Rogue Gunslinger

“Snacks!” TJ and Chloe said together.

“Did I mention I bought your favorite bottles of wine?” Annabelle asked. “Or we can go out and party tonight.”

TJ and Chloe groaned in unison and then laughed. It felt good being around them again, TJ thought, and felt her eyes burn again with tears. Coming home for the holidays had been the right choice. She realized this was the best she’d felt in a very long time.

Annabelle chattered as they walked through the terminal toward the exit. TJ half listened, thankful that the trouble between them had blown over. They were all three back in Montana just like when they were growing up. They were sisters and she couldn’t have been more delighted to be with them, even though people stared.

She laughed. She’d forgotten they were all now wearing elf hats. For a few minutes, she’d completely forgotten her near-death experience this morning in the city and True Fan’s threats.

But as she and her sisters passed a group waiting in one of the departure lines, she saw a woman raise her phone and take a photo of the three of them. Glancing back, TJ saw the woman quickly begin texting someone.

Chapter Three (#u7888e162-b2a0-5645-95ed-ca226ffea76e)

“Wow,” Chloe cried from the front seat of the SUV as she showed TJ her phone. “It’s already all over social media.” There was the photograph of the three of them in their elf hats. Just as she’d feared, the woman had recognized her, tagging the photo with her pen name. “Ah the life of the rich and famous.”

TJ groaned. “Now everyone will know that I’ve come home to Whitehorse for Christmas.”

“It isn’t like it was a secret, right?” Annabelle asked as she drove. “Everyone knows you’re from Whitehorse, Montana. Not much of a leap that you would be going home for Christmas.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Seriously, is it a problem?”

“No,” TJ lied. “It’s fine. Sometimes it would be nice to be anonymous though, but I don’t have to tell you about that.”

Annabelle sighed. “Yep, but when now faced with being anonymous the rest of my life... Well, it’s an adjustment. I have to admit, it was fun seeing my photo on the front of magazines—even if it was a doctored photo of me. Nothing is all that real with modeling.”

“So you’re not going back to it?” Chloe asked their baby sister. “You’re just going to marry Dawson Rogers, become a ranchwoman—”

“And live happily ever after,” Annabelle said with a giggle. “Yep, that’s the plan.”

They began discussing people they knew in Whitehorse and how things had or hadn’t changed.

TJ only half listened to their conversation. She hadn’t told either sister about the threatening letters—let alone what had happened in the city only hours ago. The more she’d thought about it on the plane ride back to Montana, the more unsure she was that she’d been pushed in front of that truck. Could it have been an accident? Or had it been deliberate? Either way, if that man hadn’t grabbed her...

She shivered and looked out at the snowy landscape. If that man was her True Fan, he’d been watching her apartment. When the light had gone off in her living room, he would have known she would be coming downstairs. Or he might have been a stranger passing by.

TJ shook her head, determined not to think about it. She was safe now. At least for a while.

“So we’re talking wedding bells,” Chloe was saying.

“Wait, I must have missed something,” TJ said, sitting forward to hear. “You and Dawson? When?”

“We haven’t set a date yet. I know it’s quick, but I would love a Christmas wedding, something small and intimate,” Annabelle said, sounding dreamy. Both Chloe and TJ groaned and then laughed.

“Love,” Chloe said with a shake of her head.

“Actually,” TJ said, settling back into her seat, “I always thought you and Dawson were a good match.”

They talked about weddings, growing up in Whitehorse, people they knew who’d left—and those who had stayed. The time passed quickly on the drive to their hometown.

As they pulled up in front of the house they’d grown up in after their parents had died, Annabelle cut the engine. Conversation died. They all looked in the direction of Grandmother Frannie’s house. Even though Frannie had left the house to Annabelle, TJ would always think of it as their grandmother’s. None of them spoke. The only sound was the tick, tick, tick as the motor cooled.

“Are you two all right?” Annabelle asked.

TJ hadn’t realized it when they’d met her at the airport, but Chloe had flown in only thirty minutes before she had. Which meant that like her, she hadn’t been to the house where they were raised since the funeral.

“It’s like it was when we were kids,” Annabelle said, as if trying to reassure them.

From the back seat, TJ glanced at her sister in the rearview mirror. All three of them knew the house would never be like that again. Not after their grandmother’s secrets had been unearthed, so to speak.

“If you don’t want to stay here, we can go out to Dawson’s ranch,” Annabelle said. “We have a standing invitation.”

TJ smiled at that, seeing how happy her sister was to be back together with her high school sweetheart. “I’m good with staying in the house.”

“Of course you are,” Chloe said. “You write murder mysteries.” She sighed. “I am good with staying here too. I think it’s what Grandmother would have wanted. But it’s still weird. I can’t believe the secrets our grandmother kept from us.”

TJ chuckled. Frannie had been a tiny, sweet little woman who everyone said wouldn’t hurt a fly. “Seems all those wild stories we thought she made up to entertain us had some truth in them.”

“Imagine if she hadn’t toned them down to PG,” Annabelle said.

They all laughed and opened their car doors, the earlier tension gone. Getting the luggage out, they made their way up the shoveled path through the deep snow. Christmas in Whitehorse, TJ thought. The last time she’d left here, she’d been pretty sure she’d never be back. But as she breathed in the icy evening air, she knew she was exactly where she wanted to be right now.

Annabelle scooped up a handful of snow in her mitten and tossed it into the air over them before running toward the door, fearing payback. Both TJ and Chloe let out cries as ice crystals glittered in the silver evening before covering them from head to toe.

TJ shook the light snow from her long blond hair and laughed. It was good to see Annabelle like this. It had been a long time. Now, she was again that adventurous young girl who’d gotten stuck in the neighbor boy’s tree house.

“I thought you’d want your old rooms,” Annabelle was saying as they crossed the porch and she unlocked the door.

TJ hadn’t known what to expect as the door swung open. Her grandmother had been a hoarder in her old age. The last time she’d seen this place—when she and Chloe had come up for the funeral—it had been so full of newspapers, magazines, knickknacks, old furniture and so much junk there were only paths through the house. Little had they known what was buried in there.

She stopped in the doorway, dumbstruck. The junk was gone. The walls were painted a nice pale gray, and the place looked warm and welcoming, complete with new furniture.

“Annabelle, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. We aren’t staying that long,” TJ said, shocked.

“It wasn’t all me. Willie insisted on helping and I wasn’t about to say no,” Annabelle said. “You remember Dawson’s mom. When she takes on a project... You have to see the kitchen. Dawson completely remodeled it.”

TJ could only nod and follow her sister into the kitchen where their grandmother used to attempt to cook. She stopped in the doorway. This was the room where Annabelle had discovered her grandmother’s biggest secret. It looked like any other kitchen in an older remodeled house.

“Remember the cookie jar where Frannie kept her grocery money?” her sister was saying. “I saved it.”

Chloe had stepped in and was looking around, wide-eyed. “It’s amazing.” She met TJ’s gaze. “Ghosts?”

“Gone,” Annabelle said, and crossed her heart with her index finger. “No ghosts.”

TJ thought ghosts were the least of her problems. “Did Willie help you with our rooms as well?”

“She did. Come on, I’ll show you.” Annabelle ran up the stairs. TJ and Chloe followed, whispering among themselves.

“She did a great job,” Chloe was saying. “Remember what it was like?”

“Unfortunately, I do,” TJ said. “Like a horror story.”