The Christmas Target

The entire time, however, he found himself glancing into John Hayes’s office, unable to keep his eyes off the beautiful stranger who’d come so close to perishing from the shotgun’s blast. The floral fragrance of her shampoo, something tropical and exotic, still clung where his chin had brushed her sleek auburn hair when he’d yanked her from harm’s way. Her provocative scent stirred feelings he didn’t have time to deal with now.

Concentrating on the business at hand, he realized the attractive woman in Hayes’s office had been one of two strangers in the bank that morning. The robber had been the other. His shot at her could have been a ploy intended to terrorize the others into submission. The probability that this petite and elegant woman was Santa’s accomplice was a stretch, but Ross had to check out every angle.

“Everybody stay put till the Crime Scene Unit arrives,” he warned the others after a call to dispatch, who assured him the CSU was en route.

Then he returned to Hayes’s office.

At his approach, the woman leaped to her feet, all five foot three of her. She had seemed such a tiny submissive thing in his arms, but now she appeared ready to take on a wild grizzly five times her size. Her stylishly short coat and skirt revealed long, slender legs, and as he’d held her, he had registered the pleasant fact that she was deliciously rounded in all the right places. Her spunk as well as her appearance impressed him. No, spunk suggested too much heat. In spite of having come within inches of losing her life, the woman appeared cool and composed. Glacial was a better term.

“I’m Sheriff—”

“Where’s John Hayes?” she asked abruptly.

Ross shrugged. “Probably taking a late lunch, but he’ll be back soon if he’s heard the news. Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”

She cocked her head and observed him with defiant blue eyes, dark and deep as a mountain lake. “You said ‘sheriff.’ Am I under arrest?”

“Should you be?”

“I may be crazy for coming here and for not hearing the robber’s warning,” she said in a rueful tone, “but I haven’t done anything illegal.”

“I’ll need your name and address.”

She slid the tiny strap of a fine leather handbag off her shoulder, snapped open the gold clasp and removed a business card. “Everything you need to know is right there.”

With interest, he scanned the card, printed on heavy, expensive stock. She was Jessica Landon with Rinehart and Associates, Financial Consultants, out of Miami. The card appeared authentic, but anyone with a computer and the right paper could print one. “You’re a long way from home.”

Comprehension appeared to dawn suddenly in her eyes. “You don’t think I had anything to do with—”

“Sheriff.” John Hayes, the bank’s manager, stepped into the office.

“You expecting this lady?” Ross asked. “Ms. Landon from Miami?”

John nodded. “We have an appointment.” He turned to Jessica. “Sorry, but I’ll have to postpone our meeting. Have you had lunch?”

The woman looked ready to protest the delay, then seemed to think better of it. “Is there a restaurant nearby?”

Ross nodded toward the opposite side of the street. “The café has great coffee. Good pies, too.”

“I’m free to go?”

Ross nodded again, irrationally wishing for an excuse to keep her around until his sense of duty kicked in.

“Come back in an hour,” John suggested with a glance at Ross. “I imagine the sheriff will be through by then.”

“That should do it,” Ross agreed, hoping the CSU would arrive promptly.

Jessica Landon straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and strode out of the office and the bank as coolly as if someone almost killed her every day.

TWO HOURS LATER, Jessica sat in the booth at the front of the café watching the controlled pandemonium at the bank across the street. Except for three rugged cowboy types, their weathered faces making their ages impossible to guess, one at the booth beside hers, the others at the counter, the restaurant was empty.

During her vigil, she’d watched the arrival of the Crime Scene Unit van, the departure of the customers, the removal of the glass from the front walk and the covering of the window with plywood. Throughout all the activity, the tall, handsome sheriff had been a constant presence, supervising, observing, instructing, and obviously completely in charge.

What struck Jessica most about the man, besides his distinctive good looks, was his apparent calm throughout the chaos. Nothing seemed to rattle him as he moved smoothly from task to task, person to person. He took the term laid-back to a whole new level. She could understand why the people of Swenson had elected him. He was without a doubt a good man to have around in a crisis. She just hoped he handled things quickly so she could meet with Hayes and get out of Dodge—or Swenson, as the case may be.

“Change your mind, hon?” The waitress with a name tag identifying her as Madge reappeared at her elbow, shoved the mint she’d been sucking into the pouch of her cheek and refilled Jessica’s cup. “Want to order now?”

Jessica had been nursing several mugs of decaf while she waited for Hayes to become available, obviously longer than he’d anticipated. At first, her close call had robbed her of her appetite, but she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and at three in the afternoon, hunger made her empty stomach ache.

“I’ll try some pie. The sheriff recommended it.”

The middle-aged waitress grinned and winked, exposing a lid caked with blue eye shadow. “You a friend of the sheriff?”

“We met at the bank.” How else could Jessica describe her intimate encounter with the man who had saved her life and set her senses tingling?

Madge made a clucking sound with her tongue. “What a hunk. He can park his boots under my bunk any day.”

The bedroom image made Jessica flush with heat in the already stuffy room, but she wasn’t about to discuss one stranger’s attributes with another. “What kind of pie do you have?”

Madge rattled off an impressive list, and Jessica selected chocolate cream. In moments, the waitress placed a huge wedge of pie topped with several inches of meringue in front of her and nodded toward the window. “Looks like they caught the crook.”

Another cruiser had pulled up with a man in the back seat, apparently handcuffed, judging from his posture. The Santa suit was gone, but even from across the street, Jessica could recognize those cold, deadly eyes. The sheriff climbed into the passenger seat of the car, the deputy drove away and the Crime Scene Unit van followed.

Within minutes, an Open sign appeared on the bank’s front door. Deserting her hardly touched pie, Jessica grabbed her coat, paid her bill and headed across the street.

ANOTHER HOUR LATER, Jessica left the bank in an even fouler mood than when she’d first arrived. In spite of what Max had hinted, she’d hoped this assignment would be quick, a day or two at most auditing accounts, perusing records and then writing up her assessment of the ranch’s viability in the dubious comfort of her spartan hotel room.

Max and Hayes had made other plans.

All the paperwork she needed to complete her assignment was in the office of the Shooting Star Ranch, thirty-five miles outside of town. And Hayes had insisted that the trustees wanted a thorough inspection of the ranch, acreage, stock and buildings.

“The family’s invited you to be their guest while you work,” Hayes had said. “That way you won’t have that long commute back and forth to the hotel and restaurants every day. The less you’re on the road this time of year, the better. Driving can be treacherous.”

“Then I should see you in a few days,” Jessica said.

Hayes looked surprised. “Oh, I doubt that. You should take your time, observe for yourself the assets of the ranch and how it works. Plus you have over a decade’s worth of accounts to evaluate. The trust insists on a complete evaluation of the property’s productivity. Only when the trustees are satisfied that all is as it should be will ownership be transferred.”

“Rinehart and Associates are never anything but thorough,” Jessica said, wishing in this instance it wasn’t so. She’d never been so homesick for Miami.

“Of course,” Hayes said soothingly. “That’s why the trustees selected you.”

Climbing into her rental car with wet snowflakes plastering her cheeks, Jessica wished the trustees had picked another firm. She faced a thirty-five-mile drive in unfamiliar territory in increasing snow. Blessing the fact that her vehicle had snow tires, she pulled away from the curb, eased down the main street and took the turn Hayes had instructed.

Thirty-five miles south on this road; hang a right at the Shooting Star gate. Seemed simple enough.

Within minutes she was in deserted countryside where snow drifted against fences and turned rocky outcroppings and buttes into gigantic gnomes hovering in the cold. Working at maximum, the wipers barely kept the windshield clear enough for her to see the road ahead of her. The defroster on the rear window was minimally efficient. As much as she disliked the thought of being a houseguest among strangers, Jessica had to admit that not having to drive this far at least twice a day in this weather would be a relief. Not a single car had passed her coming from the opposite direction. The only vehicle she’d seen on the road was far behind her, headlights glaring and gaining fast. She guessed most of the natives had better sense than to risk driving in these conditions and cursed her own impatience. If she’d waited until morning, the snow might have ended.

The car behind her was closing in on her bumper. Only a fool would drive so recklessly on these icy roads, she thought. The dark pickup loomed large in her rearview mirror.

The truck swerved into the other lane, pulled alongside as if to pass, then slowed, keeping pace with her speed. She wondered if the driver was trying to signal her with some sort of message or warning, but she couldn’t see through the dark-tinted glass of the pickup’s passenger window.

She slowed so he could pass, but the truck beside her slowed, too.

Without warning and catching her totally off guard, the other vehicle lurched to the right and slammed into the side of her much smaller sedan.

Jessica fought the wheel to keep her car on the pavement. Luck, not skill, kept it from spinning into a skid, and she sighed with relief as she regained control.

The truck, however, remained alongside her. With what seemed like predetermined intent, it smashed into the side of her car again.

In horrified disbelief, Jessica felt the sedan leave the road, airborne. With a sickening crunch of glass and metal, it plowed into a snowbank.

The world turned briefly white when her airbag deployed, and her body slammed painfully against the restraints of her seat belt.

Everything went black.

Chapter Two

Jessica, head throbbing, muscles stiff with cold, slowly regained consciousness. Moving gingerly, she tested her arms and legs. Nothing felt broken. She ran cold-numbed fingers over her body. No sign of bleeding or other injury. She was only bruised.

And freezing to death.

To her great relief, she discovered her door would open, and she climbed from the car. The sight that greeted her drove all further relief from her thoughts. The sedan had soared across a ditch and crashed into a wall of earth on the other side. Even if the car was drivable, she’d need a tow truck to extract it from its current resting place.

She scanned the area, searching, with mixed emotions, for the vehicle that had hit her. She needed someone to save her from the cold, but the driver of the pickup definitely hadn’t had her welfare in mind. She should be glad he hadn’t returned to finish her off. Maybe he figured she’d perished in the crash, and if she hadn’t, the cold would kill her.

She didn’t want to believe someone had run her off the road on purpose, but the person who caused the accident hadn’t stopped to assist. A glance at her watch indicated at least fifteen minutes had passed since the collision. Her assailant was long gone.

The storm was intensifying, and if she didn’t get help soon, she’d die from hypothermia. She tried her cell phone, but Hayes had already warned her it would be unreliable in this part of the country where relay towers were scarce. She was disappointed but not surprised when she couldn’t receive roaming service.

Recalling vaguely hearing or reading something about staying with the car if stranded in a snow-storm—whoever would have thought a Miami resident would need that bit of info?—she started to climb back into the vehicle.

And smelled gasoline.

The tank must have ruptured. The ominous liquid was dripping from beneath the chassis and puddling in the ditch. Afraid to risk the danger of remaining in a potential fireball, she figured she should at least attempt to retrieve her luggage. Donning extra layers of clothing—even clothing woefully unsuitable for southeastern Montana’s cruel winter climate—might be her only chance for survival.

The car had landed at an angle, and she had to struggle to drag her luggage from the trunk that rested shoulder-high. She carried her bag to the side of the road and hoped someone would pass and give her a lift.

If they could see her in the blowing snow.

Her head pounded, her bruised knees and shoulders ached, and she swore that Max was going to owe her big-time.

If she lived to collect.

She was on her knees, rummaging through her open case for additional clothing, when the howling wind carried the sound of an engine, approaching from the direction of town. Grabbing a red silk dress, Jessica raced to the center of the road and brandished the garment like a flag.

The car appeared suddenly out of the driving snow, almost on top of her. Jessica dived for the side of the road. The driver slammed on brakes, going into a skid that would have landed the SUV next to her car in the ditch without some first-class maneuvers on the part of the driver.

Jessica pushed to her feet and brushed snow from her ruined stockings.

The SUV’s door opened. A massive man exited the car and descended on her like a charging bull.

“Hell’s bells, lady! You got a death wish?” It was the sheriff from Swenson. Even hopping mad, he was the sweetest sight she’d ever seen. “You could have been hit, standing in the middle of the road like that!”

“I’ve already been hit,” Jessica said hotly. “And if I hadn’t been in the middle of the road, you wouldn’t have seen me, and I would have frozen to death in this godforsaken wilderness.”

She doubted he understood a word she’d said, since her teeth were chattering so hard, her speech was almost incomprehensible.

He must have comprehended enough, though, because his anger seemed to leave him, like the air from a deflating balloon. “Are you hurt?”

“Luckily,” she managed to utter through her chattering teeth, “not as badly as my car.”

She nodded toward the ditch, and the sheriff followed her gaze.

“Aw, sh—” He bit off the curse, then turned and loped back to his car. He returned seconds later with a blanket, and without giving Jessica time to react, he’d wrapped her tightly, lifted her in his arms and settled her on the front seat of the deliciously warm SUV, his official car from the looks of the radio and shotgun mounted on the dash.

Before she could say a word, he returned to the roadside and made a quick inspection of the wrecked sedan. After gathering her luggage from the shoulder, he placed it in the back of the SUV and climbed into the driver’s seat.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he grabbed the microphone off the dash and depressed a button. “I need a tow truck on Highway 7, eighteen miles south of town. Car’s in a ditch. Tell Pete he can wait till the storm passes. I’ve picked up the driver.”

“Ten-four,” a no-nonsense female voice replied. “Need medical assistance?”

“Negative.” The sheriff gave a call number, signed off and replaced the microphone on the dash.

Warmth from the heater was slowly thawing Jessica, and either the bump on her head or the welcomed heat was making her drowsy. She seemed to be floating, a state she’d experienced only once before, when she’d drunk too much champagne at Max’s New Year’s Eve party last January. In such a blissful state, she found maintaining a good head of steam over her situation difficult.

And ignoring the attributes of the man next to her impossible.

She’d sworn off men, she reminded herself, except as the occasional dinner date, although Max never gave up playing matchmaker, hoping she’d find the right man and settle down to raise a family. Having witnessed the chaos and heartbreak that emotional entanglements had created in her parents’ lives, she wanted none of it. Her life was full enough as it was. She had her fantastic job, her South Beach condo, her friends. She didn’t need love or anything slightly resembling it. She’d avoided infatuations as fiercely as she avoided accounting errors. She’d never had a broken heart, never shed a tear over a man, never sat by the phone for a call that never came….

Never intended to.

“Now—” The sheriff, who appeared even more attractive at close range than he had in the bank, turned to her. “Want me to take you back to the hotel?”

Even in its groggy state, her mind somehow continued to function. If she went back to town, she’d have to rent another car, drive the same treacherous roads and arrive hours, if not an entire day, later than she’d planned. And she had no intention of remaining in Montana a day longer than she had to. She hated the dinky little town, the monotony of the landscape, and, most of all, the intolerably frigid weather.

To plead her case, she lifted her lips in what she hoped was an alluring smile. “I don’t suppose you could take me to the Shooting Star Ranch?”

He started the engine and put the car into gear. “Sure you don’t want to have a doctor check you out? You must have been shaken up pretty bad.”

“Nothing a few aspirin won’t cure.”

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.