Under Threat by B.J. Daniels (reading the story of the .TXT) 📕

There was no doubt in his mind that Christy’s death had been premeditated. Someone had tampered with her battery, needing her to walk home that night so she could be run down. Which meant that the killer must have been waiting outside the bar. Just her luck that she had stayed so late that there was no one around to give her a ride somewhere.

The killer wanted him to believe the hit and run had been an accident. He’d already heard rumors that she’d been hit by a motor home of some tourist passing through. He knew better. This was a homicide, and he’d bet his tin star that the killer was local and not just passing through.

Picking up his notebook, he shoved back his chair and stood. It was time to talk to the two men who’d fought over Christy earlier in the night. Only one name had surprised him—Grady Birch, Deputy Dillon Ramsey’s friend—because the name had just come up in his cattle rustling investigation.

He decided to start with Grady, pay him a surprise visit, see how that went before he talked to the other man, Chet Jensen, the son of a neighboring rancher who’d been in trouble most of his life.

But when he reached the rented cabin outside Gallatin Gateway, Grady was nowhere around. Hud glanced in the windows but it was hard to tell if the man had skipped town or not.

Mary joined her mother in a rocking chair on the front porch after Chase and Dillon had left. Dana had joked about feeling old lately, and had said maybe she was ready for a rocking chair. Mary had laughed.

But as she sat down in a chair next to her, she felt as if it was the first time she’d looked at her mother in a very long time. Dana had aged. She had wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, her hair was now more salt than pepper and there was a tiredness she’d seldom seen in her mother’s bearing.

“Are you all right?” her mother asked her, stealing the exact words Mary had been about to say to her. Dana perked up a little when she smiled and reached over to take her daughter’s hand.

“I saw you visiting with Chase,” Mary said.

Her mother nodded. “It was good to see him. He left you his phone number.” With her free hand she reached into her pocket and brought out a folded piece of notepaper and gave it to her.

She glanced at the number written on it below Chase’s name. Seeing that there was nothing else, she tucked it into her pocket. “What did he tell you?”

“We only talked about the ranch, how much the town has grown, just that sort of thing.”

“He says he came back because he loves me, never stopped loving me. But I never told you this...” She hesitated. There was little she kept from her mother. “I got a call from a woman who claimed to be his fiancée. She warned me about contacting him again.”

Dana’s eyes widened. “This woman threatened you?”

“Chase says it was a delusional woman he made the mistake of spending one night with. Fiona.” Even saying the name hurt.

“I see. Well, now you know the truth.”

Did she? “I haven’t forgotten why we broke up.” She’d caught Chase kissing Beth Anne Jensen. He’d sworn it was the first and only time, and that he hadn’t initiated it. That he’d been caught off guard. She’d known Beth Anne had had a crush on Chase for years.

But instinctively she’d also known that her parents were right. She and Chase had been too young to be as serious as they’d been, especially since they’d never dated anyone else but each other. “You try to lasso him and tie him down now, and you’ll regret it,” her father had said. “If this love of yours is real, he’ll come back.”

She’d heard her parents love story since she was a child. Her father had left and broken her mother’s heart. He’d come back though and won her heart all over again. “But what if he isn’t you, Dad? What if he doesn’t come back?”

“Then it wasn’t meant to be, sweetheart, and there is nothing you can do about that.”

“Will you call him?” her mother asked now.

“I feel like I need a little space without seeing either Dillon or Chase,” she said. “I still love Chase, but I’m not sure I still know him.”

“It might take some time.”

“I guess we’ll see if he sticks around long enough to find out.” She pushed to her feet. “I need to get to my office.”

“I’m glad he came back,” her mother said. “I always liked Chase.”

Mary smiled. “Me too.”

But as she drove back to her office, she knew she wouldn’t be able to work, not with everything on her mind. As she pulled into her parking spot next to her building, she changed her mind and left again to drive up into the mountains. She parked at the trailhead for one of her favorite trails and got out. Maybe she’d take a walk.

Hours later, ending up high on a mountain where she could see both the Gallatin Canyon and Madison Valley on the other side, she had to smile. She was tired, sweaty and dusty, and it was the best she’d felt all day.

The hike had cleared her mind some. She turned back toward the trailhead as the sun dipped low, ignoring calls on her cell phone from both men.

Down the street from Mary’s building, Lucy studied herself in the rearview mirror of her SUV, surprised that she now actually thought of herself as Lucy. It was her new look and her ability to become someone else. It had started in junior high when she’d been asked to audition for a part in a play.

She’d only done it for extra credit since she’d been failing science. Once she’d read the part though, she’d felt herself become that character, taking on the role, complete with the