On the porch of the Big House, Hannah glanced over her shoulder in the direction that she’d felt someone’s eyes on her throughout the evening. Movement, a splash of white, caught her eye near the bunkhouse. The skin on her neck prickled. She stood still, watching the night, but saw nothing else. It had to have been a curtain blowing in the breeze because someone left a window open. Had to be.
She flung the main door of the Big House open a little too hard. It banged against the wall, the sound echoing in the silence within. She didn’t draw a full breath again until she’d locked the front door and flipped on every light operated from the switch panel in the foyer.
“Hello, Edith? Are you still around?”
Nothing. As usual, Edith had retired for the night with the setting sun. Maria must have left already, too. Knowing that Edith and Big J were somewhere in the house should have proven a comfort to Hannah, but her unease only ratcheted up. So silly. She was freaking herself out for no reason.
She made it up the stairs in record time. Subdued lighting glowed throughout the hall from wall sconces. The floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hall was nothing more than a black rectangle, showing the darkness of the ranch’s land. Brett and his brother were out there in the night, patrolling to keep her safe. She had nothing to worry about, tucked away inside a perfectly secure home.
Her attention pulled toward the hallway that led to Abra’s suite. The crime scene.
Stop thinking about it, Hannah. For real.
She hugged the envelope to her chest and scuttled to her room. As usual, Edith and Maria had left a light on for her inside.
She opened the door and at the first glimpse of movement, yelped and stumbled back. Someone was in her room. She pressed herself to the hallway wall on weak knees, breathing and wondering what the heck she should do next.
Maria appeared in the doorway. “Oh, my God, Hannah. I’m so sorry I scared you.”
Hannah sagged against the wall and let her hand holding the envelope flop to her side. “It’s just you.” She let out a peal of nervous laughter. “Oh, God. My heart.”
“Are you okay?” Maria asked.
“I think so.”
Maria disappeared into the room again, then reappeared holding a glass of water. “I knew you were working hard and I thought you might like a late-night snack when you got home. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Hannah accepted the water and drank deeply from it, feeling her heart beat in her throat as she swallowed. “Truthfully, I was already spooked before I opened the door. Got myself all worked up over something I thought I saw on the walk back here. Of course, it was nothing.”
“Was it the ghost? A woman?”
Hannah clutched the glass and gaped at Maria. “You’ve seen her, too?” she whispered.
Maria nodded. She wrapped an arm around Hannah and led her into a chair in the suite’s sitting area. “So have some of the ranch workers. I think she might be the woman whose baby’s bones were found at the Coltons’ family cemetery last month.” She made the sign of the cross on her chest.
Hannah’s head was spinning. “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Uh, no.”
“Jack found them in the family cemetery, like I said. They don’t know who the bones belong to or where they came from, but the police think they were planted there. Ryan said that they didn’t look like they’d been there long. Soon after they were discovered, we started seeing the ghost. I think the mother still walks the prairie, looking for her baby.”
“That’s horrible.” Not just because a baby had died, which was unbearably sad in its own right, but that someone had disrespected the bones by moving them. And if they’d planted some poor, sweet baby’s bones at the Lucky C on purpose for the sake of scaring the family or confusing the investigation against Abra’s attacker, then that was a despicable excuse for a human being.
Hannah shook her head, pushing away the thought that someone could stoop to such depravity. Though she was aghast about the bones, and frustrated on the Coltons’ behalf, she didn’t believe in ghosts. Did she? Then again, she sure had believed in the possibility a few minutes earlier. She thought about the photograph she’d taken on her phone. Ready to share the photograph with Maria, she looked around for her purse, but realized almost immediately that she’d forgotten it in the office.
“I hope I didn’t frighten you all over again,” Maria said. “I can’t imagine anything else bad happening at the Lucky C. Not with so many people patrolling the grounds and the police investigating the crimes against the family. I’m sure the worst is behind us all.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said instead. Hopefully Maria didn’t hear the lie in Hannah’s words. She clutched the envelope tightly to her chest—the possible proof that not all the worst was behind the Coltons. She hated the idea of breaking it to Brett that his family may have yet another crime to weather.
After Maria left, Hannah locked the suite door, then prowled the rooms, looking for the perfect hiding place for the folder of evidence. Before she’d found one, she saw a Bible she didn’t recognize lying open on the vanity.
Even from a distance, she could see a circle of red marker ink on one page. Baffled, she moved in for a closer look. What she discovered had her huffing in disbelief. Guess her first semilogical explanation that Maria had left it behind had been wrong.
“Mavis, you crazy girl.”
The Bible was open to Deuteronomy, the circled verse commanding the righteous to stone unmarried fornicators as a way of purging evil—one of the most popular passages misappropriated by the Congregation of the Second Coming.
Shaking her head at Mavis’s nerve, she slid the folder of evidence between the vanity and the wall, out of sight. Then she flipped the pages of the Bible to her favorite psalm about forgiveness. Let’s see you try to twist that verse into something hurtful, Mavis.
Smiling now, she rummaged through the desk for a pen and circled the verse over and over again until she’s created a thick blue frame for the exalted words. Just because her parents’ cult could twist the word of God for their own agenda didn’t make them right or true. Forget creeps like Rafe and religious fanatics like Mavis; Hannah was above them all. She knew in her heart who she was and what she stood for.
And what she stood for right now was indulging in the late-night snacks that Maria had left for her. Tonight’s choices were a plate of fruit, nuts and crackers, as well as a bottle of sparkling apple cider. God bless Maria. She flounced onto the sofa and popped a nut in her mouth.
Inevitably, her thoughts shifted to Brett. He might have rejected her every advance and refused to consider the possibility of them as a couple, but he’d made all this possible for her—the comfy bedroom, the great job, the pampering from Maria and Edith, and, most importantly, the sense of security he’d brought to her life. No matter how jumbled up her feelings were for him, or how unconventional their arrangement, she knew she could count on him, no matter what, even if she hadn’t felt very secure on the ranch itself that night. She glanced at the curtained windows, hoping his night had been more peaceful than hers.
* * *
The ranch was quiet and the night air was balmy and pleasant, neither of which explained Outlaw’s restlessness one bit.
Brett and Daniel sat astride their horses on the far reaches of the ranch’s epicenter, keeping one eye on the backcountry and the other on their homestead. The Big House glowed like a beacon in the distance, while the bunkhouse and barns stood like a line of matchsticks. Windows were lit and clusters of men sat outside smoking and shooting the breeze. One ranch hand whom Brett didn’t recognize in the dim light strummed a guitar. Every now and then, he caught a chord on the breeze.
When Outlaw whinnied and stamped the ground for the hundredth time, Daniel tipped his head towards Brett’s horse. “My horses have been on edge lately, too. Their appetites are low and they’re nipping at each other. Something’s in the air.”
“We’re feeling it at our end of the ranch with the workers. A few of them swear they’ve seen a ghost in the field. A woman.”
“What do you think?” Daniel asked.
Brett swung his attention away from the homestead and toward the darkness. “Like you said, something’s in the air. All I know is that it sure wasn’t a ghost who put my mother in the hospital or tampered with our fences.”
“Not to mention the bones in the cemetery last month.”
“Man, that was terrible. Disturbing.” Even now, the memory of those bones haunted Brett’s mind in Technicolor detail. “What I don’t get is why the perpetrator would still be skulking around the ranch. And the hospital, if we believe that druggie who tried to sell Mother’s locket to a pawnshop.”
Daniel’s gaze went distant. “Secrets.”
“I don’t follow.”
Daniel shrugged. “Maybe the perp accidentally left something behind around here. Or he didn’t find what he was looking for in Abra’s room. There would be lots of reasons to come back, which is why you and I are killing a perfectly good night sitting out here in the dark.”
Damn, Brett prayed that neither of those motives held true, because if that were the case, then no one on the ranch was safe. “I hope you’re wrong. But I still don’t get what you meant by secrets.”
“The ranch is too far off the beaten path for a small-time crook to risk, so I don’t think jewelry was the main point of the break-in. Not for the relatively low-value items that were stolen, and not given that photo albums were also taken. So if money wasn’t the motivation, then that means secrets are involved.”
Yeah, right. “That’s a nice theory and all, except for one thing. My mother doesn’t have any secrets. She’s a depressed, bitter socialite.” Saying the words dredged up all the frustration and pain of their combative relationship. He would forever regret his last words to her before her attack, and when—he refused to think of it as an if—she woke, he’d be the first in line at her bedside to tell her that he forgave her and ask for her forgiveness in return, but that didn’t mean he was obligated to transform her into a saint in his mind.
Daniel gave him a look. “Everybody and every place has secrets, bro.” He spurred his mount into motion, headed away from the homestead to the fence line in the distance.
Brett gave a long look at Daniel’s back, at the shoulders that were unmistakably Colton DNA. Daniel’s mother had been Brett’s father’s mistress—his father’s secret. Maybe Daniel was onto something with his theory.
Brett urged Outlaw to catch up, his mind chewing over the possibility that his mother could have brought the attack on herself through keeping a secret of her own. No way. Not Abra Colton. If she’d gotten herself in hot water, she would’ve come racing to Brett’s dad for help.
As fast as Daniel had taken off, he brought his horse to a stop. Brett instructed Outlaw to do the same.
Daniel brought his rifle up, aiming it to his right. “Did you see that?”
Brett scanned the countryside in the direction that Daniel’s rifle was pointed, but saw only tall grasses and scrub trees in the last lingering indigo glow of daylight. “No. What?”
Daniel nodded to his right. “Three o’clock. I saw movement.”
“Coyote?”
“Not sure. Probably, but it looked bigger to me.”
They stood still and quiet. Brett strained his eyes. Then he saw it, a glimpse of movement more than two football fields away. With the gait and the shape, it had to be the head or back of a large animal or a small man, its form black against the night and moving quickly away from them on top of a small rise.
Brett took up his rifle and whispered, “Come on. Let’s see what, or who, we’ve found.”
They proceeded forward with caution, letting their horses pick their way quiet and steady over the land. Brett’s senses were on high alert now. He heard every crunch of grass under the horses’ hooves, every rustle of leaves in the breeze. He was keenly aware of his own loud, fast heartbeat and the twitchy urge of his trigger finger where he held it straight against his .22.
How long had it been since he’d shot a gun? Several months, at least. It was one of those skills that never left a man completely, but he sure hoped he wouldn’t need to pull the trigger tonight.
They were nearly to the top of the rise where they’d seen the movement when a flare of light burst to life on the far side of the rise and reflected off the clouds. Brett and Daniel stopped their horses and exchanged a nervous glance. Brett adjusted his shotgun against his shoulder, his eyes locked on the glow coming from the other side of the hill.
That’s when he saw it—a flicker that could only be one thing.
“Fire,” Brett said, urging Outlaw back into motion.
With a curse, Daniel sped to join him. They raced over the hill. The hunting shed they sometimes used when there was evidence in the area of bobcats, coyotes or mountain lions was fully engulfed in flames.
“I’ll radio for help,” Daniel said. “You keep looking and I’ll catch up with you. We’ve got to catch whoever did this and I’m guessing they’re not going to hang around to watch us put the fire out.”
Brett and Outlaw took off into the prairie, cutting a wide path around the burning building. He kept his head on a swivel, straining for a glimpse of movement in the darkness, but the light of the fire hindered his night vision. It took a long time for his eyes to adjust enough to see anything but the silhouettes of trees, boulders and the horizon.
Then, he saw it again. Movement. At first glimpse of something making haste across the prairie a good fifty yards to his left, Brett sucked in a breath in shock. He slowed Outlaw while his eyes got a read on the motion again. Something or someone was definitely out there with him, something as big as a person, rustling the underbrush and running on foot fast away from him. Contrary to Maria’s imagination, this was no prairie ghost, so it’d only be a matter of seconds before Outlaw caught up to him. Or it.
Gun at the ready, he nudged Outlaw’s flank.
Then, somewhere nearby, a gunshot fired.