Montana Secrets Page 7

  Cat rounded the last curve, and Trace braced himself for his first view of High Valley Ranch in over five years, with its rolling meadows and woodlands surrounded by towering snow-crested peaks.

  Home.

  Not exactly the homecoming he’d anticipated, however.

  The gate to High Valley Ranch that usually stood open wide in welcome was closed tight. An old man stood before the gate, hammering a large sign onto its cross posts.

  No Trespassing.

  At the car’s approach, the man looked up. With a shock of surprise, Trace recognized the stoop-shouldered, white-haired figure by his blazing blue eyes.

  “That’s Daddy.” Cat pulled the vehicle to a stop in front of the closed gate and slid from the car. Through the open door, Trace could hear their conversation.

  “What are you doing?” she called to Gabe.

  “You’re a smart girl.” Gabe kept his eyes on his hammering. “You figure it out.”

  “I know what the sign says, Dad. What I don’t understand is why. We’ve never posted the ranch before.”

  “Snake Larson was here today.”

  Trace remembered the troublemaker vividly, recalled how he’d bothered Cat when she was younger and wondered how much of a nuisance Snake had been to the Ericksons while Trace had been in Tabari. His frustration at the loss of five years grew deeper. With Marc’s death, Megan’s birth and pond scum like Snake annoying her, Cat had needed him.

  And he hadn’t been here for her.

  “I saw Snake,” Cat told her father. “He almost ran us off the road. What did he want?”

  “You.” Gabe swung the hammer with ruthless fury and attacked a nail that attached a corner of the sign to the gate. “He was planning to settle down and wait until you came home from school. Said he wasn’t afraid of my shooting him this time. Said he’d figured I was too decent and law-abiding to make that kind of mistake.”

  “Then why did he leave?”

  “Told him it was true that I’m decent and law-abiding. That’s why people would believe me when I said my gun went off accidentally and shattered his kneecap.” Gabe gave the nail another vicious whack. “Snake fell all over himself getting out of here then.”

  Trace chuckled. Adversity may have taken its toll, but it hadn’t broken Gabe’s crusty spirit.

  “If Snake’s gone,” Cat said, “why post the signs?”

  “So if he comes back, I can have the sheriff arrest him for trespassing. Then maybe the big jerk will leave us alone.”

  Gabe finished driving another nail, then tossed the hammer through the open window of his truck, parked by the gate. For the first time, he glanced up and spotted Trace in the front seat of Cat’s SUV.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Company. I’ll meet you at the house and introduce you.”

  After pecking a kiss on Gabe’s leathered cheek, Cat swung gracefully into the driver’s seat.

  “Trouble?” Trace asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing Dad and I can’t handle.”

  Gabe opened the gate and waved them through before heading to his truck.

  Trace’s attention was captured by the view on the three-mile drive from the gate to the ranchhouse. He and Marc had covered every inch of this land on foot and on horseback. To someone raised on the mean streets of Chicago, the ranch had seemed like paradise, and many times in Tabari, before he’d lost his memories, Trace had wondered whether he’d inflated the land’s beauty and magnificence in his mind.

  He hadn’t.

  If anything, the land was more majestic than he’d remembered. The crisp, clean mountain air filled his lungs with intoxicating freshness, and the deep hues of the grass, forests and sky were postcard perfect. The car approached the hillock where the two-story log ranch house sat overlooking the valley, and he felt he had truly come home at last. The long and low building’s broad front porch ran the length of its facade, and pots of flaming red geraniums flanked the wide front steps, just as they had when he left five years ago.

  Nothing had changed.

  And everything had changed.

  Cat stopped the car beside the front walk and glanced at him. “You okay?”

  For a moment he couldn’t speak. When he finally found his voice, it trembled with emotion. “I was thinking of Marc and Ryan. No wonder they loved this place so much. It looks like heaven on earth, just like they said.”

  Cat sighed. “It will never be the same without them, that’s for sure.”

  She slipped from the car and circled it. Trace climbed from his seat and watched her open the rear door. Megan lay sound asleep in her carrier, her cheeks flushed, her tiny pink mouth drawn in a bewitching bow shape.

  Cat picked her up without waking her and whispered to him, “I’ll take her up to her room so she can nap until supper. She always plays herself out at the sitter’s.”

  “Want me to carry her?” Trace hungered for the sensation of his daughter in his arms.

  Cat shook her head. “She’s not that heavy, and I won’t be but a minute.”

  Trace followed Cat up the porch steps, opened the front door for her and followed her inside.

  Cat nodded toward the right. “You can wait in there. Dad was right behind us. He’ll be here soon.”

  Trace watched until Cat disappeared around the landing of the wide stairway in the central hall, then stepped into the great room he recalled so vividly. Again, nothing had changed. The same high, vaulted ceiling with its ponderosa pine beams arched above the spacious pine-paneled room. At the far end, a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded a fireplace made of river rock and flooded the entire area with brilliant late afternoon light.

  Deep sofas covered with butter-soft leather in earth tones circled the fireplace, and bright Navajo and other Native American rugs covered the floor. The only new addition Trace could spot was a table in the corner near the fireplace topped with framed portraits of Marc and Ryan in dress uniform, flanked by vases of fresh flowers from Cat’s perennial garden.

  Like a shrine.

  With Marc’s death still fresh and hurting, Trace studied his buddy’s picture. “I miss you, cowboy,” he murmured. “You should be here. It’s not right without you.”

  He swiveled at the sound of footsteps in the hall, clasped his hands behind him and surveyed the mountains through the tall windows.

  “Megan never even stirred,” Cat said behind him. “She must have been exhausted.”

  Trace turned to face her, and Gabriel entered the room.

  “Now, Catherine,” her father demanded, “who’s this visitor you were telling me about?”

  “Trace Gallagher.” Trace extended his hand, exerting all his self-control not to encompass Gabe in a bear hug.

  “He was a friend of Marc’s and Ryan’s,” Cat explained.

  Gabe didn’t accept Trace’s hand. Instead, he narrowed his sharp blue eyes and scrutinized Trace within an inch of his life.

  “Marc never spoke of you,” Gabe said in a voice heavy with suspicion. “Ryan, either.”

  “Trace was working undercover,” Cat hastened to explain. “He has a letter of introduction from Colonel Barker at the embassy—”

  “Letters can be forged,” Gabe said with an impatient shake of his head without taking his gaze off Trace.

  “Daddy!” Cat’s famous blush glowed deep red in the room’s bright sunlight.

  Trying to appear nonchalant, Trace shrugged, but his brain was working a mile a minute. Gabe’s instincts were never wrong, and although the old man hadn’t recognized him, he’d picked up immediately that something wasn’t quite right. Trace would need some fast talking and heavy backpedaling to win the old man over, convince him of the false identity.

  The lives of the entire Erickson family depended on it.

  “Why would I want to forge a letter, Mr. Erickson?” he asked with more calm than he felt.

  “Why have you shown up here years after Marc and Ryan died without us ever having heard of you?” Gabe s
hot the question at him. “Your name wasn’t among the letters of condolence.”

  “No, sir. For the first eighteen months after Ryan died, I was hospitalized, recovering from the injuries I sustained in the bombing.”

  Cat gasped. “You were there?”

  Trace nodded. “Guarding the prince.”

  “Then you saw Ryan when the embassy—” She shook her head and held up her hands. “No, don’t tell me. It’s better I don’t know.”

  “He died instantly,” Trace lied, his voice soft, consoling. “He didn’t suffer.”

  Her face pale, Cat sank into the nearest chair. “You saw him…die?”

  “Yes.” He hated the pain he was causing her, despised his deception, but he loved her too much to risk the truth.

  Tears flooded her eyes. “I’d always hoped…”

  “Hoped what?” he asked gently.

  She lifted her head and looked straight at him. “They never found his body. I’ve always hoped there was some mistake, that someday Ryan would come home.”

  “I’m sorry,” Trace said earnestly, sorry for more than she could know.

  “So why are you here?” Gabe insisted.

  “Your daughter invited me. But if you have a problem with that, I can head back to town.”

  “You have no transportation, and it’s forty miles,” Cat objected.

  Trace faced Gabriel. “Forty miles is no obstacle to a Marine.”

  The faintest hint of a smile played across Gabe’s rugged features. “To a Marine in new boots that aren’t broken in yet, it could be a hell of a trek. Sit down, son. I’ll pour us a drink.”

  Trace sat, but he knew Gabe well enough to realize the old man’s suspicions had yet to be laid to rest.

  Chapter Five

  While Gabriel filled glasses with bourbon and spring water at the sideboard, Cat studied Trace. No wonder her father’s suspicious nature had kicked into high gear at the stranger’s arrival.

  Trace Gallagher was an enigma.

  He’d appeared out of nowhere, claiming to know Ryan and Marc. She had accepted his letter of introduction at face value, not even considering, as Gabe had instantly, that such papers could be fabricated. Her unsatisfied craving for more information about Ryan’s final days had overwhelmed her caution.

  Too bad that intense yearning for news hadn’t overwhelmed her other senses, as well.

  They, unfortunately, had kicked into overdrive at Trace’s arrival and had yet to settle down. Her eyes feasted on the sight of his long, lean body, stretched out in Ryan’s favorite chair beside the fireplace, the striking planes and angles of his handsome face, the grace of his long, slender hands, their appeal unmarred by several angry scars that disappeared beneath the cuffs of his chambray shirt.

  Her ears savored the seductive music of his voice that, in its low huskiness, sounded as if he’d just awakened from a deep sleep each time he spoke. Even above the fragrance of the flowers in the room and the scent of dead ashes in the hearth, her nose could detect his haunting and uniquely masculine scent. Her hands itched to—

  With a sudden mental shock, she cut short her musings. The man was a puzzle, a stranger, possibly a dangerous stranger. She had no business indulging in flights of imagination over someone she knew nothing about. He’d spend the night, and tomorrow he’d be gone.

  And that prospect brought her no happiness. She had to be crazy for wanting to know him better, but that was exactly what she wanted.

  Gabe handed Trace a drink. “So, Mr. Gallagher, why are you here?”

  “It’s Lieutenant Gallagher, but you’re welcome to call me Trace.” Trace accepted the glass with a nod of thanks. “I’m on leave.”

  “But why here?” Gabe persisted and sagged into the chair opposite Trace.

  Cat gazed at her father with concern. He’d always been slow to warm up to people. He hadn’t really accepted Ryan until the second time he visited the ranch with Marc. But since their deaths, her dad had become even more skeptical, cynical and crotchety. He took nothing—and no one—at face value.

  Especially strangers.

  Trace lifted his glass toward Marc and Ryan’s photographs. “To absent friends.”

  Tears clouded Cat’s eyes at the gesture.

  “Amen to that.” Gabe joined the toast, then tossed back a deep swallow. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Why have you come here?”

  “Marc and Ryan told him about Montana,” Cat explained in an attempt to rationalize her hasty and probably not-too-smart invitation, “and our ranch in particular. He wanted to see it for himself.”

  His gaze still suspicious, her father peered at Trace over the rim of his glass. “Marc and Ryan had been stationed in Tabari only a matter of weeks before the bombing. If you were busy working for Prince Asim, you didn’t have time to get to know them well.”

  “We were friends before we reached Tabari,” Trace said. “We went through basic training together at Parris Island, and later at Camp LeJeune and Officers’ Candidate School.”

  “So you say.” Her father obviously wasn’t accepting any of Trace’s claims.

  Cat expected Trace to bristle at her father’s disbelief. Instead, he turned to her with a slow, easy smile that jolted her like an electric shock. “Ryan gave me a sample of the fudge you sent him that first week, the one made with macadamia nuts. Best candy I ever tasted.”

  Cat noticed her father grow still, impressed by Trace’s knowledge. Gabe’s eyes had lost their skeptical cast and were assessing their visitor with new interest.

  “And halfway through basic—” Trace shifted his attention to her father “—Marc was frantic to come home to help fight the forest fires that were threatening your tract of timber near the Canadian border, but he wasn’t able to swing a leave.”

  Cat shuddered, remembering how close the flames had come to High Valley, how only the diligence of the Forest Service crews and a lucky downpour had saved the ranch.

  “And I remember Ryan’s heel blisters that refused to heal,” Trace said, “the ones he developed on a forced march through the South Carolina swamp.”

  “So,” Gabe said with a bittersweet smile, “looks like you really did know my boys.”

  “Yes, sir. I considered Marc—” Trace’s voice broke on her brother’s name “—and Ryan my best friends.”

  “What else do you remember from their Parris Island days?” Gabriel leaned forward, his hands clenched around his glass, his eyes shining.

  Cat gave herself a shake. “While you two take a trip down memory lane, I have supper to cook.”

  She left them chatting happily and headed toward the kitchen. After seeing her father’s interest perk up at Trace’s recollections, she decided that bringing the stranger home for a visit hadn’t been such a bad idea, after all. Gabe hadn’t seemed so engrossed in anything in a long time.

  Now all she had to do was keep her unwanted reactions to the handsome Marine under control until he packed up and left. The last thing she needed was involvement with another military intelligence operative who would head off to risk life and limb on the other side of the world.

  DERRICK HUTTON sat in the shadows, waiting for a knock on his door. A man of average height and average weight with nondescript features that wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, he possessed the perfect appearance for his line of work. He could easily slip in and out of a room without calling attention to himself, walk down a street unnoticed, defy description even by a trained observer.

  Tonight, however, his skills at anonymity were of no use. What he needed was information. His mind still wrestled with the puzzle of Trace Gallagher, his thoughts returning again and again to the former bodyguard like a tongue seeks out a sore tooth. In Hutton’s three-year tenure as a civilian employee of the American embassy in Tabari’s capital of Bahira, he had never seen or heard of the man, and Hutton had made a point of knowing everyone in both the embassy and the prince’s palace.

  Odd that only after the bombing had Gallagher sur
faced as one of Prince Asim’s bodyguards. Had he been hired just prior to the bombing?

  That’s what Hutton wanted to believe, but his gut told him that Gallagher was trouble with a capital T. The terrorist didn’t dare make a move against Gallagher until he had more facts. Calling attention to their group by going after a nobody was the last complication he wanted.

  A sudden rapping at the door interrupted his thoughts. With swift, silent steps, he crossed the room and leaned close to the door.

  “Who is it?”

  The answer came, a password spoken softly in perfect Arabic. Hutton opened the door only wide enough for his visitor to slide through before closing and locking it. He motioned the newcomer to a chair, then crossed to the television set, clicked it on and turned up the volume. If for any reason he was under surveillance, the canned laughter of the sitcom would drown their conversation.

  Hutton sat across from his visitor, and the man leaned forward, his mouth close to Hutton’s ear.

  “We could learn nothing of Gallagher’s interrogation at the Pentagon. Our informant is good, but his security clearance level is not high enough to access those files.”

  Hutton sighed in disgust. “Couldn’t your contact just hack into the computer and find what he needed?”

  “If he wanted to call attention to himself—and to us.”

  The man had a point. “What did he discover?”

  “Where Gallagher went when he left the Pentagon.” His visitor’s eyes gleamed with triumph.

  Hutton waited a moment. “Are you going to tell me, or must I beat it out of you?”

  “A military transport conveyed him to Great Falls, Montana. From there he took a bus to Athens in the northwest corner of the state.”

  “His home?”

  The visitor shook his head. “According to our research, Gallagher is from Syracuse.”

  “Then what is he doing in Montana?” Hutton demanded. “Fly-fishing?”