Montana Lawman

“The last thing I need is a cop vowing protection.” Scorn practically dripped from her tense body.

“Are you saying that you do know something? Molly, you can voluntarily help me or not. Either way, I’ll get at the truth. Whatever you’re hiding will come out.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“That’s no threat.” He lifted his hand, narrowing his eyes a little when she jerked back. He continued the movement, swiping away the spider that was busily spinning a line of web straight toward her shoulder. “I always find my man. Or my woman.”

Her lips parted. “Is that some sort of, of, suggestion that I had something to do with Harriet’s death?” Her voice rose a little.

“You did get a promotion.” He waited a long beat, letting it sink in. “People have killed for less.”

“You’re vile.”

“I’m a deputy sheriff, ma’am,” he said flatly. “And there could well be a murderer right here in Rumor among us. If your sensibilities are offended, that’s just too damn bad. Murder is a vile business.” And if it took manipulating the jumpy, sexy woman into finding the murderer, then that was also too damn bad. There wasn’t much that Holt believed in anymore. But he did believe in justice.

She moved suddenly, brushing past him despite the lack of space. It left him feeling even more scorched than from the afternoon heat. “You are just as hateful as every other cop it’s been my misfortune to know.” She shoved open her door and disappeared inside.

The door slammed shut so hard the glasses on the little table rattled right along with the windows in their panes.

He picked up his glass and sucked down the lone, remaining ice cube as he studied the other glass. The one she’d used. It was still more than half-full.

There was a small, faint pink glisten smudged on the rim of the glass. She’d put gloss on her lips before she’d come out with the lemonade.

How many other cops have you known, Molly Brewster? And why?

He didn’t believe for one minute that she was guilty of murdering her boss, or even conspiring to have her killed. He did know, right down to his bones, though, that she was hiding something.

And he needed to know what it was in case it had some bearing on the investigation.

Right now, the only strong suspects they had were Lenny Hostetler, whose whereabouts where unknown, and the father of Harriet’s baby, whose complete identity was unknown.

Lenny had cause to be angry with Harriet because she’d helped his wife and children escape his abuse, and Darla Hostetler, said now-ex-wife, had strongly confirmed her belief that Lenny was more than capable of murder.

And the father of Harriet’s baby? Who knew what kind of motive he might have had, if any. Maybe Tessa had been right, and the guy wanted Harriet to end the pregnancy. Maybe he’d been so desperate for that to happen that he’d been willing to kill the mother in the process.

Holt sighed and set down his glass. Without second-guessing his reasons, barely touching the rim of Molly’s glass, he scooted it to the edge of the table. Then, with one finger at the bottom edge, and the other on the top rim, he smoothly tipped the lemonade into his empty glass.

In the SUV that served as his patrol vehicle, he grabbed a fresh paper bag from the evidence kit in the back, and bagged the glass right along with the fingerprints on it that Molly Brewster had unwittingly left him.

Chapter Two

I t was dark by the time Molly remembered the glasses she’d left on the front porch. She’d been so furious with Holt Tanner and his insane suggestion that she’d had something to do with Harriet’s death that she’d spent the entire afternoon and early evening pummeling the earth in her tiny backyard.

She had the great makings for a garden by the time exhaustion finally forced her to stop. Of course, if Molly’s sister had been around, she’d have wryly pointed out that planting a garden in Montana during the last harsh gasp of summer was probably a fruitless venture.

Rinsing off her gardening tools, Molly stored them in the little storage shed and headed around the side of the house, intending to get the glasses. There were some times that she missed her sister so badly, she ached with it.

If she could only call Christina. Hear her sister’s voice. Molly would feel better about the path she’d chosen.

But she didn’t dare call Christina. Nor could she email her sister, or send a letter, or do anything at all that might possibly provide a trail back to Molly’s location. It was safer for her, and certainly safer for Christina and her family, for things to remain just the way they’d been for the past eighteen months.

Which meant that Molly had nobody with whom she could share her worries. Nobody with whom she could vent her frustrations that she could even find a man in law enforcement remotely attractive. Not after all she’d been through with Rob.

Rounding the corner of the house, Molly went up the porch steps and grabbed the glass from the table. She didn’t want to track mud from her shoes through the living room, so she started back down the porch steps to return to the back of the house and the entrance there that led into a tiny mudroom.

Just as she reached for the wooden screen door, though, she stopped cold. One glass.

She held it up to the light, gingerly peering at the glass as if it had turned into a snake.

The glass wasn’t a snake, though. A certain deputy sheriff was.

No doubt in her mind at all that Holt Tanner had taken the other glass, she snatched open the screen door and grabbed her purse and car keys from where they were sitting on top of the washing machine.

Less than five minutes later, she’d driven up Main Street and pulled into the small parking area near the sheriff’s department. It was after eight o’clock in the evening and there was no earthly reason why she’d know that Holt Tanner would be at the station. But there he was. Just walking out the door, the light from inside shining over his dark hair, making it gleam like onyx.

You are in control. She climbed out of her car, and his head snapped up as if he’d sensed her. Though it was too dark and he was too far away to be sure, she was certain he was looking at her with that narrow-eyed, intense stare of his. Then he started toward her, moving with that curiously loose-limbed grace that seemed odd for someone who was always grim.

He stopped several feet away, his face in shadow. “Ms. Brewster. Something I can do for you this evening?”

Her hands curled. “You can give me back my glass that you stole this afternoon.”

“Harsh words.”

“True words. You had no right to take it. I can only imagine what you thought you would do with it. There are privacy laws in this country, you know.”

He turned on his heel and started for an SUV parked several yards away.

She blinked and hurriedly shut her car door. “Hey. Don’t ignore me!”

He kept right on walking until he reached the vehicle. Then he opened the door and leaned inside.

Irritation bubbled in her veins and she went right after him. “Deputy, do not ignore me. I won’t have it, I tell you. Unless you’re serious about me being a suspect in Harriet’s death, you have absolutely no right to invade my privacy like you have. You have no possible way of knowing the trouble—” He was inviting. She barely contained the words and stood there, shuddering at her temerity.

He straightened and turned. “Believe me, Ms. Brewster, I wish I could ignore you.” His lips were twisted as if he found something amusing about the situation. “Here.”

He thrust out his hand, and she recoiled, realizing belatedly that he was handing her the paper sack he had in his hand. “What is it?”

“So suspicious,” he murmured. “It’s your glass.”

Feeling like a fool, she snatched the sack from him. The thin paper crinkled under her tight grasp. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black. You give suspicious new meaning.”

“I’m doing my job, Ms. Brewster.”

“Stop calling me that!” Her face flamed. She knew she was acting like an idiot, but there seemed nothing she could do about it. Outrageous words kept coming out of her mouth no matter how badly she wanted to contain them.

“All right. What would you prefer I call you?” He leaned back against the side of his truck and crossed his arms. Leisurely. As if they had all the time in the world.

Now the words stopped up in her throat.

He tilted his head slightly, watching her as if she were some kind of bug stuck on the end of a pin. “Maybe you’d prefer I use your real name,” he suggested softly.

Molly’s fingers tightened spasmodically, and the sack fell from her grasp. She stared as, almost in slow motion, it headed for the pavement. She couldn’t even bring herself to move as glass, definitely not in slow motion, exploded from the bag like a perfectly rounded firework.

She heard a stifled oath, then nearly screamed when hands closed tightly over her hips. “Leave me alone!”

“Be still. You’ve got glass all over your legs.”

He dumped her unceremoniously on the bench seat inside his truck and dropped his hand on her knee. When he leaned toward her, she sucked in a harsh breath and instinctively flattened herself back against the seat as far as she could go.

Holt went completely still. Panic rolled off her in waves strong enough to knock him flat, and a ball of fury formed inside him so rapidly that he felt sick to his stomach. Maybe Molly Brewster was secretive. Maybe she caused him no amount of personal consternation.

But he wanted to put his hands on whoever had hurt her and slowly choke the life out of him.

“I’m reaching for my flashlight,” he said after a moment, when he could be sure his voice would come out without betraying the red haze burning in his head. “So I can see if the glass cut you.” Moving slowly, he took his hand off her knee and stepped back a few inches. “It’s right under the seat.”

Her eyes were filled with shadows and bored into his face.

“Put your right hand down, Molly,” he said softly. “You can’t miss it. You’ll feel it.”

Her hands, clutched together at her waist, separated. She started to reach. Paused.

“It’s one of those long-handled kind. Metal. Makes a good weapon in a pinch.”

Her long lashes flickered. The pearly edge of her teeth caught her upper lip. And slowly, so slowly that he hurt inside from it, she slid her right hand down the seat. A moment later she’d pulled out the foot-long flashlight. She dragged her gaze from his face to study the thing.

God only knew what was running through her mind. He supposed if she felt the need to slam it into him, he might even let her. The way he felt at the realization that someone had hurt her, someone needed to get maimed. “Heavy sucker, isn’t it?”

She hefted it a little higher, pulling it up to her lap, knocking into the steering wheel as she did so. She jerked, and the flashlight rolled from her fingers.

He caught it and flicked it on, casually stepping back even more as he trained the light on her calves and ankles.

Dammit. She had several little pinpricks of blood right above the edge of her folded sock, which no longer looked white as snow as it had that afternoon. “You been out digging ditches?”

“What?” Her voice was barely audible.

“Your shoes and socks are muddy.”

She lifted her hand, touching her forehead with fingers that trembled. “I was, um, d-digging out a garden.”

“There’s a first-aid kit under the seat, too. Did you finish the garden?” He kept his voice low. Easy. She was beginning to relax and he didn’t want to jeopardize that.

“There’s hardly any yard.” She handed him the small white plastic box. “Left, I mean. I dug up so much.”

“You must wield a mean shovel. My grandfather would’ve loved you. Hold this so I can see what I’m doing.”

“You had a grandfather.”

His lips twisted a little as he hunkered down on his heels with the long tweezers from the kit and began fishing for tiny shards of glass. “Most people do,” he said. “Though I’ve been accused a time or two of springing from some sort of pod.” He gingerly plucked a tiny sliver from the taut skin of her slender shin. It was hard not to appreciate the shape of her limbs. They were about as perfect as legs could be.

“He had a place near Billings,” he forced himself to continue. Anything to get her to relax. And knowing that he was doing as much admiring as he was removing slivers of glass wasn’t going to get it. “I spent summers with him.” His grandfather had been an ornery old coot, a farmer of sorts who loved his bottle almost as much as he’d loved his land.

In comparison to Holt’s life in Los Angeles with his mother, who’d either been high on life and whatever man she’d brought home this time or high on something considerably more illegal, summers in Montana with that ornery old man had been as near to heaven as he’d figured he’d ever get.

“He’s the reason I ended up in Montana,” he told Molly. He sat back a bit. “Do you feel any glass in your legs still?”

She rotated her ankles. “I don’t think so. I didn’t to begin with. You, um, you came here from California, you said.”

“Banished was the term you used, I think.”

The flashlight’s beam wavered under her hold when she shifted. He looked up at her as he tore open another antiseptic pad.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s what you thought.”

“It was cruel.” Her voice went even softer. “I’m not usually cruel.”

He dabbed at the cluster of tiny cuts on her leg. They oozed tiny droplets of blood and he tore open several plastic bandages. “Yeah, well, I bring that out in a lot of people.”

“There’s no excuse.”

“Honey, there is always an excuse.” His lips twisted. “And I’ve probably heard ’em all over the years.”

The toe of her shoe lifted slowly while he stuck the bandages in place. “Deputy?”

He looked up as he smoothed down the last bandage. “Yeah?”

“How did you know?”

He glanced down at her feet. They were still again. He wasn’t entirely sure he trusted them to stay that way and he had no particular desire to take a size-six tennis shoe in the face. But take it he would, before he’d lift a hand against her. “About your name?”

She nodded stiffly.

“I wasn’t certain.” He judiciously gave her feet clearance as he began gathering up the stuff from the first-aid kit. “Until now.”

Her lips parted. “You bas—”

“Yeah.” He straightened. “Literally and metaphorically.” Letting her chew on that, he stuck the closed kit in her hands. “Put that back, would you?”

Those impossibly black lashes of hers lowered for a moment as her fingers tightened on the hard, plastic box. He could practically see the urge to heave it at him playing out in her mind.

After a long moment she sighed and slipped the box back under the seat. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not a criminal or anything. And I didn’t hurt Harriet. I’ve never hurt anyone.”

“But you’re running. From someone.”

“I’m not running.” Her throat worked and her voice went hoarse. “I’m living.”

He raked his hands through his hair. What was it about this woman that got so thoroughly under his skin? So rapidly under his skin?

It was a bad sign.

“Molly, whoever it is could be a suspect. You’ve got to realize that.”

“That’s impossible. Nobody knows that I’m here.”

“Family?”

Her eyes suddenly glistened. He harshly reminded himself that women conjured tears at the drop of a hat. She was probably running from whoever had hurt her—a husband, a lover, a father. God only knew. Maybe she was even one of Lenny Hostetler’s conquests. They seemed to be cropping up with amazing regularity considering the guy had seemingly disappeared from the planet. Molly certainly looked Lenny’s type. The little worm of a man unfailingly went for slender blondes.

But that didn’t mean Molly was any more trustworthy than any other woman who’d ever been in his life.

Molly Brewster isn’t in your life.

“My family knows nothing.”

He leaned against the opened door. “Must be pretty bad if you’ve cut your family out of your life, too. Seems that person might have cause to be mad at Harriet for helping you find a new life.”

She stared at him, her expression stony. “Did you take my fingerprints off that glass? Is that why you stole it?”

Obviously, she was recovering from her shock well enough. “Borrowed. I planned to return it.”

“After you’d taken my fingerprints from it, I presume.”

“Yes.”

She looked as if she was struggling with temper. Or tears. Maybe both. “Did you?”

“Get your print? Yes.”

Tears won out. Glistening tears clung to her dark lashes, looking like liquid jewels. “I told you I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“But you’re scared to death I’m going to run the print. What’ll I find when I do?”

Her gaze sought his. She leaned forward, her hands digging into the seat beside her legs. “You haven’t done that yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“If you try, I’ll…I’ll sue you!”

“Will you?”

Her gaze flickered, and he nearly smiled. Except there was little satisfaction in manipulating this particular situation. His only justification was that there was a murderer out there, and Holt wanted him caught. If it took a little manipulation of this woman, then so be it. “I won’t run them if you help me.”

“That’s blackmail. Or extortion or something! I should have known not to expect better.”

“That’s cooperation,” he countered smoothly. “I help you, you help me. In the end we both win, don’t we?”

“I don’t like you.”

“You don’t have to. All you have to do is help me.”

“What if I go to the sheriff and complain about this?”

“Knock yourself out.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Want me to dial for you?”

She practically recoiled from the phone. “I don’t want to talk to the sheriff!”

He pocketed the phone. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“You’re hateful.”

“And you’re my only real link to Harriet Martel.”

“You’re overestimating my knowledge of her.”

“It’s a possibility,” he conceded. “Though a damned slim one in my opinion. You worked at least forty hours a week for more than a year and a half with her. As far as I’m concerned that means you were as close to her as anyone else I’ve been able to find. Now, do we have a deal or not?”

“I don’t seem to have much of a choice.”

“Is that a yes?”

She looked away and seemed to be watching the darkened town park across the way. Either that, or the library, which was also across the street.

“I don’t like your tactics, Deputy. Why should I trust you to hold up your end of this? For all I know, you’re already running my fingerprint against every data bank into which the sheriff’s department is linked.”

“I don’t lie.” Not exactly.

“Nor do I.”

“You’re lying about your identity.”

“That’s survival,” she said flatly.

He’d figured as much, given the sum of her reactions since they’d met. “I’ll return your print when I finish my investigation. That’s the best I can do.”

“Maybe I’ll just leave town.” Her voice shook, the bravado thin.

“If you do, then I’ll list you as an official suspect, hunt you down and drag your sweet butt right back here to Rumor. And your days of privacy and assumed identity are over.”

“You wouldn’t. You’re supposed to be looking for Harriet’s killer, not wasting time with innocent citizens like me!”

“Exactly. I don’t care whether you like my tactics or not, Molly. I want her killer found.”

She was shaking, and her face was pale as moonlight. But her eyes, even in the shadowy night, nearly shot sparks at him as she slid off the high seat. “Fine,” she whispered stiffly. Then she turned on her heel and walked back to her little car.

Holt watched her fumble with the door handle, then climb behind the wheel and, after a couple tries before the engine caught, drive out of the small parking lot.

He’d won.

Except there was no feeling of victory inside him at all.

Chapter Three

M olly unlocked the main doors of the library and went inside, flicking on the overhead lights as she went. She refused to look over her shoulder at the building across the street that housed the city offices, including the sheriff’s department and the mayor’s office.

You are in control.

She snorted softly as she pushed aside a book cart that one of the volunteers had left sitting in the aisle between the circulation desk and the administrative offices behind it. “Control? What a joke.”

She slapped the light switch on the wall just inside the main office and stared at Harriet’s office. There was a large, ancient desk that took up most of the space. Edwardian, Harriet had once told Molly. But pretty much ruined for its antique value when some owner along the way had added the “custom” sidepiece to use as a typewriter return. Harriet had purchased it secondhand for a song. It was big and it was ugly. And without Harriet behind it, it looked sad. It was also still piled with work that Harriet had never had a chance to attend to.

Several boxes of old-looking, dusty books were stacked on the floor against the wall. And a small stack of hardcover books sat on the sidepiece of her desk right next to the typewriter that looked to be as old as Molly was. The library did possess a computer system. There was a terminal at the circulation desk, one in the reference section and one in Molly’s office that also tied into an international interlibrary system. But Harriet had flatly refused to have one in her office despite the convenience it offered.

“I loathe the things. Making people smarter on one hand and dumber than dirt on the other.”

Molly smiled sadly, easily imagining Harriet’s brusque tones. “You saved my life once already, Harriet,” she whispered to the empty office. “Tell me what to do now.”

Only silence greeted her.

Sighing again, Molly went to the smaller office next door and tucked away her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk. She flipped open her calendar, glancing over the activities scheduled for the day. Her attention was barely on it, though. Not when she half expected Holt Tanner to come striding through the library doors at any moment.

When he hadn’t done so by closing time that evening, Molly’s tension had reached new heights.

“Could we have a little quiet here?” Her voice was sharper than she intended, and the group of teenagers sitting around one of the study tables looked up at her in shock. D. J. Reingard stopped tapping his oversize pencil against the table and frowned a little. “Sorry, Ms. Brewster. We’re just finishing the plans for the fund-raisers.”

Molly knew that. She pressed her fingertips to the cool wooden table, silently cursing her bad mood on Holt Tanner. “I’m sorry, D.J. You guys are fine. I guess the heat is getting to me.”

D.J. looked at her even more oddly, as it was cool as a spring evening inside the new library facility. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that the newest deputy his father, the sheriff of Rumor, had hired was driving her right around the bend. “So, what did you all decide on? A rummage sale or a bake sale?”

The group of teens was conducting a summer project to help raise funds to reestablish a bookmobile program that would help serve the children and families in some of the more remote ranching areas around Rumor. Molly was all for the program and, with Harriet’s blessing, had been working with this particular group of honor students for the better part of the year. So far they’d raised thousands of dollars through a Halloween carnival, holiday crafts and baked goods, Christmas wreaths and a half dozen other, smaller projects.

“Both,” Becky Reed answered with a grin. She was a petite redhead with a spray of freckles across her nose and a crush for D.J. the size of Montana. D.J., however, seemed to only have eyes for one of the other girls in the group—a statuesque sixteen-going-on-thirty blonde named Tiffany.