Five hundred dollars. Not only had her sister murdered, but she had also stolen from her and pawned a symbol of what little was left of their family, and she had done it for five hundred dollars. A lump rose in Christina’s throat, and though she shouldn’t have let this hurt, she couldn’t help but succumb to the lashes of her sister’s actions.
Perhaps Alli was on drugs. It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed her mind, but she always tried to have a little bit more faith that her sister would make better decisions. Looking back, though, she felt like a fool. Maybe if she just started thinking the worst of her sister, then she would no longer be surprised or agonize when Alli did the things she did.
Christina twisted her grandmother’s ring around her finger. It was a little tight for the ring finger on her right hand, but until she could put it back in its box and get it tucked away somewhere Alli would never find it, she could think of no better place than her own hand to keep it safe. It was funny. She could protect things by keeping them close to her—everything except her feelings.
Wyatt was across the parking lot, running the plates in his squad car. Tiny, almost ash-like snowflakes fell from the sky and, as the wind picked up, scattered like secrets throughout the small town.
The thought of secrets and the power they wielded made Christina rub the ring finger on her left hand. Her sister’s secrets had nearly cost them everything—even a chance at a future.
She glanced down at the ring as a snowflake drifted down and melted on the surface of the diamond. She thought about slipping the ring off and putting it on her other hand, feeling the weight of the engagement ring and what it had the potential to mean—loyalty, fidelity, love, trust and being loved forever by the man of her dreams.
She glanced up and caught Waylon looking at her.
“You all right?” Waylon asked, nodding toward her hand. “I’m sure she was just desperate. You know, selling the ring and all. And when people are desperate, they do desperate things.”
“I know. It’s just that...” As she looked over at him, her thoughts moved to him between her legs, looking down at her with something that was well beyond lust—and a lot like love.
“Just what?” Waylon moved closer but stopped short, almost as though he wasn’t sure whether or not he should come any closer.
“I’m not a wild dog. I’m not going to bite,” she said, but even as she spoke, she knew it had come off just like a snip. The look on his face confirmed her fears. “Sorry, I’m not upset with you. It’s just...well, I wish Alli would just stop doing what she’s doing. It’s almost like everything she is doing and trying, she is doing to hurt me and her daughter. I just can’t figure out what I did to her that would make her want to hurt me like this. All I ever did was try to help her. I came here for her. I agreed to take her daughter. All I ever wanted to do was be the best sister I could. We were all we had for each other...” She tried to continue, but she couldn’t get any more words past the lump in her throat.
Waylon rushed over to her and pulled her into his arms. His chin rested on her head as she let him hold her. It was all too much. Being with him. Losing Alli. Fighting for Winnie. Being strong...all the time. For this moment, and just this moment, she let herself be weak.
Sometimes the soul needed a moment of weakness so a person could really appreciate its moments of strength.
Waylon rubbed her back as she laid her head against his chest. It felt so good to be held by him. Being with him was what she hadn’t known she was missing, but now that she realized it, she couldn’t imagine him being anywhere else but with her. She didn’t have a clue what she was going to do with herself once he was gone. Things could never go back to the way they were—and once again, her life would be in flux.
When would life just be? Why did everything have to be a fight? Why couldn’t she just have what she wanted—a future with him?
She sucked in a long breath as she tried to take back control over her feelings. Right now, she couldn’t dwell on them. There was too much to lose and too much at risk to start wallowing in a land of what-ifs.
She pulled out of Waylon’s arms just as Wyatt stepped out of his car and made his way over to them.
“Everything all right, Christina?” Wyatt asked, his face filled with concern.
Of course he would be worried. As long as they had known each other, he had never seen her fall into the arms of a man in a moment of need, but if the events of late had taught her anything, it was that anything was possible—even the things she feared the most.
“I’m fine,” she said, attempting to swallow back the lump in her throat. “What did you find out?”
“We ran the plate numbers and it looks like the truck does, in fact, belong to Daryl,” Wyatt said. “You guys want to run over there and question him with me?”
“Let’s go. If Daryl knows where we can find Alli, maybe we can have her in custody by this afternoon.”
“And you can hit the road?” Even Christina heard the acidic tone as it burned away any softness from her voice.
Waylon reached toward her, but she stepped away from his touch. His eyes widened, and he looked shocked and confused by her refusal. Instead of falling victim to that look—the look that said he needed her—she forced herself to turn away.
Wyatt’s phone rang, and he motioned for them to hold on for a second as he answered it. “What’s up, babe?”
A fast and erratic woman’s voice came through the speaker—Christina assumed it was Gwen, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. Wyatt’s face blanched as she spoke.
“No...” he said, almost on an exhale. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I’m sure she’s okay. How did she get her?”
Get who? She glanced over at Waylon, and his mouth was pinched and a storm raged in his eyes. “He’s not talking about Winnie, is he?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
Wyatt leaned against the front of the pawnshop and ran his hand over his face.
“Don’t worry. I’m on my way. We’ll get her back. Come hell or high water, we will find Winnie.” Wyatt looked up at Christina, and this time there were tears in his eyes—tears that made her entire body go numb.
* * *
WINNIE WAS GONE, stolen from Gwen’s care. One minute she had been safe at home, and the next she had simply disappeared.
Waylon had promised Christina they would keep her safe, yet he had let Alli take her—and if anything happened to her, he wasn’t sure he would be able to live with himself. He’d known he was a father for a day, and as already culpable in letting his little girl fall into the wrong hands.
Christina had been right in thinking him incapable of being someone’s father. In fact, he shouldn’t have even had the right to call Winnie his daughter. He didn’t deserve something that good in his life.
Wyatt had gone straight over to his house to get Gwen, who had grown more and more hysterical over the phone. He could imagine how bad she was feeling right now, but no matter how badly he wanted to push the blame on her for what had happened, he couldn’t blame anyone but himself. He shouldn’t have let Winnie leave his side, yet instead of taking her under his wing, he had let others care for her.
He glanced over at Christina as he drove toward the address Wyatt had given them for the trucker. Christina’s face was steely, and she was staring out of the truck with such intensity he wondered how the glass wasn’t melting. She was being strong—and that was exactly what he needed to be as well.
This couldn’t be about emotions. From now until Winnie was found, they could only focus on the things they could control. They should only have one objective—to get Winnie back. After that, he and Christina could focus on Alli and perhaps talk about a future, but as it was, there was no way he could think about the needs of his heart. Not when it was utterly broken at the thoughts of what his daughter was possibly facing.
“Alli would never do anything to hurt Winnie,” he said, trying to not only make Christina feel better but to reassure himself as well.
Christina didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Sure. Of course she wouldn’t.” Her voice was flat and emotionless.
He could handle her display of emotions so much better than her arctic front.
“I’m so sorry about this, Christina,” he said, trying again to comfort her.
This time she glanced over at him, and the chill in her voice had overtaken her gaze as well. Some of the iciness penetrated his core and seeped into his heart.
“I told you this was going to happen. I told you Winnie wasn’t safe. We should have brought her with us.”
He didn’t want to bring up the fact that they had been busy doing other things—things that would have never happened if they had a child with them—but he stopped himself. She hated him. Bringing up anything that had happened between them would be disastrous. In truth, he didn’t blame her. He hated himself just as much for what he had allowed, albeit passively, to happen to Winnie.
“You’re right,” he said, submitting himself to her derision. He deserved whatever punishment she wished to deliver. “I never should have let her out of my sight. No matter how bad you are feeling right now, just know I’m feeling a thousand times worse. I know this is my fault. I was stupid to think Gwen could have kept her safe. Alli knows too much about the ranch and Gwen’s movements. If I’d trusted my gut, none of this would have ever happened.”
“Maybe everything...everything has been a huge mistake.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “You have to know that’s not what I meant. What you and I shared last night—”
“Was stupid,” she said, finishing his sentence. “If we just hadn’t lost focus, none of this would have happened.” She glared over at him, and her lip twitched with anger. “I told you almost the second you set foot on the ranch that Winnie was, and will always be, my primary concern. I am her guardian. You coming here put her at risk.”
“My coming here has nothing to do with your sister coming back and kidnapping Winnie. And what happened between you and me wasn’t stupid. You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it just as much as me. You are hurt and angry. I get that. But don’t forget we’re on the same side.”
“We are not on the same side. We’ve never been on the same side.”
She was pissed, and she had every right to be, but she was wrong. Yet trying to argue with her would be futile.
He could only watch and listen as she attempted to shatter the bond they shared.
He’d always been one to be the hero, to save those who needed saving and help people through their darkest moments, but he hadn’t had a clue that when he came back to Montana he would be facing his own personal version of hell.
All he could do was hope that he would be able to save Winnie. If she got hurt, or if Alli made some stupid decision, he would let his rage take over. He would no longer be a hero—he would be a man thirsty for vengeance.
“Winnie is going to be fine. They are going to start searching the ranch. For all we know she’s still there. Safe and sound.” He said it aloud, but the words sounded muted, like they were coming from the other side of the glass.
Christina said something under her breath he was glad he couldn’t hear.
They barreled down a dirt road just on the edge of the county line. A trailer sat at the end of the drive, its roof was covered in bits of tarp and one of its front windows was held together with duct tape. Even by Montana standards, the place was a crap hole.
For a passing moment, he wondered if Alli had brought Winnie to this rat-infested place. He had to brush the thought aside. He needed to treat this case like it was just any other missing person—and not his daughter. If he let this be personal, he wouldn’t have the control required to do the job that needed to be done.
He pulled in behind the big rig parked beside the trailer. Now that they were close, he could see the place listed a bit to the left, almost as though it, too, was ashamed of the wreckage it had become.
He got out and came around to open Christina’s door for her. It was a feeble gesture, but hopefully she would see it as the peace offering he intended.
“If you think you’re going to tell me to sit here and wait, you’ve got another think coming,” she said, pushing out of the truck. She didn’t even look back as she made her way toward the front door of the house.
He rushed to catch up. “I’m not the kind of guy who would ever ask you to stand by and watch as a man does the work. Do you really think I’m a jerk?” He instantly wished he could reel the words back in. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to answer.
She snorted slightly, but then as she turned to face him, she stopped. “You are not a jerk.” She stared at him for a moment, and some of the iciness of her gaze melted away. “You just need to do everything in your power to save my niece.” She turned back away and took the steps leading to the door two at a time. She knocked on the door; the sound was hollow and echoed through the house as though it was made of nothing more than cheap particleboard and spackle.
The cheap blinds rattled, as someone must have looked out at them from the living room.
“Daryl! Daryl Bucket?” she yelled. “We know you’re inside. Answer the damned door!”
Waylon could hear heavy footfalls as the man made his way down the hall. Daryl opened the door just far enough that Waylon could see one of the man’s eyes. His cheeks were covered with a day’s worth of stubble, and from what Waylon could make out from the array of stains on the man’s white shirt, he must have eaten a week’s worth of Cheetos and used his T-shirt as a rag.
“What the hell do you want?” Daryl’s voice was hoarse from lack of use and, from the tarry scent of the trailer, a hefty addiction to cigarettes.
“I’m not sure if you recognize us, but—” Waylon started.
“I know who you are. Why are you here?”
“We just wanted to ask you a few questions. No big deal, man, but we would appreciate your help,” he said, trying to act as chummy as possible, though every cell of his being wanted to reach through the crack in the door, take the man by the throat and make him answer every one of his questions to his satisfaction.
“Hmm.” Daryl ran his fingers through his greasy hair. “All right, army boy. You can come in, but I got stuff to do.” He opened the door, and in his right hand once again was his trusty bat.
They followed him down the narrow hall. It was covered in old grainy photographs of green-clad marines posing with antiquated tanks and helicopters in what looked like the jungles of Vietnam. Daryl rubbed the bat on the wall, making an unsettling sound as he walked into the living room.
He flopped down in a threadbare recliner and set his bat across his lap as he looked up at them.
Waylon couldn’t help but wonder what kind of life the old marine had lived that he thought he always needed a weapon. Though they were in different branches, he had a certain level of understanding of the world outside the United States.
When a person had experienced the brutal reality of combat, there was no going back to a life in which they could ever really feel at peace. Safety was merely an illusion—an illusion he had perpetuated by telling Christina that Winnie was safe. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have looked past the lessons that had been drilled into him—the lesson that the only person he could really trust was himself?
He stared at Daryl and his bat. The only real difference between him and that man was Waylon wasn’t carrying a bat—they were both equally a mess by the hand life had dealt them. Daryl just had the luxury of trying to forget.
“What kind of stuff do you have to do?” Christina asked, nearly spitting the words.
“That ain’t none of your business, eh,” the guy said, his warm Canadian accent in juxtaposition to his harsh words.
“I know, man. We don’t have any business coming here and buggin’ you when you got places to be. I get it.” Waylon tried his best to overcome the jagged edge of Christina’s tone. “We just had reason to believe that you might know a thing or two that could come in handy in helping us.”
“Helping you all with what?” Daryl asked.
“We heard a little rumor that you sold some things to a pawnshop last night. Is that correct?”
Daryl didn’t say anything; he simply spun the bat around in his hands.
“There’s nothing wrong with pawning a couple of things to make an extra buck here or there,” Waylon said. “Heaven knows I’ve needed a couple extra bucks now and then.”
“You’re still active. You don’t got a clue. You would have thought my going to fight for your country woulda proved my allegiance and set me up for retirement, but that ain’t happening. Ya know?”
“What do you mean? Isn’t the VA treating you right?”
Daryl twisted the bat again. “As a former Canadian, I was only ever eligible for jobs that didn’t require security clearance. You know what I mean, eh? The only good thing to come of my enlistment was my citizenship, but now that I been in the States most of my life and saw what a mess your political system is, I may just have to turn around and go back up north.” He laughed.
“I wouldn’t blame you, man.” Waylon stepped over to the window and turned slightly so the guy could be a little more comfortable. “So you sold the ring. No problem.” He glanced over at Christina, who slipped her hands behind her back in an effort to hide the ring from view.
“Then what’s the problem?” Daryl asked. “What brought you all the way up here to my door?”
“We were just wondering where exactly you got that ring. Do you remember?”
“Did she steal it?” Daryl asked, staring at the bat in his hands.
“She did,” Waylon said. “Do you know where we can find her?”
Daryl shook his head. “Truth be told, I don’t even know how she found me, but she musta searched my name or something. Anyways, she showed up on my doorstep in what I now gotta assume was a stolen car and asked me if I could help her out by taking a few things off her hands. In my defense, she didn’t tell me they were stolen. I wouldn’t have bought none of it if I’d known for sure they were hot.”
“Yet you gave the pawnshop owner a fake name and address when you sold him the stuff?”
Daryl twitched. “Is someone on the way here to arrest me? I swear I didn’t know for sure. I just had a feeling. And I needed the money. She gave everything to me for a real good price. It was a good investment. That was all,” he rambled.
“You’re not in trouble, and the cops don’t have a reason to come on out here and bother you, if you give us the answers we need.”
“Look, army boy, I really would love to help you all, but I don’t know nothing.” He glanced back down at the bat in his hands, but not before Waylon noticed the faint redness in his cheeks—a color that told him there was far more to the story than the man wanted to admit, especially in front of a woman.
Waylon turned to Christina. “You mind if I talk to him alone for a minute?” He felt bad for asking, especially since he had just told her he wasn’t the kind of guy to push a woman to the side, but there was no getting around it with the retired marine.
Christina opened her mouth to say something but stopped as she looked at him. “Daryl, do you have anything to drink in the kitchen?”
He pointed farther down the hall. “There’s some coffee from earlier this morning. And there might be a few beers left in the fridge. Help yourself.”
Christina frowned but made her way out of the room and toward the kitchen.
Waylon turned back to Daryl. “So was she good? You know, the girl who you bought the ring from.”
Daryl jerked as he looked up at him, and the way the man’s mouth opened and closed—like he was searching for air—told Waylon he’d hit the nail on the head.
“A man has needs. You’re fine,” Waylon said with a shrug. “Not to mention that Alli is a beautiful woman. I don’t blame you for making a move on her.” Actually, he hated the thought of the things Alli had done and continued to do, but that was hardly the man’s fault.
“Alli? Who’s Alli?” Daryl frowned. “She said her name was Sharon. At least I think that’s what she said.”
It didn’t surprise him that Alli would have given the guy a fake name. There seemed to be a lot of that going around. In fact, it might even have been where Daryl had gotten the idea, but he didn’t bother to ask.
“What did Sharon look like?”
“I told you before, dark haired, about five foot six, skinny—though she looked like she’d lost weight from the last time I’d saw her. It’s another reason I wanted to help her out.”
Daryl could try to make it sound like he was helping the woman out of the goodness of his heart, but he’d already admitted to letting her exchange sex for favors and profiting from a stolen item. He was no saint.
“Is there anything else you can tell me?”
Daryl shook his head.
“You saw her naked. Did she have any kind of birthmarks? Tattoos?”
The guy’s face pinched as he thought. “There was... She had a strawberry birthmark on her inner thigh.” He wiped the sweat from his brow as he looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen, checking to make sure that Christina wasn’t within earshot.
Alli didn’t have a birthmark.
“Is it possible that the birthmark was a bruise or some other kind of mark?” Waylon asked, trying to make sense of exactly what the man was saying.
“No. It was a port-wine mark,” Daryl said, making a circle with his fingers on his thigh. “It was about this big. Dark red. She said she had it as a child. She never liked to wear shorts.”
Alli lived in shorts in the summertime, or at least she had. It was possible that she could have been lying to the man about the story, but there was little to no way to replicate a birthmark like that. Yet Alli did have a tattoo of a small lightning bolt on her ankle.
“Did Sharon,” Waylon said, the name sounding as foreign as the woman Daryl was describing, “have any tattoos?”
The guy looked up toward the ceiling as though he was trying to find memories on the tiles. “No. Not that I can remember. To be honest, she didn’t seem the type. She was a bit by the book—if you know what I mean.” He gave him a look that told him Daryl wasn’t talking about tattoos.
Alli had always been anything but by the book. There was no possible way that the woman Daryl was talking about could have been Waylon’s ex-wife. But if it wasn’t her, he had no idea who else would have had the ring and the paintings. Maybe it was possible that Alli had given this other woman the items to sell, but something about it all just didn’t fit.
He was missing something. He had to be. But what was it that he wasn’t seeing?
“And you said that the woman who came to your door was, without a doubt, the same woman you picked up on the side of the road and brought back to Mystery?”
Daryl nodded. “Yep.”
“And where did you drop this woman off? Did you bring her back here the first time you met her?”
The sweat dripped on Daryl’s brow, and he tried to wipe it away, but it returned just as quickly. “I didn’t bring her back here then. She didn’t seem like the type who wanted...you know...at least not with me.”
“So where did you take her?”
Daryl looked away and tapped his fingers on the bat in his hands. Everything about his body language screamed that he was trying to come up with a convenient lie, and it made the hairs on the back of Waylon’s neck rise. The man hadn’t seemed like he really had anything major to hide, but the way he was acting now made him think otherwise.
“Don’t bother lying to me,” Waylon said, not waiting for the man to answer. “If you do, I will have the police here within minutes.”
Daryl gripped the bat and looked back up at him. “I don’t want her to get in trouble. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble. She seemed like a nice-enough woman.”
“She’s not nice enough,” Waylon spat, finally losing his patience with the man’s game. “Trust me. We have a reason to believe she may be involved with the kidnapping of a little girl. It’s why she needed the money. Why she came to you. So the faster you can give me answers, the faster we can get to that little girl. If you just tell me what you know, maybe we can even save the little girl’s life.”
“She made me drop her off on the frontage road—about a mile from anything on the north end of town. I don’t think she wanted me to know where she was going. She was good at keeping her secrets, you know?” Daryl spoke fast, flustered. “The only thing I can think of is that she kept talking about this ranch. Dunrovin. You know it?”
His stomach sank. “What did she say about it?”
“Only that she was going to take the place down. One person at a time.”
“And you thought this woman was innocent?” Christina asked as she walked down the hallway toward them. The glass of water in her hand was shaking. “Where is she, Daryl? Where can we find her? Where can we find my niece?”
“I don’t know anything. I swear, I don’t know nothing. All I know is she had some kind of vendetta. I don’t know why.” Daryl stared at Christina, an apologetic look on his face. “If this were my deal, I would start looking there. At that ranch. Flies are always drawn to things they think are rotten.”