Smoketree

CHAPTER Fifteen



The night closed in on me. Even the full moon and the stars did not shed enough light. I stared into his dim face. “No.”

“It was arranged, Kelly.” His voice was quiet, inflexible, perfectly controlled. “Surely you can see that.”

“No.” It was the only word in my vocabulary. I could think of no other that expressed my feelings.

“It wasn’t meant for you,” he went on. “I set it up for Tucker, meaning to make certain you stayed behind—but you were adamant. Even when I tried to talk you into staying. Remember?” He looked at me expectantly. “I caught you at the door as you were leaving. I said you should let him go by himself. Remember?” He shook his head. “But you went anyway. It was the one thing I hadn’t planned on.”

Remember? Of course I remembered. I had spent the past six months remembering the scenes preceding the accident, as well as the accident itself, and its aftermath.

Tucker, drunk. Strangely angry-drunk. I had tried to soothe him, telling him not to make a scene. He hadn’t made one, not really, but he had said we were leaving. That was all. We were leaving. I couldn’t disagree; the party was spoiled for me with Tucker in such a state, and I hadn’t wanted to go in the first place. Our evenings together were special. But we had gone, because Brandon was his friend, and Brandon was the host, and Brandon expected him.

And then Brandon had killed him.

“I had no choice, Kelly. He knew.”

The chair swung beneath us. I clung to it with my free hand—he held the other one, and it was numb from the strength of his grip. I stopped shivering because what he had said removed all response from me save numb shock.

“No choice?” I echoed.

“He found out,” Brandon said briefly. “He learned about the arrangement I had with Newton, and how the arms sale would go down. I don’t know how—maybe he just stumbled onto it. But he threatened to tell my father if I didn’t call it off.” He looked at me steadily, and his voice took on a funny, impassive, explanatory note. “You weren’t supposed to get into that car. Really. I didn’t want you hurt.”

“My God, Brandon—” I stared at him. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” he agreed grimly. “It was a last resort. I didn’t want to. I warned him it was too rough for him. Damn it, do you think I wanted to set him up? Tucker was my friend!”

I tried to jerk my arm out of his grasp. I failed, but I didn’t really care. I was too angry to care what he did to me. “You bastard! I hope Elliot Fitch puts a bullet through your brain!”

“He wouldn’t listen to me,” Brandon declared. “I tried to talk him out of it. I tried to buy him off. I even tried blackmail—I threatened to make sure he never worked for our studio again.” He shook his head. “It didn’t work. He was too damned determined to end the whole thing, no matter what I offered.” His teeth showed briefly. “An idealistic man, our Tucker.”

“You should have known,” I said blankly. “You couldn’t push Tucker. He always went the other way.”

“I tried something else,” Brandon admitted. “You.”

I stared at him.

“Jazzmine,” he explained. “You didn’t know Walkerton owned Jazzmine Cosmetics, did you?”

“Jazzmine? No—”

“I told Tucker if he went to my father or did anything else to shut us down, I’d have your contract cancelled. I’d see to it you never worked for Jazzmine—or any other cosmetics firm—ever again. Can’t you see it? The huge hunt for the new Jazzmine Girl. Kelly Clayton would have been finished for good.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been that hard.” My head jostled on a rubbery neck as the chair ground over the cogwheels. “Oh God—”

“Tucker was furious,” he said reminiscently. “He even threatened to kill me, but I told him to save the dramatics; he did it better on the screen. I knew he couldn’t do it. He didn’t have it in him.”

I shivered convulsively.

“I didn’t want to.” He didn’t sound a bit sorry, just puzzled that he hadn’t found the key to unlock Tucker’s integrity. “Oliver pressured me to do something, so finally I arranged the accident. I made sure he would meet a car coming the other way on a rainy canyon road, and then I made sure he was angry enough to drink too much. It wasn’t that difficult. Do you remember how angry he was, and how he kept pouring the booze down?”

I remembered. It had been very unlike Tucker.

“Well,” Brandon said, “it worked.”

I stared dry-eyed into the darkness. “Tucker,” I said, “and Drew.” I paused. “Now me?”

“I don’t want to,” he said gently. “I really don’t. But if I have to—” He paused. “Just do as I tell you. Don’t be stubborn, like Tucker. Okay?”

Like Tucker. Who was dead. And Drew, who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like me.



The chair ground its way upward, jiggling and rattling as it passed over the cogwheels at each tower. I sat against the padded back and stared into the darkness, trying to gauge the distance to the top of the mountain. It rose above us in the moonlight: a white-flanked, conical peak surrounded by lesser slopes, all clothed in black trees. The moon, round and full, rose above the peak like a cyclopean eye.

We would have to get off the moving chair. Lift ramps were designed for skis, not feet and, if I were lucky, Brandon might handle the unorthodox unloading awkwardly. I had a chance.

We ground endlessly on toward the midway point, passing signs advising beginners and intermediates to prepare to unload. A small wooden shack stood at our left overlooking the liftline. Rope netting extended outward from the ramp as a safety feature, designed to catch the clumsy skier who unloaded prematurely. Normally the ramp, snow-packed, provided an easy exit from the chairs. But now the raw wood gleamed in the moonlight, lying some five feet below my dangling legs.

A rumbling, jerky motion in the cable startled us both. The chair stopped abruptly, swinging just over the safety net. Brandon wrenched himself around and stared down the mountain, but there was nothing to see. We hung helplessly, suspended three feet from the edge of the ramp.

“We’ll have to jump for it,” Brandon said briefly, turning around again. “We’ll have to try and hit the ramp from here. ”

I gaped at him. “Are you crazy? I can’t make that jump from here!”

“Of course, if you managed to break your neck you’d be off my hands…”

“Point taken,” I said grudgingly. “I’ll jump.” And I’d run like hell when I landed.

Brandon shifted his weight repeatedly until the chair swung. The cable creaked. At the apex of the sixth swing he pushed me toward the edge of the chair. “Now.” The gun muzzle bit into my spine.

I jumped. But my leap was awkward and unbalanced, sending me flailing backward into the rope netting after a brief, painful landing on the ramp’s edge. Numbing pain shot through my body. Thoroughly tangled, I looked up in time to see Brandon’s dark shape thump down in front of me, safely on the ramp. He landed on the balls of his feet and one hand, absorbing the shock easily. And then he was up, turning, facing me almost instantly with the gun still in his hand.

I stopped moving. He reached down and caught one of my wrists, dragging me out of the net. I barked both shins on the ramp and sprawled forward, legs still tangled.

“Brandon, wait! My foot’s caught!”

He grunted disbelief and pulled harder, jamming my right foot between the edge of the ramp and a loose board. It was wedged securely, and yet he kept pulling.

I cried out. His grip loosened. I sat up at once, and managed to free my ankle. Jagged edges of broken board had torn the flesh on shin and ankle; already it had begun to swell.

“Up.” Brandon pulled me to my feet, gripping my right wrist with his left hand. “Come on.”

The catwalk he led me over ended in merging ski runs: one from above, another twisting into a narrow, snaking run below us. Brandon paused only a moment. “We’ll go up, but through the trees.”

The accompanying jerk on my arm made me stumble, missing a step, and the injured ankle gave beneath my weight. I went down painfully, grunting as I hit the ground, but I realized I had pulled free of his grasp.

“Damn it, Kelly—” He reached down for me.

A shot cracked in the trees. Brandon flattened at once. His gun came around to point at me as I hunched against the ground. He opened his mouth to speak, but another voice shouted over him.

“Throw the gun away!” it called. “Right now!”

Brandon swore.

“Kelly, get away from him!”

I jerked upright on my knees. “Harper?”

Something huge crashed through the trees, heading directly toward us. Brandon jumped to his feet, caught me against his chest, then blurted in surprise. I sucked in a frightened breath as the shape limped onto the ski run and snorted at us.

Brandon let go of me. I spun around, jumping out of range, and saw how stiffly he stood. And how snugly the rifle muzzle rested against his neck.

“Kelly,” Harper said conversationally, “take the gun away from him.”

Brandon said nothing as I moved forward and put my hand on the gun. I did not stand in front of him. I came in from the side, putting my hand on it, and felt the cold, hard touch of its metal. As he surrendered it I realized I wanted nothing more than to hurl it into the trees.

I saw the odd look in his eyes. Slowly I wrapped both hands around the gun and raised it. “I could,” I said. “For Tucker.”

“Kelly,” Harper said quietly.

“He killed him.”

“He did?”

“He set him up for it.”

I could not see him clearly in the darkness, though the moonlight limned his shape and the hat on his head. He stepped a short distance away from Brandon. He transferred the rifle from his right hand to his left. “Turn around, playboy,” he said quietly.

Brandon turned. Harper slugged him on the jaw, knocking him to the ground. Brandon did not move.

I lowered the handgun. “Had you planned that all along?” His shoulders had a funny set to them. “I’ve been wanting to do it a long time. I only wish he’d get up so I could do it again. But maybe it’s just as well he doesn’t…”

I frowned at him. “What’s the matter?”

“I think I broke my hand…”

I moved to him. “Pretty stupid, cowboy. Why did you have to hit him so hard?”

“You didn’t hear your voice when you told me who killed Tucker Pierce.”

I sighed and pushed a forearm through the tangle of my hair. “You can put the rifle away. You don’t need it now.”

“Be still,” he warned, and I felt an odd warmth on the back of my neck.

Preacher. He snuffled at me. My heart fell back out of my throat to lodge in my chest again and I swung around to hug the big horse. “Oh baby! If you hadn’t distracted Brandon when you did—” I broke off, hugging the heavy neck with all my strength.

Harper muttered something under his breath. It sounded disgusted.

I glanced over my shoulder. “What’s the matter with you?”

“You’ve got a perfectly good human being standing here—one, I might add, who just saved your life—and you’re hugging the horse.” He sighed and set the rifle on the ground. “Come here.”

I went.

His kiss was entirely possessive. It demanded a response and I gave it willingly. I could put name to none of the emotions welling up in me—some of them painful and others welcomed—but I knew I was safe and warm and very much wanted. My response was something very different from what I had shared with Tucker.

And that, I thought, was good. Harper wasn’t Tucker. He was himself. They were as different as night and day, and I loved them both.

For a long moment neither of us said anything. Muscles slid beneath the pull of his back as he tightened his arms around me. His hand caught in the hair at the nape of my neck and his moustache tickled the top of my ear. “I was so afraid you’d been hurt.”

“No. Just a wrong step, and that was my own fault.”

“You’re shivering,” he observed. “Here, let me shed this vest and get you into it.”

“I’m just scared.” But I didn’t protest as he fastened the zipper over me. And then he cupped my jaw and kissed me again, without the demand of the first one. He didn’t need it.

He let go of me and turned to Preacher. I saw Harper pull a pocket-knife from his jeans, then slice off three long leather thongs from the saddle. Two of them he tied together and bound Brandon’s legs; the other he used to tie the wrists. He checked the knots carefully.

“Will that hold him?” I asked dubiously.

“Should. If he comes around before the cops get up here, it’ll still take him a while to get the leather undone. He won’t get far. ” He bent and scooped up the handgun, slipping it into a boot, then gathered up his rifle. “You take Preacher. I’ll take you.”

I saw the limp. “Your leg hurts.”

“So does yours. So does Preacher’s.” He grinned. “Come on.”

I held back. “Wait—what about Nathan?”

He smiled a little. “Nathan’s okay. He’ll be fine. I took him in to the hospital to be on the safe side and they’re keeping him overnight, but the doc says he’ll be okay. I told you he was tough.”

I released a huge sigh of relief. “Okay,” I said, “now we can go. But you’d better explain on the way down.”

“I’m not sure I can.” He grinned. “I’ll try.”

We limped down the mountainside. I held Preacher’s reins; Harper held me with one arm locked around my waist. And he explained what he could.

“Cassie came into Smoketree hell-bent-for-leather, from what I hear,” he said. “I’d already gone into town with Nathan; she followed. By the time she got there Nathan was doing much better, and she told me what had happened with Preacher; how you were heading to Snow Crest with him. So I went home, hooked up the rig and came after you. Cassie stayed with Nathan.”

“She was pretty frightened.”

“I don’t blame her. For all she knew, he could have been dying. And then there was Preacher, maybe lamed for life. ”

“He isn’t—?” I said sharply.

“No, no, I caught him and checked him before I confronted Walkerton. Did you think he just blundered out into the middle of things like that?” He grinned, and white teeth gleamed briefly in the moonlight. “I sent him out toward you two, then slipped around to come up on Walkerton’s side. Worked, too.”

I sighed. “Thank God. It might have backfired.”

“No. I’m too good a shot. One way or another, I’d have had him.” His voice was level. “At any rate, I hauled the rig up to Snow Crest and discovered Elliot Fitch, armed and very dangerous, standing over a dead body. With him were Rafferty and Francesca Vanetti.”

I stumbled. “Are you kidding me?”

“No. Seems like they’re not innocent guests at all. More like Israeli agents.”

“Then they knew all along—”

“It’s why they came—to break up the weapons deal. Fitch told me he works this side of the Atlantic; Francesca and Rafferty usually operate out of Israel. Their sole purpose is to track down deals like this one and put a stop to it. They’d been onto Walkerton and Oliver for some time, but needed to catch them at it. This was the time.”

“But—what about our own government?”

“It’s cleared with them. They’ve already called in the Feds, and the local cops. They aren’t spies—precisely.” He grinned. “Close enough, though.”

“My God—I don’t think I believe this—”

“Better,” he said briefly. “It’s all true.”

I looked at him sharply. “Did they know Brandon was behind all the accidents? It was him, you know—he and Oliver both. They cooked up the land development scheme as a smokescreen to hide their activities.”

This time he stumbled. “Holy—” He stopped. “No. I hadn’t thought of that.” He laughed a little in discovery. “I reckon that means all those little difficulties will stop, then, and we’ll be free and clear. ” He laughed again. “Hell, maybe we can get this place on its feet after all! That is—if…” He broke off again.

“If?” I prodded. “If what?”

He sighed. “Well, we need an investor. I’ll say it flat out. We need someone with some extra money to come in and buy a piece of Smoketree, so we can turn it into a going concern again. Update it a little: put in a fancy sauna and Jacuzzi, weight room, racketball courts; set it up for winter sports like snowmobiling, cross-country skiing—like that. We can’t depend on the horses to keep us alive anymore. Times have changed.” He glanced at me. “We need someone here fulltime, to help us keep things in line. Hell, Nathan and I are cowboys. What do we know about marketing and all that fancy stuff? We need someone who knows the lingo; someone who can point us in the right direction.”

I did not smile. “I’m a model. Was a model.” I sighed. “Was a model.”

“There are other things in life besides modeling.”

“Just like there are other things besides rodeo?” This time I did smile. “I know. And I guess I need to go out and look for something, don’t I?”

“It would be a full partnership,” he suggested.

I grinned. “I thought you said Nathan would never sell.”

“He sold part of it to me. He knows what’s going on. He asked me to ask you.” His arm tightened. “Would you be willing to trade the East for the West? Southwest, at any rate?”

“I could just give you the money and sit back in New York waiting for my investment to pay off,” I said lightly.

“You could,” he agreed, “but that’s not what either one of us wants, and you know it.”

I nodded. “I know. Drew’s dead. I suppose the career might be revitalized, but not right away. I can use a break. I need the time. Smoketree’s as good a place as any for an escape.” I laughed. “Look what it’s done for me so far.”

He was silent a long moment. I listened to Preacher’s breathing behind us and the crackle of needles and cones beneath our feet. I was warmer with Harper’s vest, but in the corner of my mind I was still a little cold. Still a little afraid.

Only six months since Tucker’s death… surely it was too soon. Wasn’t it?

“I know it’s hard,” he said at last. “I’m not looking to push you where you don’t want to go. I’m not asking for a commitment. Just a chance.”

I laughed. The fear was gone. I hadn’t been afraid he would ask for a commitment; I’d been afraid he wouldn’t ask for anything. “That, I’m quite sure, can be managed.”



We got down from the mountain. Harper carefully wrapped Preacher’s leg and loaded the weary horse in the trailer after blanketing him. I leaned against the wheels and stared blankly at the police cars parked before the lodge. I heard Harper talking to Preacher, soothing him as he had soothed me more than once, making certain he was comfortable. I felt the trailer shift a little as Preacher moved, and then the tailgate door opened and Harper stepped out to lock it.

“He’s okay.” He moved next to me, slipping an arm around my shoulders. “He’s going to be sore for a while, but he’ll be back at the barrels soon enough. And then Cassie can take him to school with her.”

I turned to look at him. “School? But I thought she wanted to go on the circuit.”

“Oh, she will. Just not the pro circuit quite yet.” He smiled. “Cassie, you see, has started to grow up. She told me in the hospital, while we waited to see Nathan, that it was about time she did what was good for her instead of doing what she wanted to do. So she’s going to go to school, get the degree, then turn pro.” He shrugged. “It’ll be best that way. She can ride the college circuit and really get Preacher seasoned. By the time she hits the pros, she’ll be ready for anyone.” He paused a moment. “She said something else, too. She said she never thought she’d see the day when a down-to-earth cowboy would meet his match in a New York model. And then she wished us good luck.”

I smiled. “She’d sooner scratch my eyes out.”

“That’s not Cassie,” he reproved. “She says what she means.”

“I know. I wish more people were like her. I wish more people were like you.” I looked at his face in the shadow of his hat. “Cowboy.”

Harper did not smile. He looked out across the darkness as the rotating lights from the police cars splashed lurid illumination across his face. I looked also and saw the uniformed men and the plainclothes ones. John Oliver sat in the back of a squad car. Rashid had been loaded into a coroner’s wagon. Men had gone up the mountain in search of Brandon. Frenchie was in an ambulance. I wondered if he would live through the night.

I saw Elliot Fitch standing with Francesca and Rafferty. They were dressed for nightwork, subtle and insubstantial in the shadows—none of them anything like what I had thought them to be.

I smiled. “Such clever people.”

“And dangerous ones.”

I looked at his serious face. “Yes, I imagine they are. But where would we be without them?”

He sighed. And then he pulled me close. “Tired?”

“Too tired to know it. But the fear is gone. ” I leaned against his chest. “How is your hand?”

His grunt was mostly laughter. “Sore. Don’t think it’s broken after all. Doesn’t matter, though. It still would have been worth it.”

I shut my eyes. “Do you suppose we could leave now?”

“I think the police will want to talk to you.”

“Can’t they do it at Smoketree?”

“Maybe. But they’d probably rather do it here.”

I thought about it. “Tell them you have an injured horse.”

“They’d just send you down later in a cop car.”

“So we’ll say we didn’t know.” I pushed off the trailer and stood upright, pulling on his arm. “Come on, cowboy. Buy the lady a drink.”

He smiled. “Whiskey?”

I grinned back. “Rot-gut.”

He put out a hand and smoothed back my hair. Gentle fingertips traced the scar. “Let’s go home,” he said.

We went.