Deliverance at Cardwell Ranch

“We have to get you to shelter. I’m not going to hurt you. Do you understand me?” Any other time, he would have put out some sort of warning sign in case another driver came along. But he couldn’t let go of this woman for fear she would attack him again or worse, take off into the storm.

He had to get her to the cabin as quickly as possible. He wasn’t sure how badly she was hurt—just that blood was still streaming down her face from the contusion on her forehead. Loss of blood or a concussion could be the cause for her odd behavior. He’d have to restrain her and come back to flag the wreck.

Fortunately, the road was now closed to all but emergency traffic. He figured the first vehicle to come upon the wreck would be highway patrol or possibly a snowplow driver.

Feeling he had no choice but to get her out of this storm, Austin grabbed his duffel out of the back of the SUV and started to lock it, still holding on to the woman. For the first time, he took a good look at her.

She wore designer jeans, dress boots, a sweater and no coat. He realized he hadn’t seen a winter coat in the car or any snow boots. In her state of mind, she could have removed her coat and left it out in the snow.

Taking off his down coat, he put it on her even though she fought him. He put on the lighter-weight jacket he’d been wearing earlier when he’d gone off the road.

In his duffel bag, he found a pair of mittens he’d invested in before the trip and put them on her gloveless hands, then dug out a baseball cap, the only hat he had. He put it on her head of dark curly hair. The brown eyes staring out at him were wide with fear and confusion.

“You’re going to have to walk for a ways,” he said to her. She gave him a blank look. But while she appeared more subdued, he wasn’t going to trust it. “The cabin I saw from the road isn’t far.”

It wasn’t a long walk. The woman came along without a struggle. But she still seemed terrified of something. She kept looking behind her as they walked as if she feared someone was out there in the storm and would be coming after her. He could feel her body trembling through the grip he had on her arm.

Walking through the falling snow, down the middle of the deserted highway, felt surreal. The quiet, the empty highway, the two of them, strangers, at least one of them in some sort of trouble. It felt as if the world had come to an end and they were the last two people alive.

As they neared where he’d seen the cabin, he hoped his eyes hadn’t been deceiving him since he’d only gotten a glimpse through the falling snow. He quickly saw that it was probably only a summer cabin, if that. It didn’t look as if it had been used in years. Tiny and rustic, it was set back in a narrow ravine off the highway. The windows had wooden shutters on them and the front door was secured with a padlock.

They slogged through the deep snow up the ravine to the cabin as flakes whirled around them. Austin couldn’t remember ever being this cold. The woman had to be freezing since she’d been out in the cold longer than he had and her sweater had to be soaked beneath his coat.

Leading her around to the back, he found a shutter-less window next to the door. Putting his elbow through the old, thin glass, he reached inside and unlocked the door. As he shoved it open, a gust of cold, musty air rushed out.

The woman balked for a moment before he pulled her inside. The room was small, and had apparently once been a porch but was now a storage area. He was relieved to see a stack of dry split wood piled by the door leading into the cabin proper.

Opening the next door, he stepped in, dragging the woman after him. It was pitch-black inside. He dropped his duffel bag and her purse, removed the flashlight from his coat pocket and shone it around the room. An old rock fireplace, the front sooty from years of fires, stood against one wall. A menagerie of ancient furniture formed a half circle around it.

Through a door, he saw one bedroom with a double bed. In another, there were two bunk beds. The bathroom was apparently an outhouse out back. The kitchen was so small he almost missed it.

“We won’t have water or any lavatory facilities, but we’ll make do since we will have heat as soon as I get a fire going.” He looked at her, debating what to do. She couldn’t go far inside the small cabin, but she could find a weapon easy enough. He wasn’t going to chance it since his head still hurt like hell from the tire iron she’d used to try to cave in his skull. His back was sore, but that was all, fortunately.

Because of his work as a deputy sheriff, he always carried a gun and handcuffs. He put the duffel bag down on the table, unzipped it and pulled out the handcuffs.

The woman tried to pull free of him at the sight of them.

“Listen,” he said gently. “I’m only going to handcuff one of your wrists just to restrain you. I can’t trust that you won’t hurt me or yourself if I don’t.” He said all of it apologetically.

Something in his voice must have assured her because she let him lead her over to a chair in front of the fireplace. He snapped one cuff on her right wrist and the other to the frame of the heaviest chair.

She looked around the small cabin, her gaze going to the back door. The terror in her eyes made the hair on the back of his neck spike. He’d once had a girlfriend whose cat used to suddenly look at a doorway as if there were something unearthly standing in it. Austin had the same creepy feeling now and feared that this woman was as haunted as that darned cat.

With the dried wood from the back porch and some matches he found in the kitchen, he got a fire going. Just the sound of the wood crackling and the glow of the flames seemed to instantly warm the room.

He found a pan in the kitchen and, filling it with snow from outside, brought it in and placed it in front of the fire. It wasn’t long before he could dampen one end of a dish towel from the kitchen.

“I’m going to wash the blood off your face so I can see how badly you’ve been hurt, all right?”

She held still as he gently applied the wet towel. The bleeding had stopped over her eye, but it was a nasty gash. It took some searching before he found a first aid kit in one of the bedrooms and bandaged the cut as best he could.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

She shook her head.

“Okay,” he said with a nod. His head still ached, but the tire iron hadn’t broken the skin—only because he had a thick head of dark hair like all of the Cardwells—and a hard head to boot.

The cabin was getting warmer, but he still found an old quilt and wrapped it around her. She had stopped shaking at least. Unfortunately, she still looked confused and scared. He was pretty sure she had a concussion. But there was little he could do. He still had no cell phone coverage. Not that anyone could get to them with the wrecks and the roads the way they were.

Picking up her purse, he sat down in a chair near her. He noticed her watching him closely as he dumped the contents out on the marred wood coffee table. Coins tinkled out, several spilling onto the floor. As he picked them up, he realized several interesting things about what was—and wasn’t—in her purse.

There was a whole lot of makeup for someone who didn’t have any on. There was also no cell phone. But there was a baby’s pacifier.

He looked up at her and realized he’d made a rooky mistake. He hadn’t searched her. He’d just assumed she didn’t have a weapon like a gun or knife because she’d used a tire iron back on the highway.

Getting up, he went over to her and checked her pockets. No cell phone. But he did find a set of car keys. He frowned. That was odd since he remembered that the keys had still been in the wrecked car. The engine had died, but the lights were still on.

So what were these keys for? They appeared to have at least one key for a vehicle and another like the kind used for house doors.

“Are these your keys?” he asked, but after staring at them for a moment, she frowned and looked away.

Maybe she had been telling the truth about the car not being hers.

Sitting back down, he opened her wallet. Three singles, a five—and less than a dollar in change. Not much money for a woman on the road. Not much money dressed like she was either. Also, there were no credit cards.

But there was a driver’s license. He pulled it out and looked at the photo. The woman’s dark hair in the snapshot was shorter and curlier, but she had the same intense brown eyes. There was enough of a resemblance that he would assume this woman was Rebecca Stewart. According to the ID, she was married, lived in Helena, Montana, and was an organ donor.

“It says here that your name is Rebecca Stewart.”

“That’s not my purse.” She frowned at the bag as if she’d never seen it before.

“Then what was it doing in the car you were driving?”

She shook her head, looking more confused and scared.

“If you’re not Rebecca Stewart, then who are you?”

He saw her lower lip quiver. One large tear rolled down her cheek. “I don’t know.” When she went to wipe her tears with her free hand, he saw the diamond watch.

Reaching over, he caught her wrist. She tried to pull away, but he was much stronger than she was, and more determined. Even at a glance, he could see that the watch was expensive.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, hating that he sounded so suspicious. But the woman had a car and a purse she swore weren’t hers. It wasn’t that much of a leap to think that the watch probably wasn’t hers either.

She stared at the watch on her wrist as if she’d never seen it before. The gold band was encrusted with diamonds. Pulling it off her wrist, he turned the watch over. Just as he’d suspected, it was engraved:

To Gillian with all my love.

“Is your name Gillian?”