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“She stayed here at the house?”
“I insisted on it!” Mo informed him. “She said she’d be fine in her cabin, but I wouldn’t hear of it, not with that maniac still on the loose! You haven’t caught him, have you?”
Lucas shook his head.
“Hmm. Well, then I’m glad I made her stay here. Although I don’t think she slept much. I got up to check on Pop around two this morning and noticed the light in her room was still on.”
Mo offered to warm up his coffee, but Lucas refused. “You could at least sit down and have a cinnamon roll while you’re waiting for her.”
Mo’s cinnamon rolls were legendary, but this morning Lucas wasn’t even tempted. It was all he could do to keep from charging up the stairs and dragging Lexie Dale out of bed. “Thanks, but I’ll grab something later in town.”
“I’ll have some of those cinnamon rolls,” Tucker volunteered.
“There’s another big surprise,” Mo said as she placed the pan in the middle of the long, pine table. “I’m surprised you manage to survive on what passes for food down at The Timbers. Why, sometimes I swear I can taste the grease just walking past the front door of that place.”
Cal walked into the kitchen and nodded a greeting toward Lucas and Tucker. “What’s wrong with The Timbers?” he asked as he reached for a mug and filled it with coffee.
“Yeah,” Tucker said as he swallowed a bite of cinnamon roll. “I’m healthy enough, and I eat most all my meals there.”
Mo snorted. “Well, I suppose the food at The Timbers is good enough for a man with beef jerky for taste buds and a brain the size of a pinto bean.”
“I’d be happy to make some other arrangement,” Tucker offered. “You know, Mo, I’ve always said you were the best cook in Bluff County.”
“Not in your wildest dreams.” She slammed a cast-iron skillet onto the stovetop and began cracking eggs into it. “You’re doggone lucky there’s a place like The Timbers for the likes of you. No woman in her right mind would agree to sign on to cook and clean up after you, old man.”
Tucker might have responded with a barb of his own, but his mouth was full. He polished off one cinnamon roll and reached for another.
“But it’s different for you, Lucas.” Mo seized a spatula and attacked the eggs with short quick movements that were almost vicious. “At thirty-two years old, in the prime of your life, you ought to be eating breakfast at home, at your own table, with your wife and kids around you. At your age, most men—”
“And speaking of breakfast,” Cal cut in. “I’m half starved.”
Mo muttered something unintelligible under her breath and turned back to her cooking.
Lucas drank his coffee and congratulated himself for resisting the urge to remind his sister that she, herself, had never seen fit to marry. More than a dozen years ago, she’d been engaged to the much-maligned Tucker Oates, but it turned out that they were better as bickering companions than as husband and wife. Theirs was a pure love-hate relationship. Below the surface, Mo and Tucker cared deeply for each other, always had, but they couldn’t be in the same room for more than five minutes before the verbal dueling began.
That wasn’t the kind of relationship Lucas wanted. He knew some might consider him too picky, but he still hadn’t met that special someone to whom he wanted to make a lifetime commitment. It wasn’t that he had anything against commitment, or marriage, for that matter. On the contrary. If anything, his estimation of the institution was probably unrealistically high. But that was to be expected, he supposed, having been raised by parents who shared the kind of relationship about which love songs were written.
“Well?” Tucker said. “Aren’t you going to interrogate me?”
Lucas had already heard Mo’s version, and he didn’t expect that Tucker had anything new to add. Still, it never hurt to be thorough. “All right. Tell me about yesterday afternoon, Tucker.”
“Mo’s new pup had run off, and she needed an extra pair of eyes to look for him. So, I volunteered for the job on account of I’m pretty good at finding things. We were driving up on Summit Trail when…”
He droned on. If there was one thing Tucker liked more than Mo’s cooking, it was telling a story. No one could spin a yarn like Tucker, with just the right twists and turns. The problem was figuring out where the truth stopped and Tucker’s embellishments started.
Half-heartedly, Lucas listened to the complicated tale of how Mo and Tucker found the body of Hugh Miller and rescued Lexie.
“We were almost back to the ranch,” Tucker said, “when I realized I’d seen her before.”
“Who?” If anyone else had been talking, Lucas would have been all over them with questions, but Tucker’s imagination was nearly as big as his appetite. “Are you saying that you’ve met Lexie before?”
“Well, it isn’t that I’ve met her—not in person, you understand. But she looks so darned familiar. I’d swear I’ve seen that gal’s face before. Didn’t I say so, Mo? Right after we found her?”
“You know I don’t listen to half of what you babble on about,” Mo replied.
“I said ‘That young lady is pretty enough to be a movie star.”’ He tapped the front page of The Exposé where banner headlines screamed about some starlet’s latest hairstyle and aliens landing in Central Park. “You all make fun of me for keeping up with the world news, but I’m beginning to think that’s where I’ve seen her, right here in these pages. If I could only remember when…” He began to flip back to the front page.
Lucas shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for this kind of nonsense when there was a murderer at large. “You want me to believe that a woman who’s staying in one of Mo’s rental cabins is some sort of celebrity?”
“I’d bet good money on it, Lucas,” he said, coming to his feet. “I know I’ve seen a picture of that little gal somewhere.”
“Sure,” Cal put in. “And maybe she brought a couple of those Central Park aliens with her to Colorado.”
Mo chuckled appreciatively. “Or maybe she’s one of those miraculous women who’s a hundred and fifty years old but doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”
“Go ahead and laugh,” Tucker said as he grabbed another cinnamon roll and headed for the kitchen door. “But you know what they say, fact is stranger than fiction, my friends. Just take ol’ Tucker’s word on that.”
Lucas gave little credence to Tucker’s declaration, but he had to admit that the idea that a rich and famous woman choosing Destiny Canyon as a vacation spot made more than a little sense. True, there were few amenities, certainly not the hot and cold running servants that a celebrity might require, but the remote mountain location would afford privacy.
If Lexie Dale was famous—or even infamous—maybe that would explain why she’d gone so far out of her way to find this place. And it might also explain the motive behind the abduction attempt. So, who was she? And how had she learned about Destiny Canyon Ranch in the first place?
The need to question her nagged at him even harder. He took a last swig of coffee. “Well, I’d better go talk to our guest and find out for myself if there’s any truth to what Tucker said.”
“You’re not going to wake that girl, are you?” Mo asked, her disapproval ringing in every word.
“Only if she’s still asleep,” he said.
Before Mo could stop him, Lucas strode out the kitchen door and across the pine-paneled great room, toward the wide, hardwood staircase.
At the second-floor landing, he made a right and walked past the door to his father’s room to the guest room at the end of the hallway. He raised his hand to knock, when the door behind him opened slowly.
“Mo? Honey, is that you?”
Lucas turned around and walked back to where his father stood in the doorway. “Morning, Pop. How’re you feeling today?”
“Not too bad for the shape I’m in.”
The specialists had said Will wouldn’t make it through another Colorado winter, but Doc Rogers said he wouldn’t put it past Will Garrett to live a hundred years just to spite them. Lucas was less optimistic. Ever since his mother died five years ago, his father had been going downhill. Without the love of his life beside him, Will just didn’t seem to have the heart to go on.
“Lots of excitement around here yesterday,” Will said. “I suppose you’ve got your hands full with this homicide investigation.”
“Seems like,” Lucas confirmed. “But I don’t want you worrying about it, Pop. Everything’s going to be all right. I’m going to catch this guy before anyone else gets hurt.”
“I’m not worried,” Will said. “I know you’re going to do whatever it takes to bring him in. This county is lucky to have you on the case, son. I just hope that sweet little blonde is going to be all right.” He cocked his head in the direction of the guest room down the hall.
“Then, you’ve met Miss Dale?”
“Lexie?” Will smiled and for an instant, his eyes seemed less tired. “Oh yes. Last night, around midnight, I was coming back from the bathroom and stopped to rest a spell on the window seat. She asked if there was anything she could do to help me and I invited her to sit and chat a while.”
The small effort of standing seemed to weaken him. Though Lucas wanted to know what Lexie had said, his concern for his father took precedence. “Maybe you should lie back down, Pop.”
“No, son. I want to go downstairs. I’ve been aching all morning to get outside and sit on the porch for a spell. Your mother and I used to do that, you know. It was one of our favorite pastimes. After I retired, Rose and I had the time to sit and enjoy the view. Just looking out at the mountains and talking about all the things we’d done with you kids and the way we’d built this place…well, it was a sweet time, son. It truly was.”
Ten years ago, when Will had finally agreed to retire, Lucas had been fully immersed in his career in lawenforcement. Cal had not only had Lucas’s blessing, but a measure of gratitude, when he’d agreed to take over the reins of the Garrett ranch. Cal’s father, Duncan Garrett, had been Will and Rose’s first born son, the older brother Lucas had never known. Duncan’s life had already been lost in the jungles of Vietnam almost five years before Rose and Will Garrett’s late-in-life son, Lucas, was conceived.
After his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent abandonment, Cal and his younger sister, Jolie, were raised as Lucas’s siblings on the ranch. With three active young children to raise, Rose Garrett depended heavily on her older daughter, Maureen. Lucas sometimes marveled at the degree of dedication Mo had shown the family. But if the sister who was some twenty years his senior ever resented the years she’d spent tending her younger brother and two young cousins, she’d never shown it. In fact, if anything, it seemed the difference in their ages had given them a special closeness. Lucas adored his mother, but in Maureen he’d always felt he had a second mom, an older, wiser loved-one to whom he could come for kindly wisdom and counsel.
“If you can just help me down this last step…” Will said. Lucas offered his arm for support. Lucas waited until his father was comfortably situated on a porch chair with a blanket tucked around his legs, then he asked, “What did you and Lexie talk about, Pop?”
“Oh, a little of this and that. Mostly, we talked about her late grandfather, how she could always turn to him. How she still missed him. How she wished she had someone to talk to now for advice.”
“Did she ask for your advice, Pop?
“Well, yes. As a matter of fact, she did. Not outright, in so many words, understand. But I could tell she had a lot on her mind and was just itching to say it.”
Lucas shook his head. Was this the same woman who’d guarded her every comment during their interview yesterday?
“And did you give her advice, Pop?”
“Yes, I guess I did.” He seemed almost happy as he gazed across the front yard at the sunlit meadow. “She asked me if I thought it was worth the effort for a person to fight for what she wanted, even if it was something that didn’t seem like it would ever work out, even if other people disapproved and told her she was dead wrong.”
Lucas knew without asking how his father had answered Lexie’s question. Will Garrett had never run from a fight in his life. “You told her to stand her ground, of course.”
“Damn right, I did.” He nodded to himself. “You know, son, I like that little gal. And I can tell she’s got something heavy on her mind, something big, a problem she’s not sure she can handle on her own.” He met his son’s gaze. “Maybe you can find a way to help her, Lucas. I got the feeling she could use a friend about now.”
Lucas patted his father’s shoulder and smiled. “I’ll see what I can do, but right now I have to get going, Pop. I need to talk to Lexie.”
Will smiled. “You do that, son. You talk to her.” His smiled faded. “But don’t go pushing her too hard with all your official questions, you hear? She’s been through enough.”
Again, Lucas stopped short of making his father any promises where Lexie Dale was concerned.
When he returned to the house he reported to Mo that their father was on the porch, then he hurried up the stairs. What was it about Lexie that caused everybody in his family to want to protect her? First, Mo. Now, his father. Maybe Lexie Dale really was an alien, a supernatural being who’d cast an intergalactic spell over all of them.
He knocked twice on her door and waited. When he heard no movement on the other side, he knocked again. This time louder and with more authority. “Miss Dale. Lexie. It’s Lucas Garrett.” But still there was no answer, no sound at all on the other side of the door.
Finally, Lucas turned the knob and pushed the door open. The room was empty. The bed had been neatly made, almost as if it had never been slept in.
As a number of disturbing scenarios played through his mind, Lucas retraced his steps and pushed out the front door. On the porch, Mo was tending to their father, but Lucas didn’t stop to talk or inform them of where he was going.
As he strode across the meadow toward the cabin, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned by the sight of Lexie’s rented SUV still parked where it had been yesterday in front of her cabin. If she’d walked out of his family’s house without a word to Mo, knowing his sister would be concerned by her unexpected absence, then Lexie Dale’s behavior could only be called rude and thoughtless.
But what if she hadn’t walked out, Lucas thought, what if she’d been taken by force? The thought propelled him even faster across the meadow. When he reached the cabin, he was surprised to see the door that opened into the small two-room cabin standing wide open.
“Lexie!” he called out as he crossed the small yard and walked up onto the porch.
There was no answer, but what he saw as he stood on the threshold stopped him cold. The interior of the cabin looked like a scene from a low-budget horror movie. The small, hand-hewn, knotty pine table and chairs had been overturned. The bedding had been ripped off the bed and the mattress pulled from its pine frame. Each of the six drawers had been pulled from the dresser in the corner and the contents dumped in a heap in the middle of the floor. The clothes strung all over the room were distinctly feminine. Lexie’s clothes. But where was Lexie?
Where was the deputy assigned to guard the cabin last night? Had Lexie’s change in venue pulled his attention away from the cabin? The questions came to Lucas in rapid succession, but there would be no answers, not until he found Lexie.
With his gun drawn, Lucas moved carefully into the room. When he’d made certain no one was waiting behind the door in ambush, he made his way toward the bathroom.
Past the open door, he saw her. Seated on the floor, surrounded by the chaos of the ransacked room, she seemed almost in a state of shock. The shower curtain sagged behind her, where it had been torn from the rod. All of her belongings had been ruined. Her cosmetics were everywhere, crushed underfoot on the floor, along with a tangle of jewelry and the remains of a broken hair dryer.
“Lexie!”
She turned and looked up at him, seemingly oblivious to the blood trickling from her left hand.
“What the hell happened here?” He moved into the small room and reached down to pull her to her feet. “My God, are you all right?”
She allowed him to pull her to her feet. “I— I’m fine. I just walked in and found it like this.”
“You’re bleeding.” She looked down at the broken pieces of a perfume bottle still in her hand.
“Here.” Carefully he took the jagged pieces from her and dropped them onto the floor. She stood without speaking as he wrapped her hand in the lone towel still hanging on a hook over the sink.
The look on her face was haunted and her eyes shone with unshed tears. Lucas put his arm around her and led her out of the cabin and onto the sun-drenched porch.
“What’s this all about, Lexie?” he asked her. “Why would someone want to do this to you?”
When she looked up at him, he found he had to steel himself against the abject vulnerability reflected on her face. “It—it’s hard to explain,” she began. “I— I can’t—”
“But you have to,” he said softly, firmly. “I can’t protect you unless I know what’s going on. I can’t help you until you trust me. Trust me, Lexie.”
She met his gaze with a look that told him she longed to do exactly that, to place her trust in him and damn the consequences that until this point had her scared silent.
She opened her mouth, but then closed it again without saying anything. The lawman in Lucas sensed she was ready to crack. If he pushed her now she might be able to give him the answers he needed to catch a killer.
But the man in him held back, momentarily overwhelmed by compassion for a woman who he sensed had already been through more than her share of pain. He remembered his father saying she needed a friend. Was it possible to be that friend and still do his duty?
“Come with me, Lexie,” he said quietly. “We’ll talk in town, at my office.”
She hesitated for a moment and looked back at the ravaged mess inside the cabin. “But what about—”
“I’ll have my men take over here, and see to your things.”
Then he put his arm around her and walked with her across the meadow and into his family’s home where he knew, at least for the moment, she’d be safe.
THEY’D SPOKEN LITTLE on the drive into town, and they remained separated by an uneasy silence while Lucas ushered Lexie past Sylvia’s desk and into his office. It wasn’t that he’d gone soft, he told himself as he directed her to the chair opposite his desk. He did not intend to let her off without another round of solid questioning. But she had been through another ordeal this morning and it seemed only right to give her a little time to recover from the shock of finding her possessions rifled. Besides, giving her time to mull over the seriousness of her situation just might convince her to cooperate.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he told her. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? A lawyer?”
“I don’t need a lawyer. Not unless you’re planning to charge me with something.”
Lucas shook his head. “No. But I do need answers, Lexie. And I don’t intend to let up until I get them. If you’d feel better with counsel present, now’s the time to let me know.”
“I don’t need a lawyer,” she said calmly, in a voice that revealed none of the emotion he’d witnessed less than an hour ago inside the ransacked cabin. “There’s nothing more to say. I told you everything yesterday.”
“I remember what you said.” Lucas leaned back against the edge of his desk and folded his arms across his chest. “All right. Then let’s talk about today.”
