Linda Miller - Big Sky Secrets

She approached the gizmo, frowning a little as she examined the smudged buttons, their numbers and letters partially rubbed off by years of weather and wear. Good thing she knew Ria’s number by heart, she reflected, because the skinny directory dangling from a chain beside the telephone looked as though some wild animal had eaten the pages in a single bite.

Murmuring to Bones, who wanted to be set down on his own four feet, wobbly though they were, Quinn plunked several coins into the slot and started punching digits.

Please be home, she thought as Ria’s phone rang once, twice, three times.

“Hello?” Ria said, just as Quinn was about to hang up, ask somebody for directions and hoof it to her aunt’s farm. There was puzzlement in Ria’s familiar voice. “Who is this?”

Quinn swallowed, and the backs of her eyeballs stung. “It’s me, Aunt Ria,” she managed.

“Quinn?” A smile came into Ria’s tone, and she no longer sounded curious. Most likely the readout in her caller-ID panel had flashed an unfamiliar number or maybe even read “pay phone.” “Are you—? Where—?”

Quinn laughed, forestalling the need to cry even as a certain giddiness rose within her. “I’m in Three Trees,” she said. “At the...” She paused, turned her head, read the big sign out by the highway. “At the Whistle-By Truck Stop.”

“That explains the readout,” Ria murmured, probably thinking aloud rather than addressing her niece. “What on earth—?”

“I’m here for a visit,” Quinn said cheerfully. “Can you come and pick us up?”

Ria didn’t ask who “us” was, as Meredith would have done. In fact, she didn’t hesitate at all. “I’ll be right there. Don’t talk to strangers.”

Quinn smiled at the admonition. Too late, she thought. “Okay, I won’t.” Since pretty much everybody around this little Montana burg qualified as a stranger, she guessed she’d just zip her lip until Ria showed up.

And that would be soon, Quinn hoped, because she needed something to eat, a hot bath and a few hours of sleep. Nice as Tim Anderson had been to her, she’d been afraid to close her eyes the whole night, despite all the subtle indications that he was a devoted family man.

It could so easily have been an act. Quinn shuddered slightly at the silent admission.

She’d just said goodbye to Ria and hung up the clunky black pay-phone receiver, rubbing her hand down the thigh of her jeans in a hopeless attempt to wipe away any lingering germs, when a man’s voice spoke.

“Are you all right?”

Quinn’s heart sped up a little as she turned, clutching poor, road-weary Bones protectively to her chest, and saw a tall, dark-haired man in a cop’s uniform standing directly behind her. His shirt was so crisply starched that the folds still showed, and his badge gleamed in the sunlight, brightly enough to dazzle a person, but she made out the words embossed in the metal just the same: Sheriff, Parable County.

“Um, sure,” she said, her bravado wavering slightly now. The sheriff looked kind enough, with his warm brown eyes and that crooked cowboy smile, but she still had to fight down a wild urge to turn and hotfoot it right out of there.

Here she was, already breaking the don’t-talk-to-strangers rule. Again.

But he was a cop, and under other circumstances, Quinn would have pelted him with questions about the job, the life, given her own aspirations to serve in law enforcement someday. And surely it was safe to talk to a policeman.

Plus, making a break for it would have been a bad idea, she decided, since he would surely catch her easily, long before she reached the woods behind the truck stop and found a place to hide—he looked young and fit. While Quinn was pretty sure she hadn’t broken any laws—was running away from home illegal?—the affable intensity of this man’s focus unnerved her. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere until he got the information he was after.

“Boone Taylor,” he said, putting out a hand.

Quinn had to jostle Bones a little, but she managed to return the sheriff’s handshake. Her throat closed up tight, her nearly empty stomach tightened like a fist, and she felt her upper lip and the space between her shoulder blades go clammy with perspiration.

Sheriff Boone Taylor waited a beat or two, but when nothing came out of Quinn’s mouth, he arched one eyebrow and asked, with a glint of humor in his eyes, “Do you have a name?”

It wouldn’t do her any good to lie, she sensed that, and anyway, she was rotten at bending the truth. If she tried to shine this guy on, he’d know it by her expression or her body language—or both. In an instant, too.

“Quinn Whittingford,” she managed to croak out. “I’m here to visit my aunt, Ria Manning. Maybe you know her?”

Get here, Aunt Ria. Please, get here quick.

“She’s a good friend of my wife’s,” he said, and Quinn relaxed a bit, only to tense up again when he added, “I saw you get out of the cab of that truck a little while ago. Was the driver somebody you know, Quinn, or did you hitch your way here?”

Quinn swallowed. Exactly how far away was her aunt’s flower farm? What if Ria lived at the far end of some long dirt road, on the other side of town, a rutted stretch of gravel winding for miles and miles before it finally reached the truck stop? In that case, it might be an hour before she arrived, or even longer.

“I hitched,” she admitted.

The sheriff rested his hands on his hips, and his black leather belt—with its gun and holster and various other fascinating cop gear—creaked as he shifted his weight slightly and studied her with a pensive frown on his tanned and handsome face. “That’s not good,” he said.

Quinn blinked hard, fearing that tears would spring to her eyes if she didn’t, giving away how scared she was. “I know,” she said, very quietly. “But my aunt’s on her way here right now. Everything’s fine, Officer—really.”

He absorbed her words, giving no indication whether he believed her or not, smiled at Bones and gently touched the little dog’s head, scratched him behind the ears. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“His name is Bones,” Quinn said, hoping the hurried way she spouted out the answer hadn’t made her sound guilty of some crime, like dognapping. “I found him wandering around at a rest stop last night. Maybe he just got lost, but it was pretty far from any towns or farms or anything, so I think somebody must have dumped him.”

Boone shook his head, and a muscle bunched briefly in his square jaw. “There’s a special place in hell for people who do things like that,” he said, frowning again. “Looks like he could use a few good meals and a bath.”

Quinn smiled then. She didn’t know why she did that, because she was still scared shitless of being arrested or sent straight back to Portland without even getting a chance to make her case with Ria. There would be hell to pay with her mom, and then she’d be packed off to summer camp anyway, and all of this would be for nothing. “Yeah,” she agreed.

At that moment, she spotted Ria’s car, the same unprepossessing compact she’d driven back in Portland, before Uncle Frank died, swing into the lot out by the big Whistle-By Truck Stop sign.

Saved.

“There’s my aunt now,” Quinn chimed, pointing. She hoped Sheriff Taylor would get back into his cruiser and drive away, satisfied that the runaway was about to be collected by a responsible adult and, therefore, all was well. No point in hanging around; he must have crimes to solve, even way out here.

“I guess I’ll stay and have a word with her,” Boone Taylor said, making it plain that he wasn’t planning to budge until he had a real handle on what was going on. “Why don’t you leave the dog with me, go inside and rustle up a bowl of water for him?”