CHRISTMAS AT THE CARDWELL RANCH (2 page)

Lily loved the house because of its isolation at the end of a road with no close neighbors—the exact reason Ace would have hated living there. Her brother loved to be around people. He liked the noise and commotion that came with owning a bar in Big Sky, Montana.

But as much as she yearned to go to her quiet house, she couldn’t yet. She wanted to make sure Mia made it home all right. Mia lived in an expensive condo her parents owned partway up the mountain toward Big Sky Resort.

Lily noticed Mia’s down ski jacket where she’d hung it before her shift, her worry increasing when under it she found Mia’s purse hanging from its shoulder strap. She left both there, thinking Mia might return to retrieve them. As she went out the back door of the bar, she saw that it was still snowing. She glanced toward Lone Mountain, disappointed the falling snow obliterated everything. She loved seeing the mountain peak glistening white against the dark winter sky. It really was a magnificent sight.

Thinking of the skiers who would be delirious tomorrow with all this fresh powder, she had to smile. She understood why her brother loved living here. The Gallatin Canyon was a magical place—especially at Christmas.

The Gallatin River, which cut through the steep, granite bluffs in a breathtaking hundred-mile ribbon of river and winding highway, ran crystal clear under a thick blanket of ice. Snow covered the mountains and weighted down the pine boughs, making the entire place a winter wonderland.

Before the ski resort, the canyon had been mostly cattle and dude ranches, a few summer cabins and even fewer homes. Now luxury houses had sprouted up all around the resort. Fortunately some of the original cabins still remained and the majority of the canyon was national forest, so it would always remain undeveloped.

The “canyon” was still its own little community made up of permanent residents as well as those who only showed up for a week or two in the summer and a few weeks around Christmas and New Year’s for the ski season.

Outside, her breath expelled in cold white puffs. She hugged herself as she looked through the driving snow and saw Mia’s car. Mia was always so protective of her car. It seemed strange that she would leave it. But if she really had been drunk... Maybe she was planning to come back.

Who had she left with, though? Some cowboy, the Texan had said. That, too, didn’t sound like Mia, let alone that the cowboy had “poured her into the passenger seat.”

Everything about this felt wrong.

Unable to shake off the bad feeling that had settled over her, Lily headed for her SUV. The drive up to Mia’s condo didn’t take long in the wee hours of the morning after the bars had closed. There was no traffic and few tracks in the fresh snow that now blanketed the narrow paved road. Her windshield wipers clacked noisily trying to keep up with the falling snow, and yet visibility in her headlights was still only a matter of yards.

Lily was used to driving in winter conditions, having been born and raised in Montana, but just the thought of accidentally sliding off the road on such a night gave her a chill. Why hadn’t she told her brother where she was going?

She’d heard tomorrow was supposed to clear, the storm moving on. With a full moon tomorrow night, maybe she would go cross-country skiing. She loved skiing at night in the moonlight. It was so peaceful and quiet.

Through the falling snow, she got glimpses of Christmas lights twinkling on the houses she passed. She’d already done all her Christmas shopping, but she was sure her brother would be waiting until the last minute. They were so different. She was just thankful they were close in spite of their differences, even though Ace was always trying to get her to loosen up. He saw her orderly life as boring.

“You need to have some fun, sis,” he’d said recently when he’d given her a ski pass and the ultimatum that she was to use it on her day off. “It will do you good.”

She didn’t need Ace to tell her what else he thought would do her good. She’d forbidden him to even mention her former fiancé Gerald’s name. Not that it often stopped him.

Distracted with her thoughts, she saw that she’d reached her destination. But as she pulled up in front of Mia’s condo, her earlier bad feeling turned to dread.

Mia’s front door stood open. A drift of freshly fallen snow had formed just inside the door.

Chapter Two

The hair stood up on the back of Lily’s neck as she got out of her SUV and walked toward the gaping front door.

“Mia?” she called as she carefully peered in. She could hear music playing inside the condo. Mia’s unit was on the end, and it appeared that whoever was staying in the adjacent one wasn’t home.

Lily touched the door. It creaked the rest of the way open. From the doorway, she had a view of the stairs. One set went up, the other down.

“Mia?” she called over the music. No answer as she carefully stepped in.

She’d only gone a few steps up the stairs when she saw what appeared to be a fist-size ball of cotton roll across the floor on the breeze coming in the open door behind her.

One more step and she saw dozens of white balls of cotton. Her heart began to pound. Another step and she saw what was left of the living room sofa cushions.

The condo looked as if it had been hit by a storm that had wreaked havoc on the room. The sofa cushions had been shredded, the stuffing now moving haphazardly around the room. Lamps lay broken in pieces of jagged glass shards on the wooden floor. A chair had been turned over, the bottom ripped out. Nothing in the room looked as if it had weathered the storm that had blown through here.

Who would do such a thing?
Why would they?
Lily fumbled out her cell phone as she backed down the stairs, her heart hammering against her rib cage. What if whoever had done this was still in the condo?

“I need to report a break-in,” she said the moment she reached her SUV and was safely inside. She kept her eyes on the open doorway. When the dispatcher at the local marshal’s office answered, she hurriedly gave her name and the address.

“Is the intruder still there?”

“I don’t know. I only went just inside the door.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m outside. I don’t know where the owner of the condo is. I’m worried about her.”

“Can you wait in a warm place?”

“Yes. I’m in my vehicle and watching the condo.”

“Please stay there until law enforcement arrives.”

* * *

M
ARSHAL
H
UD
S
AVAGE
was on duty when the call came in. He’d just been up on the mountain on a disturbance call. All day he’d felt as if he were moving in a fog. A cop friend of his from the academy had been killed two nights ago. He was still in shock.

Paul Brown’s death, on top of what had happened to Hud’s family last spring, had left him shaken. In April, he’d let a dangerous woman come into his home. Hud’s wife and children had almost been killed.

He was a
marshal.
He should have seen what was right in front of his eyes. He would never forgive himself. Worse, the incident really had him questioning if he had the instincts anymore for this job.

When he’d heard that his friend Paul had been murdered just forty miles away in Bozeman, he’d been ready to throw in the towel.

“I’m running scared,” he’d told his wife, Dana.

She’d hugged him and tried to persuade him that none of what had happened to their family was his fault. “I was the one who was so excited to have a cousin I’d never met come stay with us. You saw that I was happy and ignored things you wouldn’t have under any other circumstances.”

“I’m a
marshal,
Dana. There is no excuse for what happened last April. None.”

Now as he turned into the condo subdivision in the pines, he tried to push everything but this latest call out of his mind. More and more, though, he wasn’t sure he deserved to be wearing this star.

As he pulled up, a young brunette got out of her SUV and stood hugging herself against the cold snowy night. A break-in this time of year was unusual. Normally this sort of thing happened during off-season when there were fewer people around.

“Are you the one who made the call?” he asked as he got out of his patrol pickup.

She introduced herself as Lily McCabe.

“Ace’s sister,” he said with a nod.

“Sometimes I forget how small a community Big Sky is,” she said, not looking in the least bit happy about the prospect that everyone knew her business.

Gossip traveled fast in the canyon. Hud had heard something about Ace’s sister being left at the altar. He couldn’t imagine any sane man leaving this woman.

“Wait in your vehicle while I take a look inside,” he told her. But as he headed for the open front door, he saw that she was still standing outside as if too nervous to sit and wait.

At the door, he pulled his weapon and stepped in, even though he doubted the burglar was still inside. The condo had been ransacked in a way that surprised him. This was no normal break-in. Nor was it a simple case of vandalism. Whoever had done this was looking for something and was determined to destroy everything in his path if he didn’t find it.

He moved carefully through the upper floor, then the lower one, before he returned to the woman waiting outside.

“Is she...”

He shook his head. “No sign of anyone. I’ve called for backup. Until they get here, can we talk in your vehicle?”

She nodded and climbed behind the wheel. She’d left the SUV running, so it was warm inside. He couldn’t help noticing how neat and clean the interior was as he pulled out his notebook. “Whose condo is it?”

“I don’t know their name. Mia told me that her parents own it. She is the one who’s been staying here.”

“Mia?”

“Mia Duncan. She went to work for my brother at the Canyon three weeks ago. I’m here helping out over the holidays, as you apparently know.”

He nodded. He’d heard Ace’s sister had bought a house about four years ago up the mountain—about the same time her brother had opened the Canyon Bar.

“Were you meeting Mia here after work?”

Lily shook her head. “She left before her shift was over. I was worried about her, so I decided to drive up and check on her.”

“Did she say why she left?”

“No. That’s just it. She didn’t say anything. One of our patrons saw her leave with a man. The patron said he thought she’d been drinking.”

He sensed that she didn’t see how any of this helped and hated talking about Mia behind her back. “Could the man she left with have been a boyfriend?”

“She’d said she wasn’t seeing anyone, but I can’t swear to it.”

“Did this patron describe the man he saw her leave with?”

“Just that he was wearing a cowboy hat and driving a pickup.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down much. What is this patron’s name?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before. I’m sorry that I can’t offer much in the way of details. He had a Southern accent, if that helps.”

“You’re doing fine. Did you see anyone leaving as you drove into the condo complex tonight?”

“No. But as soon as I pulled up here, I saw that her door was partially open. I only went a few steps inside before I called you.”

He’d seen her footprints in the snow. Unfortunately, the footprints of the intruder had been covered by fresh snow. Someone who knew Mia’s hours at the bar and knew she wouldn’t be coming home until the bar closed? But she left early. So where was she?

Hud wrote down Lily’s cell phone number and closed his notebook as another patrol rig drove up. “I’ll call if I have any more questions.”

“I don’t know Mia well, but I’m worried about her. This is the second night she’s left in the middle of her shift without telling anyone. Before that she was our most reliable employee.”

He nodded. If it wasn’t for the ransacked condo, he would have just figured the woman had met some man and fallen hard. People in love often became less reliable employees.

Hud assured Lily he’d let her know when he heard something. But he could tell nothing he might say would relieve her worry. After seeing the inside of the condo, he shared her concern.

* * *

W
ITH
HER
SHIFT
finally over, Teresa Evans opened the back door of the bar and looked out at the falling snow. She had mixed feelings about seeing her boyfriend after the fight they’d had earlier before she’d left for work.

But she didn’t have to worry about it. The main parking lot was empty. No Ethan sitting out here in his old pickup, the engine running, the wipers trying to keep up with the falling snow. No Ethan at all.

The only vehicles were Reggie’s SUV and Ace’s old Jeep. Both were covered in snow.

“Do you need a ride?” Reggie asked behind her, making her jump. The other server stopped to frown at her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said a little too sharply.

Reggie raised an eyebrow.

“Didn’t Lily say Mia left with someone else earlier?” Teresa asked. “Her car’s gone.”

Reggie glanced to the spot where Mia had parked earlier. Teresa followed her gaze. There was a rectangular spot in the snow where the car had been.

“I guess she must have come back for it,” Reggie said with a shrug. “I hope she wasn’t as drunk as that customer thought she was. Bad night to be driving as it is.”

“Yeah,” Teresa agreed. “Or to be working.”

Reggie took hold of her arm and gently squeezed it through Teresa’s coat. “Hey, accidents happen. Ace knows that.”

It took her a moment to realize that Reggie was referring to the tray of glasses she’d dropped earlier in the evening when she was clearing one of the tables. “Clumsy,” she said to cover the truth. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

“Is everything okay with Ethan?” Reggie asked, lowering her voice, as they stood under the shelter of the small landing just outside the bar. Reggie didn’t look at her when she asked it. Instead, she pretended more interest in digging her keys out of her purse.

Teresa stared through the falling snow, trying to conjure Ethan and his old pickup. “We’re good.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it was too cold to get into it out here in the wee hours of the morning. “I appreciate you asking, though.”

“Hey, we’re friends. You sure you don’t want a ride?” Reggie said, looking around as she found her keys in the bottom of her shoulder bag. “I don’t see Ethan.”

“He’ll be along soon. He probably just fell asleep. I’ll give him a call. If worse comes to worst, I’ll walk. It’s not that far.”

Reggie looked skeptical. “You’d be soaked to the skin if you walked in this.” But she let it drop, no doubt sensing that whatever was going on with Teresa, it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. “Well, then, I’ll see you tomorrow. I just hope it won’t be as crazy as it was tonight.” With that, Reggie stepped off the covered landing and headed for her car.

Teresa found herself wondering when Mia had come back for her vehicle as she watched Reggie clean the snow from her car and finally drive away. She couldn’t shake the memory of what Mia had said to her earlier.

Several cars went by, disappearing quickly into the falling snow. Still no sign of Ethan. Reaching into her pocket, she told herself he had probably fallen asleep and forgotten to set the alarm. Her pocket was empty. She tried the other one. Empty. With a groan, she remembered leaving her cell phone on the breakfast bar earlier. She’d been in such a rush to get out of the apartment and away from Ethan, she’d forgotten it.

Ethan wasn’t coming. Had she really expected him to come after the fight they’d had? She considered going back inside the bar to wait, but she didn’t want Ace to know Ethan had stood her up. As soon as Reggie’s taillights disappeared in the snowstorm, Teresa started the walk home.

The fight earlier had been another of those stupid ones.

“I need to know you want to marry me and have this baby,” he’d said while she was getting ready for work.

“Stop pressuring me.” Ever since she’d told him she was pregnant, he’d been so protective that sometimes she couldn’t breathe. He was determined they had to get married and settle down. His idea of settling down was moving closer to his parents, who lived down in Billings.

“I don’t think your new friend Mia is good for you. I saw her talking to some guy the other day. I’ve seen him before. He’s bad news.”

Teresa stifled a groan.

“I don’t want you getting involved in some drug deal, or worse.”

She had turned to face him, unable to hide her growing impatience. Ethan had been like this ever since he’d gone to the law enforcement academy and was now working for the Montana Highway Patrol.

“I’m sure Mia isn’t involved in any kind of drug deal.”

“Your friend might not realize what she’s getting herself into with a man like that.”

It made her angry to hear him talk this way. “Mia’s a big girl,” she’d snapped. “She can take care of herself.” When Ethan looked skeptical, she’d added, “Mia carries a gun.” Instantly, she’d wished she hadn’t added that part.

“She
what?
” he’d demanded.

“It’s just a small one. She wears it strapped on her ankle.”

Ethan had sworn and begun to pace. “You’re hanging out with a woman who carries a concealed weapon? Does she even have a permit to carry it?”

“Damn it, Ethan. Stop acting like a narc.”

He had stopped dead in his tracks.
“What?”

“It’s just that you used to be fun. Now you’re such a...”

He had waited for her to finish.

“Cop.”

Without another word, he’d grabbed his coat and left.

Still, she couldn’t imagine him not picking her up. He was too concerned about her and the baby. Something must have come up with his job, she thought now as she walked through the deep snow toward the apartment they shared.

Ethan had been her high school sweetheart. She smiled to herself now as she thought of how they’d been back then. He had been adventurous, up for anything. His friends said he was crazy fun.

But a couple of years ago, he’d almost gotten into some serious trouble with some ex-friends of his. The incident had apparently scared him straight. He was no longer crazy fun. Far from it.

Teresa wasn’t sure she wanted to be married to a cop. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be married to Ethan. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be pregnant.

Shoving those thoughts away, she found herself worrying about Mia as she ducked her head against the thick falling snow. Tonight she’d seen Mia get into some kind of argument with a man who’d come into the bar alone. The conversation had looked personal—and definitely heated. At one point the man had grabbed Mia’s arm. In the skirmish, the man ended up spilling his drink on her.