Cowboy's Legacy

Reiner shook his head. “She said she never got a good look at him. Just had a bad feeling, you know?”

“Why her, do you think?” Frank asked.

“Who knows how dudes like that pick their targets, but she was terrified of him.”

Frank glanced at Nettie. He could tell that she was thinking the same thing he was. Why would the woman be that terrified of someone driving a van who’d possibly followed her home once and drove into the yard another time? He could understand concern. He could even understand fear. But terror? Not unless she had some other reason to fear the man behind the wheel of that van.

Which meant she knew him. And if he was the one who’d abducted her... Well, why else would he come looking for her in Wyoming unless there was more to the story? If that was even what had happened to Jenna. The woman seemed to have a habit of disappearing.

* * *

FLINT TOOK A shower at the sheriff’s office and put on the clean uniform shirt and jeans that Mark had gotten him from his house. He’d been up all night, dozing only a little in the break room at the office. He felt wired, terrified one moment, and confident the next that they would find Maggie alive, and soon.

In the meantime, he knew that if he didn’t work, he’d go crazy. While Mark canvassed the neighborhood, Flint was holding down the fort. He kept thinking that someone would call with news about Maggie. By now, word would have traveled around the county. Someone had to spot her.

Mark had called to say that Celeste hadn’t turned up. Wayne hadn’t heard from her, other than an email from a Paradise Valley spa confirming her reservation for last night. She hadn’t shown, though. No one knew where she was, but Mark had a BOLO out on her, as well as Maggie. Someone was going to spot her as well, Flint told himself. They would find Maggie. Then Celeste would spend the rest of her years behind bars for abducting her.

He just prayed that Celeste wouldn’t kill her. Mark had called earlier to tell him that it appeared Celeste had taken the gun her husband had purchased for her since it hadn’t been found in the house. As hard as he tried to think about anything else, he could feel the clock ticking.

When he’d received the texted photo of Jenna from Frank, he felt sick. All this time, Jenna had been hiding out in Wyoming with a man? He wondered how Anvil would take this news—if he didn’t already know.

On his way out to the Holloway farm, Flint couldn’t get the photo of Jenna and Kurt Reiner off his mind. Jenna was smiling in the snapshot. She looked so different from the photo her husband had given him back in March. For one thing, she’d bleached her hair blond and she was clearly wearing makeup. He hoped he wouldn’t have to show this photo to Anvil. It was going to be hard enough on the man when he learned that his wife had been shacking up with a lover in Wyoming all this time. He didn’t need to see how happy she looked.

He thought about the first time he’d driven out to the Holloway farm. Anvil had called him to say his wife was missing. He’d known little about the couple, since they stayed to themselves and seldom came into town.

He’d seen Jenna in passing in town when she’d made the trip in for groceries, but other than a nod to each other, they’d never even spoken. Jenna had seemed...painfully shy. Now, though, he wondered if he’d misread not only her, but also the entire situation.

It was clear now that Jenna had planned her escape from the farm. From her husband. From even the law. She’d done it systematically. Flint had changed his view of her since seeing the photo of her and Reiner. He realized he needed to know a whole lot more if there was any connection between Jenna’s and Maggie’s disappearances.

Thinking about Jenna kept his mind off the panic he felt when he thought of Maggie. He told himself that once Mark found Celeste... But he felt wired one minute and exhausted the next. He kept praying that Maggie was alive. That Mark would find her before it was too late.

While he tried to concentrate on doing his job, the thought of Maggie being missing hung at the back of his mind like a physical pain that never went away. When he thought of her, his heart would pound and he’d feel sick to his stomach. Not being part of the investigation was driving him crazy.

He knew he should be glad that there’d been a break in the Holloway case for the distraction. Otherwise he would be pacing the floor at the sheriff’s department, waiting for word. Mark had promised to call the moment there was any news.

But he also knew that he was too involved in this one, even if the DCI didn’t force him to take a leave of absence. As he pulled up in the yard, the front door of the house opened and Anvil appeared. Worry burrowed the farmer’s brows. Anvil held a dish towel in one hand, a cup in the other.

There was a time when Flint would have thought the man was worried that Jenna’s body had turned up and he was about to go to prison for murder. But Anvil didn’t look worried. He merely looked mildly curious. From the beginning, the farmer had sworn that his wife had run off with another man. As it turned out, he’d been right.

Still, Flint doubted Anvil was ready for this news, he thought as he climbed out of the patrol car and started toward the porch steps.

“Sheriff?”

“I’ve got some news about Jenna.” He pulled his coat around him to ward off the cold wind coming out of the snowcapped mountains. Low clouds hung over the peaks with the promise of a winter storm by noon. Christmas was only days away, and without a doubt, it was going to be white. Just the thought of Christmas without Maggie... He felt his stomach roil. “Mind if we step inside?”

Anvil shoved the door open and moved aside to let the sheriff enter. The first thing that struck him was how clean the house was. Anvil hadn’t just cleaned up after the incident with his wife. He’d continued to do so. The house looked spotless. Flint had to wonder if it had ever been this clean when Jenna was taking care of it.

Also, Anvil looked more kept up. He seemed to be dressed better. There’d definitely been a change in the man. Some local women had noticed it after Jenna disappeared. The women were convinced that Anvil had done away with his wife and was looking for another one just because he started wearing jeans instead of overalls. At least the last half of that still might be true, Flint thought.

“Coffee?” Anvil asked as he put down the cup he was holding and moved to the sink to carefully fold the dish towel and hang it over a rack.

“Sure,” Flint said, studying the man’s back. The news he had was a double-edged sword. He feared it would draw blood from a man who had already been put through the mill over Jenna’s first disappearance.

Not only had Anvil found out disturbing things about the woman he’d spent twenty-four years with, but also he’d lost her. The worse part was that most everyone in the county still believed that he’d killed her.

* * *

“WHEN JENNA DISAPPEARED, what did she take with her?” Nettie asked in the Sheridan, Wyoming, café.

Reiner looked up at her in surprise. “You mean did she take her clothes and stuff?”

“Did she?”

“No.” He looked insulted. “She was...abducted. I told you, the apartment was torn up as if she’d struggled. I was at work. I came home and she was gone.”

“None of her things were missing?” Frank asked.

The man seemed to consider that. “Her purse was gone, some of the money I kept in the apartment for groceries. I figured that’s where she was headed when whoever took her showed up at the apartment.”

“How much money was missing?” Frank asked.

Reiner looked as if he didn’t want to answer. “She took all that was in the drawer. Maybe a couple hundred. Maybe less.” He looked sick. “You’re thinking she bailed on me, but you’re wrong. She wouldn’t have done that. You don’t know her like I do.”

Frank wondered if her husband of more than twenty years had told Flint the same thing when she’d disappeared back in March. He doubted either man had really known this woman.

“She ever talk about her past?”

“You mean like her husband?”

“More like old boyfriends before or after her husband,” Nettie said.

Reiner seemed to think for a moment. “She mentioned growing up in some hellhole in North Dakota. Her parents were really strict. She said she never saw them touch each other. Seriously, not a hug, a kiss, even hold hands. She wondered how they’d conceived her.”

“Where was this in North Dakota?” Frank asked.

“Some wide spot in the road.” He frowned as if thinking. “Radville. That’s right, because she said it was anything but rad. I thought that was pretty funny. She had that kind of sense of humor.”

“Did she say why she left there?” Nettie asked.

He shrugged. “Who wouldn’t? She might have said that her parents were glad to see her go. They didn’t want her dating. I think they wanted her to become a nun. Not really, but you know what I mean.” He laughed. “Jenna a nun? Jenna was the horniest woman I’d ever—” He stopped, his gaze going to Nettie. “Sorry.”

“So she had a sexual appetite?” Nettie asked.

“Boy howdy. I got the feeling she hadn’t had any in years, if you know what I mean.”

Frank thought he did. “She like it kinky?”

Reiner colored and shot Nettie a look before turning back to him. “Seriously?”