Odd Man Out

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On the way out, he turned off the lights and closed the door. As he stepped into the darkness of the porch, he felt a chill on the back of his neck.

Denver.

A premonition swept over him. He had to get to her; she needed him. As he hurried across the porch, he caught the slight movement of something in the night. He turned, but too late. An object glistened in the streetlight for an instant, and then there was only pain and darkness.

Chapter Five

J.D. woke, cold and confused. He glanced around, surprised to find himself on Max’s office porch. He was even more surprised to find he was alive. His head ached and he couldn’t remember a thing. Except Denny. He could see the light in her auburn hair, hear the sweet sound of her voice. And...feel the lamp as she knocked him into the bathtub. He groaned. It was all starting to come back.

Rubbing the bump on the side of his head, he tried to get up. A wave of nausea hit him and forced him back down. Where was Denny now?

As he stumbled to his feet, bits and pieces of the night began to return, ending with him leaving Denver at the cabin with Pete. He swore—and reached into his coat. Max’s wallet was gone.

Except for his pickup parked at the curb, the street was empty. His watch read 3:52 a.m. Damn. One thing was for sure. Investigating Max’s murder was turning out to be more dangerous than he’d realized—than he was sure Denny realized. He had to protect her. He smiled at the humor in that; he wasn’t even doing a very good job of taking care of himself. But now more than ever, he feared for Denny’s safety.

As he headed for the lake cabin, he wished he could come up with a logical explanation for waking Denny and Pete at this time of the night. Instead he knew he was about to make a first-class fool of himself. At least it was something he was good at. But he had to make sure Denny was safe. A vague uneasiness in the pit of his stomach warned him she wasn’t.

* * *

IN THE DREAM, DENVER skipped through the bank door ahead of her parents, singing the song her mother had taught her. The words died on her lips; her feet faltered and stopped. Everyone inside the bank lay on the floor on their stomachs. A silence hung in the air that she only recognized as something wrong. As she turned and ran back to her parents, she saw the other uniformed policeman on the floor. Her father’s hand came down on her shoulder hard. He shoved her. She fell, sliding into the leg of an office desk. She heard her mother scream. Then the room exploded.

The phone rang.

Don’t answer it, her father said in the dream. He wore his police uniform and he was smiling at her. The phone rang again. Don’t answer it unless you want to know the truth. But as she looked at him she already knew—

Denver sat up, drenched with sweat. The phone rang again. For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was. Then familiar objects took shape as her eyes adjusted to the dark. The phone rang again. She fumbled for it. “Hello?”

Silence. Heavy and dark as the night. The dream clung to her. Alive. Real.

“Hello?” Denver shivered. Just nerves. And that damned dream. “Is anyone there?”

“Denver McCallahan?” a voice whispered.

The dream had left her with an ominous feeling. She tried to shake it off. “Yes?”

“I have information about your uncle.”

“Who is this?” The voice sounded familiar. She sat up straighter and rubbed her hand over her face. The dream and the last remnants of sleep still hovered around her like a musical note suspended in the air. “You know something about Max’s murder?” Her head started to clear a little. It was just a crank call. “If you know anything, why haven’t you gone to Deputy Cline?”

The caller coughed. “You’ll know when you meet me at Horse Butte Lookout under the fire tower. But hurry.”

Now fully awake, Denver clutched the phone. “You can’t expect me to come to an abandoned fire tower now.” The voice sounded even more familiar; if only she could keep the person talking.

“Look, if he finds out I called you, I’m dead meat.” The caller sounded genuinely frightened. “The fire tower. Hurry. I won’t wait.”

“Please just tell me—”

But he’d already hung up.

“Damn.”

Denver stared at the receiver in her hand. Then at the clock beside her bed. It read 4:05 a.m. She hung up the phone and hurriedly pulled on warm clothes. The fear in the caller’s voice made her think he really might know who murdered Max. That hope ricocheted around in her head, forcing out everything else. If he really knew...

Denver opened her bedroom door and started down the stairs. Her heart thudded. Someone was downstairs. She listened, trying to recognize the noise floating up from the living room. It sounded like— Cautiously she crept down the stairs and stopped, staring in surprise.

The fire had burned down to smoldering embers. The warm sheen from the firebox radiated over the living room, bathing the sleeping Pete Williams in a reddish wash. Sprawled across the couch, Pete snored loudly.

Denver shook him gently; he didn’t stir. She tried again, a little more forcefully. He groaned and started snoring again. Well, she’d tried, she told herself as she covered him with the quilt from the back of the couch. She knew he would have tried to stop her from going, anyway.

Hastily she wrote him a note—“Gone to Horse Butte Fire Tower”—and propped it against his teacup. Trying to protect her must have worn him out, she thought with a laugh as she closed the front door behind her. Just as she reached her Jeep, an arm grabbed her from the darkness. Only someone’s hurried words stopped the scream on her lips.

“Take it easy, slugger,” J.D. said. “It’s only me. You don’t have a lamp with you, do you?”

“What are you doing?” Denver demanded in a hushed tone as he released her. “Trying to scare me to death a second time?” As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see his pickup parked in the trees.

“I think the question is where are we going at this hour of the night? And why are we whispering?”

Denver planted her hands on her hips. “I thought you left.”

“I did.” He gave her an embarrassed shrug. “I came back. I had a feeling you might need me.”

She liked the sound of that. And, although she’d never admit it to him, she was glad he was there.

“Maybe I’m psychic when it comes to you.” He grinned. “Or maybe I just know you.”

She mugged a face at him. “Well, as you can see, I’m fine.” She reached for the Jeep’s door handle. J.D.’s gloved hand covered hers.

“‘Fine’ isn’t going for a drive at four in the morning, Denny. What’s going on?” He glanced at Pete’s pickup. “Where’s Pete?”

Out like a bad light bulb, she thought. “I don’t have time to argue—”

From inside the cabin, the phone rang. Denver started to run back to answer it in case it was her mysterious caller changing his mind. But it stopped on the third ring. Maybe it had been the caller, checking to see if she’d left yet.

She turned to find J.D. already in the Jeep. He grinned at her. Maybe it was the grin. Or the late hour. Or just plain common sense. She might need him when she got to the fire tower. But at that moment, she didn’t mind the idea of the two of them in the close confines of the Jeep together.

As Denver backed down the driveway and started up the narrow road through the pines, she realized she hadn’t thought about where her caller had phoned from. There was no telephone near the fire tower. She’d just assumed he was calling from West Yellowstone, but he wouldn’t be able to reach the tower quickly if he’d phoned from town. No, he either had to call from a private residence near the lake, or—

As she tore up the road, she remembered the phone booth at Rainbow Point Campground.

“Where exactly are we going in such a hurry?” J.D. asked. Denver smiled as she took a corner in a spray of snow, ice and gravel, and he fumbled to buckle up his seat belt.

“Horse Butte Fire Tower.”

His gaze warmed the side of her face. “Really?”

She’d made the mistake of kissing him at the tower the day he said he was leaving. She’d foolishly thought one kiss would change his mind. She shot him a look. “I can promise you you’re not going to get as lucky as you did the last time.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that.

To her surprise, he laughed. “That’s too bad.”

But she could feel him studying her, and when she glanced over at him, she saw what could have been regret in his gray eyes. Probably just lack of sleep, she assured herself as she concentrated on the next curve, waiting for the campground phone booth to come into view. As she came around the corner, her foot pulled off the gas pedal unconsciously.

The phone booth stood in the darkened pines, door closed. The overhead light glowed inside. She stared at it half expecting someone to materialize inside it. The pines swayed in the wind. The booth stood empty. Had that been where he called from?

“I think you’d better tell me what’s going on,” J.D. said, frowning at her as she hit the gas again and barreled past the campground. Denver glanced back into the darkness, then took a sharp curve on the snowy, narrow road with the familiarity of someone who’d driven it for years. J.D. hung on. “Come on, Denny, I’m sure you have a good reason for trying to kill us. I’d feel better, though, if I knew it before the wreck.”

She smiled. “You were the one who insisted on coming along.”

“So true.”

Freewheeling around the next curve, Denver shot down a straightaway and looked back. No headlights. “I got a call tonight from what sounded like a man. He claimed he knows something about Max’s murder. He told me to meet him at the fire tower.”

“I’m sorry I asked.” J.D. let out a breath after Denver successfully maneuvered the Jeep around another sharp curve in the road. “Let me ask you this—are you completely crazy?”

Denver looked over at him for just a second, then back at the road. Yes, she’d been crazy once. Crazy in love. Then just plain crazy when she realized J.D. had walked out of her life and not even looked back. Meeting a possible murderer in the middle of the night was nothing compared to that.

“I know it probably sounds foolhardy to you,” she said.

J.D. let out a laugh. “No, it sounds suicidal to me. Have you considered you might be driving right into a trap?”

Why had this made a lot more sense back at the cabin when she was half-asleep? A sudden chill raced up her spine and the first stirrings of real fear made the Jeep seem even colder inside.

The dark pines that lined both sides of the road blurred by blacker than the night. Occasionally the moon broke free of the clouds to lighten the slit of sky where the road made a path through the trees. Her headlights flickered down the long, narrow tunnel of a road. Behind her, darkness fought the silver-slick reflection of the snow hunkered among the pines.

“If you wanted to kill someone, can you think of a better place than an abandoned fire tower?” J.D. asked.

“No.” She reached over to bang on the heater lever; the darned thing wasn’t even putting out cold air. When she looked up, she saw the reflection of a large mud puddle dead ahead. She tried to avoid it and plowed through a pile of deep slush instead. The windshield fogged over. Hurriedly she rolled down her window. As she wiped a spot clear on the glass with her mitten, she heard what sounded like another vehicle close behind her. Her caller? Or just a reverberation in the trees?

“What’s wrong?” J.D. asked, glancing over his shoulder.

“I think we’re being followed.”

“Great.”

Not slowing down, Denver leaned down to rummage under her seat.

“What now?” J.D. asked.

“You don’t happen to have a weapon on you, do you?”

“I’m a guitar player, Denny, not a gunslinger.”

She dug blindly until she felt the screwdriver, then pulled it out and held it up to the lights from the dash.

“Get serious,” J.D. said.