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Harlan had hoped that the bruise wouldn’t be that noticeable—a symbol of his failure—but it didn’t much matter. He’d just have to learn to live with it for the next several days.
“I’ll be fine, thanks. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit down.”
Mercer gestured to a chair. “By all means.”
Harlan glanced at Callie, then pulled the chair out, as Mercer introduced the people around the table. The names and faces came at him too quickly to process, but when the sheriff got to the only one Harlan really cared about, she finally looked up at him, offering him a curt, professional smile.
Her eyes weren’t smiling, however. Not even close. And her voice had a clipped, unfriendly tone. “Hello, Harlan.”
He nodded. “Callie.”
Mercer’s eyebrows went up. “You two know each other?”
“Long time ago,” she said. “Back in graduate school. We took a couple of criminology classes together.”
She’d said this with about as much warmth and enthusiasm as an accountant reciting the tax code. There was a lot more to it than that, but she wasn’t offering any details. Which was fine by Harlan. He didn’t want to think about those details—although he was finding it difficult not to.
Mercer said, “Denver, right? University of Colorado?”
“Right,” they said in unison.
They exchanged an awkward glance as Mercer studied them curiously, then sat back down.
“Small world,” he said, “but I reckon you two can catch up some other time. Right now we’ve got business to attend to.” He looked at Harlan. “Your supervising deputy says you’ve got some information to share.”
Harlan tore his gaze away from Callie and nodded. He had spent the better part of his morning at the Torrington marshal’s substation gathering up as much intel on Billy Boy Lyman as he could find. He hadn’t had much sleep since the incident, and his supervisor back in Colorado Springs had urged him to take it easy and let someone else handle the heavy lifting.
But Harlan had refused.
He preferred to clean up his own messes.
When he’d heard that his Glock had been found under a burned-out pickup truck near Williamson—a vehicle carrying the body of a local rancher—he’d made a vow right then and there that he wouldn’t rest until Billy Boy was back in custody.
Or begging St. Peter to open up the pearly gates.
“First,” he said, “I want to apologize to all of you for making any of this necessary. If I hadn’t been derelict in my duties, none of us would be sitting here right now.”
He glanced at Callie again but got nothing back. She was carefully examining her fingernails.
“Let’s not worry about blame,” Mercer said. “The way I look at it, the only reason we’re here is because of this boy Lyman.”
“Thanks, Sheriff, I appreciate that.” Harlan reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small stack of photographs. “I assume you all saw the mug shot I faxed over?”
There were nods and murmurs around the room.
“Lyman’s a Nebraska native who moved with his mother to Wyoming when he was sixteen years old. He’s been in and out of custody ever since, his latest bust for an aborted robbery attempt at the Colorado Springs Bank and Trust three weeks ago. He was out on parole at the time, and since the courts are backed up, someone on high figured it wouldn’t hurt to ship his butt up to Torrington to finish out his state sentence while he’s waiting for trial. That’s where I came in.”
He laid the stack of photos on the table. “We took these from the convenience store’s surveillance footage. The main unit was destroyed, but the owner keeps a backup in his office closet.”
“How’s the clerk doing?”
The question came from a young guy sitting next to Callie. Rusty-something.
“Touch and go, last I heard.”
Harlan had found the clerk tied up and shoved into a storeroom, his head caved in by a blow much harder than the one he himself had received. Once he saw the poor guy, he knew that he could easily have wound up in the very same condition. So maybe getting beaned by Billy Boy instead of the girlfriend or the potato chip lover was a blessing he should be thankful for.
Tapping the photos, he said, “These are the two perpetrators who helped Lyman escape. We think they may have been his partners in the bank job, but they were wearing ski masks at the time and managed to get away.”
Mercer said, “You run those photos through facial recognition?”
Harlan nodded. “No hits so far, which isn’t much of a surprise considering how bad the resolution is.” He looked at the others. “We found their Chevy Malibu dumped in a field about sixty miles north of the convenience store. Broken water pump. That’s probably where they hitched a ride with the victim. And since people tend to go where they feel most comfortable, I’m hoping they might be local. Maybe one of you crossed paths with them at one time or another.”
He slid the photos to Mercer, who picked up the stack and started shuffling through it. Within seconds, something shifted in the sheriff’s eyes. “Well I’ll be damned. This is getting cozier and cozier.”
“You recognize them?”
Mercer didn’t answer. Instead he took a photo off the top of the stack and spun it across the table toward Callie. “That face look familiar to you?”
Callie caught it, then dropped her gaze, studying the image carefully.
After a moment, she said, “Looks like Megan Pritchard, but this is a little fuzzy and it’s been a while. She hasn’t been around much since her last stint in juvie, and that was like—what?—three, four years ago?”
Mercer shrugged. “Give or take.”
“So who is she?” Harlan asked.
“Megan Pritchard-Breen,” Callie said. “Only nobody uses the Breen part since her mother got a divorce years ago. She’s one of our local troublemakers. Sheriff here likes to call her a wild child, but I think he’s being polite in deference to the family. Sociopath is more accurate.”
“She’s also a bit of a fire bug,” Mercer told him. “So draw your own conclusions.”
“And she’s got family up here?”
Mercer glanced at Callie, and Harlan followed his lead, but she once again averted her gaze. He sensed, however, that this time it had nothing to do with their past. There was a different kind of history at play here. An underlying discomfort she wasn’t anxious to address. And Harlan had the feeling he was the only one in the room who didn’t know about it.
“She’s the granddaughter of Jonah Pritchard,” Mercer said. “And if you spent any significant amount of time in Williamson, you’d recognize the name.”
“Local celebrity?”
“That’s one way of putting it, if you like ‘em old and mean and wealthier than the crown prince of Tangiers.”
“I take it you’re not a fan.”
“Let’s just say the pathology seems to run in the family, only Jonah is a little better at hiding it.” He looked at Callie. “And if that is Megan Pritchard, I think you know what it means.”
She frowned. “You want Rusty and me to go out there.”
“I know you’ve got issues with the old coot, but you are the lead deputy on this case.”
“Out where?” Harlan asked.
“Pritchard Ranch,” Mercer said. “If Meg’s in trouble, she’d go to her grandpa for help. Always has, always will.”
“Which means Billy Boy might be there, as well.”
“That’s the logical assumption. So I’d suggest you three saddle up, pronto. We don’t have a warrant, but maybe the Pritchards will cooperate.”
Harlan nodded, then got to his feet.
“Wait a minute,” Callie said, her frown deepening. “You want him to go with us?”
Mercer’s brows went up again. “Is that a problem? I thought you two were old friends.”
Harlan and Callie exchanged another glance, neither of them willing to tackle that one in public, and Harlan could feel the eyes of everyone in the room shifting in his direction. The office gossip line would be buzzing this afternoon.
Mercer tapped his watch. “Tick tock, Deputy Glass. We’ve got a trio of killers to catch.”
Looking like a woman who had just been condemned to a decade of indentured servitude, Callie reluctantly rolled her chair back and stood up.
Harlan knew exactly how she felt.
Chapter Four
“How much farther is it?” Harlan asked.
These were more or less the first words spoken since the three of them had climbed into Callie’s cruiser. Now that Harlan had broken the silence, Rusty—who had probably sensed the tension in the air and had been smart enough to keep his mouth shut—gestured from the front passenger seat, saying, “Just up the road apiece. About five or six miles.”
To Callie’s mind, it might as well be five or six hundred. With all due respect to the late Jim Farber and his family, she couldn’t wait until this day was over. From Nana Jean’s matchmaking to the surprise appearance of a man she loathed and now this trip out to Pritchard Ranch—the last place she wanted to go—this was turning out to be a record breaker. All future days would surely be measured against this one.
Callie had never considered herself a vindictive woman. She’d never been one to hold on to a grudge. More often than not she found she could remain civil with the tiny handful of men she’d been intimate with. She had long ago convinced herself that she was a much better friend than lover.
But the breakup with Harlan had been different. Maybe it was her immaturity, or maybe it was the simple fact that she had been so head over heels in love with him. Whatever the cause, she had carried this burning resentment toward him a lot longer than she wanted to admit.
It rarely came to the surface, however. No reason it should. She hadn’t seen Harlan in nearly a decade, and had long since learned to get through a day, a week, sometimes even a whole month, without thinking about him. But every time she did, she found herself hating him all over again.
She knew, of course, that her anger was simply a way of masking the pain. Not just because of the breakup, but because of the circumstances surrounding it.
She’d bet good money that if the accident hadn’t happened, she and Harlan would still be together. No question. But that tragic night had forced such an enormous wedge between them that it was no wonder they could barely stand to look at each other.
Callie didn’t think she would ever forgive Harlan for what he’d done. And until today it hadn’t been much of an issue.
Now here he was, sitting in the backseat of her SUV, and it took every bit of inner strength she could muster to keep from slamming the brakes and throwing him out in the middle of the highway.
The thing that really galled her, however, was that despite her turmoil she couldn’t stop thinking about how good he looked. The years had given his face and body an angularity, a solid, rustic dignity that had only been hinted at in his younger days. He’d been attractive back then, no doubt about it, but now he looked as if he’d just stepped out of a movie screen, his blue-eyed Hollywood good looks tempered with just enough real-world ruggedness to make him a genuine human being.
And that was all the more reason to hate him. He should be suffering for what he’d done. Balding and getting too fat and covered in festering boils.
Tell us how you really feel, Callie.
Gripping the wheel tighter, she punched the accelerator and picked up speed.
THE PRITCHARD FAMILY had always displayed their wealth without apology. Nestled in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, the ranch was seven thousand acres of rolling hills, grassy flatland and a sleekly modern, three-story dream house that was big enough to hold the population of a small third-world country.
As she pulled up to the gate, Callie thought about her connection to the family. Despite the shared blood, she had long ago realized that there really wasn’t one. Not the kind that mattered, at least. Before she was even born, Jonah Pritchard had made it clear that neither she nor her mother were worth spitting on, and Callie herself couldn’t care less about his money.
Everyone in town knew the history between the two families. A few of her friends—including Sheriff Mercer—had urged her to pursue her stake in the Pritchard fortune. When her father was killed, he’d left behind a sizable trust that rightfully belonged to her. But pursuing it meant lawsuits and court hearings and exhumed bodies and DNA tests and a lot of bad feelings all around.
If Callie went forward, she knew full well that Jonah would wage a smear campaign against the memory of her mother. He’d hire a platoon of lawyers and PR flacks to claim the DNA tests had somehow been tainted or tampered with, claiming the girl had slept around like a common whore and that Callie could be just about anyone’s child.
There was no amount of money that would dull the sting of such an attack, especially in a town the size of Williamson, which had less than seven thousand residents—the majority of whom loved to gossip. And with Nana Jean getting frailer by the week, it just wasn’t worth it.
Callie was content to know that she had earned her place in this world. And she couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that Megan, the so-called real Pritchard granddaughter, had turned out to be a family embarrassment. No smear campaign necessary.
Callie had to admit she’d found a certain satisfaction in this knowledge.
As she pulled her cruiser to a stop, the guard manning the gate came out of his booth and approached her window with a smile on his face. Landry Bickham was a grizzled old cowboy who had been working for the Pritchard family as long as anyone could remember, and Callie didn’t think she’d ever seen him without that smile.
“Afternoon, Deputy Glass. You sure you didn’t make a wrong turn?”
“If only,” she said. “I need to go up to the house. Police business.”
Bickham grunted. “You make an appointment?”
Callie just stared at him.
Bickham nodded, then went back to the booth and picked up the phone. Callie knew she could ask him if he’d seen Megan in the past few hours, but there wasn’t much point. Landry was loyal to a fault—the secret behind his longevity on the job.
After his call was done, he came back shaking his head, the smile still intact. “Jonah is a little under the weather today, isn’t taking any visitors.”
“I already told you, this isn’t a social call.”
Bickham shrugged. “You might try again tomorrow morning.”
“Open the gate, Landry.”
“I really wish I could do that, Callie, but I’ve got my—”
Before Landry could finish his sentence, Harlan had his door open and was climbing out. He brushed the flap of his coat back, revealing the star clipped to his belt. “U.S. Marshals Service. Open that gate now or consider yourself under arrest.”
Bickham’s smile faltered slightly. “For what?”
“For aiding and abetting a fugitive. Or for being a general pain in the butt. Take your choice.”
Callie couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed by Harlan’s intrusion. Didn’t he think she could get the job done?
Apparently not.
“Fugitive? What fugitive?” Bickham said. “I’m just following orders.”
