a wrong number. But something about the calls made him uneasy. Why would a wrong number call back twice?
He didn’t have long to worry about it. By the time he’d deleted the messages, Rick had climbed into the pilot seat and started the engine.
Once they were in the air, Tuck settled the flight headset in place over his ears and sat back for the ride, static and the rumble of the rotors numbing him, creating white noise in which his thoughts churned.
The last time he’d been to Fort Yates, a little over a year ago, he’d gone down for a weekend of boating, gambling and drinking. The memories were a mix of blurred impressions and startlingly clear images. The ending of that vacation was not one he’d ever experienced before. After all, it wasn’t every day that a man got engaged, married and ditched all in the span of forty-eight hours, more or less. He still wasn’t sure how it had all happened, but he had the pictures and annulment papers that proved it hadn’t been a bad dream.
As they neared the small outpost of Fort Yates, the neon lights of the Running Buffalo Casino rose up out of the grasslands, a beacon of garish illumination on the dark prairie. The red, yellow, blue and green neon lights reflected off the still waters of Lake Oahe, a lake formed by a strategically placed dam near Pierre, South Dakota. The lake provided miles of fishing and camping for the residents of North and South Dakota, its shores following the Missouri River’s path from Pierre almost to Bismarck.
Tuck’s chest tightened as he leaned forward to stare out the window of the helicopter. The casino and the surrounding resort looked just as they had the last time he’d been there. Nothing had changed. Except him. Gone was his carefree, reckless sense of taking each day one at a time. He still didn’t know why he’d jumped into the wedding and—more disturbing—why she’d ended it so quickly. The whole situation had made him step back and take stock of his life, and he hadn’t much liked the direction he’d been heading.
The helicopter bypassed the casino and landed at the Standing Rock Airport south of town where a Sioux County sheriff’s SUV waited, lights flashing on top of the vehicle.
As soon as they exited the chopper, the sheriff met them, his hand held out. “I’m Sheriff White Hawk. I thought you’d never get here.”
“Can you bring me up-to-date?” Tuck stepped forward, used to taking charge.
“Our victims were the NIGC rep and a local schoolteacher.” The sheriff talked as he led them back to his vehicle. “We cordoned off the shoreline around the two bodies, and I’ve had a couple of my deputies asking questions around the area. So far, no one saw anything.”
Typical. With so much wide-open space in North Dakota, a person could get away with murder, and no one would be the wiser for days. That’s where Tuck’s job became critical. “Has the state crime-lab team arrived?”
Sheriff White Hawk nodded. “They just got here.”
“Was everything left the same way as it was found?”
“Other than the footprints from the fishermen, no one’s touched a thing.”
“Good.” Tuck climbed into the passenger seat of the sheriff’s SUV.
They accomplished the short ride to the crime scene in relative silence, the occasional static flaring from the radio on the sheriff’s shoulder harness.
A mile past the turnoff to the casino and recreation area, the sheriff turned on a county road, headed toward the lake. After another mile, the lawman slowed the vehicle and glanced at Tuck with a grimace. “We go cross-country from here.”
Tuck nodded and held on as they bumped across the dry, flat land to the shore’s edge, where several other SUVs and a flotilla of motorboats ringed the crime scene. Yellow crime tape flapped in the wind around the land side of the perimeter.
Tuck ducked beneath the tape and flashed his credentials to get past the battery of Sioux County deputies and Standing Rock tribal policemen.
Once inside the perimeter, Josh hurried forward to the crime-scene technicians and exchanged a few words.
Tuck hung back, his gaze panning the area, his investigative eye noting everything that could be considered evidence. There wasn’t much to go on. Based on the lack of blood spatter, the agent and the woman had been murdered elsewhere and their bodies dumped here, probably by boat. The sheriff’s deputies would be checking for anyone who might have seen a boat pull close to shore. But as dark as it was, if the boat didn’t have a light, no one would have seen a thing.
When Behling stepped back, Tuck caught his first glimpse of the dead woman.
Tuck’s breath caught in his throat and his heart jammed in his chest so hard it hurt, a foggy haze settling around the edges of his vision.
Pushing back pain, Tuck sucked in a deep breath, his feet carrying him forward as if he was walking through quicksand. He had to be seeing things that weren’t there. It couldn’t be her. “Do you have a positive ID on the woman?” he asked, his voice echoing in his head.
The medical examiner looked up at Tuck, his brows raised questioningly. “You have a need to know?”
“It’s okay,” Behling said. “He’s another special agent.”
Tuck moved closer, his gaze fixed on the body. “Jesus.” He closed his eyes, pressure squeezing his chest tight. “I know her.” He opened his eyes and stared down at the lifeless remains of the woman he’d met a little more than a year ago here at Fort Yates.
Behling’s head jerked in his direction, his brow furrowing. “You know her?”
Tuck nodded. “That’s Julia Anderson. She was my wife.”
Chapter Two
An hour later, Tuck sat on the side of the bed in his hotel room at the casino, staring at his hands. What the hell had just happened? He was on his way home for a week off—he’d never planned to spend his vacation finding out who had murdered a woman he’d been married to for a grand total of forty-eight hours.
Behling left him at his door, claiming he had a mound of paperwork and calls to make and that he’d check in with Tuck the next morning when Rick would take them back to Bismarck.
Relieved to have a chance for some time to himself, Tuck had assured Behling he would be fine and needed the rest and an opportunity to think…alone.
Except for the blood staining her chest, Julia looked the same as the last time he’d seen her on their wedding night—what he could remember of it. Long blond hair and pale blue eyes, a slender build, rounded, firm breasts. She’d been a beauty then and was just as beautiful in death. Had they met any other way…had they tried to make their farce of a marriage stick…this scenario might have had a completely different ending.
Over a year had passed since their last correspondence—the annulment papers delivered by courier to his apartment door on his day off.
His head dropped into his open palms, the terrible nature of Julia’s death weighing him down. Who had killed her?
The cell phone lying on the bed beside him buzzed. He checked the caller ID—Dante. He didn’t bother answering the call. What could Tuck say to his brother? Hi, I’m in Fort Yates and just got through
