Unforgiven

“Maybe you haven’t heard, but women can vote now.”

“Biggest mistake this country ever made,” he said, only half joking. He thought of Lila and the trouble he’d had with her. Women were too headstrong and independent. He still believed a woman’s place was in the home and said as much to his son.

Carson didn’t seem to be listening. He stood staring down into his drink. WT wondered what he hoped to find there. Carson had always been moody as a boy. His mother’s doing when he was young, WT thought with a curse. Why couldn’t Carson have been more like Destry?

That thought made his stomach churn. People said Destry was too much like him. They had no idea.

When Carson looked up at him again, his expression was both angry and guilty. “You take this ranch away from my sister and you’ll kill her. Hasn’t she lost enough because of me?”

“You talking about that no-count rodeo cowboy Rylan West?”

“She loved him and would have married him if—”

“She’s not marrying him any more than you’re marrying that whor—”

“Careful, that’s my fiancée.”

WT looked at him hard, then laughed. “You’re not fooling me with this halfhearted protest about not wanting to take the ranch away from your sister any more than you are with this ridiculous engagement. You have no intention of marrying that woman.”

“Don’t I?”

“Well, let me put it to you this way. You marry that woman and I’ll leave this whole place and every dime I have to some goddamned charity.”

Carson cocked his head at him and smiled. “Now who’s bluffing?”

WT smiled back. “The difference is I can afford to call your bluff. I suspect you don’t have that luxury.” He narrowed his gaze, feeling his ire rise even higher. “You have no choice if you want my help with the sheriff. You’ll stay here and take over the ranch. Or you can go it alone without another dime from me. There is no third option and, from what I’ve heard, you might be in need of a damned good lawyer soon. I hope I’ve made myself clear,” he said as his cook and housekeeper, Margaret, rang the dinner bell.

“Perfectly,” Carson said and drained his glass.

* * *

NETTIE BENTON AT THE Beartooth General Store was the first person to see Carson Grant driving by in that fancy red sports car.

It wasn’t blind luck that she’d been standing at the front window of the store when Carson drove past. The once natural redhead, now dyed Sunset Sienna to cover the gray, spent most of her days watching the world pass by her window at a snail’s pace. It was why, as the storeowner, she often knew more of what was going on than anyone else in these parts.

“Bob,” she called to her husband. No answer. “Must have already gone home,” she muttered to herself. The two of them lived behind the store on the side of the mountain. Bob didn’t spend much time in the store his parents had turned over to them when they’d gotten married thirty years ago. He didn’t have to.

“Nettie loves minding the store—and everyone’s business,” he was fond of saying.

Nettie hurriedly grabbed the phone and began calling everyone she knew to tell them about Carson Grant.

“Nettie?” Bob called from the office in the back. “What’s all the commotion out there?”

Not only was Bob getting hard of hearing—at least hard of hearing her—he wouldn’t appreciate her news. Though he might have enjoyed seeing the bleached blonde with Carson.

“It’s Carson Grant,” she said as she stepped to the office doorway.

Bob didn’t look up from the bills he’d been sorting through. “What about him?” he asked distractedly.

“He’s back in Beartooth.”

Her husband’s head jerked up in surprise. “What?”

“I saw him drive past not thirty minutes ago.” She’d recognized Carson right off, even though it had been years since she’d laid eyes on him.

“Why would he come back now?” Bob asked, clearly upset. But then most of the county would be upset, as well.

“I would imagine it has something to do with the rumor circulating about new evidence in Ginny West’s murder.”

“What new evidence?”

“I heard it was some kind of fancy hair clip one of the kids found over at the old theater. Now they’re speculating that she might have actually been killed there and not out on the road.” She frowned. “Are you all right?”

Bob was holding his stomach as if something he ate hadn’t agreed with him. “You give me indigestion,” he said angrily as he shoved the bills away and pushed himself to his feet. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t making all of this up.”

“It was Carson Grant, sure as I’m standing here.”

“What I want to know is why he wasn’t arrested years ago?” Bob demanded. “Everyone knows he killed that poor girl. If your sheriff can’t figure that out, then there’s something wrong with him.”

Her sheriff? “Well, I, for one, am not convinced Carson did it,” she said as he pushed past her and headed for the back door and home.

“The fact that you’re the only one who believes that should tell you something, Nettie.” He didn’t give her a chance to respond as he slammed out the back door.

Surprised, since that was the most passion she’d seen in her husband in years, maybe ever, she wandered back to the front store window to entertain herself until she was forced to wait on a customer, should one come by.

The narrow two-lane paved road was empty—just as it was most days. The town of Beartooth was like a lot of small Montana towns. It had died down to a smattering of families and businesses. Not that it hadn’t been something in its heyday. With the discovery of gold in the Crazy Mountains back in the late 1800s, Beartooth had been a boomtown. Early residents had built substantial stone and log buildings in the shadow of the mountains where Big Timber Creek wound through the pines.

By the early 1900s, though, the gold was playing out and a drought had people leaving in droves. They left behind a dozen empty boarded-up buildings that still stood today. There was an old gas station with two pumps under a leaning tin roof at one end of town and a classic auto garage from a time when it didn’t take a computer to work on a car engine at the other.

In between stood the Range Rider bar, the post office, hotel and theater. There’d been talk of tearing down the old buildings to keep kids out of them. Nettie was glad they hadn’t. She thought fondly of the hidden room under the stage at the Royale theater where she’d lost her virginity. Unfortunately, that made her think of the sheriff, something she did her best not to do. Her sheriff, indeed.

Directly across the street from Nettie’s store was the Branding Iron Café where ranchers gathered each morning. Right now a handful of pickups were parked out front—and another half dozen down the street in front of the bar.

Nettie knew the topic of conversation among the ranchers must have Carson Grant’s ears burning. She wondered if the West family had heard yet and how long it would be before one of them either ran Carson out of town again—or strung him up for Ginny West’s murder.

But it was her husband’s reaction that had her scratching her head.

* * *

“WHERE’S YOUR SISTER?” WT asked Carson as he looked up from his meal and apparently realized for the first time that Destry wasn’t at the table.

“She got a call that some cattle had gotten out and were on the road,” Carson said.

His father grunted in answer, the sound echoing in the huge dining hall. Carson idly wondered how often this dining room was ever used. Not much, he’d bet, since everything looked brand-new, and it wasn’t as if WT had friends or family over. He’d never been good at making or keeping friends.

“Why didn’t she call one of the ranch hands to take care of it? Or our ranch foreman? This is what I pay Russell to do,” WT said irritably after a few bites.

Carson tamped down his own irritation. “I would imagine she didn’t want to bother them in the middle of their dinners, especially when she’s probably more than capable of taking care of it herself.” Knowing his sister, that would be exactly her reasoning.

“You see what I mean about your sister?” WT asked with a curse. “She doesn’t know her place.”

“This is her place,” Carson said defiantly in the hopes that an argument would end this meal faster. It couldn’t end soon enough for him.

WT continued to eat, refusing to rise to the bait. He hadn’t even acknowledged Cherry’s presence since she’d sat down. Did he really think that by ignoring her she would leave? Under other circumstances, Carson might have found all of this amusing.

He’d done his best to convince his father to give him enough money so he could leave the country. Coming back here only reminded him of everything he’d spent eleven years trying to forget.

But WT had been adamant. There would be no money, not even any inheritance, if he didn’t return.

“What about the sheriff?” he’d asked.

“He has a few questions, that’s all.”

A few questions about Ginny’s murder after all these years?

Clearly WT didn’t realize how dangerous it was for him being back here, he thought, recalling the look on Nettie Benton’s face when he’d driven by her store earlier today. There had been no reason to try to sneak back here. In a community this small, there were few secrets.

This was Montana where there was still a large portion of the rural population that believed in taking the law into their own hands—just as they had in the old days. That could mean a rope and a stout tree.

He mentioned that now to his father.

“I told you not to worry about any of that,” WT said without looking up.

“Don’t worry about it? Do I have to remind you that the last time I saw Rylan West he swore he’d kill me if he ever saw me again?”

His father finally looked up from his plate, his expression one of mild amusement. “I guess you’d better not let him see you then.”

* * *

DESTRY FOUND THREE W Bar G cows standing in the middle of the county road, just as a neighboring rancher had described over the phone. She slowed the truck, all three cows glancing at her but not moving. They mooed loudly, though, associating the sound of a truck with the delivery of hay.

“You girls are out of luck,” Destry said as she began to herd them with the pickup back up the road toward W Bar G property. She regretted missing her brother’s first dinner at home, but hoped he would understand. He and his fiancée needed time alone with WT so they could work out whatever was going on. Her being there would have only made things more strained, she told herself.

As it was, her conversation with Cherry by the pool earlier had left her even more concerned about her brother. Apparently the two had met at the Las Vegas casino where they both worked, Cherry as a dancer and Carson in the office.

Destry couldn’t imagine her brother living in Vegas, let alone working in a casino; neither could she see him settling down on the ranch. But then again, she didn’t know him anymore.

She wondered how much Carson had told his fiancée about what had happened eleven years ago. Did Cherry know about Ginny’s murder? Or that Carson was still the number one suspect?

She lowered her pickup window to feel the air, driving slowly as she moved the cattle at a lazy pace down the road. They were in no hurry, and neither was she.

This far north, it wouldn’t get dark for hours yet. Even with the possibility of an approaching storm, it was one of those rare warm fall afternoons in Montana. The rolling hills had faded to mustard in contrast to the deep green of the pines climbing the mountains. As always, the Crazy Mountains loomed over the scene, a bank of dark clouds shrouding the peaks.

She loved living out here away from everything. In this part of Montana, you could leave the keys in your pickup overnight, and your truck would still be there in the morning. The rural area’s low crime rate was one reason Ginny West’s murder had come as such a shock. It rattled everyone’s belief that Beartooth was safe because you knew your neighbors. Now, like a rock thrown into Saddlestring Lake, Carson’s return would create wide ripples.

Ginny West’s murder—and her breakup with Carson right before it—would be rehashed in booths and at tables in the Branding Iron Café and on the bar stools at the Range Rider bar.

There were still plenty of people around who believed Carson had killed her. Rylan West among them, she reminded herself with a sinking heart.

What would he do when he heard that Carson was back?

The cows mooed loudly as she brought the pickup to a stop and got out to open the barbed-wire gate. She’d seen a broken fence post where she figured the cows had gotten out. She’d let Russell know. Overhead, a hawk soared on an updraft.

As she waded through the tall golden grass, grasshoppers buzzed and bobbed around her. She lifted the metal handle to loosen the loop attached to the gate and, slipping the post out, walked the gate back to allow the cows into their pasture.

At the sound of a vehicle on the wind, she looked up the road. Dust churned up in the distance.

“Come on girls,” she said to the cows, swatting one on the backside with her hat to finally get them moving. She could hear the growing sound of the vehicle’s engine and was thankful she’d managed to get the cows off the road in time. Once she had them inside the fence, she dragged the barbed-wire gate back over to the post.

Destry had just cranked down the lever that kept the gate taut and closed when she heard the truck slow. She turned, squinting in the cloud of dust, as the pickup stopped only feet from her.

When she saw who was behind the wheel, her heart took off at a gallop.

CHAPTER THREE

RYLAN SWORE AS HE SAW Destry standing at the edge of the road. Had he really thought he could come storming out to the ranch and not run into her? One look at her and he’d known he wasn’t ready for this.

Destry looked the same and yet completely grown up. Her hair was longer, that same rich russet color that reminded him of fall in Montana. It was plaited down her slim back except for a few strands that the wind lifted around her face under the shade of her straw hat. She wore a yellow-checked Western shirt and jeans, both accenting her more mature, rounded figure.

Her eyes were still that faded blue that often matched Montana’s big sky. As he looked into them, he felt that old spark. It burned into him, hotter than a Montana summer day.

One look at her and he realized all the running he’d done the past eleven years had been for nothing. He couldn’t escape the way he felt about this woman any more than he could forgive her brother for what he knew he’d done.

His sister’s murder was like a line drawn in the dirt. Neither of them could step over it. Destry was convinced her brother was innocent of Ginny’s murder. Rylan would never believe that. Nothing had changed.

“Destry,” he said through his open window. The word felt alien on his lips, and he realized how long it had been since he’d uttered it aloud. It brought with it an ache that made him grit his teeth.

* * *

DESTRY HAD WATCHED FROZEN to the spot as the pickup came to a dust-boiling stop next to her. The early evening light ricocheted off the windshield, blinding her for a moment before the driver’s side window came down.

The shock of coming face-to-face with Rylan after all these years sent a tremor through her. She stared into those familiar brown eyes, seeing the Rylan West she’d fallen in love with as a girl. For a moment, lost in his gaze, she had the overpowering feeling that if he would just get out of that pickup and take her in his arms they could find their way back to each other.

“Destry?” The sound of her name on his lips made her heart pound with the familiarity of it.

She found her voice. “I wondered when I’d see you. I should have known what it would take. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

He shoved back his Stetson. “I reckon not. I need to see your brother.”

She shook her head. Before he’d left town, she’d tried to convince Rylan that her brother couldn’t have killed Ginny. “If you just knew him the way I do...”

But his mind had been made up. Just as it was today. She could see it in the clenched muscles of his strong jaw, in the set of his broad shoulders. He’d looked the same way the day of his sister’s funeral when he’d gone after Carson, the two of them getting into a fistfight at the cemetery until Rylan’s father had broken it up.

“I was hoping...” She couldn’t even bear to say the words, her hopes like daggers through her heart. She’d dreamed about the day she would see Rylan again. Her dream crumbled like the dried leaves on the cottonwoods nearby, turning to dust in the wind.

The man she’d known was gone. It was high time she let go of the past. Let go of Rylan West.

* * *

RYLAN NEARLY BUCKLED under the pain he saw in her eyes. “Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

She sighed, cloaking the hurt with a smile, a smile with an edge to it. Anger fired her blue eyes. It burned hot as a flame. She knew what he planned to do.

For weeks after Ginny’s murder, he’d tried to find proof that would put Carson Grant behind bars. What he kept running into was the same thing that had kept Carson free all these years—a lack of evidence.

“I have to get my sister justice since the law isn’t going to. As Ginny’s oldest brother, I owe her that.”

“And you think this is the way?” she said, sounding sad and disappointed in him.

“Stay out of this, please.”

“Carson’s my brother.”

“And Ginny was my sister. At least you still have your brother.”

“Not if you have your way.”

He had no intention of killing Carson—just getting the truth out of him, one way or the other. He snatched off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. Now that he and Carson were both back, Rylan intended to see his sister’s murderer behind bars. He said as much to Destry.

“He didn’t do it, Rylan,” she said. “He never left the ranch that night.”

“According to his alibi. You. But we both know that was a lie.” He fought back the image of her naked in his arms the night they’d made love for the first time at the old abandoned ski lodge high on the mountain. Little did they know what was happening in the valley below them.

Her hands went to her hips, her gaze blazing. “Carson didn’t know I’d left the ranch to meet you. It was an honest mistake since you and I were both sneaking around back then.”

“I notice that even you didn’t bring up Carson’s other alibi.”

“What would be the point? My brother could have a half dozen alibis and you still wouldn’t believe him.”

Rylan swore because she was right. “You have to admit his best friend isn’t the most reliable alibi, not to mention that Jack French would say the moon was made of cheese if your brother asked him to. Destry, when are you going to stop covering for your brother and see him for what he really is?”

She took a step toward the pickup, her fists balled at her sides. “When are you going to realize that you might be wrong?”

Rylan looked away, his jaw tensing in frustration. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.” He’d never believe Carson wasn’t Ginny’s killer, and Destry would defend her brother until hell froze over. “We both know why your brother is back in town. The county attorney threatened to bring Carson back in handcuffs if he didn’t return for questioning about the new evidence.”

“New evidence? Is that true?”

He saw her surprise. “Your father didn’t tell you? I thought you would have heard.” But then again, Destry hardly ever left the ranch, from what he’d heard.

“I just assumed WT forced Carson to come back,” she said.

Rylan shook his head. “A gold hair clip with my sister’s name on it was found under the stage at the Royale. We’re pretty sure Ginny was wearing it the last time we saw her.”

“So she was at the old theater that night?”

“The sheriff thinks she might have met someone there, probably her killer, then was taken by car to where her body was left.” He looked away, fighting the roiling emotions boiling inside him.

“Maybe now the real killer will be found,” Destry said.

He hated the hopefulness he heard in her voice. She would be devastated when the truth came out.

“Destry,” he said, as kindly as he could, “the county attorney wouldn’t have forced your brother to come back here unless the evidence pointed to him.”

Her blue eyes narrowed to slits. “If you’re so sure this so-called new evidence will prove my brother guilty, then why are you out here ready to take the law into your own hands?”

“Because the law in this county is Sheriff Frank Curry. Everyone knows that he does whatever your father tells him to.”

Destry shook her head angrily. “Or because you know a hair clip isn’t going to prove that my brother had anything to do with her death.”

“Not unless someone can place your brother in the old theater that night.”

“Don’t you think if my brother had been there, someone would have mentioned it by now?” she demanded.

She had always been strong and determined. It was one of the reasons he’d loved her more than life. If his sister hadn’t been murdered that night, he didn’t doubt they’d be married now, probably have a couple of kids.

Did Destry ever think about what might have been? She’d made a life for herself on the W Bar G. He’d heard how she had taken over after her father’s plane crash. She was born to ranch, that’s what people said. They also said how lucky WT was to have such a daughter. Everyone liked Destry and with good reason.

Carson, though, was another story.

“I warned your brother that if I ever saw him again... Destry, I can’t live with myself unless I do something. Can’t you understand that?” He hated the pleading he heard in his voice. It upset him that it mattered what she thought of him, even after all these years.

Her gaze softened. “I can understand. But not this way. Find out who your sister was meeting in town that night.”

He flinched at the mental picture of the coroner and EMTs bringing his sister’s body out of the shallow ditch beside the road a few miles outside of town. The killer had thrown her into the ditch, leaving her for dead, leaving her to die alone beside the road.

“She ran into your brother,” he snapped.

She made an impatient sound. “How can you be so sure that Ginny wasn’t seeing someone else that she kept not only from Carson, but also from your parents and even from you?” she demanded.

He swore under his breath as he slapped his hat back on to his head. “Some mystery man? That’s just some story your brother cooked up to shift suspicion onto someone else. This isn’t getting us anywhere. It’s the same old argument. It’s why I left eleven years ago. Your brother killed her.”

“Are you willing to stake everything on it? If so, then there is nothing more I can say, is there?” She turned toward her truck.

“What if you’re the one who’s wrong, Destry?” he called after her. “Ginny said your brother had been following her. How can you be so sure your brother didn’t leave the ranch that night? It wouldn’t be the first time he lied. Or the first time he hurt Ginny, would it?”

* * *

CARSON KNEW BETTER THAN to try to reason with his father, but he had to give it a shot. As he looked down the table, he wondered if WT believed he’d killed Ginny West. Or if it mattered to him. Apparently being Waylon Thomas Grant’s male heir trumped everything—even murder.

“Tomorrow morning, I’ll show you the new grazing land I’ve picked up since you’ve been gone,” WT was saying.

“Aren’t you worried about this new evidence that’s turned up?”

WT scoffed. “The state attorney general has been putting pressure on local law enforcement to clear up their cold cases. The sheriff is just going through the motions. I doubt there’s any new evidence. I wouldn’t worry about it.”