their business. So the whole idea was to sweep whatever trouble the club had under one of their expensive Persian rugs.
Worse, the folks who owned the club didn’t want to upset the residents—or jeopardize new clientele—so they wanted everyone to believe that once they were behind these gates they were safe and nothing bad could happen.
Buford snorted at the thought, recalling how the general manager had asked him to park in the back of the main lodge so he wouldn’t upset anyone. The guard at the gate had said, “Sheriff Buford, right? I heard you were here for a complimentary visit.”
A complimentary visit. That had made him contrary enough that he’d parked right out front of “the Main Lodge.” Now, though, as he started up the wide flagstone steps, he wished he hadn’t been so obstinate. He felt his arthritis bothering him and, worse, his stomach roiling against the breakfast his wife had cooked him.
Clara had read in one of her magazines that if you ate a lot of hot peppers it would make you lose weight. She’d been putting hot chile peppers in everything they ate—and playing hell with his stomach.
The general manager he’d spoken to earlier spotted him and came rushing toward him. The diminutive man, whose name Buford couldn’t recall at first, was painfully thin with skin that hadn’t seen sunlight and piercing blue eyes that never settled more than a second.
“I thought I told you to park in the back.”
Buford shrugged. “So what’s the problem?” he asked as he looked around the huge reception area. All the leather, antler lamps and chandeliers, thick rugs and gleaming wood floors reminded him of Clara’s designer magazines.
Montana style, they called it. The Lodge Look. Buford was old enough to remember when a lot of places looked like this, only they’d been the real McCoy—not this forced Montana style.
“In here,” the general manager ordered, drawing him into a small, claustrophobic office with only one window that looked out on the dense forest. The name on the desk read Kevin Andrews, General Manager.
Kevin closed the door and for the first time, Buford noticed how nervous the man appeared. The last time Buford had been called here was for a robbery inside the gates. That time he’d thought Kevin was going to have a heart attack, he’d been so upset. But once the missing jewelry, which turned out only to have been misplaced, was found, all was well and quickly forgotten.
Buford guessed though that it had taken ten years off Kevin’s life from the looks of him. “So what’s up? More missing jewelry?”
“This is a very delicate matter. I need you to handle it with the utmost care. Do I have your word?”
Buford felt his stomach roil again. He was in no mood for this. “Just tell me what’s happened.”
The general manager rose from his chair with a brisk “come with me.”
Buford followed him out to a golf cart. Resigned that he had no choice but to ride along, he climbed on. Kevin drove them through the ritzy residence via the narrow paved roads that had been hacked out of the pines.
The hotel-size houses were all set back from the road, each occupying at least ten acres from Buford’s estimation since the buildings had to take up three of those acres with guest houses of another half acre. Each log, stone and glass structure was surrounded by pine trees so he only caught glimpses of the exclusive houses as Kevin whipped along the main road.
Finally he pulled down one of the long driveways, coming to a stop in front of a stone monstrosity with two wide wooden doors. Like the others, the house was all rock and logs with massive windows that looked out over the pines on the mountainside and Flathead Lake far below.
Buford saw with a curse that two of the security force’s golf carts were parked out front. One of the garage doors was open. A big, black SUV hunkered in one of the three stalls. The others were empty.
Getting off the golf cart, he let Kevin lead him up to the front door. Bears had been carved into the huge wooden doors, and not by some roadside chainsaw artist. Without knocking, Kevin opened the door and Buford followed him inside.
He was hit at once with a familiar smell and felt his stomach clutch. This was no missing jewelry case.
With dread, he moved across the marble floor to where the walls opened into a football field–size living room with much the same furnishings as the club’s main lodge. The two security guards were standing at the edge of the room. They had been visiting, but when they saw Kevin, they tried to act professional.
Buford looked past them to the dead man sprawled beside the hearth of the towering rock fireplace. The deceased was wearing a white, blood-soaked velour robe and a pair of leather slippers on his feet. Apparently nothing else.
“Get them out of here,” Buford ordered, pointing at the two security guards. He could only guess at how many people had already tromped through here contaminating the scene. “Stay back and make sure no one else comes traipsing through here.”
He swore under his breath as he worked his way across the room to the fireplace and the dead man. The victim looked to be in his late fifties, but could have been older because, from the tightness of his facial skin, he’d had some work done. His hair was dark with distinguishing gray at the temples, a handsome man even in death.
It appeared he’d been shot in the heart at point-blank range. An expensive handgun lay on the floor next to the body in a pool of drying blood. Clearly the man had been dead for hours. Buford swore again. He’d bet that Kevin had contacted the Grizzly Club board before he’d called the sheriff’s department.
Around the dead man were two different distinct prints left in his blood. One was a man-size dress shoe sole. The other a cowboy boot—small enough that Buford would guess it was a woman’s. It was her prints that held his attention. The woman hadn’t walked away—she’d run—straight for the front door.
AT THE MOTORCYCLE, BLYTHE tied up her hair and climbed on behind the cowboy. She didn’t think about what she was doing as she wrapped her arms around him. All she knew was that she had to escape, and wherever Logan was headed was fine with her. Even better, this Whitehorse place sounded like the end of the earth. With luck, no one would find her there.
She reminded herself that she’d thought this part of Montana would be far from the life she wanted so desperately to leave behind. But she’d been wrong.
Running didn’t come easy to her. She’d always been a fighter. But not today. Today she only wanted to forget everything, hang on to this good-looking cowboy on the back of his motorcycle, feel the wind in her face and put her old life as far behind her as possible.
An image flashed in her mind, making her shudder, and she glanced down at her cowboy boots. She quickly wiped away a streak of dark red along the sole as Logan turned the key and brought the Harley to life.
She felt the throb of the engine and closed her eyes and her mind the way she used to tune out her mother when she was a girl. Back then it was to close out the sound of her mother and her latest boyfriend arguing in the adjacent room of the small, old trailer house. She had learned to go somewhere else, be someone else, always dreaming of a fantasy life far away.
With a smile, she remembered that one of her daydreams had been to run away with a cowboy. The thought made her hold on to Logan tighter as he shifted and tore out of the café parking lot in a shower
