The Black Sheep and the Princess (32 page)

Of course, the snow was deeper this far down the hillside, but not that much.

Had Donovan and Bagel come this far once already? And then she had another thought. Or had someone else been through the snow down here first?

Her heart, already thumping pretty good from slogging through knee-deep snow, picked up an extra beat. She opened her mouth to call out, then thought better of it. Whoever had been here, if someone had, had come recently, to make those kinds of snow tracks. What if they were still out here? What if they found Donovan, or her, out here stalking about? Then what?

She glanced wildly around for a moment, trying to see where Donovan might be. There were more tracks heading past this cabin, but were they just his? She couldn't tell at this point. She waded through the snow up to the cabin in front of her, wanting to know what they might have been looking for, not that they apparently found it, seeing as they'd continued on, but she wanted to look anyway. Maybe he was just spending more time investigating these and that was why the snow looked more churned up.

A peek inside the door showed nothing out of the ordinary. Bare bunk beds were shoved against the far wall, along with a few heavy wooden dressers and two huge oak footlockers, the same type of furniture she'd discovered in the other cabins she'd looked into. She hadn't gotten around to inspecting the furnishings up close as yet, mostly because she imagined the years of mold, heat, and dampness would mean replacing most of it.

She went to duck back out, then stopped, and ducked her head back inside. Her boots had left wet marks on the floorboards, but that wasn't what caught her attention. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something wasn't right. It didn't come to her until she looked back down at her damp boot-prints.

“No dust,” she murmured. She hadn't gone into every cabin yet, and none of the ones down here by the lake, but she had done a cursory examination of a few of the larger, more viable ones up the hill, closer to the main lodge. The one thing she remembered most from her exploration was the sneezing attacks she'd gotten from the dust.

This cabin was musty and smelled a bit moldy, but was otherwise as neat as a pin. “That's odd.”

“That's what I thought.”

Kate stifled a scream and spun around with her hand clamped to her chest. “You really need to stop doing that.”

“You really need to stay inside where it's warm so only one of us has frostbite to cure later.”

“You never came back, and I got curious. I wanted to know what was going on. It's my camp,” she said, knowing she sounded ridiculously defensive, especially since he was the one out here willingly sacrificing to help her out. “I'm sorry,” she said before he could mention the same to her. “I guess I just don't do well with the helpless female role. I'm not the sitting around, eating muffins while the big strong guy does all the work, type. It just doesn't sit well with me.”

“Understood,” he said. “It's your numb toes. But next time—”

She kissed him to shut him up, then smiled when it worked. Before he could go back to lecture mode, she stepped into the cabin. Donovan knocked his boots against the doorframe, then stepped in behind her.

She took a slow scan of the room. “So, I'm guessing someone has been playing Goldilocks and the Three Bears in my cabins?”

“A more accurate assessment than you could imagine.”

She shot him a questioning look. “So you think people were living in them? Or sleeping here, or whatever? Because if they were just using it for storing contraband of some kind, why bother cleaning, right?”

“Uh, I don't think they've been storing anything here. Not in the way you mean, anyway.”

Kate raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

Donovan moved past her and pointed to the wall. “See these?”

She had to move closer. There were a series of small holes drilled, but no hardware in them any longer.

“And here?” He pointed to the headboard and baseboard of one of the bunks.

Kate leaned closer and saw they'd been drilled at the corners of the headboard and footboard, only these holes still had eyehooks in them. She looked at Donovan. “I have no idea what these mean.”

To demonstrate, Donovan smiled and flopped down on one of the bunks. He put his arms over his head and spread his legs.

“Oh,” Kate said. Then her eyes popped wide when he wiggled his eyebrows, then pumped his hips.
“Oh!”

He sat up. “It looks like someone in town has set up a little…business out here. Of the kinky variety.”

She walked over to the wall, looked at the series of holes, which were just above head level for her, and decided she didn't need all the details. She turned back to face him. “So instead of a camp for special needs kids, I have—”

“The best little whorehouse in Winnimocca.”

“Oh, my God.” She looked back at the holes in the wall, then at the beds, trying not to imagine…anything. She wasn't as successful as she'd hoped. “How did you figure that out? I mean, from a couple of holes in the wall, I'd have never put that together.”

“Actually, I didn't find those first.” He stood up and pulled an envelope out of his inside pocket. “I found these.”

“Which don't belong to you.”

Kate whirled around, but Donovan was already halfway across the room, placing himself between her and their newly arrived guest.

“And you would be?” Donovan asked.

“Stan Harris,” Kate supplied, still frozen to the spot in shock. “Ralston Chamber of Commerce.”

“Ah, Stan,” Donovan said. “Sorry, I didn't recognize you without the makeup and…the heels, I think it was?”

Stan stepped into the cabin in a swirl of snowflakes, leaving the door open behind him. He stuck out his hand. “I'll take those.”

Donovan tossed it to him, flustering him briefly as he tried to react quickly enough to catch them.

“Donovan!” Kate shouted, surprised that he'd so easily acquiesced, then realized the ploy the instant Donovan closed the gap and drove Stan into the cabin wall with one well-placed, fullback-sized shoulder.

Stan wheezed air at the heavy contact, but he managed to still be clutching the manila envelope as Donovan pinned him in place.

“You have a little explaining to do,” Donovan said, the calm of his tone at severe odds with the menacing look on his face.

Kate stepped a little closer, keeping her eyes on Stan's hands, making sure he was holding only the envelope and nothing else. Like a weapon.

“I—I don't owe you any kind of explanation. You don't belong here.”

“I belong wherever the hell I say I do. You, on the other hand, are trespassing.”

Stan's lip curled slightly. “You have no place telling me what I can and can't do, much less passing any judgment, what with your drunk father and slut of a moth—”

Donovan's hand closed over Stan's throat, cutting off whatever else he'd been about to say. “Careful.” He leaned in. “Now, when I remove my hand, the only words coming out of your mouth are going to be the ones explaining how and why you and some other fine residents of Ralston came to use this property for your own twisted little jollies.”

“Go to—” Stan gagged as the pressure was increased, before Donovan relaxed his grip. But Stan doggedly continued. “I don't have to answer to you or anyone,” he rasped. “What we do and where is our own business.” His gaze strayed from Donovan, past his shoulder to Kate. “She isn't the owner of this property, so you have no legal right to hold me here or question me.”

“I'm considering a citizen's arrest.”

“On what grounds? Trespassing? I highly doubt Gilby is going to be interested in prosecuting that.” He stretched his neck. “However, he might be motivated to arrest you for assault. Besides, you don't have proof that anything that might have allegedly gone on here wasn't done between consenting adults. Now, let me go.”

“Let me ask you something,” Donovan said, not moving so much as an inch, his face still up close and personal with Stan's. “The women in those pictures with you and a number of the other fine examples of Ralston citizenry, you know, the pictures you came racing out here in the snowstorm from hell to recover?”

“It wasn't supposed to storm like this,” he muttered, but Donovan kept talking.

“Looking at the women—and thank goodness they all look like they're of age there, Stanley—but, you know, and this might be a wild guess on my part, but I'm thinking they don't look like English is their first language, or their second for that matter. I haven't spent much time in Ralston on this return trip, but, you know, I don't recall a sudden influx of Russian women in town. Hard to imagine they all just happened to show up to party with some of Ralston's kinkiest for a few drinks and some fun with leather.”

Stan swallowed, and Kate noticed his knuckles whiten on the death grip he had on the envelope. “Like I said, you can't prove any different.”

Donovan stared him down for a second, then finally backed away, the release so sudden, Stan sagged a little against the wall before recovering his balance.

“So that was what the graffiti was all about?” Kate blurted out. “Your sorry attempts to scare me off so you could continue having your perverted little sex parties?”

Stan's gaze darted to her again. “You're not wanted here, Ms. Sutherland. Why don't you take the hint and set up your precious little camp elsewhere. Your mother wasn't the most popular person in Ralston when she packed up and left here without so much as a warning or an ‘I'm sorry' We relied on the economic boost we got from the camp.”

“So you'd think you'd be happy to see the return of that potential business revenue.”

“Not from you.”

“It was ten years ago,” Kate said, truly surprised at the level of animosity in his voice, but not bothering to apologize for her mother. In this case, she had no doubt Stan was telling the truth, or close enough to it. It sounded just like something Louisa would have done.

Stan pushed away from the wall, but heeded Donovan's silent warning when he again stepped forward between the two. He moved closer to the door instead. “Ten very long, economically depressed years. We'd rather have Timberline come in here and change the whole town into some giant tourist trap than have the likes of any Sutherland connected with Ralston in any way again.”

“So, you must have really enjoyed setting up your little sex shop here for a number of reasons,” Donovan interjected. “A little source of revenue for the town, assuming you charged for the pleasure—and I use that term really loosely here—of an invitation to one of your little leather and chain parties. But, even better, a middle finger of sorts to the oh-so-fine Sutherland clan every time you cracked that whip. Just imagine Louisa Sutherland rolling in her grave if she knew what depraved acts were taking place on the grounds of her once high-and-mighty camp.”

Donovan stepped closer. “But, let me ask you, though, did the Russian women get that part? And how much were you paying them, anyway, because from the looks of those pictures—and Stan, digital would be a real improvement over Polaroids, get with the new millennium—but, to be honest, they don't look like they're having near as much fun as you guys. So, what was in it for them?”

Stan darted his gaze from Donovan to Kate and back. “You have no proof any money changed hands.”

“I don't have to. I'm sure the full-scale investigation into the arson perpetrated on Ms. Sutherland's cabin will lead to some interesting discoveries. Especially when I point Roger in the right direction.” Donovan nodded toward the envelope. “That is, unless Roger is the guy in the full mask and chains getup. Doesn't look too comfortable to me, having your balls all knotted up like that, but who am I to say? Anyway,” he went on, quite conversationally, “we can take this to the state level then, no problem. I have a few connections.”

“It won't matter. You have no standing in this matter. And neither does she. It's not her cabin. None of this belongs to her at all.”

“Is that why you didn't even bother trying to hide your tracks this morning?” Kate asked, both furious and repulsed by the revelations. “Once you found out my name wasn't on the deed, you knew you could just tromp in here and—” She stopped, broke off, looked at Donovan. “Wait, the only person he could have heard that from would be—”

“Me.”

Sheriff Gilby stepped into the open doorway, decked out in a heavy parka and fur-lined, state-issued uniform hat. But all Kate saw was the very big service revolver in his hand.

“I'll take that,” he said, sticking his free hand toward Stan, who immediately handed over the envelope, looking almost sick with relief.

“It won't matter what you do here and now, Gilby,” Donovan said. “Copies of those pictures are already being processed, and state officials are being alerted as we speak.”

“I've been watching you all morning,” Gilby said. “You haven't been back to the cabin since making your ill-advised little stroll down here. If it were me, I'd have still been up there in that nice warm bed of hers, bumping—” He broke off when Donovan took a menacing step forward, but he recovered quickly and leveled his gun at Donovan's chest.