Lone Rider (3 page)

Despite the beauty, this place made her anxious. She didn't like the quiet or the isolation or the fact that she'd been forced to hide out here for her own safety.

At the sound of a vehicle, she moved closer to the railing so she could see the narrow dirt road that wound up through the trees. She held her breath, afraid someone had found her—and not a reporter.

The past twenty-two years were a dark hole that haunted her. While she couldn't remember anything from those years, she had vague, disturbing flashes of the past that came without warning at all hours of the day and night. While they made no sense, their dark ominous feel scared her. She was afraid to find out who she'd been the past twenty-two years. Or why she'd tried to kill herself all those years ago.

As Russell Murdock's pickup came into view, she leaned against the railing, weak with relief. He had been her sanctuary from the storm since her return. Russell, a soft-spoken sixtysomething rancher with a heart as big as Montana, had saved her when he'd found her in an isolated spot outside Beartooth. She been confused, not sure how she'd gotten there or where she'd been.

Her last memory was of giving birth to twin daughters. Was it really possible that they had both now graduated from college? She'd hoped they would come home for the summer so she could spend some time with them, but both had taken off to Europe to allegedly continue their studies abroad.

Their prolonged absence was Buck's doing. She hadn't even gotten to see them since she'd been back. While she'd met with her other four daughters, Cassidy and Harper hadn't been allowed to return home.

“If they come back here, they will be bombarded by the media asking if they've seen their mother, where she's been, why she's back, what she said, what she looks like, and on and on,” Buckmaster had said irritably.

She couldn't argue with his logic. But she ached to see her twins all grown up. She remembered the sweet identical babies she'd given birth to and felt sick inside to think that they wouldn't even remember her. It was bad enough that her other four children barely remembered her.

Russell, understanding how upset she'd been about not seeing Harper and Cassidy, had offered to take her to visit them in Europe. But she'd declined. All she needed was to get the media circus going again by leading the press right to her twins. It had died down somewhat, even though she knew reporters were still looking for her. If Russell hadn't hidden her away in this cabin...

“The cabin is part of some land that my former employer W. T. Grant owned,” he'd told her when it became clear that she would have to hide out for a while from the press. “It's my daughter's now, but no one uses the place. No one will think to look for you there.”

“The media frenzy isn't going to die down,” she'd told him. “Not as long as Buck is still running for president. Maybe it would be better if I just disappeared again.”

“Where would you go? No, you need to stay here,” Russell had said with a decisive shake of his head. “The cabin will be safe, and I'll come see you every chance I get. Don't worry about me being followed.” He'd smiled, making him even more handsome. “I know how to lose them on these back roads.”

She watched him drive up and park out front. As he got out of his truck, he stopped to meet her eyes. His expression instantly softened as if he knew what she'd been going through. He sensed things about her, things that would have turned another man away and yet if anything made him even more protective.

Her heart went out to him, but she didn't move. Didn't dare. She couldn't let him think she was falling in love with him. She'd given her heart away at twenty-four to Buckmaster Hamilton, and it was still his. Maybe would always be his.

Unless there'd been another man in her life during the past twenty-two years that she couldn't remember. That thought made her hug herself against the chill that raced up her spine. Had there been a man? She shuddered to think what kind of man he would have been, given her flashes of memory.

“I brought you strawberries,” Russell called, making her smile as he reached into the back of the truck and brought out a cooler. “I wanted to bring ice cream, but I knew it would melt before I got here.”

He started toward her. She waited, anxious to know if he'd heard from Buck, but not wanting it to be the first thing out of her mouth.

Russell didn't ask how she'd been doing, because he already knew, as she led him into the small but modern cabin.

She felt guilty for involving him in her messy life. He'd been so kind. “I'm so sorry I—”

“Stop,” he said, putting down the cooler and stepping to her. His big hands cupping her shoulders felt warm, reassuring. “I couldn't be happier helping you. Wasn't it obvious that I was at loose ends when you came into my life? I desperately needed a diversion.”

Was that what she was? She feared he wanted more than that from her and needed to warn him what a mistake that would be. It wasn't just that she was still in love with Buck. No, her reasons, along with her fears, ran much deeper.

“Ready for your doctor's appointment?” he asked.

He hoped the neurologist would be able to determine what had caused her memory loss. She feared he might be right. “What if he tells me...”

“We'll face whatever he tells you together,” Russell said quickly and reached for her hand.

“Still, I'm afraid that I will bring something dangerous into your—”

“I can handle whatever you bring.” His gaze locked with hers. “I will protect you no matter what. Believe that.”

She could see that he meant every word. Russell would protect her to his dying breath, and that scared her even more. She hated that she'd put him in that position. Like her, he sensed that something scary from her past would ultimately find its way to Beartooth. His fear for her safety made her all the more frightened that it was only a matter of time before her past found her.

* * *

J
ACE
HAD
HOPED
Buckmaster Hamilton was right and Bo was headed back to the ranch. But by the time he'd saddled up that afternoon, leaving his pickup and horse trailer at the Hamilton Ranch, there was still no sign of Bo. Even as he rode through the foothills and into the tall pines, winding his way up into the formidable Crazy Mountains, he still hoped to run across her.

It didn't take him long to pick up her tracks. The trail into the mountains was on Hamilton Ranch property, so no one else had ridden this way recently.

He knew there could be a good excuse why she hadn't shown up. She could have gotten injured. Or her horse could have. Either would have kept her in the mountains longer than she'd planned. But the fact that she'd gone camping knowing that she had a meeting with the auditor first thing Monday morning made him suspicious that neither of those was the case.

Bo Hamilton grew up rich and insulated. This was probably the first real adversity she'd ever had in her life—and her way of handling it had been to run. That didn't surprise him at all given their past. As he rode, he became more angry with her. How could she leave her employees to face the mess at the foundation? It would be all he could do not to turn her over his knee when he found her. Instead he would take her back to face the consequences.

He hated to think what this might do to his sister. Em had a problem with trusting the wrong people. Hadn't he feared that Bo Hamilton would let her down, just as she had him? Worse, when he'd heard about the work Bo had been doing at the foundation, he'd wanted to believe she might really have changed, grown up, no longer acted on impulse. But if she'd ridden up into the mountains to hide... He'd wring her neck when he found her. And he
would
find her.

“Are you crazy?” his best friend Brody McTavish had exclaimed a few hours earlier when Jace visited to tell him where he was going. Brody had shoved back his Western straw hat to gaze at him with amused blue eyes. “You're doing this for your
sister
?” He'd laughed good-naturedly and with a shake of his head had turned back to mucking out his barn.

“This has nothing to do with Bo Hamilton other than the fact that I have to find her and make this right.”

“Make this right? Or rewrite the past? Jace—” Brody turned to look at him, his face suddenly serious. “What if she took the money? What if she rode up into those mountains to meet someone, and they are miles from here by now?”

“There is only one way to find out. Would you mind watering and feeding my animals while I'm away? I should be back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”

“You know you can count on me,” Brody had said. “But be careful. That family seems to attract trouble like bald tires pick up nails.”

Jace had chuckled and given his friend a slap on the back. “Thanks for your help and your advice.”

“Went in one ear and out the other, didn't it?” Brody sighed. “You just can't seem to get over her, can you? But I'm not going to tell you this is a fool's errand if there ever was one. Just don't make me have to come looking for you, too. There's a storm coming and we both know what that means in the Crazies.”

Now, as Jace rode higher up into the mountains following the trail Bo Hamilton had left behind, he breathed in the fresh smell of the pine trees and told himself he knew what he was doing. It was the same thing he'd been doing since his parents had died, leaving a teenager with an already wild and out-of-control kid sister to raise. He was trying to save Emily.

A breeze groaned high in the treetops. Nearby he could hear the rush of water in a small creek. He tried to concentrate on the wildness of the country, the beauty and the incredible views. He loved riding into the Crazies, loved the cool air under the heavy pine boughs, the quiet broken only by the sounds of nature, the isolation. The mountains released a calm in him that he could find in no other place.

That had been something he and Bo shared.

He shoved that thought away, anxious to hear the sound of another horse. Another person. Today he was the hunter. He wondered how Bo Hamilton would react when she realized she was his prey.

Mostly he hoped to hell he wasn't making a huge mistake, since he really had no idea what he was going to find up here.

CHAPTER FOUR

A
LEX
R
OSS
COULDN
'
T
HELP
worrying about the young woman who'd come into Big Timber Java coffee shop this afternoon. Normally she had a smile for him, her blue eyes bright as stars and her laugh...well, he'd fallen for her laugh the first time he'd heard it—even before he'd connected the laugh with the tattooed, pierced young woman.

Not that he hadn't been surprised when he'd finally put the laugh with the face of the young woman now mulling over her coffee. She was nothing like he'd expected and certainly not his type. That's why he'd never talked to her, even though he'd wanted to since the first day he'd heard her laugh.

Now, though, unable to stop himself, he quickly picked up a dishrag from behind the counter and headed for her table.

“Usually all it takes is coffee to put a smile on your face,” he said as he pretended to clean her table. “It looks as if you've barely touched yours today, so maybe that's the problem.” He wondered if he could sound any more lame.

She looked up at him, startled as if she'd been deep in thought. He wondered what she'd been thinking about. Probably a man—maybe the same one who often came in with her on her coffee break. Or maybe the one he'd seen sitting across the street in his car watching her the past couple of days. A jealous boyfriend?

As she blinked those big blue eyes at him, she gave him a wan smile instead of her usual dazzling pierced lip grin, the one that made his day the few times she'd turned it on him. Not that she'd ever really seen him, he suspected. To her, he was just the barista behind the counter.

“You work here,” she said as if finally realizing who he was.

“The apron was the dead giveaway, right?”

She looked embarrassed. “Sorry. My mind was a million miles away. I recognize you now. I haven't seen you that much behind the counter. You must work here part-time.”

He smiled at that. Actually he owned the place and another five like them across the state. “Alex Ross. Part-time barista. That's me.”

“Emily Calder.”

“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Calder. How about I get you another coffee?” He took the disposable cup of cold coffee in front of her. “The usual?”

She quirked one pierced dark eyebrow. “You know what I drink?” Her smile was brighter and the worry in her eyes a little less noticeable.

He rattled off her usual. “One Montana Mocha Grande with an extra shot of espresso, topped with whipped cream, a drizzle of caramel and a little shaved chocolate.”

She laughed. “Do you know all your customers' favorites?”

Only the ones who made his day. He grinned. “I just happened to remember yours.”

* * *

B
O
'
S
SCREAM
ECHOED
across the narrow ravine, the dense pines seeming to smother the sound.

The man laughed as he held her tighter. “Ain't no one around gonna hear ya so you might as well shut your trap.”

She screamed again as his fingers dug into her side.

“Keep that up, though, and I'm gonna cut ya good,” he said next to her ear.

She felt the dull blade press into her throat, the scream dying on her lips. She could smell his rank unwashed body, his breath nasty. He slowly turned her as if to get a good look at her. His fingers bit into the flesh of her arm as he held her with one hand and brandished the knife with the other.

“I'll be damned. Yer a fine one. Where'd ya come from?”

When she didn't speak, couldn't with her heart lodged in her throat, he gave her arm a rough shake.

“I asked ya where ya come from.”

Her mind, like her body, had frozen in astonishment when he'd first grabbed her. Panicked, her thoughts whizzed from one to the next too quickly. The only one she could catch and hold on to was
This isn't happening
.

She swallowed. “Down in the valley.” From the time she was a young child, she had known that she was a Hamilton and what that meant. When your family was wealthy—especially if your father was a senator—there were apparently people who could hurt you, kidnap you and demand ransom. But growing up in Montana not far from the ranch, she and her five sisters had always felt safe. Their father had seen to that.

“Down in the valley,”
he mocked her. “I gathered that. You got a name?”

She hesitated. “Bo.”

“Bo?” He let out another harsh laugh. “Like Bo-Peep?”

She'd been told that her older sisters had been allowed to name her and that it had been three-year-old Kat who'd come up with the name. Who let a three-year-old name the latest child? Her mother, apparently.

“Bo what?” the man asked when she didn't respond to the tired joke.

“Calder.” The name popped into her head. With it came a stab of pain. Her name really would have been Calder if she had married Jace five years ago. Why hadn't she said Smith or Jones or anything except Calder?

Instinctively she'd known she couldn't give the man her real name. Something told her that would have been a mistake. But thinking of Jace made her remember his sister, Emily, and her daughter, Jodie, and why she desperately needed to get off this mountain.

It was almost as if he'd seen what she was thinking. “You ain't goin' nowhere, Bo-Peep, 'cept with me.” He smiled. “I been up in these woods for weeks. It's damned lonely, but not no more.”

“If I don't get back, they'll come looking for me,” she blurted.

“That right?” He studied her for a full minute before he turned her arm so he could get a good look at her left hand. “You ain't married. So who's gonna be lookin' for ya?”

It was a good question. Did anyone even know that she'd left? One of the wranglers had seen her leave Saturday, but he might have no reason to mention it to anyone. Surely someone would eventually notice her SUV parked over by the “bunkhouses” her father had built for his daughters as they got older. They weren't really bunkhouses. That's just what he called them. They were actually condos, six of them with a connected large communal area. Her father had hoped it would keep his daughters on the ranch. It hadn't. Bo rented an apartment twenty miles away in downtown Big Timber near the Sarah Hamilton Foundation office. It was easier than driving in from the ranch five days a week.

“My family,” she said with more assurance than she felt. “They'll be looking for me. They expected me back this morning. If I don't show up...” She let the rest hang, hoping he would loosen his steely grip on her arm and put away the knife.

The look in his eyes said that wasn't going to happen. “Then we best get movin',” he said. “Nice of ya to provide me with a horse. I about wore out my boots in this damned rugged country.”

She looked down and saw he was right. His boots had definitely seen better days. He'd been living up here for weeks? That's when she noticed the metal bracelet-like loops on his wrists. Realization hit her like a horseshoe to the head.

Her gaze shot up to his face. He was much dirtier, his hair longer, his beard fuller, but in an instant she knew she'd seen his mug shot on television. This was the escaped fugitive from Livingston. The one believed to have killed a man during the robbery of a local convenience store. She'd seen it on the news but hadn't paid much attention, and yet she now recalled the name because law enforcement had been looking for him for weeks.

Spencer. Raymond Spencer. Her pulse thundered in her ears. There was no doubt. She'd ridden into the camp of a violent criminal, and now she was his captive.

* * *

S
ARAH
COULDN
'
T
HELP
being nervous as the doctor came into the room. What was she afraid he was going to tell her? That there was a physical reason for her memory loss? Or was her greatest fear that whatever had caused it was psychological?

Dr. Turner introduced himself before taking a chair across from her, but it was clear that he knew who she was. Anyone with a television would have heard about her.

He was a small man with such a neat appearance that she wondered if he suffered from OCD. Even his movements felt too precise, too careful.

She looked away. He made her feel uncomfortable. Had she always been this sensitive to other people's...idiosyncrasies? Or was she overly observant because she'd lived too long not knowing whom she could trust? That thought did nothing to relieve her anxiety.

“You've experienced some memory loss?” he asked as he looked at what his nurse had written on the chart, seemingly unaware of her discomfort.

She glanced around his office rather than at him. Like him, it, too, was compulsively neat. She fought the urge to move something just to see what he would do. “I can't remember the past twenty-two years.”

His head came up with a start. “But you remember before then?”

She nodded. “I remember giving birth to my twin daughters. They recently graduated from college.”

He leaned back in his chair for a moment to study her. “When and where did you come to?”

“Four months ago I woke up on a dirt road just outside of Beartooth. I was confused. My only thought was that I had to see my daughters. I have six. The twins are the youngest.”

The doctor picked up his pen and turned it slowly in his fingers as if inspecting it for even the slightest of smudges before asking, “Why did you wait four months to come see me?”

“I'm not sure I want to know why I can't remember.”

He frowned. “Were you involved in any trauma that you know of such as an assault or car accident or violent collision in, say, a sporting event?”

“I'm told I crashed my car into the Yellowstone River in the middle of winter before I...disappeared.”

He studied her again for a long moment before jotting down the information in her chart. “Does anything help improve your memory?”

She hesitated. “I get flashes like shadows that fade in and out sometimes, but they make no sense, so I can't be sure they're even memories.”

“You don't have any short-term memory loss?”

“No.” She watched him write.

“So you don't know why or how the memory loss began?”

“No.” She answered questions about her medical history—at least the years she recalled.

“Drugs? Alcohol?”

She shook her head. “Not that I know of,” she said, remembering the taste of vodka even though she couldn't recall ever drinking it.

“I'm going to do a physical exam along with some cognitive testing. Then we'll see about a CT scan to rule out damage or abnormalities to the brain. We'll take blood to check for an infection...”

Sarah felt like a sleepwalker as she went through the process. Later she found herself back in the doctor's office. She moved several things on his desk before he joined her.

When he came back into the room, he stopped before sitting down and asking, “Did you move something on my desk?”

“Why would I?”

He nodded. “Good question.” He quickly replaced both items she'd moved to their original locations before he sat. “Yours is a very interesting case,” he said once behind his desk again. “I can see no medical reason for your memory loss, no damage to the brain, no infection...” He closed the chart and steepled his fingers as he peered at her. “That leaves another possibility.”

“That my memory loss might be psychological,” she said, voicing her worst fear.

He nodded slowly. “I can give you the name of a psychiatrist...” She said nothing as he scribbled the name on a prescription pad he pulled from his top drawer. She took the sheet from him, folded it and put it into her pocket.

As she stood to leave, he said, “I would be interested to see how it turns out.” His gaze locked with hers, and she saw that he'd made up his mind about her.

The moment he'd realized that she'd moved items on his desk, he'd known she'd done it to mess with his mind. Just as he'd known she was lying when she'd denied it. Now he was probably wondering why a woman would lie about losing twenty-two years of her memory.

* * *

C
URIOUS
, E
MILY
WATCHED
Alex Ross head behind the counter to get her another coffee. He'd been
flirting
with her! The thought surprised her. He was not the kind of man who normally gave her a second glance.

He wore an apron with Big Timber Java printed on it over his button-down shirt and chinos. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing surprisingly muscled tanned arms. She wondered what he did when he wasn't working here in the coffee shop. Then she shook her head as she imagined what her ex Harrison would have thought of the guy.

She instantly felt defensive on Alex's behalf. While he wasn't her usual type—not in the least—he was nice and kind of cute in his way-too-straightlaced clothes. He'd been so sweet when he'd come over to the table. He wanted her to feel better. Harrison had never cared how she was feeling one way or the other.

Just the thought of the man who'd gotten her arrested made her go cold inside. He'd been mean, taking out his temper on her with hard words and fists. But that was all behind her, she told herself as the barista returned with another cup of coffee. She reached for her purse.

“It's on the house. Your smile was payment enough,” he said. “I was worried about you. You looked so serious. Can't have one of my favorite customers looking so sad.”

Yep, he was definitely hitting on her. She grinned, more amused than anything. She certainly wasn't taking any of this seriously as she accepted the coffee. “Thanks.” She took a sip. “Nice job.”

He shrugged. “I try. I've seen you in here with Jace Calder. Any relation?”