Backcountry Escape (Badlands Cops Book 3) Read online

  Gage didn’t say I told you so. He didn’t need to. Didn’t want to after having to stand and listen to her desperate attempts to change her boss’s mind.

  When she finally hung up, she stared at her phone. “I can’t work for at least a week.”

  “That’s not such a bad thing.”

  Her head whipped up, fury in her green eyes. “It’s a terrible thing. On every level. I can’t be here. It will haunt me—her body. Every night. You can’t get rid of something you never face. It puts my job, my dream job, in jeopardy. Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked to get this position?”

  The color had come back to her face, the faintest blush rising in her cheeks. She was breathing a little heavier after that tirade, and she had her fingers curled into fists.

  She was possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he knew that made him a jerk. “Yeah,” he finally managed. “You worked your butt off.”

  His simple affirmative had her slumping in her seat. “I don’t want to go to the ranch. Duke will worry. Sarah and Rachel will worry and fuss. Your grandmother will make a feast for seventy and expect a handful of us to eat it all. Worst of all, you Wyatt boys will push me out of this when it is my fight.”

  “It’s our fight.”

  “And yet I’m the one with blood on my hands.” She held them up as if she’d been the one to do any kind of killing.

  He knelt in front of her and, though he knew it would be a mistake, took both her raised hands in his. “There’s no blood here.”

  “There might as well be,” she returned, her voice breaking on the last word. She blinked back tears. “I can’t sit idly by. If you take me back there, you’ll push me out. All of you.”

  Brady would lead that charge, but Gage didn’t tell her that. He held her hands in his, irritated that both were so cold. She should have drunk the tea. He should have made her.

  “No, you can’t sit idly by,” he agreed, if irritably. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t go to the ranches and work through it. Let the police do their jobs here. Let your boss do his job for the park. Back home, we’ll work together to figure out what this really is. Together. I promise. No one will push you out.”

  She stared at him, eyebrows drawn together, frown digging lines around her mouth. Her eyes were suspicious, but she sat there and let him hold her hands. She sat there and stared at him. Thinking.

  While she was thinking, he was feeling quite a bit too much.

  She tugged her hands out of his grasp and stood abruptly. She stalked away from him, though it ended up being only a few steps because the cabin was so small. She whirled and pointed at him. “You promise?”

  “I promise,” he replied solemnly.

  Because Gage Wyatt would break rules and didn’t mind lying when it suited, but he wouldn’t break a promise to Felicity. Not even if it killed him.

  Chapter Three

  Felicity sat in the passenger seat of Gage’s truck, brooding over the lack of her own vehicle. The lack of her job for at least a week. The lack of her little cabin that wasn’t her home exactly. It wasn’t hers to own—it was the park’s.

  But neither were the ranches hers, though they made up the tapestry of her childhood and adolescence. The Wyatt boys and the foster girls of Duke and Eva Knight had run wild over both ranches. They were a piece of her, yes, but she didn’t own them.

  She’d gotten into the wrong business if she was worried about owning things, though. Apparently, the wrong business if she didn’t want to find dead bodies.

  She closed her eyes, but that only made said bodies pop up in her head, so she opened them and leaned her forehead against the window. She watched the scenery pass, from the stark browns, tans and whites of the Badlands to the verdant green and rolling hills with only the occasional ridge of rock formations that would lead them to the ranches they’d grown up on.

  “Brady said for us to meet at my grandma’s.”

  Felicity sighed. “I don’t want a fuss.” She didn’t want all the attention or the attempts at soothing. Right now she wanted to be alone.

  Except then her company would be the images of the dead bodies she’d found, and that didn’t exactly appeal, either.

  “Maybe it’d be a good time to tell them about our Ace connection theory,” Gage offered as if he was trying to make her feel better. Which was odd coming from Gage, who was known more for making a joke out of serious things. Still, if she really thought about it, he often did that in a way that made people feel better, even if only momentarily.

  “So it’s our theory now?”

  Gage lifted a negligent shoulder. “We can call it yours, but I agree with it.”

  “Will they?”

  “Not sure. Don’t see why they wouldn’t. It makes sense. We’ll look into it one way or another.”

  “We or you guys?”

  He spared her a look as he pulled through the gate to the Reaves Ranch. Pauline Reaves had run this ranch since she’d been younger than Felicity, and though she’d married, she’d kept the ranch in her name and never let anyone believe her husband ran things.

  As the story went, her late husband had been in love with her enough not to care. Felicity had never met the Wyatt boys’ grandfather, who had died before Felicity had come to live with the Knights.

  Felicity loved Grandma Pauline like her own. Not such a strange thing for a girl who’d grown up with the care and love of foster parents to love nonfamily like family. Pauline had always represented a strong, independent feminine ideal to Felicity. One she’d thought she’d never live up to.

  But the older she got, the more Felicity felt that if she worked hard enough at it, she could be as strong and determined as Grandma Pauline. She could forge her own path.

  Thoughts of Pauline’s strength disappeared as the line of cars in front of Pauline’s old ranch house came into view. Despite its sprawling size, piecemeal additions and modernizations over the years, and the fact only two people lived full-time in it, the house was well cared for. The boys always made sure repairs were done quickly, and Grandma kept it spick-and-span.

  Still, it showed its age and wear. There was something comforting in that—or there would be if there wasn’t this line of cars in front of it.

  “Everyone’s here.”

  “I mean, not...everyone,” Gage said, trying for what she assumed was a cheerful tone.

  He’d failed. Miserably. Everyone or almost everyone’s vehicle being here meant something...something big at that. It was more than her stumbling across a dead body.

  Felicity frowned as Gage parked in line. Based on the vehicles she recognized, Tucker and Brady were here, as was Duke and potentially Rachel and Sarah if they’d driven over with him. Dev and Grandma Pauline lived on the property, but it was Cody’s truck that really bothered her. Why would he come all the way out from Bonesteel? The only vehicle missing was one belonging to Jamison and Liza. Hopefully they were at home in Bonesteel, safe and sound, taking care of Gigi, Liza’s young half sister. “What is all this? Why is everyone here?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, sounding confused enough that she believed him. He got out of the truck and she followed. Dev’s ranch dogs pranced at their feet, whimpering excitedly as they’d been trained not to bark at Wyatts or Knights.

  Felicity wanted to dawdle or trudge, spend some time playing with the dogs, or maybe make a run for it to the Knight Ranch, where she knew she still had a bed waiting for her.

  But that was cowardly, and it wouldn’t change whatever this was. It would only avoid it for a while.

  She followed Gage’s brisk pace to the back door, which led to a mudroom. The dogs wouldn’t follow inside at this entrance since you had to go through the kitchen to get to the rest of the house—and Grandma Pauline did not allow dogs in her kitchen.

  Felicity stepped into the kitchen behind Gage
. A very full room.

  Duke and Rachel were there, sitting at the table. When Felicity had been younger, she’d been jealous of Rachel. She was Duke and Eva’s only biological child, and she looked like she belonged in the Knight family. Even though with the fosters they’d been a conglomeration of black, Lakota and white—no one looking too much like anyone else—Felicity had always felt the odd man out with her particularly pale skin and bright red hair.

  But she was older now, and today she was glad to see the people who were her family.

  It was a little harder to be grateful for the presence of the Wyatt brothers. All of them being here in this moment only meant trouble. They brought it with them, and though they fought it as much as they could, it was always there.

  Tucker stood next to Cody and Jamison—so they must have driven together from Bonesteel. Dev and Brady sat at the table while Grandma Pauline bustled around the kitchen.

  They all looked at Felicity with smiles that were in turn sad, sympathetic or pitying. Felicity’s chest got tight and panic beat through her, its own insistent drum of a heartbeat. “What’s going on?”

  Grandma Pauline all but pushed her into a chair and set a plate with a brownie on it in front of her. Duke took her hand and patted it.

  All the eyes in the room except Gage’s turned to Tucker.

  His smile was the most pitying and apologetic of all. “When Brady told me what happened I asked a buddy over in Pennington County to let me know if they found anything out.”

  Felicity had to pause before she spoke. Getting upset often made her stutter return, but if she kept herself from rushing, she could handle it. “And they did?”

  “The victim’s name is Melody Harrison.”

  Everyone was quiet. So quiet and this was usually a noisy group.

  “It’s a common enough last name,” Felicity forced herself to say slowly and calmly. “It might be a coincidence.” She didn’t know anyone named Melody, even if they shared a last name. Of course she’d been taken away from her abusive father at four. She hardly knew her biological family.

  “It is common. Unfortunately, the next of kin who identified her...” If it was possible, the pitying expression grew worse. “He was her father. Michael Harrison.”

  “M-my father. B-but that’s common, too, and—”

  Tucker nodded grimly. “I confirmed it, Felicity. Your father. Melody was twenty-two, so she was born after you were placed with the Knights.”

  “Y-you’re s-saying that...” She winced at how badly the stutter sounded in the quiet room. She made sure to take breaths between each word as she spoke. “The dead body I found is my sister.”

  “At least by half. Which means...” Tucker scraped a hand over his jaw.

  She didn’t let him say it. She might have before last year. Let him say it. Let the Wyatt boys take care of it. But no one could really take care of what was going on in her head. Even when she was weary enough to wish someone else could.

  “The cops will try to connect me to it even more now.”

  * * *

  GAGE SWORE AND felt a stab of guilt when Felicity flinched as if she’d received some kind of blow.

  This was ludicrous. “How? When she didn’t even know the sister existed?” Gage demanded.

  His brothers gave him that look. The you should know better, Gage look. Because he was a cop. He knew how to investigate a suspicious death, and Felicity tripping over her alleged half sister was certainly suspicious.

  He looked at Felicity. She’d made him promise that she wouldn’t get elbowed out of dealing with this herself, so he waited for her to bring it up.

  Though mostly he wanted Grandma Pauline to shove her full of brownies while he took care of everything.

  However, he had enough women in his life to know they didn’t particularly appreciate that method. Besides, he’d promised. So... He all but bit his tongue.

  He gave Felicity a go-ahead nod, and then gestured when she simply stared at him. She blew out a slow breath.

  “It could be Ace,” Felicity finally said. She looked down at the plate and the brownie on it, but her voice was clear and steady no matter how little eye contact she made.

  “How?” Jamison returned.

  She looked up and met Jamison’s gaze. “I interfered. I helped Nina and Cody. I don’t know how it’s Ace, but I know why it could be. It makes sense.” Her gaze shifted to Gage, looking for some kind of support or backup.

  Me not Brady. Which was very much not the point. “Obviously, the timing of the first one doesn’t work, but it could be a copycat type thing. It could be a way to make it look like she’s involved—and I think the family connection only makes that more plausible.”

  His brothers mulled that over.

  “Possibly a setup. To get Felicity in trouble. A punishment for interfering,” Jamison said, clearly trying to work out the logistics. “I buy that. It’s Ace’s MO. But how would he have orchestrated it? Since the attempt on Nina’s life, we’ve been keeping tabs on everyone Ace talks to.”

  Gage had thought about that on the long, silent drive over to Grandma Pauline’s. “We keep tabs on everyone who visits him in jail. Not who he talks to inside. He could be paying off a guard or threatening another inmate. Problem is, until Ace is sentenced and sent to a more secure facility, he has ample ways to outwit the system and us.”

  “His lawyer keeps getting the trial pushed back,” Tucker said, disgust lacing his tone. “They’re going to drag it out as long as they can.”

  “Don’t you have any informants on the inside, Detective?” Gage asked, infusing the word detective with only a little sarcasm.

  Tucker rolled his eyes. “Not anyone I’d trust enough to tangle with Ace.”

  “What do we do?” Duke asked. Demanded.

  “The park forced me to take a week’s leave of absence, and then they’ll reevaluate,” Felicity said miserably.

  “So, you’ll be home.” Duke didn’t have to say where you belong for it to be heard echoing in the silence.

  Felicity smiled at Duke, but surely everyone saw how sad that smile was.

  “There’s not much we can do right now,” Jamison said, always the de facto leader, no matter the situation. “Tucker will keep his ear to the ground when it comes to the investigation. Cody and I can look into getting some more information about who Ace talks to in the jail.”

  “What about...” Gage hesitated at the word father, considering he barely liked to call his own one. “Michael Harrison. Where did this guy come from?”

  “He was the victim’s father.”

  Gage shook his head. “That’s an awful big coincidence. There was a reason Felicity was removed from his care. Was this girl?”

  “Okay, point taken. We’ll look into both of them.”

  “And what will I do?” Felicity asked, and though Gage thought she tried to turn it into a demand like Duke had done, it didn’t quite hit the mark.

  “Come home and rest, girl,” Duke instructed.

  Gage opened his mouth to come to her defense because he’d promised, but she shook her head.

  She smiled at her foster father. “That’s a good idea, Duke.”

  They both stood up from the table, and since she hadn’t taken even a single bite of the brownie Grandma had put in front of her, Grandma immediately shoved a plastic container full of brownies into her hands.

  Felicity smiled and gave Grandma a one-armed hug. “Thank you, Grandma Pauline.”

  “You eat, you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Felicity glanced back at Gage. “Keep me up-to-date?”

  He ignored the fact he got a little something out of her asking him and not Brady. He was very good at ignoring things he didn’t particularly care for.

  He gave her a nod, and Duke, Rachel and Felicity left Grandma’s kitchen. Leaving Gage with
his brothers and Grandma.

  Dev stood first. “I’ve got work.”

  “I’ll help,” Gage offered. “I was supposed to anyway.” He paused and looked at Jamison, Cody and Tucker. They had the best ways to get information. Gage had a few buddies over at Pennington, but Tucker knew the detectives. Jamison and Cody had been integral in getting Ace arrested in the first place, so they had a lot of ways to find information on the Ace side of things.

  Gage rode the road. He had a bit too much of a mouth on him to receive the promotions Tucker and Brady seemed to rack up without even trying.

  It didn’t bother him. He preferred the in-the-trenches view from the bottom, but right now the lack of resources to get information made him superfluous.

  So why not sweat away some frustration on ranch work? He’d spend the night, check in on Felicity tomorrow morning, then head back to his apartment to pick up his take-home car for his evening shift.

  If that itch between his shoulder blades stayed there all through the afternoon and night, well, he’d deal.

  * * *

  WHEN HE WOKE up the next morning and trudged down to breakfast, Brady was waiting at the breakfast table. Gage rubbed bleary eyes and knew the news was bad without even a word passing between them.

  “They searched Felicity’s cabin,” Brady said without preamble.

  “And?”

  “They found evidence of clothing being burned in the fire grate outside the cabin. They’ve collected some hair they found—clearly not Felicity’s.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s that woman’s hair. That doesn’t mean anything. Good Lord, she’s not a suspect.”

  “They’ve sent the hair and what was left of the burnt clothes in for DNA testing,” Brady said, his calm poking at Gage’s agitation.

  Brady sighed and shook his head, showing his first sign of emotion. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”