He hit her. Looking back now he could see he shouldn’t have let what happened with the other one cause him to pull his punch. Should’ve put her down hard, considering how she’d yelled and hit back at him.
Caught him right in the balls, too, before he’d given her a good whack with the lug wrench.
But she’d been breathing, even moaned a little when he hauled her into the back of his truck, trussed her up, slapped some duct tape over her mouth in case she started that yelling again.
He’d gone back, too, picked up her phone and got her pocketbook out of her car. He’d heard about how the police found those things before.
He’d felt too damn good, knowing he’d done what he’d set out to do, what he was meant to do. She’d wake up in her room, and he’d teach her her place right quick. Her duty.
But when he’d gotten back to the cabin, gone to pull her out, there was a lot more blood than he’d expected. His first thought was that he’d have to clean it off.
His second was she’d gone and died on him right in the back of his damn truck. Just died on him.
It not only soured his righteous mood, it scared him some.
He’d covered her back up, driven straight off. He hadn’t even gone in the cabin. Home wasn’t the place for some damn dead girl who didn’t know how to behave.
Especially with the ground too hard to dig a grave.
Bitter about his bad luck, he drove through the night, through a squall of snow toward the wilderness. It took some doing, some snowshoeing with a dead girl over his shoulder, but he didn’t have to go far.
He buried her in snow, along with her phone, her pocketbook. But he took the money out of it first, took the blanket he’d wrapped her in. He wasn’t stupid.
Nobody would find her until spring, most likely, and maybe not then. The animals would take her first anyway.
He considered saying a prayer over her. Decided she wasn’t worthy of it, hadn’t been worthy of him. So he cleaned her blood from his hands with snow, and left her in the dark stillness of wilderness.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bodine purely loved Christmas Eve. The resort closed midday after the last of the checkouts, and remained closed until the day after Christmas. Security would make their rounds, of course, taking shifts, and horses would be tended. But for all intents and purposes, everyone had a day and a half to spend with friends and family.
The grannies would come, spend the night, and the ranch hands and any employees who weren’t with their own families were welcome to a feast of food and drink.
Bodine rode home with Callen—a habit at least three times a week now—through a steady Christmas snowfall.
“Are you going to see your mom and sister for Christmas?” she asked him.
“Tomorrow, yeah, for dinner.”
“You give them my best. What did you do for Christmas back in California?”
“Mooched off friends. Like I’m doing at your place tonight.”
“We’ve got enough food for an army. I only praise Jesus the women in my family conceded years back to have the resort kitchen handle this do. Otherwise, I’d be stuck peeling and chopping the minute I walk in the door.”
“You could come hide out at the shack, help me deal with the presents I’m hauling to my sister’s tomorrow.”
“You haven’t got them wrapped yet?”
“I’ve got till tomorrow, don’t I? And I don’t wrap. That’s what those fancy bags are for.” He glanced over. She had her hair braided back, a long dark twist, and her face was flushed from cold and pleasure. “Are you all wrapped up?”
“Wrapped, bowed, tagged, and under the tree.”
Didn’t she look all smug about it? And pretty as a Christmas ribbon.
“Show-off.”
Laughing, she angled her head, fluttered her lashes. “Being smart and organized isn’t showing off. Plus, I’ll admit I had Sal help me. She likes to fuss with wrapping, is a hell of a lot better at it even if it does take her half of forever. And it kept her distracted.”
Her smile dimmed, dropped away. “She’s missing Billy Jean. They always spent Christmas Eve together drinking champagne cocktails. And now that other girl’s gone missing, and Sal’s decided she was taken off by the same one who killed Billy Jean.”
When he said nothing, Bodine looked over. “You think the same?”
“I think they were both women alone, both had breakdowns—out of gas for one, flat tire for the other. I leave the rest of the thinking to the sheriff.”
“Car jacked up like she started to change the tire, but she didn’t have a lug wrench—from what I read about it. It seems she’d have called somebody, as her mother said she had her cell phone when she left. But it could be the battery was dead. It could be, most likely, she hitched a ride, and then …
“I had to pass her,” Bodine added. “Almost had to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I read what time they said she’d left her mother’s. She’d gone to see her mother, and was driving back to Missoula to meet some friends, some of her college friends. She goes to U of M. Jessie and I almost had to pass her, her going, us coming from town that evening. I went right by where they found her car. I have to wonder how much I missed her by.”
She shook it off.
“But I think what happened to Billy Jean was somebody from outside did it. It could have even been a guest, though I hate to think it. I think somebody snatched that girl, and that’s a terrible thing, but it’s not the same. She was only eighteen—a lot younger—and Billy Jean drove home the way she did most every night. This Karyn Allison hadn’t been home for a visit, I heard, for a couple weeks.”
He understood why she needed to believe that—and maybe she had it right. But believing that wouldn’t push her to take precautions. So he firmly stomped on her theory.
“It could be two different people went after two women having car trouble inside of a month within about twenty miles of each other.”
Bodine hissed out a breath. “That’s what I tell Sal when she gets worked up about it, and what I tell myself because I want to sleep at night.”
Since that satisfied him, he nodded. “No harm in that, as long as you stay smart and keep your eyes open. I’ve never known you to do otherwise.”
“I don’t even know why I’m talking about it on my favorite night of the year. Except I was thinking how your mother must be so happy to have you home for Christmas, and that other mother doesn’t know where her girl is, or if she’s all right.”
To comfort herself, she leaned forward to stroke Leo, then straightened. “Wait. Keep my eyes open? Is that why either you or Rory ends up hitching a ride to and from with me if I’m not on Leo?”
Callen rode easy. “Just saving fuel.”
Her sarcasm dripped like melting ice. “Just thinking about the environment?”
“More should.”
She couldn’t argue that. And found, when she broke it all down, she couldn’t be insulted, either. Very much. “I appreciate the concern. Though I can handle myself just fine, I appreciate the sly, manly lookout all the same.”
She smiled, overbright, when Callen sent her a slow, careful look.