Dark Horse

“You told me my father died.”

“He did die.”

“You just failed to mention he died on the way to prison for kidnapping and murder.”

“He didn’t do it. He swore he didn’t do it,” her mother had cried. She was convinced that her husband hadn’t been involved with Marianne McGraw nor had anything to do with the kidnapping, let alone the double murder of two innocent babies.

But someone had. And if not her father, then someone had let him be convicted and die for a crime he hadn’t committed.

Nikki was determined to get to the truth no matter what it took. She had just short of a week before the twenty-fifth anniversary of the kidnapping to get the real story. Travers desperately wanted her to do the book. It was the family she was worried about.

She’d been thinking about how to get close to at least one of the sons before she headed for Sundown Stallion Station and met the rest of the McGraws.

If there was one thing she believed it was that the people in that house had more information than they’d given the sheriff twenty-five years ago. They just might not realize the importance of what they’d seen or heard. Or they had their reasons for keeping it to themselves.

“So how did you get into writing crime books?” the nurse’s aide asked as if putting off going back down that long hallway by herself.

“It’s in my blood,” Nikki said. “My grandfather was a Pulitzer Prize–winning newspaper reporter. From as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be just like him.”

“He must be proud of you,” Tess said almost wistfully.

Nikki nodded distractedly. Proving herself to her grandfather was another reason she would do whatever it took to get the real kidnapping story—or die trying.

Chapter Three (#u8ed6f4a0-6fc9-5f95-b856-b7f4a49760dd)

Cull McGraw put down the windows on his pickup as he drove into Whitehorse. It was one of the big sky days where the deep blue ran from horizon to horizon without a cloud. In the distance, snow still capped the top of the Little Rockies, and everywhere he looked he saw spring as the land began to turn green.

Days like this, Cull felt like he could breathe. Part of it was getting out of the house. He just felt lucky that he’d intercepted the newspaper before Frieda, the family cook, had delivered it on the way to the kitchen.

He didn’t need a calendar to know what time of the year it was. He had seen the approaching anniversary of the kidnapping in the pained look in his father’s eyes. He could feel it take over the main house as if draping it in a black funeral shroud.

Every year, he just rode it out. The day would pass. Nothing would happen. No one would come forward with information about the missing twins. Another year would pass. Another year of watching his father get his hopes up only to be crushed under the weight of disappointment.

What always made it worse was the age-progression photographs in the newspaper of what Oakley and Jesse Rose would look like now and his father’s plea for any information on them.

Ahead, he could see the outskirts of the small Western town. Cull sighed. He should have known there would be a big write-up in the paper, since this would be the twenty-fifth anniversary. He glanced over at the newspaper lying on the seat next to him. He’d read just enough to set him off. When would his father realize that the twins were gone and would never be coming back? Knowing Travers McGraw the way he did, Cull knew his father would hold out hope until his last dying breath.

But this year, the publisher of the paper had talked his younger brother Ledger into an interview. As he drove down the main drag, he spotted Ledger’s pickup right where he knew it would be—in front of the Whitehorse Café.

* * *

JUST AS NIKKI had done for the past few days, she watched Ledger McGraw enter the Whitehorse Café. He had arrived at the same time each morning, pulled up out front in a Sundown Stallion Station pickup and adjusted his Stetson before climbing out.

Across the street in the park, Nikki observed him from behind the latest weekly newspaper as he hesitated just inside the café door. She saw him looking around, and after watching him for three mornings, she knew exactly what he was looking for. Who he was looking for.

He tipped his hat to the young redheaded waitress, just as he had the past three mornings, before he took a seat at a booth in her section. He had been three when the twins were kidnapped, which now made him about twenty-eight. There was an innocence about him and an old-fashioned chivalrous politeness. She’d seen it in the way he wiped his boots on the mat just outside the café door. In the way he always removed his hat the moment he stepped in. In the way he waited to be offered a seat as if he had all day.

She’d keyed in on Ledger when she’d realized that no one else in the McGraw family had such a predictable routine. That wasn’t the only reason she’d chosen him. In the days she’d been in town watching him each morning, she had seen his trusting nature and hoped he would be the son she might get to help her.

Nikki didn’t kid herself that this was going to be easy. She’d heard from other journalists that the family hated reporters and all of them except Travers had refused to talk about the kidnapping. She desperately needed someone on that ranch who would be agreeable to help her. Ledger might be the one.

Nikki wished she had more time before making her move. But the clock was ticking. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the kidnapping was approaching rapidly. It still gave her a chill when she looked at the photographs she’d taken of Marianne McGraw. It hadn’t been her imagination. The woman had risen up from her chair, eyes wild, hands clenched around the “babies” in her arms.

If Nikki had had any doubt that the woman was still in that shell of a body, she no longer did. Now she had to find out if the rumors were true about Marianne and Nate Corwin.

From across the street, she watched Ledger take a seat in his usual booth. A moment later, the redhead put a cup of coffee, a menu and the folded edition of what Nikki assumed was the Milk River Courier on his table.

The local weekly had just come out this morning. Ledger had been interviewed, which surprised her, since it was the first time she knew of that he’d spoken to the press, but it also made her even more convinced that Ledger was her way into the family.

Inside the café, she watched Ledger looking bashful as he picked up the menu, but he didn’t look at it. Instead, he secretly watched the redheaded waitress as she walked away.

Nikki saw something in his expression that touched her heart. A vulnerability that made her turn away for a moment. There was a yearning that was all too evident to anyone watching.

But no one else was watching. Clearly this young man was besotted with this redhead. Today, though, Nikki noticed something she’d missed the days before.

As she watched the waitress return to the table to take his order, she saw why she’d missed it. Along with the obvious sexual tension between them, there was the glint of a gold band on the young woman’s left-hand ring finger.

Her heart ached all the more for Ledger because this was clearly a case of unrequited love. Add to that an obvious shared history and Nikki knew she was witnessing heartbreak at its rawest. The redhead had moved on, but Ledger apparently hadn’t.

High school sweethearts? But if so, what had torn them apart? she wondered, then quickly brushed her curiosity aside. Her grandfather had often warned her about getting emotionally involved with the people she wrote about.

She knew in this case, she had to be especially careful.

“Care, and you lose your objectivity,” he’d said when, as a girl, she’d asked how he could write about the pain and suffering of people the way he did. “The best stories are about another person’s pain. It’s the nature of the business because people who’ve lost something make good human-interest stories. Everyone can relate because we have all lost something dear to us.”

“What have you lost?” she’d asked her grandfather, since she’d never seen vulnerability in him ever.

“Nothing.”

She’d always assumed that was true. Nothing stopped her grandfather from getting what he wanted. He’d go to any extreme to get a story and later to run the newspaper he bought, even if it meant risking his life or his business. But then again, that was one of the reasons Nikki suspected her grandmother had left him to marry another man. Not that her grandfather had seemed to notice. Or maybe he hid his pain well.

Ledger McGraw was in pain and it couldn’t help but touch her heart. Nikki knew her grandfather would encourage her to use this new information to her advantage.

“Keep your eye on the goal,” he’d always said. “The goal is getting the best story you possibly can. You aren’t there to try to make things better or bond with these people.”

That had sounded cold to her.

“It’s all about emotional distance. Pretend you’re a fly on the wall,” he’d said. “A fly that sometimes has to buzz around and get things going if you hope to get anything worth writing about.”

Nikki now felt anxious. She had to make her move today. Ledger would be finishing his breakfast soon. She couldn’t put this off any longer. Just as she decided it was time, she saw Ledger grab the redhead’s wrist as she started to step past his table.

Nikki saw those too shallowly buried emotions arc between them as the waitress reacted to whatever he was saying to her. The waitress jerked free of his hold and looked as if she might cry. But Nikki’s gaze was on Ledger’s face. His pain was so naked that she couldn’t help feeling it at heart level.

Ledger McGraw was incredibly young, his protectiveness for this woman touching. He’s still a boy, Nikki thought, and felt guilty for what she was about to do.

* * *

LEDGER IMMEDIATELY REGRETTED grabbing Abby’s wrist. Without looking at her, he said, “He’s hurt you again.”