Reunion at Cardwell Ranch (16 page)

She felt the same way. As he drew back from the passionate kiss, he traced his thumb over her lower lip.

“I fell in love with your mouth that night,” he said quietly. As he lifted his gaze, he said, “And your eyes. You have the most incredible eyes. I feel as if I can look into your soul.”

Sid shivered. “Don’t look too closely.”

He shook his head. “You’re not as bad as you want me to believe,” he said just as quietly. “What do you see when you look into my eyes?”

“Kindness, compassion...” She halted seeing something that tied her tongue in a knot for a moment. “Caring.”

He smiled. “Caring? Look deeper.”

She let out a nervous laugh even as she was filled with pure joy. “Love?”

Laramie nodded. “I’ve fallen for you, Obsidian Forester. Fallen hard.”

Sid couldn’t speak, which was just as well because in the next moment he stole her breath away as he cupped her face in his big hands and kissed her again.

She felt wrapped in wisps of soft, warm clouds as he began to unbutton her shirt. His fingers brushed over the tops of her breasts, hardened her nipples to aching pebbles. He followed his fingers with his mouth, suckling at her until she cried out with a desire that burned to the heart of her.

With fumbling fingers, she helped him remove her own and his clothing. She sighed at the feel of his naked skin, the taut muscles of his chest and arms and stomach. Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled him to her.

When they came together it was as if they had been missing pieces of a puzzle that finally had found each other. They moved with the ancient rhythm of passion and love.

Sid arched against him, crying out when he brought her to the peak of desire, and she shuddered in his arms as she collapsed on the bed. The cool night air moved over her perspiring bare skin like a caress.

They might have stayed like that the rest of the night—if it hadn’t been for the back door banging open.

Chapter Eighteen

Laramie sat up with a start, grabbing for his jeans as heavy footfalls could be heard from the other room. He glanced at Sid, her face pale and worried in the soft glow coming through the window. From her expression, she had no idea who had just broken into her cabin.

She was reaching for her robe and he’d only managed to drag on his jeans and button all but the top button when a figure filled the doorway, a second larger figure behind it.

The overhead light came on, momentarily blinding him.

“Sorry, it wasn’t my idea to come barging in,” a woman said. Laramie did a double take at her—and the armed masked man holding the gun to the woman’s head.

“What have you done now, Zander?” Sid demanded as she pulled on her robe and tied the sash tight around her middle.

The woman who was the spitting image of Sid shrugged. “You know me, sis. Trouble just seems to find me. But this time I have a feeling this is more about you than me.”

“She
is
your sister,” Laramie said as he realized this had been the woman who’d knocked him out the previous night at his house.

“
Half
sister,” Zander said and smiled. “The bad half, if you ask Sid.”

“Enough. Give me the paintings,” the man said. “All of them, including the one you stole tonight, or I kill her.”

“I don’t think so,” Sid said.

Laramie recognized the man’s voice. Cody Kent. “You’d better listen to him, Sid. If you’re right, he’s already killed once. Isn’t that right, Cody? You killed H. F. Powell the night you stole the paintings.”

“What?” the artist was clearly taken aback. “I didn’t kill Powell.” He ripped off the ski mask as he shoved Zander into the room. Waving the gun, he said, “Just give me the paintings and no one gets hurt.”

“Is that what you told our father?” Sid demanded.

“
Your father
?” Cody asked in confusion. “I didn’t think H.F. had any family.”

“He didn’t have much regard for marriage,” Zander said with a sigh. “But, like his daughters, he believed in justice. He planned to nail you and the others to the wall. He would have shown you all up and you knew it.”

Cody waved the gun at them. “Look, we just went to his studio to talk to the crazy old coot. No one was supposed to get hurt. But H.F. was determined to ruin us all and destroy everything we’d built with the coalition. We didn’t even believe he’d forged our paintings until we entered the studio and saw them.”

Sid made a disparaging sound. “But once you did, you couldn’t let the public see them. Were you afraid that if you just took them, he would only repaint them? He wasn’t a man easily persuaded.”

Cody swore. “I saw that we were getting nowhere with him, I wanted to leave. But we weren’t leaving without the forgeries. H.F. put up a fight, but finally he gave in. We carried the paintings to the car.”

“Including the one that was up for auction tonight,” Laramie said.

“That was Rock. He had to have it. We tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen,” Cody said.

“So how did you end up with all of the paintings?” Sid asked.

The artist looked surprised. “What makes you think—”

“You’re the one standing here with the gun,” she said.

Cody chuckled. “Rock promised to get rid of the forgeries, but I didn’t trust him. I was right. I discovered where he’d hidden them. That’s why he couldn’t tell anyone when he discovered they were missing.”

Laramie wanted to rush the man, but he couldn’t take the chance that Cody wouldn’t get off a shot. In the small cabin, it would be too easy to wound or kill one of them.

“Why didn’t
you
destroy them?” Laramie asked.

Cody shook his head. “They were beautiful.” He looked at Sid. “Your father was the most talented artist I’ve ever met. He was brilliant. Crazy as a loon, but a real genius. I knew I should destroy them, but I couldn’t. After a few years, I sold them. They were worth a lot more by then because our careers were going better. I figured the chances were good no one would ever find out.”

“It wasn’t easy, but I found them,” Sid said.

He didn’t seem to hear her. “Once I saw the one you brought to the gallery, I pretended to be as upset as Taylor was,” he said to Laramie. “We were all trying to get ahold of Rock. I knew he’d admit that they’d been stolen from him, but no one would believe him. But I had bigger problems. There was talk of a cat burglar in Big Sky. Only this cat burglar didn’t take anything. I paid a couple of houses a visit and realized quickly what was going on when I saw some of the originals H.F. had used to make his forgeries.”

“Is that when you panicked and anonymously donated what you thought was an H. F. Powell painting to the auction? That painting was a new one still on the easel in his studio the night he was killed.”

“You have no idea how hard it was to part with it,” Cody said. “That painting is worth a small fortune.”

Sid shook her head. “It would be—if my father had painted it. During the last years of his life, H.F. quit painting his own art to make forgeries of all your work. To keep the creditors at bay and the three of us fed, I painted in my father’s style.”

“It was a
forgery
?” Cody let out a bitter curse. “You’re just a family of forgers.”

“Exactly,” Zander said. “Our family was all smoke and mirrors.”

Cody looked sick. “I knew someone was switching the real paintings and collecting the forgeries once I heard about the so-called cat burglar. I just didn’t know who until tonight. I thought you would try to steal the painting. But I didn’t know how you would do it. Imagine my shock when I saw you in that black dress jumping down off the roof with it. I planned to follow you, but you got away. I thought I’d blown it, then low and behold, I spotted your double and she led me right to you.”

“Hank Ramsey was in on it, too, right?” Laramie asked. “Why isn’t he here?”

“I stopped by his place tonight.” Cody sighed. “I found him hanging from a beam in his kitchen.”

“You might as well put down the gun,” Laramie said. “It’s all going to come out now.”

Cody shook his head. He looked broken, like a man who had nothing to lose. “My art is all I have. Destroy that and I have nothing.” He leveled the gun at Sid. “No matter what happens to me, those forgeries have to be destroyed.” He pulled a bottle from his coat pocket. Laramie recognized it for what it was. A homemade firebomb—probably like the one he had used the night of H. F. Powell’s studio fire.

* * *

S
ID
HAD
BEEN
watching everything play out in front of her, feeling a little dazed. Since her father’s death, she’d been grieving for all that had been lost. Once the first forgery had turned up, she’d been on a mission to catch her father’s killer.

Cody Kent. She’d known it would be one of the original cowboy artists who started the coalition—or all four of them. She’d just never guessed it would be Cody who showed up at her door.

Laramie took a step toward Cody. She could tell he was trying to gauge his chances. He had to know that there was no one more dangerous than a man backed into a corner.

Sid stepped in front of Laramie. Her heart broke at the thought that she might get him killed over all this. If only she hadn’t gotten him involved. Zander, as well. She was going to get them all killed, and for what? Some artist’s ego? Or the price of an artist’s reputation?

“I didn’t want it to be you,” Sid said to Cody. “I guess we all wanted to believe it was Rock Jackson. But when I heard the news, I wondered why Rock would be making counterfeit money if he was the one who’d been selling the paintings he’d stolen from my father that night.”

Cody nodded, a bitter smile coming to his lips. “I realized that something like this could happen. That some fool might take H.F.’s copy of one of the paintings to an expert. I wasn’t stupid.”

“So why sell them?” Laramie asked.

Cody shrugged. “In retrospect, I should have destroyed them.”

Sid shook her head. “If Rock had already taken the forgeries that night...you didn’t have to go back and kill my father. H.F. was old and tired. He wouldn’t have redone the forgeries. But you couldn’t let him show you up. It was more about your pride, your ego, than the paintings or even what the organization had been doing. By then, I’m sure your group had covered up the charity scam.” She glanced at the glass jar clutched in his hand. “You went there to end it once and for all.”

“I thought I could talk some sense into the old fool.” Cody shook his head. “It’s all water under the bridge now, though. There won’t be anyone left who will be able to say differently and the forgeries will be destroyed for good.”

“What about Taylor?” Laramie demanded, moving up beside Sid, determined to protect her. How she loved this gallant man. “Taylor’s going to sing like a canary. He’ll tell everything he knows.”

“Even if anyone believed a word he said now that he’s facing a murder charge, Taylor doesn’t know anything,” Cody said.

“That’s too bad because I’m betting he didn’t kill Rock,” Laramie said. “Or that Hank Ramsey didn’t hang himself, either.”

“If you’re expecting a confession...” Cody said as he took a step back.

“You toss that in here and you’ll never get out in time to save yourself,” Sid said seeing him look toward a candle that still burned next to the bed. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Also you will destroy some of my father’s paintings. Thanks to you, they’re worth more now than when he was alive.” He hadn’t been able to destroy the forgeries. He wouldn’t be able to burn her father’s originals. “Not to mention...” She looked toward the bank of windows in the studio.

Cody looked angry and upset as he followed her gaze. He realized as she had that the windows were large enough that at least one of them might be able to get out before the fire killed them.

“Thank you for pointing that out,” he said. At gunpoint, he forced them all into a windowless storage room at the back of the cabin where Sid kept the old saws and milk cans she’d collected for her crafts.

“I’m sorry you have to die,” Cody said. “You have your father’s talent. But you also don’t follow the rules. You could never be a member of the Old West Artists Coalition.”

Laramie balled up his fist and took a step forward, but Sid caught his arm as Cody retreated from the room, slamming the door behind him and pitching them into darkness. Sid heard him lock the door and shove what sounded like her heavy buffet in front of it.

Chapter Nineteen

Laramie snapped on the switch he’d seen by the door. The small storage room was suddenly illuminated by a dim bulb hanging from the ceiling. He turned to Sid. “Tell me there is a reason you wanted him to trap us in here.”

“Other than my sister is as crazy as our father and is determined to get us all killed?” Zander asked.

Sid stepped to the door, putting her ear against it. “Just as I thought, he’s looking for the forgeries and stealing some of my paintings. I’m just thankful Cody appreciates good art. Now that he knows I’m H.F.’s daughter...he probably figures they’ll be worth a lot of money once I’m dead.” Her lips turned up in a knowing yet bitter smile. Then she quickly turned toward the old metal milk cans stacked in a corner. “Help me move these as quietly as we can.”

“See what I mean? Crazy, just like our father,” Zander said. Laramie thought the last thing Sid had done was lose her mind, so he hurried to help her and saw what had been hidden under the milk cans—a hatch in the floor.

He moved quickly to lift it. A blast of freezing cold air rose with the door. He looked down at the steps that disappeared into the darkness. “An escape tunnel?”

Zander laughed as her sister handed her a flashlight. “So this is where you hid the forgeries.”

“Quickly,” Laramie said as Zander snapped on the light and began to climb down. “We have to get out of here before he sets the place on fire.” He looked at Sid. “If he burns the cabin, your work will go up in flames.”

She smiled almost sadly and descended the stairs.

Laramie followed on her heels. They moved through a long tunnel that ended with a set of crude steps that went up.

“This is that other cabin in the woods,” Zander said as they climbed up into a small laundry room lit with daylight coming through the windows.

The moment they stepped out of that room into a larger one, Laramie saw the paintings. Along with the forgeries, he saw dozens of Sid’s. Still, he couldn’t imagine letting Cody Kent destroy even one of her works.

“Alert the authorities,” he said as he headed for the door.

“It’s already been done,” Sid said. “The moment the hatch was opened an alarm was set off. I have a friend who works at the security company. Wait, where are you going?”

“I can’t let him destroy your paintings, let alone get away.”

“They aren’t worth dying over. I can paint more,” she said grabbing at his sleeve. “Neither is catching Cody.”

Laramie heard sirens in the distance. “Stay here with your sister.” With that, he rushed out the door into the snowy morning.