Redemption (34 page)

“Jack—”

“Unless you’d rather not.”

She looked into his blue eyes, eyes the color of faded jeans. “Are you sure about this?”

“I don’t want to get your hopes up, but there’s someplace I think we should check.”

“No, I mean—”

“I know what you mean. I’m sure I want you to be happy. If I’m wrong about my hunch, then I give up. But if I’m not... Like you said, this gold is yours. Your mother wanted you to have it and now there is nothing standing in your way.”

* * *

“
H
AVE YOU BEEN BUSY
out at the W Bar G?” she asked after she’d changed clothes and Jack was driving them out of town.

He shook his head. “I’m working on my place.”

Her heart dropped like a stone. “Right. To sell it.”

“Actually, I’m going to ranch it. There’s some good pasture there and with some new corrals...”

“So you’re staying.” She couldn’t help her shock.

He glanced over at her. “Yeah.”

She let that sink in for a moment. “I heard Judge Hyett was brought up before a commission on what he’d done to you. I can’t believe he only got a three-month suspension. Are you going to file a lawsuit against him and the state for the two years you lost?”

“Nope.” Once the news had come out, Arnie Thorndike had contacted Jack, offering to help him with a lawsuit. Jack had thought Arnie was busy enough with his client Cecil Ackermann. “I’m not interested,” he’d told Thorndike, just as he told Kate now. “I can’t get the years back. That’s the past. I’m lookin’ to the future.”

Kate grew quiet after that and didn’t speak again until he’d turned down the road along the edge of Ackermann Hollow and driven up into the trees to park.

“My mother died on this land,” she said. “I knew that, but I don’t think I let myself admit it until now.”

“What are you saying, Kate?”

“Remember when you told me that all lost treasure is cursed?”

“Kate—”

“Look what this treasure has already cost.”

He studied her openly. “Are you saying you want to quit?”

Kate looked out at the hollow. The last time she’d left here, she’d thought she’d killed a man. “I don’t want it to beat me.” She let out a small laugh. “I don’t know if it is stubborn pride or just mule-headed determination. I’ve fought the fear and the feelings and...” She swallowed. “I’ve never cared about the monetary value. You were right about that. I just need to find it because she risked her life when she made that map.”

“Then I hope I’m right,” Jack said as he opened his door.

* * *

“
T
IFFANY NEEDS HELP,”
Frank told the county attorney. “Her mother programmed her to come after me. It isn’t her fault. She’s just a
child.
”

“She’s a few months short of eighteen, but even if she was much younger, she tried to kill you, Frank. She would have killed you if you hadn’t stopped her.”

He hadn’t told anyone about the crow who’d saved him. No one who didn’t know something about crows would have believed him.

Crows remembered faces. He’d read about a study where scientists wore masks when they captured and tagged crows. Whenever anyone wore the same mask for years after that, the person was harassed by crows.

Tiffany had killed a family member of one of his crows. The crows would know the person who’d hurt one of them. So it made perfect sense to him why the crow had attacked her.

The county attorney sighed. “Let’s wait until we get the doctor’s evaluation from the state mental hospital to see if she’s deemed able to stand trial.”

“I won’t press charges.”

“The state will. She shot an officer of the law. We know she planned to kill you.”

“She’s my
daughter.
”

“Are you sure about that, Frank? You said your ex never told you about her, that she programmed this girl to kill you. I’ll set up a paternity test.”

Frank put his head in his hands.

“Where is her mother?” the county attorney asked.

“Probably long gone by now. I threw her address and phone number away, but Billy Westfall has it.”

“I’m going to ask that a BOLO be put out on her. At the very least, she needs to be notified and questioned. It’s possible charges will be brought up on her.”

“I don’t care about any of that. I just want to see Tiffany get help. Even if it turns out that Pam lied and she isn’t my daughter. Either way, I’m going to do everything I can to help her.”

* * *

T
HEY CLIMBED UP
through the hollow. The afternoon sun fingered its way through the pine boughs to dapple the ground with splashes of gold. Nearby, Kate could hear the creek. It still ran high from snow runoff, but it was clearer now. She could see the colorful boulders beneath cold green water.

The day smelled of sunshine and pine trees. In the shade it was cool, a reminder that summer was still to come. Kate wished she and Jack were hiking up into the Crazies for a picnic lunch or a swim in Saddlestring Lake. For a moment, she could pretend they were. Lovers looking for a secret spot to lay down a blanket and make love.

The hair on the back of her neck suddenly prickled. She turned, stopping to look back. All she saw were the thick pines and part of the roof of the old barn. A squirrel chattered at them from a nearby tree. A shadow fell over her as a hawk glided in a circle above the tops of the pines.

“Anything wrong?” Jack asked. He’d gone a few yards on up the mountain and had apparently just now realized she’d stopped.

She looked again down the mountainside, then shook off the feeling that they were being watched. “Just being paranoid,” she said under her breath.

“What?” Jack asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“We’re almost there.” He was carrying all the equipment as well as the shovel. He’d insisted, saying she probably shouldn’t even be hiking up here, that he’d waited a week on purpose so she could get her strength back.

Jack was true to his word. They hadn’t gone far when the land flattened out a little and Kate saw that they’d reached an old logging road.

“We kept digging near the house because we were so sure Cullen wouldn’t have dragged a bunch of gold bullion way up into the mountains,” Jack said. He motioned to the old logging road. “But with a four-wheeler, all he needed was a way through the fence.”

She followed Jack a few dozen yards and saw where someone had made a gate of sorts, then covered it with brush. Her pulse began to pound. “I think you might be right.”

Jack smiled as he shoved back his hat to look at her. “We’ll see,” he said as he pulled out the map. “I think that one line isn’t a creek, but this road.”

Kate followed him and the road, going back and forth from watching Jack to watching the map. When he stopped, she held her breath. It definitely looked as if this was the spot.

“You should do this,” he said, handing her the metal detector.

Her fingers were shaking as she took it. She shot him a look, then turned the metal detector on and began to move it slowly back and forth across the grassy ground.

* * *

T
HE METAL DETECTOR
went off, strong and sure. Jack’s stunned gaze came up to meet hers. Could he really have been right about this?

“Jack?” she said, her voice breaking as she went over the spot another time. No doubt about it. Something big was down there.

He grabbed the shovel and began to dig. Kate turned off the metal detector, put it down and dropped to her knees to begin moving the rock out of the way. Jack shoveled deeper, Kate moving anything she could out of the way.

Then she picked up the metal detector, and he stopped to watch as she turned it on and held it over the shallow hole he’d dug. The beep was stronger than ever.

He quickly went back to work. As he did, he tried to hold down his excitement, but it was hard. When he’d compared the map on the back of the photograph with the map Kate had given him, he could see where they made their mistake. Still, it had been conjecture until he’d hiked up here and seen the logging road and the hidden gate.

That’s when he’d known he had to bring Kate up here, had to give her a chance to find the buried treasure her mother had wanted her to have so desperately that both had risked their lives.

Even as he’d thought about how excited he would be for her to find it, Jack knew what it would mean. She would leave Beartooth. The gold was the only reason she’d come here. The café had just been a blind to hide behind and keep her going until she found the treasure buried long-ago.

Digging was slow. The sun slipped behind the Crazies. A cool breeze stirred the leaves in the nearby aspens and made the pine boughs sigh softly. Jack finally dug the hole large enough to climb down into it.

He was a good five feet deep when his shovel struck something solid. His gaze flew up to Kate’s. He saw the expression on her face. Fear and excitement tangled together with shock. Added to that, regret. The last thing he wanted was to see Kate leave Beartooth. Leave him.

“Before we do this,” he said, his voice sounding strange to him, “there’s something I need to say to you.”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“I love you. I think I’ve loved you since the first night I laid eyes on you and you told me what a fool I was for trying to save you. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I want to start a new family tradition. I want to build something, grow roots in the shadow of these mountains, dream about my future again.”

Kate’s gaze met his. “Now, Jack? You waited for this moment to tell me this?”

“Yeah, whatever is down here, I love you and I want you to be happy. If it takes a chest of gold, well, then I hope that’s what we’re about to find. But I need to know if you are in this with me.”

“Jack, what are you saying?” Kate asked, laughing.

He looked toward the peaks for a moment before he looked again at her. “I’m asking you to be my partner.”

“Partner?” she asked skeptically.

“Fifty-fifty.” He stepped to the side of the hole and placed a hand on her knee. “See that land down there,” he said, pointing in the distance toward the French place. “It’s ours. We can tear down the house and build a new one, buy some cattle and raise a garden. We can plant trees and—”

“Jack, the café doesn’t make enough money to—”

“I have money. My mother left me money I invested and have never spent.” He met her dark gaze. “I never knew what I wanted to do with it, but I do now. I know my mother would approve.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll marry me.”

“Jack—”

“Fifty-fifty. Just think what you and I can do here in Montana, Kate. We can rewrite our family histories. Why not here?”

She looked down the hollow where she’d been born and her mother had died. “I don’t know, Jack. I’m not sure I would make a good rancher’s wife. I don’t cook, clean or sew.”

He laughed. “You don’t have to do any of those things.”

“I’d want to keep the café,” she said. She thought of Claude. He’d said this place would grow on her. She smiled to herself. “It’s what Claude would have wanted. What I want, too.”

Jack smiled and pulled her down into a kiss. “This place has got to you, hasn’t it?”

Or could it be this man? “Yeah, Jack, this place has gotten to me.”

“Well, will you marry me?” he asked.

“You have to know
now?
” she asked, surprise in her tone.

He nodded solemnly. “I do, before we find out what is down here in this hole.”

She glanced toward the trunk at his feet, then at Jack. “Yes.”

* * *

A
S
F
RANK DROVE
into his ranch yard, he automatically looked to the telephone wire, expecting to see a dark row of crows waiting for him.

The wire was empty. So were the clothesline and the barn ridge. The crows were gone. They’d been gone since that day one of them had died in the dirt just feet from his front door.

He’d once read about a town in Canada that had become a stopover for migrating crows and pretty soon a half million had invaded the town.

Unable to put up with so many crows, the town made a plan to kill three hundred thousand of the birds. Armed with guns, the mayor led the group.

They killed one crow.

That was all it had taken. The crows had warned each other. Word spread among the birds and their migration pattern changed to avoid the town. For generations, crows had been avoiding farms where one of them had been killed in the past.

Because of that, he knew his birds wouldn’t be coming back. Nor would others come to take their place.

He knew it was silly, the horrible sense of loss that he felt for his daughter, for his family of birds.

He tried to minimize the latter, reminding himself they were just birds. But they were his birds, his family. Pam had stolen seventeen years with his daughter from him. Now his daughter had taken the only family he’d known.

His despair darkened as evening set in across the wide valley. He crossed the porch, stunned by the depth of silence in the crows’ absence.

As he was pushing open the screen door, he heard the sound of a motor as a vehicle approached. An SUV he didn’t recognize pulled into the yard, the driver cutting the lights and engine. As the door opened, he saw who it was.

“Lynette?”

She didn’t speak as she closed the car door and started toward him. She didn’t have to. He opened his arms and she stepped into them. He held her so tightly he feared she couldn’t breathe.

She didn’t try to tell him that everything would be all right. She didn’t speak at all. She just let him hold her.

* * *

J
ACK’S WORDS FILLED
her heart like helium. Kate felt light-headed from the sun, the climb up the mountain, the thought that this could be it. The inheritance Cullen Ackermann had stolen from her mother.

She had to sit down on the edge of the hole. Jack touched her leg, looked into her eyes and then shoveled away more dirt to expose an old wood-and-metal trunk.

Kate thought of Claude as she watched the clouds building over the Crazies. She felt what it must have been like for him that day here in the hollow. The woman he’d loved was dead. And now he had a toddler in his arms and all hell was breaking out with the sheriff and deputies storming the compound.