Montana Creeds: Logan (20 page)

“What ‘things that go on around here,’ Cassie?” Logan asked. If Stillwater Springs had become a hotbed of crime since he left, the
Courier
hadn’t mentioned it. Nor had Jim, or Sheriff Book—although Floyd
had,
he remembered, asked him to stop by the office sometime soon.

He’d assumed that was part welcome, part warning—good to have you back, boy, but don’t think you’re going to raise hell in my town.

He moved the drop-in at the sheriff’s office up a notch on his agenda.

“Why didn’t you say anything about this before?” Logan asked, frowning.

“I just had the dream last night,” Cassie told him, looking dead serious.

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

Cassie nodded. “Round up those yahoos,” she said, gesturing toward Alec and Josh, “and we’ll go inside and have a cold drink.”

She was her old self again—and not.

He called the kids.

Josh’s cell phone rang while they were all swilling cola on ice in Cassie’s small, immaculate kitchen.

“We’re with Logan, Mom,” Josh explained patiently, after listening for a few moments. “We saw a real teepee—” His face changed, and his shoulders tensed.

“Okay.” He sighed. Then he ended the call and looked straight into Logan’s face. “We’ve gotta go home,” he said. “Wanda got out somehow, and Mom can’t find her anyplace.”

“W
ANDA
?” B
RIANA CALLED,
pocketing her cell phone as she reached the edge of the old cemetery. She shouldn’t have worried the boys, but the truth was, she’d panicked when she got home and found the back door standing wide open and the dog gone. “Wanda!”

A low yip sounded from the direction of the orchard, and Briana hurried in that direction. “Wanda!”

Reaching the first row of gnarled old apple trees, she stopped cold. Wanda sat almost square in the middle, shadowed by overhanging branches heavy with birdpecked fruit, looking up and shivering visibly. Her hackles stood straight up.

Instinct froze Briana’s heart, midbeat. Made the tiny hairs rise on her forearms and her nape. The branches only a few feet over Wanda’s head shook violently.

Briana barely dared to lift her eyes. When she did, she saw a massive brown bear clinging to the trunk of that apple tree and looking down at Wanda, almost curiously.

Were there cubs around? Briana had little—make that zero—experience with bears, but she knew if this was a sow, with a baby or two to protect, she and Wanda were in even bigger trouble than she’d thought.

Willing Wanda not to move, Briana slowly got out her cell phone again. Thank God Josh had programmed the thing to speed-dial; she thumbed the one-digit number and waited, her heart pounding so loudly that she was sure the bear could hear it.

“Mom?” Josh said. “We’re almost there—did you find Wanda?”

“I’m in the orchard,” Briana whispered, marveling at the calm flow of her voice. “Wanda’s here, too, and there’s a bear.
Tell Logan there’s a bear.”

Josh relayed the message, and Logan came on the line before Briana could let out her breath.

“Do not move,” he told her.

The tree branches began to shudder again, and Wanda gave a soft whimper.

“Hurry,” Briana pleaded. The phone was so slippery against her palm that she nearly dropped it.

“We’re turning in at the ranch road right now,” Logan said. “Stay on the phone with Josh—I need both hands to drive.”

Briana didn’t stay on the line, she hung up. If that bear mauled Wanda—or her—she didn’t want her son to hear it.

The phone didn’t ring again, as she’d half expected, half feared. Logan would have better sense than that—the shrill, unfamiliar sound might set the bear off. And it was on the brink of rage
now;
the very air seemed charged with a tremulous zing.

Wanda gathered the muscles in her haunches, as if to stand on all fours and try to make it to Briana. Her eyes were huge and full of trust. She believed she’d be all right, if she could just get to her mistress.

Briana knew it wasn’t that simple, and it grieved her to think the dog’s trust might be misplaced.

Hours seemed to pass, though it was surely only a matter of seconds. She thought she heard the roar of Logan’s truck engine, but he was probably too far away to get to them in time.

Never show fear around a dangerous animal.
The voice inside her head was her father’s. He’d told her that a dozen times if he’d told her once, and he’d been an expert on the subject, called upon to face angry bulls and excited broncs every time he stepped into an arena in his silly clown getup.

The truck came closer, and Briana felt both exhilaration and alarm. The bear heard it, too, and started down the trunk of that ancient apple tree, the branches shaking so ferociously that it seemed the whole tree might be uprooted.

Wanda broke and ran just as the bear reached the ground.

It stood on hind legs, forepaws raised. A strange, almost mystical calm came over Briana, as some stronger, braver version of herself took charge.

“You will not hurt my dog.”
Had she spoken the words, or just thought them? In either case, the bear, still upright, regarded her with its huge head tipped slightly to one side.

Wanda ducked behind Briana; she felt the dog pressing close against the backs of her legs.

The bear gave a tentative growl. Lowered itself to all fours. Power rippled beneath the mangy fur on its haunches; it was gathering itself to spring.

Briana, desperate again, tried to grin.

At the same moment, Logan’s truck came jostling overland at top speed, horn honking, veering right into the orchard.

The bear pondered its options, with an idle grace, and then bounded away, passing within a few feet of Briana and Wanda, in the general direction of the cemetery.

Logan slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the truck, running toward her. He pulled her hard against him, held her tight to his chest.

Briana’s knees buckled; she would have crumpled to the ground if Logan hadn’t been supporting her. Past his shoulder, she saw Josh and Alec in the truck, their faces pale circles against the windows.

“You’re okay,” Logan told her breathlessly. “You’re okay.”

She began to shake, hard. So did Wanda.

A cold sweat broke out all over Briana’s body.

“I can walk,” Briana managed to say. “I’m not so sure about the dog.”

Logan held her a few moments longer, until he could be sure she wouldn’t crumple to the ground. Then he reached down and hoisted Wanda into his arms.

Briana stumbled after him, looking back only once, to make sure the bear was still gone.

B
RETT TURLOW
hunkered in the shadowed back booth at Skivvie’s Tavern, his guts roiling like a pot of rancid soup left too long on the stove. His credit was no good at Skivvie’s, but earlier he’d stopped by the real estate office where his sister worked. Freida had been out showing a house to some sucker, so he’d borrowed a
few dollars from the cigar box she kept in her desk drawer. Petty cash, she called it.

Everything about Freida was petty, as far as Brett was concerned.

Her constant harping that he ought to get his ass off her couch and into a job, for example. Freida still thought it meant something in Stillwater Springs to be a Turlow. Although three years ago now that snooty librarian, Kristy Madison, had bought the big family house on Maple Street for pennies on the dollar, Freida was saving up to get it back.

It didn’t seem to bother Freida that Kristy had no intention of selling. She worked on the place from dawn ‘til dusk, and sometimes longer, every time she had a day off from the library. Brett knew that because he sat out there on Maple in the dark sometimes, in Freida’s ratty Corolla, remembering how things used to be, and the lights burned in that old wreck of a house ‘til all hours.

Lived like a spinster, that Kristy. Good-looking woman, too. Prime piece of tail, librarian or not. Word on the street was, she’d gotten her heart good and broken by none other than Dylan Creed, and she was waiting for him to come back.

Made her sound like that pathetic woman in the song—“Delta Dawn,” wasn’t it?—meeting the train every day, hoping her long-lost lover would come rolling in on it.

Brett snorted under his breath and turned his second foaming brewski round and round between his hands, there on the scarred tabletop. Like
Dylan
would ever trouble himself to visit Stillwater Springs again, with everything going his way out there in the big world.

As for Kristy—well, if she was waiting for somebody, it was for her own reasons, and not because she was hung up on Dylan or anybody else. Brett had known her all his life, and she didn’t care about anything besides books and horses and that old house.

He had to slow down on the beer, he told himself. This one had to last, because he was plum out of money—again.

He’d had all of that he needed once, back in the glory days when Turlow Timber was one of the biggest operations in the state. Briana Grant wouldn’t have shut down
that
Brett Turlow, that was for sure. All right, so he’d had the Creed brothers’ leavings when it came to women, but that hadn’t been half-bad. He’d had a convertible and credit cards and all the best clothes, which was more than Logan or Dylan or Tyler could have claimed.

He’d done all right with the women
then.

Brett rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. He was fairly slavering to guzzle down that second beer, feel it hit his jangly nerve endings and dull all the ugly regrets, but besides his empty wallet, there was another reason to hold off.

Every time he got even halfway drunk, he saw Jake Creed’s ghost.

In fact, though he was still semisober, the specter loomed up on the other side of the table, right there in the back booth. Jake’s whole chest
was smashed to a bloody pulp under his tattered plaid work shirt, but he grinned.

Oh, the son of a bitch always grinned.

“I didn’t kill you, you bastard,” Brett mumbled, jumping a little when he realized he’d spoken aloud.
There had been an investigation after the accident, and he’d been cleared of any wrongdoing.

The ghost vanished, still grinning, but its disappearance wasn’t the relief it should have been. Brett had been safe from Jake Creed’s shade during the daylight, as long as he was sober, but he’d just seen him, and it wasn’t much past noon—was it?

He leaned sideways in the booth seat, ‘til he could see the beer-sign clock on the far wall. It had a lightup bear holding a can of brew in one paw on it, and the wire hands said five minutes to three.

Briana Grant appeared in Jake’s seat in the next moment, looking all sexy and soft and female. She looked down her nose at Brett, like he stank or something, and then
blip
, she was gone.

Brett’s benumbed brain groped for a memory that slithered away from him like wet soap in the bottom of a bathtub. Logan Creed. He’d seen Creed with Briana’s boys, in the Mexican restaurant at the casino.

Holy shit.

No wonder Briana had turned him down when he’d asked her to the drive-in on Friday night. She was boinking the local hotshot.

Brett took a big gulp from his beer mug, hoping to steady himself.

He’d gone straight to Briana’s place, after she’d cut him dead in the parking lot at the casino that morning—or had he? Sometimes, he got things he did mixed up with things he’d only
thought
about doing.

He took another taste of the beer, just a cautious sip this time. Had to make it last, he reminded himself. Freida refused to buy the stuff, stingy bitch; she had
wine sometimes, but he always found it, and he’d finished off the last of her supply after he got back from Briana’s.

If he’d
gone
to Briana’s.

He shoved both hands into his hair.

Think.

Yes. He’d been there. The back door had been unlocked, and he’d gone inside, planning to move things around a bit, that was all. Give her a little jolt when she got home.

But an old black dog had come at him, first thing—hadn’t even barked a warning, like a dog ought to do. He’d turned and hotfooted it for the Corolla, with that hound snarling and nipping at his ass.

“Hello, Brett,” a familiar voice said, interrupting Brett’s struggle to sort the real from the imaginary.

Brett blinked, looked up, saw Sheriff Floyd Book sitting across from him. At first, he thought he was imagining it, like before, when old Jake was there, and after him, Briana.

A few beats passed before Brett understood that the sheriff was flesh and blood.

“I ain’t done nothin’,” he said immediately.

Book smiled. Took off his hat and set it on the seat beside him, nodded his gratitude when Sally Jo, the barmaid, brought him the usual, a cola with extra ice. Sally Jo looked at Brett like she was scared of him, and scuttled back behind the bar as soon as she’d delivered Book’s beverage.

“Thought I’d give you a ride over to Freida’s,” Book said easily. “You’re in no shape to drive, it appears to me.”

Rage swelled inside Brett, fit to burst him wide open. “Sally Jo call you and tell you I was drunk?” he rasped.

“Don’t you go blaming Sally Jo for my coming here,” Book said, after taking a sip of his cola. Must have gone down good, since he closed his eyes for a moment, like he was savoring the taste or something. “Under state law, she’s partly responsible if you get into an accident on the way home.”

“I ain’t gonna get in no accident,” Brett said.

Book sighed. He was tired of his job, everybody knew that. Tired of Stillwater Springs, and probably tired of his crippled wife, too.

And Brett was tired of
him.

Things would just go from bad to worse, though, if Jim Huntinghorse won the special election.

“You talk like a hillbilly. You need a shower and a shave. And those clothes… well. Those clothes.” The sheriff interlaced his fingers, studied Brett thoughtfully. “Once, your name meant something in this town. What happened?”

Brett merely snorted. Book knew damn well
what happened.
The old man had died, leaving the company books in a tangle—turned out he’d had a whole nuther family squirreled away in Missoula—and then Jake Creed had gotten himself killed up in the woods on a fine summer day, just like this one. And after that, “Brett Turlow” meant fuck-all in Stillwater Springs and everywhere else.

“I’ll finish my drink,” Book said affably, as though they were two friends having a nice chat, “and give you a lift over to Freida’s. You can hike back for the Corolla later on.”

“I am not drunk,” Brett said. “And I didn’t cut that logging chain and turn all that timber loose on Jake Creed, neither.”

“Nobody said you did,” the sheriff replied easily. He seemed loose, like his joint sockets were lubricated with motor oil, and Brett knew there was a younger, sharper man behind Book’s eyes than most people ever guessed.

“Everybody
thinks
I did,” Brett lamented. “Same as.”

The sheriff glanced at Brett’s beer, like he might take it away, hand it off to Sally Jo to be dumped down the drain back of the bar. So Brett grabbed it and chugged it right down.

Book just waited and watched.

He’d been doing it for years.

Waiting. Watching. Eyeballs peeled for a wrong move.

“Something has been eating at you all this time,” the sheriff remarked. “That’s for sure.”

“You headed up the investigation yourself,” Brett reminded him. “There was no proof that I killed Jake Creed.”