Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

Seventeen years earlier

The fall knocked the air out of her. She’d landed badly, one leg bent under her. On the way down, she’d hit her head and the skin on her arms and legs was scraped raw.

Stunned, she tried to get to her feet in the darkness of the tight, confined space. She’d lost both shoes, her body ached and her left hand was in terrible pain, her fingers definitely broken.

She managed to get herself upright in the pitch blackness of the hole. Bracing herself on the cold earth around her, she looked up, still dazed.

Above her, she could see a pale circle of starlit sky. She started to open her mouth to call out when she heard him stumble to the edge of the old dry well and fall to his knees. His shadow silhouetted over part of the opening.

She stared up at him in confusion. He hadn’t meant to push her. He’d just been angry with her. He wouldn’t hurt her. Not on purpose.

The beam of a flashlight suddenly blinded her. “Help me.”

He made a sound, an eerie, low-keening wail like a wounded animal. “You’re alive?”

His words pierced her heart like a cold blade. He’d thought the fall would kill her? Hoped it would?

The flashlight went out. She heard him stumble to his feet and knew he was still standing looking down at her. She could see his shadow etched against the night sky. She felt dizzy and sick, still too stunned by what had happened.

His shadow disappeared. She could see the circle of dim light above her again. She listened, knowing he hadn’t left. He wouldn’t leave her. He was just upset, afraid she would tell.

If she pleaded with him the way she had the other times, he would forgive her. He’d tried to break it off before, but he’d always come back to her. He loved her.

She stared up until, with relief, she saw again his dark shape against the starlit sky. He’d gone to get a rope or something to get her out. “I’m sorry. Please, just help me. I won’t cause you any more trouble.”

“No, you won’t.” His voice sounded so strange, so foreign. Not the voice of the man she’d fallen so desperately in love with.

She watched him raise his arm. In the glint of starlight she saw it wasn’t a rope in his hand.

Her heart caught in her throat. “No!” The gunshot boomed, a deafening roar in the cramped space.

She must have blacked out. When she woke, she was curled in an awkward position in the bottom of the dry well. Over the blinding pain in her head, she could hear the sound of the pickup’s engine. He was driving away!

“No!” she cried as she dragged herself up onto her feet again. “Don’t leave me here!” As she looked up to the opening high above her, she felt something wet and sticky run down into her eye. Blood.

He’d shot her. The pain in her skull was excruciating. She dropped to her knees on the cold, hard earth. He’d said he loved her. He’d promised to take care of her. Tonight, she’d even worn the red dress he loved.

“Don’t leave! Please!” But she knew he couldn’t hear her. As she listened, the sound of the engine grew fainter and fainter, then nothing.

She shivered in the damp, cold blackness, her right hand going to her stomach.

He’d come back.

He couldn’t just leave her here to die. How could he live with himself if he did?

He’d come back.

Chapter One

As the pickup bounced along the muddy track to the old homestead, Dana Cardwell stared out at the wind-scoured Montana landscape, haunted by the premonition she’d had the night before.

She had awakened in the darkness to the howl of the unusually warm wind against her bedroom window and the steady drip of melting snow from the eaves. A Chinook had blown in.

When she’d looked out, she’d seen the bare old aspens vibrating in the wind, limbs etched black against the clear night sky. It felt as if something had awakened her to warn her.

The feeling had been so strong that she’d had trouble getting back to sleep only to wake this morning to Warren Fitzpatrick banging on the door downstairs.

“There’s something you’d better see,” the elderly ranch manager had said.

And now, as Warren drove them up the bumpy road from the ranch house to the old homestead, she felt a chill at the thought of what waited for her at the top of the hill. Was this what she’d been warned about?

Warren pulled up next to the crumbling foundation and cut the engine. The wind howled across the open hillside, keeling over the tall yellowed grass and gently rocking the pickup.

It was called the January Thaw. Without the blanket of white snow, the land looked rung out, all color washed from the hills until everything was a dull brown-gray. The only green was a few lone pines swaying against the wind-rinsed sky.