“I’m saying, as your friend, and as your employer, just so we touch all the bases, you and Chase are both grown-ups, both single, both with minds of your own. As his sister, who knows him inside and out, I’m advising you: If you want to start something, you’ll have to start it. And nobody who knows either of you is going to be shocked or worried if the two of you start sleeping together. I don’t know why people let sex be so damn complicated.”
“I’m not talking about having sex with him.”
“Of course you are.”
Jessica let out a sigh. “Of course I am. I need to think about it. Not for a year or so. A day or two is enough for me. Bodine?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I like having a friend.”
Glancing over, Bodine grinned. “You got lucky with me. I’m a hell of a good friend.”
She continued to grin as she punched the gas again. Nearly home now, she thought as she passed a blue compact heading in the opposite direction, and she really wanted to get there.
*
If Karyn Allison’s tire had blown two minutes sooner, Bodine would’ve seen her on the side of the road and stopped rather than zipping by the car as Karyn drove toward Missoula.
Two minutes would have changed everything.
*
He cleaned blood from his hands with snow. He hadn’t meant to do it. Why hadn’t the girl just behaved? He had a right—God given—even an obligation to procreate, to continue his line.
To spread his seed into the world.
And hadn’t God put her right in his path?
There she’d been, on the side of the road with a blown-out tire. A clearer sign of divine intervention he’d never seen.
Now, if she’d been too old—for childbearing—or uncomely, as a man had a right to take a comely woman for his wife, he’d have changed the tire for her, like a good Christian, and continued on his way.
On his hunt.
But she was young. Younger than the tavern whore and pretty as a lemon drop. Since she’d already set about jacking up the car, she showed she had some spirit, and a man wanted some spirit passed on to his sons.
And hadn’t she thanked him, smiled pretty as you please when he stopped to do the job for her?
He appreciated good manners. How she’d stepped back to let him take over demonstrated she knew her place.
But then she’d gone and taken out her phone, said how she’d call the friends she was meeting, let them know what was going on.
He couldn’t have that.
He told her so, and she’d given him a look he didn’t much like. Disrespectful.
He hit her. Looking back now he could see he shouldn’t have let what happened with the other one cause him to pull his punch. Should’ve put her down hard, considering how she’d yelled and hit back at him.
Caught him right in the balls, too, before he’d given her a good whack with the lug wrench.
But she’d been breathing, even moaned a little when he hauled her into the back of his truck, trussed her up, slapped some duct tape over her mouth in case she started that yelling again.
He’d gone back, too, picked up her phone and got her pocketbook out of her car. He’d heard about how the police found those things before.
He’d felt too damn good, knowing he’d done what he’d set out to do, what he was meant to do. She’d wake up in her room, and he’d teach her her place right quick. Her duty.
But when he’d gotten back to the cabin, gone to pull her out, there was a lot more blood than he’d expected. His first thought was that he’d have to clean it off.
His second was she’d gone and died on him right in the back of his damn truck. Just died on him.
It not only soured his righteous mood, it scared him some.
He’d covered her back up, driven straight off. He hadn’t even gone in the cabin. Home wasn’t the place for some damn dead girl who didn’t know how to behave.
Especially with the ground too hard to dig a grave.
Bitter about his bad luck, he drove through the night, through a squall of snow toward the wilderness. It took some doing, some snowshoeing with a dead girl over his shoulder, but he didn’t have to go far.
He buried her in snow, along with her phone, her pocketbook. But he took the money out of it first, took the blanket he’d wrapped her in. He wasn’t stupid.
Nobody would find her until spring, most likely, and maybe not then. The animals would take her first anyway.
He considered saying a prayer over her. Decided she wasn’t worthy of it, hadn’t been worthy of him. So he cleaned her blood from his hands with snow, and left her in the dark stillness of wilderness.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bodine purely loved Christmas Eve. The resort closed midday after the last of the checkouts, and remained closed until the day after Christmas. Security would make their rounds, of course, taking shifts, and horses would be tended. But for all intents and purposes, everyone had a day and a half to spend with friends and family.
The grannies would come, spend the night, and the ranch hands and any employees who weren’t with their own families were welcome to a feast of food and drink.
Bodine rode home with Callen—a habit at least three times a week now—through a steady Christmas snowfall.
“Are you going to see your mom and sister for Christmas?” she asked him.
“Tomorrow, yeah, for dinner.”
“You give them my best. What did you do for Christmas back in California?”
“Mooched off friends. Like I’m doing at your place tonight.”
“We’ve got enough food for an army. I only praise Jesus the women in my family conceded years back to have the resort kitchen handle this do. Otherwise, I’d be stuck peeling and chopping the minute I walk in the door.”
“You could come hide out at the shack, help me deal with the presents I’m hauling to my sister’s tomorrow.”
“You haven’t got them wrapped yet?”
“I’ve got till tomorrow, don’t I? And I don’t wrap. That’s what those fancy bags are for.” He glanced over. She had her hair braided back, a long dark twist, and her face was flushed from cold and pleasure. “Are you all wrapped up?”
“Wrapped, bowed, tagged, and under the tree.”
Didn’t she look all smug about it? And pretty as a Christmas ribbon.
“Show-off.”
Laughing, she angled her head, fluttered her lashes. “Being smart and organized isn’t showing off. Plus, I’ll admit I had Sal help me. She likes to fuss with wrapping, is a hell of a lot better at it even if it does take her half of forever. And it kept her distracted.”
Her smile dimmed, dropped away. “She’s missing Billy Jean. They always spent Christmas Eve together drinking champagne cocktails. And now that other girl’s gone missing, and Sal’s decided she was taken off by the same one who killed Billy Jean.”
When he said nothing, Bodine looked over. “You think the same?”
“I think they were both women alone, both had breakdowns—out of gas for one, flat tire for the other. I leave the rest of the thinking to the sheriff.”
“Car jacked up like she started to change the tire, but she didn’t have a lug wrench—from what I read about it. It seems she’d have called somebody, as her mother said she had her cell phone when she left. But it could be the battery was dead. It could be, most likely, she hitched a ride, and then …