Christmas at Cardwell Ranch

Teresa shielded her eyes from the blizzard and the bright headlights as the vehicle caught up to her. A thought struck her in that instant. The engine sound was wrong. She knew it wasn’t Ethan in his old pickup even before she saw the large black SUV slow to a stop next to her.

It was one of those expensive big rigs like ones she saw all over Big Sky. The windows were dark as well as the paint. She was trying to see inside, to see if she knew the driver, when the back door was suddenly flung open.

The man who jumped out was large and bundled up in a bulky coat. Her heart was already racing by the time he grabbed her. She tried to scream, but he clamped a gloved hand over her mouth and dragged her toward the large SUV. She fought, but he was too strong for her. Still, she got in a few good kicks and punches before he forced a smelly cloth over her mouth and nose, and everything went black.

Chapter Three

Hud got the call just after daylight the next morning. He’d been up all night with the break-in. He needed sleep and food badly, and was on his way home, hoping for both when the call came in.

“My fiancée didn’t come home last night.”

“Who am I speaking with?” he asked. The man sounded more than a little upset.

“Ethan Cross.”

Hud knew Ethan, knew his record. A wild, good-looking kid who’d gotten into trouble a lot before going to the academy and becoming a highway patrol officer.

“Your fiancée is Teresa Evans?” he asked to clarify. Ethan had been with Teresa since high school. That was the nice thing about a small community. Hud knew the players, at least the local ones.

“She works at the Canyon. I was supposed to pick her up after closing, but I got called out on an accident down by Fir Ridge. With the roads like they were, I didn’t get back in time. When I realized she wasn’t home, I went looking for her. This isn’t like her.”

Hud took a guess. “Did the two of you have a fight earlier yesterday?” It was an old story, one he’d heard many times.

“Not really a fight exactly. Still, she wouldn’t not come home.”

“She probably just stayed at a friend’s place to let things cool down. Have you checked with any of her friends?”

“There’s only one she’s been tight with recently. I tried Mia’s number, but she doesn’t answer.”

“Mia Duncan?” Hud asked, and felt his pulse quicken when Ethan said yes. “Have you tried Teresa’s cell phone?”

“She forgot to take it when she left for work. I found it when I called her number looking for her.”

“Let’s give her a few hours and see if she doesn’t turn up,” Hud said, hoping he didn’t have two missing women, since Mia Duncan hadn’t turned up yet, either.

* * *

TAG COULDN’T BELIEVE how much he’d missed this. As he trod through the knee-high snow on the mountain the next morning swinging the ax, he breathed in the frosty air and the sweet fresh smell of pine.

“How about that one?” Dana called from below him on the mountainside. They had climbed up the mountain behind his cousin’s ranch house Christmas tree hunting. Now she motioned at one to his far right.

He waded through the new-fallen snow to check the tree, shook off the branches, then called back, “Too flat on the back. I’m going up higher on the mountain.”

“There’s an old logging road up there,” she called from down below. “I’ll meet you where it comes out. If you find a tree, give a holler. Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking down here.” She sounded as if she was enjoying this as much as he was, but then Dana had always loved the great outdoors.

He felt a chill as he remembered what had happened to her and her family last spring. Some crazy woman had pretended to be a long-lost cousin, and having designs on Hud, had tried to kill Dana, her children and her best friend, Hilde. Fortunately Deputy Colt Dawson had found out the woman’s true identity and arrived in time to save them all.

Tag couldn’t imagine something so horrifying, but if anything, his cousin Dana was resilient and Camilla Northland was in prison, where hopefully she would remain the rest of her life.

The new snow higher up the mountain was as light as down feathers and floated around him as he climbed. He had to stop a couple of times to catch his breath because of the altitude. “You’re not in Texas anymore,” he said, laughing.

The land flattened out some once he was near the top, and he knew he’d hit the old logging road. As he started down it, he kept looking for the perfect tree. Dana’s husband, Marshal Hud Savage, had warned him not to let Dana come back with one of her “orphan” trees. Hud hadn’t been able to come along with them. He was working on a burglary case involving a condo break-in and a possible missing person.

“She’ll find a tree that she knows no one will ever cut because it’s so pitiful and she’ll want to give it a Christmas,” Hud warned him. “Don’t let her. You should see some of the trees that woman has brought home.”

Tag told himself he would be happy with whatever tree they found as long as it was evergreen. But he knew he was looking for something special. He hadn’t had a real Christmas tree in years. Along with getting one for Dana’s living room, he planned to pick up a small one for his father’s cabin. He knew Harlan probably didn’t decorate for Christmas, but he’d have to put up with it this year since his son was determined to spend Christmas with him.

Dana had said she would lend them some ornaments and the kids would make some, as well. Tag couldn’t wait, he thought, as he looked around for a large pretty tree for Dana and a smaller version for him and his father.

He hadn’t gone far down the logging road when he picked up a snowmobile track coming in from what appeared to be another old logging road. Dana had told him that they often had trouble in the winter with snowmobilers on the property because of the catacomb of logging roads that ran for miles.

He remembered hearing one late last night, now that he thought about it. A lot of people got around that way in the wintertime. For all he knew, his father had been out and about after the bar closed. To visit his girlfriend? The thought made him smile.

“I found a tree!” Dana called from somewhere below him on the mountain. He couldn’t see her through the thick, snow-filled pines.

“An orphan tree?” he called back, and heard her laugh. “Hud will have my head,” he mumbled to himself as he started to drop off the side of the mountain, heading in the direction he’d heard Dana laugh.

He’d only taken a couple of steps when the sun caught on an object off to his right. Tag saw what looked like a branch sticking up out of the snow. Only there was something very odd about the branch. It was blue.

As he stepped closer, his heart leapt to his throat. It wasn’t a branch.

A hand, frosty in the morning sun, stuck up out of the deep snow.

* * *

MARSHAL HUD SAVAGE arrived by snowmobile thirty minutes after he’d gotten the call from his wife. He found Dana and Tag standing half a dozen yards away from the body. It was the second time in the past six years that remains had been found on the ranch. Hud could see that Dana was upset and worried.

“It’s going to be all right,” he told her. “Go on down to the house and wait for the coroner. He’ll need directions up here.”

As soon as she left, he stooped down and brushed the snow off the victim’s face. Behind him, Tag let out a startled sound, making him turn.

“You know her?” he asked.

Tag nodded, but he seemed to need a minute to find his voice. “She works at the Canyon,” he said finally. “I think her name is Mia. I ran into her at the bar last night. Or more correctly, she ran into me. Was she...murdered?”

“Looks like she was strangled with the scarf around her neck,” Hud said. He could see where the scarf had cut into her throat. “But we’ll know more once the coroner and the lab does the autopsy.”

“I thought it might have been an accident,” Tag said.

Hud studied him. He seemed awfully shaken for a man who’d only just run into the woman the night before. “So, what exactly happened last night at the bar?”

He listened while Tag recounted the woman stumbling into him, apparently quite drunk, and how he’d gone out the back door after her to make sure she was all right. “I saw her getting into a pickup with a man.”

“And you think her name was Mia?” Hud asked. Could this be the missing Mia Duncan? He had a bad feeling it was.

Tag told him that all he knew was what another server at the Canyon had told him. “She had apparently left in the middle of her shift.”

“Do you know the name of the other server you talked to?”