Rustled - By BJ Daniels Page 0,5

locked in a room alone.

But it was the first time her captor had been a woman. Emma took another sip of the hot coffee to chase away the chill. She’d thought she’d been ready for Aggie Wells. She’d known the woman would come for her, but she’d underestimated Aggie.

When the former insurance investigator had disappeared a few weeks ago, Emma had been so certain Aggie was trying to make it appear that Hoyt had done something to her. But when Emma had recently come home from town and smelled the woman’s perfume in the main house at the ranch, she’d known Aggie was alive.

She had wondered how Aggie had known that everyone was out of the house. That’s when she’d found the listening devices Aggie had apparently installed in the house and she’d known that with Hoyt in jail and his six boys busy working on the ranch, it was only a matter of time before Aggie would come for her.

Emma remembered sitting in the kitchen after Hoyt was arrested, waiting to see what Aggie had planned next. She’d been sure that the woman’s plan had been to frame Hoyt for the murder of his third wife—and then take advantage of Emma being alone at the ranch to what? Kill her?

Emma hadn’t known, but she’d been armed and thought she was ready when Aggie suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Everything after that was still fuzzy. She drank more of the coffee, feeling a little better, unwrapped the sandwich—a ham and cheese—and took a bite before moving back over to the window and peering out a small hole the size of a fist between the boards.

Where was she? In some abandoned farmhouse near Whitehorse, Emma was fairly sure. The landscape looked familiar and she didn’t think Aggie had driven far after she’d drugged her.

So what did Aggie have planned for her?

She thought about the first time she’d met the former insurance investigator at the bar at Sleeping Buffalo Resort north of town. She’d been surprised that Aggie was about her own age, early fifties, a tall, slim woman with an aura of intelligence and energy. Emma remembered thinking she was the kind of woman she could have been friends with—under other circumstances.

Aggie had told her that night about her suspicions that Hoyt Chisholm had killed his other three wives. Emma hadn’t believed it. Still didn’t, even though evidence had been found along with his third wife’s remains that linked him to her murder.

She’d been all the more convinced of her husband’s innocence when she’d realized that Aggie had faked her own disappearance to make Hoyt look guilty of yet another murder.

At a sound on the other side of the only door, Emma turned and braced herself. She didn’t think Aggie planned to kill her—at least not yet. Otherwise, why bother to bring her here?

A dead bolt scraped in the lock, the knob turned and, as the door swung inward, Emma saw Aggie Wells framed in the doorway. She was holding a handgun in a way that made it clear she knew how to use it.

She laughed, because even if the woman had been unarmed, Emma wasn’t up to launching any kind of attack.

“You’re in a good mood,” Aggie said. “But then you are annoyingly cheerful most of the time, aren’t you? It is one of the things I hate about you.”

“You mean there are other things you hate about me?” Emma said, pretending to be crushed.

“I hate that you’re married to Hoyt Chisholm.”

Now they were getting somewhere, Emma thought as she watched the woman come into the room. For some time, she had suspected that the reason Aggie was so obsessed about Hoyt’s case was that she’d fallen in love with the man. Emma could understand how that might have happened. Look how quickly Emma herself had fallen for him.

“You should eat,” Aggie said, sliding the tray toward her.

Emma sat down, reached for the thermos and started to pour herself another cup of coffee but stopped, the cup and thermos held in midair.

Aggie chuckled. “Don’t worry, it’s not drugged.”

She finished pouring the rest of the coffee into the plastic cup, thinking it was too late anyway if the coffee was drugged. She returned the stopper to the thermos and sat back against the wall as she took a drink. The coffee made her feel a little better and she needed to start thinking straight.

The only way she could get herself out of this was if she was very careful with this