Run Wild (9 page)

Trent jotted down a few notes, but Lana was probably right. Every rancher in the area, not to mention most of their ranch hands, had rifles. Many of them were similar brands. He wouldn’t find out who had killed that buck and left him on the road unless someone saw them do it, which Trent doubted, or he would have received a phone call. All he could do about it at this point was keep his ears to the ground, see if anyone slipped up during conversation and offered evidence they’d been out that way at the right time in the evening to have shot the buck or seen anyone driving by or up to anything out of the ordinary.

Trent’s town usually talked to him about any detail, or event, they found odd. His people helped keep crime in the area to a minimum. Everyone looked out for everyone, as it should be. But this damned murder had the entire town and all ranches in the area squeamish. People weren’t thinking, or behaving, as they usually did.

“Thanks, Lana. My appointment is here, but I appreciate the phone call.”

“Glad to help.” She said her good-byes and hung up before Trent could do the same.

He placed the phone on the receiver and stood as Natasha walked in the door.

“Right on time.”

“I am?” She glanced at the large, round clock on the wall behind him. “Looks like I’m fifteen minutes early.”

“Like I said,” he muttered, starting around the desk.

Her expression changed slightly, although he couldn’t guess at what emotion, or reaction, he’d just pulled out of her. More than likely, working among a family of bounty hunters, Natasha had to be quick and alert to pull anything past them. Either she’d just learned this sheriff of a rural county might measure up to her standards more than she’d originally thought or he’d actually just busted her trying to catch him off guard. He doubted he’d get the truth out of her.

His phone rang again and he stopped, grabbing it and holding a finger up for her to give him a moment. “Sheriff’s office,” he said, then glanced at the caller ID.

“It’s me, Matilda, again,” Matilda whispered. “I forgot to tell you. Natasha King told me yesterday she wouldn’t be staying a week but just overnight. Well, I told you that part already. But I forgot to tell you this part.”

Trent stared down at his desk, not showing exasperation or any reaction at all to his long-winded and easily excited bed-and-breakfast owner. Anything he said would just keep them on the phone longer.

“Our suspect requested her room for one more night. She isn’t going home yet.”

“I appreciate your letting me know.”

“She’s there right now, isn’t she?” Matilda was still whispering but doing it very loudly and with a shrill edge from excitement in her tone.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll let you go.”

“I appreciate it. Good-bye.” This time he hung up on Matilda while she was saying good-bye. The older lady meant well, though, and believed herself a good and loyal citizen. He’d have to make a point of stopping by later and thanking her personally.

Natasha was tilting her head, watching him when he held the Carl Williams file and gestured for her to follow him. They weren’t going to have this discussion in the main office where anyone might walk in.

“How many people do you have watching me, Sheriff?” she asked as she stepped inside his office.

Trent sighed, seeing how Matilda might have taken his simple request to an extreme. Although technically, he hadn’t asked anyone to watch Natasha.

He moved around his desk and sat. “Paranoid, Miss King?”

“Hardly.” She slumped into one of the two wooden chairs facing his desk.

They were incredibly uncomfortable chairs, a tactic his father had firmly believed in, since quite often the only people who sat in them were people the sheriff needed to question. Trent had never bothered to replace them.

She didn’t act as if she noticed, rested the file she’d brought with her on her lap, and stared at him with her unusual shade of eyes. “I wouldn’t complain except it’s not common for maid service, even at a bed-and-breakfast, to enter your room while you’re showering and claim to be cleaning.”

“‘Claim to be cleaning’?” He leaned back in his chair, watching her almost golden eyes glow, although she kept a straight face otherwise. “What exactly do you think Matilda was doing?”

“I
know
she was going through my things.” Her voice was soft, easy to listen to, and her expression didn’t change in spite of her accusations. “I wasn’t yet in the shower when she entered my room. She announced that Housekeeping was there so softly I wouldn’t have heard her if I’d already started the water. She didn’t hear me open the door a crack and spot her bent over my suitcase, rifling through it.”

“Was anything missing?” Trent had always considered Matilda fairly levelheaded. She was a good businesswoman, although a nasty gossip. But she could keep her mouth shut when asked, which was why when he’d contemplated trying to leave a bug on Natasha’s Avalanche, or make that her uncle’s Avalanche since the tags were registered to him, and Matilda had come outside and offered to put the bug among Natasha’s personal things, Trent had taken her up on her offer.

In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t his best professional move, but Trent had liked the idea of knowing where Natasha was when she wasn’t with her truck and had seriously doubted he’d be able to get that close to her belongings, at least not yet. He had every intention of spending quite a bit of time with Miss Natasha King while she was a guest in his town, but it was what she did on her own time from the moment she arrived here that might be relevant. Except so far, the modern, fancy little bug hadn’t offered him a thing he hadn’t been able to find out simply by paying attention.

“No, nothing was missing. Which is why I know she’s watching me,” Natasha told him. “And, my guess is, taking your request to do so a bit too seriously. Please ask her to tone it down a bit.”

He waited a heartbeat and, when she appeared to be done but wasn’t demanding he tell her whether her accusation was accurate, he decided to let the subject die and move forward.

“Did you bring something to show me?” he asked, nodding and looking at her lap.

She fingered the file. “Maybe. Let’s hear what you have to tell me, first. I’d like to start with the details of this murder and, more specifically, all proof you have against my father.”

Natasha was all business. Trent sensed her defensive edge, though, which made him even more curious what she might have brought with her.

“What I plan on doing is giving you the details about the murder, of which I’m sure you have a lot now if you listened to the newscast videos online.”

“You know as well as I do reporters aren’t always accurate.”

“If they were I wouldn’t be doing my job right.”

“Exactly.” Her full lips curved into the softest of smiles at his comment, and she leaned back against the upright wooden back of her chair.

Both chairs were set far back enough from his desk to make it difficult for anyone to use any part of it for their own things. It wasn’t that he didn’t like sharing his desktop, but with the chair back this far Trent could lean back in his comfortable office chair and see all of Natasha to her knees.

With anyone else, it allowed him to be assured no one would pull out a weapon without him seeing. At the moment, he enjoyed how flat her stomach was when she leaned back. She wore blue jeans that looked comfortable, not too tight. Yet they showed off how round her hips were and how long and slender her legs were. She was dressed in warmer clothes than she had been yesterday. More than likely her thin blood from living in L.A. her entire life wasn’t handling their cooler weather very well. The short-sleeved knit sweater she wore clung to decent-sized breasts and hugged her thin figure. Natasha gripped her file and crossed one leg over the other. He kept his eyes on her face and didn’t lower his gaze, not needing to since he’d already taken her incredibly hot, distracting good looks to memory.

“What details about the murder have you found out?” he asked.

“It was a very disgusting, gruesome murder. You’ve got a sick son of a bitch running around up here.” She opened her mouth as if she’d say more, and he leaned forward, eager to hear what it might be. But she licked her lips instead of saying anything else and stared at him with her stunning eyes.

“You were going to say,” he prompted.

“I was going to say I don’t blame my dad a bit for getting the hell out of Dodge.”

He frowned. She smiled again, this time looking triumphant.

“I would have, too,” she added, licked her lips again, and waited.

He lowered his attention to his file, opening it, then began pulling out pictures. Maybe she needed to see exactly how sick their murderer was.

Trent began laying eight-by-ten crime scene photos out in front of him, creating a row of them and tapping each one with his finger as he placed it next to the one before it. Natasha knew his tricks. They were the oldest investigative ploys in the world. She’d witnessed her uncle pulling the same stunts on more than one occasion.

The sheriff would now lay out the details of the crime, intentionally leaving out a detail or two or even stating the order of events wrong on purpose to see if he could trip her up. If she had any first-hand knowledge about this murder, getting wrapped up in the gory details, laid out in pictures, might make her slip and reveal she knew a detail he hadn’t mentioned. Since her uncle had reminded her that the sheriff might use that type of interrogation to satisfy his curiosity about whether she was involved or not, Natasha had printed off the Web site pages she’d browsed through prior to talking to Uncle Greg. She might know something Sheriff Oakley wouldn’t mention, but it would be because she had read every article she could find about the terrible murder before talking to him.

She had half a mind to tell him she was on to his game. Instead, she decided to use another tactic. Standing and pressing her hands against the edge of Trent’s desk, she leaned over him and the pictures.

“Oh God,” she gasped, her jaw dropping at the sight of the horrific pictures.

Trent looked up at her and his gaze dropped. The short-sleeved sweater she had on was a V-neck, and with her arms straight and hands bracing the edge of his desk she knew she offered a damn nice view of cleavage. They’d already determined Trent was a healthy red-blooded man in his prime. She was using her body to distract him, only because he was using his line of questioning to trip her up. A mixture of pleasure and satisfaction that she could so easily sway his attention turned to an equal amount of frustration, then anger. This was about her father.

Natasha stared at pictures of the most horrific murder she’d ever seen in her life. Trent truly believed her father could have something to do with how this poor young ranch hand had died. To think anyone could believe her father—and she didn’t care how long it had been since she’d last seen him—had anything to do with this was beyond preposterous. George King didn’t have it in him to be a killer. The more she thought about it the more it made her mad. And the angrier she got, instead of yelling at the sheriff, she wanted to scream at her dad. How could he have gotten himself messed up in something like this?

Trent stood as well. “Ethel Burrows found Carl Williams.” He tapped a snapshot of a man stretched out between two poles, his arms and legs bound to each pole so his body resembled the letter
X.
“Now Ethel was a ranch hand’s wife before she married Jim. She’s grown up around livestock and wouldn’t be as weak in the knees as some women.” He picked up the eight-by-ten and held it up to Natasha’s face. “Not everyone witnesses a decapitated body during their lifetime, though.”

“My God,” she whispered. That bit of news hadn’t been printed anywhere or mentioned in any of the news pods she’d watched that morning. Her hand went to her mouth as her stomach churned. Her eyes remained glued to the gruesome photograph as Trent continued talking.

“Ethel was crossing the large parking area they have between the ranch house and two of their outbuildings when she saw him. The morning sun was in her eyes and, according to her statement, she wasn’t sure what she saw at first.”

Trent pulled the photograph away from her face, placed it on his desk, then picked up the one next to it. He held it up for her to see as he had the previous one.

“Ethel went inside to get her husband, Bill, but he’d already headed out toward acreage they have at the base of the mountains. She found Morgan Reeding, one of Bill’s ranch hands who’s been there on Trinity Ranch since I was a boy. Morgan was probably the first to have a good look at Carl,” he continued, his tone morose, as if he’d been the one to find Carl Williams.

Natasha took her eyes off the picture to look at him, but his attention was on the back side of the eight by ten, as if he was reliving every bit of it while going over it with her.

“Morgan was out in the barn overseeing some of the recently birthed foals when Ethel found him. He went with her around the barn and had his phone out calling me before they were halfway down the lane. That’s when he stopped and ordered Ethel to turn around and go into the house.” Trent exhaled and shook his head. “You see, Ethel is five months pregnant. Morgan couldn’t control her hysteria when they both realized what they were looking at. He got her back in the house while calling me, then headed back for a closer look at the execution.”