“I’ll need horses for half a dozen men,” Lucas said. It wouldn’t be easy tracking the killer through the miles of National Forest that bordered the ranch, but it would be nearly impossible on foot.
Cal nodded. “No problem.”
Lucas started back toward his vehicle and both men followed. As he walked, he gave Deputy Ferguson his orders. “Stay here and get a preliminary statement from the woman. I’ll want to question her myself, later. But right now I need to get up on the mountain. Call the officer at the Mount Destiny ranger station and apprise him of the situation. Tell him to keep his eyes open and his back covered.”
Once Lucas got to the crime scene, he’d set a perimeter and establish a command post. Afterward, he’d send his deputies—six, not counting the man he planned to assign to guard duty at the ranch house—into the mountains to try to track the killer. If they were lucky, they’d pick up a trail before nightfall.
“Helluva deal,” Cal said as he followed Lucas back to his vehicle. “A man comes here for a vacation and gets shot out of the saddle in broad damn daylight.” He sighed and shook his head. “Who’d have thought something like this could happen here?”
“What can you tell me about the dead man, Cal?”
“Name’s Miller. Hugh Miller. He checked in on Tuesday after booking a cabin for a month.”
“What about his wife? Have you talked to her?”
“No. And she’s not his wife. Her name’s Lexie Dale. She checked in on Tuesday, as well, but she’s staying in her own separate cabin.”
“Miller’s significant other?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Cal said.
Lucas wasn’t surprised that his cousin had so little information about the couple. Cal had given Mo’s guest operation a wide berth from day one. As long as the tourists who stayed in the four small hunting cabins at the edge of the ranch property stayed clear of his cattle and his hay fields, Cal could almost tolerate them.
“There’s a good chance Mo knows more about both of them,” Cal said. “You know how she is.”
Lucas had to smile. Yes, he knew exactly how his older sister went out of her way to make each guest feel as if they were a member of the Garrett family. And when it came to singles, she could be a shameless matchmaker. Although never married, Mo considered herself an expert on relationships. If anyone could give Lucas the lowdown on the relationship between Hugh Miller and Lexie Dale, it was Mo.
“Cal, what do you make of this shooting?” Lucas asked as he pulled open the door and slid behind the wheel. “Do you think it could have been an accident?”
“Doubtful. There’s a bullet hole between the man’s eyes that looks damn deliberate to me.”
“Sounds like our shooter is better than a fair marksman.”
Cal frowned. “God only knows what he had planned for Miss Dale. She was unconscious when Mo found her.”
A single fact stuck in Lucas’s mind and chilled his blood. “Are you telling me Mo was there?”
Cal nodded. “And lucky for Miss Dale, she was. That worthless pup of Mo’s wandered off again this morning. She and Tucker Oates were driving around in the Jeep, looking for the dog when they heard somebody yelling for help.”
Cal and Lucas exchanged a resigned glance. Both of them wished Mo would be more cautious, but they knew she had a heart as big as all outdoors and would never turn her back on a stray of either the two-legged or four-legged variety.
“Then what?”
“The noise from the Jeep must have scared off the attacker,” Cal went on. “They found Hugh Miller dead at the side of the trail. Not far from his body, Lexie Dale was tied up and unconscious.”
“She was drugged?”
“Looks like whoever killed Hugh Miller meant to carry her off with him,” Cal said.
“And Mo interrupted him right in the middle of his crime.” His own sister could have easily become the killer’s next victim, Lucas thought grimly. If he’d needed further incentive to bring the killer in, he’d just found it.
He put the SUV in gear. “Did you see anything that might give us an idea who did it?”
“No. But, then, I didn’t do much looking around. I didn’t want to destroy any evidence.”
Lucas nodded and started to pull away when an afterthought struck him. “Tell Mo not to worry. If she needs me to help out with Pop, I’ll be around later.” It had been six months since Will Garrett’s stroke. During that time, the family had formed a protective circle around the ailing patriarch, hoping to make his recovery as peaceful and complete as possible.
Cal said he would deliver the message and Lucas gunned the engine and raced out of the ranch yard and past the stables toward the trail that wound seven miles to the summit of Mt. Destiny.
Despite the disturbing reality that a man had been murdered on Garrett property, Lucas experienced immeasurable relief knowing his family was safe. As he bumped along the trail headed for the crime scene, however, the reality of what had happened took shape in his lawman’s brain: A man had been shot to death and a woman attacked. A killer was still on the loose.
It was the kind of crime he might have expected on the city streets where he’d spent five years becoming the kind of lawman qualified to become Bluff County Sheriff.
At age thirty-two, with nearly ten years law enforcement experience under his belt, Lucas Garrett could hardly be called naive, and yet the crime that had taken place today—a seemingly cold-blooded and calculated murder and an attempted abduction—still shocked him. Not because of its brutality, but because it had happened here, on the land that had been his family’s home for a generation.
His family and this ranch meant the world to him. Weaned on high-country air and the Garrett heritage of hard work, self-respect and dedication to duty, Lucas took seriously his role as Will Garrett’s son. His place within the family defined him as surely as his badge, and protecting those closest to him was even more important than his career.
For a man like Lucas Garrett, the crime that had occurred this morning was almost a personal affront. Things like this just did not happen in Bluff County. Not on his watch, anyway. And sure as hell not on his own doorstep.
THREE HOURS LATER, the effects of the chemical that had rendered Lexie senseless seemed to have finally dissipated. Except for a small bruise over her eye and a metallic taste at the back of her throat that not even Mo Garrett’s coffee could dispel, Lexie felt almost human again.
Bit by bit, with Mo’s help, she’d been able to piece together the bizarre events of the afternoon, events that had cost a man his life and landed her flat on her back on a couch in the main house at the ranch where she’d rented a cabin for what she’d hoped would be a peaceful month-long vacation.
So much for that fantasy, she thought.
While the paramedics were checking her out, tending to her minor cuts and bruises, a deputy sheriff had taken her statement
