the reason Aggie was so obsessed about Hoyt’s case was that she’d fallen in love with the man. Emma could understand how that might have happened. Look how quickly Emma herself had fallen for him.
“You should eat,” Aggie said, sliding the tray toward her.
Emma sat down, reached for the thermos and started to pour herself another cup of coffee but stopped, the cup and thermos held in midair.
Aggie chuckled. “Don’t worry, it’s not drugged.”
She finished pouring the rest of the coffee into the plastic cup, thinking it was too late anyway if the coffee was drugged. She returned the stopper to the thermos and sat back against the wall as she took a drink. The coffee made her feel a little better and she needed to start thinking straight.
The only way she could get herself out of this was if she was very careful with this crazy woman, who she suspected was also a killer.
Aggie had caught her off guard at the main house at the ranch this morning. It had been just this morning, hadn’t it? She thought so. She’d been expecting her. She’d even gotten a small pistol out of Hoyt’s gun safe.
But then Aggie had appeared in the kitchen doorway and said, “I think it’s time I told you the truth.”
Emma had held the gun on her as Aggie had sat down across the table from her. “You framed my husband.”
“I did much worse than that.” Aggie had looked at Emma’s coffee cup sitting on the table next to a small plate with cake crumbs on it. “I’ll tell you everything, Emma. You deserve to know the truth. Is there any coffee?”
Emma thought she’d been watching Aggie the entire time she went to get another cup and the rest of the coffee in the pot. But that must have been when Aggie put the drug into her half-empty coffee cup.
Aggie had begun talking. Emma had listened, getting more drowsy by the moment and having a hard time making sense of what the woman was saying. It wasn’t until she’d dropped her coffee cup that she realized she’d been drugged. She’d grabbed for the gun, but her movements had been too slow by then and Aggie had been much quicker.
She remembered Aggie walking her out to an old pickup and buckling her in. Emma couldn’t be sure how far they had gone when Aggie got her out and up the stairs into the old farmhouse. That’s the last she remembered until waking up thinking it was morning.
“What now?” Emma asked as she picked up the sandwich and took a bite.
“We wait,” Aggie said.
“What for?”
Aggie merely smiled and turned to leave.
“You realize my family will be looking for me,” Emma said.
“I wouldn’t count on that. You left a note that said you couldn’t deal with all of this.”
“Hoyt won’t believe it,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
“Oh, I think he will. Along with the note, everything you brought into the marriage is gone from the house. If they bothered to check, which I don’t think they will, they’d find that you bought a used pickup the day after Hoyt was arrested. The title is in the name of Emma Chisholm.”
ZANE HAD NO IDEA HOW to find Emma. He started his search in Denver because that was where his father had met her. He flew into the mile-high city on the last flight out of Billings.
The cattleman’s meeting had been held at one of the large hotels downtown. He had booked a room, feeling as if he was searching for a needle in a haystack. Armed with a photo of Emma taken at the ranch, he began with employees at the hotel.
“You a cop or a bill collector?” one of the clerks behind the main desk asked him.
“She’s my stepmother,” he said truthfully. “She’s gone missing.”
“And you think she’s hiding out here at the hotel?”
“No, but I think she stayed here the beginning of May.” Zane leaned closer and dropped his voice. “I didn’t want to get into this, but … she met my father here, they eloped days later to Vegas and now she’s disappeared and I haven’t a clue how to find her.”
“What about your father? He doesn’t know how to find her either?”
“Seems they saw no reason to share their pasts or much else.”
The clerk didn’t look as if he believed a word of it.
“I just need to make sure she’s all right,” he said. “My father is worried about her.” He laid a fifty-dollar bill on the counter, his hand covering all but the important parts of it. “Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.”
“I didn’t work here then, but I could take a look and see if she was registered back in May,” the clerk said, smoothly cupping the fifty in his palm as Zane removed his hand. He tapped on the computer keyboard.
“It would have been under Emma McDougal.”
The clerk skimmed the computer screen. “Nope. Sorry. No Emma McDougal registered as a guest here in the month of May. Or April, for that matter.”
Now all Zane had to go on was what little had been on the marriage license he’d found in his father’s safe. Apparently Emma had been born in Caliente Junction, California, fifty-three years ago. He’d looked on the internet. Caliente Junction was now nothing more than a wide spot in the road. Even if someone still lived there, which looked doubtful from what he’d seen, what were the chances anyone there would even remember her or her family?
Zane went to his room and called home to tell his brothers where he was headed in the morning.
“Where the hell is Caliente Junction?” Marshall asked.
“Apparently out in the desert near the Salton Sea. I don’t think there is a town there—if there ever was—from what I can tell. Just a few buildings on a two-lane road. What’s going on there?”
“Just working. Dawson is still up in the mountains,” his brother said. “You know him, he heads for high ground the moment there’s trouble at the ranch. Nothing new there. Let us know what you find out about Emma. Dad keeps harping on us to find her.”
Zane hung up and booked a flight into Palm Springs, California, for the next morning as he considered Caliente Junction on his laptop screen. He had a bad feeling his father wasn’t going to like what he found out about his new bride.
JINX CLARKE RODE ALONG just feet from Dawson Chisholm, frantically trying to decide what to do. Her options were limited given that her hands were tied behind her and he was holding her horse’s reins. One false move and, as he said, she’d be hitting the dirt again. Her left shoulder hurt as it was from her recent fall, thanks to him. She wasn’t looking forward to being thrown to the ground again.
But she knew that at any moment Rafe could come riding out of the trees with all but a couple of his men with him. If he noticed she wasn’t with them, he would hightail it back for her. More than likely, though, he wouldn’t know they’d lost her until they got the cattle down to the first corral.
