Wrangled Read online

  She was hoping for a slow day at the office when her cell phone rang.

  Luke shot her a look. “Whatever it is—”

  “Sheriff Crawford,” she said, taking the call. She listened, avoiding Luke’s gaze and trying not to let her true feelings show in her expression. “Don’t worry, Hoyt, I’m on my way.”

  “Hoyt Chisholm? I thought he’d gone to Butte to identify his first wife.”

  “She wasn’t Laura. But he thinks he knows where Laura is.” She reached for her shoulder holster.

  “I’m going with you.”

  She started to argue but felt the baby kick. Her stomach cramped and for a moment she held her breath, knowing Luke was watching her intently.

  “All right.” Even though Luke was a game warden, he’d had the same law enforcement training and was often called in when there was a need.

  “Where does he think Laura is?” Luke asked as they headed for her patrol SUV.

  “Chisholm ranch. He thinks Laura has been masquerading as his housekeeper, Mrs. Crowley.”

  Luke let out a low curse. “And Emma?”

  “Hoyt tried the house and couldn’t raise anyone, but they could all be at that grass fire I heard called in earlier. It’s under control, but apparently Emma is missing and so is Mrs. Crowley.”

  * * *

  ZANE COULD SEE THE DRIVER of the pickup and knew the man wasn’t going to slow down. He was betting that the man driving the truck was the escaped prisoner from California and had nothing to lose and everything to gain if he got away.

  “Zane.” Marshall sounded worried. “Zane, I quit playing chicken when I was fourteen.”

  At the speed that they were traveling, the two pickups were going to meet at the same time where the two roads intersected.

  “I’m not letting him get away,” Zane said, and kept the pedal floored.

  He watched the pickup out of the corner of his eye growing closer and closer. He saw Marshall reach for the dash to brace himself for the crash they both knew was coming.

  At the last moment, the driver of the other truck veered to the left. Zane hit his brakes and cranked his wheel to the right, but he was still going too fast to keep from hitting the other truck.

  The driver’s side of Zane’s pickup smashed into the passenger side of the other truck, driving it farther up the road and out into the open pasture. As Zane fought to keep control of his pickup, the other driver hit a dry irrigation ditch.

  Zane swerved away, tires digging into the dirt, the truck rocking wildly.

  “He’s losing it,” Marshall said as the other truck rolled. It churned up a cloud of dust as it rolled a second time and came to rest on its top out in the middle of the pasture.

  When Zane got his pickup stopped at the edge of the road, he and Marshall jumped out and ran toward the truck. The driver had kicked out the windshield and was trying to climb out. The man matched the mug shot the sheriff had provided them of the third escaped prisoner so they could keep an eye out for him.

  The escaped felon crawled out, bloody and bruised. He was hurt badly enough that he didn’t put up a fight, just lay on his back in the grass.

  “I need a doctor,” the man cried. “You almost killed me.”

  “Where is Courtney Baxter?” Zane demanded.

  “I’m not saying anything without a lawyer,” the man said.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Marshall said, no doubt seeing that his brother wanted to beat the truth out of the man. He grabbed some rope from the back of the pickup and began tying up the escaped prisoner for the ride to the sheriff’s department.

  Zane’s cell rang. “Is everything all right at the house?” he asked when he saw that it was his brother Dawson calling.

  “No one’s here.”

  “What?” He looked at Marshall. “He says there’s no one there.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dawson said on the other end of the line. “I just found a note from Mrs. Crowley saying that they have gone into town.”

  Zane was shaking his head. “I’m going to the house,” he called to Marshall, who signaled him to go.

  Running to his pickup, he leaped in and tore down the road toward the ranch house. Emma wouldn’t go into town, not with her stepsons fighting a grass fire burning down the road. She’d be baking something for when they finished with the fire.

  He prayed he was wrong about the fire being a diversion. But the timing of the fire was too much of a coincidence. And now Emma, Dakota and Mrs. Crowley were gone?

  He could see the house in the distance. Zane raced toward it, his heart in his throat. He kept seeing Dakota’s face, remembering their lovemaking.

  Why in the hell hadn’t he told her that he loved her?

  As the house loomed ahead, he prayed Dakota was all right.

  * * *

  “DID SHE HURT YOU?” Dakota asked Emma as they bounced along the road in the ranch pickup. Dakota was driving; Emma sat in the middle with Laura Chisholm holding a gun on her.

  “No.” Emma had been pretending to doze off and on from the time Dakota had helped Laura put her in the pickup.

  “Just keep your eye on the road,” Laura snapped. She’d peeled the scar off her face and no longer looked anything like Mrs. Crowley.

  “Why are you doing this?” Dakota asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. She’d heard all about Laura Chisholm, knew at least some of the horrible things she’d done and suspected there was even worse they didn’t know about. Dakota couldn’t bear to think of this woman with her father.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Laura said, and leaned down a little to look into Emma’s face. Emma had her eyes closed and her head on Dakota’s shoulder.

  As they’d been leaving the house, Emma had leaned heavily on her and seemed completely out of it. Until she’d whispered, “Be ready once we reach the well house.” Then she had touched her fingers to her lips.

  Dakota had nodded and squeezed her hand.

  Now she wondered how Emma had known where they were going even before Laura had begun barking out orders.

  “Can you drive any slower?” Laura snapped.

  Dakota gave the pickup a little more speed. The road was narrow and bumpy as it cut through pasture. As they dropped over a hill, the house disappeared behind them.

  “No one is coming to save you,” Laura assured her as she caught Dakota looking in the rearview mirror. “That’s a nasty fire that could destroy most of their pasture on that side of the ranch. They aren’t going to stop fighting the fire to save you.”

  Clearly, this woman was behind the fire. She’d managed to get everyone away from the house. Dakota wondered how the housekeeper had started the fire and realized it must have been the third escaped prisoner from California.

  “Emma, I’m surprised you don’t want to ask about me and Hoyt,” Laura taunted.

  Emma seemed to stir. “Hoyt?”

  Laura laughed. “You do realize that you’re not even legally married, since I am alive and well?”

  Alive, yes. Well? Dakota thought not. She was just grateful she hadn’t drunk the tea the woman had made her. She feared neither she nor Emma would still be alive for this little trip.

  As Dakota drove over another hill, she saw the creek through a stand of pines and beyond that, what appeared to be a small stone building with an old waterwheel on one side and a cistern on the other.

  * * *

  AT THE HOUSE, ZANE THREW the pickup into Park and jumped out. As he was running toward the door, he noticed that the truck Mrs. Crowley drove was gone. Someone had left, maybe all three of them, but they hadn’t gone to town. Of that he was sure.

  He hit the front door, burst through it and into the house, already calling Dakota’s name as he ran.

  “Dakota!” The house felt empty long before he reached the large kitchen.

  He glanced upstairs. “Dakota?” Taking the stairs two at a time, he charged up to the next floor, all the time telling himself there was no one here. But he had t
o be sure.

  He hadn’t passed anyone on the main road but that didn’t mean anything. There were numerous back roads on the ranch.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he glanced toward the kitchen and noticed two teacups sitting on the table along with a plate of cookies.

  Emma would never leave her kitchen without cleaning everything up.

  He stepped in and noticed another teacup in the sink. The pantry door was ajar as well.

  His phone rang, making him jump. For a moment he thought it was going to be Dakota. He imagined her telling him that she and Emma had gone for a drive with Mrs. Crowley to see the fire.

  “Zane?”

  It was his brother Marshall. “Is everything all right there?”

  “No one’s here, just like Dawson said. The pickup Mrs. Crowley has been using is gone.”

  “Zane, earlier Emma was telling me that she’d been spying on Mrs. Crowley. Apparently the old gal’s been going out late at night and not coming back until the wee hours of the morning. She was telling me about it when I saw the fire. She thought Mrs. Crowley might have been meeting a man somewhere on the ranch.”

  Zane didn’t even want to ask why Emma had been spying on the housekeeper. Racing to the far wing, Zane knocked at the housekeeper’s door. No answer. He tried the knob. Locked. If he was wrong, his father would not be happy.

  He stepped back, lifted his leg and kicked at the door. One more kick and the frame shattered, the lock broke and the door swung in.

  The room was immaculate. In fact, it didn’t even look as if anyone was staying here.

  “Mrs. Crowley?” He stepped in. “Mrs. Crowley?” The bathroom door was ajar. He pushed it all the way open. Empty.

  As he turned to leave, he spotted the framed photograph and froze in midstep.

  It was a photograph of his father and a woman he’d never seen before. Why would Mrs. Crowley have a photograph of his father and some woman?

  He stepped over to the picture and picked up the silver frame. His father looked incredibly young. Behind him was the original ranch house before the later additions, so that meant the woman in the photograph had to have been his father’s first wife, Laura.

  His gaze went to the woman in the photo. He felt his heart drop to his stomach. The frame slipped from his fingers and hit the floor, the glass shattering.

  Laura Chisholm was Mrs. Crowley? She’d been living here all these months, right under their roof?

  His cell phone rang. His father. He quickly answered it.

  * * *

  EMMA CONTINUED TO ACT as if she was still suffering from the drug Laura had given her. Through her half-closed eyes, she watched the landscape she had come to love blur past the window of the pickup.

  Laura had a small, snub-nosed pistol pressed against her side. Emma felt the cold, hard metal with each bump that the pickup hit as Dakota drove them away from the prairie and up into the foothills.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blackened, scorched earth from the grass fire off to the east. By now her sons would have the flames out and possibly be heading back to the house. She could only hope that they would find the note she’d left in the pantry.

  “Don’t you want to talk about it?” Laura asked.

  Emma raised her head just a little to glance sideways at the woman. She looked so different now without the scarred face, the sightless eye. What gleamed in her two blue eyes was a brittle hatred that made her inwardly flinch.

  “I would think you’d have questions for me. Don’t you want to know how I survived, how I killed Tasha and Krystal, how I framed your stepson with the help of my daughter?”

  Did any of that matter now? Emma didn’t think so. “You’re sick.”

  Laura laughed. “I’m no sicker than your friend Aggie.”

  That reminder stirred something in Emma. She had to tamp it down to keep from showing Laura that she wasn’t as drugged as she was pretending.

  “I know you killed her,” Emma said, slurring her words.

  “I hated doing it, though. I admired Aggie. We had a lot in common.”

  Aggie would have looked beyond Mrs. Crowley’s disguise and not been fooled, Emma thought, then remembered that Aggie was dead because Laura had ultimately fooled her somehow as well.

  “Why don’t you just kill me?” Emma said. “Let Dakota go.”

  Laura smiled. “I’m afraid I’ve had to change my plans. You know, if you had drank that first cup of coffee I fixed you the morning after I started my job, it would have been all over right then. No one else would have gotten hurt.”

  Emma remembered the anger and frustration she’d seen in Mrs. Crowley’s expression that morning. She’d misinterpreted it as the woman simply trying to establish herself in the house, the kitchen in particular.

  “You could have poisoned me at any time after that,” Emma said.

  Laura chuckled. “You amused and intrigued me. I liked watching you, knowing that I could kill you at any time—and you had no idea who I was.”

  “That must have made you very happy.” They were close to the old well house now. Emma cut her gaze to Dakota. The young woman was strong and determined, her hands on the wheel sure. Emma knew she could trust Dakota to put up a fight when the time came. She just hoped that she didn’t get her killed.

  * * *

  “PARK HERE,” LAURA ORDERED. She couldn’t help being disappointed. She’d expected more out of Emma. She regretted giving her a drug that, while it had allowed Emma to regain consciousness, made her pathetically docile. She’d hoped for more fight out of her.

  “Give me the keys,” she told Dakota, who turned off the ignition and handed over the keys.

  Laura saw them both looking expectantly toward the old stone well house and stone water tank.

  “Let’s go see Courtney,” Laura said. “I know how badly you want to see your sister. But remember. If you try anything, I will shoot Emma, then shoot you and Courtney.”

  “You would kill your own daughter?” Dakota demanded.

  “I told you. I don’t like children. Especially my own.”

  “What did my father ever see in you?”

  Laura laughed. “I was beautiful and sexy and he was broken after your mother’s death. I was touched by that kind of anguished love and wished Hoyt loved me half as much.”

  That got a small rise out of Emma. “Maybe he would have loved you more if you hadn’t cheated on him.”

  Laura opened the pickup door and, keeping the barrel of the gun buried in Emma’s side, pulled her out.

  “You know nothing about it,” she snapped, hating that she’d let Emma get to her. She couldn’t have been more jealous of Emma than she was at that moment. Hoyt adored Emma. The two couldn’t keep their hands off each other. He’d never been like that with her.

  At the door to the well house, she tossed the key to the padlock to Dakota. The stone building had been perfect for her needs. It had no windows, only one door and was almost six miles from the ranch. Nor did anyone ever come up this way.

  Laura remembered it because Hoyt had brought her out here the only time she’d ridden a horse with him.

  “Open it.”

  * * *

  DAKOTA CAUGHT THE KEY. Laura still had the gun pressed into Emma’s side, a hand gripping her arm. Emma gave a slight shake of her head. Apparently she didn’t want to try to do anything until they got inside.

  She inserted the key into the padlock, fearing what they would find inside this odd building. The door was made of metal and had rusted over the years. She had to push hard to get it to open.

  As it swung in, Dakota blinked. The only light in the stone structure came from the now open doorway and from four small openings high above in the circular stone walls.

  The walls were smooth and there were several old watermarks on them. Dakota realized that this was part of the cistern used for water storage.

  She spotted her sister in the shadows and felt a surge of relief. Courtney was alive. For a mome
nt, that was all that mattered. Then she heard the rattle of chains and noticed the handcuff around Courtney’s right wrist. The other end of the chain was attached to a pipe that ran along the wall.

  Courtney began to cry at the sight of her. “Dakota, how did you—” The rest of her sister’s words died on her lips as she saw Laura and Emma come into the room.

  “A little family reunion,” Laura said.

  Courtney seemed to cower, a look of despair on her face. Dakota noticed that she was dressed in a pair of old jeans, a soiled T-shirt and sneakers. There were several containers that looked as if they had contained food stacked in the corner.

  “You’ve kept my sister here chained to a pipe like an animal?” Dakota said, turning on Laura.

  “Let’s not forget that your sister was in on framing your boyfriend,” the woman said.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Dakota said.

  “I thought it was just a joke,” Courtney cried. “I didn’t know… .” Her eyes filled with tears again as she bit off the rest of the lie. “Oh, Dakota, I’m so sorry.”

  As Laura started to shove Emma into the room, Dakota caught her signal. Emma whirled around, taking Laura by surprise, and knocked the gun from her hand. It skittered across the concrete floor. Dakota dove for it.

  She heard Emma let out a cry and heard Courtney yell a warning. As her hand closed over the gun she was kicked hard in the side, knocking the air out of her.

  Then Laura was on her, slamming her head against the concrete floor. Dakota felt blood run down into her left eye as she tried to fight the woman off. For her age, Laura was surprisingly strong and she fought dirty. She grabbed a handful of Dakota’s hair, jerking her head back as she wrenched the gun from her hands.

  In an instant, Laura was on her feet and holding the gun on them.

  Dakota rolled over, wiping blood from her eye. Emma had gotten to her feet, but Laura had been too fast for her to intervene. She backed up as Laura swung the barrel of the gun toward her.

  “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid,” Laura said, sounding breathless and yet excited. “I should just shoot you right now. If Dakota moves a muscle, I will.”