B.J. Daniels - Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch

Her heart caught in her throat. “No!” The gunshot boomed, a deafening roar in the cramped space.

She must have blacked out. When she woke, she was curled in an awkward position in the bottom of the dry well. Over the blinding pain in her head, she could hear the sound of the pickup’s engine. He was driving away!

“No!” she cried as she dragged herself up onto her feet again. “Don’t leave me here!” As she looked up to the opening high above her, she felt something wet and sticky run down into her eye. Blood.

He’d shot her. The pain in her skull was excruciating. She dropped to her knees on the cold, hard earth. He’d said he loved her. He’d promised to take care of her. Tonight, she’d even worn the red dress he loved.

“Don’t leave! Please!” But she knew he couldn’t hear her. As she listened, the sound of the engine grew fainter and fainter, then nothing.

She shivered in the damp, cold blackness, her right hand going to her stomach.

He’d come back.

He couldn’t just leave her here to die. How could he live with himself if he did?

He’d come back.

As the pickup bounced along the muddy track to the old homestead, Dana Cardwell stared out at the wind-scoured Montana landscape, haunted by the premonition she’d had the night before.

She had awakened in the darkness to the howl of the unusually warm wind against her bedroom window and the steady drip of melting snow from the eaves. A Chinook had blown in.

When she’d looked out, she’d seen the bare old aspens vibrating in the wind, limbs etched black against the clear night sky. It felt as if something had awakened her to warn her.

The feeling had been so strong that she’d had trouble getting back to sleep only to wake this morning to Warren Fitzpatrick banging on the door downstairs.

“There’s something you’d better see,” the elderly ranch manager had said.

And now, as Warren drove them up the bumpy road from the ranch house to the old homestead, she felt a chill at the thought of what waited for her at the top of the hill. Was this what she’d been warned about?

Warren pulled up next to the crumbling foundation and cut the engine. The wind howled across the open hillside, keeling over the tall yellowed grass and gently rocking the pickup.

It was called the January Thaw. Without the blanket of white snow, the land looked rung out, all color washed from the hills until everything was a dull brown-gray. The only green was a few lone pines swaying against the wind-rinsed sky.

Little remained of the homestead house. Just part of the rock foundation and the fireplace, the chimney as stark as the pines against the horizon.

Past it, in the soft, wet earth, Dana saw Warren’s tracks where he had walked to the old well earlier this morning. All that marked the well was a circle of rock and a few weathered boards that covered part of the opening.

Warren cocked his head as if he already heard the marshal’s SUV coming up the ranch road. Dana strained her ears but heard nothing over the pounding of her heart.

She was glad Warren had always been a man of few words. She was already on edge without having to talk about what he’d found.

The elderly ranch manager was as dried out as a stick of jerky and just as tough, but he knew more about cattle than any man Dana had ever known. And he was as loyal as an old dog. Until recently, he and Dana had run the ranch together. She knew Warren wouldn’t have gotten her up here unless it was serious.

As Dana caught the whine of the approaching vehicle over the wind, the sound growing louder, her dread grew with it.

Warren had told her last night that he’d noticed the boards were off the old dry well again. “I think I’ll just fill it in. Safer that way. Give me something to do.”

Like a lot of Montana homesteads, the well was just a hole in the ground, unmarked except for maybe a few old boards thrown over it, and because of that, dangerous to anyone who didn’t know it was there.

“Whatever you think,” she’d told him the night before. She’d been distracted and really hadn’t cared.

But she cared now. She just hoped Warren was wrong about what he’d seen in the bottom of the well.

They’d know soon enough, she thought as she turned to watch the Gallatin Canyon marshal’s black SUV come roaring up the road from the river.

“Scrappy’s driving faster than usual,” she said frowning. “You must have lit a fire under him when you called him this morning.”

“Scrappy Morgan isn’t marshal anymore,” Warren said.

“What?” She glanced over at him. He had a strange look on his weathered face.

“Scrappy just up and quit. They had to hire a temporary marshal to fill in for a while.”

“How come I never hear about these things?” But she knew the answer to that. She’d always been too busy on the ranch to keep up with canyon gossip. Even now that she worked down in Big Sky, her ties were still more with the ranching community—what little of it was left in the Gallatin Canyon since the town of Big Sky had sprung up at the base of Lone Mountain. A lot of the ranchers had sold out or subdivided to take advantage of having a ski and summer resort so close by.

“So who’s the interim marshal?” she asked as the Sheriff’s Department SUV bounded up the road, the morning sun glinting off the windshield. She groaned. “Not Scrappy’s nephew Franklin? Tell me it’s anyone but him.”

Warren didn’t answer as the new marshal brought the black SUV with the Montana State marshal logo on the side to a stop right next to her side of the pickup.

All the breath rushed from her as she looked over and saw the man behind the wheel.

“Maybe I should have warned you,” Warren said, sounding sheepish.

“That would’ve been nice,” she muttered between gritted teeth as she met Hudson Savage’s clear blue gaze. His look gave nothing away. The two of them might have been strangers—instead of former lovers—for all the expression that showed in his handsome face.

Her emotions boiled up like one of the Yellowstone geysers just down the road. First shock and right on its heels came fury. When Hud had left town five years ago, she’d convinced herself she’d never have to lay eyes on that sorry son of a bitch again. And here he was. Damn, just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse.

OVER THE YEARS as a policeman in L.A., Hudson “Hud” Savage had stared down men who were bigger and stronger. Some had guns, some knives and baseball bats.

But none unnerved him like the look in Dana Cardwell’s whiskey-brown glare.

He dragged his gaze away, turning to pick up the heavy-duty flashlight from the seat next to him. Coward. If just seeing her had this affect on him, he hated to think what talking would do.

Her reaction to him was pretty much what he’d expected. He’d known she would be far from happy to see him. But he had hoped she wouldn’t be as furious as she’d been when he’d left town. But given the look in her eyes, he’d say that was one wasted hope.

And damn if it was no less painful than it had been five years ago seeing her anger, her hurt.

Not that he blamed her. He hadn’t just left town, he’d flat-out run, tail tucked between his legs.

But he was back now.

He picked up the flashlight and, bracing himself against the wind and Dana Cardwell, he opened his door and stepped out.

The sun glinted off the truck’s windshield so he couldn’t see her face as he walked to the front of the SUV. But he could feel her gaze boring into him like a bullet as he snugged his Stetson down to keep it from sailing off in the wind.

When Warren had called the office this morning, Hud had instructed him not to go near the well again. The ranch foreman’s original tracks to and from the well were the only ones in the soft dirt. It surprised Hud though that Dana hadn’t gotten out to take a look before he arrived. She obviously hadn’t known the order was from him or she would have defied it sure as the devil.