“Objection!” Rourke’s lawyer, Hal Rafferty, had cried, getting to his feet. “He’s telling her what to say.”
“Overruled. We’ve heard this from other witnesses. Answer the question,” the judge instructed Cassidy. “And Mr. Corwin, please move on.”
“Yes,” Cassidy said, voice barely audible.
“And what did you hear him say before he left?” the prosecutor asked. This part was new. This part would put the nail in Rourke’s coffin.
Cassidy licked her lips, her eyes welling with tears as she looked at Rourke. “He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’”
“Speak up, Miss Miller.”
“He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’ But he didn’t mean it. He was just—”
“Thank you. No more questions.”
Cassidy had left out one important point his lawyer had been forced to remind her of on cross-examination.
“Who wrote the note that was left on my client’s pickup windshield, Miss Miller?” Hal Rafferty had asked.
Again tears. “I did.”
“And what did that note say?”
Cassidy twisted her hands in her lap, eyes down. “Blaze is meeting Forrest up Wild Horse Gulch.”
“You sent my client to the murder scene?” Rafferty demanded.
“Objection. There was no murder scene until your client got there.”
“Sustained.”
“Why did you write that note, Miss Miller?” the attorney demanded.
She stared down at her hands, crying now, shaking her head.
“What did you hope to gain by doing that?” Rafferty asked.
Again a head shake.
“Answer the question, Miss Miller,” the judge instructed.
“I don’t know why I did it.”
“Did someone instruct you to do it?” the attorney asked.
Her head came up. Rourke saw her startled expression. “No. I…just did it on impulse. I thought he should know what Blaze was…doing.”
“You a friend of Rourke McCall’s?”
She looked at Rourke, then the attorney, and shook her head.
“You were just trying to do him a favor?” the attorney asked. “Or were you trying to set him up for a murder?”
“No.” Cassidy had burst into tears. She’d been just a girl, sixteen going on seventeen, shy and gangly. The jury hadn’t believed that anyone like Cassidy Miller could have set him up.
“Who put you up to it?” the attorney demanded. “Who?”
“No one did.”
But Rourke knew better. Cassidy had left the note. He would never have gone up to Wild Horse Gulch if she hadn’t. He wouldn’t have been framed for murder.
What he didn’t know was why. Or who’d put her up to it.
But he was finally out of prison, finally back, and he was finally going to get the truth out of Cassidy Miller.
AS THE AFTERNOON DRAGGED ON, Blaze Logan found herself pacing in front of the Antelope Development Corporation window or ADC as it was known around the county.
“Sit down, Blaze,” Easton Wells finally snapped. “You’re making me nervous as hell.”
She turned from the window to look at her boss. Easton Wells was thirty-nine, a little old for her in more ways than the nine years between them. He had dark hair and eyes, not bad-looking but nothing like Rourke McCall. Nothing at all. And that was part of Easton’s charm. He had a good future, was divorced—no alimony or children, his ex-wife on another continent and not coming back, and Easton thought Blaze was the hottest thing going.
What could she say? She loved it.
But he didn’t want to marry her. Not yet, anyway.
“What if Rourke doesn’t come back to town?” she lamented out loud.
“I wouldn’t blame him,” Easton said, not looking up from the papers on his desk. ADC was small, a reception area and the larger office that she and Easton shared.
Blaze shifted her focus from across the street to her own reflection in the large front window. She turned to get a side view, liking what she saw, but she wasn’t getting any younger. She was thirty. Almost thirty-one! She needed to think about marriage. And soon. And Rourke’s getting out of prison had given her the answer.
“Rourke will bring a little life to this town,” she said, trying to get a rise out of Easton. “I, for one, think the diversion will be good. I know I’m getting tired of the status quo.”
Easton looked up and shook his head. “I know what you’re trying to do and it isn’t going to work.”
“What?” she asked innocently. She’d been dating Easton for years now off and on. Believing a woman should always keep her options open, she’d also seen Sheriff Cash McCall a few times. She’d had to initiate the impromptu dates with Cash. Like all the McCalls, he was stubborn and dense as a post. She’d had to practically throw herself at him to even get him to notice her.
Easton wasn’t dense. He just didn’t want to get married again. But she intended to change that. And Rourke was going to help her. He just didn’t know it yet.
“You’re trying to make me jealous,” Easton said.
She smiled and stepped over to his desk, placed both palms down on the solid oak surface and leaned toward him, making sure her silk blouse opened at the top so he got a tempting view of the cleavage bursting from her push-up bra.
“East, we both know there isn’t a jealous bone in your body,” she said in her most seductive voice.
He looked up, halting on the view in the V of her blouse appreciatively before looking up into her face.
“It would be a mistake to fool with Rourke,” he said, looking way too serious. That was another problem with Easton. He took everything too seriously, like work. He often got mad at her because she was late in the mornings or took too long at lunch or didn’t finish some job he’d given her or spent too much time on the phone.
“If I were you, I’d steer clear of Rourke,” Easton said.
“Would you?” she asked, lifting a brow as she studied him. “Why, East, you and Rourke used to be best friends.”
He nodded. “A long time ago. I’m sure Rourke has changed. I know I have.”
Not for the better necessarily, Blaze thought.
“I think you’re just mad at Asa. You wouldn’t even be in business if he’d gotten his way.” Asa had campaigned with all his power and money against coal-bed methane drilling in his part of Montana. “But you beat him.”
Easton shook his head. “Asa McCall is never beaten. All I did was make an enemy of him, which is a very dangerous thing to do.”
“And just think how much money you’ve made because of it,” she purred.
“Like I said, I wouldn’t mess with any of the McCalls if I were you. You don’t want that kind of wrath brought down on you.”
She studied him, a little surprised. Easton didn’t scare easily. “You make it sound as if the McCalls have done something to you.”
“I just wouldn’t want any of them