“Maria?” Dan stuck his head into the kitchen. She was where she always was, making something for lunch that promised to be good. A pan of muffins sat cooling next to her, ready to take to Rosebud today. “Cecil’s not here. Do you know where he went?”
Maria’s head popped up and she looked around like she was worried about something. “No. He left muy early today.”
“Huh.” It was Thursday. If Cecil left the office at all, he did it on Saturday. Something wasn’t right. “Thanks,” Dan said, digging out his cell phone as he turned to go. He needed to check in with Rosebud.
“Señor Armstrong? I…”
The way Maria said it—all nervouslike—pulled him up short. He turned back around and saw her twisting her hands in her apron. She was always a timid woman, but right now she looked like she was on the verge of disappearing entirely. “What is it?” he asked in his calmest voice.
“I found…something.”
The hair on the back of his neck shot to attention. She’d found the box. He shut his phone off. “Where is it?” Maria scanned the room again, but no one else was in the house. “Is it here?”
“Sí. Come.” She led him down into the basement—a place Dan had not been before—and over to a small metal door fastened to the wall. Without speaking, she opened the door and pulled out a garbage bag, which was covered with a thin layer of black dust.
Coal—a coal chute. He’d had no idea it existed. Dan peeled back the bag and there it was. The box. Twelve inches wide, three inches deep and almost two feet long, like a safety deposit box from an old, old bank. His pulse picked up the pace. He wasn’t sure what was in here, but he had a hunch that it was enough to get Cecil out of the picture and save Rosebud’s reservation. “When did you find it?”
“Two days ago.” She was still whispering, even though they were in the basement. The whole place reeked of old onions and rotten potatoes.
“And it was here?” Maria might not realize it just yet, but she had the mother of all retention bonuses coming her way. “How did you find it?”
At that, she managed to look proud. “It was not in any place I clean. So I started looking in all the places I do not clean.”
Dan fought the urge to hug the woman. “The key?” Although the key was secondary. If he had to, he’d bust this damn box open with a sledgehammer—although a busted box was harder to hide from Cecil, if he needed to keep it hidden.
“Sí.” The basement was dark, but he was sure he saw her wide smile. “Come.”
They went back upstairs, Dan clutching the box to his chest. In the sitting room, she stood on tiptoe and reached up behind the mounted buffalo head hanging on the wall. She pulled out a small silver key on an Armstrong Holdings key chain. “I checked. It works.”
“Maria, I love you.” Which, of course, made her blush like a prairie fire, but he couldn’t help it. “You will always have a job with me, okay? But no one knows about this. No one, got it?”
“Sí, señor.”
Dan all but ran to his room. When he got there, he shoved the old dresser up against the door, just to be safe. Then he sat down on the bed and opened the box.
The first file was filled with detailed schematics for a lakeside resort. Dan stared at the plans in dumb shock. Over four hundred and twenty acres of golf, horseback riding and luxury hotel accommodations—all situated on the edge of the soon-to-be-constructed Dakota Lake. There was even a casino, because part of the resort was located on what was left of the Red Creek reservation.
So that was it. Dan was stunned. He hadn’t come close to guessing Cecil’s intent, branching out into real estate. The old man was financing construction with Armstrong Holdings money, but the resort would be all his.
He wasn’t pushing the dam—he was pushing the reservoir. He was pushing beachfront property in South Dakota.
Finally, Dan set the resort plans aside, confident they would be enough to get Cecil permanently removed from Armstrong Holdings. He picked up the next file. At first, it was just lists of names, some with dates written next to them. He couldn’t make heads or tails out of any of it. None of the names rang the slightest of bells. But then the lists began to include dollar figures in the hundreds of thousands next to the dates. The third list had job titles. Royce Maynard, Chief Judge—$250,000; 4/12/10.
Holy hell. Cecil had been bribing government officials.
His hands now shaking, Dan kept flipping until he got to a file marked Indians. A jump drive fell out when Dan opened the file folder. He grabbed the drive, but didn’t get much further into the file before he got to names he recognized.
Rosebud Donnelly. It was circled, with a date written next to it that Dan recognized as his first meeting written above today’s date—but no dollar amount. Joe White Thunder was there, as was Emily Mankiller. No money, just circles and dates. Near the back of the file, he found an envelope labeled Tanner Donnelly and dated over three years ago. He opened it and pulled out a set of dog tags.
He closed his eyes, not wanting to see any more. Not that he’d ever doubted Rosebud’s murder theory, but there had always been the possibility that his uncle, his family—his business—wasn’t involved. Not for a dam and not for a resort. But he held the proof in his hands.
Damn his hunches. Always proving themselves right.
There was more—much more—in the box, but Dan made the snap decision that ignorance was not only bliss, but also a matter of self-preservation.
He had to tell someone about this. His first inclination was to call Rosebud, but God only knew what that woman would do with hard evidence. She’d promised not to take another shot at him, but Cecil? Fair game.
He needed the authorities. What had that guy’s name been? Tom…Yellow something? Dan dug into his wallet and found the card. Yellow Bird.
He turned his phone back on. One missed call from Rosebud, probably wondering where he was. He glanced at the clock. Man, he was late. Hell, it would take almost as much time to call her as it would to get there, and he needed some serious backup on this issue. Dan dialed Yellow Bird’s number and then began putting the files back into the box.
“Yellow Bird,” the gruff voice answered.
“This is Armstrong. Dan Armstrong.” He locked the box. He couldn’t afford to lose any of this, and he couldn’t afford to give Cecil the chance to destroy the evidence.
“Officially or unofficially?” Yellow Bird asked after a long pause.
“I found something you’ve been looking for. I need to get it to the right person.” What was that guy’s name? Dan raced to his desk and flipped through his files. “Do you know who James Carlson is?”
“Don’t jerk my chain, Armstrong.” Yellow Bird’s voice was sharp, but quieter, like he was trying not to be heard.
Dan bristled. “I can forget the whole damn thing if you’d like, Yellow Bird.”
He heard Yellow Bird sniff. “I know Carlson. What do you have?”
“I’m not at liberty to say at this moment.” All those weeks with Rosebud were wearing off on him. “Enough,” he added.
“I’m going to hold you to that. Give me twenty.” The line went dead.
That went well, Dan thought as he shoved his phone in his pocket and wrapped up the box in his pillowcase. If he floored it, he could be at Rosebud’s office in twenty. He didn’t even stop to grab the muffins.
He held all the winning cards, and he wanted to show her the hand.
The first thing that tipped him off was Judy—more specifically, the fact that she was crying. The second thing was when she looked up and saw him and physically recoiled in horror. The third thing was when she said, “What are you doing here?” like he’d just come back from clubbing baby seals.
If the hair on the back of his neck stood up any more, he’d be halfway to bald. “Is Rosebud here?”
“She left.” The hatred in Judy’s voice was unmistakable as she scooted back from her desk. If Dan didn’t know any better, he’d think the woman was actually afraid of him.
He tried again, hoping to calm her down. “What happened?”
“What happened?” Judy gaped at him like he’d gone stupid. “What happened was that you didn’t warn us that your uncle and some scary man named Shane Thrasher were going to show up an hour ago. What happened was that Joe had to escort that Shane guy out to his car because he had a gun under his coat. What happened was that your uncle left five minutes later, smiling like he’d won the freaking lottery, and what happened was that ten minutes after that, Rosebud walked out of here like she’d been zombified while you were nowhere to be seen. That’s what happened.”
“My uncle and Thrasher were here?” For a second, he didn’t want to believe it. It was just not possible that Cecil would come here—with Thrasher, for God’s sake—one day before the court date. The man never got his hands dirty.
“I’m sure you knew all about Cecil’s visit, didn’t you? Why else weren’t you here? Oh, I should have warned Rosebud. I did. I told her to be careful with you—but did she listen to me?” Judy was a full five seconds from bolting down the hall, screaming bloody murder. “No. Instead, we let you in here, we let you bring us cookies and brownies, and we let you do…” Here she faltered, but the pause didn’t last long enough for Dan to get a word in edgewise. “Something to her. And now it’s all on your head.”
She was talking like he’d set up Rosebud. Like he was already guilty just because of his last name. “Judy. You know me. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you—any of you.” She didn’t have a gun, but that hadn’t stopped Dan’s hands from going up. “Where did she go?”
“I’m not telling you anything. Get out!” Judy picked up the only weapon she had—the coffeepot—and threw it.
He was gone before it smashed behind him.
He’d start with Rosebud’s house, he decided as he peeled out of the parking lot. Dan had only been there once—after the bar fight—and everything looked a little different in broad daylight. He tried calling her, but it went straight to voice mail, and he didn’t think he could even get close to explaining himself in thirty seconds, so he kept trying.
As the phone rang and rang, he wavered between trying to figure out what Cecil had pulled and not wanting to know. Whatever it was, it was going to be bad. After all, the man had not only bought off public officials, but had even had at least one person killed. If Dan ever saw Thrasher again… Dan checked the glove box. He had enough shotgun shells to do the job right, law be damned.
Finally, he thought he recognized a dirt road. Another half mile down was a house that looked a hell of a lot more like a run-down shack than he remembered. The windows were spider-webbed with tape—more tape than glass, he guessed. No wonder she wouldn’t let him visit her. This was what a top-flight lawyer could afford around here?
He was going to make this—all of it—up to her. He had to.
Dan was out the door, hauling the pillow-cased box with him. He was going to need all the backup he could get.
The first thing he noticed was the way a hard silence had come down on the world like a hammer. Nothing made a noise. Not even the wind managed to shush through the weeds.
“Rosebud, please!”
A woman’s cry snapped through the silence like a pistol shot. Behind the house. Dan ran around the side just in time to see his Indian princess shake off Emily Mankiller like she was a fly. The older woman landed with a thud on her backside.
Emily saw him, too. During the one awful second when she looked up at him, he saw a world of hurt in her eyes. “No.”
It was a warning—but not for Rosebud. For him.
Rosebud froze. She was wearing the buckskin dress with the moccasins. Her hair hung long and loose behind her, the ends blowing in a breeze he couldn’t feel. She stood next to her paint horse, the reins in one hand. Her bag was slung over her shoulders.
He couldn’t see her other hand.
The whole thing happened in slow motion. She turned around and locked eyes with him. It was like part of her wasn’t even there—her eyes were dead. Zombified, Judy had said, and that wasn’t far off.
She dropped the reins as her other hand came up, and Dan found himself staring down the barrel of a too-familiar pistol. Instinct kicked in. He let go of the box and stuck his hands up in the air. The box bounced off the tip of his boot, but not hard enough to make him break his stance.
“I should have known better.” Her voice was mechanical, and despite how damn quiet the world had gotten, he could barely hear her over the rush of blood in his ears. “I did know better, but I…” She blinked at glacial speed, but the pistol didn’t waver. “I have no excuse.”
“Rosebud, don’t!” Emily pleaded again.
“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You’re the one who told me to get close to him. You’re the one who told me to muddle his thinking, to see what I could get out of him. I was just doing what I was told. Like I always do.” Rosebud’s voice cracked at the end. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to give anything up to you. I thought I could lead you on with a wink and a kiss and not lose who I was. I knew you were trouble, but I couldn’t help myself.” She laughed, a rote sound that held no pleasure. “I guess that makes me the naive one, doesn’t it?”
A small sting quickly blossomed into a gut-clenching pain—not unlike the one time he’d tangled with a scorpion. She had been leading him on—the possibility had never occurred to him. He’d been too caught up in the chase, in the catch, to even realize that she was trying to catch him, too.
“I’m sorry!” Emily’s cry was bordering on hysteria. “I didn’t want it to be like this!” She turned to Dan. “She never told me anything—nothing about you, I swear!”
The pain dulled, but only a little. He had no idea if he’d been double-crossed. But whether or not Rosebud had set him up was immaterial right now. He might be holding all the cards, but she was the one holding the gun.
He cleared his throat. He might be weaponless but he could still negotiate—although he’d never tried to close a deal when a gun was pointed at him. But he had no choice. “What happened?” Such a simple question. He could only hope it wouldn’t get him shot.
Her lips curled up into a feral smile. “How nice of you to ask, but how unnecessary. You’ve seen the pictures. You helped Cecil set them up. Made sure that Thrasher got a good shot of my face and my…” Her eyes scrunched shut, like she was trying not to see something. He thought he saw her bite her inner lip.
Pictures? Oh, damn. He’d screwed up. He hadn’t set her up, but that was immaterial. He’d promised Rosebud he wouldn’t let anyone scare her. But he hadn’t been able to protect her from his uncle and Thrasher. He’d let her down and, given the drop she had on him, he might not get the chance to apologize, much less make it right.
He made sure to keep his voice level, hoping that some part of his calm would get through to her. “I didn’t set up anything.”
“You made me think I could trust you—that you cared about me.” She sniffed then. He had no idea if she was crying for herself, or for what she was about to do to him.
“I love you.”
“Words,” she spat out. The gun jumped an inch, and he fought the urge to take cover. “Lies.”
“The truth.” She hadn’t shot him yet, so he had that going for him. “When the dust settled and we got this dam thing figured out, I was thinking about asking you to marry me.” It struck him as funny that it was the truth, but it was.
“You don’t want a wife.” He could see the tears that were just starting to spill over the edge. “You said so yourself.”
“You would never be just my wife, darlin’. You will always be my equal.”
She softened, and the gun barrel dipped a good half foot. “Dan…”
Keep talking, he prayed. The more she talked, the better chance he stood.
“Whatever he did—whatever pictures he took—I’ll make him pay. Believe me, he’ll get what’s comin’ to him.”
She trained the gun back on his face. “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…” She cocked the hammer.
Dan’s cell phone rang from deep in his pocket. The unexpected noise made them both jump, and she eased the hammer back down.
“This is important,” he said as he slowly dug the phone out of his pocket. She barked out a harsh laugh, but didn’t stop him. Yeah, he agreed. What could be more important than being held at gunpoint? But he thought he knew who was calling him. “Armstrong.”
“Dan Armstrong?”
“Yeah.”
“Carlson here.”
“James Carlson?” At the mention of his name, Rosebud jolted with enough force that her horse skittered a step away from her.
“Special counsel for the Department of Justice. Thomas Yellow Bird said you might have something I want.”
“Depends on what it is you’re looking for.”
“Do you know Rosebud Donnelly?”
Dan looked at the woman who was currently not acting in the capacity of a lawyer. “She’s here with me now.” Rosebud jumped again, the confusion plain on her face. “She contacted you some time ago about her brother’s death and a possible connection to my uncle, Cecil Armstrong.”
“You sound like a man up-to-date on the situation. Do you have something I can use?”
“Use for what?”
“You tell me what you’ve got, and I’ll let you know if I can use it.”
What the hell was this—a game? The arm he was still holding over his head was beginning to tingle. Time to lay his cards on the table. “I found a box of my uncle’s. It’s got plans for a waterfront resort, as well as lists of names, dates and dollar amounts. I think Tanner Donnelly’s dog tags are there, too.”
Both women gasped, and Emily broke into tears.
“Dollar amounts?” At least Carlson no longer sounded like he was playing a game of chess.
“I think he bought off some judges to make sure things went his way. I didn’t recognize any of the names.”
“Mr. Armstrong, you should know that we at the DOJ are pursuing an indictment of Cecil Armstrong and Armstrong Hydro on RICO charges. Your information will be invaluable.”
Wait—Armstrong Hydro? It was hard to think straight, what with the gun and the phone and the sobbing aunt and the zombified Indian princess. “What do I get in return?”
Carlson didn’t say anything at first. “What do you want?”
“Leave my company out of this. Cecil left Texas five years ago and has been operating independently ever since.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Then I burn the box.”
“That’s uncalled for, Mr. Armstrong.”
His hand was completely asleep now, but Rosebud still had the gun trained on him. “I’ll give you all the evidence I have if you leave my company out of it. And you have to leave Rosebud out of it, too.”
Another pause, this time longer. Dan wondered if the call was being recorded or traced. “Now why would I have to do that?”
“I think Cecil’s trying to blackmail her.” She jabbed the gun in his direction again, but this time he saw past it. Her face—blotchy and red and furious and hurt—told him he was spot-on. “I think he’s got photos of her—compromising photos. I want them destroyed. No one else sees them. No one.”
“Who else is in them?”
Dan swallowed the last shred of his pride. “Me.”
Carlson said nothing for a painful minute. “You said she’s there?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Well, right now, she’s got a gun pointed at me.”
Carlson whistled. “Those must be some photos. Let me talk to her.”
“James Carlson wants to talk to you,” Dan told Rosebud. Moving as slowly as he could, he held out the phone.
Maybe her hand was getting tired, too, because the gun was anything but steady. In one quick motion, she reached out and snatched the phone from him. “It’s me.”
Me? Something about the way she said it hit Dan as more than just two lawyers talking, but he was in no position to get his nose bent out of shape about it.
“No, I—yes.” She scrunched her eyes shut tight, and for some reason, Dan was reminded of the first time he’d recognized her in the parking lot. She looked miserable, but her voice didn’t waver at all—just like when she’d lost it after the bar fight and told him she hoped crying didn’t affect his opinion of her in the courtroom. “They’re awful, James. Everything. Everything.”
Thrasher must have found the cabin. That was the only logical explanation. He must have found the cabin, and them in it.
One box of shotgun shells wasn’t going to be enough.
“He said—” Here she hiccupped, but had herself back under control in a second. “Cecil said that if I showed up in court tomorrow, he had a website that was going to go live. He has…he has video.” She managed to get the last bit out, but finally the sobs had started.
Hot rage filled him. It was one thing to have pictures of him—but what Cecil was doing to Rosebud was beyond the pale. He had to pay—him and Thrasher.
“But I—yeah. Yeah. Do I have your word?” In no great hurry, she lowered her weapon. “I know. I understand. I will. No, I won’t. Promise.” Gun finally pointing at the ground, she held the phone out to him. “He wants to talk to you again.”
Dan’s first instinct was to get the gun, but sudden movement seemed like a bad idea right now, considering the fingers on one hand had completely fallen asleep. “Carlson?”
“Here’s the deal, Armstrong. You give me Cecil, and you can keep your company. The company will plead no contest to bribing public officials and will be fined for an amount equal to, but not greater than, the amount of money paid in bribes.”
“And Rosebud?”
“I can’t destroy the photos—yet. I explained to her that blackmail is a serious charge. But I’ll hold them under lock and key, and I promise they will never be made public.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Didn’t she tell you about me?”
The lightbulb went off. “James—from law school?”
Rosebud nodded.
“I promise you—I won’t let this out. But we need the site to go live, at least for a few minutes. She’s got to go to court tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking. Five minutes, and we’ll have enough to put him away on blackmail alone. She’s already agreed.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked Rosebud.
“I made a mistake,” she said. Her voice was as flat as three-day-old soda. “This is the price I’ve got to pay.”
“Oh, and I told her not to shoot you,” Carlson added as an afterthought. “You’re a material witness now.”
“Thanks. What about Cecil?”
“Yellow Bird is on his way to get the evidence. The moment the site goes live, we’ll arrest Cecil. Yellow Bird thinks a man named Thrasher is our hit man, so we’ll pick him up then, too.”
Damn it. He wouldn’t get the chance to make Thrasher beg for his life. He could only hope Yellow Bird would do it for him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Humor the old man—and don’t kill him, okay? This is bigger than just your uncle. Yellow Bird has the details.”
Chief Judge, that one entry had said. “You’re going to roll him?”
Carlson exhaled into the phone, a man tired by a long fight. “I’m going to try. Either way, I need him alive. Can you do that, or do I need to send Yellow Bird to pick you up, too?”
Not killing Cecil was asking a lot of a man, but Rosebud was staring at him. “I get the company, Rosebud stays out of it and you get Cecil. That’s the deal?”
“That’s the deal.”
“Done.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“What happened?” Emily had managed to right herself. She edged toward Rosebud. “Dear?”
“I…” Rosebud looked down at her hand and seemed to notice she was holding a gun. “Oh. I’m—I said I wouldn’t do that again.”
Considering the circumstances, he wasn’t sure if an incoherent Rosebud was such a good thing or not. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not! I— Oh, my God. I messed up. I messed up everything.” Unexpectedly, she whirled, leaping onto her paint’s back with surprising agility, considering the horse wasn’t even wearing a saddle. The horse reared back, just enough that Dan could see she still had the gun in her hand. Then the two of them took off down the road before cutting through some tall grass and disappearing behind a low hill.
Something clamped down on his arm. It was only then that he realized he’d tried to run after her. He looked down to see Emily’s strong hand gripping him. “No,” she said again. “It’s not safe for you.”
“Not safe for me?” As if the last ten minutes had been a picnic? He shook her off—but not so hard that she lost her footing. “You tried to set me up.”
Her eyes went wide in alarm. “We didn’t know—”
His phone rang. Giving Emily a final glare, he walked away and did the only thing he could.
He answered it.