had one tragedy on his conscience. He didn’t need another.
“All right. We’ll do this your way. Tell me what you want.”
A look of surprise flashed across her face. Then, as if through an act of will, her features arranged themselves into a calm mask. “I want to take him home,” she said. “I want to bury him on the hilltop above the ranch, next to Mama and Papa. That’s what Frank would want.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. I’ll tell the sheriff what happened, fill out the paperwork and hope for the best.”
She nodded grimly, offering him no thanks. “Get these miserable handcuffs off him. If you hadn’t forced him to wear them, Frank would still be alive.”
Matt made no reply. It was standard procedure to handcuff a prisoner during a transfer. But Jessie would have no interest in hearing that.
Taking the small key from his pocket, he crouched beside her. Together they turned Frank’s body onto its side. For her sake, he worked gently and carefully. Frank was beyond hurting, but he knew Jessie would feel the slightest strain, twist or pinch as if were happening to her own flesh.
When the manacles were removed, Jessie lowered Frank’s body to the ground. Then, with her mouth set, her eyes brimming, she stepped back and allowed Matt to lift her brother in his arms.
Frank Hammond had not been heavy in life. His lanky teenaged body, still in the process of growing, was little more than bones and sinew. Matt needed no help carrying him out of the gully, laying him across the saddle of the spare horse and lashing his body into place. It was a shame neither of them had brought a blanket. It might have been easier on Jessie if they’d been able to wrap him.
Anxious to be done with this sad business, he swung onto the back of his chestnut gelding and waited while she mounted her mare. Without a word, she moved in front of him and headed south, keeping below the ridge. Matt savored the glint of sunlight on her raven curls as he rode a few yards behind her. He found himself missing the grip of her hands at his waist and the lightly electric pressure of her breasts against his back.
Jessie would not have an easy time of it, with her brother dead and her ranch gone. With no resource except her beauty, she could easily go the way of too many pretty girls and end up making her living on her back.
By all the fires of hell, Matt vowed, he would shake the life out of her before he’d let her do a thing like that!
His own vehemence startled him. Years ago a retired sheriff, who’d been a friend and mentor, had warned him that getting involved with any woman on a case was a surefire recipe for trouble. Matt had always followed that advice. He would continue to follow it, even now.
Especially now.
Jessie Hammond was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and only six or seven years his junior. She was spunky and tender, with a vulnerability that roused all his protective instincts. But he wasn’t about to become involved with her. He was only concerned for her welfare. And besides, this wasn’t even his damned case!
Or was it?
Once again Matt ran her story through his mind—the ill-fated purchase of the stallion, the foreclosure on the ranch, the seizure of the horse and the fight with Allister Gates. If there was one common thread that ran through Jessie’s retelling, it was that Frank had been the one in charge. Frank had mortgaged the ranch. Frank had bought the stallion. And Frank had been the one to go and take the horse back.
That, Matt realized, was what bothered him. He had met both the brother and the sister. Frank had been quiet, almost timid, scarcely capable of violence, let alone murder. The bold one of the pair had been Jessie. Willful and audacious, she might have deferred to her brother as the man of the family, but in a crisis, she would have been the one to act—or at least to push him into action.
Matt stared at her proud, slender back, struggling against the flow of his thoughts. What if both Frank and Jessie had lied to him? What if she’d gone with Frank that night, to cover him with the rifle while he took the stallion? If Allister had tried to stop them, it would have been Jessie who’d stood in his way.
And it would have been Jessie who’d shot him.
Chapter Four
T hey rode single file over unmarked ground. Jessie led the way on her mare, her rigid shoulders betraying her tightly reined emotions. Matt followed a few yards behind her on his tall chestnut, leading the bay with Frank Hammond’s body slung over the saddle. He had hoped Jessie would talk to him, maybe tell him more about what had happened. But she hoarded her secrets as she hoarded her grief, locked in some deep place he could not reach.
Let it go, logic tempted him. With Frank Hammond dead, the murder of Allister Gates should be a closed case. Frank was beyond punishment, and if this dark sprite of a woman had fired the fatal shot, then dropped the rifle in the confusion of getting away, the consequences would haunt her to the end of her days. Surely justice would be served well enough.
The argument made all the sense in the world. But Matt had sworn an oath to uphold the law, and he did not take that oath lightly. He had lost a prisoner entrusted to his care. That meant he no longer had the option of walking away. Whatever the cost, it would be his duty to uncover the truth and to act on that truth.
Even if getting to the truth meant destroying Jessie Hammond.
They were moving deeper into the hills that formed the skirts of the Big Horn Mountains. The aspen groves were giving way to the forests of pine that carpeted the slopes as far as the timberline. Above them, still blanketed in snow, rocky peaks jutted against the sky.
Matt had assumed she was leading him back to her ranch. But no one would build a homestead on this steep, remote landscape. Jessie, he suspected, was taking him someplace else.
“I’m new to these parts,” he called out, breaking the long silence. “Which way is your ranch?”
“You mean the place that used to be our ranch.” Her reply was blade thin, blade sharp. “It’s due east of here, in a hollow on the other side of that long ridge. We’ll pass the graveyard on the way down. But right now we’re taking a side trip. There’s something I need to do.”
The steely undertone in her voice warned him against asking her more. As she spoke, she swung the mare left and cut down the hill toward what looked like an overgrown box canyon. Matt followed her, taking care to see that the steep descent didn’t cause her brother’s body to slip off the horse. Damn, but he’d be glad when this grim errand was done and Frank was planted in the family graveyard where she wanted him.
But even then, the trouble would be far from over. Matt couldn’t walk away from this mess now; he was in too deep. Justice demanded that he learn the full truth about Allister’s death. For that he would have to win Jessie’s trust, even if it meant betraying her later.
They had reached the box canyon he’d seen from above. The mouth was narrow and overgrown, its entrance hidden by a high tangle of oak brush. Inside, stream-fed alders reached almost to the top of the sheer rock walls. Fingers of water from hidden springs trickled over the grassy floor.
Not until the mare nickered, and the gelding began to snort and toss its head, did Matt realize what the canyon held.
Through the trees, he could make out flashes of motion and the glint of sunlight on an ebony coat.
