To his surprise, Eugene began to laugh. “Doesn’t that sound a little too organized for a worthless ne’er-do-well like me?” his cousin asked, getting up and coming over to the bars. “Huh, hotshot game warden?”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Luke asked, afraid he already knew what was coming.
“Buzz. It was his idea. He was bored and if anyone knew how to poach and get away with it, it was Buzz. Why do you think we went to Billings? To unload what we’d killed.” He laughed again. “Don’t look so shocked. Buzz used to poach all the time when he was warden. You didn’t notice how our meat supply never ran low?”
Luke stared at his cousin, remembering what McCall had said about her mother thinking Trace might have had something on Buzz he was using as leverage. “Did Buzz also mention that Trace Winchester was blackmailing him?”
Eugene grinned. “Well, if Trace was, I can tell you this much—no one blackmails Buzz for long.” His cousin shook his head, giving Luke a disgusted look. “You always thought you were better than us, didn’t you? Buzz joked that as great as you thought you were, you’d never catch us. Even if you did, Buzz said you’d never arrest us.” He turned to go back to his cot. “When you see Buzz, tell him to spring me from the joint.”
“I’m afraid Buzz isn’t going to be springing anyone,” Luke said. “He committed suicide tonight after confessing to killing Trace Winchester.”
“PLEASE DON’T DO anything heroic,” Sandy said, rising from the kitchen chair where she’d been sitting, waiting.
Heart hammering, McCall heard the click of the safety being flipped off on the pistol as she stared at Sandy Sheridan. Two thoughts zipped past. What was the sheriff’s wife doing here pointing a gun at her? And Luke wouldn’t be back tonight.
“How did you get the job with my husband?” Sandy asked as she advanced on her, the gun steady in her hand and pointed at McCall’s heart. “Because you aren’t afraid of anything? Or was it because you could twist Grant around your little finger? He always told me how much he liked you.”
From the expression on Sandy’s face, that had been a mistake on the sheriff’s part.
“What are you doing here?” McCall asked, understanding only that she was in serious trouble. That overcaffeinated, frantic look was in Sandy’s eyes, and she held the gun like a woman who knew how to use it.
Sandy gave her an impatient look. “Don’t try to con me. The moment I saw you standing at my front door, I knew that Grant was right. He said you made a damned good deputy because you were bright and saw what other people didn’t.”
“You’re both giving me too much credit,” McCall said. Outside, the wind had picked up. It whipped the cottonwoods, a limb scraping against the side of the house and flickering shadows past the window. “I haven’t a clue why you’re here.”
“Guess,” Sandy said with a giggle.
A thought worked its way through the panic. “Buzz didn’t kill my father.”
Sandy laughed, a sound like piano wires snapping. “How can you say that? The man confessed.”
No doubt at gunpoint.
McCall tried to concentrate, but the wind and trees whipping against the cabin kept distracting her. She felt too tired for this, her mind numb from shock and fear and a deep sense of regret.
How could she have been so wrong? Buzz had looked so guilty, too guilty. No wonder she’d felt such an emptiness when it had looked as if he’d done it—and taken the easy way out.
The sheriff was right: she had been too emotionally involved.
“You aren’t going to tell me you killed my father, are you?” McCall asked. “I thought you loved him.” She was only a few feet away from Sandy, but she knew better than to make a play for the gun.
“I did love him.” Hatred flared in Sandy’s eyes. “I loved him more than you can ever understand. I would have done anything for him. And what did he do to me? He broke my heart.” She was crying now but still holding the gun aimed at McCall’s heart.
McCall’s mind was racing again as she tried to put it all together. “Trace felt guilty about what he’d done to you, so of course he would agree to meet you on the ridge to talk.”
Sandy’s eyes narrowed. “Very good.”
Trace had been furious with Ruby over her little tryst with Red, so he would have been primed to do anything his old girlfriend asked.
“But things got out of hand,” McCall guessed.
“He refused to leave that tramp and you,” Sandy said. “I told him you probably weren’t even his baby. He thought he was just going to get to walk away from me.” Her eyes took on a faraway look that turned McCall’s blood to slush.
Outside the cabin, something moved across the window. Not a limb. Someone.
“So you killed him,” McCall said, trying hard not to look past Sandy to the window again. Someone was out there headed for the front door. Luke? But he’d said he wouldn’t be back. Her heart soared then dropped like a stone. Had he seen the sheriff’s wife holding the gun on her? If he hadn’t, he’d be walking into this deadly situation.
“What did you use? A gun, a knife, a rock?” McCall asked as she took a couple of steps toward the back of the cabin, hoping to turn Sandy so she wouldn’t be able to see whoever was about to open the front door.
“What are you doing?” Sandy demanded, grabbing the weapon with both hands. “Stop moving.”
“I just need to sit down,” McCall said, motioning toward the kitchen chair nearby.
“You’ll be lying down soon enough and for a very long time,” Sandy snapped. “Enjoy standing.”
“So how did you do it?” McCall asked, forced to be content with having turned Sandy at least most of the way from the door.
“I shot him if you must
