“Who’s Billy Jean?”
“She works at the Saloon. Bartender, server.” Bodine dismounted. “She must’ve been working last night, I’d have to check. It looks like she had a breakdown.”
Frowning, Bodine looked through the window and felt a stab of real alarm. “Her purse is on the seat. She wouldn’t just leave her purse on the seat.”
“Hold on.” Callen dismounted, handed Bodine the reins of both horses, and walked around the car. Bodine yanked her phone out of her jacket, scrolled through for Billy Jean’s number.
“Bo.”
“Wait, wait, I’m calling her. Maybe she just…”
She trailed off as she heard the opening riff from Michael Jackson’s hit. Billy Jean’s signature song.
“That’s her ring. That’s her ring. What—”
“The phone’s on the ground over here. And it looks like somebody’s trampled through this snow, into the trees.”
“She wouldn’t do that.” Though Bodine could see as clearly as Callen the disturbed snow and brush. Then she saw more.
Her gaze landed on the shape, the dark blue jacket barely an instant before Callen’s did the same, but Bodine leaped and ran before he could grab her.
“Bo. Damn it. Wait.”
“She’s hurt. She’s hurt.”
He caught her, dragged her back. With snow up to their knees, they struggled until she got an arm loose enough to punch.
“Let go of me, you stupid son of a bitch. She’s hurt.”
With no choice, he clamped his arms around her. “She’s past hurt, Bo. Stop it. Stop it now. You can’t help her.”
Fury and fear spewed through her like a sickness. “Get your hands off me. I swear, I’ll kill you.”
He only tightened his hold. “You can’t touch her, do you hear me? It won’t do any good and might do some harm. She’s gone, Bo. She’s gone.”
Desperate, she fought him another few seconds, then stopped. Just stopped, with her breath tearing out, smoking away, her body quivering.
“I need to see. I won’t touch her if … I need to see. Let me go.”
He eased his hold, shifted so he was no longer blocking the body from her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Bo.”
“She…” She’s gone. Callen’s words echoed in her head, and the awful truth of them struck her heart, her guts. “She hit her head on that rock. She hit her head. There’s a lot of blood. She … Let go. I’m all right. Let go.”
When he released her, she kept her gaze on Billy Jean’s face, took her phone out again. “Will you call nine-one-one, Callen?” Maybe her voice came out raw, but it came out steady. “You do that, and I’m going to get our security to—to—block off the road here. To block it off so nobody comes near.”
“Let’s go back to the road and do that.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
She had to think, to take steps, to do what came next. While it was too early—thank God—for guest check-ins or checkouts, many employees used this road to get to work if they lived off property.
She ordered security to block the road, both sides for half a mile, to everyone but law enforcement, called for a staff member to bring the keys to the closest unoccupied cabin.
“I don’t think I should tell them why.” Still knee-deep in the snow, Bodine stared at her phone. “I don’t think I should do that yet. I should call my parents. They need to know, but … Billy Jean’s parents, they live … near Helena. No, no.”
She had to press the heel of her hand to her forehead, somehow shove the information out of her brain. “Her mother lives near Helena. They’re divorced. Her father … I can’t remember. She has a brother somewhere. In the navy. No, no, he’s a marine.”
When Callen said nothing, she snapped at him, “It’s important.”
“I know it is. I didn’t know her, Bodine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s important. The sheriff’s on the way, and you can tell him how to contact her family.”
“I need to talk to them.” Everything inside her felt hot and dry, just scorched. “She worked for us. She was one of us. I need to talk to them, too. Somebody was chasing her. You can see where…” She looked back, saw the trenches in the snow. Where someone had chased Billy Jean.
And where Callen had come after her, to stop her.
“I messed that up,” she murmured. “I plowed right through, and I’d have grabbed on to her, moved her, if you hadn’t stopped me. It’s a crime scene, that’s what it is. I know enough to know you’re not supposed to go stomping around a crime scene.”
“You saw a woman lying in the snow. You saw blood. You were thinking of her, not a damn crime scene.”
Thinking of her—a friend, an employee, a woman with a rollicking laugh. And not thinking at all, Bodine admitted.
She couldn’t allow herself to do that again.
“I’d’ve made it worse. It can always be worse, and I’d’ve made it worse.” She had to take a long breath before she could look at him. When she did, she saw the bruise forming just under his right eye. “I’m sorry I hit you. I really am.”
“You’re not the first, I don’t expect you’ll be the last.”
Still, she gave the bruise a light brush with her fingertip. “You can put some ice on it once we … The cabin. Need to get the keys once they bring them down to Mike—security. The police can use it if they need to. They’ll need to get our statements, maybe talk to whoever saw her last before she left the Saloon.”
Think, think, she ordered herself as her insides quivered. Make an agenda, tick off the boxes. “And … I don’t know what else. I can’t seem to get my brain in order.”
“It’s working well enough from where I’m standing.”
“Maybe you could walk on up, see if they got the keys to Mike yet.”
“You’re not leaving her. I’m not leaving you. Bodine. Walking back to the road, right there, isn’t leaving her.”
She glanced back. They’d left the horses, just left the horses standing in the road.
“You’re right. We need to secure the horses,” she said, starting back. “And we need to get them to the BAC. When they’re done with us, the police, you could ride Sundown and lead Leo.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Even as he gathered the reins, Callen turned toward the sound of an approaching car. He steered the horses to the far side of the road, grateful the police had responded faster than he’d hoped.
He wanted, above all, to get Bodine away from there, away from standing in the snow, looking at the body of a dead friend.
The black truck with the county sheriff’s department emblem on the side stopped a few feet short of Billy Jean’s car.
Callen watched the man get out. The broad-shouldered, defensive lineman’s build, the cream-colored hat over short, straw-colored hair, reflective sunglasses over eyes Callen knew to be cold, hard blue. Square-jawed, thin-lipped, he turned his head enough to give Callen a ten-second stare before moving toward Bodine.