the ground.
Footsteps in the hall. Hurry! She practically threw herself out the open window, hit the wet slick ground and fell, her leggings instantly muddy and soaked.
Scrambling to her feet, she ran through the pouring rain to the lofty pine trees and the cover they afforded. She streaked across the grassy hillside to the creek bed and the cottonwoods. Following the creek, she ran to where she’d hidden her vehicle earlier. She didn’t look back, afraid she’d see Brandon McCall’s handsome face—and his shotgun pointed at her heart.
She was soaked to the skin and chilled as she climbed behind the wheel, started the engine and peeled out. All she wanted right now was to get back to the motel and climb into a tub of hot water. She didn’t want to think about the empty safe. About the call to Dr. French. She didn’t want to think about what she’d learned tonight about Mason VanHorn. Or Brandon McCall.
Her hands were shaking as she drove as fast as she could toward the highway, needing to put distance between her and the VanHorn Ranch.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Not about Mason VanHorn. Or about Brandon McCall. But she was. She’d thought she’d seen something promising in Brandon McCall years ago, but it seemed she had been as wrong about him as she was Mason VanHorn.
Slamming her hand down on the steering wheel, she warned herself not to let this get personal. She laughed at the thought. After years of specializing in digging up dirt, she was good at what she did. She’d written the book on detachment when it came to her job—to her life.
But this wasn’t just any investigation. And she could no longer pretend it was. It had suddenly gotten damn personal.
At the two-lane highway, she turned south on the road from Antelope Flats, Montana, to Sheridan, Wyoming. Since her arrival, she’d seen little traffic on this stretch, even in the daytime, except for an occasional coal mine or gas worker, a rancher heading for Sheridan or a fisherman coming up from Wyoming headed for the Tongue River Reservoir. But nobody at this hour of the night.
She watched her rearview mirror expecting to see at least one set of headlights behind her on the rain-slick highway. Instead there was only darkness. At least for the moment. The storm snuffed out all light from the moon or stars, turning the Tongue River to pewter as it followed her over the border into Wyoming.
Her plan had worked, for all the good it had done her. Vandalizing the coalbed methane wells had gotten everyone away from the ranch house. Well, almost everyone.
At least it had gotten her what she wanted—inside the ranch house—inside the safe.
Tears burned her eyes. If Mason VanHorn had cleaned out the safe, did that mean he’d destroyed the evidence? Did that mean she’d never be able to get to the truth?
She rubbed a hand over her wet face and stared past the clacking windshield wipers at the rainy highway. Exhaustion pulled at her. She was wet and tired and cold and discouraged. She’d almost gotten caught tonight, but the fact it had been Brandon McCall made it all the worse.
He hadn’t recognized her, she knew she should be thankful for that. But even that hurt. He hadn’t remembered her. But she’d remembered him. That should have told her everything she needed to know. Obviously he hadn’t been as taken with her as she had been with him all those years ago.
She’d thought about what it would be like to run into him. Just not on the VanHorn Ranch. Not working for the enemy. The long-running feud between the McCalls and the VanHorns aside, she’d expected better of him.
She crossed the river as the highway meandered to Sheridan, Wyoming, fighting her disappointment. Angry with herself for ever thinking he might be different from other men she’d known. Even more angry that, over the years, she’d held him up as the kind of man she would want in her life.
How ridiculous was that? He’d been little more than a boy. She couldn’t know what kind of man he would grow into. But she thought she’d known. Obviously she’d seen something in Brandon McCall that hadn’t existed.
She felt sick. Men just kept letting her down. What did that say about them? Or her?
How she would have loved to drive straight to the airport and fly home. But she couldn’t leave. Hers wasn’t the only life at stake here and this wasn’t the first investigation where she’d run into trouble. She was known for hanging in until she got what she was after.
Even if she could have let Mason VanHorn get away with what she knew he’d done, she had Lenore Johnson to think about. When she’d hired the private investigator, she’d warned Lenore how dangerous this was going to be.
Now Lenore was missing. Presumed dead, if Mason VanHorn or Dr. French found out that she’d been asking questions about them.
If Lenore Johnson had failed, Anna knew she had even less chance of finding out the truth. But she had to try to find Lenore, try to help her if she was still alive. How, though, could she find out the truth with everything—and everyone—against her?
Along with Brandon McCall, every ranch hand at the VanHorn Ranch would be looking for her now, including Mason VanHorn himself once he returned from Gillette.
She glanced in the rearview mirror again. Nothing but rain and darkness behind her. The same in front of her. She hadn’t been followed. But she wasn’t safe. She wouldn’t be safe and she couldn’t help Lenore until she could get the goods on Mason VanHorn. She desperately needed leverage. She’d thought she would find it in his office safe, that he would keep it where he could get to it, that he needed it as desperately as she did.
If she was right, then the evidence was at the house—just not in the safe. She would have to go back. Tomorrow night, once it got dark.
She’d have to get back into that house, even knowing that they’d all be waiting for her. All the ranch hands and hired thugs. Mason VanHorn, if he heard about tonight—and Brandon McCall.
And if she was really unlucky, the man she feared the most, Dr. French.
Chapter Three
Tuesday
Sheriff Cash McCall had just gotten to his office when the phone rang.
“This is Johnson Investigations in Richmond, Virginia,” said a woman with a wonderful Southern accent.
“I’m calling in regard to Lenore Johnson. She is in your area on an investigation and we haven’t received word from her for several days. She had made a prior arrangement to call yesterday afternoon at a set time. She did not call. We have reason to believe she might have met with foul play.”
An investigator all the way from Virginia? “I can’t file a missing person’s report for forty-eight hours on an adult, but I would be happy to take the information,” Cash told her.
“We’d appreciate that. Because of the nature of our business, I’m afraid I can’t give you the details of the investigation. However, I can tell you where she was staying, the make and model of the car she was driving and give you her description.”
“All right.” Had she been a tourist, Cash wouldn’t even have done that much in the first forty-eight hours. Usually people just lost track of time and forgot to call. But since she was an investigator… And since he was a nice guy who had taken this job to help people…
