Boots And Bullets

Boots and Bullets

BJ Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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“Are you sure you want to know the truth?”

He feared Kate Landon didn’t have any idea what she was getting into. Worse, how dangerous it might get.

“I’ve always wanted to know the truth.”

That feeling that he was meant to come here, meant to meet this woman, overwhelmed him. The answer was in this town, but so was the danger.

He was worried about her and not just because of his damned dream. She was putting her faith in him.

And he feared that if he kissed her, it wouldn’t stop there.

He couldn’t make Kate Landon any promises and she was the kind of girl who deserved promises from a man.

About the Author

BJ DANIELS wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a four-and-a-half star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA, or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website at www.bjdaniels.com.

This book is dedicated to the Malta Quilt Club and all the other wonderful and amazingly talented women who are teaching me to have fun with fabric. Quilting keeps me sane when words fail me. Thanks ladies!

Chapter One

Cyrus Winchester opened his eyes and blinked in confusion. He appeared to be in a hospital room. From down the hall came the sound of a television advertisement for an end-of-season fall sale.

He told himself he must be dreaming. The last thing he remembered was heading to Montana to spend the Fourth of July with the grandmother he hadn’t seen in twenty-seven years.

Glancing toward the window, he saw a gap in the drapes. His heart began to pound. The leaves were gone off the trees and several inches of fresh snow covered the ground.

A nurse entered the room, but she didn’t look in his direction as she went over to the window and opened the curtains. He closed his eyes again, blinded by the brightness.

As he tried to make sense of this, Cyrus could hear her moving around the room. She came over to the bed, tucking and straightening, humming to herself a tune he didn’t recognize. She smelled of citrus, a light, sweet scent that reminded him of summer and driving to Montana with the windows down on his pickup, the radio blaring.

With a start, he realized that wasn’t the last thing he remembered!

His hand shot out, grabbing the nurse’s wrist. She screamed, drawing back in surprise, eyes widening in shock. What was wrong with her?

He opened his mouth, his lips working, but nothing came out.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said and pushed the call button with her free hand. “The doctor will be glad to see that you’re back with us, cowboy.”

Back with us?

Cyrus tried again to speak, desperate to tell her what he remembered, but the only sound that came out was a shh.

The nurse gently removed her wrist from his grasp to pour him a glass of water. “Here, drink a little of this.”

Gratefully he took the cup from her and raised his head enough to take a sip. He couldn’t believe how weak he felt or how confused he was. But one thought remained clear and that was what he urgently needed to tell someone.

He took another swallow of water, feeling as if he hadn’t had a drink in months.

“Sheriff.” The word came out in a hoarse whisper. “Get. The. Sheriff. I saw it. The nurse. Murdered. In the hospital nursery.”

Chapter Two

Cyrus tried to make sense of what his twin brother was telling him. “No, Cordell,” he said when his brother finished. “I know what I saw last night.”

His brother’s earlier relief at seeing him awake had now turned to concern. “Cyrus, you’ve been in a coma for three months. You just woke up. You wouldn’t have seen a murder unless it happened in the last twenty minutes.”

“I’m telling you. I saw her. A nurse or a nurse’s aide, I don’t know, she was wearing a uniform and she was lying on the floor with a bloody scalpel next to her just inside the nursery door.” He saw his brother frown. “What?”

“You’re in a special rehabilitation center in Denver and have been for the last two months. There is no nursery here.”

Cyrus lay back against the pillows, looking past his identical twin to the snow covering the landscape outside. “The hospital was a brick building. Old. The tiles on the floor were worn.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his brother’s surprised expression. “There is such a place, isn’t there?”

“You just described the old hospital in Whitehorse, Montana, but you haven’t been there for months,” Cordell said.

“But I was there, right?”

“Yes, for only one night. They were in the process of moving you to the new hospital the night you were … “

“You’re eventually going to have to tell me what happened to me,” Cyrus said.

“What’s important is that you’re conscious. The doctor said everything looks good and there is no reason you shouldn’t have a full recovery. As for this other issue, we can sort it out later when—”

“A nurse was murdered.” Cyrus swallowed, his mouth and throat still dry from lack of use.

“I’m sorry, but it had to have been a dream. You say you got up out of bed that night—”

“I buzzed for the nurse, but no one answered the call button, so I got up and walked out past the nurse’s station,” Cyrus said, seeing it as clearly as his brother standing before him. “The nurses’ station was empty, but I remember looking at the clock. It was two minutes past midnight. I could hear someone down the hall talking in whispers in one of the rooms. I walked in that direction, but as I passed the nursery windows—”

“Cyrus, this is the first time since your accident that you’ve been conscious,” Cordell said gently. “That night in the old Whitehorse hospital, you were hooked up to monitors and IVs. There is no way you got up and walked anywhere. I’m sorry. I know it seemed real to you, whatever you think you saw, but it had to have just been a bad dream.”

“Then how do you explain the fact that I can remember exactly how the old tiles felt on my bare feet or the way the place smelled, or that I can describe the hospital to you if I was never awake to see it?”

Cordell shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Then you can’t be certain that I didn’t see exactly what I said I did.”

“All I know is that if you had gotten out of bed that night in the old hospital, the alarms on the monitors would have gone off.”

“Maybe they did. There were no nurses around to hear them. I’m telling you the place was a morgue and there was no one at the nurses’ station.”

“Even if that was true, monitors were recording your vital signs. If you disconnected anything and walked down the hall there would be a report of it.”

“Maybe there is. Have you seen the records?”

His brother sighed. “You were moved to the new hospital the next morning. Don’t you think someone would have noticed you were no longer connected to the IV or monitors?”

“Maybe the nurses covered it up because they were down the hall killing a woman.”

“Cyrus—”

“I know what I saw,” he said with a shake of his head. What frustrated him even more than not getting anyone to believe him was that after all this time, any evidence of the crime would be gone.

“I’m glad you’re the same old Cyrus, stubborn as ever,” Cordell said with affection.

“Were there any other patients in the hospital the one night I spent there?” Cyrus asked as a thought occurred to him.

“One of the reasons the ambulance took you to the old hospital was because there was another patient who couldn’t be moved, so the hospital was still staffed for the night.”

Sure it was. “Another patient? Maybe that patient saw or heard something that would corroborate my story.”

“That patient was in his eighties. He died that night.”

Cyrus sighed and closed his eyes.

“Listen, the doctor said you shouldn’t overdo.”

“I want you to call the hospital up there and the sheriff,” Cyrus said, opening his eyes. “I’m telling you I saw a murder.” He gave his brother a detailed description of the female victim.

“Okay, I’ll check into it if it will make you take it easy for a while.”

Cyrus lay back against the pillows on the hospital bed, exhausted. How was that possible after sleeping for almost three months?

“Get some rest,” Cordell said, clasping his hand. “I can’t tell you how good it is to have you back.”

“Yeah, same here.” He was glad one of the first faces he’d seen after waking had been his twin’s. But he couldn’t help feeling helpless and frustrated.

He’d seen a murdered woman that night in the hospital and no one believed him. Not even his brother.

CYRUS WOKE to find his twin beside his bed. Through the open curtains he could see that it was dark outside. How long had he been asleep this time?

Cordell stirred and sat up, seeing that he’d awakened. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” Had he expected Cyrus to wake up and recant his story about the murdered woman he’d seen? Surely his twin knew him better than that. “What did you find out?”

From Cordell’s expression, he’d been hoping, at least. “I called the hospital in Whitehorse and talked to the administrator. She assured me there was no murder at the old hospital the night you were a patient there.”

“Someone moved the body.”

“She also assured me that you never left your bed. There were two nurses on duty that night monitoring not only you, but also the elderly gentleman in a room down the hall. One nurse was just outside your room the whole time.”

Cyrus knew that wasn’t true, but Cordell didn’t give him a chance to argue the point.

“I also called the Whitehorse sheriff’s department and talked to our cousin McCall, who has since become the sheriff. There was no murder at the old hospital that night. Nor any missing nurse because both nurses who were on duty that night are accounted for. Nor was there a nurse’s aide or orderly or anyone else working that night.”

Then she must have just been dressed in a uniform for some reason, Cyrus thought.

“There was also no missing person report on any woman in the area.”

She must not have been from Whitehorse.

He saw his brother’s expression and knew that Cordell would have thought of all of this and asked the sheriff to run a check in a broader area with the description Cyrus had supplied. He and Cordell were private investigators and identical twins. They could finish each other’s sentences. Of course Cordell would have thought of all these things.

“Sheriff McCall Winchester assured me that no unexplained vehicles were found near the old hospital nor has anyone in the area gone missing.”

Was it possible everyone was right and that he’d only seen the murdered woman in a coma-induced nightmare?

Cyrus didn’t believe that. But then again, he also couldn’t believe he’d been in coma for three months.

WITHIN A FEW WEEKS, Cyrus was feeling more like his old self. He’d been working out, getting his strength back and was now restless. He hadn’t been able to shake the images from the dream. In fact, they seemed stronger than they had the morning he’d awakened in the rehabilitation center.

He still had no memory, though, of what had happened to him in Whitehorse in the hours before the accident that put him in the coma.

Cordell had filled him in, finally. Apparently, he’d driven to Whitehorse in his pickup and stopped that night at the Whitehorse Hotel, an old four-story antique on the edge of town. He’d gone there, he remembered, to see his grandmother Pepper Winchester after receiving a letter from her lawyer giving him the impression that she might be dying.

Even now he couldn’t remember why he’d wanted to go see the reclusive grandmother who’d kicked her family off the ranch twenty-seven years ago, never to be heard from again—until now.

In Whitehorse, he’d taken a room on the fourth floor of the hotel, intending to wait until his brother joined him the next morning before going out to the Winchester Ranch.

Apparently he had barely gotten into his room when he’d either heard something outside or happened to look out the window. What he’d seen, Cordell said, was a child molester breaking the only yard light in the hotel parking lot and slashing the rear tire of a VW bug parked there.

Cyrus must have watched as the man went back to the dark-colored van, the engine running, and realized the man was waiting for the owner of the VW to come out.

He’d run downstairs in time to keep the young woman who owned the VW bug from being run down by the van and killed. While saving her, he’d been hit and suffered a blow to his head that had left him in a coma all these months.

“That’s some story,” Cyrus said after his brother finished.

It was like hearing a story about someone he didn’t know. None of it brought back a single memory. But it did fit in with his dream, since he’d spent a night in the old hospital.

During the weeks he’d spent getting stronger, he hadn’t brought up the so-called murder dream with Cordell because it upset him. Cyrus suspected he worried about his twin’s mental health. During his last checkup, even the doctor had questioned Cyrus about headaches, strange dreams and hallucinations. Clearly Cordell had talked to the doctor about his brother’s inability to let this go.

“I didn’t think coma patients dreamed,” Cyrus had said to the doctor.

“Actually, they retain non-cognitive function and normal sleep patterns. It’s their higher brain functions they lose, other than key functions such as breathing and circulation. You were in a deep-level coma caused by trauma to the brain. I’m sure that explains what you thought you saw.”

After his doctor’s appointment, Cyrus stopped by

Winchester Investigations, unable to put it off any longer. With each passing day, he had more questions—and more suspicions. He knew there was only one way to put his mind at ease.

“Hey,” he said after tapping at his brother’s open office door.

Cordell looked up and from his expression, he’d been expecting this.

“I have to go back to Whitehorse and check out a few things myself.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, you need to stay here and do some work. We both can’t be goofing off. When I come back—”

“Yeah, I want to talk to you about that.”

“Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s just that, well, you’ve met Raine,” Cordell said.

Cyrus smiled. He’d been pleased when his brother had introduced him to the woman he’d been seeing for the last three months. Raine Chandler, he’d been surprised to hear, was the woman he’d saved up in Montana.

“So I brought you two together.” Cyrus had never believed in divine intervention. But as eerie as this was, he felt as if it had all happened for a reason. And that reason, he feared, was so he could be at the hospital that night and make sure justice was done.

But that surprise was nothing compared to realizing his brother had fallen head-over-heels in love with the woman. After Cordell’s horrible marriage and divorce, no one had expected him ever to consider marriage again—especially his twin.

But when he’d met Raine, he’d seen that she was wearing a gorgeous diamond engagement ring and Cordell was always grinning when he was around her.

“Raine and I made a deal back in Montana,” Cordell was saying. He looked uncomfortable. “She said she’d marry me only when you could be my best man.”

Cyrus was surprised. “She was taking one hell of a chance I was going to come out of my coma.”

“Raine has a lot of faith. I think she knew how much I would need you at my side on my wedding day.”

Cyrus laughed. “True enough. Congrats, Cordell, and I’d love to be your best man. So when is the big day?”

“We haven’t set it yet. We were waiting to see … “

If Cyrus really was going to be all right. That was the problem with being twins: sometimes you knew exactly what the other one was thinking.

“I’m fine, really. This is just something I need to do. I’m not crazy, no screws loose from the head injury. If you had seen what I did, you’d be doing the same thing. It was that real, Cordell.”

His brother nodded. “So go to Montana, do what you have to do and—”

“Set a wedding date. I’ll be there for you. This thing in Montana won’t take that long, unless you’re thinking of getting married right away.”

“No, we were considering a New Year’s wedding. Did I mention that our cousin McCall is getting married at the ranch at Christmas?” Cordell asked.

“You aren’t seriously considering—”

“Raine and Grandmother hit it off.” Cordell shrugged. “Grandmother thinks we should move our investigative business to Montana. I know,” he said quickly, putting up a hand. “I told her you’d never go for that.”

Cyrus had to laugh. Cordell was the one who had wanted nothing to do with his grandmother. He’d tried to talk Cyrus out of even going to Montana in the first place. Now he was actually considering another wedding at the ranch after Christmas?

“Hey,” he said, “whatever you and Raine decide. Count me in.” He hugged his brother and headed for the door.

“Call me when you get there and keep in touch,” his brother called after him. “If you need me, I’ll be there in a heartbeat. Or if I don’t hear from you.”

Cyrus stopped at the door to look back at him and laughed. “Stop worrying about me. I’ll probably be back within the week. By the way, thanks for taking care of my pickup.”

“Sure.”

Cyrus got the feeling there was something his brother wasn’t telling him. “You didn’t let your girlfriend drive my pickup, did you?”

“The way Raine drives? Are you kidding?”

He started to step out into the hallway.

“Cyrus!”

Turning, he looked back at his brother and saw more than worry on Cordell’s face. “Be careful.”

Cyrus felt that bad feeling he’d awakened with rise to the surface again. If the murder had been nothing more than a bad dream, then why did his brother look scared for him?

Chapter Three

His first morning in Whitehorse, Montana, Cyrus headed straight for the new hospital. The squat, singlelevel building sat on the east end of the small western town. There was an empty field behind it, the Larb Hills in the distance.

For a moment, he stood outside, hoping the cool October day would sharpen his senses. He felt off balance, confused and a little afraid that the blow to his head had done more damage than anyone suspected—and all because of what he believed he’d seen that night in the old hospital.

The doctor had said he might have some memory lapses, either short-or long-term. He’d been warned that he might not feel like himself for a while.

“There are things you might never get back.”

Like my sanity?

When he’d reached town last night, he’d returned to the Whitehorse Hotel on the edge of town and taken the same room he had planned to stay in more than three months earlier.

He hadn’t slept well and when his brother had called and he’d told him where he was, Cordell threatened to come to Montana. Cyrus had talked him out of it, assuring him he wasn’t losing it.

Now, as Cyrus stepped into the new hospital’s reception area, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he was wrong. Who saw a murder that never happened?

It wasn’t just that no one believed him. They all made it sound as if it would have been impossible for anything he said to have actually happened. All of them couldn’t be wrong, could they?

Of course, his first thought was conspiracy. But did he believe that even his cousin was in on it?

The hospital was smaller than most, but then Whitehorse wasn’t exactly booming. Like a lot of small Montana towns, its population was dropping each year as young people moved away for college and better-paying jobs.

“May I help you?” The receptionist was in her early twenties with straight blond hair and a recently applied sheen of lip gloss. He stared at her name tag, not registering her name as he suddenly had a flash of his so-called murder dream. The woman lying dead in the nursery hadn’t been wearing a name tag. So maybe he was right and she wasn’t a nurse. Or maybe she’d lost her name tag in the struggle.

“Sir?”

Cyrus stirred, blinking the receptionist back into focus. He removed his Stetson. “I need to speak with your hospital administrator.” He realized he should have made an appointment. Had he been afraid the person wouldn’t see him once he recognized the name and knew what this was about?

“Your name?”

“Cyrus Winchester.”

The receptionist picked up the phone. “Let me see … oh, here she is now.”

A woman in her sixties with short gray hair walked toward them. She was dressed in a suit and had an air of authority about her.

“This man needs to see you,” the receptionist said.

The hospital administrator gave him only a brief glance. “Why don’t you come back to my office.”

Cyrus followed her into a small, brightly lit room. The light hurt his eyes. Another side effect of the coma, this sensitivity to light?

“Would you like me to close the blinds?” She was already closing them, dimming the room a little.

“I’m Cyrus Winchester.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Winchester?” She didn’t introduce herself but the plaque on her desk read Roberta Warren.

“Were you also the administrator at the old hospital?” he asked.

“Yes. I’ve been the administrator for the last thirty-four years.” She clasped her hands together on her desk and seemed to wait patiently, although her demeanor said she had a lot to do and little time.

He kneaded the brim of his hat in his lap, surprised he was nervous. “You know who I am.”

“Yes.”

“Then you probably know why I’m here.” He realized he was nervous because he was sitting in front of a health care specialist who was looking at him as if he might be nuts.

“Your brother called us about an incident you thought you’d seen while at the old hospital the night you were there.”

“That incident was a woman murdered in the nursery.”

She shook her head. “There was no murder at the hospital.”

Another chunk of memory fell as if from the sky. “There were two babies in bassinets,” he said as he saw the nursery clearly in his memory. Why hadn’t he recalled that earlier? Because it hadn’t registered? Or because it hadn’t mattered when there was a dead woman lying just inside the nursery?

Now, though, he thought the fact that the two babies were there did matter for some reason. He tried to remember, but that only made his head ache and the memory slip farther away from him.

Roberta Warren was still shaking her head. “There were no babies in the nursery that last night the old hospital was still open. I’m afraid you’re mistaken about that, as well.”

He tried another tactic. “Do you know a woman with long auburn hair, greenish-blue eyes, tall, slim, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties?”

“As I told your brother, there is no one employed at the hospital who matches that description.”

“Do you know anyone in town who matches that description?”

She raised a brow. “I thought you said it was a nurse who you thought you saw murdered.”

“She wasn’t wearing a name tag when I found her. Maybe she was only pretending to be a nurse.”

The administrator looked at her watch pointedly. “I’m sure you’ve spoken with the sheriff. Had there been a murder—”

“I’d like to speak to the two nurses on duty that night,” he said.

“I won’t allow that.”

“Why not?” he asked, thinking he might be on to something.

“I’ve questioned both of them at length, Mr. Winchester. One was always at the desk that night. The sheriff also questioned them as well and looked at the monitor readings. You never left your bed that night. If you decide to pursue this, it will have to be with a subpoena and just cause.” Her tone said good luck getting either. “I won’t have you accusing my nurses of something that never happened.”

He rose to his feet. He wasn’t going to get anything from this woman. “Thank you for your time.”

She sighed and gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sure your doctor explained to you that what you thought you experienced was a coma-induced hallucination of some kind, perhaps stemming from your line of work. There is no cover-up, no murder, no reason for you to waste your time or anyone else’s. I would think you would be glad to be alive and have better things to do with your time.”

“I am glad to be alive. Unfortunately, the woman I saw lying in a pool of blood in the old hospital nursery isn’t and for some reason no one cares.”

He saw that his words finally hit home because she had paled. But that gave him little satisfaction. He turned and walked out of her office and reception area into the bright October morning.

He was shaking inside. Where had that come from about the babies? But now that he thought about it, he was certain there’d been two babies in the nursery.

Just as he was certain there’d been a murder. Now all he had to do was prove it—against all odds, because his instincts told him he was right. If that woman was ever going to get justice, it would be up to him.

THE MOMENT the office door closed, Roberta Warren let out the breath she’d been holding. Her hands were trembling as she reached into the drawer for the small bottle of vodka she kept there disguised in a water bottle.

Taking a sip, she told herself that there was no reason she should be so upset. But when Cordell Winchester had called questioning whether or not there had been a murder more than three months ago at the hospital, she hadn’t thought anything of it.

That was because he hadn’t mentioned that the murder his brother thought he’d seen had been in the hospital nursery. Or that the woman had been found in a pool of her own blood. Or that there had been two babies in bassinets in the nursery the night of the murder.

Roberta Warren took another sip of the vodka and quickly put the lid back on the water bottle. Her hands were a little steadier, but her heart was still pounding. The man couldn’t have possibly dreamed any of this. Who dreamed a murder in such detail? But was he just fishing or did he know something?

She took a mint from her drawer and chewed it, debating how to handle this. The best thing was to ignore it. Cyrus Winchester would tire soon since he would keep running into dead ends, and he would eventually go back to Denver.

But then again, she hadn’t expected him to come all the way to Whitehorse to chase a nightmare. She’d heard the determination in his voice. The fool really thought he was going to get justice for the dead woman.

Calmer, Roberta picked up the phone and almost dialed the number she hadn’t called in thirty years. She put the phone down. She was overreacting. That was probably what he hoped she would do. But still she worried that this would get all over town, hell, all over the county, if he continued to ask questions.

If he didn’t give up soon, she would have to come up with a way to dissuade him.

She stood, smoothed her hands over her skirt and walked to the window, half expecting to see Cyrus Winchester standing outside her office, staring in as if he thought he could make her feel guilty enough to panic.

Well, he didn’t know her, she thought, but she was glad to see him drive off anyway.

THE OCTOBER DAY WAS sunny and blustery. Golden leaves showered down from the trees and formed piles in the gutters. The air smelled of fall with just a hint of the snowy winter days that weren’t far off.

He was driving down a wide, tree-lined street when he saw the single-level brick building. Even with the sign removed, Cyrus recognized the old hospital. The realization gave him a chill.

As he pulled to the curb, he saw that apparently the movers hadn’t completed the job of removing the furnishings, because there was a large panel truck parked out front and both front doors of the building were propped open.

Getting out of his pickup, Cyrus walked along the sidewalk past the truck. The back was open, a ramp leading into the cavernous, dark interior. He glanced in and saw a dozen old wooden chairs, some equally old end tables and several library tables.

As he passed, he saw that on the side of the truck were painted the words Second Hand Kate’s. Under that in smaller print, Used Furnishings Emporium.

“Hello?” he called as he stepped through the open front doors of the old hospital. The interior still had that familiar clinical smell and that empty, cold feeling he remembered. He reminded himself that it had been empty now for more than three months.