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Emma only glimpsed the woman slumped in the wheelchair with her head lolling to one side. She wore a long coat, slacks and penny loafers. Her chin-length dyed auburn hair hid most of her face. She clearly wasn’t from around this area.
The wheelchair squeaked down the hall to the echo of the men’s footsteps. Emma waited until she heard them turn the corner and start down the hall toward her office before she moved.
Her first instinct was to run down the corridor, out the back door. Except all the doors in the building locked automatically and had to be opened from the inside with a key, a precaution from when patients roamed these halls.
And she’d left her keys on her desk, not needing them to scare away a few kids through the window at the back door.
She would have to hide in the building.
Unless she could get to her keys.
She stole down the corridor, trying not to make a sound. At the corner, she sneaked a look down the hallway toward her office.
The two men had stopped with the wheelchair at the locked section that had once been reserved for the criminally insane.
The chain and lock on the doors rattled. She watched as Dr. French inserted a key. The chain fell away with a clatter that reverberated through the building. Afraid to move, she watched the doctor hold the door open for the wheelchair.
He had a key? Even she didn’t have a key to that area and had been told it was only a long corridor of padded, soundproof rooms best left locked up.
Emma waited until the men disappeared through the doors, the burly one wheeling the woman into the second door on the right. The number on the door read 9B. What was it she’d heard about 9B, something terrible. Oh God. She had to get out of here.
If she moved fast, she could get to her office, get the keys to the front door—and her car. The doctor had seen it parked out front. He knew she was here. She had no choice. But if she could reach her car and get away…
She hadn’t gotten but a few yards when she heard the squeak of the wheelchair; a slightly different sound echoed. They were already coming back!
Panic immobilized her. Down the dim hallway, she saw the burly man back out of the room with the empty wheelchair. She had to move fast. They would be looking for her, wondering where she was, what she’d witnessed. After all, she wasn’t supposed to be working tonight.
But where could she go? Not the patient rooms. If they caught her hiding in the dark in one of them, they’d know she’d heard their conversation.
Where?
She caught sight of the ladies’ room just a few doors up the hall in the same direction as the men. Run! Except she couldn’t run. She couldn’t even walk fast because of her feet and years of inactivity. But she managed a lunging shuffle, her heart thundering in her chest—a clumsy, terrifying run for her life.
As the doctor came out of the room and closed 9B’s door, Emma shoved open the ladies’ room door and stumbled into the windowless blackness. Frantically, she felt her way to one of the four stalls.
Stumbling into the cold metal stall, she closed the door, locked it and, quaking with fear, sat down on the toilet.
All she could hear was the pounding of her pulse in her ears and the echo of panting. She had to quit gasping for breath. They would hear her. The place was old and empty. Every sound echoed through it. If she could hear them, they could hear her. She had to get control, had to think.
She held her breath for a moment and listened. The snick of a lock followed the rattle of the chain on the doors to the closed wing. She let out the breath she’d been holding. It came out as a sob. She clutched her hand over her mouth, breathing fast through her nose.
From where she sat, she could see through the crack along the edge of the stall to the lighter gap under the bathroom door.
The empty wheelchair squeaked down the hall along with the sound of the men’s footfalls. She held her breath as a shadow darkened the gap under the ladies’ room door. They were directly outside. Had they seen her? Did they know she was in here?
“Looks like Karl’s here somewhere,” said the burly one. “We interrupted his dinner.”
Her sandwich! She’d left it half-eaten on her desk when she’d fallen asleep. She’d also left the light on in her office, the TV on, the volume turned low.
“Karl carries a purse?” Dr. French asked in a tone heavy with sarcasm.
Her heart stopped. She’d left her purse on the desk. Her purse!
“Dammit, Davidson, I thought you said Karl was definitely working tonight,” Dr. French snapped.
“He said he was.”
The older man made a disgusted sound.
Emma couldn’t hold her breath much longer. Tears burned her eyes. They knew she was in the building. They would look for her. She had to think of something. Some way out of here.
Closing her eyes tightly, she waited. Over the pounding of her pulse, she heard the squeak of the wheelchair growing fainter and fainter as it moved down the corridor away from her.
She waited until she heard the back door close before she moved. Opening her eyes, she forced herself to leave the stall. A dim light filled the gap under the door. No shadows. She pushed open the door.
They were gone.
She leaned back against the wall, weak with relief.
The hallway was empty.
She heard the sound of the back door opening and closing. A car engine revved, the sound growing dimmer.
Her legs were like water and she feared she might be sick as she shuffled back to her office, trying not to hurry in case anyone was watching her. She didn’t look behind her down the hall. Nor did she glance toward the locked wing where the men had taken the woman.
At her partially closed office door, she braced herself and pushed. The door swung noiselessly open. Her heart lodged in her throat as she looked to her chair.
Dr. French wasn’t sitting in it, as she’d expected he would be.
The office was empty.
The movie was over on the small TV. Her half-eaten sandwich was still on the edge of the desk along with her Big Gulp-size diet cola and her purse.
She began to cry from relief as she hurriedly closed and locked the door behind her. Stumbling to her chair, she dropped into it, her muscles no longer able to hold her up.
She was safe.
They were gone.
She could pretend she’d never seen them.
But could she pretend she didn’t know there was a woman locked in one of the padded, soundproof rooms down the hall? And wouldn’t the men return for her?
Emma reached for the remote and shut off the TV. She should call someone. The sheriff. But then she would have to stay here alone until he arrived.
Not if she called from home. She didn’t live far from here. Just a few miles down the river toward Wyoming.
She picked up her purse and reached for her kitten key chain with the keys to the doors out of here.
The keys were gone.
Panic sent her blood pressure into orbit. She couldn’t get out until she found the keys. She bent, thinking she must have knocked them to the floor.
But as she bent over, the hairs rose on the back of her neck.
In slow motion she lifted her head, then turned by degrees to look behind her through the office window to the hallway.
Dr. French smiled and held up her keys.
Chapter Two
Monday night
Two nights later
Brandon McCall couldn’t keep his eyes open. He’d driven every road on this section of the ranch and, like all the other nights, he hadn’t seen a thing. Not a track in the soft earth. Not a light flickering down in the sagebrush. Not a soul.
Tonight a storm was blowing in. Lightning splintered the horizon and thunder rumbled in the distance as dark clouds washed across the wild landscape, from the Bighorn Mountains over the rolling foothills to the tall cottonwoods of the river bottom.
The first raindrops startled him, hitting the roof of his pickup like hail. He stopped on a hill, turned off the engine and killed the lights.
Taking off his Stetson, he laid it over the steering wheel and stretched his long legs across the bench seat, careful not to get his muddy western boots on the upholstery.
He had a good view of the ranch below him and knew there were a half-dozen other men on watch tonight in other areas, waiting for vandals.
Unfortunately there was too much country, and even Mason VanHorn, as rich as he was, couldn’t afford to hire enough men to patrol his entire ranch.
Something moved in the darkness, making him sit up a little. A stand of pine trees swayed in the stormy darkness. He watched for a moment, then leaned back again. False alarm. But he didn’t take his eyes off the spot.
It looked like another long, boring night since he doubted the vandal was dedicated enough to come out in this weather. This was southeastern Montana, coal country, and coalbed methane gas had turned out to be the accidental by-product of the huge, open-pit coal mining to the south. The thick coal seams were saturated with water, which, when pumped out, produced gas that bubbled up like an opened bottle of cola.
With big money in natural gas, thousands of wells had sprung up almost overnight, causing controversy in the ranching communities. Some landowners had cashed in, opting to have the shallow wells dug on their property. Others, like Brandon’s father, Asa, would die before he’d have one on his ranch.
The real battles had less to do with traditional uses of the land and more to do with environmental concerns, though. By extracting the gas from the water, something had to be done with all the water, which was considered too salty for irrigation but was being dumped into the Tongue River. The drilling was also said to lower the water table, leaving some ranch wells high and dry.
Mason VanHorn had the most gas wells and was the most outspoken in favor of the drilling. Because of that, he’d become the target of protesters on more than one occasion.
And that was how Brandon McCall had gotten a night job on the VanHorn spread. He’d been in the Longhorn Café in Antelope Flats the day the new VanHorn Ranch manager, Red Hudson, had come in looking for men to patrol the ranch at night.
Fortunately for Brandon, Red didn’t seem to know about a long-standing feud between the VanHorns and the McCalls and Brandon hadn’t brought it up. He’d hired on, needing the money. While he worked some on his family ranch at the other end of the river valley, that job didn’t pay like this one.
The irony was that his little sister Dusty thought he had a girlfriend and that’s why he dragged in like a tomcat just before dawn every day.
He wished. No, this was his little secret. And given the generations of bad blood between the McCalls and the VanHorns, Brandon would be out of a job—or worse—once ranch owner Mason VanHorn found out. He hated to think how VanHorn would take it when he found out he had a McCall on his payroll.
Something moved again in a stand of pines below him. The wind and something else.
He sat all the way up.
A slim, dark figure stood motionless at the edge of the pines. He stared so hard he was almost convinced it was a trick of the light from the storm.
The wind whipped at the trees. Rain slanted down, pelting the hood, pouring down the windshield. He turned on the wipers, squinting into the driving rain and darkness.
This had been monotonous boring work—until last night when several of the wells had actually been vandalized. Nothing serious, just a lame protest attempt, and patrols had been stepped up.
Red had made it clear he wanted the vandal caught at all costs. And now it looked as if the vandal was planning to hit one of the wells in Brandon’s section.
The presumed vandal sprinted out from the pines, running fast and low as he wove his way through the tall sage and the rain. He wore all black, even the stocking cap on his head. From this distance, he appeared slightly built, like a teenager. A teenager on a mission, since he had what appeared to be a crowbar in one hand.
The vandal disappeared over a rise.
Brandon slapped a hand on the steering wheel with a curse. If he started the pickup, the vandal would hear it and no doubt take off on him. Brandon needed to catch him in the act.
He had no choice. He was going to have to go after him through the pouring rain and darkness. He’d be lucky if he didn’t break his leg or worse, as dark as it was.
Pulling on his coat, he snugged on his Stetson, quietly opened the pickup door and reached back to pull the shotgun from the gun rack behind the seat. Not that he planned to shoot anyone. Especially if it really did turn out to be some teenager with a cause.
But it was always better to have a weapon and not need it than the other way around.
Rain slashed down, stinging his face as he loped down the hillside, winding his way through the sagebrush until he reached the rise where he’d last seen him. In a crouch, the shotgun in both hands, he topped the rise and squinted through the rain and darkness.
At first, he didn’t see anything. Coalbed methane wells were fairly unobtrusive. Not a bunch of rigging like oil wells. The wellheads were covered with a tan box about the size of a large air-conditioning unit. The boxes dotted the landscape to the north past the ranch complex, but there were none near the house.
He scanned the half-dozen wells he could see. No sign of anyone. Frowning, he wondered if the vandal might have doubled back, having purposely drawn him away from his pickup. Brandon had been so sure the vandal hadn’t seen him where he was parked.
But as Brandon started to look behind him, he caught movement down the hillside toward the ranch house itself and the large stand of pine trees behind it.
The VanHorn Ranch was nothing like Brandon’s family’s Sundown Ranch, which was family-owned and run with a main house and the barns nearby.
The VanHorn Ranch was run by hired help, so the main ranch house sat back a half mile from a cluster of buildings that housed the ranch office, the bunkhouses and the ranch manager’s house.
The rustic main ranch house was long and narrow, tucked back into the hillside and banked in the back by pines. Mason VanHorn lived in the house all alone after, according to local scuttlebutt, his wife had run off and he’d alienated his only two offspring.
The vandal disappeared into the pines at the back of the ranch house, the crowbar glinting in the dim light.
This time of the morning, there were no lights on in the small compound down the road from the ranch house, and few vehicles, since most of the men were out riding the huge ranch’s perimeter.
The ranch house was even more deserted since Mason VanHorn had flown to Gillette, Wyoming, two days ago for a gas convention and would be gone for at least another forty-eight hours.
Red had promised a large bonus to any man who caught the vandals or anyone else trespassing on the VanHorn Ranch before the boss got home.
And now Brandon had one in his sights.
A bank of clouds crushed out the light of the moon. Brandon moved, running fast. Had their vandal gone from wells to an even bigger prize: VanHorn’s house?
Brandon reached the trees and stopped, moving slowly through the darkness of the dense pines to the back of the house. The guy was nowhere in sight, but Brandon heard the snap of rain-soaked curtains in the wind and spotted the open window.
He thought about radioing for backup, but just the sound of the radio might warn the intruder. At the window, he raised the glass higher to accommodate his height of six-four, and climbed into what appeared to be a bathroom, since he found himself standing in a large tub, the wet curtains flapping behind him in the wind.
