Ms. Calculation

She dabbed her eyes. It wasn’t real. A fresh tear twisted down her cheek.

It was stupid, but as she cried, she couldn’t handle the thought that Wyatt had seen her turn into a blubbering mess. When he saw her after the last time, she was supposed to be at her best—maybe down a size or two, hair perfectly colored and flung in symmetrical curls over her shoulders like one of those models from the pages of Country Living. But no...he had to break her heart—though admittedly, the last time she’d seen him, she may have been the one doing the breaking.

Was that why he had agreed to take on the assignment of telling them about Bianca’s death? She wiped the rest of the wetness from her face and stomped down the steps of the porch and into the driveway.

She just needed fresh air—anything to pull her into a different reality, where none of this was really happening.

“Gwen?” Wyatt called after her.

She stopped but she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t look at him and his ridiculously sexy features. Not right now. Right now she’d like to look at anything but him...the oh-so-confusing him.

“What, Wyatt? What do you want? You gave me the news you came here to give. Now I’ve got to go to work. This ranch and the cows on it are all we have—if I don’t turn a profit this year, it’s over.” Her knees felt weak, but she refused to let herself to succumb to the feeling. She had to be strong. She had to fake it...at least until he was gone, and then she could turn into a big mess for as long as she needed.

If there was any silver lining to what was happening, it was that her mother had drunk enough whiskey to pass out for at least the rest of the day. The last thing she needed was to have to deal with that train wreck before she had everything figured out—she could only handle one major catastrophe at a time.

“Don’t run off, Gwen. I need to ask you a few more questions.” He rushed to walk by her side, so she sped up.

“Ask away, but you’re going to have to walk because I’ve got to feed the horses.” She motioned toward the red barn that sat in the distance.

“In your nightgown?” he asked, motioning toward the red plaid thing she’d forgotten she was wearing. “And you do know you’re wearing slippers, right?”

She stopped and spun to face him, but carefully pulled her nightgown over her moccasins. He was wearing a stupid, charming grin—a grin she wanted to slap right off his face. How dare he, at a time like this?

“What do you want to know?” As she thought about the things he’d want to ask—Bianca’s favorite restaurant, where she’d liked to spend her time, her love life—she choked up and had to take a long breath. She couldn’t cry again.

He reached up, so slowly that she watched his motion and thought about moving out of the radius of his touch, but she stayed put. He took her shoulder gently and stroked her arm with his thumb. It made her think of her favorite mare, Dancer. The mustang was fifteen, yet anytime she was stressed or acting out, all Gwen had to do to calm her was rub her hands down her flanks and make those same circles with her thumbs.

No matter how much Wyatt might have liked her to be, she wasn’t a damned horse that would turn soft under his touch and bend to his wants. He should have known better. It hadn’t worked in the two years they had dated in high school either. In fact, it only infuriated her.

She pulled away from his touch. The place his hand had been chilled and she covered it with her own hand, trapping some of the leftover heat.

“Gwen, it’s okay to be upset about this. If you want, I can take care of the livestock. Why don’t you go inside and lie down? I can come back and talk to you another time if you’d like.”

Some of her anger at the world slipped with the kindness in his voice. He wasn’t here to hurt her. He was here to do his job. And maybe, just maybe, he was here because he was still her friend and he could look past how she had treated him when they were younger—not that it had been unjustified, her anger toward him, but she should have been kinder. His heart had been just as much on the line as her own.

She ran her hand down her nightgown and started to move back toward the house. Maybe she should lie down, take a break, have a cup of coffee and collect her thoughts. She thought about sending him away, but it made her heart shift in her chest.

“The last thing I want is to be alone right now.” She was surprised by her blunt honesty. It was unlike her, but, then again, nothing about this morning was in the realm of normal. “If you don’t have anywhere else to be, maybe you can wait while I get dressed and then take care of the animals. Then we can head up to Bianca’s cabin.”

Wyatt frowned. “She had a cabin?”

Gwen sighed as she walked back into the house and motioned to her mother’s bedroom door as a loud snore escaped from under the door. “We each adopted one of the hands’ cabins at the edge of the property. Having a place of your own comes in handy when she gets a little too out of hand.”

“How often does that kind of thing happen?” His face twisted with concern but not judgment, and it softened some of the hard edges of her feelings toward him.

Most of the time, when people talked to her about her mother’s problem, it was with a mixture of pity and judgment. Then again, few people wanted to bring it up. It was like the worst-kept secret of Mystery, Montana, that her mother and her family were one hot mess. In fact, it would probably be only a matter of time before the news of her sister’s death would hit the airwaves. She would know as soon as it did because within the hour casseroles would start showing up on their doorstep.

She looked toward her mother’s bedroom. At least it was unlikely Carla would get up to answer the door in the condition she was in. Gwen glanced up at the clock. On days like this, when her mother had been drinking all night, Carla normally wouldn’t get up until it was time to go to the bar again. Tonight, she’d probably be in hog heaven—getting free drinks from the other lushes and lechers who frequented the bar, all in honor of her daughter’s death.

Hate reverberated through her—but the hate wasn’t just for her mother, or their situation, or even her sister’s death. It was hate for everything.

Her life was such a disaster. And there was nothing she could do about it. No way to control all the emotions that flooded through her. All she could do was feel. She glanced back at Wyatt, staring at him for a moment too long.

“Do you want me to get you something?” he asked, motioning toward her upstairs bedroom. “You can just sit down. I’ll grab your gear.” His face turned slightly red, as though he’d suddenly realized that “gear” may involve her panties.

She shook her head and walked to the stairs, his embarrassment pulling her back to reality. “I’ll be right back.”

When she reached her room, it took all her strength not to collapse onto the bed and bury her face into the pillows and scream—yell at the world, tell it of her hate, tell it of her pain, tell it about the injustices that filled her life.

* * *

BEING ALONE IN the Johansens’ house felt surreal, like somehow he was reliving moments of his past—moments he had fought hard to forget. He walked to the fireplace and looked at the collection of pictures that rested on the mantel. All were covered with a thick layer of dust, forgotten or perhaps intentionally ignored by the women of the house. He rubbed the dust off the closest one. The picture was of a man, whom he recognized as Mr. Johansen, wearing a Hypercolor shirt and drinking a Miller Lite beside a small, white, inflatable kiddie pool. A young blonde girl was splashing water and laughing. The man wasn’t smiling, rather he was looking off into the distance as a cigarette trembled on his lip, almost as if he were looking into a future where only tragedy waited.

Carla’s snoring sounded from the other room, reminding him of why he’d always hated coming into this house.

He glanced at all the other pictures. None were from any time within the last fifteen years. It was like life had stopped the moment that Mr. Johansen died. He could only imagine what would happen to their lives now that Bianca was gone as well.

Wyatt had to get out. He couldn’t let himself get sucked back into this world. Not when it was clear that Gwen could barely tolerate him. He couldn’t carry her through this like he used to carry her through the nights her mother had left her alone when Gwen was younger. He couldn’t save her—he’d already tried.

He rushed outside to the barn. Horses he could understand. Women, on the other hand... Women were an entirely different issue.

One of the barn cats sauntered over to him as he made his way inside. It wrapped itself around his legs, rubbing against him. He picked it up and scratched under its chin as it purred and kneaded the front of his shirt. As he stood there stroking the long gray hair of the cat, he glanced up at the hayloft. They had spent so many hours up there, just him and Gwen. They had been able to talk for hours; it had always seemed like they would never run out of things to discuss. They’d had this wonderful bond with each other that, no matter how many women he’d dated since, he was never able to re-create. Maybe it was the one thing he missed most about her—their deep bond, so strong that he could feel it even when no words were spoken.

Putting the cat down, he moved over to the bales of hay. He pulled off flakes and dropped them into the stalls for each of the horses. Though it was cold, in an effort to keep the hay from digging into his uniform, he stripped off his uniform shirt and his ballistics vest, leaving only his tank top. It felt good, the chill of the winter air, the scratching of the hay against his arms and the smell of horses on his skin.

He wasn’t involved with the business of his family’s ranch enough anymore to really help in the everyday comings and goings, and sometimes, when he caught a whiff of fresh hay or the heady fragrance of sweet oats, he missed being more available.

There was a thin cough, and he turned around. Gwen stood in the barn’s doorway, looking at him in a way that made him wonder if it was attraction or revulsion. He moved to grab his shirt and vest, but she stopped him with a wave of the hand.

“It’s fine. Just be comfortable. There’s not going to be anyone up at the cabin who’s going to care if you’re wearing your uniform. At least not since...” She trailed off, as though she couldn’t bring herself to talk about Bianca.

He grabbed his shirt and slipped it over his tank top anyway. It felt strange to be standing in front of her even semi undressed. In all their time together, they hadn’t taken things to a deeply physical level.

He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was still the same girl he had known before, or if she had given up on her quest to wait until marriage. He’d always appreciated, or at least respected, the effort it took to restrict oneself from pleasures of the flesh, but it wasn’t a dogma that he had been able to follow.

She looked disappointed when he put on the shirt—or was she relieved? It would have been so much easier if he could just read minds.

The drive to the cabin was short, but the entire time he had been glancing over at her, wondering what she was thinking and trying to hold back from asking her the million questions running through his mind. Most were stupid, insipid... Whether or not she liked her job at the ranch, what it was like to still be living with her mother or, for that matter, why she was still choosing to live with Carla. No matter if Gwen stayed or went, her mother would continue her self-destructive behavior. It was only a matter of time...

He pulled to a stop in front of the cabin that Gwen had directed them to. There was a small chicken coop outside it, and there was a bevy of hens clucking inside, waiting to be fed.

Gwen nearly jumped out of the patrol unit and ran to the chickens. She grabbed the bucket out of the galvanized can beside the coop and poured the cracked corn into the trough. The hens came running in a flurry of feathers and clucks.

He stood and watched her, taking in the sight of her body flexing as she moved around the coop. She seemed nervous, but he could have her all wrong. Most people he could read at a glance. The ability to tell whether someone was lying, hiding something or telling the truth came with the job. Yet he didn’t have the same innate gift when it came to Gwen. She was his enigma.

“I’m going to go inside. Feel free to take your time out here, okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s fine. I’ll be out here if you need me.” She didn’t bother to look back at him, fully consumed with opening the henhouse to collect this morning’s eggs. This late in the year, without a light in the henhouse, they both knew that there wouldn’t be many, if any, eggs, but he didn’t say anything.

He walked to the front of the cabin. Its walls were made of the aged, gray logs like those from the pioneering days when the town had been founded. The wooden door sat crooked in the frame, listing like Bianca’s drunk mother. For a moment, he wondered if Bianca had left it like that on purpose as a reminder of what she had to move past in order to live her own life.

He pushed the door open. His breath caught in his throat. Papers were strewn around the room, every drawer was open and the couch cushions had been thrown from their places, one precariously close to the woodstove. Either Bianca was the kind who never cleaned, or someone had turned the place over.

In an effort to avoid causing Gwen any more emotional trauma, he walked inside and closed the door. He pulled out his camera and clicked a few pictures. It was odd how, in just a few short hours, his assignment had led him from thinking this was a natural death to a possible suicide to now something much more sinister.

He couldn’t say if Bianca’s death was a murder. Nothing about Bianca’s body or presentation at the scene had pointed toward a struggle or malevolent act, but his instincts told him to push the investigation deeper.

Unfortunately, he was leaving in a few days for a prisoner transfer in Alaska. If he followed his instincts, he could be wrapped up in this investigation for weeks—and he had been wrong before. Just a year ago, he’d wasted time investigating a case similar to this. Maybe it had been his bravado, or his need to follow every lead, but he’d spent two weeks tracking down every thread just to find out from the medical examiner that their victim had died of a methadone overdose. The guy had been seeking euphoria—and all he’d found was the grave.

Wyatt walked through the cabin, careful not to disturb things in case he needed to call in his team of investigators—and what a team it was, two of the least-trained CSI guys anyone had ever met. In fact, he wasn’t sure if Lyle and Steve had ever gone to college, or if their certification had come from some online university where they never had to actually set foot on a crime scene to graduate.

There was a squeak from behind him. Gwen stood there, her hands over her mouth as she stared at the mess of papers, clothes and overturned chairs.

“Do you know who would have done this?” he asked, staring at her.

Her eyes were wide and she dropped her balled fists to her sides. She glanced at him and shook her head.

He’d been wrong about Gwen. He’d thought he couldn’t read her. Yet when she looked at him, he could see she was lying.

Chapter Three

They’d gone through everything. Or at least it felt like it. Gwen closed her sister’s dresser drawer with a thump.

“Anything?” Wyatt asked, motioning toward the drawer that had been filled with her sister’s bras.

From an objective point of view, it struck her as a bit funny and maybe a touch endearing that Wyatt, the type-A man who seemed most at home in his squad car, was squeamish about riffling through her sister’s underwear drawer. In high school he had seen just about every pair of panties that Gwen had owned, though things had always stopped there.

She glanced over at him. He had been good-looking back in the day, but he was nothing then compared to the man he had become—the man she had just watched throwing bales of hay around like they were pillows rather than seventy-five pounds of dead weight. If things had been different, if she could have ignored the pull of reality, she could have stood there all day and watched him sweat.

He brushed past her, leaving the room, and he still carried the sweet scent of hay, horses and leather. The heady aroma made her lift her head as she drew in a long whiff of the man she had once loved.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been in relationships, it had only been a few months—wait, a year—since her last thing. It hadn’t quite been a Facebook-official relationship. No, it had been more of a burger-and-a-beer/Netflix-and-chill kind of thing. No real feelings beyond lust and the occasional need for a back rub. It had been great until he had suddenly disappeared, and two months later she had seen the guy’s engagement to another woman splashed across their tiny paper, the Mystery Daily.

The news hadn’t hurt so much as caused her the emotional whiplash that came with being so quickly replaced. A month after the engagement announcement, she still hadn’t gotten an invite to the wedding that nearly the entire population of the small town had received. She had always resigned herself to the belief that everyone knew everyone’s business in Mystery—yet a few had still asked her why she hadn’t gone and she had been forced to tactfully remove herself from the conversation.

“You okay?” Wyatt surprised her as he touched her shoulder ever so lightly.

How long had he been standing there?

She nodded, thankful he’d pulled her from her thoughts. “What do you think they were looking for in here?” She motioned around her sister’s cabin.

“First, we don’t know if this was a they kind of situation. Maybe your sister did this. There’s no proof that her death was anything unnatural, or more than a—”

Suicide.

He didn’t need to finish the sentence to inflict the pain that came with the word.

“My sister wouldn’t kill herself. You knew her. You saw her almost every week. Do you really think that she could do something like that—or like this?” She waved at the strewn couch cushions. “No one turns over their own place.”

He looked away, but she could see in the way his eyes darkened that he was already thinking the same thing.

The desk where her sister’s laptop normally sat was conspicuously empty. But the printer was still there, and there was a wastebasket on the ground, its contents strewn across the floor like everything else in the cabin. She pulled away from Wyatt’s touch and picked up one of the balled-up pieces of paper. Uncurling the wad, she found an email. It was dated November 27—one week earlier. She didn’t recognize the email address or the long bits of code that her sister included in the printout. It looked like it had been pulled from the printer before it was done, and long dabs of ink were smudged down the paper’s length.

“What’s that?” Wyatt asked, sidestepping her as though he was trying his best not to touch her again.

“I dunno... It looks odd, though,” she said, flipping the page so he could see.

It was probably nothing. She crumpled the paper in her hands and, picking up the garbage can, dropped it in. Maybe she was looking too hard and trying to see things that were not really there—she glanced at Wyatt—especially when it came to him.

He bent down and picked up another of the papers. He sucked in a breath as he looked over the page.

“What is it?”

He held the paper and didn’t move, almost as though if he stood still she wouldn’t have asked the question.

She stepped closer and looked over his shoulder.

The email was almost identical to the one she had picked up, but instead of black smudges of ink, the message was there in its entirety:

RUN AND LIVE.

STAY AND DIE.

CHOICE IS YOURS.

Why hadn’t Bianca told anyone about the threat? And why, oh, why, had she chosen to stay?

* * *

HE SENT A picture of the email to the head of the IT department, Max, along with a promise that if Max got back to Wyatt within a day, Wyatt would personally take him on a ride-along. He hated ride-alongs, especially when it entailed taking a person who would ask more questions than a kid on Mountain Dew. Yet without a doubt, it would expedite the process—and he needed answers as soon as possible.

He was having one heck of a time focusing on anything other than the way he wanted to take Gwen into his arms and hold her. She looked so broken. Every time she stopped moving, she zoned out, almost as though she couldn’t find the strength to start moving again.

He knew the feeling all too well. It was why he never stopped—the moment you started bringing up the pain was the moment the world collapsed around you. In his line of work, it was best to just bury the past...along with anything else that kept him up at night. Bianca’s death was definitely going to fall in that category.

Bianca had looked nearly pristine when he’d arrived on scene. Her hair was pulled back into her signature ponytail and her scrubs were still clean, like she’d just pulled them out of the dryer before she had come out to the ranch.

His heart sank at the thought of the ranch. No wonder Gwen was so lost. She had so many reasons to be angry. So many people she could point a finger at, and no one more than him. Even in the event of Bianca’s death he could be held responsible—at least tangentially. He had likely been home, resting comfortably after a long day on shift. If he’d been more involved in the comings and goings of Dunrovin, if he had agreed to feed the horses, or been around at all, maybe she would still be alive. Not that Gwen knew that—but her being unaware didn’t relieve any of his guilt.

Gwen was doing it again, staring at the floor like it was the exact spot where Bianca had been found. His hands twitched with the need to feel her in them.

“Let’s go. I’ll run you back home.”

She jerked as though she had forgotten where they were.

He took care to lock the door to the cabin to stop anyone from coming back in, and then he held her hand on the way back to the car. Her fingers were limp in his. She was a ghost of what she used to be—strong and hot, as wild and free as the Montana mountains and wilderness that surrounded them. He wished he could pull her from her stupor, pull her back to the land of the living instead of falling deeper into the pit of the despondent.

It wasn’t long before they were bumping down the Widow Maker Ranch’s long, snowy driveway, laden with potholes and ruts left over from hard use in summer and fall. As Wyatt twisted and turned, trying to avoid the worst of the bumps and the largest snowdrifts, he was reminded of how life was just like a road—full of obstacles and dangers.

Something hit the car and he tapped on the brakes as he tried to identify the source of the sound. There was another thump and he pulled to a stop.

“What was that?” Gwen asked, looking around.

Pastures lined both sides of the drive, grasses so tall that even in the snow it looked like they were in a sea of brown reeds—making it nearly impossible to see who or what could have been responsible for the sound.

“Stay inside,” he said as he stepped out of the car.

He walked to the front of the patrol unit. On its fender were the scattered, oozing remnants of two eggs. He turned just in time to see Carla holding a carton and pulling her arm back to take aim.

“Stop, Carla!” he ordered, his voice hard-edged and full of authority.

The egg flew through the air, missing him by just a few inches and smacking against the car’s windshield.

Gwen stepped out of the car and slammed the door. “Mother, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Her mother smeared her forearm under her nose and dropped the carton of eggs, its contents rolling on the ground at her feet. “He’s a bastard...” She motioned to Wyatt as though he couldn’t hear her. “It’s his damned fault.” She reached behind her back.