Sleepless in Montana (40 page)

She glared at Jemma. “My best friend. A liar.
I thought I could trust you. Dad is sick, is he? I just found a
copy of his last medical exam in Big Timber. He’s missing one leg,
but other than that, he’s as healthy as I am. Maybe more.”

Dinah inhaled sharply, the sound slashing
through the room, and Carley turned to her mother. “Was I so
pitiful and dumb that you had to get Dad to agree to this lie? It’s
Jemma’s fault, isn’t it? She’s always the one with ideas, and most
of them without a bit of sense.”

“Carley—” Jemma began, her tone shattered.
Hogan took one look at her stricken, pale face and drew her close
against him.

Carley slashed down her hand. “I’m running
this show. Shut up. All of you were in on it, weren’t you? All of
you knew that I was being stalked, and all of you stopped your
lives to come here. And I’ve trusted you all with my life.”

She slammed her fist into Mitch’s midsection,
and he didn’t blink, his features taut and pale.

“I trusted you,” she said, her voice
vibrating with passion. “I trusted you completely.”

“Honey—” Mitch stopped when Carley glared at
him, her usually cheerful expression livid with rage.

Hogan saw the family he loved, tearing in
pieces, Carley wounded and slashing at the tenuous bonds. Jemma was
shaking badly now, tense within the circle of his arm. Ben and
Dinah were rigid and pale; looking helpless and worried, Aaron and
Mitch were clearly gripped by Carley’s stormy emotions. “That’s
enough, Carley.”

“No, it’s not. Not nearly enough.” Carley’s
tears were trailing down her pale cheeks, dripping onto her T-shirt
and spotting the dark blue fabric.

Jemma moved from Hogan’s protective arm
around her waist and started toward Carley, to hold her as she
always had. Hogan caught Carley’s open hand as it shot toward
Jemma’s face. “No.”

“Let her.” Jemma pushed free of Hogan’s
protection. “Hit me. I don’t care. Nothing could compare to losing
you. I’d rather anything happened to me, than to have you hurt
again. He’s been waiting since that night— Don’t you think I’ve
lived every minute of it with you, every night when you cried out?
It has to stop, Carley. Hogan can’t paint anymore, because he sees
your face as it was that night— eyes open, rounded, your mouth
bruised. It’s got to end. That bastard is lurking around here,
making threats, and Hogan and Ben and Mitch and Aaron are the best
protection you’ve got— This was the safest place for you.”

“The safest place for me is away from you
all,” Carley stated darkly, her voice vibrating with emotions. “You
came here, you got Hogan and everyone else in my family and—”

“You want to hit me, fine. Do it. But you
were trapped in that night eighteen years ago and—”

“Dammit, what night eighteen years ago?” Ben
demanded, and the entire room seemed to quiver and stop in time as
the younger adults looked at each other.

Dinah took Ben’s hand. “What happened
eighteen years ago?” she asked softly, fearfully. “I want to know.
Something changed Carley— what happened?”

“Mother, you didn’t know, did you? That was
our little secret, the girls and the boys.” In blistering detail,
lashing out with all the pain in her, Carley told what the attacker
had said and done to her.

Their expressions stricken, Ben and Dinah
sank to the couch.

Mitch jerked Carley back from the door she
had just opened. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I am, and not with you.”

“I’ll take you,” Hogan said, after smoothing
Jemma’s taut back. Secrets kept too long hurled around the room,
and there was nothing he could do to hold them back. Jemma looked
as if she were crumbling and Ben stared vacantly into space.
Dinah’s eyes held tears, Aaron looked off into the night, and Mitch
never stopped looking at Carley.

“I want her out of this house, now,” Carley
stated, glaring at Jemma. “Or I’ll never set foot in it again.”

Hogan took Jemma’s cold, shaking hand and
placed his keys in her fist. He wanted to hold her in his arms, to
protect her, but she wanted this finished. Jemma wanted the Kodiaks
salvaged, and at the moment, he believed that, too. “You be at my
place when I get there. Stay put. Aaron— Mitch, make certain she’s
okay.”

“I’ll stay with her.” In the dim light,
Aaron’s face looked as aged and haunted as Ben’s.

“You’re protecting her. Sending her away, so
she won’t have to face what she’s done.” Carley was taut with rage,
sending an antique glass lamp onto the floor, shattering it. “She’s
got you all wrapped around her finger, all dancing to her tune and
telling me lies. My family, my fine, loving family, doesn’t think
that I can handle my life.”

“That’s enough, Carley,” Hogan said, wrapping
his hand around her upper arm and tugging her toward the door.
“We’ll talk about it outside.”

But Carley was running toward a fast horse
and when Hogan leaped from the front porch to follow her, Aaron
called his name. “Here. If he’s out there—”

Hogan caught the heavy automatic Beretta and
jammed it into his belt. He glanced at Jemma, took a hard, fast,
kiss and said, “You’re not running away. I’ll come after you, if
you do. Stay at my house, in my bed, and you’d better be there when
I get home.”

He didn’t wait for her consent, there was no
time; Carley was already racing across the pasture. Hogan caught a
fast horse, a gelding named Pete. Wrapping his hands in Pete’s
mane, he sailed over the fence as Carley had.

Carley was bent low in the moonlight, riding
bareback across the moonlit stretch toward the stream where she’d
been attacked. By the time he got there, Carley was running toward
the spot in the bushes.

Hogan came up softly behind her.
“Carley?”

She was shaking, staring at the spot where
she’d been pinned and threatened and where her life had
stopped.

“I hate myself,” she whispered, violence in
the hushed tone. “I’m weak, and I’m pitiful.”

He wanted to hold her, to tell her that she
was the beautiful sister he’d always loved, but Carley wasn’t
listening now; she was tearing herself into shreds. “You’re not.
You’re Carley.”

She pivoted to him, her body rigid, tears
streaking her pale moonlit face. “Why are you always at the wrong
place, saying the right things? Haven’t you had enough? You’re
probably the only one in this whole situation who knew that I
should be told... that Mom and Dad should have been told years ago.
You told me that— that they should know. How many times was it?
There was pain in you then, and now I know—”

Carley fell into the bushes, lying on her
back, arms at her sides, shaking as she relived the attack.

Hogan jerked her to her feet and held her a
distance away from him. He shook her, willing her to understand, to
come back from the evil place she’d been. “Stop that. Do you want
to give him more power? He’s already done enough.”

“I hate Jemma. She did this.”

“She loves you, Carley. More than herself.
She knew what would happen if Ben and Dinah weren’t told— how she
could be hated by them both, and yet for you, she kept a lie
alive.”

Then Hogan released his sister and stepped
back. Carley had to stand on her own, and she couldn’t if everyone
continued to protect her. She had her pride, too, and Hogan prayed
that she could deal with what he would tell her. “He’s dangerous,
Carley. He’s probably a serial killer, and I think he murdered my
uncle—”

“Joe Blue Sky? But—”

“There was motor oil on the rag near Joe’s
body. The rag hadn’t been there long. It wasn’t weathered. The oil
did not match that of Joe’s pickup.”

“That lovely old man? Who would want to kill
him? What monster would kill him?” she corrected, her eyes wide,
filling with horror.

Hogan studied her, gauging her strength now.
“There’s more. Do you want to know or not?”

He’d banked on her Kodiak blood, that
fearless blood that matched his, and when Carley nodded and held
his hand, Hogan said, “Remember old Doc Medford, the dentist? His
house and lab burned.”

“I know, but what does that have to do
with—”

Hogan inhaled and wished he didn’t have to
tell Carley. But there had been enough secrets around her. She
needed the truth. “There were unusual bite marks on the women he
murdered. Bite marks are traceable now to dental work. Those women
were supposed to be— very sweet and untouched.”

“Virgins?” Carley supplied shakily. “Like me?
Like I was?” she corrected with a blush.

Hogan brought her trembling body against his,
wanting to protect Carley as he always had. But he had to go on
with the truth, or Carley’s healing couldn’t begin. “Yes. But they
weren’t virgins. I think he was angry to discover that special bit
of information, and killed them in a rage. Those dental records
could have proven him guilty.”

“He bit me that night.... He likes to hurt.”
Carley wrapped her arms around Hogan, holding him tight. “How
awful. That’s why I was never left alone, why you and Mitch and Dad
and Aaron—”

“And Jemma, too. Try to understand, Carley.
She loves you. She knew you wouldn’t leave Seattle for your own
safety.”

“She did my thinking for me. I can’t forgive
that easily.”

“Jemma was trying to protect you, maybe a
little too much. But you’ve changed.”

Hogan held her back from him, looking down
her small curved frame. “For one thing, you’ve lost weight, and
you’ve been holding your own with Jemma, not letting her push you
around. Your one handicap is that you have a family of powerful
people around you with their own scars. That’s why they want to
protect you— because they love you and don’t want you to be where
they’ve been—”

“Mitch?”

Hogan prayed that what he was doing was
right. “You should ask him about the scars on his back.”

Carley shook her head, the short boy cut
making her face look more feminine than the longer style. “He won’t
tell me. I’ve tried.”

“I think he will now.”

Carley was quiet, looking away into the
rolling pastures. “What about Jemma? I know she hasn’t had an easy
life, but she’s always seemed so strong.”

“She made herself that way. She’s fought a
long time, and she’s done her best for everyone else. I want to
help her now.”

“She had bruises on her face one day— when
she was married. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ she said, and then she was
divorced. I don’t know what she went through. She wouldn’t talk
about it. Looking back, Jemma never told me anything she didn’t
want me to know. That’s one-sided, isn’t it?”

Carley wasn’t asking questions; she was
trying to unravel and rebalance a lifetime relationship.

Hogan let her deal with that, dropping
painfully into the realization that Jemma had been in an abusive
marriage. The thought startled him; he hadn’t thought of Jemma as a
woman who would allow that.

Rage began to curl through him, and he slowly
slammed the door on it. At the moment, he was trying to get through
to Carley to trust the people who loved her, and Jemma hadn’t
trusted him.

He pushed away that sliver of pain and
concentrated on getting through to Carley.

In the moonlight, Carley’s face was stark
with pain. “You’re saying that everyone has had pain and that
they’re working to heal. I don’t know if I can do that.”

When Carley snuggled closer, Hogan knew that
she would weigh her emotions. “Jemma is staying with me. She’s not
going anywhere until this is over. I think that will be soon.”

Carley pushed free of him and walked to the
stream bank. She threw rocks into the stream for a long time,
skipping them. Hogan came to stand beside her, tossing rocks as she
was.

He wanted her to know that he’d always feel
the same about her, no matter what she decided about Jemma, or her
family.

When Carley sat on the bank, he sat beside
her, and together they watched the moonlight caress the stream.

“Cutthroat,” she said, noting the fish that
had hurled itself out of the water.

“Big brown trout— five pounds,” Hogan
corrected, and could almost imagine Jemma running for her
high-priced, designer pole. “You do your thinking, Carley. Take
your time.”

“Okay.” She turned to him. “Everyone else
knows this, but me, right? Jemma?”

Hogan shook his head. “No. The Kodiaks have
vigilante blood. I didn’t want a free-for-all, before the killer
shows his hand. He meant to send a message to us— that he was a
threat. I want it to appear that we didn’t get the message, and
he’s just sent another in Ben’s mailbox— a picture of you in
Seattle and a new bra.”

He waited to see the fear in Carley’s
expression, but instead she locked her jaw and narrowed her eyes.
She wanted to fight and that was good.

Hogan handed a truth to her, and hoped it
would help strengthen her. “I didn’t think Jemma could handle it.
She would, if she had to, though. I wanted to protect her, and they
are only suspicions. I have nothing really to go on. I think he’s
getting restless, and he’s stirred up. I think he’ll probably make
a move soon. I didn’t want Jemma to go off half-cocked and set him
off. I think we should sit tight.”

“But you thought that I should know, or you
wouldn’t have told me. You think that I can handle this, don’t
you?” Carley’s tone said that knowledge had helped her
self-confidence, and Hogan nodded.

She inhaled the sweet night air, scented of
cut grass, and said quietly, “I’m ready to take a long ride now, an
easy one, to air out. I suppose I’m stuck with you, my Knight of
the Round Table, right?”

He smiled at the memory she’d dredged up from
her childhood. Carley’s emotions were churning now, but she knew
what was sensible and right. “Let’s ride back and saddle up, and
I’ll take you up to meet my mother. There’s nothing like a
moonlight ride in the foothills to straighten things out. I’ve been
thinking I’d like to roof that old cabin up there, if you’ll help
me. It’s just a tiny thing, and we can use the leftovers in the
barn. We’d take packhorses.”