Unforgiven

THE STORM BLEW IN WITH a vengeance just after midnight. Destry woke to rain and the banging of one of the shutters downstairs. She rose and padded down the steps wearing nothing but the long worn T-shirt she’d gone to bed in.

As she stepped off the bottom stair, she slowed, surprised to feel the chilled wind on her face. Had she left one of the windows open?

The air had a bite to it, another indication that winter wasn’t far off. This time of year the days could be hot as summer, but by night the temperature would drop like a stone. Soon the water in the shallow eddies of the creek would have a skim of ice on them in the morning and the peaks in the Crazies would gleam with fresh snow.

She thought about her brother’s earlier visit. What had he walked all the way down here for? She’d been too worked up over seeing Rylan at the time to question him. Later she’d had the feeling he wanted to tell her something. Whatever it was, he’d apparently changed his mind.

After they’d finished stacking the wood, she’d invited him in, but he’d declined. Just as he had when she’d offered to give him a ride back up to their father’s house.

“I need the exercise,” he’d said and had taken off before it became completely dark.

Her thoughts turned to her visit with Rylan earlier that night. Just the memory of him cooking steaks in that small cabin, warmed her still. It had seemed so normal, so welcoming, like the Rylan she once knew. He might come after Carson again when she wouldn’t be there to talk him out of it. But at least it wouldn’t be tonight.

Destry hugged herself from the chill as she started across the open living room. The worn wood floor beneath her bare feet felt freezing cold. The shutter banged a monotonous beat against the side of the house. The wind curled the edge of the living room rug and flapped the pages of a livestock grower’s magazine left on an end table.

It wasn’t until she reached the back of the house that she realized it wasn’t a window that had been left open—it was the back door.

A chill rattled through her that had nothing to do with the wind or the cold. Through the open doorway, the pines appeared black against the dark night. They whipped in the wind and rain below a cloud-shrouded sky.

Destry reached to close the door but stopped as she caught movement out beyond the creek. Something at the edge of the trees. Without taking her eyes off the spot, she reached for the shotgun she kept by the back door to chase away bears. She didn’t have to break it down to know it was loaded. There were two shells, one in each barrel.

She stared through the darkness at the spot in the pines and cottonwoods where she would have sworn she saw something move just moments before.

As she stood in the doorway, large droplets of rain pinged off the overhang, splattering her with cool mist. The wind blew her hair back from her face and molded the worn T-shirt to her body.

What had she seen? Or had she just imagined the movement?

Another chill raced across her bare flesh. She hated the way her heart pounded. Worse, that whatever had been out there had the ability to spook her.

The door must not have been latched and had blown open. But as she started to close the door, she recalled the downed fence and the tracks leading into the trees behind her house that she’d seen from the air. With everything that had happened, she’d forgotten about them.

Few people who lived out in the country locked their doors, especially around Beartooth. Destry never had. But tonight she closed the door, locked it and, leaving the shotgun by the back door, took her pistol up to her bedroom.

CHAPTER SIX

NETTIE BENTON DIDN’T notice the broken window when she opened the Beartooth General Store early the next morning. She hadn’t gotten much sleep, thanks to Bob and the bad dreams he’d had during the night. She’d awakened to find him screaming in terror—as if his snoring wasn’t bad enough.

He’d finally moved in to the guest room, or she wouldn’t have slept a wink. When she’d gone to open the store’s front door, she’d looked across the street and seen the new owner of the café chatting with a handful of customers. Just the sight of Kate LaFond threatened to ruin an already bad day.

The woman had purchased the Branding Iron after the former owner had dropped dead this spring. Just days after the funeral, Kate LaFond had appeared out of nowhere. No one knew anything about her or why she’d decided to buy a café in Beartooth.

The community had been so grateful that she had kept the café open, they hadn’t cared who she was or where she’d come from. Or what the devil she was doing here.

Everyone but Nettie. “I still say it’s odd,” she said to herself now as she stood at the window watching Kate smiling and laughing with a bunch of ranchers as she refilled their coffee cups.

An attractive thirtysomething brunette, Kate had apparently taken to the town like a duck to water. It annoyed Nettie that, after only a few months, most people seemed fine with her. They didn’t care, they said, that they didn’t know a single relative fact about the woman’s past.

“It’s just nice to have the café open,” local contractor Grayson Brooks had told her. Nettie had noticed how often Grayson stopped by the café mornings now. Grayson owned Brooks Construction and was semiretired at forty-five because of his invalid wife, Anna. He had a crew that did most of the physical work, allowing him, apparently, to spend long hours at the Branding Iron every morning.

“Kate’s nice and friendly and she makes a pretty good cup of coffee,” Grayson had said when Nettie had asked him what he thought of the woman. “I think she makes a fine addition to the town.”

“Doesn’t hurt that she’s young and pretty, I suppose,” Nettie had said.

Grayson had merely smiled as if she wasn’t going to get an argument out of him on that subject, although everyone knew, as good-looking as he was, he was devoted to his wife.

“Did you ever consider it’s none of our business?” her husband, Bob, had asked when Nettie had complained about Kate LaFond to him. He’d been sitting in his office adding up the day’s receipts.

“What if she has some dark past? A woman like that, she could have been married, killed several husbands by the age of thirty-five, even drowned a few of her children.”

Bob had looked up at her, squinting. After forty years of marriage, he no longer seemed shocked by anything she said.

“Why on earth would you even think such a thing?” he’d asked wearily.

“There’s something about her. Why won’t she tell anyone about her past if she has nothing to hide? I’m warning you, Bob Benton, there is something off about that woman. Why else would she buy a café in a near ghost town, far away from everything? She’s running from something. Mark my words.”

“Sometimes, Nettie” was all Bob had said with one of his big sighs, before leaving to walk up the steep path to their house.

Now, Kate LaFond looked up. Their gazes met across the narrow stretch of blacktop that made up the main drag of Beartooth. The look Kate gave her made a shudder run the length of Nettie’s spine.

“That woman’s dangerous,” she said to herself. It didn’t matter that there was no one around to hear. No one listened to her anyway.

Nettie moved from the window and went about opening the store as she did every morning. Lost in thought, she barely heard something crunch under her boots. She blinked, stumbling to a stop to look down. That’s when she saw the glass from the broken window.

* * *

DESTRY DROVE UP TO THE big house, anxious to spend some time with her brother. She hadn’t slept well last night after discovering the open door, so she’d had a lot of time to think.

She was worried about her brother. Even more worried about what he might have come down to the house to tell her last night.

This afternoon she would be rounding up the last of the cattle from the mountains. After a season on the summer range, they would be bringing down the last of the fattened-up calves, and all but the breeding stock would be loaded into semis and taken to market.

Destry always went on the last roundup in the high country before winter set in. The air earlier this morning had been crisp and cold, the ground frosty after last night’s rain. But while clouds still shrouded the peaks of the Crazies, the sun was out down here in the valley, the day warming fast.

As she pulled up to the house and honked, she was surprised when her brother came right out. He’d never been an early riser even as a boy. He must really be desperate to get away from their father. Or was it his fiancée?

“Okay, where are we going?” Carson asked as he climbed into the pickup.

Destry nodded her head toward the bed of the truck and the fishing tackle she’d loaded this morning.

“Fishing?” He shook his head as she threw the pickup into gear. “Did you forget I don’t have a fishing license?”

“With all your problems, you’re worried about getting caught without a fishing license?”

He laughed. “Good point.” He leaned back in the seat as she tore down the road, and for a moment, she could pretend they were kids again heading for the reservoir to go fishing after doing their chores.

Destry barreled forward, having driven more dirt roads in her life than paved ones. The pickup rumbled across one cattle guard after another, then across the pasture, dropping down to the creek.

Because it was late in the year, the creek was low. She slowed as the pickup forded the stream, tires plunged over the rocks and through a half foot of crystal clear water before roaring up the other side.