Loe raamatut: «Hero's Return»

CHAPTER ONE

Skeletal Remains Found in Creek

The skeletal remains of a woman believed to be in her late teens or early twenties were discovered in Miner’s Creek, outside Gilt Edge, Montana, yesterday. Local coroner Sonny Bates estimated that the remains had been in the creek for somewhere around twenty years.

Sheriff Flint Cahill is looking into missing-persons cases from that time in the hopes of identifying the victim. If anyone has any information, they are encouraged to call the Gilt Edge Sheriff’s Department.

“NO, MRS. KERN, I can assure you that the bones that were found in the creek are not those of your nephew Billy,” Sheriff Flint Cahill said into the phone at his desk. “I saw Billy last week at the casino. He was alive and well...No, it takes longer than a week for a body to decompose to nothing but bones. Also, the skeletal remains that were found were a young woman’s...Yes, Coroner Sonny Bates can tell the difference.”

He looked up as the door opened and his sister, Lillie, stepped into his office. From the scowl on her face, he didn’t have to ask what kind of mood she was in. He’d been expecting her given that he had their father locked up in one of the cells.

“Mrs. Kern, I have to go. I’m sorry Billy hasn’t called you, but I’m sure he’s fine.” He hung up with a sigh. “Dad’s in the back sleeping it off. Before he passed out, he mumbled about getting back to the mountains.”

A very pregnant Lillie nodded but said nothing. Pregnancy had made his sister even prettier. Her long dark hair framed a face that could only be called adorable. This morning, though, he saw something in her gray eyes that worried him.

He waited for her to tie into him, knowing how she felt about him arresting their father for being drunk and disorderly. This wasn’t their first rodeo. And like always, it was Lillie who came to bail Ely out—not his bachelor brothers, Hawk and Cyrus, who wanted to avoid one of Flint’s lectures.

He’d been telling his siblings that they needed to do something about their father. But no one wanted to face the day when their aging dad couldn’t continue to spend most of his life in the mountains gold panning and trapping—let alone get a snoot full of booze every time he finally hit town again.

“I’ll go get him,” Flint said, lumbering to his feet. Since he’d gotten the call about the bones being found at the creek, he hadn’t had but a few hours’ sleep. All morning, the phone had been ringing off the hook. Not with leads on the identity of the skeletal remains—just residents either being nosy or worried there was a killer on the loose.

“Before you get Dad...” Lillie seemed to hesitate, which wasn’t like her. She normally spoke her mind without any encouragement at all.

He braced himself.

“A package came for Tuck.”

That was the last thing Flint had expected out of her mouth. “To the saloon?”

“To the ranch. No return address.”

Flint felt his heart begin to pound harder. It was the first news of their older brother, Tucker, since he’d left home right after high school. Being the second oldest, Flint had been closer to Tucker than with his younger brothers. For years, he’d feared him dead. When Tuck had left like that, he’d suspected his brother was in some kind of trouble. He’d been sure of it. But had it been something bad enough that Tucker hadn’t felt he could come to Flint for help?

“Did you open the package?” he asked.

Lillie shook her head. “Hawk and Cyrus thought about it but then called me.”

He tried to hide his irritation that one of them had called their sister instead of him, the darned sheriff. His brothers had taken over the family ranch and were the only ones still living on the property so it wasn’t a surprise that they would have received the package. Which meant that whoever had sent it either didn’t know that Tucker no longer lived there or thought he was coming back for some reason.

Because Tucker was on his way home? Maybe he’d sent the package and there was nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately, a package after all this time didn’t necessarily bode well. At least not to Flint, who came by his suspicious nature naturally as a lawman. He feared it might be Tucker’s last effects.

“I hope you didn’t open it.”

Lillie shook her head. “You think this means he’s coming home?” She sounded so hopeful it made his heart ache. He and Tucker had been close in more ways than age. Or at least he’d thought so. But something had been going on with his brother his senior year in high school and Flint had no idea what it was. Or if trouble was still dogging his brother.

For months after Tucker left, Flint had waited for him to return. He’d been so sure that whatever the trouble was, it was temporary. But after all these years, he’d given up any hope. He’d feared he would never see his brother again.

“Tell them not to open it. I’ll stop by the ranch and check it out.”

Lillie met his gaze. “It’s out in my SUV. I brought it with me.”

Flint swore under his breath. What if it had a bomb in it? He knew that was overly dramatic but, still, knowing his sister... There wasn’t a birthday or Christmas present that she hadn’t shaken the life out of as she’d tried to figure out what was inside it. “Is your truck open?” She nodded. “Wait here.”

He stepped out in the bright spring day. Gilt Edge sat in a saddle surrounded by four mountain ranges still tipped with snow. Picturesque, tourists came here to fish its blue-ribbon trout stream. But winters were long and a town of any size was a long way off.

Sitting in the middle of Montana, Gilt Edge also had something that most tourists didn’t see. It was surrounded by underground missile silos. The one on the Cahill Ranch was renowned because that was where their father swore he’d seen a UFO not only land, but also that he’d been forced on board back in 1967. Which had made their father the local crackpot.

Flint took a deep breath, telling himself to relax. His life was going well. He was married to the love of his life. But still, he felt a foreboding that he couldn’t shake off. A package for Tucker after all these years?

The air this early in the morning was still cold, but there was a scent to it that promised spring wasn’t that far off. He loved spring and summers here and had been looking forward to picnics, trail rides and finishing the yard around the house he and Maggie were building.

He realized that he’d been on edge since he’d gotten the call about the human bones found in the creek. Now he could admit it. He’d felt as if he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. And now this, he thought as he stepped to his sister’s SUV.

The box sitting in the passenger-side seat looked battered. He opened the door and hesitated for a moment before picking it up. For its size, a foot-and-a-half-sized cube, the package was surprisingly light. As he lifted the box out, something shifted inside. The sound wasn’t a rattle. It was more a rustle like dead leaves followed by a slight thump.

Like his sister had said, there was no return address. Tucker’s name and the ranch address had been neatly printed in black—not in his brother’s handwriting. The generic cardboard box was battered enough to suggest it had come from a great distance, but that wasn’t necessarily true. It could have looked like that when the sender found it discarded and decided to use it to send the contents. He hesitated for a moment, feeling foolish. But he didn’t hear anything ticking inside. Closing the SUV door, he carried the box inside and put it behind his desk.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Lillie asked, wide-eyed.

“No. You need to take Dad home.” He started to pass his sister but vacillated. “I wouldn’t say anything to him about this. We don’t want to get his hopes up that Tucker might be headed home. Or make him worry.”

She glanced at the box and nodded. “Did you ever understand why Tuck left?”

Flint shook his head. He was torn between anger and sadness when it came to his brother. Also fear. What had happened during Tucker’s senior year in high school? What if the answer was in that box?

“By the way,” he said to his sister, “I didn’t arrest Dad. Ely voluntarily turned himself in last night.” He shrugged. Flint had never understood his father any more than he had his brother Tuck. To this day, Ely swore that he was out by the missile silo buried in the middle of their ranch when a UFO landed, took him aboard and did experiments on him.

Then again, their father liked his whiskey and always had.

“You all right?” he asked his sister when she still said nothing.

Lillie nodded distractedly and placed both hands over the baby growing inside her. She was due any day now. He hoped the package for Tucker wasn’t something that would hurt his family. He didn’t want anything upsetting his sister in her condition. But he could see that just the arrival of the mysterious box had Lillie worried. She wasn’t the only one.