Corralled. B.J. Daniels
Читать онлайн книгу.
guessed though that it had taken ten years off Kevin’s life from the looks of him. “So what’s up? More missing jewelry?”
“This is a very delicate matter. I need you to handle it with the utmost care. Do I have your word?”
Buford felt his stomach roil again. He was in no mood for this. “Just tell me what’s happened.”
The general manager rose from his chair with a brisk “come with me.”
Buford followed him out to a golf cart. Resigned that he had no choice but to ride along, he climbed on. Kevin drove them through the ritzy residence via the narrow paved roads that had been hacked out of the pines.
The hotel-size houses were all set back from the road, each occupying at least ten acres from Buford’s estimation since the buildings had to take up three of those acres with guest houses of another half acre. Each log, stone and glass structure was surrounded by pine trees so he only caught glimpses of the exclusive houses as Kevin whipped along the main road.
Finally he pulled down one of the long driveways, coming to a stop in front of a stone monstrosity with two wide wooden doors. Like the others, the house was all rock and logs with massive windows that looked out over the pines on the mountainside and Flathead Lake far below.
Buford saw with a curse that two of the security force’s golf carts were parked out front. One of the garage doors was open. A big, black SUV hunkered in one of the three stalls. The others were empty.
Getting off the golf cart, he let Kevin lead him up to the front door. Bears had been carved into the huge wooden doors, and not by some roadside chainsaw artist. Without knocking, Kevin opened the door and Buford followed him inside.
He was hit at once with a familiar smell and felt his stomach clutch. This was no missing jewelry case.
With dread, he moved across the marble floor to where the walls opened into a football field–size living room with much the same furnishings as the club’s main lodge. The two security guards were standing at the edge of the room. They had been visiting, but when they saw Kevin, they tried to act professional.
Buford looked past them to the dead man sprawled beside the hearth of the towering rock fireplace. The deceased was wearing a white, blood-soaked velour robe and a pair of leather slippers on his feet. Apparently nothing else.
“Get them out of here,” Buford ordered, pointing at the two security guards. He could only guess at how many people had already tromped through here contaminating the scene. “Stay back and make sure no one else comes traipsing through here.”
He swore under his breath as he worked his way across the room to the fireplace and the dead man. The victim looked to be in his late fifties, but could have been older because, from the tightness of his facial skin, he’d had some work done. His hair was dark with distinguishing gray at the temples, a handsome man even in death.
It appeared he’d been shot in the heart at point-blank range. An expensive handgun lay on the floor next to the body in a pool of drying blood. Clearly the man had been dead for hours. Buford swore again. He’d bet that Kevin had contacted the Grizzly Club board before he’d called the sheriff’s department.
Around the dead man were two different distinct prints left in his blood. One was a man-size dress shoe sole. The other a cowboy boot—small enough that Buford would guess it was a woman’s. It was her prints that held his attention. The woman hadn’t walked away—she’d run—straight for the front door.
AT THE MOTORCYCLE, BLYTHE tied up her hair and climbed on behind the cowboy. She didn’t think about what she was doing as she wrapped her arms around him. All she knew was that she had to escape, and wherever Logan was headed was fine with her. Even better, this Whitehorse place sounded like the end of the earth. With luck, no one would find her there.
She reminded herself that she’d thought this part of Montana would be far from the life she wanted so desperately to leave behind. But she’d been wrong.
Running didn’t come easy to her. She’d always been a fighter. But not today. Today she only wanted to forget everything, hang on to this good-looking cowboy on the back of his motorcycle, feel the wind in her face and put her old life as far behind her as possible.
An image flashed in her mind, making her shudder, and she glanced down at her cowboy boots. She quickly wiped away a streak of dark red along the sole as Logan turned the key and brought the Harley to life.
She felt the throb of the engine and closed her eyes and her mind the way she used to tune out her mother when she was a girl. Back then it was to close out the sound of her mother and her latest boyfriend arguing in the adjacent room of the small, old trailer house. She had learned to go somewhere else, be someone else, always dreaming of a fantasy life far away.
With a smile, she remembered that one of her daydreams had been to run away with a cowboy. The thought made her hold on to Logan tighter as he shifted and tore out of the café parking lot in a shower of gravel.
Last night dancing with Logan she’d thought she was finally free. It was the best she’d felt in years. Now she pressed her cheek into the soft warmth of his leather jacket, lulled by the pulse of the motorcycle, the feel of the wind in her hair. She couldn’t believe that he’d found her.
What had she been thinking giving him that damned key? She’d taken a terrible risk, but then she’d never dreamed he would come looking for her. What if he had gotten into the Grizzly Club this morning before she’d gotten out of there?
She shook off the thought and watched the countryside blur past, first forest-covered mountains, then wide-open spaces as they raced along the two-lane highway that cut east across the state.
She’d gotten away. No one knew where she was. But still she had to look back. The past had been chasing her for so long, she didn’t kid herself that it wasn’t close behind.
There were no cars close behind them, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be looking for her.
For a moment, she considered what she’d done. She didn’t know this cowboy, didn’t know where he was taking her or what would happen when they got there.
This is so like you. Leaping before you look. Not thinking about the consequences of your actions. As if you weren’t in enough trouble already.
Her mother’s words rang in her ears. The only difference this time was that she wasn’t that fourteen-year-old girl with eleven dollars in the pocket of her worn jean jacket and her only possession a beat-up guitar one of her mother’s boyfriend’s had left behind.
She’d escaped both times. That time from one of her mother’s amorous boyfriends and with her virginity. This time with her life. At least so far.
That reckless spirit is going to get you into trouble one day. You mark my words, girl.
Wouldn’t her mama love to hear that she’d been right. But mama was long dead and Jennifer Blythe James was still alive. If anything, that girl and the woman she’d become was a survivor. She’d gotten out of that dirty desert trailer park where she’d started life. She would get out of this.
“WHO’S THE VICTIM?” Sheriff Buford Olson asked, sensing the Grizzly Club general manager hovering somewhere at a discreet distance behind him.
“Martin Sanderson,” Kevin said. “It’s his house.”
Buford studied the larger bloody footprint next to the body. At a glance, he could see that it didn’t match the soles of the two security guards or the general manager’s, and unlike the other smaller print, this one headed not for the door, but in the opposite direction.
As he let his gaze follow the path the bloody prints had taken, Buford noted that the man had tried to wipe his shoe clean of the blood on an expensive-looking rug between the deceased and the bar where he was now lounging.
Buford was startled to see the man making himself at home at the