let your insurance office know. They might want you to get her to sign something.”
In front of his pickup, the EMTs were helping the woman to her feet. Cull heard her say she needed to go to her rental car. She was late for an appointment.
“I’m not sure you should be driving,” one of the EMTs said.
“I can take you wherever you need to go,” Cull said, stepping forward. “I agree. You shouldn’t drive.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Actually, I would appreciate that,” she said. “I’m not familiar with this area. As shaken as I am, I would probably get lost.”
“Where are you headed?”
“A ranch outside of town. The Sundown Stallion Station—are you familiar with it?”
Cull stared at her, feeling all the blood drain from his face. He remembered now where he’d seen her name before. On a scratch pad on his father’s desk.
* * *
SHERIFF MCCALL CRAWFORD watched Cull help the woman into the passenger side of his pickup. He looked more shaken than Nikki St. James did.
She tried to still the bad feeling that had settled in her stomach as she watched Cull slip behind the wheel. She’d seen his face when the woman had told him where she’d been headed—to his ranch.
McCall could no more help her suspicious nature than she could flap her arms and fly. She’d heard about scams involving people who appeared to have been hit by vehicles. It usually involved a payoff of some kind.
As she watched Cull start his truck and pull away, she couldn’t help wondering who Nikki St. James was and, more to the point, what she was after. Did she really have an appointment at the ranch? Or was she a reporter trying to get a foot in the door?
Travers McGraw had been forced to get a locked gate for the ranch entrance because of the publicity about the kidnapping. With the twenty-fifth anniversary coming up next week, McCall worried that Cull had just been scammed.
She looked toward the café, suspecting someone in there had witnessed the accident. Wouldn’t hurt to ask and still that tiny voice inside her that told her there was something wrong about this. Also she could use a cup of coffee.
As Cull drove past, she saw him glance at the woman in the passenger seat of his pickup. He looked worried. McCall thought he should be.
Nikki St. James was looking out the side window as they passed. She seemed to be interested in someone inside the café.
McCall turned to see redheaded waitress Abby Pierce standing in the window.
* * *
NIKKI TRIED TO RELAX, but she could feel Cull’s gaze on her periodically as he drove. That had been more than risky back there. He could very well have killed her.
Her original plan was for Ledger. She’d seen how kindhearted he was. It was one thing to have Travers on her side, but she needed at least one family member she could count on. She’d hoped her stunt would make him more amenable to helping her once he knew who she was.
With Cull, she wasn’t sure. At first, he’d been so scared that he would have done anything for her. But then she’d seen his shock when she’d told him where her appointment was.
As he drove south, she said, “Thank you for doing this. I hate to have you going out of your way for me.”
“It’s not out of my way. Your appointment is with Travers McGraw?”
“Yes.”
His gaze was like a laser. “He’s my father. I’m Cull McGraw, his oldest son.”
She’d feigned surprise. “I knew Whitehorse was a small town, but...”
Nikki saw suspicion in his eyes as they met hers. He would have been a fool not to be suspicious and Cull was no fool. She could see that right away.
She recalled the change in him she’d seen after she’d mentioned her name—and where her appointment was. Had the sheriff said something to him to make him question the accident?
He’d said little since they’d left the small Western town behind them. This part of Montana was rolling prairie where thousands of bison had once ranged. In the distance she could make out the Little Rockies, the only mountains on the horizon.
Wild country, she thought, watching the cowboy out of the corner of her eye. It took a special breed to live in a place where the temperature could change in a heartbeat from fifty above to fifty below zero.
Nikki tried to relax but it was hard. There was an all-male aura about Cull that seemed to fill the pickup cab. She would have had to be in a coma not to be aware of the handsome cowboy, even with his scowling. Did he suspect that what happened back there had been a stunt? She should have stayed with her original plan and waited for Ledger.
Too late to worry about that now. With relief, she saw the sign for the turnoff ahead. Her pulse jumped when she saw the Sundown Stallion Station horse ranch come into view. It reminded her of every horse movie she’d ever seen as a girl. Miles of brilliant green grass fenced in by sparkling white-painted wooden fence that made the place look as if it should be in Kentucky—not the backwoods of Montana.
Cull McGraw hit the remote control on the massive white gate that she knew had been erected not long after the kidnapping to keep out the media and morbidly curious. People not so unlike herself.
The gate swung open without a sound, and after he drove the truck through, it closed behind them.
She was really doing this. Her grandfather had taught her that nothing was out of line to get a story. She would get this one. Her head ached and she was regretting her stunt back in town. It almost got her killed and it hadn’t worked. Cull seemed even more distrusting of her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glance over at her. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
Nervous, scared, excited, terrified. “I have a little headache,” she said. She’d hit the pavement harder than she’d planned.
He looked worried and guilty. She felt a sharp stab of her own guilt. But she quickly brushed it away. She had to know the truth about her father. Even as she thought it, a lump formed in her throat.
What if her grandfather was right and she couldn’t handle the truth?
This case was definitely more than just a book for her; she could admit that now. She’d come here to prove that Nate Corwin had been innocent.
“Nate Corwin was a philanderer,” her grandfather told her the day before she’d left for Whitehorse, Montana. “Of course, he was having an affair with Marianne McGraw. He loved women with money. It’s why he married your mother.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Too bad you can’t ask your mother, but she’s off on some shopping spree in Paris, I hear. But then again, she’d just defend him like she always did,” Wendell St. James had said. “Don’t come crying to me when you find out the worst.”
“I’ve
