Page 52 of Christmas Ransom

“Cora’s with me.” The road was getting worse. “Got to go.”

After he disconnected, he could feel the elderly woman’s gaze on him. “You didn’t ask how I hurt my wrist,” Cora said as they left the county road and headed up into the mountains.

He glanced over at her. His first thought was that she’d been spying on someone. Everyone in the county knew that she kept binoculars handy and had even bought herself some night-vision ones. If the grapevine could be believed, she loved learning people’s secrets and then cashing in on them. That highly illegal quirk had almost gotten her killed last year, but Davy doubted it had stopped her.

“Gardening?” he asked, clearly joking.

She cackled. “Yep, winter gardening.” She was still chuckling when she said, “The road is going to get a lot worse, I’ll warn you right now. Best hang on. The cabin’s all hell and gone back in here. Place has been empty for years. I figure she’ll go there like an animal returns to its den.”

Even though she’d been right about Jesse working as Debra Watney at the hospital, he still wasn’t sure that she wasn’t leading him on a fool’s errand back up here in the mountains. He could feel time slipping away.

“It’s not far now,” Cora said, sitting up to strain to see into the glow of the headlights.

At first he didn’t even see the road. But then he saw the fresh tire tracks in the snow. Only one set. Pine trees stood like towering snow-covered walls on each side as the road narrowed to a Jeep trail.

“I’m trying to decide if we should walk the last part or drive right up to the cabin,” Cora said as she shifted into four-wheel drive. “Not sure it makes a difference, since if I know Jesse, she’ll be expecting us.”

He shot her a look. “What are you saying?”

“If she wants your girlfriend dead...” Again he thought about correcting her. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. He wasn’t sure what they were. “Then she would have killed her at your house. Why bring her up here unless she was waiting for someone?”

“Jud isn’t going to show up, but she might not know that,” Davy said. He could feel Cora’s gaze swing to him.

“Probably won’t make a difference to Jesse which man shows up. I suspect she was planning to kill that boyfriend of hers anyway. He was the kind she would eventually squish beneath her boot. She’d much rather you see her kill Carla.”

Davy felt his stomach roil. He was beginning to wonder about Cora and if she even knew what she was talking about, when a cabin came into view in the headlights.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Carla realized that Jesse had heard something. She had her head cocked, listening, and didn’t seem surprised when headlights cut through the grime-coated glass of the front window. “Stay here!” she ordered and moved to the door.

Carla knew she didn’t have long. She slid across the mattress, then reached over to grab the branding iron from the edge of the fireplace. She had just enough time to hide the iron next to her before Jesse turned.

The blonde’s face hardened to stone. “You moved.”

“I’m freezing. I moved closer to the fire.”

Jesse studied her for a moment before glancing at the fire.

Carla held her breath, afraid she would see that the branding iron was no longer leaning against the soot-coated rocks.

At the sound of boots on the porch, both of their gazes were drawn toward the front door. Jesse quickly came back over to her to point the gun at Carla’s head.

“I figured someone would come looking for you,” Jesse said. “Hope it’s your cowboy. If his PI brothers are worth their salt, then they know about me by now—and that I had family up here in the mountains. Thing is,” she said, frowning, “the place isn’t that easy to find.”

CORAPARKEDANDturned off the engine. There was no sneaking up on the cabin. Anyone inside would know that they had company. The headlights went off, pitching them into darkness.

The only light that flickered inside the structure was from a fire. Davy couldn’t see anyone through the grime-covered window, but he felt as if they were being watched. No one, however, had come to the door.

He wondered if Carla was here with the woman Cora called Jesse. If so, who was Jesse expecting to come driving up? Jud? “You should stay in the truck,” he said to Cora.

The elderly woman harrumphed and was out the pickup door before he could stop her, taking her shotgun with her. He hurried after her. As they reached the porch, he stopped to listen, afraid he’d hear a gunshot.

Cora scaled the rickety porch steps and was almost to the door when Davy heard a female voice call, “Come in!”

Davy recognized it as that of the blonde aide from the hospital, the same one Cora swore was actually Jesse Watney—an alleged killer, and the woman who he knew in his gut had Carla. He reached past Cora, grabbed the door handle, turned it and pushed. The old door groaned and creaked as it swung slowly open.

The fire in the room illuminated the scene before him. Carla sat on an old mattress a few feet from the fireplace, and the blonde stood over her with a gun pointed at Carla’s head.

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