High-Calibre Christmas

“It isn’t up to him,” Pepper snapped. “Do what you want. Just don’t expect miracles.”

“Thank you, Mother,” she said sarcastically.

When McCall looked up, Virginia was gone. She got to her feet. “I should get back to town.”

“I’m glad you took my advice and ran for sheriff.”

McCall laughed. “No one else wanted the job.” She studied her grandmother. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

“I told you. You’re good at what you do. The county needs someone like you.”

McCall wasn’t so sure about that. “Does this desire you have for me to be sheriff have anything to do with my father’s death?”

“We would have never known he was murdered if it wasn’t for you,” her grandmother said. “One of his killers is dead because of you.”

McCall caught the “one of his killers.” “We don’t know that his killer didn’t act alone.”

Her grandmother gave her an impatient look. “Don’t we?”

McCall sighed. “What are you planning to do?”

“Nothing. I know you will find out the truth. That’s why you make such a good sheriff.”

McCall looked at her grandmother and saw there was no reason to waste her breath arguing with her. So she just picked up her hat, kissed her grandmother on her cheek and left.

But as she drove away, she couldn’t help but glance back in her side mirror. Her grandmother stood at the door, watching her leave, an expression of determination etched into the woman’s weathered face.

Pepper Winchester was a force to be reckoned with, and she was convinced that someone in her family had betrayed her—and was a coconspirator in her youngest son’s murder. Clearly, she wouldn’t rest until she found out the truth.

McCall feared what that truth would do to her grandmother.

JACE QUICKLY FORGOT about Ava Carris. Running into Kayley after all these years had him reeling. She’d been the love of his life.

Back in high school he’d thought she always would be. All he’d wanted was to marry her. They’d already started their family—Kayley had been a couple of months pregnant.

He had been so excited about being a father.

Then tragedy had struck. His father died. Two weeks later, Kayley lost the baby. It shattered his picture of the future. Suddenly all that loss had changed everything. Jace knew he had been running from all that pain when he’d left Kayley, left Whitehorse.

He’d hated himself for running out on her, knowing she was in as much pain as he was. But he’d desperately needed space and time. He’d joined the Marines and later left to join an undercover special-ops government program.

He hadn’t looked back. He couldn’t let himself.

The familiar drive north along the Milk River through a landscape devoid of all color seemed surreal. Winter up here meant a monochromatic palette, everything dulled somewhere between white and brown. The drab landscape mirrored his feelings. He would get his mother and uncle buried; then he would put all of this behind him.

He hadn’t gone far when he spotted the mailbox with Dennison on it and slowed to turn down the tree-lined narrow dirt road. The house was an old two-story farmhouse, white with blue shutters.

His treehouse was still in one of the largest old cottonwoods down by the creek. A tire swing hung from one of the larger branches. It moved restlessly in the breeze, reminding him of summer days spent daydreaming in it.

As he pulled in, nothing moved. He half expected his mother to appear in the front doorway. Marie, he thought with no small amount of resentment. She wasn’t the only thing missing. No dog. Jace figured a neighbor must have taken his uncle Audie’s collie. No Audie, either.

He sat for a moment, swamped with memories of a childhood free to wander in the fields and river bottom that ran for miles behind it. A childhood with the little girl who lived down the road.

“It hasn’t all been bad, has it?” Kayley had asked him that last day before he left twelve years ago.

“No,” he’d said. It hadn’t been bad at all. Just the ending.

Getting out, he grabbed the overnight bag he’d brought and walked toward the house where he’d grown up. He wasn’t surprised that the front door wasn’t locked or that the house was spotless. His mother had always kept it that way. He took his bag up to his room.

His mother had left it just as it had been. He stood for a moment in the doorway, before moving down the hall to the guest room.

As he dropped his bag on the double bed, he stepped to the window to look out. He could see his uncle’s house down the road. He would have to sell it, as well.

Back downstairs, he checked the fridge. One of the neighbors must have cleaned it out, just as they had probably been keeping the house up.

He stood for a moment in the empty house and listened, hearing nothing but his own breathing until he couldn’t take it anymore and headed for town. He’d go to the grocery store to stock up on just enough food to last him until he could get the hell out of here.

AVA HAD SPOTTED THE STACK of local newspapers in the office when she’d checked into the motel on the edge of town. They had been piled next to a fireplace, no doubt to be burned.

She’d gone back after she’d settled into the room and asked the girl at the motel desk if she could look at them. Methodically, Ava had gone through them, reading the articles. She was interested in Whitehorse, this town where Jace Dennison was from.

But she was also interested in anything about Kayley Mitchell.

The newspapers went back a good couple of months. Fortunately, they were only a few pages, so it didn’t take long to work her way through them.

She hadn’t gone far when she found a photograph of Miss Kayley Mitchell and her kindergarten class. The cowgirl was an elementary-school teacher? Could she look any sweeter standing there with an arm around two little girls in her class?

Ava wadded up the paper and sailed it across the room before continuing her search. She was shocked when she found the front-page story about two babies being switched at the hospital thirty years before—and how a recent murder tied in. Jace Dennison had been one of the switched babies!

The thought gave her chills. She kept reading, completely engrossed and even more convinced coming here had been destined. Jace needed her.

When she found the funeral notice for Marie and Audie Dennison in the most recent newspaper, she saw that the funeral was tomorrow. She was so glad she hadn’t missed it. She glanced toward her clothes hanging in the closet and smiled. How providential that she still had the black dress she’d worn to her husband’s funeral.

JACE WAS STANDING IN the grocery store checkout aisle when he saw her. “Ava?”

She jumped at the sound of her name, and he thought for a moment she might run out of the store.

He stepped out of line to block her exit just in case she thought about taking off again.

“Jace? Jace Dennison, right?” she said quickly, getting her composure back.

“I thought that was you,” he said, not buying for a moment that she didn’t quite remember his name.

She’d been looking down another aisle when he’d spotted her, as if searching for something. Or someone.

“I hadn’t realized we were headed for the same town in Montana,” he said.

“Small world, isn’t it.”