The truth was that Maggie had been hiding for nine months, turning her back on a world that had hurt her and her daughter one too many times.
Coward. Other people cope. Why can’t you?
Drumming her fingers on the checkered cloth that covered the table, she frowned at the telephone. Could the caller have been Mary Theresa? It had been so long since they’d spoken, too long…
She picked up the receiver again and dialed rapidly before she let her pride get the better of her. The long-distance connection was made and she waited. One ring. Two. Three. Click.
“Hi.” Mary Theresa’s breathy, upbeat voice brought a smile to Maggie’s lips as she nervously twisted the ring on her right hand. “This is Marquise. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I promise.”
The recorder beeped and Maggie steeled herself. “Mary Theresa, this is Maggie. If you’re there please pick up…Mary Theresa?…Oh, okay, Marquise, are you there?” she asked impatiently, using her sister’s stage name, hoping that if Mary Theresa was within earshot she’d put aside her petulance and answer. A heartbeat. Two. Nothing. “Look, I, um, I got a message from you—you know the kind you used to send.” She glanced around the room and felt foolish. What if she’d dreamed up the whole thing? “Well, at least I think I did, and I need to talk to you, so please call me back. I’m still at the ranch in Idaho.” She rattled off the number, waited a second or two in the fleeting hope that her sister was listening, then, sighing, hung up. “Damn.”
The sun had finally set and the cabin felt cold and bereft, empty. Maggie checked the thermostat, then walked to a window and looked toward the mountains as if she could will her daughter’s image to appear from the shadows. All the while her sister’s cryptic message haunted her. What had Mary Theresa said? Only you can help me. It was Thane. He did this to me.
Did what?
Who knew? It was nothing. Had to be. She couldn’t let her wild imagination get the better of her. Just because Maggie wrote mysteries for a living and had delved into true-crime stories, didn’t mean she had to believe something horrible had happened to her sister.
With one eye on the clock, Maggie pulled out a serving bowl of stew she’d made earlier in the week, dumped the contents into a saucepan, and switched on the stove. She sliced bread, topped it with cheese, intending to broil the open-faced sandwiches as soon as Becca had put Jasper away for the night.
As the seconds ticked by, Maggie told herself not to worry, turned on a couple of lights, unloaded the dishwasher, and ignored her computer, which had been waiting for her all day, the monitor glowing with a screen saver of cartoon characters. The idea of working on any kind of story at the moment was about as appealing as day-old oatmeal.
She’d tackle chapter six after dinner.
No sign of Becca.
Don’t be a worrywart. She’ll be back. Sighing, she shut the door, snapped her hair into a ponytail and, as the cabin grew darker, flipped on a lamp near the front door.
Her thoughts crept down a forbidden path, a crooked trail that still led to Thane Walker. She hadn’t seen him in years but imagined he was just as sexy and irreverent as ever, a lone-cowboy type complete with a Wyoming swagger and enough lines in his face to add an edge of severity to already-harsh features. The kind of man to avoid. The kind of man who attracted trouble. The only man who had ever been able to make Maggie’s blood run hot with only one cynical glance.
“Forget it,” she told herself. She must’ve imagined the whole scene in the barn. She’d only thought she’d heard Mary Theresa’s “voice” because it had been so long, so many silent months without a word from her twin. She walked to the fireplace and plucked an old framed photo from the mantel. It had been taken nearly ten years earlier, when Mary Theresa, who had reinvented herself as simply Marquise, à la Cher or Madonna, was about to launch her own Denver-based talk show. The two sisters stood back to back, identical twins except that they were mirror images. Mary Theresa was left-handed, Maggie used her right; one side of Mary’s mouth lifted more than the other, the opposite was true of her sister. One of Mary Theresa’s pinkies turned inward—the right. On Maggie, it was the left.
Maggie felt a smile tease her lips as she ran a finger over the faded snapshot. She and Mary Theresa both had auburn hair that curled wildly, but Mary Theresa’s had been highlighted with gold and framed her face in soft layers while Maggie’s had been scraped back into her ever-functional ponytail. Mary Theresa had worn a short, shimmering black dress, a designer original, complemented with a strand of pearls, black hose and three-inch heels. She’d been on her way to a party with some once-upon-a-time celebrities.
At that same frozen moment in time Maggie had worn sneakers, jeans, and a flannel shirt with a tail that flapped in the wind and had balanced three-year-old Becca on one outthrust hip. With the snow-shrouded Rocky Mountains as a backdrop, the two sisters braced themselves on each other, then swiveled their heads to grin into the camera. Bright I-can-take-on-the-world smiles, rosy cheeks, a smattering of freckles and green eyes that snapped with fire had stared into the lens.
It seemed like ages ago.
A lifetime.
She set the photo on the mantel, where it had been, between pictures of all stages of Becca’s life as well as her own, then glanced outside. The evening was gathering fast, stars visible through the thin layer of clouds.
“Come on, Becca,” she worried aloud as she snapped on the exterior light and stepped onto the front porch. Silently she hoped for some sign of Jasper galloping toward the barn. But there was no sound of hoofbeats, no glimpse of a gray horse appearing over the slight rise of the field. Instead she heard a breath of wind sighing through the dry leaves that still clung to the trees and the clatter of a train rolling on far-off tracks. Again the howl of a coyote on some nearby hill.
Her gaze scoured the distance.
An answering soulful cry, lonely and echoing, reverberated across the land and put Maggie’s teeth on edge. Leaning one hip against the porch rail, she tried to find the sense of calm, of well-being that she’d been looking for when she’d leased this place at the first of the year.
Everything’s fine; you’re just letting your overactive imagination get the better of you. If you were smart, Maggie-girl, you’d use this to your advantage, go inside, pour yourself a cup of coffee and start writing. You’ve got a deadline in your not-too-distant future.
Nervously she fidgeted with the wedding ring that she still wore on her hand. It was a joke really, something she’d have to give up, but couldn’t quite. Not yet.
She’d reached for the door when she heard it—the muted rumble of an engine that got louder, then the crunch of gravel being flattened by heavy tires. Turning, she spied twin beams flashing through the night, the beacons broken by the trunks of trees as they passed, headlights from a truck that rolled to a stop not far from the barn. Black, slightly battered, sporting a canopy, the truck was unfamiliar.
A solitary man was behind the wheel—a man she thought she recognized.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
It couldn’t be. Or could it? Was her mind playing tricks on her? All the saliva in her throat disappeared.
The driver cut the engine and opened the door. “Maggie?”
She’d know that voice anywhere, even after more than a dozen years.
Thane Walker, big as life, stepped out of the cab.
Her throat turned to sand, and her stupid heart jolted.
“Well, well, well,” she said, forcing the words past lips that were numb. As he slammed the door of his truck, she told herself that the accelerated beat of her heart was way out of line.
He started toward the porch.
Looking