Carol Ross - The Rancher's Twins

Taking the bounty, he studied the label. “Uh...” No wonder he hadn’t found it sooner. Why were companies always changing label designs and bottle sizes and making things look different? “Thank you.” With a final glance at the medication and a shake of his head, he shut the refrigerator door and turned to face the petite blonde now standing rigidly in front of him. “This is it.”

Adjusting her glasses, she gave him a brisk nod and an of-course-it-is look. Her gaze seemed to soften as Trout edged closer to examine her shoe. She gave the dog a pat.

“How did you...?”

“Dad said you called this morning.”

Dad was Frank Gardner. He and his wife, Alice, owned Brewster Ranch Supply. Grace had recently returned to Falcon Creek and was working for her parents while she established her own accounting business. Jon was her first client.

And what Grace said was true—Jon had called earlier to make sure the medication was in stock. Had that only been this morning? It felt like days ago. Ranching and hard work went hand in hand, but springtime meant calving season, which pushed it to a whole different level. His day had started hours before dawn and wouldn’t end until after dark. Technically, it wouldn’t end at all, not for a few more weeks, anyway, until his last cow had calved.

Grace was still staring at him. “It will only take a minute.”

“What will?” he asked.

“What I need to speak with you about. I know how busy you are, Jon. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Please.”

The earnest expression on her face gave him pause. Seeing as how Grace was currently doing his taxes, he felt it imprudent to refuse. Maybe something had come up.

“All right, then,” Jon agreed, even as an unsettling feeling began to creep over him. Grace looked...off.

Exhaling a loud sigh of relief, she took off toward the back of the store like a horse for the barn, her heels clicking smartly on the scarred wood floor. The thump of his boots and the tap of Trout’s toenails joined in discordant harmony as they followed.

Inside her office, which also doubled as a supply room, he was surprised to see Katie Montgomery already seated in the chair in front of Grace’s desk. Katie was the daughter of the ranch foreman on the Blackwell Ranch, his grandfather’s spread. Katie and her sister, Maura, had grown up there and, at seven years younger, Katie felt like his kid sister.

She looked up from her phone. The frown she’d been wearing transformed into a tight smile. “Hi, Jon. Hey, Trout.” The dog gave her a friendly nudge and an enthusiastic tail-wag. Katie scratched his neck. Strands of reddish hair had pulled loose from her braid and she looked as tired as Jon felt.

“Hello, Katie.”

Jon glanced around, considered sitting on a crate marked Farm Cat Tasty Food and then decided to remain standing. Trapped in a cramped room with these two women would normally feel like a treat. That was not the case right now. The air was thick and charged with tension, like that brief, hair-tingling moment of warning right before a thunderstorm came barreling down from the Rockies. You knew it was coming but there wasn’t much you could do about it except hunker down and brace yourself. When neither woman seemed inclined to get on with it, he looked pointedly from Grace to Katie and back again.

“What’s going on, ladies?”

Grace lowered herself into the chair behind her desk. “This is very difficult for me. I consider both of you friends... I hate having to do this, but I know you both will appreciate it if I just get to the point.”

“I know I will.” Tasks ticked through his mind again like a slide-show to-do list.

“I can’t get a hold of Big E,” Grace said. Big E was the name most everyone used when referring to his grandfather, Elias Blackwell. Jon wasn’t surprised, since most of the time Big E didn’t want to be gotten a hold of.

“Uh...” Jon wasn’t sure how this was his problem.

“Katie needs to order supplies, but the bill hasn’t been paid for a couple of months.”

That was odd.

“How long has it been since you’ve called your grandfather?” Katie asked him.

Was it his imagination or was that a twinge of accusation in her tone? Tough, smart, hardworking and honest, Katie also had a way with horses that could turn even the most seasoned cowpoke green with envy. Ranching was in her blood and Jon respected that. He would never say that anyone had an easy relationship with Big E, but Katie’s was about the smoothest he’d ever seen. He wasn’t quite sure how she managed it.

The phone rings both ways, he wanted to answer. But didn’t. His issues with his grandfather had nothing to do with Katie.

Holding his tongue, he looked toward Grace instead. “What do you mean you can’t get a hold of him?”

“Katie told me he’s not home.”

“Did you try his cell phone?”

“I’ve been trying it for over a week now.”

A week? A ripple of concern trotted up his spine. Jon hadn’t known Big E had plans to go anywhere. But he didn’t exactly keep himself up-to-date with the comings and goings of his grandfather and his stepgrandmother, Zoe. In a general sense, Jon did his dead-level best to stay away from Big E’s fifth wife, while he and Big E’s relationship might be described as cordial on a good day and tense on its worst. Thinking back, it had been at least a week since he’d spoken to Big E. And that conversation, like most of their communications, had been ranch-related.

“Huh. Well, Katie, where is he? How long has it been since you’ve spoken to him? Or your dad?”

Katie inhaled a breath, held it for a couple of seconds and then let it out. “I don’t know where he is. Dad hasn’t spoken to him.”

That troubling feeling gathered a head of steam and galloped headlong through his bloodstream.

“I’m sorry, Jon.” Grace’s pained expression seemed a perfect reflection of what he was feeling. “Your grandfather, it seems, has gone missing.”

* * *

“LYDIA NEWBURY, LYDIA NEW-W-BURY, Lydia New-bur-r-ry...” Lydia was practicing saying her new last name. Her biggest problem would be slipping up and saying Newton. But Tanner assured her that was the point; it was similar enough to her real name that if she did slip it would be easy to cover.

She studied the ancient map of Montana in the faded, dog-eared road atlas and wondered why—why did she continue to stare at the worn page? It wasn’t like the JB Bar Ranch was suddenly going to appear on the paper before her in the form of a little black dot like the quaint town of Billings, which unfortunately was now far, far behind her. Nor was it going to present itself as a pretty, powder blue squiggle, either, like the winding, picturesque Yellowstone River that she was traveling roughly parallel to.

The view beckoned through the windshield and pulled her focus outside the vehicle again. Awesome, these mountains, but in the truest, most uncorrupted sense of the word. She glanced back down at the map, at the mapmaker’s attempt to shade in a likeness of the Rocky Mountains. Ha. Not even a camera could do justice to these peaks jutting from the earth in all their rugged, snowcapped glory.

Philadelphia seemed light-years away. She took a second to be thankful for that and for the fact that she’d made it this far. Every mile felt like a tiny victory, a step closer to freedom.

She’d pulled over on the highway because she knew she had to be close. The turnoff was somewhere east of Livingston, but she couldn’t remember how many miles. She’d entered the ranch’s “address” into her phone at the car lot in Billings where she’d purchased the used SUV. That is if “JB Bar Ranch, Old Tractor Road, Falcon Creek, MT” could be considered a proper address. GPS had recognized the place, so she’d gone with it, but cell service had been spotty and with the constant searching for service, her battery was dead.