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He hurt all over. The movement of simply sitting up made him hurt worse. “How did I get here?”
“You called for help.” The two cops introduced themselves. All he caught was Officer Forester for the larger of the two. Andrews for the other one. “Do you remember what happened?”
His last memory was lying in dead leaves and snow, bleeding badly. Before that... Abigail. His heart began to pound. “Is she...”
“Dead,” Forester said.
Stuart closed his eyes, trying to blot out the memory of all the blood, of the wild, inhuman look on her face, the frantic screams as she attacked him. All he’d ever seen was the capable, accomplished, calculating woman who’d drugged him. But like him, there’d been that lonely, lost part of her that she’d thought she could fill with Leann’s love.
He opened his eyes again as he heard one of the officers pull up a chair next to the bed. The other had turned on a video recorder. “We need to know what happened,” Forester said. “Can you start at the beginning?”
The beginning. How could he possibly explain why he had gotten into a car with Abigail Creed, when he knew he shouldn’t have?
NEWSOFWHAThad happened to Sheriff Layton spread like wildfire across the Powder River Basin. CJ couldn’t believe his good luck. With life-threatening stab wounds, the sheriff had been airlifted out to Billings. The state police had been called in to investigate the nurse’s death.
Which meant that until it was finished, there would be no law in Powder Crossing or the surrounding area. It felt like a gift from heaven. Now was the time to move on everything.
“I need that drilling rig on the Stafford Ranch asap,” CJ told Frankie. “We need to move while the sheriff is in the hospital.”
“The snowstorm held it up. Everything’s ready. You sure about this?”
He didn’t have to ask what Frankie was referring to. Few people could understand a person who could kill his own kin and yet it happened every day. When your own blood turned against you, you did what had to be done.
“I’ll make sure my sister and her cohorts show up. You make sure we put them out of business. Otherwise—”
“I got it.”
“Also, let’s find out where Dirty Business is meeting. I’m in the mood to burn a few more barns and community centers, aren’t you?”
Frankie chuckled. “You’re making this into a war zone. You do realize that, right?”
“Barns and community centers catch on fire all the time. I just want the message sent to those people that we aren’t playing around anymore.”
STUARTTOLDTHEstate police about meeting Abigail while investigating Oakley Stafford’s shooting and how the nurse had brought him dinner when she saw him working late.
“Were you sleeping with her?” Forester asked.
“No.” He’d already warned himself to be careful about what he told the officers. Which meant he couldn’t mention her drugging him. Any law officer with a brain would have brought her in. The problem was that most of the drug had already left his system by the time he realized what she’d done.
But after that, a law officer without a death wish wouldn’t have gotten into the car with her and let her take him out into the country and try to kill him.
Nor could he tell them that the first time she’d stopped by his office with dinner for the two of them, red flares had gone off. He hadn’t trusted her. But then again, he trusted few women, given his history with them.
“We were just friends. At least that’s what I thought. She had me over to dinner recently. When she stopped by saying she wanted to go to Baker for a burger, I didn’t feel I could say no. I wasn’t planning to see her after that. She seemed lonely. I never really understood what she was doing in Powder Crossing.”
He saw the two cops exchange a look.Oh damn,he thought as his heart dropped. What did they know that he didn’t?
The sheriff waited, aware that guilty people tended to talk too much when being interrogated. He didn’t want to be one of them, but he couldn’t help the feeling that the two officers knew something that might land him in trouble.
While he waited, he tried to think of what he would say when they asked him why Abigail had tried to kill him. He had no choice but to tell the truth—up to a point. Otherwise, it might look as if he had tried to attack her, and she’d merely fought back.
Forester cleared his throat. “Please tell us what happened on the way to get a burger.”
He took his time. “Abigail wanted to drive. I didn’t realize anything was wrong until she pulled off the highway in an isolated spot. She’d mentioned having sex before, but I’d never taken her up on it and I wasn’t going to then.”
“But that wasn’t what she was after?” Forester said.
Stu shook his head. “I told you that I wondered what she was doing in Powder Crossing. She finally told me the truth. She was a close friend of a woman I had dated for a short period of time. A woman who later committed suicide, but by then the woman was with someone else.”
