He watched as they placed Moose’s remains into the coroner’s van. This would be the last time he saw his friend, and the realization broke him like he would have never thought possible. With Moose gone...he was on his own. Moose had been his greatest friend. They had spent so many years hunting, fishing and drinking beer together that without him, Ty wasn’t sure he wanted to do any of their favorite things ever again.
To do it without Moose, it just didn’t seem right.
The doors slammed shut, pulling him from what he now realized were inane thoughts. Here he was staring at the body bag and thinking about standing on the banks of the Madison with the man whose body was growing ever colder.
Those memories and choices could wait, even if the thoughts wanted to press through and take him to the best moments he’d once had with his friend.
He dropped his head and closed his eyes as the van took off down the icy road, careening slightly as the back tires worked to find grip. The van spewed black smoke like it was some kind of pissed-off bull.
Anger filled him as he listened to the van’s tires slip and the engine rev—if they weren’t in such a hurry, they would have been able to navigate the ice without issue. While there wasn’t anything else that could happen to Moose that could make him more dead, it struck him as wrong that the coroner was so irreverent. On the mountain, he and his team had treated Moose with absolute veneration and care and to see the coroner fishtailing and spinning his tires tore at him.
He turned toward his truck and trailer, his sled already loaded, and he was ready to go. It had been a long day.
Getting in his pickup, he pulled onto the slick road, careful to ease on the gas and not repeat the moves that the coroner’s van had made. The thought of the coroner’s driving made him shake his head again.
Then, how could he judge the guy when he hadn’t been perfect on this call, either. He had basically dismissed Holly—and that was after he had agreed to let her come along to find Moose. Had he known things would have gone so sideways, there was no way he would have brought her along. However, the last thing he had ever expected was to find Moose like that...with his head nearly completely severed. Who had done this? And why?
As he envisioned the blood-soaked snow, he pressed the gas pedal a little too hard and he was forced to slow down. He tried to think about anything other than all that blood. It had been everywhere...everywhere except near his sled.
That fact could mean any number of things, but one likelihood rose above all the rest—Moose hadn’t been sliced on his sled. His death had to have come after he’d stepped off.
He had searched around in the dark, but he hadn’t seen anything obvious on scene that fit an object capable of what he had found. Hell, he hadn’t even found a stick.
The last time he had been called out to a death reminiscent of Moose’s was when he had been a deputy. A man had run into a wire while riding his mountain bike and the results had been nearly identical. Which made him think that there had to have been something out there that he simply hadn’t seen.
There had just been so much blood.
He ran his hands over his face and picked up his phone as it buzzed with a series of emails and messages from the unit and the sheriff’s office. Everyone was texting him and sending their condolences. He wanted to tell them that they were sending them to the wrong person—they needed to be talking to Moose’s mom.
Then again, he needed to talk to her first—he’d have to be on her step at dawn so no one would make a mistake and have to bear the weight of tearing down a mother’s world.
He looked at the sleeves of his jacket. Though he’d been wearing nitrile gloves while working on the scene, he’d still somehow managed to get his friend’s blood all over his arms.
It was hardly the first time he’d had blood on him from a crime scene; he was constantly covered by the detritus of crime and death, and the sight of it didn’t bother him. If anything, it felt...well, not right, but somehow cathartic. If anyone in the world should have been out there on the mountain taking care of Moose in his final physical form, then it was him.
He wasn’t into the woo-woo stuff, but he couldn’t help but wonder why Holly had come back into his life at the same time. It had to be some kind of message from the universe or whatever.
It was strange that on all the calls in all the years he had been doing this kind of thing, he’d never worked with an ex, and he’d never before lost a best friend. It had to be more than a coincidence, though he couldn’t make sense of what else it all meant.
Not long after they’d broken up he’d been lost, and it was then when he decided to apply to work at the sheriff’s department. He had met Moose at the academy in Helena.
Damn. Holly had even been behind his meeting his best friend in the first place.
It was wild how many things in his life were connected to her and their failed relationship.
Maybe it was only right that she had been there when Moose had passed—though, she could have never known all the threads that connected them. In fact, she probably hadn’t even known Moose. She hadn’t said anything to make him think she had, but she had been through so much that anything was possible.
Hopefully she was going to be okay—emotionally and physically. She was pretty tough. Heck, if he had to guess she had never gone to the hospital or gotten stitches.
The thought made him almost smile and huff a laugh, though he couldn’t have told anyone why. Maybe it was the fact that she was exactly what every Montana woman was bred to be—tough as nails and capable of handling everything from a blown-out head gasket to a rattlesnake in the garage. Then again, they were also the kinds of women who, when they got all gussied up, could wear Chanel and walk the streets of New York City with enough confidence that people assumed they were locals.
He had to admit he had a thing for that type—the Holly type.
He had only spent a handful of nights with Holly. Yet he found that when he was lonely, it was those nights which he found himself thinking about. She had been a one-of-a-kind woman when they had dated, and she had become more of everything since they had parted. She was definitely the one who got away.
It did him no good to sit here and rehash the old days, when he had so many other things that he could be dealing with. One thing was for sure, he needed to find out what exactly had happened to his friend. As far as he was concerned, that was where all of his attention needed to be focused.
However, it wouldn’t hurt to swing by Holly’s place and check on her on his way home. That way, he could find out whether or not she had arrived safely and if she had in fact gone to the hospital. He owed her that much. Heck, he didn’t even need to stop—hopefully, she’d be sleeping by now and a porch light would be on or something. If he did stop by, would it be weird? It kind of felt weird.
He tried to reassure himself by repeating the fact that he simply wanted to make sure she was safe. He would have done it for anyone. It just happened to be that this anyone was Holly.
It seemed like she was an exception to a lot of his rules—or maybe it wasn’t rules, but comfort zones.
Once he had heard that comfort zones were where the human spirit went to die. Maybe she was being sent to him or placed back in his life to be some cosmic reminder that he needed to grow as a person. He just wasn’t sure which direction.
As he drove the miles back into town, his mind did double backs and somersaults as he thought about how he should approach things with Holly, or if he should approach things. He was making a huge assumption that she would even want to have him back in her life. She hadn’t seemed like she did. Yet she had touched him. That had to have meant something.
As he entered town, he thought about getting her number on their database and texting her, but he didn’t even know what to say.
Hey, how are you doing? No.
Doing okay? No, too clipped.
Worried about you. Too much.
His best bet was just to swing by.
He exhaled, hard. He resigned himself to the fact that there was no right move here, there was only doing what his heart was telling him to do. He turned left down Spring Road, and toward the house where Holly had grown up and of which she’d eventually taken ownership when her parents had passed away—or so he’d heard through the small-town gossip mill.
It had started to snow harder, and he clicked his lights down to low beam so he could see through the flurries in the dark slightly better. His eyes were tired and as he eased down the road, the snow crunched under his tires.
He couldn’t ignore the nagging in his gut that was telling him to turn around and that he had no business checking up on her. However, it was too late to turn back now. If he did, he’d spend all night worrying about her and second-guessing himself. It was only going to take a second and then he could get some damned sleep.
Tomorrow was going to be just as arduous as today had been—tomorrow, the investigation would go into full effect.
As he neared her house, he spotted a white King Ranch heavy-duty pickup parked across the street. It didn’t look like anyone was inside.
The 1970s-style house hadn’t changed much on the outside since he was a kid. The only difference had been new gray siding, which did little to mask the age of the place. It wasn’t his business, but he wondered if Holly had updated the inside when she had taken over ownership of the house, or if she had left it as her parents had kept it—with the brown and white textured carpet. The carpet where they had lain on their bellies, casually touching feet while they had pretended to watch television. He kind of hoped she hadn’t changed a thing.
Her SUV was in the driveway, making him wonder how she had gotten it home—the last he’d seen, it had been parked where she had gone in on the ski trail. Cindy must have made sure she’d gotten home with it, or she’d had someone drive it back for Holly.
As he drove closer, her front door came into view and standing in front of it was a man with dark hair. He was wearing a heavy winter coat and cowboy boots. Ty didn’t recognize the guy, but he slowed down as he watched the man bang his fist against the door. Every time he banged his fist against the wood, the Christmas wreath hanging at its center shook violently and the glass bulbs looked dangerously close to flinging off and crashing to the ground.
The guy pissed him off. Perhaps it was his intensity to get Holly to answer the door. There was a doorbell, but the guy seemed adamant about beating up the structure.
Ty slowed his truck to a crawl.
Before he reached the King Ranch pickup, he pulled to the side of the road, just far enough to be unobtrusive and unnoticed, but still see the front door and be accessible if something was happening and she needed help.
The man wailed on the door again, this time kicking at the bottom when his knocking went unanswered.
Ty reached for his door handle, readying to go have a talking-to with the unknown man as Holly’s front door opened. She appeared in the light, a dark frown on her face. She was wearing a white nightgown that hugged at her frame like wanting hands, and it made her appear almost angelic in the snowy night.
She crossed her arms over her chest, but whether it was from the cold or fear, Ty wasn’t sure.
Whatever was going on here, he didn’t like it.
He kept his hand on the handle of his pickup, but he didn’t open his door. Before he went rushing out to save her, he needed to make sure that she was really in need of saving and that he wasn’t rushing in where he wasn’t needed and acting like a fool.
The dark-haired man leaned against the doorjamb, moving in closer toward Holly. She stepped back from the man, but she didn’t close the door. If the man was as bothersome as Ty was assuming, he would have thought that Holly would have slammed the door in the man’s face. Instead she stood there talking and as she spoke her hands lowered from her chest. She looked more relaxed, but suddenly the man she was speaking to stood up straight and waved his hands in the air—the move was aggressive.
She put her hand on the open door like she was about to close it, but the man stuffed his foot inside the door as he continued to wave his hands wildly. Ty rolled down his window, hoping to hear something to tell him whether or not his presence was justified here, or if he was just witnessing a lover’s spat.
The only problem was, she hadn’t mentioned that she’d had a boyfriend, or even hinted that she was in any kind of situationship or whatever. Sure, it had not been his business, but from the way they had touched, and she hadn’t pulled away, he assumed that he was cleared for landing...well, not landing her, but at least for seeing if she wanted to go out and have coffee sometime.
The man’s yelling cut through the air. “Don’t you care about anyone besides yourself?”
She put her hands up and her face pulled into an even deeper scowl. “All I’ve said is that you can’t just show up here.”
The sound of the man’s hand connecting with the doorjamb was Ty’s call to arms. That was it. He jumped out of the pickup and raced over toward Holly.
As she spotted him, her face brightened for a split second before she took on a look of utter confusion. The man with his back to him turned. “What in the hell are you doing?” the man asked, but then as quickly as he spoke, he turned back to Holly. “Is this your new boyfriend? I should have known. You always had a thing for dumbasses.”
“Are you sure you didn’t catch a glimpse of yourself in the glass, buddy?” he said, nudging his chin toward the door but never taking his eyes off the man.
“Funny,” the guy said, turning around to face him. He looked like he was about thirty-six, and he was pale but carried the kind of bulk that made it clear he worked out. He could still take him.
“Knock it off,” Holly said, moving outside, her face coming fully into the porch light. “You need to leave. You’ve been drinking,” she said to the guy. “And you—” she turned to face him “—what gave you the right to think you could show up on my doorstep in the middle of the night and be my knight in shining armor? Haven’t you done that enough today? I think you need to leave, too.”
He was taken aback. She wasn’t wrong, but she sure as hell wasn’t right—he was not a knight and he hadn’t come here to save her. “Holly, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I needed to know you made it home. That’s all.”
“I’m here. You can go, too.”
“Holly—” He said her name like it was a call to her for forgiveness and a whisper of something more. It made him feel weak in front of the other guy.
The dude put his hand on his shoulder and Ty instinctively jerked away from the guy’s touch. The man smirked. “You know...if you want her more than me, you can have her. She is manipulative and cruel. Pushing me away and pulling me back—”
“How dare you,” Holly started.
The guy put his hand up, quieting her. “Before I go, though, let me say one more thing,” he said, sounding drunker than ever, “this soul crusher is nothing but problems. I’m doing you a favor in telling you to tuck tail and head out, man.”
“I’ve always been a man who makes up my own mind. More often than not, when someone says something like you just did, it means one of two things—you’re jealous or you are angry that you’ll never have a chance. In this instance, I think it must be a combination of both.”
The guy moved abruptly like he was about to strike, but before he did Holly made a squeaking noise that stopped the guy in his tracks.
“Robert Finch and Ty Terrell.” She said their names in a way that reminded him entirely too much of his mother. “You both need to get off my porch!” She stepped between them. “Neither of you get to pick and choose what I do with my life.”
He stood there in stunned silence.
She looked up at Robert and then to Ty, anger flaming in her eyes. “I said leave.”