Big Sky Secrets Read online

  For a moment, Ria considered calling Quinn directly; she knew her niece’s cell number by heart, but she decided to wait awhile, until she’d weeded and watered and fertilized a few rows of zinnias. That way, she could work off some of her irritation and not have it spilling over into her conversation with Quinn.

  She headed for the field, worked until she was sweating and her nose was surely peeling from too much direct sunlight—she’d forgotten to put on the blue baseball cap she usually wore when she spent more than a few minutes outside—and was on her way back to the house to clean up and have a light lunch when she heard the jaunty honk of a car horn and looked up to see Brylee Sutton’s SUV rolling along the driveway.

  Ria smiled, made for the edge of the lawn and waited.

  Brylee stopped the rig and got out, smiling that warm, wide smile of hers. As always, her dog, Snidely, was riding shotgun, and he leaped across the seats and down to the ground to stand benignly at his mistress’s side.

  Brylee, her beautiful brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, held out a cloth-covered basket, the contents exuding a marvelous butter/cinnamon/sugar smell.

  “Hope we’re not interrupting or anything,” she said, meaning herself and Snidely. “It’s just that I’ve been on another of my baking jags.”

  Ria was genuinely glad to see her friend, though she suspected there was more to this visit than an overabundance of baked goods.

  “Come on inside,” she said.

  * * *

  LANDRY CAUGHT UP to Zane over at his place, where he was standing just outside the barn, next to Blackjack, his gelding. Bent at the waist, Zane was in the process of checking the animal’s right rear hoof for pebbles or burrs, and while he didn’t stop what he was doing or straighten his back, his eyes blazed at Landry.

  “Say what?” he growled, in response to Landry’s opening statement.

  Landry sighed, rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. The jangly state of his insides had nothing to do with the five thousand he’d sent to their dad, via the internet, or with Zane’s clear disapproval—and everything to do with the lingering scent of Ria Manning and the crazy effects of just one kiss.

  “I’m not here to confess my sins and get your absolution, bro,” he said. “I just thought you ought to know the old man is up to something again, that’s all. In case he turns up in person with a plan to cause trouble.”

  Young Nash, their half brother, nowhere to be seen at the moment, was settling in at Hangman’s Bend just fine, but, like any kid, he wanted to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that his father loved him. And that meant the boy was susceptible to Jess’s influence, easily manipulated. Vulnerable.

  Jess wouldn’t hesitate to promise the boy everything there was to promise, use him to achieve some purpose of his own—most likely gouging one or both his older sons for more money—and then abandon the kid all over again.

  Slowly, Zane let go of Blackjack’s shin, walked away from the horse and set the hoof pick on top of a nearby fence post. “Did Jess say he was headed here?” he asked, his tone as taut as his expression. “To Montana?”

  “Not exactly,” Landry answered, simultaneously shaking his head no. “But he’s been gambling, and I think he’s in deep—probably deeper than he admitted to me. Even if he settles up with the badasses he told me about over the phone last night, that doesn’t mean the heat is off.” He paused, sighed. “I think his life is in danger, Zane.”

  “And I think you’re a world-class sucker,” Zane answered, but some of the tension drained from his face and the stiffness in his shoulders eased a little. Lightly, he slapped Landry on the back. “Let’s go inside and talk awhile.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DRIVER OF the semi pulled in at a busy truck stop on the outskirts of Three Trees, Montana, reined in the big machine with a squeal of brakes and smiled over at Quinn Whittingford. His eyes were sad and gentle, in a way that made seventeen-year-old Quinn miss having a dad just that much more. He glanced at the ragtag little dog cuddled in her arms, then looked into her face again.

  “You sure you’ll be all right?” the man asked quietly. His name was Tim Anderson, and there was a snapshot of a pretty woman and three small girls affixed to the driver’s-side visor. His wife and daughters, he’d told Quinn earlier. He’d picked her up back at that last rest stop, somewhere in southern Idaho, late the night before. “That little fella can’t offer much protection, much as he might want to.”

  Quinn held the gray-and-white critter she’d named Bones, after finding him alone and hungry, possibly lost but more likely abandoned, maybe five minutes before Mr. Anderson had stopped at the rest stop to stretch his legs and avail himself of some free coffee. He’d already given Quinn the standard lecture on the dangers of hitchhiking, offering her his cell phone so she could call home and let her “folks” know she was okay, but, obviously, he was still concerned.

  She knew he was a good person, and that she’d been lucky to catch a ride with him, considering some of the stuff that could have happened. Quinn had endured the speech, but since she planned on becoming a cop after college, or even an FBI agent, and she’d seen all the shows on the ID network about rapists and serial killers, she wasn’t completely clueless.

  Not, she silently admitted, that her behavior was any indication she knew better than to take such a risk. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Tim Anderson nodded. “You be careful, now,” he said as she pushed open the heavy door of the truck, slung her backpack over one T-shirted shoulder and climbed down onto the running board and then the pavement, careful not to drop Bones in the process. “Sure you don’t want to use my cell phone? Call your mom and dad?” he asked again.

  “I’m sure,” Quinn said politely. She didn’t have a dad, actually, and her mom was probably relieved that she was gone—if she’d even noticed yet. She had a cell of her own tucked into her backpack, but the battery was stone dead, and she hadn’t mentioned it, for whatever reason. “Thanks again.”

  She stepped back, and smoke billowed from the truck’s gleaming stacks. The horn blew once, a shrill salute, Tim Anderson waved goodbye from behind what seemed like an acre of windshield and Quinn silently asked herself a question she’d kept at bay until then: what she’d do if Ria turned her away. Though she’d always been close to her aunt, it was at least remotely possible that Ria was busy with her new life and didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with a teenage runaway.

  Still, she couldn’t, wouldn’t go home, not only because she was seriously on the outs with her mother, who preferred to be addressed as “Meredith,” claiming that being called “Mom” made her feel ancient, but because Bones would almost certainly wind up in a shelter if she did.

  Meredith didn’t like dogs—or cats, either, for that matter. They were too messy, she claimed, too much trouble, always needing something. Like a kid, maybe?

  Furthermore, all the carpets in the upscale Portland condominium the two of them had been sharing for most of Quinn’s life were a pristine white.

  And the house rules were strict. No shoes allowed past the tiled entryway. No eating or drinking outside the kitchen, at the table or the breakfast bar. No watching television or listening to music in the living room.

  The whole setup reminded Quinn of one big and very weird game of hopscotch—whatever she did, she had to be careful not to step on the lines. Naturally she never invited friends over; she’d have to police their every move, as well as her own, if she did. So, when she wasn’t at school, Quinn spent most of her time holed up in her bedroom, and even there, she felt like some kind of hostage.

  She’d been over at her friend Rosalie’s place, cruising social-media sites on her tablet while Rosalie used the desktop in the family room—family room, what a concept—when Meredith had called and turned an ordinary day upside down.

  Quinn and Rosalie had been having a great time until Quinn’s cell phone rang, and Meredith instructed her, crisply and with no preamble
at all, to come home and pack. At the last minute, she’d found a summer camp with an opening—Quinn hadn’t even known she was looking for one—and promptly signed her daughter up for nearly three months of arts, crafts and songs around the campfire. She’d be leaving first thing in the morning, from the parking lot at their church, by bus.

  Koombah-freakin-yah, Quinn had thought, as an overwhelming sense of hopeless misery settled over her.

  She’d reminded Meredith that camp was for kids—that she was seventeen, not seven—and she’d be perfectly all right spending the summer at home. Why, in one more year, she’d pointed out, her temper gathering momentum, she’d be going off to college, for Pete’s sake.

  Meredith, being Meredith, hadn’t listened. She’d insisted that Quinn would make new friends at Camp Winna-Whatever and have a wonderful time swimming and hiking and breathing in all that fresh air. In other words, it was a done deal, and there would be no negotiations.

  Obviously, Quinn’s mom wanted a teenager-free summer, though she hadn’t actually said that straight out, of course. True, Meredith seemed chronically worried and distracted these days, and she’d been working even longer hours than usual lately, and traveling a lot more than usual, too. If something was seriously wrong in Meredith’s life, though, Quinn was the last person she’d have confided in.

  Quinn had gone right home from Rosalie’s—Meredith was still at the office and Hannah, the housekeeper, had already left for the day—and she’d packed, all right. But not for a stint at camp.

  No, she’d stuffed fresh underwear, an extra pair of jeans, a favorite T-shirt and her tablet computer into her backpack, along with her cell phone and charger, and lit out. She’d walked for several miles, not exactly sure what to do next, and then, finding an ATM in the convenience store where she’d stopped to buy a bottle of water, Quinn had taken her last eighty dollars out of her account and made up her mind to head for Three Trees, Montana. And Ria.

  Two cowgirls on their way to a rodeo in Idaho had offered her a lift, and she was off. They’d bought her a cheeseburger along the way, asked her a lot of questions, like how old she was and if something was wrong at home, and, finally, reluctantly, dropped her off at the rest stop, where she met up with Bones and took a chance on a long ride with Tim Anderson, a stranger.

  Now, standing outside the truck-stop café, hot and tired and grungy, Quinn wondered if the people inside would kick her out if she tried to bring Bones in with her. She could sure use something cold to drink and maybe a sandwich, and she needed to use the restroom, too.

  She supposed she could say Bones was a Seeing Eye dog, but since he looked more like a walking dust mop than a service animal, the story probably wouldn’t fly.

  Still, Quinn couldn’t bring herself to leave him outside, alone. She didn’t want the poor little thing to think, even for one second, that he’d gotten his hopes up only to be ditched all over again. Her stomach grumbled loudly, and she looked around carefully, spotted a phone booth over by the newspaper boxes and the ice machine.

  Juggling Bones, she rummaged through her backpack and came up with enough change—she hoped—to make a local call. Accustomed to cell phones, texts and instant messaging over a computer, Quinn had never actually used a pay phone.

  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.
r />   “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.