“You were right,” the PI said into his hands-free device. “She went by the house. She was in there a good half hour. I’m following her and the deputy now.”
He swore as he realized that he’d been spotted. “I’m going to have to let them get ahead of me.” He turned at the next street. He was pretty sure where he could catch up to them again.
“How did they seem when they came out of the house?”
“Hard to say.” He got paid to spy on people, photograph them, follow them. He didn’t get paid to analyze their feelings, but he was smart enough not to say that. “Subdued.” He could hear that the answer didn’t make his client happy.
Ahead, he saw the pickup, but this time he stayed back. “They’ve pulled into a motel and are going inside the office.” He told his employer the name of the downtown Billings motel as he pulled over to wait. “What would you like me to do? It appears they have booked a room and are now carrying their bags there.”
“One room?”
“Yes, they both went into the same room.” Jim listened for a moment. “Right, I can do that. I’ll put the tracking device on the pickup tonight.” Now that they knew they were being followed, he couldn’t let them see him again.
“Once I can track them myself, I think it would be best if I took it from here.”
“You’re the boss.”
“I’ll stop by your office and pay you in cash when I pick up any file you might have made on this.”
The man was worried that hiring a private detective to follow a homicide cop and a deputy marshal might come back on him?
“I understand.” He hung up, telling himself he was glad to be done with this one. But just to cover his own behind, he’d keep a digital copy of his work and the man’s requests. Hopefully, he would never have to use it, he thought as he waited for it to get dark enough to go back to the motel and attach the tracking device to Deputy Marshal Brick Savage’s pickup.
“I’M NOT SURE I’m up to understanding any of this,” Mo said once they were settled into the motel room and she’d taken a peek inside the envelope. She was exhausted—and still upset. Her sister had told Hope to give it to her in case anything happened to her. What had Hope been thinking? Clearly the woman didn’t have a brain the size of a pea.
But what scared her was the realization that Tricia had known there was a chance that something would happen to her. So she’d left whatever was in this envelope for Mo. If only Hope had given it to her right away.
“What is it?” Brick asked as he pulled back the curtain to look out into the street.
“A stack of photocopied financial reports,” she said. “I can’t make heads or tails of them, not tonight.” She wasn’t sure what she’d hoped to find in the envelope. A diary. Photos. A suicide note. Something personal to Mo to explain what it was that she’d left for her. It made her question if Tricia had been in her right mind. Wasn’t that her fear? That Natalie hadn’t killed the baby? The only other person in the house that day was Tricia.
“I’m tired, too,” Brick said as he checked outside again.
“Have you seen the vehicle that you thought was following us?” she asked, putting the manila envelope into her suitcase.
“No, maybe I was just being paranoid.”
“Or letting Natalie get to you,” Mo said with a sigh. “I’ll wash up and go to bed.”
Brick moved away from the window and stretched out on top of his bed.
By the time she came out of the bathroom, he was sound asleep. She crawled between the sheets in the matching queen bed. She couldn’t quit thinking about her sister. Had Tricia fallen in love with the mystery man? That she would even have an affair was so unlike her, it was hard to believe. Tricia had always been the good one. It was one of the reasons she had gone to their grandmother’s instead of Mo.
She closed her eyes, desperately wanting to put the day behind her. Natalie was dead. Whatever secrets the woman had refused to give up would go to the grave with her. She felt sleep tugging at her. Her last thought was that she hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her sister goodbye.
Mo came out of the dream screaming. She felt hands on her and fought to shove them off, but the fingers were like steel.
“Mo. Mo?” The hands gave her a shake, and she opened her eyes, startled and instantly embarrassed because she knew she’d had another one of her dreams.
Brick released her and she sat up, backing against the headboard as she chased away the last of the darkness. They’d hardly spoken after renting the motel room. Mo didn’t remember falling asleep but it must have been quickly.
She gulped air and tried to still her pounding heart. A chill in the room dried the perspiration on her skin, but her nightshirt still felt damp. As the light on in the room chased away the dark shadows that followed her sleep, she began to breathe easier.
“Better?” Brick asked now. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, but no longer touching her.
She nodded, unable to look at him. The nightmares were terrifying and embarrassing. They made her feel weak. Worse, vulnerable.
“A bad one, huh? I’ve had a few that followed me into daylight,” he said quietly. “The worst ones don’t go away easily. They always make me afraid to close my eyes again because I know the terror is waiting for me.”
She glanced in his direction and saw that he was looking at the hideous mountain painting on the opposite wall instead of at her. Her heart seemed to fill. He understood what she was going through because he’d not only had the bad dreams, but also he’d felt the weakness, the vulnerability, the embarrassment of them.
“If it helps, I can leave the light on,” he said when he finally did look at her.
Mo shook her head. As he started to get up from her bed to turn off the lamp next to them, she touched his hand. She hadn’t meant to reach for him. It was as if an inner need was stronger than she was. She hated needing anyone and yet she did.
“I can turn out the light and stay here, if you want me to,” he said quietly.
She nodded, tears filling her eyes. She wiped at her the wetness on her face, heard him turn off the light, then felt his weight settle in next to her on the bed. She took a few calming breaths before she slid down in the bed to lie next to him.
Staring at the ceiling in the ambient light coming through the motel room’s curtains, she felt him take her hand in his large warm one. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized that she was trembling. But as he held her hand, she felt his warmth move through her until she quit shaking, until she was no longer afraid to close her eyes.
BRICK WOKE WITH Mo snuggled against him and his arm around her. He didn’t dare move, not wanting to wake. Not wanting to let her go just yet. He wondered about her bad dreams and was glad she hadn’t had another one later last night.
With a shock he realized that he hadn’t had one since the two of them had joined forces. Maybe he really was getting better. He smiled to himself and felt her shift in his arms. He held his breath.
“I know you’re awake,” she whispered.
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“Because your hand isn’t on my breast anymore.”
Brick withdrew his arms as she turned to face him. “I’m sorry, if I did anything—”
“I was joking,” she said smiling. “You were a perfect gentleman.” She eyed him as if surprised by that. And maybe...disappointed? “Should I be insulted?”
He chuckled. “Trust me, it’s not because I haven’t wanted to.”
She laughed and turned to get up on the opposite side of the bed. “Trust you?” she said, her back to him. “Won’t that be the day. I’m going to get a shower.” She stopped and turned. “Have you ever carved your initials into a tree along with the name of one of your...women?”
“No.”
Mo nodded and smiled. “I’m anxious to find that tree. I’m assuming you’ll want to go along?” She said it over her shoulder as she headed for the bathroom.
“I’m stuck to you like glue,” he said before she closed the door.
They spent the morning canvassing the neighborhood around Tricia and Thomas’s house. Brick knew Mo was hoping that one of the neighbors might have seen a man going into the house who wasn’t Thomas over the weeks that Tricia had been having the affair—or on the day she’d died.
When they came up empty, they stopped for lunch and then headed toward Red Lodge in hopes of finding the campsite where Tricia’s lover had left their initials carved in a tree.
THEY ARRIVED AT the forest service campground midmorning. Most of the sites were open. A few occupants in tents and small trailers were packing up to leave as he drove slowly through the pines higher up the mountain.
He had the photograph that Tricia’s alleged lover had taken on their camping trip.
On the way to the campground, Mo had been looking through the envelope her sister had left for her. Now she put it away, apparently still not understanding why Tricia wanted her to have it.
“I’m still shocked that we are looking for the identity of my sister’s lover,” Mo confided. “Tricia was always the rule follower, the voice of reason. For her to do this...”
“People fall in love,” he said. “At least that’s what I’ve heard.”
She swung her gaze on him. “You’ve never been in love?”
He seemed as surprised by the question as she was shocked that he hadn’t been in love. He slowly drove through another loop of the campground. “Why? Have you?”
“Middle school, my science teacher. High school, this sweet boy who wrote me these awful poems. A couple of times in college. Several since then.”
He laughed. “That’s your love life?”
“Apparently, it’s better than yours. You’ve really never been in love?”
He could feel her gaze on him as he pulled over and cut the engine in an empty campsite. “There’s a tree down,” he said in explanation for stopping. “We’re going to have to walk to see the upper end of the campground, where we should have a view of the creek that’s in the photo.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, keeping him from exiting the truck cab. “You weren’t in love with even one of the women you dated?”
“I cared about all of them. Maybe you and I have a different definition of love. When I tell a woman that I love her it will be right before I propose marriage.” With that, he climbed out of the pickup and closed the door.
Mo exited the truck as well, still looking surprised by his answer. They started up the mountain road, climbing over downed trees and limbs. “Looks like they had a storm up this way,” he said. This high up the mountain, there were only the sounds of birds, the breeze high in the tops of the pines and the whisper of the stream. As they climbed higher, though, the sound of a roaring creek grew louder.
“Seriously, you’ve never felt...love?” she asked.
“The head over heels kind?” He shook his head and glanced at her. “I’m assuming you haven’t, either. It’s probably why you can’t understand what happened to your sister.”
She seemed to consider that. “You’re probably right. It seems...reckless, something Tricia never was. At least I thought that was true. Let me see the photo.” He handed it to her. “I think that’s it up there,” she said excitedly. “See that mountain in the distance?” She held up the snapshot.
“Lead the way,” he agreed as they quickened their pace. Now all they had to do was find a tree up here with Tricia and her lover’s initials carved in it.
AS THEY REACHED the campsite, Mo stopped to check the photo again. “This is the campsite.” She turned to see Brick already checking trees.
For a moment, she merely stood looking at this beautiful sight. The creek cut a green swath through the rocks and pines to fall away down the mountainside below them. She breathed in the rich, sweet scent of pine and caught a hint of someone’s campfire smoke trailing up from a site below.
She thought of her sister, the last person she could imagine enjoying camping. That Tricia might have slept up here in the blue tent in the photo... It boggled the mind. She tried to imagine the man who could sweep her sister off her feet.
“Mo? I think you’d better come over here,” Brick said.
She turned to find him standing next to a large pine tree at the edge of the mountainside, overlooking the roaring of the creek. As she approached, she saw the crude heart carved into the bark of the pine.
There were two sets of initials at the center of the heart. TM, a plus sign, and JP. Tricia’s lover had used her maiden name initial. Wishful thinking on his part? Or was that the last name she’d given him? This man had understood from the beginning that Tricia was married, hadn’t he?
“Know anyone with those initials?” Brick asked.
Mo shook her head. “I have no idea who JP is.”
The gunshot echoed through the trees, splintering the bark on the tree next to her. Several nearby birds took flight, wings flapping wildly as Brick lunged for her, taking them both to the ground.
The second shot ricocheted off the tree where they had been standing, sending bark flying again. And then there was nothing but the sound of the breeze in the pines and seemingly hushed roar of the creek. Not even the birds sang for a moment as Mo tried to catch her breath.