The Christmas Target

He gave her a quick head-to-toe glance as if to assure himself. “Then the Shooting Star Ranch it is.” He pulled onto the highway and drove slowly through the swirling snow as confidently as if he knew the route blindfolded. “You’re not used to driving in these conditions.”

She resented his implication that the accident had been her fault, and that irritable feeling helped squelch any danger of succumbing to his aw-shucks Western charm. “I was doing fine until someone sideswiped me and knocked me off the road.”

“They didn’t stop?”

She could hear the anger in his voice and was glad it wasn’t directed at her. “If they did, I was unconscious. No one was around when I came to.”

“Get a license-plate number?”

She shook her head and winced at the pain the movement caused. “All I saw was a dark-colored pickup with tinted windows.”

He stifled another curse. “You’ve just described ninety percent of the vehicles in this county.” Flicking her a glance that seemed to pierce straight through her, he asked, “You sure you were hit? I can’t believe no one stopped to help, especially in this weather. People here are friendlier than that.”

“Have the garage check the car’s driver’s-side panels.” She didn’t like his suggesting that she’d lied, and the frost in her voice matched the temperature outside. “The damage has to be there. Whoever it was, hit me hard. Twice.”

This time he seemed to accept her account. “I’ll ask for a paint sample from the damaged area. See if I can track the truck down.”

“Isn’t that a lot of trouble for a fender bender?” His thoroughness impressed her.

“Hit-and-run’s bad enough.” His scowl emphasized the rugged contours of his face. “If you’d frozen to death back there, it would also have been manslaughter. At least.”

“At least?”

“If someone ran you off the road on purpose and you’d died from the accident or the cold, it would have been homicide.”

She shook her head, unable to comprehend the notion that the wreck had been intended. The movement was not a smart reaction, with her head and body still painfully sore. “Do all sheriffs think like you?”

“How’s that?”

“Paranoid. I’ve only been in town a few hours. Who would want to run me off the road, much less murder me?”

“Ever heard of road rage?” His expression was dead serious, and she couldn’t decide if he was better looking when he smiled or was solemn. “The perpetrators seldom know their victims.”

“I didn’t have time to do anything to make him mad. This guy came out of nowhere.”

“Anyone else you’ve ticked off since you came to town?”

“Nobody but the shotgun Santa.” Her eyes widened at a sudden thought. “You haven’t released him, have you?”

“No way.”

“Has he robbed other banks?”

The sheriff’s tanned forehead wrinkled in a frown. “The guy has no record. Holds a respectable job in Grange County north of us. He isn’t on drugs. In fact, he doesn’t fit the profile of a bank robber at all. And whatever his motive, he’s not talking.”

“Maybe the coming holidays affected his reasoning. Not everybody’s crazy about Christmas,” Jessica said with more intensity than she’d intended. The knock on her head had made her talkative. She rarely felt so at ease with strangers. “Maybe he was… What do the psychologists call it? Acting out?”

“We’re still running a check on him. All we know for certain is that he wasn’t the one who ran you off the road. Anybody else who might be out to get you?”

Jessica could think of dozens, business executives whose get-rich-quick-at-someone-else’s-expense schemes she’d thwarted with her investigations. But none of them was within a thousand miles of Montana.

Unless…

“I haven’t met the people at Shooting Star Ranch yet,” she said. “Don’t know if someone there has something to hide, something they’re afraid my audit might unearth.”

The sheriff coughed harshly, as if something had caught suddenly in his throat. Once he was able to speak again, he gave her a megawatt smile that warmed her more than the superefficient car heater. “Guess you won’t know that until you meet them and do your homework.”

He seemed remarkably unconcerned.

“Do you know them?” Jessica asked. “You don’t think they’re a threat to me?”

His expression sobered, but mischief twinkled in his brown eyes. “I’ll give you my number, so you can call if you feel threatened.”

Being around the sheriff was making her paranoid, expecting criminals around every corner, she thought, when probably she’d simply been the victim of ugly but common road rage. “Maybe the guy who hit me was drunk, and I was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Maybe.” He slowed the car, turned off the highway and stopped in front of a rustic timber arch, where the words Shooting Star Ranch and the emblem of a star with lines trailing behind it like a comet’s tail had been burned into the sign above the driveway. “We’re here.”

Jessica peered through the snow. “Where’s the house?”

The sheriff started the car again. “Five miles up this road.”

“Five miles! That’s a heck of a driveway.”

“Short by Montana standards, but don’t worry. I’ll deposit you safely at the front door.”

They continued up the driveway with snow-covered open fields on either side. After several minutes, dark shadows loomed in front of them. As they approached, Jessica could make out tall, leafless trees in front of a huge, three-story Victorian house, complete with symmetrical Queen Anne turrets flanking spacious porches.

“This is the main house,” the sheriff announced.

“It’s not what I expected.”

“Not every ranch looks like the Ponderosa,” he said with a wry grin.

When the sheriff brought the SUV to a halt, Jessica could see the Shooting Star emblem carved into the corbels and cornices of the gingerbread trim.

“It lives up to its name.” She turned to the sheriff and offered her hand. “I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve saved my life. Twice now.”

He gripped her hand firmly in the calloused warmth of his own. “All in a day’s work. We serve and protect.”

“And provide delivery service.” She kept her voice light and retracted her hand, unwilling to admit how much she’d enjoyed the contact, how much she liked him. Her attraction to him wouldn’t be a problem, however, since she’d never see him again. “I’ll just hop out and get my luggage. No need to inconvenience you more than I already have.”

He killed the engine and opened his door. “I’ll get your bag.”

Jessica climbed out quickly and met him at the back of the SUV. “It isn’t heavy. I can manage. You need to get back to work.”

“No problem. I’m through for the day.”

She reached for the luggage, unwilling to obligate herself more to a man she found entirely too appealing. “Then you should be headed home.”