Hero's Return

“But they had to know that when the remains were found it would bring you home,” Flint said. “You left town so soon after that night, they might not have known where you’d gone. Or they were so upset about what happened, the game was over—at least for a while.”

“Well, they know where I am now, if that package is any indication.”

Flint seemed to consider that. “The coroner, please,” he said when someone answered on the other end of the line. “Did anyone else know about the two of you?”

“Madeline swore me to secrecy. I never told anyone.” His head was spinning. Madeline hadn’t survived the raging waters of the creek that night just as he’d feared. She’d apparently brought about her own death by misjudging the creek’s current. “When will we know for certain that it’s her?”

“The coroner is having DNA run on the hair follicles. If we knew where she was really from, we could check dental records. You met her in Denton? Then there is a good chance she’s from somewhere around this area. Also, if she has family, they might come forward now.”

“She said she had a father and brother. But she could have lied about that, too.”

“Sonny?” Flint said into the phone. “I have a question for you.”

Tucker hardly listened. He was staring at the box with the doll in it, trying to make sense of everything. It had been a scam. Even the baby, though? But if Flint was right and Madeline hadn’t come alone that night...

His brother hung up. “Sonny says the remains of the woman he has at the morgue never had a child. He can tell from the pelvic bones.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Tucker said and rubbed a hand over his face, his brain fighting to reevaluate what he thought had happened that night. It had always been about money for Madeline. The plan must have been for her to disappear and whoever was working with her to blackmail him all these years. Only Madeline had hit something in the water and died. None of the rest had been real.

“You must think I’m a complete fool,” he said.

“You were young and vulnerable. She targeted you. If the remains are hers, then she was a lot older than she told you, and I’m betting that you weren’t her first—just her last. But her jumping into that creek...” Flint shook his head. “That was gutsy and dangerous. She must have known you were getting suspicious so she pulled out all the stops. But like I said, she couldn’t have done it alone. Someone had to be waiting downstream to fish her out of the water. Except she hit her head and died. Between that and you leaving town, it threw a monkey wrench into their plan.”

“They had me right where they wanted me.”

Flint nodded. “They would have bled you dry with blackmail. There are a lot of limbs hanging over that creek. It’s ironic, but it would appear she got cocky and wasn’t able to pull off her last deception. All this assuming the remains are hers.”

“Still, if the creek hadn’t overflowed, she would have never turned up and I would have gone on waiting, believing I killed her and our son.” Tucker glanced at the box on the floor with the doll inside. “Whoever sent that box knew I would come back to Gilt Edge now.”

“Sure looks that way. If anyone contacts you, thinking they can still cash in, don’t leave me out of the loop this time.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come to you all those years ago. Before you saw me, I’d gone down to the pay phone at the edge of town and made an anonymous call. I said I’d seen a girl fall into the creek.” Tucker gave his brother a sad smile. “I was scared, filled with guilt.”

“You were just a kid. Nothing you could have done would have saved her. Sonny said she couldn’t have survived her head injury.” Flint frowned. “Now that you mention it, I remember Dad saying he’d seen sheriff’s deputies down at the creek. When they didn’t find a body, they would have assumed your call had been a hoax.”

“Whoever she was working with had already hidden the body and cleared out by the time the sheriff’s deputies got there.”

“Tuck, you didn’t kill her. She jumped in the river trying to get money out of you. Her death was an accident.”

He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment. “Still, I’ve always felt I should have done more or at least done things differently. If I’d just raised the money and given it to her...”

Flint shook his head. “She would have come back for more. You have to realize that. She was a con artist.”

He knew he’d been a damned fool from the moment he’d met Madeline. She’d been his first. She’d made him believe that she loved him as much as he did her. He thought he was going to save her from her horrible family.

And now, if those skeletal remains in the morgue were hers, she was dead—and had been for nineteen years. Not just dead. Caught up in her own scam. But who hid her under the driftwood that night downstream? Whomever she’d been in league with. The man she was really in love with? A man who had talked her into jumping off a bridge into raging water in the dark as part of a con? Or had that been all her idea?

He had felt responsible for her death and the baby’s for so long it was hard for him to let go of the guilt. He’d been played. And not just by the woman he’d known as Madeline Ross. He’d been played by whomever she was working with.

“The worst part,” he said with a bitter bark of a laugh. “Is that I really thought I loved her and would never love anyone else the way I had her.”

But a completely different emotion was bubbling up inside him like a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. If whoever had been working with her thought they could blackmail him... He hoped they would try. He wasn’t that teenager they’d tricked all those years ago. This cowboy was more than ready for them now.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u5116cf9d-d5b1-50f9-bf71-3d2d10e4b2be)

BILLIE DEE RHODES stopped singing to smile as the back door of the Stagecoach Saloon opened early the next morning. A cool spring breeze rushed into the kitchen along with the freshly showered scent of the cowboy who entered.

The fiftysomething Texas-born-and-bred cook turned from her pot of chili she had going to smile at Henry Larson, the retired rancher she’d been seeing for months now. He’d started stopping by for a cup of coffee with her early in the morning months ago. Now it was an every-morning occurrence that had grown into something much more.

He looked around to make sure no one else was up and at work yet, then stepped to her and gave her a kiss. “Good morning, Tex,” he said, smiling as he locked gazes with her. Neither of them could believe they’d found love at this age.

It was their little secret. Billie Dee had wanted it that way, but Henry was right about everyone who knew them getting suspicious. The retired rancher had already told his sons, who now worked his ranch.

But Billie Dee hadn’t told the Cahills, the amazing family that she’d come to know since taking the cook position at the saloon. She felt as if she was part of the family and hated keeping it from them. One of these days I’ll tell them, she kept assuring herself.

She poured Henry a cup of coffee and one for herself before joining him at the kitchen table. Henry was a big handsome cowboy with gray at his temples. The retired rancher had been a widower for over five years.

Billie Dee had come to realize that Henry was a man who could do just about anything and had. He was her hero in so many ways.

She’d joked when she’d moved to Montana that she was looking for a big handsome cowboy. She’d just never dreamed at her age that one would come along.

Henry had been so patient with her, making it clear that he wanted to marry her. So why was she dragging her feet? It wasn’t like the man didn’t know just about everything there was to know about her. Well, almost.

There was one thing she hadn’t told him. That one huge regret of her life that she hadn’t shared with him yet. So what was holding her back?

“Beautiful morning,” she said, glancing out the window toward the mountains lush with pines and new green grass. She loved spring in Montana. Winter, though, was more a love-hate relationship. How could she not love the falling snow? Or being curled up in front of a warm fire with her cowboy? It was driving through it, scraping ice and snow off her windshield, fighting drifts to get out of her driveway, that she hated.

Henry kept telling her that once they were married, she would never have to do any of that again. She wouldn’t have to cook at the saloon, either, if she didn’t want to. Maybe that was another reason she was putting off the next step. She loved her job.

“No babies yet?” he asked after taking a sip of his coffee.

“Both Lillie and Mariah look like they could pop any second, but nope, not yet.” Billie Dee was excited for them, but it would mean that Mariah and Darby Cahill would move out of the apartment upstairs over the saloon and into their house that was almost finished.

Darby had offered her the apartment upstairs rent-free. “You won’t have to drive through the snow in the winter. All you have to do is come downstairs.”

She’d been touched, but then again Darby and the rest of the Cahill clan didn’t know about the romance brewing between her and Henry. “Thanks, I’ll think about it,” was all she’d said.

“You’re going to have to tell them,” Henry said now as if reading her thoughts.

“I was waiting until the babies were born.”

Henry laughed and shook his head. “What are you so afraid of? That once you tell them, you will have to finally really consider marrying me?”

She smiled. “I do want to marry you. But...”

“I told you, you don’t have to give up your job here, if that’s what you want. And certainly not your wonderful independence.”

Billie Dee reached across to put her hand on his. “I know. I promise, I’ll do it soon.”