“That she believes she’s above the law? Or that she could have killed him?” Oakley shook her head. “I wouldn’t be surprised. I think our mother is capable of just about anything. Except forgiveness.”

  “Unless you’re CJ.” Tilly wiped at the tears that spilled down her cheeks. “I need to find a job and a place to live. I’m embarrassed to even tell Cooper about this, let alone Holden. He really hoped that Cooper and I getting married might bring the families together. Instead, it’s going to make things worse.”

  “No,” Oakley said. “It’s going to be all right. Let’s get a place together for the time being. I have some money saved. Unless you and Cooper want to elope and skip a wedding.”

  Tilly wiped her eyes. “No,” she said emphatically. “I was just thinking about it. I’m not going to let her force me into running away like Cooper and I have done something wrong or have anything to hide,” she said, biting at her lower lip for a moment in anger. “Okay, let’s get a place together. I have money saved as well. Cooper and I will have a real wedding come hell or high water.”

  “That’s my big sis,” Oakley said, hugging her again and silently promising that their mother would regret this. “I saw a sign at the café. That upstairs two-bedroom apartment over the general store is for rent. It’s going to be okay.” The words sounded hollow but they made Tilly smile.

  “She isn’t going to change her mind. She’ll never let me back on the ranch.”

  Oakley knew what a powerful force her mother could be. But soon, Charlotte Stafford would be fighting not just the McKennas, but also her own blood. “In the meantime, we plan your wedding and have some sister time.” Fortunately, she was still able to come and go at the ranch. She had to keep it that way—at least for now.

  She didn’t tell Tilly what she was planning to do—or who was going to help her. Things were bad at the Stafford Ranch, but they were going to get much worse. She was thankful Tilly wouldn’t be there—in the middle of it—when everything hit the fan.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE SHERIFF FELT a little better by the time he reached his office. He was anxious to hear from the lab on his blood test. He hadn’t been at the office long when Douglas Burton, the head of CH4, marched in with two large men who looked like thugs. He said they were his security.

  Burton seemed to take in the small office, the small sheriff’s department and Stu himself before he removed his coat, told his two flunkies to wait outside and sat down with a heavy sigh. He was a heavy-set man with an air of superiority that made Stu inwardly bristle. He’d seen the way the man had taken in the office and the sheriff himself before dismissing both. Clearly, Burton had come here to kick some butt, starting with the local law.

  “What are we going to do about this problem, Sheriff?” the man demanded.

  “Given what happened in Wyoming with your company, why wouldn’t there be people trying to stop the drilling?” Stu said. “Residents complaining that their water turned black and smelled like gasoline, orphaned wells by the thousands leaking arsenic and methane into groundwater, cities finding fracking chemicals in their main water supply and taxpayers expected to foot the bill to clean up your mess. And you’re surprised a group of concerned citizens are trying to stop the drilling here in the Powder River Basin of Montana?”

  Burton leaned back in his chair. “Well, I think I can see what the problem is now, Sheriff. No wonder you haven’t caught and jailed these vandals. You’re probably one of them.”

  “No, Douglas, I do my job as sheriff. Unfortunately, we are short-staffed. As I saw you notice, we are a small department. I believe other gas companies have hired security to keep their drilling equipment safe, but I have to warn you, if your thugs step out of line, they’ll end up in my jail behind bars.”

  The gas executive let out an angry breath before getting to his feet. “It’s people like you who are the problem. You want your homes warm in the winter. You use the gas, the oil, but you don’t want the drilling. Wait until it’s forty below and you can’t heat your home, your office. When people can’t afford the gas and want to know why it costs so much, I’ll have to tell them that it’s because I’ve been forced to keep repairing vandalized equipment, forced to hire security to protect that equipment, raising my costs so I can get that gas to them. Then you’re going to wish that you hadn’t made it so hard for me to do my job.”

  As Burton stormed out of his office, Stu’s cell phone rang. He picked up and listened as the lab tech informed him that his blood test showed a small amount of a drug that could have knocked him out in a larger quantity, but not enough to definitely say he’d been drugged.

  He disconnected and sat for a moment trying to breathe, his mind racing. There was no doubt in his mind that Abigail had drugged him just as he suspected. Why, though? He thought of his keys on the end table farthest from him and the lingering scent of her perfume on them.

  His heart began to pound as he looked around his office. Had she come down here last night? She had keys that would have gotten her into the back door, avoiding the dispatcher on duty. Keys to his office.

  If so, what was she looking for? He tried to remember if his computer had been on when he’d come in this morning. His brain had still been foggy. With a curse, he remembered that he’d put his latest password on a piece of paper in his wallet.

  He pulled out his wallet and caught the lingering scent of Abigail’s perfume on it. It took only a moment to see if his password was still in the wallet. It was, but not where he usually kept it.

  Touching his keyboard, his computer screen lit. He moved the cursor to Files and clicked. The sheriff’s department computer program kept track of all files visited, organizing them based on the user. He checked to see which files had been opened and felt his heart drop like a meteor from space. Only one had been opened. At two in the morning.

  The file on Leann Hayes’s suicide.

  His already upset stomach roiled, making him fear that he would hurl before he regained control. Why would Abigail be interested in Leann Hayes, a woman he’d dated? What had Abigail been looking for to go to such extremes as to drug him? He was the sheriff, damn it. Why take a risk like that? Head aching, he had another thought. Had the office been the only place she’d gone last night?

  After picking up his keys and pulling on his winter coat, he left the office and headed home to his nearby house where he’d grown up and now still lived. He’d been tricked, drugged and used. Worse, Abigail was interested in a case that he had hoped would go away. So what was her interest in Leann Hayes? What had she hoped to find in the case file? What in his house—if he was right and she’d gone there as well?

  But the big question remained. What was he going to do about it?

  * * *

  CHARLOTTE WATCHED THE PI drive away, anger and bitterness and fear making her chest ache. Why hadn’t she had Dixon declared dead? Clearly, she should have. But she’d wanted to forget him, to put it all behind her as if it had never happened. The only reason she’d married Dixon was to show Holden.

  Had she really held out hope that after his first wife, Margie, had died that he might come back to her? The thought turned her stomach. When she’d heard that he was with Lulabelle, she’d reacted out of spite by marrying Dixon—and it had come back to bite her in that behind that he had loved so well.

  Now Tilly thought she was going to marry Holden’s son? Over her dead body. She wanted to scream. Cooper was like his father. Tilly couldn’t trust his love. Tilly couldn’t trust any McKenna.

  Why couldn’t her daughter understand? Because Tilly had never had her heart ripped from her chest. She’d never felt that kind of betrayal, that kind of pain that would blacken her heart, turning it slowly to stone.

  A thought struck her like the blade of a shovel slamming into her skull. There would be a wedding. A big wedding. Knowing Tilly, it would be at the large church in Powder Crossing. Charlotte could see it filled with people. Everyone would be there to see Tilly in a white wedding dress, her sister, Oakley, next to her, and Cooper McKenna and his brother...not Treyton, Duffy, next to him as the two said their vows or his best friend, the sheriff? And Holden. Holden would be there. Still handsome.

  She squeezed her eyes shut against the imagined sight, wanting to crawl into a hole and never come out. She couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t. It felt as if she’d lost control of everything as she paced the floor.

  Just the thought of the PI made her feel even sicker. He’d caught her arguing with her daughter. He’d seen her at her worst. She’d clocked his shocked face as well as his self-satisfied look at seeing her flared temper. He’d been convinced that she could commit murder.

  If it was that easy, lucky for the PI that he wasn’t now buried in the woods behind her house. She could tell that he was satisfied he knew exactly what had happened to Dixon. All he had to do was prove it. Or find the body.

  Charlotte hadn’t heard the creak of the wheelchair until CJ spoke.

  “That was ugly,” he said behind her, startling her out of her thoughts. “You know he won’t give up. He’ll be back.” She wished she didn’t agree with him.

  “But we have more important things to worry about,” CJ said. “Inez Turner is in hospice care. We have to act now. Are you listening to me?” he demanded.

  She turned to look at him blankly, lost in thoughts of the past and the growing horror of the future, each thought like a stone lodged in her throat.

  “The Montana 360 Ranch. Mother, we can’t let Holden get that ranch.”

  The name of the ranch didn’t register. Her mind was on the PI, on Tilly and that damned engagement ring. She remembered the first time she’d seen it—on her best friend’s finger. It wasn’t until Margaret “Margie” Smith had told her who had put that ring there that her world had shattered around her. Living on neighboring ranches, she and Margie had been good friends.

  Later, Margie swore that she didn’t know about Charlotte and Holden, but how could she not have? The wedding was planned. There was no way Margie or Holden could back out. It was too late. They had no choice, Margie said. The day Margie married Holden was the darkest of Charlotte’s life and a turning point that had sent her life to hell.

  “The Turner place is part of some of the old Smith Ranch,” CJ was saying loudly as if he thought she’d gone deaf. Or wasn’t listening. She hadn’t been. “It once belonged to Margaret Smith’s grandparents.”

  Just hearing him say Margie’s name made her bare her teeth. Margie had taken Holden away from her, dangling a piece of the Smith Ranch property in front of him—but not all of it. Her parents weren’t stupid. They held back some of the ranch so Holden’s father couldn’t get the property. But the old, greedy son of a bastard had put pressure on his son to marry the woman for it. That much was true.

  Still, Charlotte would never forgive Holden, whom she felt had betrayed her for the worst piece of the Smith Ranch. And the rest of that ranch had become the Turner Ranch and was now up for grabs. Old man McKenna must be rolling in his grave to think that Charlotte might beat his son out of the place. Charlotte, the woman Holden’s father had looked down on. Not good enough for his son because she didn’t come with a land dowry. At least not as large a piece of land as Margie Smith had come with.

  Swallowing down the bitterness that rose in her throat, she turned her attention to her son. What would she do without CJ? She’d almost lost him. She still had to keep him from going to jail or worse, prison. Without CJ, she had no reason to go on.

  “We have to get that ranch, no matter what we have to do,” CJ was saying more forcefully. As if her son had to tell her that the Turner place was the missing piece between her ranch and McKenna’s property on the two sides of the river. She’d been waiting for years to obtain that land—putting the final nail in old man McKenna’s casket and his son’s at the same time. Without water, Holden and his ranch couldn’t survive.

  “I will take care of it,” she said to CJ. He didn’t even know what was at stake if they didn’t get it. “Let me change. I’ll go to see Inez on her deathbed if that’s what it takes.”

  “I heard Bob isn’t letting anyone in to see her but family and close friends,” CJ said. “Maybe I should go with you.” He touched the wheelchair as he said it as if he thought his disability would open doors that she couldn’t. He might be right, but she couldn’t let him do that.

  She shook her head. “I won’t let her son stop me. Inez will see me. I’ll get that land. Whatever it takes.” She couldn’t let Holden or anyone else get that ranch. Over her dead body would she ever let her former lover have it.

  * * *

  THE SHERIFF UNLOCKED the front door of the house he’d been raised in with trepidation. He’d been left the house and the sheriff job when his father had died. Not that he hadn’t had to run for the office, but everyone had liked his father when he was sheriff, so Stuart had won easily. Truth is, no one else wanted the job, which is why no one had run against him. He’d had the house and the job ever since.

  As he stepped in, he couldn’t imagine why Abigail would have taken his keys and gone to his house last night. What had she hoped to find after her visit to his office? Something that connected him to Leann Hayes’s death?

  As he moved deeper into the house, he lamented the price of living in a small town, miles from anything. People knew things about you that you wished they didn’t. Everyone had speculated on why Leann had killed herself. The prosecutor in Miles City had suspected the man Leann had taken up with after she’d left the sheriff—Cooper McKenna. Cooper had spent a little time behind bars, but without any evidence, Leann’s death had been ruled a suicide. End of story.

  Or it would have been, Stuart thought with a curse. Then Cooper McKenna had returned to town after being gone for two years and found what he thought was evidence that Leann had been planning to run away with someone in Powder Crossing. His theory was that either the person had killed her and made it appear to be a suicide, or someone else didn’t want her leaving town and had murdered her.

  Cooper wanted the case reopened, something Stuart had been dragging his feet about doing, hoping it would blow over.

  And now Abigail Creed was snooping around the case?

  He stepped in expecting to catch the lingering scent of Abigail’s perfume and wasn’t disappointed. The scent made him queasy. He moved quickly through the small place, checking his bedroom, then the bathroom, then the living room, not even sure what he was looking for. Everything looked as he’d left it. But would he know if she had gone through his things?

  Going back to the bedroom, he opened his bureau drawers. He wasn’t one to roll his socks or fold his briefs. As he checked each drawer, he told himself he was wasting his time. He couldn’t prove that she’d gone through anything.

  But when he opened the bottom drawer, his heart fell. Old photographs. He kept them in a shoebox at the bottom of the deep drawer. He quickly pulled off the old T-shirts that had been covering the box and carried it over to the bed.

  As he lifted the lid, he tried to remember the last time he’d looked inside. They were old photographs back before everyone used their cell phones and hardly ever had their photos printed.

  But Leann had gotten a Polaroid instant camera for her birthday before he met her. Everywhere they went she would ask people to take a photo of them. She loved it when he took photos of her with her camera. So it wasn’t surprising to see a snapshot of her mugging a face at him right on top of the pile.

  There were more of the two of them, so many that he couldn’t tell if some were missing. Leann had liked to take photos. Her apartment had framed ones that she’d taken before moving to Powder Crossing. He thought of the photograph in Abigail’s rented house—the only personal thing in the entire place. Also, the only photograph in the home of a woman who said she was a photographer. She’d said the framed photo on her wall had been taken by a friend. Leann? He felt his chest compact, his breathing suddenly ragged.

  He knew without any evidence that Abigail had found these. Why had he kept photos of Leann after she’d broken up with him and immediately gone to Cooper? That old resentment and feeling of betrayal clutched at his chest. He hadn’t loved Leann. He knew that now. But it didn’t make it hurt any less.

  His first instinct was to destroy the photos now, but he stopped himself. The photos weren’t incriminating. Leann was just someone he’d dated. There’d been no harm in keeping them, especially since everyone in town knew he had been with Leann before she’d moved on to his best friend.

  After slamming the lid back on, he returned the box to the drawer, covering it with one of the old T-shirts. He closed the drawer, fighting to convince himself that there had been nothing to find—not in Leann’s file, not in his house. So why couldn’t he stop shaking inside?

  Because he didn’t like being lied to; worse, being drugged and duped. From the moment he’d met Abigail, he’d warned himself to stay clear of her. Why hadn’t he listened? Now he knew she wasn’t who she was pretending to be. But what was she looking for? And why? What had really brought her to Powder Crossing, Montana? All his instincts told him the answer. Leann.

  He had to find out what her connection was to Leann Hayes. Meanwhile, he couldn’t let her know that he was on to her. He pulled out his phone as he reached his patrol SUV, gave himself a minute before he called her.

  “Hey, you should have awakened me this morning,” he said.

  There was that moment of hesitation in her voice before she caught herself. Had she feared that he would realize he’d been drugged and call her on it? “You were sleeping so soundly I couldn’t bear to wake you. I got called in early for work.” Another lie.