Molly still couldn’t get her head around what was happening. “Why would you shoot Gage? He was about to give me Rowdy. It would have been over. You would have had the dummy and saved your job.”

  “Yes, my job that I hate,” Georgia said. “When your father came in wanting to ensure Rowdy, I saw a way out. I didn’t know some fool was going to murder him and take the dummy. That hadn’t been part of the plan. I figured the way Clay Wheaton looked when he came in to sign the paperwork that he didn’t have much time left. You still don’t get it, do you?”

  She didn’t. She was still too shocked to make sense of any of it.

  “I changed the beneficiary. You were never going to get a million dollars. Your father signed a fake one with you as the beneficiary. I had him sign another page—this one—so when he died and Rowdy didn’t turn up, I would collect the insurance.”

  “But only if you split it with me,” came another voice behind Molly, another one she recognized.

  * * *

  BRANDT SURFACED WITH a blinding headache.

  He pushed himself up. He could hear voices coming through the trees, his memory returning like a swift kick to his solar plexus. He rose, staggered for a moment, then began to move toward the sound, telling himself that as long as they were talking, Molly might still be alive.

  * * *

  MOLLY TURNED TO see Jessica Woods, the alleged paranormal investigator she’d met at the café. Jessica came out of the trees from the direction of the road out of town. Like Georgia, she was armed. Molly had a sudden flashback of that day in the hotel when she’d thought that the two of them were in league together. It had been such an uncharitable thought that she’d felt bad about it. Now she realized that her instincts had been right. Just too late to do anything about it. Georgia and Jessica had been in this together.

  “You were both pretending you were looking for Rowdy,” she said.

  “Oh, we weren’t pretending,” Georgia said. “We definitely needed Rowdy not to be found before we could get our hands on it and destroy it so we could collect the insurance money. You, Molly, with all your righteous behavior, were the fly in the ointment. Would you really have given up a million dollars to help me?”

  “I would have,” she said. “You were my friend. I didn’t want you to lose your job.”

  Georgia laughed. “Didn’t I tell you, Jess? She’s a saint, straight arrow, gullible as all get-out. Her and the cowboy sheriff.”

  “I see you have your phone,” Jessica said. “I wouldn’t bother trying to call him. The sheriff won’t be coming to save you. I ran into him in the woods. I left him out cold.”

  Molly’s body went limp. She staggered, terrified to think what Jessica had done to him. The phone had been her backup. Now there was no one coming to save either of them. “Was the deputy part of your plan too?” she asked, surprised that her voice sounded almost normal to her ears.

  “Jaden?” Georgia laughed. “He was just for amusement and information. I figured he’d know if Rowdy was found and tell me. But he didn’t even know about the ransom demands. You and the sheriff kept that bit of information to yourselves.”

  “We should get moving,” Jessica said. “Grab the dummy and let’s go. I can finish this up.” Georgia moved toward the rock and the case with Rowdy inside. Gage hadn’t moved. “Leave the case—that way no one will ever know if the dummy was in there or not.”

  Finish up? Molly held her breath afraid she already knew what they had planned.

  “Sad that your uncle killed you, Molly. But at least you got off a shot that ended his life as well. Jaden will find an unregistered gun lying by each of you with your prints on one and Gage’s on the other. Shouldn’t have come out here by yourself. Should have called me.” Georgia was saying. “When I hear what happened, I’m going to be devastated. We’d become such good friends.” Georgia reached down to open Rowdy’s case.

  Gage’s hand shot out. Molly caught the glint of a gun an instant before she heard the shots. Two of them, fired quickly in succession. Georgia went down hard next to Rowdy lying inside his open case. Behind her, Molly heard Jessica swear and instinctively rush forward.

  The moment she did, Molly lunged for her and the gun in her hand.

  * * *

  TWO SHOTS ECHOED through the trees. Brandt didn’t know how long he’d been out as he struggled to his feet. Too long. He ran toward the rock, terrified of what he would find. As he burst out of the pines, his own weapon drawn, his head pounding, fear gripped him as he took in the sight before him in the moonlight. Near the rock, there was no movement. He could see Gage slumped over, Georgia on the ground in front of Rowdy’s case.

  At first he didn’t see Molly. Everyone seemed to be down. But then he saw movement. Molly and Jessica grappling on the ground. The shine of the gun in Jessica’s hand in the moonlight as the two rolled, Jessica coming out on top.

  He charged toward them, terrified of taking a shot for fear he would hit Molly and yet at the same time, terrified not to take the shot. The bang of a gunshot was followed by a second one. Both seemed to fill the small meadow, echoing off the large boulder.

  For a moment, nothing moved. Brandt blinked. Jessica was still looming over Molly, the gun in her hand. And then Molly wrestled the gun away and Jessica slowly collapsed to the ground beside her.

  Brandt rushed to Molly, dropping to his knees next to her, his gun still in his hand as he stared at her in the moonlight. He’d been terrified by all the blood, convinced Jessica had shot her.

  “Are you hit?” he cried and felt a drowning wave of relief when she shook her head.

  “I got it all,” Molly said as he took her in his arms.

  It wasn’t until hours later after reinforcements had arrived, Gage had been rushed to a hospital and that he and Molly were in his office, that Brandt understood her words. She’d recorded everything on her phone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Brandt listened to the recording on Molly’s phone a second time. It was all there, the truth and not just about Gage, but about Georgia and Jessica. After Molly had told him about hearing Rowdy singing at night, he’d done a search of her room and the one adjoining it on the opposite side as Georgia’s.

  He’d found the small recorder in the air vent and known only one person could have put it there. He almost had everything he needed to release Cecil from jail—and arrest the person he now believed had killed Clay Wheaton, a.k.a. Seth Crandell.

  He just needed proof.

  Molly was at the hotel, no doubt packing to leave. He told himself this shouldn’t take long as he grabbed his Stetson and drove to Eureka. After everything he’d learned, he thought the prosecutor could make a pretty good case.

  The sheriff just needed a few things clarified.

  Tom Sherman looked up in surprise at finding Brandt standing in his doorway. “Sheriff,” he said as he got to his feet, placing both hands on his desk. For support? Or so Brandt didn’t see how nervous he was? “I heard you caught Seth’s killer. Congrats.”

  “Guess you haven’t heard the latest.” He saw a tick around Tom’s mouth. “Cecil Crandell didn’t kill him.”

  “I thought I heard you found his gun?”

  “Did through an anonymous tip after Cecil was arrested.”

  “I should think that would be sufficient to put him away for a long time.”

  Brandt nodded. “I have crime techs breaking down the weapon as we speak. That’s the thing about killers. They just assume they can wipe prints off a gun, but they always miss a spot. All we need is one clear print.”

  He saw Tom swallow and shift nervously on his feet, waiting. “I suspect the killer was worried there wouldn’t be enough evidence against Cecil, even though the man had confessed. Oftentimes people confess to cover for someone else.”

  “His son Gage,” Tom said quickly. “I thought of that myself.”

  “Gage didn’t kill Seth.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to need your fingerprints, Tom.”

  The man had the look of someone about to make a run for it. “Why?”

  “I’m betting we are going to find Seth’s prints in your SUV. You did meet with him before the night you killed him, didn’t you? Did he tell you what happened the night your sister died? Or did he continue to cover for his brother Ty? I’m also betting that you’ve been watching the hotel, waiting for an opportunity to get what you believed was justice.”

  “You can’t prove—”

  “That’s just it—I think I can. I forgot to mention,” Brandt said. “Seth’s small recorder was found. He’d recorded Rowdy’s songs on it, probably liked to play them at night. I would imagine that’s what the elderly couple a few doors down heard the night Seth died. The night you murdered him, you retrieved the recorder when you heard Ash coming up on the elevator. You sure you didn’t leave your fingerprints on the recorder? How about the tape inside?”

  “You can’t prove anything,” Tom said, sounding more confident than he looked.

  “Jaden,” Brandt said to his deputy who’d been waiting in the hall. “Would you please read Mr. Sherman his rights?”

  As the deputy approached him, Tom’s expression crumpled. He dropped into his chair. “Someone needed to get justice for Ruby. Your father sure as hell didn’t.”

  “But you killed the wrong man, Tom. Seth wasn’t responsible for your sister’s death, Ty was. I suspect that’s why he killed himself.”

  Tom’s eyes widened. “I want a lawyer.”

  “I’m sure you have one you can call,” Brandt said. “But I’m curious. Why did you leave the recorder in the hotel, set up where you could operate it remotely in the room next to Seth’s daughter?” he asked after Jaden had read Tom his rights.

  Tom shook his head. “If that ridiculous dummy hadn’t been missing, she and the others would have left town and it would have been over. I could have put Ruby to rest, finally after all these years.”

  “You tried to scare away the wrong person,” Brandt said. “All you did was make her more determined to find her father’s killer and find Rowdy.”

  “Rowdy,” Tom said with a bark of laughter. “That damned puppet. You’re right. Seth and I did meet. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me the truth about what happened to my sister. He had the puppet do it. I should have killed them both then.”

  Brandt watched Jaden lead the man out of his office toward the patrol SUV parked outside thinking what a tragedy it had all been. If Cecil hadn’t dropped his gun that night in the ventriloquist’s room, maybe Tom never would have picked it up and killed Seth.

  The irony was that if Tom had waited, Seth would have died of natural causes and Tom wouldn’t be arrested for homicide right now.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  Molly turned to look at Brandt. She smiled at the handsome cowboy sheriff in the noisy Kalispell airport. It had taken a while before she’d been able to smile after everything that had happened.

  Tom Sherman’s arrest had rocked the county. Tom’s fingerprints had been found on the tape recorder cassette as well as a partial on the trigger of the gun.

  The townfolk of Fortune Creek had been more shocked when it came to Georgia Eden. Like Molly, everyone had liked Georgia. She’d fooled them all, especially Molly.

  That was what made it so hard, she thought now as she picked up the case with Rowdy safely inside. Her suitcase was already being loaded onto the plane. She’d thought she’d found a friend.

  “I have a feeling that we’ll see each other again,” she said meeting Brandt’s gaze.

  “Not soon enough to suit me,” he said stepping to her. His kiss was pure honey, his hand cupping her neck warm and reassuring. “You sure about this?” he asked as he drew back from the kiss.

  “I want to personally deliver Rowdy to the museum,” she said. At least that part of Georgia’s story was true. The money would go to Gage, her uncle who had helped save her life. He was still in the hospital, but doctors said he should make a full recovery.

  When he did, Molly wanted him to have the option of leaving the ranch that he’d felt trapped on all these years.

  “You know that he probably won’t leave,” Brandt had said when she’d told him of her plan.

  “Probably not since his sons are there, his mother and father. He might not realize how strong those roots are that have held him there,” she said. “But I like the idea of Rowdy maybe saving Gage’s life since he’d saved Rowdy.”

  “I never thought you’d really destroy it,” Brandt said now, motioning to the case with the Crandell Ranch brand on it.

  She smiled, wondering if that was true. “It took my father’s murder for me to finally get to know him.” She shook her head ruefully. “I wish he knew how sorry I am.”

  The sheriff scoffed. “You risked your life to save Rowdy and now your father’s memory will live on at the museum. I think he knows.” He drew her to him as tears welled in her eyes.

  As her flight was called, he let go of her. She wiped her eyes. “If you’re ever in Fortune Creek again, give me a holler.”

  * * *

  ON THE WAY back to Fortune Creek, Brandt stopped by a bookstore and picked up a copy of East of Eden. Jaden had remembered it from high school, but Brandt wasn’t sure he’d gotten around to actually reading it. Back in those days, rodeoing was all he’d cared about.

  It hadn’t taken him long to read it once back in Fortune Creek. He’d known how the story would end. Two brothers, one the father’s favorite, a deadly rivalry between the two. He thought of Gage Crandell, who would have been fifteen the year Ruby Sheridan died and his brother Seth joined the military and his younger brother Ty killed himself.

  Brandt had wondered if there was a reason East of Eden was the book stuck in the door the night the ventriloquist died. Or had Gage randomly chosen the book?

  He’d taken the book by the hospital. “Have you read this?” he asked Gage who shook his head. “I think you might want to. Might make you feel like you weren’t alone.”

  One son loved, one son hated, one son feeling unloved, he’d thought as he’d left the hospital.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Helen spotted her first. The dispatcher had been getting Ghost a drink when she saw the car pull up out front.

  Brandt heard her exclaim in the room outside his office and looked up. Helen, the woman who always said she didn’t like dogs, was holding that ball of white fluff that had been rescued from Jessica Woods’s pickup.

  The sheriff had been planning to take it to the shelter, but Helen wasn’t having any of that. She’d scooped up the furball and the two had been inseparable ever since. It had surprised him, but not as much as learning that Jessica really had been a ghost hunter by profession. How she and Georgia had crossed paths was still a mystery.

  “Well, I’ll be darned,” Helen said. “Would you look at that.”

  He looked past her in time to see Molly standing by what appeared to be a new SUV. He smiled so hard that it hurt his face. She had come back?

  For weeks, every time they’d talked, she’d said she was tying up loose ends. He hadn’t pressed her, knowing it would be a mistake. As it was, he couldn’t imagine what a woman like her would do in Fortune Creek. Would she even last a week if she did come back?

  He’d warned himself not to get his hopes up and yet here she was. He pushed himself up from his desk and walked toward the door. The look on her face was definitely one that said, And you thought you’d never see me again.

  It was true. Not that he could blame her. They were from two completely different worlds. Murder had thrown them together. That and a dummy named Rowdy the Rodeo Cowboy. But it would take a lot more to keep them together, Brandt thought as he pushed open the sheriff’s department door and stepped out into the sunshine. It would take a love strong enough to last forever.

  Summer had come to Fortune Creek slowly; after all, this was Montana and only miles from the Canadian border. His father used to joke that the weather kept out the riffraff—until summer.

  Today was one of those early summer days when the sky was a blinding blue, the sun a lolling ball of heat, making the pine-covered mountains shimmer with light. People fell in love with Montana in the summer.

  “You came back,” he said as he stopped on the sidewalk to take her in.

  “Couldn’t stay away.”

  He glanced at the SUV. It was packed to the top. “Almost looks like you’re moving in.”

  She grinned. “Don’t believe me? How about you come over here, cowboy? I think I have just what will convince you.”

  “That right?” he asked as he stepped toward her. He had no idea what had brought her back, let alone what might keep her here with him.

  But when he reached her, she stepped to him and kissed him.

  He felt his heart take off like the bald eagle he’d seen earlier flying across Montana’s big sky. It had been free to go anywhere it wanted, but it stayed here in this isolated part of the state—just like him.

  Brandt drew back from the kiss to look at her. “What in the hell are you going to do in Fortune Creek?”

  “You mean after I marry you? See that building down the street? I want it. I’m going to open a business.” He cocked a brow at her. “Don’t worry—I’m a financial analyst. I know what I’m doing.”

  He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “If that was true, you wouldn’t be interested in marrying a small-town cowboy sheriff.”

  “Try me,” Molly said and kissed him again.