and they could walk away with some good money after very little work on their part.
These rustlers, though, were going for the big reward, rustling a hundred head at least. From what Dawson had seen so far, they knew exactly what they were doing. Just like this woman.
She cocked her head at him. “You caught me, but how are you going to keep me when the others come back?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.” He dragged her over to her horse. “Let me help you up,” he said and, before she could protest, hoisted her up into her saddle. Taking her reins, he headed for his horse. “You try anything and you’ll be on the ground again in a heartbeat. I don’t think you want that, do you?”
She glared at him before looking again toward the opening in the trees as if she expected the other rustlers to come riding in at any moment.
Dawson knew what would happen if the rustlers caught them out in the open. He had to get her to the other side of the large meadow, to a place he’d found when he was a boy, a place where he could hide her and make sure she didn’t warn her partners in crime.
He swung up onto his horse and, leading hers, headed across the meadow. He needed to get them both out of sight until he could decide what to do with her—and how to get his cattle back.
“If you let me go, I can keep them from coming back,” she said. “You have my word.”
“Your word, huh? Like that is worth anything.”
She let out an unladylike curse as he led her and her horse across the meadow. “I’m just trying to save your sorry neck.”
He glanced back at her. “And I’m just going after my cattle.”
“Your cattle? Don’t you mean your boss’s cattle?”
“I’m one of those Chisholms who you think can afford to lose a hundred and twenty-five head of cattle without even noticing it.”
“You’re a Chisholm?”
He could tell she liked it better when she thought he was just one of the hired hands. “Dawson Chisholm, and you are …?”
“Everyone calls me Jinx.”
He chuckled. “I can see why.”
EMMA CHISHOLM WOKE WITH a terrible headache. She lay perfectly still and didn’t dare open her eyes. There was a pounding at her temples and she felt sick to her stomach.
She inched her hand across the bed, hoping Hoyt was still lying next to her and hadn’t gotten up early and gone to work already. Maybe if he got her something for her headache before she tried to get up—
The bed was empty. With a jolt she opened her eyes. Two thoughts hit her at once. She wasn’t in her bed at the main house of Chisholm Cattle Company ranch and it wasn’t morning.
Through the boards that had been nailed haphazardly over the only window in the room, she could see daylight, but from the angle of the shadows it appeared to be afternoon.
Emma struggled to sit up, taking in the unfamiliar small room with its paint-peeling faded walls, the mattress resting on the scarred wood floor, the tiny closet with two buckets, one full of water, and the tray near the door with a sandwich in plastic wrap, an apple and a thermos.
As her memory came back, she was suddenly aware of the cold air coming in through a broken pane at the window. She hugged herself for a moment before getting to her feet.
Her head swam and she had to drop back to her hands and knees. Crawling over to the tray, she opened the thermos. Coffee, and it was still hot. She poured herself some into the plastic cup it came with. Her fingers trembled as she took a sip and considered the situation she found herself in. It wasn’t the first time she’d been drugged and locked in a room alone.
But it was the first time her captor had been a woman. Emma took another sip of the hot coffee to chase away the chill. She’d thought she’d been ready for Aggie Wells. She’d known the woman would come for her, but she’d underestimated Aggie.
When the former insurance investigator had disappeared a few weeks ago, Emma had been so certain Aggie was trying to make it appear that Hoyt had done something to her. But when Emma had recently come home from town and smelled the woman’s perfume in the main house at the ranch, she’d known Aggie was alive.
She had wondered how Aggie had known that everyone was out of the house. That’s when she’d found the listening devices Aggie had apparently installed in the house and she’d known that with Hoyt in jail and his six boys busy working on the ranch, it was only a matter of time before Aggie would come for her.
Emma remembered sitting in the kitchen after Hoyt was arrested, waiting to see what Aggie had planned next. She’d been sure that the woman’s plan had been to frame Hoyt for the murder of his third wife—and then take advantage of Emma being alone at the ranch to what? Kill her?
Emma hadn’t known, but she’d been armed and thought she was ready when Aggie suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Everything after that was still fuzzy. She drank more of the coffee, feeling a little better, unwrapped the sandwich—a ham and cheese—and took a bite before moving back over to the window and peering out a small hole the size of a fist between the boards.
Where was she? In some abandoned farmhouse near Whitehorse, Emma was fairly sure. The landscape looked familiar and she didn’t think Aggie had driven far after she’d drugged her.
So what did Aggie have planned for her?
She thought about the first time she’d met the former insurance investigator at the bar at Sleeping Buffalo Resort north of town. She’d been surprised that Aggie was about her own age, early fifties, a tall, slim woman with an aura of intelligence and energy. Emma remembered thinking she was the kind of woman she could have been friends with—under other circumstances.
Aggie had told her that night about her suspicions that Hoyt Chisholm had killed his other three wives. Emma hadn’t believed it. Still didn’t, even though evidence had been found along with his third wife’s remains that linked him to her murder.
She’d been all the more convinced of her husband’s innocence when she’d realized that Aggie had faked her own disappearance to make Hoyt look guilty of yet another murder.
At a sound on the other side of the only door, Emma turned and braced herself. She didn’t think Aggie planned to kill her—at least not yet. Otherwise, why bother to bring her here?
A dead bolt scraped in the lock, the knob turned and, as the door swung inward, Emma saw Aggie Wells framed in the doorway. She was holding a handgun in a way that made it clear she knew how to use it.
She laughed, because even if the woman had been unarmed, Emma wasn’t up to launching any kind of attack.
“You’re in a good mood,” Aggie said. “But then you are annoyingly cheerful most of the time, aren’t you? It is one of the things I hate about you.”
“You mean there are other things you hate about me?” Emma said, pretending to be crushed.
“I hate that you’re
