Lone Rider (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

A
LEX
HADN
'
T
KNOWN
what was bothering Emily Calder the day before. But when she came into the coffee shop for her break the following morning, she looked even more upset.

He hoped it had nothing to do with her accepting a date with him the day before.

Normally he didn't spend much time in any one coffee shop. He liked to divide his time between them. But lately, he'd been making himself useful at the Big Timber one because of Emily. Since he'd started out working in a coffee shop, he still remembered how to make a mean cup of coffee.

When he saw Emily come in, he waved her to an empty table and quickly made her coffee, personally taking it over to her. His cousin and the other barista shared a look that he ignored.

“Here you go,” he said to Emily. “Is everything all right?” he asked more quietly.

She looked up to meet his eyes. “Great.”

“Really?”

“Maybe not great.”

He felt his heart drop, afraid of what she was going to say next. “If it's about our date...”

She shook her head. “Things aren't going well at work.”

He couldn't help his relief. “I'm sorry to hear that. Is it anything you can talk about?”

She shook her head. “But this helps.” She gave him a smile and reached for the coffee.

He watched her take a sip. “Did I get it right?”

“Perfect.” Her gaze locked with his. “Thank you. You really need to let me pay you,” she said, pulling her gaze away to dig in her purse.

“It's my treat.”

“I don't want to get you into trouble with your boss,” she whispered.

He started to tell her that he was the boss, but something stopped him. She'd said she would go out with him, thinking he worked at the shop part-time. Would it change things if he told her who he really was?

He feared it would, so he let her count out the cost of the coffee—and a tip. “Thanks,” he said and let it go at that. “If you ever need to talk, though...well, you have my number.”

She smiled. “I might do that.”

* * *

B
O
SWALLOWED
HARD
as Ray came toward her with the roll of duct tape. She avoided his eyes, trying to make herself as small and vulnerable as possible. As if she wasn't as vulnerable as she'd ever been.

“Yer goin' to have to ride the horse,” he said as he knelt down beside her and pulled out a length of the tape. “We ain't never gettin' there if yer the one walkin'.”

She was so surprised that she looked up at him.

He must have seen hope spark in her gaze, because his face twisted into a cruel expression. “If ya think—”

“No,” she said quickly. “I'm just relieved. I wasn't sure I could walk very far.”

He studied her, clearly trying to gauge the truth in her words. “I kin see ya'd be worthless walkin'.” He nodded. “Ya'll ride, but I'll be leadin' yer horse and if ya—”

“I won't,” she said, not needing to hear any more of this threats.

He grabbed her wrist, his fingers biting into her flesh. “Right. Ya won't.” He began to wrap her wrists together so tightly that she let out a cry. She'd made him angry. He'd seen how badly she wanted to escape. She couldn't make that mistake again.

Bo bit her lip against the pain of the tape on her already raw wrists. She wouldn't cry out again. She couldn't if she hoped to keep him from hurting her. She could feel him watching her, taking her measure. She'd never met anyone more mistrustful. What had made him like this? She remembered the myriad of scars on his body and shuddered to think. Not that it mattered how he'd come to be the violent criminal the police had tagged him. She had to learn how to avoid upsetting him. She wouldn't let herself think about how long she would have to appease this man or what would happen when he'd had enough of her.

She told herself she could do this. She would survive this no matter what she had to do.

* * *

“I
HEARD
B
O
H
AMILTON
is missing,” Lynette “Nettie” Johnson Benton Curry said as she joined her husband for an early lunch at the picnic table beside the Beartooth General Store. The day had turned beautiful, bright and sunny with a hint of the warmth of the summer to come.

“What?”
The sheriff stopped digging out the sandwiches from the bag she'd brought to look at his wife. Her hair, a bottle red, suited her. She'd had her naturally curly hair cut short. That too suited her since she was a small woman, although he'd never thought of her that way. True, he towered over her, but Lynette was such a strong, determined, stubborn and infuriating woman that she'd always felt more like his equal.

“Hadn't you heard?” she asked, blue eyes sparkling with both surprise and pleasure. While she had tried to give up gossip, it still found her doorstep. And whether she would admit it or not, she still enjoyed knowing something that other people didn't—and sharing it. “She went up into the Crazies camping Saturday, planning to be back yesterday, but no one has seen her.”

“That much I know,” he said as he pulled out a sandwich and freed it from the plastic bag. “Her father called me. What I'd like to know is how
you
know.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.

“Anita, who works at the café next to the Sarah Hamilton Foundation office, overheard one of the employees talking. She told her sister, who told Claudia Turner, who told Mabel Murphy—”

“Who told you,” he said with a nod of his head. He took another bite of his sandwich. It always amazed him how fast gossip traveled in this county—and the circular routes it took before it reached his wife.

Lynette leaned closer. “The reason everyone is in a panic is that an auditor was to meet with Bo at 11:00 a.m. yesterday morning. Guess why an auditor was called in.”

Frank shook his head. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear this, but something told him he needed to.

“There's money missing along with Bo Hamilton. Apparently, a lot of money. Someone has been stealing from the foundation for months.”

He put down the half-eaten sandwich as his stomach did a slow roll.

“What's wrong? I thought you liked tuna fish,” Lynette said.

“So the assumption on the gossip line is that she's run off with the money?” he asked, feeling a little sick. Buckmaster hadn't mentioned any of this, no doubt purposely.

Lynette nibbled at her sandwich. “Oh, you know the grapevine. Speculation is that there is a man involved.”

He bristled. “Why would people instantly think a man was involved?” he demanded more forcefully than he meant to, and more defensively. “Women steal all the time and all by themselves without any help from a man.”

She eyed him over her sandwich, looking amused. “What else would make a woman like Bo Hamilton steal from her own mother's charity foundation and take off if there wasn't a man involved?”

He stared at her, fascinated with how her mind worked. “I will never understand women.” He stood.

“You aren't going to finish your sandwich?”

“I've lost my appetite.” He didn't know why he was so upset. Another Hamilton in trouble, that's all he could think, and now the foundation was involved. Not to mention that all the women in the valley were convinced a man was at the root of the problem.

Lynette put his usual, an orange soda and a candy bar, back into his lunch bag. “Here, you'll want this for when you get hungry later, especially since you didn't finish your sandwich.”

She knew him so well. He snatched up his sandwich and took a giant bite, chewing it as he looked at her, almost daring her to say anything.

She smiled. “I love you, too.”

He finished the sandwich before he took the bag she'd offered him. She was right. Later he would want the orange soda and the candy bar.

Right now, he was angry with himself. He wished he had asked more questions about the missing Bo Hamilton when her father had called him. He wondered if he was losing his edge.

“I suppose you don't want to hear the latest on Sarah Hamilton, then?” she asked as he started to walk away.

He sat back down at the picnic table, feeling his anger leave as he looked at his wife. Lynette was the love of his life. She frustrated the hell out of him sometimes, a lot of times, but he never wanted to live without her.

“Nothing you can say will surprise me,” he said, realizing it had sounded like a dare. He didn't want to dare Lynette.

She chuckled and leaned toward him conspiratorially, signaling this was going to surprise him whether he liked it or not. With a sigh, he waited. There were no other people around since it was almost two in the afternoon. But still Lynette felt the need to whisper, which meant whatever she planned to tell him was going to be good.

“As you know, when Sarah Hamilton suddenly showed up in the middle of nowhere outside Beartooth and stepped out of the trees in front of Russell Murdock's pickup, Russell took her to the closest doctor, which just happened to be old Dr. Farnsworth.”

Yes, he knew all this and said as much. Dr. Farnsworth was retired, lived just down the road from where Russell had found the woman and had moved to the area a few years ago with his wife, so he hadn't recognized the senator's first wife whom everyone else had thought dead for twenty-two years.

Lynette nodded. “The doctor was checking Sarah for injuries and getting her cleaned up, since apparently she was scraped up along with being confused, so he had his wife help him with her.”

Frank was losing his patience. “Lynette—”

“The doctor's wife saw something.”

“Saw something?”

Lynette leaned closer. “A tattoo.”

“A lot of people have tattoos.” He told himself this wasn't news, and yet when he thought of fiftysomething Sarah Hamilton, she was the last person he'd expect to get a tattoo.

But he reminded himself that the woman couldn't account for twenty-two years of her life. Who knew what could have happened to her during that time? Did any of them know
this
Sarah Hamilton?

“Not everyone has a tattoo like this one.” Lynette was still looking like the cat who'd eaten the canary.

“Like what?”
he demanded.

“Very unusual. The doctor's wife had never seen another one like it.”

“How many tattoos has the woman seen?” he grumbled. “Is she an expert in tattoos? The woman is in her seventies. I really don't think—”

Lynette reached into her pocket and pulled out a small white piece of paper. “I had her draw the design to the best of her memory.” She held the paper out triumphantly. “I thought you might also like to know where this tattoo is located.” As he started to tell her he was getting tired of having to guess, she held up her hand and said, “On her right buttock. Kind of like the way you brand your cattle.”

He took the scrap of paper and looked down at the crudely drawn design. Then he looked at his wife. “What the hell is it?”

“If I had to guess, I'd say it was a pendulum.”

“
A pendulum?
Why would someone get this tattooed on their butt?”

His wife shrugged.

“But what does it mean?”

“You're the detective. I can't do it all for you,” she said as she finished her sandwich. “You have to admit it's interesting, isn't it?”

He wanted to grab her and kiss her. “I really should hire you for the department,” he said as he looked again at the design. It did remind him of a brand. “A pendulum, huh?”

“I have to get back to work.” She'd married the Beartooth General Store when she married her first husband, Bob Benton. He had hated the store. He gave it to her in the divorce because she loved working there. After it burned down, she'd sold the property, thinking she'd put that part of her life behind her.

But now she was back working for the new owner part-time because the store was still her baby, the only baby she'd ever had. Also, the store was the epicenter of the county's gossip and, like it or not, Lynette was a gossip magnet.

“Hey,” he said as she put her trash in her paper lunch bag and stood to leave. He rose, as well. Taking her arm, he drew her to him. “You really are something.”

“I know. That's why you married me.”

“That was one reason,” he admitted with a chuckle. Then he kissed her, picked up his bag with his soda and candy from the picnic table and headed for his office, hoping someone somewhere could tell him what this tattoo meant, because it damned sure meant
something
.

* * *

“T
ELL
ME
AGAIN
about how you met Sarah.”

“Angelina, must we do this now?” Buckmaster asked with a groan. He suspected she was merely trying to keep his mind off Bo. All through lunch, he'd been looking out the window, praying that he would see her come riding out of the pines in the distance.

“Please just indulge me.”

“I've told you. I took a load of horses up into the park for the summer. I was unloading them when I noticed her standing next to the corral.”

“So it was love at first sight?”

He heard the edge to her voice. Why did she put herself through this? She'd never shown any jealousy before Sarah's return. Or had he just missed it?

“It wasn't love at first sight.” As he said it, he realized how true that was. Sarah had been cute, but he came across a lot of cute girls. At twenty-five, he hadn't even given a thought to settling down... But somehow that had changed the day he met Sarah, he realized.

“Who made the first move?” Angelina asked.

He let himself remember. He could almost smell the dust, the horses and the pines. The warm, early summer breeze stirred her long blond hair. Even now he could feel the summer sun on his back.