On the drive to Helena, Mo seemed to relax. He respected how she seemed to bounce back from disappointment quickly.
“Tell me about Brick Savage,” she said out of the blue.
He glanced over at her for a moment before turning back to his driving. “Not much to tell,” he said, wondering if she was just bored or if she were really interested.
“I doubt that’s true since your reputation with women precedes you. Apparently you like to lasso them, but you always set them free.”
“I wouldn’t believe everything you hear.” He cleared his throat. “You want to hear my life story or just the raunchy parts?”
She laughed. “I want to hear it all,” she said, settling into her seat for the drive.
“Okay. I was born and raised in the Gallatin Canyon, grew up on a ranch with a mother who ran day-to-day operations and a father who was the local marshal. My whole family lives in that canyon. Ranching and wrangling is all I’ve ever known.”
“And yet you’re a deputy marshal,” she said. “Or will be if I don’t get you fired before you even start.”
He ignored that. “I guess in the back of my mind I always thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps.”
“Will working with me ruin that for you?” she asked, sounding actually concerned.
“Don’t worry about me.” Brick had to admit, he’d always been impulsive, going with what felt right at the moment. He’d never felt rooted to the ranch the way his siblings had. He’d always been a free spirit.
Then again, he’d always had his twin brother, Angus, the solid, steady one, to help steer him out of trouble—until recently. Not to mention, he’d also had his very wise cousin Ella. But now he was on his own since both of them had moved on with their lives.
And now here he was. On his own. Two rogue lawmen. He couldn’t depend on Mo to steer him into anything but trouble.
“So you said you were shot. An angry husband?”
“I’ve made a habit of steering clear of married women. My brother and I and my cousin Ella were helping a rancher in Wyoming on a cattle drive. Her husband, who she was divorcing, was giving her a hard time. I just got in the way of a bullet.”
“That explains a lot. It was all about rescuing a woman in distress. You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
He shook his head and sighed as they reached the Helena hospital where they would find Natalie’s ex. “You just like giving me a hard time, don’t you?”
Mo grinned. “Now that you mention it...”
THE TALL, DARK-HAIRED doctor came into the room on a gust of air-conditioned breeze. He closed the door and went straight to his desk, sitting down behind it before he considered the two of them. Clearing his voice, he glanced at his watch and asked, “I don’t have a lot of time before my next surgery. What is this about?”
“We’re here about your ex-wife Natalie,” Mo said, trying to see the woman she’d known with this man. In the time she’d spent time around the woman, Natalie had never mentioned her ex.
“Natalie and I are no longer married.”
“We are hoping you’d seen her today,” Brick said.
Dr. Philip Berkshire shook his head. “Why would I? I haven’t even seen her in years.” He started to rise.
“She contacted you for bail money when she was arrested,” Mo said.
He slowly lowered himself into the chair. “I said I hadn’t seen her. I didn’t say I hadn’t heard from her.”
“She didn’t call you today?” Brick asked.
“No. She called when she needed bail money, and I turned her down.”
“Why?” Brick asked.
“Why?” the doctor seemed shocked by the question. “Because I don’t owe her anything.”
“Or because you believe she’s guilty?” Mo asked. “The two of you worked together. That’s how you met and married, right?”
“That was a long time ago. I know nothing of the kind of woman she is now.”
“What kind of nurse was she?” Mo asked.
“She was a fine nurse, a devoted, compassionate nurse.”
“Why did she quit nursing to become a nanny?”
“You would have to ask her that.”
Brick shifted in his chair. “I would love to, but since she’s not here and you are...”
“We divorced.”
“Why?”
Berkshire shot Brick a narrowed look. “That’s personal.”
“Look, we’re trying to find her. Her life is in danger,” he said. “Also, she might have information that we need in another death.”
The doctor closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. “She had this thing about babies, sick babies. I’m sure you already know this,” he said, opening his eyes and turning his attention on them again. “She had a younger sister who was born very sick. The doctor had given the infant only weeks to live. Natalie told me that she couldn’t bear the child’s suffering and was relieved when the baby passed. That is what you’re looking for, isn’t it? A reason?”
“You think she put her sister out of her pain and suffering?” Mo asked, feeling sick to her stomach. What if it had begun when Natalie was only a child herself?
“I think she wanted to. Whether or not she did... I believe it’s why she became a nurse and why when we divorced, she left the hospital to become a nanny for fatally ill children.”
“Is she capable of killing a suffering infant?” Brick asked.
Berkshire steepled his fingers in front of him, studying them for a moment before he spoke. “Not without causing herself great harm. If Natalie is anything, it is too caring. She was incapable of keeping any distance between herself and her patients. I could see how it was eroding her objectivity. She was too involved, too compassionate.”
“Does she have a close friend that she might turn to?” Mo asked, hoping for some clue where the woman might be headed now that she was injured.
He shook his head and then shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Brick leaned forward in his chair. “She was injured in a car accident in Ennis. I thought maybe she might have come to you for help.”
“No. Natalie wouldn’t come to me. Not after I wouldn’t give her the bail money. Her pride wouldn’t allow that.”
“What about her family?” Mo asked. “Would she go to them?”
“Her mother’s dead and she had a falling out years ago with her father when her mother got sick. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m scheduled for a surgery,” he said as he rose to leave.
Mo asked for directions to Natalie’s father’s house and the doctor told her. “What kind of falling out?” she asked as he headed for the door.
The doctor stopped but didn’t turn around. “Her mother asked Natalie to help her die.” With that, he was gone.
BRICK FOLLOWED A long dirt road that cut across arid country bare of little more than sagebrush. They’d been driving all day across Montana, from Ennis to Helena and now to the eastern portion of the huge state. He was wondering if they’d taken a wrong road when they came over a rise and he saw an old farmhouse in the distance.
As they grew closer, he could see that the two-story stick-built house was once white. Over the years, the paint had faded and peeled until now it was a windswept gray. The yard resembled other ranch and farmyards he’d seen across Montana. Ancient vehicles rusted in the sun along with every kind of farm implement. An old once-red barn leaned into the breeze. A variety of outbuildings were scattered like seeds over the property.
As they pulled down the driveway, an equally weathered looking man came out the screen door. Shading his eyes, he watched the pickup approach as if he hadn’t seen anyone this far out in a very long time.
Brick parked, killed the engine and got out. He heard Mo exit the pickup and wondered what she was thinking as she took in this place. This was where Natalie had grown up?
“You lost?” the man asked. His voice and on closer inspection, his face, though weathered, was closer to fifty than eighty. Brick realized he was probably looking at Natalie’s father.
“We’re looking for Natalie Berkshire,” Mo said.
Before she could get the words out of her mouth, the man was shaking his head. “Never heard of her,” he said, already turning back toward the house.
“She’s your daughter,” Mo snapped.
The man stopped, his back to them. “Not anymore.”
“She’s on the run from people who want to hurt her,” Brick said quickly. “She’s injured and scared and probably has no one else to go to. Why wouldn’t she come here?”
The man let out a deep-rooted bitter sound and slowly turned to face him. “Because she knows better than to come here.”
“You wouldn’t help her?” Brick asked, finding it hard to believe that blood wouldn’t help blood.
“I wouldn’t throw water on her if she was on fire.”
“I don’t believe that,” Mo said.
“What do you know about anything?” the man demanded.
“I know she’s your only child and if there is something wrong with her, then you have to share in that blame.”
The man narrowed his eyes, anger making his nose flare. “Leave my property before I get my gun and run you off. That girl was a bad seed from birth.” His voice broke. “Her mother tried to save her with love and look where that got the woman. Dead and buried.” There were tears in his eyes as he went back inside, slamming the screen door behind him.
MO WATCHED THE arid landscape sweep past as they drove back to the two-lane highway. Neither of them had spoken as if they didn’t know what to say. As Brick pulled up to the stop sign, he glanced over at her.
“Which way?” he asked.
For a moment, she didn’t know how to answer. They could drive to the closest town, where Natalie would have gone to school, find someone who knew her when she was young, maybe even find out why the woman’s father hated her so much.
But Mo realized that none of that would help. For all she knew, the car crash could have caused internal bleeding and Natalie could be lying in a ditch somewhere, dying or already dead. Or she could have appropriated another vehicle and stolen some cash, and was on her way to her next job in another city, even in another state.
Mo had to make a choice. She felt as if she was at a crossroads. Maybe Natalie had nowhere to go, no one to help her. If she wasn’t badly injured, she would keep going. Maybe Brick was right and it wasn’t Mo’s job to stop the woman—even if she could.
So what did that leave? Keep chasing Natalie or face a possible truth about her sister? If she wanted answers, she was going to have to find them herself without Natalie’s help. A part of her still believed that Natalie was lying. But if she wasn’t... It was a chance she couldn’t take.
Brick was still waiting. “South to Billings,” she said. “If it was true and Tricia was seeing another man, I need to find out who he is and what part he might have contributed to all of this.” She kept having nightmares about that day and what role she may have played herself. Maybe if she’d listened to what Natalie had to tell her then...
He turned onto the highway headed south. Mo leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes for a moment. She feared sleep, especially after meeting Natalie’s father. If that didn’t bring on more nightmares, she didn’t know what would.
She could tell that man had shaken Brick, as well. When Natalie told her that she grew up on a ranch, Mo had pictured rail fencing, horses running around a green pasture, a large house with a mother baking in the kitchen. She realized that Natalie had let her picture that, wanting Mo to believe that she was a born and bred Montana girl as open and honest as the big sky.
Victim or monster? Mo still couldn’t say. Brick wanted to believe the best. But even if Natalie was the murderer Mo believed she was, it didn’t mean that she’d killed Joey. Who was this woman and how much of what she’d told her was true?
“I believe that Natalie knows more than she told the police,” she said. “More than she’s told me. She was trying to warn me that day. She seemed worried about Joey. Worried...” She looked over at him and felt tears fill her eyes. She was fighting to make sense of all of this.
She looked away as he voiced her worst fear.
“Worried that Tricia might have harmed her own baby?”
Mo quickly wanted to argue that Tricia wouldn’t, couldn’t. But in truth, given the condition her sister had been in the last time she’d seen her, she didn’t have an argument in response. Fortunately, Brick didn’t give her a chance.
“Natalie was living in that house, right? Of course she would have seen things, overheard things... If she didn’t kill Joey, then someone else with access to that house did. If there was another man...”
Mo felt the weight of his words and hated that he was right. “It’s time to find out if anything the woman has told me is the truth.” Whether she wanted to hear it or not.