He watched as a rather rotund man answered the marshal’s knock.
Popping open his door so he could hear, Brick listened to his father questioning the man before moving on to the next rig.
Brick couldn’t hear as well this time, but he saw the man who answered the marshal’s knock point to a space at the back of the campground. His father nodded, then headed in that direction.
Brick got out of the patrol SUV and followed him into a stand of dense pines. If the motor home had been parked here, it wouldn’t have been visible from the highway. Nor was it near any other campsite. Even if Natalie had screamed bloody murder, she might not have been heard. But he doubted that whomever had taken her had allowed her to scream at all.
He stopped short when he saw what his father was doing—snapping photographs with his phone of the tire tracks left in the soft earth. This was where the motor home had been. But had Natalie been inside it?
“A call just came in on the radio,” he told the marshal. “A couple of deputies picked up Maureen Mortensen.” He wasn’t sure what response he was expecting, but his father only nodded.
Without a word, they walked back to the patrol SUV and climbed inside before his father said, “You need to learn how to take orders.” Hud started the engine. “You always were the stubborn one.”
Brick chuckled at that. “Just like my father and grandfather, I’m told.”
“Well, at least your namesake grandfather.” Brick had heard stories about his grandfather Brick Savage, the former marshal. If half of the stories were true, then his father and the former marshal had butted heads regularly.
“Any update on Natalie?” he asked him now.
“Still catatonic.” His father sighed, picked up his radio and called in a description of the motor home that the man in the camper had given him. It sounded like one of those rental motor homes. Older driver. Only description was elderly and gray.
If Natalie had been held in the motor home, the driver could be miles from here by now—or parked at the hospital. His father obviously thought the same thing as he asked that a deputy watch for a motor home at the hospital parking lot and ordered that another deputy go to work calling motor home rentals in the area.
They drove in silence back to where Brick had left his pickup. As he started to climb out, his father said, “Deputy, you want this job? Take a week. I don’t want to see you again unless it’s at your mother’s dining room table. And stay clear of Billings PD’s case. Got that?”
“Got it.”
As he closed the door, Brick heard a call come in over the radio that all law enforcement available were needed for a three-vehicle pileup in the canyon twenty miles south of Big Sky. His father sped off, leaving him standing next to his pickup.
Brick knew he should go camping. Go back into the mountains and not come out until his next doctor’s appointment. But as he watched his father’s patrol SUV disappear over the rise, he realized this was his chance to go to the hospital and see Natalie. Maybe she was catatonic. Maybe she wasn’t. He knew that he’d heard her say something. There was only one way to prove it.
His father was closing in on the theory that she was abducted by a person driving a motor home. It wouldn’t be long before the marshal made an arrest. Meanwhile, the Billings homicide detectives should be arriving at any time—if they hadn’t already been to the hospital.
And down at the jail there was a blonde cop with a nasty kick locked up behind bars. He wondered what she’d have to say for herself. His groin still hurt, not to mention his bruised ego. He realized that there was nothing he would enjoy more than seeing her behind bars.
Chapter Five
Mo couldn’t believe her luck. She’d been arrested on a charge she could wiggle out of the moment she went before a judge, and these backwoods lawmen had to know that. But how long would that take?
She could feel the clock ticking. Once Natalie was released from the hospital, she would be gone again, only this time, she wouldn’t make the same mistakes. She could disappear down a rat hole and might not surface for months, even years. By then she would have had numerous jobs. Which meant numerous victims. Mo couldn’t let that happen any more than she could let Natalie get away without having the chance to talk to her one more time.
As it stood now, there was no proof that she’d been at the hospital with any felonious intentions. All they had her on was pretending to be a nurse. Given her connection to Natalie Berkshire, the law could try to make something out of that. But ultimately, they wouldn’t be able to hold her on any of it—except for her attack on the deputy marshal, Brick Savage—the man who’d found Natalie after her escape from whoever had abducted her.
Mo paced in her cell. She kept thinking about standing over the woman’s bed, hearing the hoarse whisper, feeling the woman’s words hit her like a hollow-point slug to her chest. She’d had her right where she wanted her. The truth had been within her reach.
Natalie would run the moment she was released from the hospital. But what was she running from? The law? Her own guilt? Fear? Or this thing she’d kept secret?
At the sound of the door into the cell area opening, she turned to see Deputy Marshal Brick Savage come in and head toward her. She groaned inwardly. Of course he would come to gloat.
When he stopped at her cell door,
