“Whoever that was, wasn’t driving the black SUV that had been following us yesterday,” Brick said. “What I want to know is how they knew we were going to the campsite?”
“Hope? You think she lied about knowing the man’s name. She could have called him to tell him what she’d told us? That would be pretty stupid of her, wouldn’t it? Especially if Tricia’s lover is the one who just shot at us.”
Brick pulled off his Stetson and raked a hand through his hair. “Then how did anyone know where to find us?”
“She must have told someone, unless...” Mo met Brick’s gaze across the cab of the pickup. “You don’t think...”
“I do think.” He pulled the pickup to the side of the road and they both got out to search the undercarriage. They found the tracking device quickly enough. Brick was about to destroy it when Mo stopped him.
“Let’s give whoever did this something to follow,” she said, pointing to the freight train moving slowly along the tracks on the other side of the road.
Brick smiled and spotted a dirt road that ran beside the train track. Back in the truck, he drove along a narrow road along the tracks. Heading off the slow-moving freight train, he jumped out of the truck and waited for it to catch up to him. He was back to the pickup within minutes.
“All done.” His gaze locked with hers. He was still shaken by the close call on the mountain. “Any idea what is going on?”
“I think we’re getting close to the truth.” She shook her head. “But I’m nowhere near figuring out who JP might be or what these documents are that Tricia left me.”
“I need to go back up the mountain to get that one slug that lodged in the tree,” he said. “That is, if we’re going to take this to the police.”
Mo shook her head. “It’s a long shot we could ever track it to the gun, but at least we will have the evidence.”
He drove back up the mountain. “Why don’t you wait here? I won’t be long.” He pulled his spare pistol out from under the seat of his truck and handed it to her. “Fire a shot if you need me.”
She smiled. “You just handed me a loaded gun. I think I’ll be able to take care of myself.”
He wasn’t gone long before he returned with the slug he’d dug out of the tree with his pocketknife.
“Do you think the person who shot at us was trying to kill us or just scare us?” she asked.
Brick smiled. “If he was trying to kill us, then he was a piss-poor shot. I think he was trying to send us a message.”
“To quit looking for the man Tricia was involved with? Or stop looking for her killer?”
“Could be one and the same,” Brick said.
Mo made a disgruntled sound. “All he did was make me more determined—and more convinced that what Natalie told me was true. Tricia didn’t kill herself.”
“He? The shooter could be a woman.”
“My money is on her boyfriend. Who else would be worried about us finding out his identity?”
He could tell that Mo had been racking her brain, trying to figure out who JP could be while he was up on the mountain getting the slug.
“I can’t even imagine how Tricia crossed paths with him between taking care of her house and her day job, though,” she said.
“What is it?” Brick asked as he saw her freeze and then hurriedly pull out her phone.
“Something Hope said.” She scrolled on her phone for a moment before she looked up. “My sister volunteered every other Saturday at a nonprofit dog shelter. I remember Thomas complaining that she spent more time there than at home and had to shower before he could get near her.”
“Any luck?” he asked as he watched her thumb through the shelter site.
She shook her head. “No one on the board with those initials. I’m going to call Hope. Maybe the initials mean something to her.” When Hope answered, she put the cell on speakerphone.
“We found the campsite and the carving on the tree of the heart with their initials in it. Do you remember anyone from college with the initials JP?”
“JP? No. Honestly, I’ve always thought it was Andy. He’s such a sweetie and he’s always liked her.”
“Think. Do you know anyone by those initials?”
Hope was quiet for a moment. “Sorry, I don’t. Tricia always referred to him as her special friend.”
MO HUNG UP and put her phone away, irritated with Hope and even more irritated with herself. If she’d let Natalie tell her what was going on that day, she could have talked to Tricia. At least she would have tried to help her rather than hiding her head in the sand, not wanting to hear that anything was wrong.
“I’ll call my partner at homicide when we get back to Billings,” she said. “We can give him the slug you dug out of the tree—although I doubt it will lead us to the shooter. But I want to get everything I can on my sister’s death.”
An hour later, Mo introduced Brick to her partner, Lou Landry, outside the diner around the corner from Billings PD. A little gray around the edges and highly seasoned after thirty-five years at this, Lou was more like a father figure than a partner. Mo knew she’d been placed with him so he could keep her out of trouble. It had worked—until the Natalie Berkshire case.
“You are opening up a can of worms,” Lou said after she told him what she needed. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I have to know if what Natalie Berkshire told me was true.”
“Mo, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but we are getting inquiries from all over the state and even the country about Natalie. It’s much worse than we first thought. People are demanding the cases be reopened.
