Run Wild (20 page)

Natasha grinned, holding her change in her hand and staring at the vending machines. Her aunt and uncle had the perfect relationship, one that had passed the test of time and been through many hurdles. Life would truly be perfect if she could find a man who would treat her as well as her uncle treated her aunt. Once again images of Trent popped into Natasha’s head. It took more than a perfect body and sexual chemistry to make a perfect man.

Not that she’d given Trent a chance to show her what kind of man he might be. She shoved the distracting thoughts out of her head, or tried to, again.

“Yes, I’m fine, Uncle Greg. Thanks for asking.” She laughed along with both of them. “The Avalanche doesn’t have a scratch on it. You know I’m a really good driver. And I have really fast reflexes.”

“I brought you up well,” Aunt Haley swooned.

“Yes, you did,” Natasha said seriously. She wasn’t sure if her aunt knew how much Natasha appreciated being given the life she had today, which was a good one. Once she got home and back into her comfort zone, thoughts of Trent would quit plaguing her. It might not hurt to go out one night there soon, hit the clubs. Mr. Perfect was probably right there in L.A., just waiting for her. “And thank you for that,” she added.

“No thanks are necessary,” her aunt said seriously. “You’re a King and part of our family. And you’re the daughter I never had,” she added.

“Okay, you two can get mushy later. Back to the facts, Natasha. Why was this buck dead on the highway?”

“I don’t know. I guess it got hit.”

“Right at the turnoff to one of the largest ranches in Northern California? And no one picked it up? Was it still warm?”

“I didn’t touch it!” she exclaimed, but had to agree with her uncle. It hadn’t crossed her mind that it was odd for a dead buck to be in the highway. Remembering that night, she’d sat in the truck when Trent had gone with the man who’d come in from town to help clear the buck away. “It didn’t cross my mind to ask about the buck,” she admitted.

“Don’t cut yourself short, sweetheart,” her aunt immediately jumped in, defending her. “You’ve got mad computer skills that have helped out on more cases than I can count.”

“It didn’t cross your mind to ask about the buck?” Uncle Greg interrupted. “What else was going on?”

A drop-dead sheriff was going on. Natasha worded it a bit differently for her aunt and uncle: “When I first checked in at the bed-and-breakfast, I met Sheriff Oakley, the man who’d called and insisted I come up and discuss the murder with him. Our meeting wasn’t exactly…” She let the words trail off, unable to describe how her first meeting with Trent went without coming out and saying she had flipped him over her head and Trent threw her a fast one and proved he had skills of his own.

“How old is this sheriff?” Uncle Greg asked.

“We saw his driver’s license before I came up here,” she reminded him, although she doubted he’d forgotten. Natasha fed one of the vending machines and pushed the button for a large bottle of water, then moved to the next machine and plugged more coins into it, then selected cheese crackers. “He’s thirty-five.”

“And I’m sure even better looking than his driver’s license picture,” her aunt prompted. “Am I right?”

Again Natasha could tell her aunt and uncle were speaking to each other under their breath and she couldn’t hear a word they were saying.

“Yes, he’s gorgeous,” she admitted, carrying her afternoon snack back to the truck. “And no, he didn’t distract me from learning all I could about Dad,” she added, frowning when she guessed that might be what they were saying to each other.

“We know he didn’t,” Aunt Haley said immediately. “We were just pointing that out to each other. You would never let a man get close enough to distract you from doing your job, or interfere with any other part of your life. You’ve always insisted everything around you, whether they were your personal things or your schedule for the day, be in perfect order. A sexy sheriff would mess everything up. That isn’t how our Natasha works,” she said easily, laughing as if she thought it precious. “Too bad for the sheriff, huh. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took one look at you and forgot what he was investigating.”

Even Uncle Greg laughed at Aunt Haley’s last comment.

Natasha dropped the keys to the truck on the ground as she faced the driver’s side door. Cursing under her breath, she bent down and snatched them up, then unlocked the truck. Was that how they saw her? Was every aspect of her life in perfect order and allowing any man to get too close, to disturb her emotions and put her head in a state of chaos, unacceptable?

It was a sobering thought and not something she wanted to explore with either one of them right now. Better to remain focused and share the rest of the details with them. Once she’d told them everything, they would pace, brainstorm, and share how they saw the sequence of events she’d laid out for them. Part of her wished she were home already so she could watch them in action. They were quite the team, and she knew they would offer insight on certain events she hadn’t thought of. Her bounty-hunting skills were far from par to the course. Maybe she’d try to do some fieldwork once she was home, now that they had another person in the office. It would be a hell of a lot better than sitting with Patty all day.

“I didn’t mean anything bad by it,” Aunt Haley consoled, when Natasha cursed under her breath.

“I know. I’m sorry. I dropped the keys.” The last thing she wanted was a discussion on relationships. Trent had successfully taken her from an empty, deep void, where she’d stamped out all feelings, when he made it blatantly clear how guilty her father appeared. Then in less than an hour Trent had pulled every emotion out of her within minutes. He’d made her come with one damn kiss.

“All right. I didn’t want to upset you. It’s actually very high praise. Your organizational skills are what make you so perfect. And I’m sure you’ll make sure that perfect man never messes up your life.”

Was her aunt kissing ass or mocking her?

Mess up her life?

Trent Oakley had appeared in her world and turned it all upside down, inside out, scattered her senses to the wind, stomped on every emotion she was capable of having, then left them scattered for her to gather and put back together. And the worst part of it all, he probably didn’t have a clue he did any of that.

“I’m not worried about relationships right now,” Natasha said, and as the words left her mouth she remembered Trent suggesting they explore what was obviously simmering between them. How in the world would he have proposed they do that? She shook her head, meaning what she’d just said. It had to be how it was. “I’m too upset about Dad.”

There. She’d admitted the real truth.

“Coming up here showed me how lacking my true investigative skills really are. I should have thought to learn more about why the buck was in the highway,” she admitted. “There was another roadblock of sorts, earlier today. I’d left Weaverville because I caught the woman who runs the bed-and-breakfast snooping through my things.”

“Are you serious?” her uncle barked.

“She came across as pretty nice and I think overall she was. The sheriff put her up to it. I know he did. Trent either asked her to check me out and learn if I knew where my my father was or straight up suggested she search through my stuff when the opportunity was right to see if I was hiding anything.”

“Did he admit to that?” her aunt asked.

“No. But when I confronted him about it, he didn’t deny it.” Natasha saw the hard, impenetrable stare he’d given her when she’d brought it up. She saw all of him in her mind. It seemed he was hell-bent on remaining in her thoughts no matter how hard she tried scooting him to the side. “After I checked out of that bed-and-breakfast and decided to get another room, I’d barely been there an hour when I thought I saw Dad across the street.”

“What?” both her aunt and uncle said at the same time.

“It was getting dark, and incredibly overcast, and I was peering out of an old window.” She stopped before adding that the window had desperately needed cleaning. “He was in a gray Buick. I got the tag number.”

“Give it to me and I’ll run it for you, if you want, but George isn’t in a gray Buick.” Her uncle spoke with enough conviction, it sounded as if he’d already confirmed that with her father.

“How do you know?” Before either could answer, she added, “I followed him. That’s when I ran over the spikes in the road. He’d turned off the highway onto a rough dirt and gravel road. But he had a far enough of a lead on me that I didn’t notice he pulled off and drove around the booby-trapped part of the road. We followed him and found an old, abandoned log cabin.” Natasha was on a roll now, her thoughts spinning as she let the words tumble out. “It was obvious someone was staying there. The sheriff had caught up with me and I didn’t want him knowing I’d come out that way following the Buick. If he was Dad, I wanted to talk to him before bringing the law around him.”

“Spikes in the road?” her uncle grumbled, that dangerous edge returning as he interrupted her. “Please tell me my Avalanche is okay.”

“I’m driving home in it right now, Uncle Greg. The truck is fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” her uncle said dryly. “But what about you? Why are you coming home?”

Her aunt jumped in immediately. “Your father needs you up there, Natasha.”

“Needs me?” She climbed into the truck, dropped her crackers and water in the passenger seat, then pulled the truck door closed. “Did he say he needed me? Where the hell is he?” Was he staying at the run-down old cabin? she wanted to ask. Did he try to shoot her?

“He wanted us to give you a message,” her uncle said. “George said to tell you that it wasn’t him at the cabin.”

“What?” Her voice cracked and she ended up whispering into the phone. She stared at the crackers in the seat next to her, knowing there was no way she’d be able to eat them now. Shifting her attention to the opened ashtray, Natasha frowned at the small black cylindrical disk she had tossed in with the change. “That wasn’t Dad?”

“Why did he ask us to give you that message?” her uncle asked, his tone soft but serious. He was in full interrogation mode now.

“He didn’t tell you?” Suddenly she felt like crap. “He knew I had doubts,” she murmured, more to herself than her aunt and uncle.

“He simply stressed it was imperative you knew he wasn’t at the cabin. He said you needed to know that,” her uncle explained. “Now that I know you thought you’d found him and were following him, I understand the message. I don’t know how he knew you thought you were following him, though. Do you?”

“No. It doesn’t make sense.”

Natasha blew out a troubled breath. “I really need to talk to Dad. The evidence against him is overwhelming. It’s sickening how everything points to him being a murderer.”

“And you believed he was?” her uncle demanded.

Natasha didn’t miss the accusation in his voice.

“Okay.” Aunt Haley stepped in, her voice crisper and clearer than Uncle Greg’s had been a moment ago. “We were able to find all the details on the murder. So we don’t have to go over any of that.”

“If you relied on newscasts online, they didn’t report Carl Williams was beheaded and his head impaled by a fence post at the entrance to the ranch.”

“Damn,” her aunt said, breathing loudly as she allowed a moment of silence to pass among all of them.

It wouldn’t please her aunt and uncle, but Natasha told them the truth anyway. “I’m coming home because it didn’t appear I could do anything up there. Dad’s fingerprints were all over the corpse and positioned in a way that made it look as if he secured the rope around Williams’ wrists and ankles. His fingerprints were everywhere. Dad was at the scene of the crime. If he didn’t kill that ranch hand, he was involved. And at that cabin I saw a man running from us over the hill. I thought it was Dad. I yelled at him. I yelled, ‘Dad!’ He stopped, turned, and shot at me.”

Again there was a rather unsettling bit of silence over the phone. They could be pissed at her all they wanted. They hadn’t been there. Natasha wasn’t ignoring family. Her family was ignoring her, specifically her father, which was what he’d done all her life.

She returned her attention to the small black disk and picked it up out of the ashtray. As she flipped it over, she recognized it for what it was—a bug. And it had been in her purse.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” her uncle said.

Natasha stared at the listening device as it dawned on her how it ended up in her purse. She knew what she was going to do, too.

“Where is Dad now?”

Chapter Nine

Trent leaned over the large walnut desk and frowned as Porter Vaskins, the vice president of Trent’s bank, turned the small key around slowly between his long, skinny fingers.

“You understand our policies about safe-deposit boxes are quite strict.” Porter looked at Trent over the rim of his glasses. “You’d need a court order to access a box.”

“I know that, Porter.” Trent knew Porter played by the rules, not that he hadn’t asked the older man for favors in the past.

Porter had been with First National Bank ever since Trent could remember. He and his father used to come into the bank and Porter would always have a bowl of lollipops. Those lollipops were the only reason Trent tolerated the otherwise extremely boring errand.