chapter Seven
Aggie returned with paper and pen—and of course a gun. She dropped the paper and pen onto the mattress and leaned against the wall, the gun in her hand.
While Aggie had been gone, Emma had used the buckets in the closet. Just washing her face and cleaning up a little made her feel stronger.
“I’m going to need some fresh clothing,” Emma said from where she’d been standing and peering out a space between the boarded-up window. “I assume you removed my clothing from the house and still have it.”
She’d realized that if Aggie had gotten rid of her belongings, then she wasn’t planning on letting Emma live.
Aggie studied her for a moment without answering, making Emma’s heart pound. Was she upset that Emma had asked for a change of clothing? Or did she realize as Emma did, that if she admitted to getting rid of Emma’s things, then they would both know what her plans were?
Emma so far had been the perfect prisoner, not asking for anything, not trying to escape. She’d thought it better to bide her time.
But she needed fresh clothing and she was tired of pretending to be the perfect prisoner. However this ended, Emma wasn’t about to go down in a cowardly fashion if she could help it.
“Write the letter and I’ll get you some of your clothes,” Aggie said.
Emma glanced toward the paper and pen on the mattress, relieved to hear that Aggie hadn’t gotten rid of her things. That had to mean something.
Unless the woman was lying. That was always a possibility.
But Emma had little choice but to go along. “You left a note at the house.” She shifted her gaze to Aggie. “I don’t remember writing it.”
“You didn’t. I did.”
She cocked a brow. “Aren’t you afraid someone will check the handwriting and realize it isn’t mine?”
Aggie laughed. “How long have you been in that house? Two months? I really doubt any of your stepsons would know your handwriting. Anyway, the note I left for you at the house was sloppy, hurried as if you were upset. I also made it short and sweet. Now, quit stalling.”
Emma walked over to the mattress, sat down on the edge and picked up the paper and pen.
“Here, you can use the tray to write on,” Aggie said, sliding it over to her with her foot. “Start by apologizing for running out on Hoyt.” She smiled. “That is what you would do, isn’t it? Then tell them you are afraid for your life.”
At least that part Emma would write honestly.
“Now write, ‘I’m having a friend drop this off at the house.’” She lifted a brow. “You can’t really say that Aggie will be dropping it off when no one is home, now, can you?”
So that was how she planned to get the letter to Chisholm Cattle Company quickly. Emma felt better already. Aggie didn’t have an accomplice. She was all alone in this. That definitely narrowed the odds—even with Aggie holding the gun.
“EMMA WAS DELIGHTFUL,” the fiftysomething male supervisor at the hotel told Zane when they met that morning. “I hated to lose her. Everyone liked her.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. I need to find her.” He filled the man in on what he knew so far about Emma’s disappearance, including the fact that she might be in danger, something he thought very likely after his conversation with his brother Marshall first thing this morning.
He still couldn’t believe that the house had apparently been bugged and that even the sheriff was beginning to consider that Aggie Wells wasn’t just alive, but that she might have faked her disappearance and taken Emma.
“Did she ever mention family?” he asked the supervisor.
The man shook his head, visibly upset by the news about Emma. “She had a father out in California. I believe they were close, but other than that…”
“Did she mention his name?”
“Sorry. Emma wasn’t one to talk about herself.”
“She didn’t get any mail here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you know where she lived?” Zane asked.
“She had an apartment just down the street from here.”
Zane glanced toward the front door and the street beyond it. “This is a pretty pricey neighborhood.”
“I got the feeling she was careful with her money.”
Was it possible she’d come from money? Or married it? Or was just careful with what she made?
She could have been divorced or widowed. Zane swore under his breath; there was no way of knowing. When he’d gone on the internet, he hadn’t been able to find an Emma McDougal that matched her age.
“She was like family here at the hotel,” the supervisor said.
And if she really had left on her own accord, she would have come back here, Zane thought. Clearly she could have gotten her old job back.
Letters. He thought of the note Emma had allegedly left. After talking to his brother Marshall this morning, he realized there was a chance she either hadn’t left it or had been forced to write it.
“You wouldn’t happen to still have anything that Emma had written?” he asked. “She left a note, but we suspect it wasn’t her handwriting.”
“As a matter of fact, I have her employment application. We keep those on file for five years.” He went into the office and returned a moment later with a copy for Zane. “You don’t see penmanship like this anymore. These kids and their texting—their handwriting is atrocious. I could show you applications that are barely legible.”
Zane stared down at Emma’s perfect script. There was no way she’d written the note left at the house. Under former employment, the line was blank. The address line was also blank.
“There isn’t much on this application,” he noted.
The man shook his head. “She’d just gotten to town, didn’t have an apartment yet, no past experience, but there was something about her, you know?”
Zane thought he did. He thanked the supervisor.
“When you find Emma, will you tell her that we all miss her?”
“I will,” Zane said, aware that Hoyt Chisholm wasn’t the only man who’d fallen for Emma at the Denver hotel.
THE SUN ROSE HIGHER, taking the chill out of the mountain air, but Jinx felt little of the warmth. When she’d seen the calves in the corral, she’d known. Rafe wasn’t taking any chances. He’d had his men leave the weaker calves that had been slowing them down. He was spooked, which meant he was suspicious of her.
She leaned back in the saddle to stretch her spine. Huge cumulus clouds floated in the sea of brilliant blue over the tops of the pines. The air up here felt so clean she swore it hurt to breathe. She was tired but Dawson, she noted as she glanced over at him, was exhausted. How much longer could he keep going without any sleep? She knew he hadn’t gotten any last night.
As an old homestead cabin came into view, she saw Dawson rein in. Like her, he must have spotted the small creek nearby and the meadow of grass. They could push the calves only so hard. It had been slow going and they hadn’t made much headway, but she also didn’t think they’d left any strays for the wolves and grizzlies to eat.
“We have to stop,” he said as she rode over to him. He looked as if he expected an argument from her. He knew how badly she wanted the leader of the rustling ring. So much she could taste it. But she couldn’t leave him and the calves. She figured he was counting on that.
Rafe would be pushing the cattle down to the next corral, but he couldn’t move up the delivery date because he would have no way to contact the truck drivers with no cell phone service for miles around.
There was time, she told herself as she swung down from her saddle. The calves had already found the creek. She headed for the old cabin. It looked as if it had been used by ranchers who brought their cattle up to summer range, maybe even the Chisholms, though not Dawson. He apparently liked the cave better.
“You can catch up to the herd if you leave now,” Dawson said behind her. “I don’t want you staying for the wrong reasons.” She didn’t turn, didn’t answer. Rafe would be pushing the cattle toward the last corral, afraid something was amiss with her disappearance. She figured that meant he wouldn’t be doubling back again to look for her—or anyone else.
Too bad that wasn’t the real reason she was staying here.
“Jinx,” Dawson said behind her. There was a softness to his voice as light as a caress. She turned around to face him, saw his expression and told herself she should have taken his advice and ridden out before she got in any deeper.
“LOOKS LIKE THINGS GOT ROUGH,” McCall said in her office. Marshall had brought her what was left of the listening device after the brothers had put on the fight at the kitchen table. “It’s not a smoke alarm. It appears to be some sort of listening device, just as Emma suspected.”
Marshall nodded. “She didn’t bail on my father, did she?”
McCall studied the pieces he’d brought her. She was beginning to believe more and more that Emma had been right about a lot of things.
“Now what?” he asked.
“We have to assume whoever put this in the kitchen will have heard the fight up until the point where the device was destroyed,” the sheriff said. “With luck, that person will wait until he or she is sure all of you are away from the house and then try to replace it.”
He smiled, obviously noticing the way she was trying not to say Aggie’s name. “Leaving yourself open just in case it isn’t Aggie?”
“Just trying not to jump to conclusions.”
He nodded. “I checked the house. There are at least two more of these things, one in the living room and another in my dad and Emma’s bedroom, just as you said she told you in the letter.”
McCall could see how angry he was. “We have to keep our cool,” she warned. “If she gets any hint that we’re onto her…”
“I know. We need her to lead us to Emma—if she has her.”
“Have you heard anything from Zane?”
“He called this morning in the middle of the fight. I called him back from my cell phone away from the house and told him what was going on here,” Marshall said. “He’s flying to some place in California today, the last address he could find for Emma. I told him to keep looking for her—just in case we’re wrong and Emma really did leave. I guess we’re covering all our bets.”
“Didn’t you say your brother Dawson went to check on your cattle up on summer range?”
“Yeah.” Marshall frowned. “I got the feeling he’d be gone for a couple of days at least. I don’t think we need to worry about him showing up unexpectedly. My brothers and I were talking. We have some new fence we started putting in before Dad was arrested. It’s up in the north forty far enough that we wouldn’t be coming back to the ranch until late.”
“That sounds good. We want her to know you’ll be gone for a while. I’ll take it from there,” the sheriff said.
“You sure you won’t need any help?” Marshall asked.
McCall smiled. “Thanks, but I think I can handle it.” She knew that all the brothers would be there in a heartbeat if they thought they were needed. She liked the Chisholm men. They were all gallant, all loyal to family.
She thought of her newest deputy, Halley Robinson, and her fiancé, Colton Chisholm. They made a cute couple. Halley made a darn good deputy. McCall was happy for her and hoped Emma’s situation had a happy ending, as well.
“Set it up for tomorrow,” she said, afraid to put it off.
Marshall nodded. “Dad said Emma swore she smelled the woman’s perfume in the house several times. The last time he didn’t believe her. That’s really weighing on him right now. He’s convinced that not only is Aggie alive but that she might have already hurt Emma. He is doing everything possible to get out on bail. I know he has a call in to the governor.”
“Hopefully this will all be over by tomorrow,” the sheriff said. If Aggie showed up, McCall was just praying she would lead her to Emma. If Emma was still alive.
THE LOOK IN DAWSON’S DARK EYES spurred Jinx’s heartbeat into a gallop.
“Jinx,” he said again, the soft timbre of his voice melting her resolve. She watched him yank his Stetson from his head and rake his fingers through his thick black hair. His expression was one of both desperation and desire.
She felt the same stir in her. “Chisholm…” She said his last name as if that could stop him.
It didn’t.
In two long strides he closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her, dragging her to him, his mouth dropping to hers, stealing her breath, making her heart drum in her chest. She looped her arms around his neck, holding on tight as if in a fierce gale.
“What if Rafe comes back?” she said when he let her come up for breath.
“I don’t give a damn about Rafe,” he said as his mouth hovered over her lips. And then he was kissing her again, deepening the kiss.
Desire shot through her veins, hot and sweet. She told herself this was a mistake, but she no longer believed that as Dawson cupped her jean-clad bottom and lifted her against him. His mouth dropped from hers and trailed along her jaw to her throat to the tops of her breasts. She felt the heat of his breath, his mouth, as he ferreted one rock-hard nipple from her bra, then another.
With a cry, she arched against him and he lifted her higher, pressing her against the sun-warmed wood of the cabin as he peeled back her shirt, her bra, and found bare skin.
They never made it inside the cabin. As the sun rose high above the pines and clouds drifted past in the endless sea of blue overhead, they made love on their discarded clothing spread across the summer grass as the calves rested in the shade of the trees along the creek and the breeze stirred the leaves on the cottonwoods overhead.