Bodyguard Under the Mistletoe

He left the room quickly.

From down the hallway, Jesse heard a door slam. He turned to Carolyn. “I’m leaving two men here at the house. Wentworth and Neville. I’ll be staying at Fiona’s.”

“You’re welcome to stay for dinner,” she said.

“It’s better for me to leave.”

He didn’t want to face Dylan again. Not until he had something to report.

PETE RICHTER LIKED being up high, above it all. In the nest he’d made in a pine tree, twenty feet off the ground, he was damn near invisible. Not many people looked up when they were searching. They were too stupid. They kept their eyes on the dirt.

He looked down at the Carlisle ranch house, peering through small binoculars for a better view. He was close enough to hear them talking but couldn’t make out the words.

All the feds, except that one guy who was having sex with the high and mighty Carolyn Carlisle, had left early this morning, taking their chopper and sniffer dogs along with them. They’d arrested Logan and everybody else in the SOF. Fine with him. As far as he was concerned, they could all go to hell.

He leaned back against the rough pine bark. Years ago, when he worked as a lumberjack in Oregon, he had stayed in the treetops all day. Except for the cold, he was comfortable. Earlier, he’d used a hand ax—a tool he carried on his belt—to chop away the small branches that poked into his back. This was a good perch for a watcher, even better for a sniper. If he’d wanted, he could have taken aim from here and picked off ten men before they noticed him.

But that wasn’t his plan.

As soon as he found his share of the ransom, his five-hundred-thousand-dollar share, he intended to leave the West to the cowboys and their stinking cattle. He’d move to Baja. Live on the beach. Climb the palm trees and get coconuts for food. He’d never work again.

If damn Butch Thurgood hadn’t double-crossed him, he could have been in Mexico right now. He should have known better than to trust Butch. That cowboy had been coasting on his rodeo reputation for years, but he was weak.

Richter hadn’t meant to kill him. When he started hitting Butch, he only wanted to punish him, to make him talk. But things got out of hand. Butch made him mad. Real mad.

He remembered using his gloved fist, punching again and again. Then he’d picked up a rock. Butch died with his eyes wide open, staring up in surprise.

Hearing voices from the ranch house, Richter peered down. He saw the security guard he’d shot leaving the house with the fed. They got into a truck and drove south, toward the widow Grant’s property where the sheriff and his deputies were digging around and searching.

The worst thing that could happen was for one of those lamebrain deputies to find the ransom. But they weren’t that smart. He’d already gone through the outbuildings on the widow’s land. And he hadn’t found a damn thing.

Still, he knew the money was there. Butch didn’t have time to move it. But where? The way Richter figured, the widow had to know. Maybe she’d been working with Butch. Or maybe she found the money and stashed it herself.

Either way, Pete needed to get his hands on Fiona Grant. He’d make her talk.

Chapter Six (#ulink_43aafd96-52b9-5d5a-8563-c496719b29f4)

Sunset painted the December skies in streaks of pink and gold above distant, snowy peaks. For a moment, Jesse watched and marveled. He’d almost died. This might count as the first sunset of the rest of his life. Inborn wisdom told him to take a moment to appreciate this miracle of light.

He sat on the one-step covered porch outside Fiona’s front door. Beside him was Sheriff Trainer from Delta. His deputies had removed the body and dusted for prints. They were still combing the area—looking for evidence and finding nothing of importance.

The sheriff took a drag on his cigarette. “I’ve been around a long time. Never been tangled up in anything this complicated, but I’ve dealt with my share of lawbreakers. And it seems to me that when people get in trouble, they’re usually asking for it.”

“Not in my line of work,” Jesse said. “Most of the people I’m hired to protect are victims of circumstance. Like the Carlisles. Like Nicole.”

“Miss Nicole was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the sheriff conceded. “Those boys from the SOF didn’t set out to kidnap anybody. But you’ve got to admit that they wouldn’t have kept Nicole if she hadn’t been Dylan’s wife. They knew he’d pay any price to get her back.”

“Are you saying that it’s Nicole’s fault that she got kidnapped?”

“Hell, no. I’m not blaming her.” His long, narrow face grew even longer when he frowned. “I might be a rural county sheriff, but I’m not an idiot.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

But he’d thought it. Before the kidnapping and murder, Sheriff Trainer might have been a good-natured, easygoing guy. Now he was as nervous as a squirrel guarding his winter cache of pinecones.

“I’m trying to make a point,” Trainer said. “There’s got to be a reason why the kidnappers are searching here.”

Jesse knew where the sheriff’s logic was headed. They’d all been asking the same question: why here? Logic pointed toward Fiona. She must have done something to bring trouble upon herself.

He also knew that those assumptions were dead wrong. His instincts told him that Fiona was completely, entirely innocent.

The sheriff looked down at the growing ash on his cigarette and asked, “How well do you know Fiona Grant?”

“I met her for the first time today,” he said. “But I knew her husband. A good man who died too young.”

The sheriff shot a glance toward Jesse. “Do you think she’s got something to hide?”

“Hell, no.”

Not Fiona. Not that sweet, gentle woman with the appealing gray eyes. When they found the opened boxes in her pottery studio, she was genuinely surprised. Until he mentioned the ransom, the thought hadn’t occurred to her. When they discovered the body of Butch Thurgood, he’d seen her terror.

“It doesn’t make sense, Sheriff. If she knew where the ransom was stashed, why wouldn’t she grab it and run?”