He’d been to a bachelor party for a friend and had been so sauced when he’d met Julia, he hadn’t been thinking clearly. After dancing with her for two hours straight, they’d ended up in his hotel room, making love until early into the next day. Still high on alcohol and sex, they’d run out to the justice of the peace, obtained a wedding license and tied the knot at the quaint little wedding chapel in Fort Yates. As the alcohol wore off and exhaustion set in, they returned to his hotel room, where they collapsed and slept through the rest of the day and night.
When Tuck had woken the next morning, Julia had been gone, leaving a note with an apology and no forwarding address. She’d filed for an annulment immediately, and their union had been dissolved. Just like that.
When his cell phone quit ringing, Tuck glanced at it, remembering the “911” text message from earlier that day before…well, before everything. Behling’s call, the quick trip to Fort Yates and the murders had made him forget to follow through, but now the contents of the message came back to him in a rush.
Could the message have been from Julia? His heart skipped several beats as he dialed the number in the message. Could it have been the last text message Julia had sent before she’d been brutally murdered? He opened the text screen and a phone number flashed up at him. With a sense of dread, he pressed the number, engaging the dialing capability.
After several rings, someone answered. Or at least Tuck thought someone clicked the talk button. The ringing had stopped, but no one spoke.
“Hello?” Tuck waited in case the connection was bad. Reception in the far reaches of North Dakota was scarce if not nonexistent. “Hello?”
“Tuck? Tuck Thunder Horse?” a feminine voice asked in a whisper.
A hint of recognition tugged at Tuck’s consciousness and his heart rate kicked up a notch. “Speaking.”
“It’s J-Julia.”
All the air left Tuck’s lungs as if someone had sucker punched him. “Julia?” How could it be Julia? She was dead, her body taken to the Fort Yates morgue. He’d identified the body himself. His stomach gurgled and twisted.
“I need to see you,” the woman said.
Tuck ran a hand through his hair. Who the hell was this? Why was she impersonating a dead woman? His grip tightened on the phone as anger forged through him. He tamped it down and feigned ignorance of what he’d witnessed earlier. “When? Where?” His voice was gruffer than he’d intended, a lump knotting in his throat.
“Are you in North Dakota?” she asked.
His lips thinned. “As a matter of fact, I am. Just flew into Bismarck a couple hours ago and made a quick run south to Fort Yates.”
She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Oh, thank God.”
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No. No, nothing is all right.”
Tuck couldn’t agree with her more. Anyone with the gall to pass herself off as a dead woman wasn’t firing on all cylinders. “Tell me where you are.”
“In Fort Yates.” Her words were spoken carefully, as if she was afraid to give away too much.
“Where in Fort Yates? I’ll see what I can do to get there.”
“I can’t tell you. Tell me where you are and I’ll meet you.”
“I’m at the casino.”
After a long pause, she whispered, “Meet me in fifteen minutes at the marina below the casino. Come alone.”
Alone. Tuck’s sense of self-preservation tensed. She could be setting him up. But for what? Hell, at this point did it matter? He wanted to know her game. “It’s dark. How will I find you?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find you.”
Before he could question her further, the line clicked in his ear.
His emotions still raw from seeing the woman he’d married on a whim lying dead on the shore of Lake Oahe, Tuck’s blood ran cold then hot, blazing through his veins like fast-flowing molten lava. How dared she? How dared this stranger call claiming to be Julia, when Julia lay dead?
He checked his watch and headed out the door. The walk to the marina from the hotel wouldn’t take long, five minutes max. That would give him ten minutes to watch for her to arrive if she wasn’t already there.
His stride ate the distance. Part of him wanted to notify Josh of the phone call, but something in the
woman’s voice made him hesitate. He had to know her story before he called in his friend, otherwise Behling might think he was imagining things.
Wide-open expanses of North Dakota prairie were interspersed with scrubby little trees along the road down to the marina. Tuck scanned both sides, peering into the bushes and the shadows of the limited vegetation along the way.
The marina consisted of two long jetties jutting out into Lake Oahe with small, medium and large boats moored in the slips. The marina building perched at one end of the pair of jetties, closed for the night, shuttered, with all merchandise displays tucked within the walls. Besides a dirty yellow streetlight on the marina, two lone lights jutted from the top of poles at the end of each jetty, reflecting light off the inky water below.
Tuck had about given up trying to find the woman when a figure detached itself from the shadow of the marina building, a dark cap pulled down low. As Tuck neared the figure, her head turned left then right in a jerky, nervous movement. She wore a long, draping shawl wrapped around her body, disguising her figure. She could have been a young or old woman, fat or thin. He couldn’t tell, but he’d find out soon enough.
Tuck stood back, studying the woman for a moment, gathering his nerve and tamping down the desire to strangle her for playing the role of a murder victim.
Coaching himself to calm, he forced all anger from his face and demeanor, then walked forward.
She remained hidden in the shadows.
“I’m here…Julia.” His teeth ground together on her name. “What do you want?” Tuck stopped, refusing to move closer. She’d have to meet him halfway.
The hint of a sob drifted across the crisp evening air toward him, and the woman moved another step out of the shadows, her hand reaching out. The glow from the yellowed night light glanced off the side of her face, illuminating her profile.
Tuck sucked in a breath and backed up a step. The female was the image of the one the medical examiner had pronounced dead only a short while ago.
Tuck lurched forward, gripping her arms, his fingers digging in, refusing to let her escape. “Who the hell are you?”
She hunched her shoulders, her body shaking, staring up at him, searching his face. “Tuck?” His name wasn’t so much a question as a statement, and some of the tension in her arms slackened.
Tuck’s grip tightened. He’d be ready if she tried to make a run for it.
“We can’t stay here,” she whispered.
Tuck’s
