Manhunt (A Rocky Mountain Thriller Book 1) Read online

Jace pushed his way into the Hideout Saloon and bellied up to the bar. The place smelled like the inside of an ashtray and looked as if it had barely survived until closing time the night before. Judging from the vacant stools, the locals hadn’t gotten off work yet, or maybe they were in the same shape as the bar and had opted to lie low tonight.

  In the tavern’s defense, a Dale Watson song drifted from the corner jukebox. Jace’s kind of place.

  He slid off his coat, still wet from the snow, and slipped it over the stool’s vinyl back. Settling in, his gaze landed on the tapper. What he wouldn’t give for a cold beer, real country music, and an afternoon with nothing to worry about. Instead here he was, flirting with landing himself back in jail all to help a woman with pretty green eyes.

  He shook his head and tried to banish the image of Shanna’s eyes from his mind. The worst thing was the look she’d given him when he told her he’d done time. Disappointment. Disillusion. He still felt the sting. Maybe he shouldn’t care, but he did. And that was more worrisome than anything. He’d agreed to help her in the hope he could finally make a rich bastard pay for his sins. But somewhere along the trek through Bonner Pass, things had gotten more complicated.

  Jace pulled his gaze from the tapper. This might be the perfect place to drown his sorrows, but that wasn’t why he was here. He needed to find out what, if anything, the locals knew about what had happened on Gusset Ridge. Or at least, the sheriff’s version of what had happened.

  He focused on the big man behind the bar. “Hey.”

  “Minute.” The bartender turned back to the pressing job of wiping sludge-thick dust off a bottle of Drambuie that looked like it hadn’t been splashed into a glass in ten years.

  So customer service wasn’t this guy’s priority.

  Jace glanced around the bar’s dark interior. He pointed to a television suspended high in one corner. “Can I get you to turn that on?”

  The bartender nearly growled. Seemingly in slow motion, he lumbered to the end of the bar and flicked a switch on the wall. A sitcom flickered on the screen.

  “Can you turn the channel? I was hoping to catch the news.”

  You’d think he’d asked the guy to spit-shine his shoes. “You drinking something? Or you just come in to watch the tube?”

  The sour odor of day-old alcohol on the bartender’s breath just about knocked Jace over. “I’ll have a tap. You serve food?”

  “Kitchen’s not open.”

  Jace’s stomach pinched. The stapled paper menu stuck between ashtray and salt-and-pepper shakers promised grub from noon until midnight. But since this guy seemed to be the type to carry out a grudge, Jace thought better of pointing that out. Let the guy nurse his hangover while Jace nursed a beer. He’d stop at the corner store and get some food to bring back to Shanna. “Ran into a roadblock on the highway yesterday. Any idea what that was about?”

  The bartender plunked a flat beer in front of him and grunted something unintelligible.

  “Sheriff’s department,” Jace prodded. “Looked like something was going on up Gusset’s Ridge way.”

  “Don’t know.”

  Some help this guy was. Just Jace’s luck to get a bartender who hated small talk. He glanced up at the tube where an impossibly gorgeous blonde was arguing with an impossibly preppy actor-type wearing scrubs. “They might have some explanation on the news. Mind changing the channel?”

  The guy gave him a nod, yet didn’t move one muscle toward the television.

  Jace glanced at his watch. Two minutes after five. If the sheriff’s roadblock made the news, it would likely be a headlining story. He’d better hurry. “You got a remote?”

  “Lost it.”

  Great. Jace pushed away from the bar and strode to the corner. Climbing up on a stool, he manually changed the channel just as the Action News headline flashed on the screen. He turned up the volume. Pity to drown out the music, especially since it seemed to be the only thing this dump had going for it, but he needed to hear.

  After stories ranging from an environmental group protesting a uranium mine in the Red Desert Basin to reports of chronic wasting disease in deer, Jace was rethinking the decision. He must have either missed the report, or there wasn’t one.

  The door swung open and a stream of early evening sunlight poured into the dingy bar, highlighting streaks on the mirror behind the booze bottles. The bartender glanced up. Instead of the growl he’d given Jace, he broke out a wide grin. “Hey, baby. How you doing?”

  Jace would recognize that look anywhere. The wide smile. The too-long stare. The feeling that the whole world came alive when that special person entered a room. He’d looked at Darla like that once. Hell, if he hadn’t had his head handed to him, he would have been happy to look at her that way for the rest of his life.

  A woman who looked more green around the gills than the bartender plopped on the bar stool next to Jace. “Wasn’t sure I was going to make it this morning.”

  “Hard day?”

  He focused on the weather report and sipped his beer in an attempt to give some semblance of privacy.

  “Yeah, thanks to you and those shots of tequila.”

  The bartender pulled a tap and set a glass of a beer in front of her, still smiling. “A little hair of the dog?”

  The woman groaned, but took a sip anyway. “Hey, you hear the excitement?”

  “My excitement is you coming in here.”

  She giggled. “No, I mean, the manhunt.”

  Jace gave up any interest in the weather report. He fought the urge to lean toward the woman in an effort to catch each word.

  “Manhunt?” the bartender repeated.

  “Yeah, Susan told me about it. I guess some woman shot her boyfriend.”

  The bartender grunted. “Yeah? Who’s the bitch?”

  Jace could see the woman shrug in the mirror’s dim reflection. “Don’t know. But Susan said the sheriff was stopping cars, looking for her.”

  “Who’s the boyfriend?”

  “Some rich guy from Palmer. Davis, I think they said.”

  The name meant nothing to Jace, although Shanna had mentioned another man was on the hunting trip, Talbot’s financial officer.

  “She killed him dead.”

  Jace went cold.

  “I guess they were hunting. Had a fight. She shot the outfitter, too.”

  Jace spun to face the woman. Gut tight, he forced the question from his lips. “The outfitter have a name?”

  The bartender glared. “What’s it to you?”

  Jace ignored him, keeping his focus on the woman. “A name. Did they release the outfitter’s name?”

  The woman pushed bleached hair the texture of cotton candy over one shoulder and smiled as if enjoying the attention. “I’m so bad at names.”

  Jace didn’t have time for this. He needed to know. He wanted to shake her. “Was it Roger Harris? Gusset Ridge Outfitters?”

  She screwed up her forehead, then reluctantly nodded. “That sounds right…maybe…”

  Jace felt sick. He wasn’t close with Roger. Hell, he’d bought the ranch so he wouldn’t have to be close with anybody. But he liked Roger. He was good people. Honest. Kind. Too kind.

  Roger didn’t deserve to die.

  Jace’s ears hummed, anger churning in him like a river over rapids. He threw a few bucks on the bar, slipped off his stool, and made for the door. He tried to look as casual as possible, but he could feel the bartender’s eyes on him even after the door closed.

  And he couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take the guy to pick up the phone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cigarette smoke wafted toward Shanna, carried on a wave of giggles.

  Apparently she and Jace weren’t the only ones to discover the great hiding place behind the furniture store. So had what was probably the town’s entire preteen girl population—all four of them. The cigarette butts littering the ground should have clued her in.

  Shanna lowered herself between a scraggly
clump of bushes and the store’s steel siding. She didn’t know how long Jace had been gone, but it seemed like forever. Even so, her mind was still buzzing with his confession and what it might mean.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the steel. She was such a damn romantic. As starry-eyed as those girls puffing on cigarettes and dreaming of cute boys. Would she ever learn? Men were who they were, not who she wanted them to be. All her romantic ideals—the loving husband, the wise boss, the valiant cowboy—were fantasies.

  She needed to start facing reality.

  She scraped the hair out of her eyes. She’d give Jace a few more minutes, then she was going to the sheriff and taking her chances. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She didn’t have anything to fear.

  Men’s voices rumbled from the street.

  Shanna peered around the corner of the building.

  A sheriff’s vehicle sat in front of the tavern. A man and a woman stood on the sidewalk outside, talking to the deputy. The man gestured dramatically to the tavern with a meaty hand.

  Shanna’s throat tightened. She tried to make out their words over the throb of her pulse. Something had happened. But what?

  One of the men glanced her way.

  She ducked back behind the building. Every nerve in her body screamed to run.

  The excitement had to be about her. The odds of a sheriff’s car stopping outside the very tavern where Jace had gone to gather information were too great for even her to believe it was a coincidence. So what had happened? Where was Jace?

  Had he turned her in? Would he do that?

  She took another peek around the corner, careful to keep at the same level as the bushes to conceal her presence. Still just the man, the deputy, and the woman. No Jace.

  So where was he?

  Shanna pushed horrible images from her mind. Jace arrested. Jace dead. She had to concentrate. She had to figure out what to do next.

  “Shanna.”

  She started. Her empty stomach lurched. She squinted into the shadows, searching the thick copse of cottonwood and willow that flanked the creek.

  “Shanna. Here.”

  She followed the sound of his voice to a parking lot nestled behind the convenience store on the other side of the schoolgirls’ smoking refuge. The girls looked from the parking lot to her, staring with big, watchful eyes.

  At first she just saw the truck, a rusted-out pickup that had seen better decades. Then Jace propped an arm and leaned out the open window. “Hurry.”

  Shanna shot to her feet. Pushing past the surprised girls, she raced across the parking lot to the truck. She didn’t know what was going on, what he’d learned or where the pickup had come from. For all she knew, she was a fool to trust him. But she didn’t think so. He’d gotten her this far, hadn’t he? Jail or no jail, Jace had to be a better bet than a sheriff she didn’t know.

  Or was she just being gullible again?

  She yanked open the passenger door and jumped inside. “Where did you get this truck?”

  “Bought it.” Jace jammed the truck into gear. “Get down.”

  She slid off the seat and onto the floorboards, folding her body so the top of her head was below window level.

  Jace hit the gas. The truck’s engine vibrated under her and growled loudly enough to rattle her teeth. He took a hard turn and the truck jolted onto the street.

  “What’s going on?” Shanna asked more forcefully.

  “You tell me.”

  “What?”

  “What happened on Gusset Ridge?”

  “I told you what happened.”

  “I want details.”

  “Details? What do you mean?”

  “Did you fire your gun?”

  “No.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Where is it?”

  “What?”

  “Your rifle. I assume you weren’t out hunting deer without a rifle.”

  Her rifle. What had happened to it? For a moment, she couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe.

  Jace took a hard left, forcing her to hang on to the seat.

  “It was in its holster thing. On my saddle.”

  “And what happened to the horse?”

  “I fell off. She was scared. She took off and joined the pack mules.”

  “So you didn’t even touch the rifle? Didn’t return fire? Didn’t even try to protect yourself?”

  “I loaded it and put it in the thing on my saddle.”

  “And after that?”

  “Nothing. By the time I realized Mr. Barstow was shooting at me, my horse was long gone.”

  Jace set his chin. From her angle below the dash, she could see a muscle working in his throat. “Two men were killed on that ridge.”

  “Two men?” Somehow she couldn’t believe it. Here she’d been shot at, Barstow had tried to kill her, but the idea that someone had actually died yesterday shocked her to the core. “Who?”

  “My neighbor, for one.”

  “The outfitter?”

  “Roger Harris. Good man. One of the finest I’ve met since I moved here.”

  She remembered him. He was nice. Considerate. He’d helped her saddle her horse that morning. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? You said you didn’t kill him.”

  His tone was so sharp, she reeled backward, pressing her back against the door. “I didn’t. I’m telling the truth.”

  He clenched his teeth and took another turn. He pressed his foot to the accelerator. The truck shuddered but responded. The engine roared. The tires whistled over pavement.

  Shanna didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know what to do. Jace’s anger, his obvious belief that she’d kept a horrible truth from him, scared her. She could only hope he would tell her all of what he’d learned and give her a chance to explain… and that he’d believe her. “You said two men died. Who was the second?”

  “A guy by the name of Davis. Know him?”

  “Ron Davis?” She felt a shock zing through her, then nothing but numbness. “He’s Talbot Mining’s chief financial officer. He was part of our hunting party.”

  “How did he end up dead?”

  “I—I don’t know. Mr. Barstow must have shot him, and your neighbor, too.” She gave her head a little shake to clear it. She still couldn’t wrap her mind around the image of Mr. Barstow as a killer. Saying the words out loud made the whole thing even more unbelievable.

  “Sheriffs’ departments all over the state seem to believe you shot them both.”

  “Me?”

  He slapped something on the seat near her head.

  She flinched, then looked to see what it was. A newspaper. The headline screamed Woman Wanted for Double Murder.

  “You and your lover, this Davis guy, had a falling out when he refused to leave his wife. He broke it off between you during the hunting trip. So you shot him.”

  “That’s not true! Mr. Davis was new to the company. I didn’t know him beyond the office. I didn’t shoot anyone!”

  “They say Roger tried to stop you, so you shot him, too.”

  She shook her head. Jace couldn’t believe that. Not after all they’d been through. Not after…

  He pointed to the newspaper. “Read it for yourself.”

  She moved her eyes over the newsprint, not really seeing the words. Below the fold, a photo of herself stared back at her. Her vision blurred. The black-and-white words of the story blended to a hazy gray. “If you believe I did what they say… if you believe I’m a murderer… why didn’t you turn me in? There was a deputy right there. Why did you smuggle me out in this truck?”

  “I wanted to ask you myself. Witness your reaction. See if you’ve been feeding me a load of bull.”

  She looked at him directly, unblinking. “Then look, dammit.”

  He glanced at her.

  “I didn’t shoot anyone. I don’t know what happened on the ridge, not after I ran. But the last I saw, both Mr.
Davis and your friend Roger were alive. I swear it.”

  He turned his eyes back to the highway. Lips pressed in a line, he drove, saying nothing.

  Shanna’s pulse pounded over the roar of the engine. Jace had to believe her. She’d just met the man yesterday, but over the past hours, she’d thought she felt something meld between them. Some kind of bond. What? Trust? She didn’t know. But in less than an hour since they’d reached Copperville, it had all fallen apart.

  Maybe they didn’t really trust each other. Maybe she just wanted to trust him. Maybe she just wanted so badly to be able to trust anyone.

  A minute stretched to five. The truck’s floorboards grew hot. Her legs grew stiff. Still, she didn’t dare move. She watched Jace’s face, trying to guess what he’d do next.

  Finally Jace glanced down at her. “You can get up now. No one will notice you out here.”

  She straightened her cramping legs and slid into the seat. She stretched the seat belt across her chest.

  The Wyoming countryside whizzed past outside the window. Oil rigs protruded from the dry brown valley. Mountain peaks loomed to the front and driver’s side, dusted white with snow. Judging from the slant of the evening sun, they were moving north. Back in the direction they came.

  Shanna swallowed into a dry throat. “You’re taking me back?”

  Jace gave his head a shake. “I’m taking you to Palmer.”

  “Palmer?” To her apartment? To Emily? “What happened to going to the next county? What happened to getting someone impartial to investigate?”

  “You’re wanted for a double murder. You’re the subject of a statewide manhunt. There’s no such thing as impartiality anymore.”

  She nodded. “So I turn myself in. Prove myself innocent in court.”

  Jace let out a harsh laugh. “Charged with a double murder? With Barstow and the sheriff as witnesses against you? Sorry, Shanna, but you don’t stand a chance.”

  He was right. If Mr. Barstow and the sheriff said they saw her shoot those men, there would be no jury in the state that would believe her.

  She studied Jace’s face. His jaw was still hard, still set, but she could swear there was something a little softer in his eyes. “Do you believe me?”

  “That’s not going to matter one way or the other.”