your cattle all rounded up?”
“Most of them,” Hoyt said. “My sons brought the majority down earlier. They’re going back up tomorrow for the ones they missed. Here, let me carry that box for you. I’ll walk you out.”
Emma knew her husband wanted to talk to the sheriff alone. That’s why she waited, then snuck around the house to a dark corner so she could listen.
“Aggie’s story about Laura, it’s crazy,” Hoyt said.
“Yes,” the sheriff agreed as she took the box of listening devices and set them in the back of the patrol SUV. “So why are you still worried about Emma?” she asked as she closed the car door.
“You’re sure Aggie worked alone?”
“From what we can tell. There isn’t any chance Laura is alive, is there?”
Hoyt rubbed a large hand over his neck as he always did when he was worried. “I can’t imagine how, and yet…”
“And yet?”
“Her body was never found.”
McCall nodded. “It’s not that unusual in a lake that size, plus during a storm and that time of year. Unless you know something I don’t?”
“No, it’s just that…” He rubbed his neck again. “I never told anyone, but Laura was insanely jealous.”
“Insanely?” the sheriff asked.
“It was what we were fighting about the day she drowned,” Hoyt said, his voice full of pain. “She attacked me. I was trying to hold her off….” He let out a sound like a sob.
Emma closed her eyes and leaned into the side of the house. The wood felt cool to the touch. She wanted to run to her husband, throw her arms around him, comfort him. She knew what was coming, feared it bone deep.
“I swear to you, McCall, I didn’t push her overboard,” Hoyt was saying. “She pulled away from me. I thought she’d lost her balance. But the truth is…I think she might have purposely fallen overboard.”
DAWSON GRABBED Jinx’s hand and pulled her back into the bathroom as the bedroom door slammed open. As heavy footfalls thudded across the floor, he raised the shotgun, motioning for her to be quiet.
As if that was necessary. From Jinx’s expression, he figured she was thinking the same thing he was. Lyndel had discovered that Jinx wasn’t in the broom closet and now they were turning the house upside down looking for her.
Dawson listened to someone rummaging around in the bedroom. Lyndel? Slim? Or had someone else arrived? And what were they searching for in the master bedroom?
He heard a drawer close, then the familiar snick of a bullet being jacked into the chamber of a gun before the person left, slamming the door behind them. Whoever had come into the room was now armed as well as dangerous.
Dawson let out the breath he’d been holding. Getting out of there without any bloodshed was seeming less and less likely. They would be looking for Jinx inside the house and out. For all he knew, Lyndel had called in more ranch hands to help. Or possibly even the rest of the rustlers back from Montana.
He eased the bathroom door open and peered out. Jinx did the same next to him. The bedroom was empty.
The way he saw it, they had two options. Trying to escape through the back way without the digital recorder. Or going out the front door with it.
Dawson walked over to the phone beside the bed and picked up the receiver, remembering belatedly that Lyndel had had it disconnected. He wasn’t in the habit of carrying a cell phone. They were pretty worthless unless you lived in Whitehorse. A few miles out, you couldn’t get any service, so what was the point when you lived on a ranch miles from town?
But he wished to hell he had one right now. He looked over at Jinx.
She shook her head. “Mine’s in the other pocket of my jean jacket.”
Great. “Come on,” Dawson said. “We’re getting out of here. We’ll call the sheriff as soon as we reach town and have him get your jacket and the digital recorder with the evidence on it.” He’d expected her to put up an argument and was surprised when she didn’t.
For once Jinx wasn’t taking chances? It gave him hope.
He moved to the door, grabbed the knob and slowly turned it. As he pulled the door open a crack, he peered out. The hallway was empty. “Stay behind me.”
Jinx nodded and they slipped out of the master suite into the hallway.
Dawson could hear raised voices coming from the front part of the house and knew any moment they