At the Crossroads (Buckhorn, Montana #3)(8)

But taking him in had been her plan before everything had gone sideways in this café in the middle of nowhere. She tried to slow her pounding pulse. There’d been times when she’d been fearful with good reason as a deputy—whenever she’d walked into a situation without knowing what was really going on.

But this time, she could see where this was headed. This time, she had even more reason to be afraid, she thought as she watched Culhane. Her hand went protectively to her stomach. She could lose everything today.



CHAPTER FOUR


EARL RAY CAULFIELD had recognized Culhane Travis when he walked in. Just that morning, he’d heard all about him on the police scanner he kept by his bed. Former sheriff’s deputy. Armed and dangerous. Wanted for the murder of his wife. He’d jotted down the man’s description and the make and model of his pickup along with the license-plate number—as he often did, though never expecting that they’d cross paths. Montana was a huge state.

When the cowboy had walked into the café, Earl Ray had looked out front to the pickup the man had been driving. Years of working in a special division of the military had honed his skills. Earl Ray had seen that Culhane had a gun under his shirt, and he’d considered what to do about it.

He liked to think himself a good judge of character. In his line of work in the military, he’d had only seconds to assess a situation before acting. While he might have slowed some with age, he still believed he hadn’t lost a lot of those ingrained abilities that had made him good at his job.

He’d watched Culhane Travis take a seat at the counter. He’d picked up on the cowboy’s interest in recently paroled part-time criminal Leo Vernon, who’d just gotten back after spending the past eighteen months as a guest at Montana State Prison.

He’d decided to just watch him, pretty sure there wouldn’t be any trouble inside the café. The cowboy seemed to be waiting for Leo to take a smoke break outside, something Leo usually did by now.

But that was before the three armed men had walked in. At first Earl Ray had thought the men were looking for Culhane Travis. Instead, their leader went straight back to the kitchen after Leo. Earl Ray saw the former sheriff’s deputy take in the men and start to leave, only changing his mind when the woman came in.

He had no idea who she was—just that she also was armed and seemed to be here because of the cowboy. As she took a seat next to Culhane, there was no doubt in Earl Ray’s mind that the two knew each other—and well.

That much firepower in this small space made him more than nervous. He had been thinking about how to get everyone out of there before there was trouble, when he heard the gunshot.

The situation had gone downhill from there and was about to get worse. He just hoped the cowboy and his lady friend bided their time for an opening. There were too many people at risk in this café for more gunplay.

He looked over at Bessie. What she’d told him earlier about wanting to move to Arizona had shaken his world. He couldn’t let her do that. Yet, he also knew he couldn’t stop her once her mind was made up.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said now, voicing his hope as he took Bessie’s hand and squeezed it. “We’re all just going to stay calm.”

She looked at him with such admiration, such trust, that it hurt his heart. He had to swallow, feeling the weight of everyone’s life balanced on his aging shoulders, especially Bessie’s.

“You are so full of bull, Earl Ray Caulfield,” she said with a chuckle. But she squeezed his hand for a long moment before letting go.

SMOKE WAS RISING from the grill. Culhane stepped over the dead body on the floor and, taking off his jean jacket, furtively pulled his weapon from the waistband of his jeans and hid it on a high shelf next to the grill. As he pulled on a clean white apron, he glanced toward the counter where he’d left Alexis.

Damn but she was beautiful. It was a stray crazy thought that made him realize what he had to lose. It was one thing for him to get himself killed. But he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her. She wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for him. True, he’d tried to warn her, and she hadn’t trusted him. Not that he blamed her. Why would she trust him, given what all he’d kept from her—and she didn’t know the half of it?

But his...so-called wife, Jana Redfield, was the least of his problems right now, he told himself as he cleaned off the grill and got it ready to get serious about cooking. Yet at the back of his mind, he was trying to figure out how to get Alexis out of this mess, along with the innocent residents who’d thought they were just going to a quiet Sunday-morning breakfast.

SHIRLEY LANGER HAD been sitting in the booth across from Lars, wishing she’d never agreed to breakfast or anything else.

“It’s over between Tina and me and has been for a long time,” Lars had been saying, keeping his voice down. His living with Tina Mullen while sneaking out and seeing her had been a sticking point for months.

Shirley remembered the night he’d shown up half-drunk at her apartment behind the Sleepy Pine, the motel that she managed on the edge of Buckhorn. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known that he liked her and was interested, but he’d been with Tina for several years, worked for her parents and lived in Tina’s house. He had always seemed comfortable with that arrangement.

Until that night when she’d opened the door to him, and he’d poured his heart out to her. “Tina’s pregnant,” he’d said a year ago on her doorstep, upset and angry. “That baby she’s carrying, it can’t be mine. We’d been having problems for a while. No way is that baby mine, and she knows it.”