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

shaft of morning sun. Through the window, he could see Lone Peak. “Your apartment is wonderful,” he said as he put the shoebox on the table and sat down.

“Thanks.” Mary pulled out a chair opposite him. “May I?” she asked, and pulled the box toward her.

He nodded. “I looked at some of it, but truthfully, I didn’t want to do this alone.”

She took out the diary pages, treating them as if they were made of glass. “There had to be a reason her friend was told to give you this after she was gone.” She picked up one page and read aloud, “‘Friday, I saw him again at Buck’s T-4. He didn’t see me but I think he knew I was there. He kept looking around as if looking for me.’”

“She met him here in Big Sky!” Mary exclaimed as she flipped the page over. “‘Saturday. I hate that we can’t be together. He hates it too so that makes me feel a little better.’”

She looked up at Chase. “They were star-crossed lovers right here in Montana.”

“Star-crossed lovers?” He scoffed. “From what I’ve read, it’s clear that he was a married man.” He raked a hand through his hair. “What if my father has been here in Big Sky all this time, and I never knew it?”

Mary could see how hard this was on him, just as she could tell that a part of him wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth. “Are you sure you want to find him?”

Chase had been fifteen when his mother had gotten sick the first time, and he’d come to the area to work on a neighboring ranch. Later, Mary’s family had put him to work on their ranch, giving him a place to live while he and Mary finished school.

They’d both believed that he’d been sent to Montana because of one of Hud’s law-enforcement connections. Her father had never spelled it out, but she now realized that both of her parents must have known Chase’s mother back when she’d lived here. She must have been the one who’d asked them to look out for him.

Mary and Chase had been close from the very start. From as far back as she could remember, he’d been haunted by the fact that he didn’t know who his father was. He’d been born in Arizona. He’d just assumed that was where his mother met his father. He hadn’t known that there was much more of a Montana connection than either he or Mary had known. Until now.

“Truthfully? I’m not sure of anything.” His gaze met hers. “Except how I feel about you.”

“Chase—”

He waved a hand through the air. “Sorry. As for my...father... I have to know who he is and why he did what he did.”

She nodded. “So we’ll find him,” she said, and picked up another page of the diary. “There has to be some reason he couldn’t marry your mother.”

He swore under his breath. “I told you. He was already married. It’s the only thing that’s ever made sense. It’s why my mother refused to tell me who he is.”

“Maybe she mentions his name on one of the pages,” Mary suggested. “If we put them in order.” She went to work, sorting through them, but quickly realized that she never mentioned him by name, only J.M.

She stopped sorting to look at him. “J.M.? He shouldn’t be hard to find if he still lives here.” She got up and went to a desk, returning with a laptop. “Maybe we should read through them first though. It doesn’t look as if she wrote something every day.” She counted the diary sheets. “There are forty-two of them with days on both sides, so eight-four days.”

“About three months,” Chase said. “If we knew when the affair started...” They quickly began going through the pages. “This might help,” he said as he held up one of the pages.

Something in his voice caught her attention more than his words. “What is it?”

“Christmas Eve.” He read what his mother had written. “‘It was so romantic. I never dreamed it could be like this. But he reminded me that I didn’t have much to compare it with. He said it would get better. I can’t imagine.’”

Chase looked up. “I was born nine months later.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but it was clear that it mattered a whole lot. “I have to know who he is.”

She heard the fury in his voice as he told her about the heart-shaped necklace that his mother had never taken off. “Maybe he loved her.”

He scoffed at that. “If he’d loved her, he wouldn’t have abandoned her. She was alone, broke and struggling to raise his child.”

“Maybe the answer is in these pages, and we just missed something,” Mary said after they finished going through them.

He shook his head and scooped up the diary pages, stuffing them roughly back into the shoebox and slamming down the lid.

Mary wanted to know the whole story. She looked at the box longingly. It was clear that Chase had already made up his mind. Even after reading all the diary entries, she knew it was his mother’s view of the relationship, and clearly Muriel’s head had been in the stars.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, worried.

“Find him. J.M. The Big Sky area isn’t that large.” He stepped over to the laptop and called up local phone listings from the browser and started with the Ms. “We can surmise from what she wrote that he’s older, more experienced and married. The necklace he gave her wasn’t some cheap dime-store one. He had money, probably owned a business in town.”

She hesitated, worried now what he would do once he found the man in question. “I think you should let me go with you once we narrow down the list of men.”

He looked at her, hope in his expression. “You would do that?”

“Of course.” She picked up the phone to call her mother. Dana had known