Justice at Cardwell Ranch (21 page)

“She was pretty shaken up after what happened and I got busy, but she’s standing right here. I’ll let you talk to her since I have to get back to Dana.” He handed off the phone.

A moment later a shaky-voiced Stacy said, “Hello?”

“I need to know about the party Tanner Cole had at the Iverson Construction site twenty years ago.”

“What?”

“You were there. I’ve seen a photograph of you standing around the campfire. I need to know who shot the photos. Come on, Stacy, it wasn’t that long after that that Tanner died. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“I remember,” she said, sounding defensive. “I was just trying to understand why you would ask me who took the photos. I did. It was my camera.”

“
Your
camera? Why were you taking photographs at the party?”

“Jordan. I wanted to get something on him,” she said. “He was always telling on me to Mother.”

Blackmail, great. Liza sighed. “If it was your camera, then how is it that there’s a photo of you?”

Silence then. “Alex Winslow. He wanted to borrow the camera for a moment. I made him give it back—”

“By promising to get him copies,” Liza finished.

“Yes, how did you—”

“Do you still have the negatives?”

“I doubt it. Unless they’re stored in my things I left here at the ranch.”

“Let me talk to Jordan,” Liza said, feeling as if all the pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together.

“Jordan? He’s not here. He asked me who took the photos, then he left, saying he’d come by the hospital later.”

“Do you know where he went?” Liza asked, suddenly worried.

“He said something about blackmail and the other side of the coin.”

Ahead, Liza saw the Iverson house come into view in her headlights. “If you see him, tell him to call my cell.” She gave Stacy the number, then disconnected as she pulled into the wide paved drive.

Parking, she tried Jordan’s cell phone number. It went straight to voice mail. She left a message for him to call her.

The Iverson house could only be described as a mansion. But then Wyatt Iverson was in the construction business. Of course his home would have to be magnificent.

Liza got out and walked up the steps to the wide veranda. She rang the doorbell, heard classical music play inside and was reminded of Crystal Winslow’s house down in Bozeman. It wasn’t anywhere as large or as grand.

Liza thought about an old Elvis Presley song about a house without love. Or honesty, she thought as she rang the bell again.

Getting no answer, she checked the five-car garage. There was a large ski boat, a trailer with four snowmobiles and the large black SUV, the same one Liza had seen Wyatt Iverson driving the night of the reunion dinner.

He’d returned home. So where was he? And where was Jordan? She tried his cell phone again. As before, it went straight to voice mail.

Something was wrong. She felt it in her bones. If Wyatt Iverson had returned, where else might he have gone? She recalled overhearing Shelby say what sounded like she was going to meet someone. Was she stupid enough to agree to see her husband? If so, where would they have gone if not their house?

Yogamotion was her first thought. But she’d seen Shelby hightail it out of there. Was it possible Wyatt had taken another vehicle? She thought about Jordan. What if he’d come up here as she suspected?

She didn’t want to go down that particular trail of thought. Maybe Wyatt Iverson had gone by his construction office. Unlike his father, Wyatt kept all his equipment under lock and key at a site back up Moonlight Basin.

She hurried to her rental SUV and, climbing behind the wheel, started the engine and headed for Moonlight Basin. All her instincts told her to hurry.

Chapter Sixteen

Jordan came to in darkness. He blinked, instantly aware of the pain. His wrists were bound with duct tape behind him. More duct tape bound his ankles. A strip had been placed over his mouth. He lay in the back of the rented SUV. Outside the vehicle he heard a sound he recognized and sat up, his head swimming. Something warm and sticky ran down into his left eye. Blood.

Through the blood he looked out through an array of construction equipment. He couldn’t see the piece of equipment that was making all the noise, but he could see a gravel pit behind the site and catch movement.

Now seemed an odd time to be digging in a gravel pit. Unless, he thought with a start, you wanted to bury something.

Jordan knew he was lucky to be alive. He’d been a damned fool going to Iverson’s house unarmed. What had he hoped to accomplish? The answer was simple. He’d wanted to hear Wyatt Iverson admit to Tanner’s murder. He’d also wanted to know how he’d done it.

So he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do—a suicidal mission that had been successful if one didn’t take his current predicament into consideration.

Hurriedly, he began to work at the tape on his wrists. There were few sharp edges in the back of the SUV. Nor could he get the door open thanks to child locks. In frustration at modern advances, he threw himself into the backseat and was headed for the front seat to unlock the doors, when he heard it.

The noise of the running equipment had dropped to a low purr.

Jordan felt around quickly for a sharp edge. He found it on the metal runner of the front passenger seat and began to work frantically at the tape. Whatever Wyatt Iverson had been up to, he’d stopped. Jordan had a bad feeling that he’d be coming for him any moment.

The tape gave way. He quickly peeled the strip from his mouth then reached down to free his ankles.

The back door of the SUV swung open and he was instantly blinded by the glaring beam of a heavy-duty flashlight.

“Get out,” Iverson barked.

Jordan saw that the gun was in the man’s other hand and the barrel was pointed at him. He freed his ankles and did as he was told. As he stepped out, he breathed in the cold night air. It made him shiver. Or it could have been the sudden knowledge of what Iverson planned to do with him.

Standing, he could see where the earth had been dug out in a long trench. There was already one vehicle at the bottom of the trench. He recognized Shelby’s expensive SUV.

“Get behind the wheel,” Iverson ordered, and holding the gun on him, climbed in behind him in the backseat.

Jordan could feel the cold hard metal of the gun barrel pressed against his neck.

“Start the car.” Iverson tossed him the keys.

His hand was shaking as he inserted the key. The engine turned right over even though he was wishing for a dead battery right then.

“Now drive through the gate to the back of the property. Try anything and I’ll put a bullet into your brain and jump out.”

Jordan drove through the gate and down the path that led to the gravel pit and ultimately the trench Iverson had dug for Shelby—and now him. He realized there was only one thing he could do. Iverson would have him stop at the high end of the trench. He would get out and send Jordan to his death—either before he buried him at the bottom of the trench or after.

He hit the child locks so Iverson couldn’t get out and gunned the engine. He would take Iverson with him, one way or the other.

* * *

A
S THE
I
VERSON
C
ONSTRUCTION
site came into view, Liza noticed that the large metal gate hung open. She cut her headlights and slowly pulled to the side of the road.

It wasn’t until she shut off her engine and got out that she heard the sound of a front-end loader running in the distance. Drawing her weapon, she moved through the darkness toward the sound.

She’d just cleared the fence and most of the equipment when she saw an old red pickup parked back between some other old trucks. She could see where the right side of it was all banged up. Some of the paint of the patrol SUV was still on the side. It was definitely the pickup that had run her off the road.

Ahead she heard a car start up. She could make out movement in the faint starlight. She hurried toward it, keeping to the shadows so she wasn’t spotted.

But the car didn’t come in her direction as she’d thought it would. Instead, it went the other way. In its headlights she saw the gravel pit and finally the trench and the front-end loader idling nearby.

To her amazement the vehicle engine suddenly roared. The driver headed for the trench.

Liza ran through the darkness, her heart hammering, as the vehicle careened down the slope and into the narrow ditch. She reached the fence, rushed through the gate and across the flat area next to the gravel pit in time to see the lights of the vehicle disappear into the trench.

Her mind was racing. What in the—

The sound of metal meeting metal filled the night air. She came to a skidding stop at the edge of the trough and looked down to see two vehicles. Smoke rose from between their crumpled metal, the headlights of the second one dimmed by the dirt and gravel that had fallen down around it.

She waited a moment for the driver to get out, then realizing he must be trapped in there, the trench too narrow for him to open his door, she scrambled down into the deep gully, weapon ready.

As she neared the vehicle, she recognized it. The rental SUV Jordan had been driving. Her pulse began to pound. Jordan did crazy things sometimes, she thought, remembering how he’d swum out into the river to be with her while she waited for the ambulance to arrive.

But he wouldn’t purposely drive into this trench, would he? Which begged the question, where was Wyatt Iverson?

* * *

“
C
OME ON, BABIES,”
D
ANA SAID
under her breath and pushed.

“That’s it,” her doctor said. “Almost there. Just one more push.”

Dana closed her eyes. She could feel Hud gripping her hand. Her first twin was about to make his or her way into the world. She felt the contraction, hard and fast, and pushed.

“It’s a boy!” A cheer came up at the end of the bed. She opened her eyes and looked into the mirror positioned over the bed as the doctor held up her baby.

A moment later she heard the small, high-pitched cry of her son and tried to relax as Hud whispered that they had a perfect baby boy.

Dr. Burr placed the baby in Dana’s arms for a moment. She smiled down at the crinkled adorable face before the doctor handed the baby off to the nurses standing by. “One more now. Let’s see how that one’s doing.”

Dana could hear the baby’s strong heartbeat through the monitor. She watched the doctor’s face as Dr. Burr felt her abdomen first, then reached inside. Dana knew even before the doctor said the second baby was breech.

“Not to worry. I’ll try to turn the little darling,” the doctor assured her. “Otherwise, sometimes we can pull him out by his feet. Let’s just give it a few minutes. The second baby is generally born about fifteen minutes after the first.”

Dana looked over at her son now in the bassinet where a nurse was cleaning him up. “He looks like you,” she said to her husband and turned to smile up at him as another contraction hit.

* * *

L
IZA REACHED THE BACK
of the car. She could hear movement inside. “Jordan!” she called. A moment later the back hatch clicked open and began to rise. She stepped to the side, weapon leveled at the darkness inside the SUV, cursing herself for not having her flashlight. “Jordan?”

A moan came from inside, then more movement.

“Liza, he has a gun!” Jordan cried.

The shot buzzed past her ear like a mad hornet. She ducked back, feeling helpless as she heard the struggle in the car and could do little to help. Another shot. A louder moan.

“I’m coming out,” Wyatt Iverson called from inside the SUV. “I’m not armed.”

“I have him covered,” Jordan yelled out. “But you can shoot him if you want to.”

Liza leveled her weapon at the gaping dark hole at the back of the SUV. Wyatt Iverson appeared headfirst. He fell out onto the ground. She saw that he was bleeding from a head wound and also from what appeared to be a gunshot to his thigh. She quickly read him his rights as she rolled him over and snapped a pair of handcuffs on him.

“Jordan, are you all right?” she called into the vehicle. She heard movement and felt a well of relief swamp her as he stumbled out through the back. “What is going on?”

“He planned to bury me in this trench,” Jordan said. “I think Shelby is in the other car. I suspect he killed her before he put her down here.”

Wyatt was heaving, his face buried in his shoulder as he cried.

“Can you watch him for a moment?” Liza asked, seeing that Jordan was holding a handgun—Wyatt’s, she assumed.

She holstered her own weapon and climbed up over the top of the SUV to the next one. Dirt covered most of the vehicle except the very back. She wiped some of the dirt from the window and was startled to see a face pressed against the glass.

There was duct tape over Shelby’s mouth. Her eyes were huge, her face white as a ghost’s. Blood stained the front of her velour sweatshirt where she’d been shot in the chest at what appeared to be close range since the fabric was burned around the entry hole.

Liza pulled out her cell and hit 911. “We’ll need an ambulance and the coroner.” She gave the dispatcher directions, then climbed back over the top of Jordan’s rental SUV to join him again.

Wyatt was still crying. Jordan, she noticed, was more banged up than she’d first realized. He was sitting on the SUV’s bumper. He looked pale and was bleeding from a shoulder wound.

“Come on, let’s get out of this trench before the sides cave in and kill us all,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

He grinned up at her. “Just fine, Deputy,” he said, getting to his feet. “I sure was glad to see you.”

As she pulled Wyatt to his feet and the three of them staggered up out of the hole, she smelled the pine trees, black against the night sky. The air felt colder as if winter wasn’t far behind. She looked toward Lone Peak. The snow on the top gleamed in the darkness. Everything seemed so normal.

The rifle shot took them all by surprise. Wyatt suddenly slumped forward and fell face-first into the dirt. Jordan grabbed her and knocked her to the ground behind one of the huge tires of a dump truck as a second shot thudded into Wyatt’s broad back.