One Night Standoff
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Nicole Helm
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17.1K
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27
Chapter One
It couldn’t be happening again.
Hazeleigh Hart stood in the doorway to her boss’s office and was sure she was in the midst of a nightmare.
There was blood. So much—too much—blood.
Mr. Field was most decidedly dead.
There was grief and denial. Emotions battered Hazeleigh, but the one that finally made her move was fear.
This was not the first dead body she’d uncovered in the past year. The last time it happened, the police had been sure she’d had something to do with the murder, before her sister had helped clear her.
Murder. Who would want to kill poor old Mr. Field, an eccentric man who paid for her to do research, and to organize his own, about a supposed bank robbery in Wilde back in the 1800s?
But it didn’t matter who. It didn’t matter how or when. It only mattered that she was alive, and the only one standing here looking at his dead body. He had to have been murdered. There was no other explanation for all that blood.
She hadn’t had a bad feeling this time—like last year, when her sister Zara had accidentally dug up their other sister’s body. No, Mr. Field’s lifeless body—slumped over his work in his office—was a complete and utter surprise.
Would anyone believe it?
No.
Her whole life she’d been plagued by bad premonitions, so to speak, but they were neither consistent nor always correct, which meant no one ever believed her. They didn’t believe her if she said something bad was going to happen before it did, and they didn’t believe her when she said she hadn’t felt anything before something bad had happened either.
Except Zara. Sometimes. Her living sister was the only person who ever believed her, but Hazeleigh knew even if Zara trusted her innocence—and she would, because Zara always believed her to be innocent—she wouldn’t be able to do anything about how bad it looked.
No one would.
Slowly, Hazeleigh backed out of the office. Her stomach was queasy, and her eyes burned with tears. Mr. Field was a sweet old man. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. The harshest thing she’d ever heard him say was “fiddlesticks” when he spilled soup on his keyboard.
She’d had to type all his emails for him while he waited for it to be fixed—he hadn’t wanted the expense of buying a new one, though he could have afforded it easily.
A sob rose in her throat, and she managed to turn away from the body.
She would have to go away. Away from here. The death. The blood. Away from poor Mr. Field and all his research. Away from Wilde, Wyoming—the only place she’d ever really been.
She would have to disappear.
She had been to jail. Well, a holding cell. It wasn’t the end of the world, but... She felt something wrong deep inside of her. Consistent or not, right or not, she just knew letting the police investigate her would end badly for her.
She had to disappear. She walked out of the fort—the historic building where Mr. Field had his office—to her car in the parking lot. She began to drive to the Hart Ranch, eyes always in the rearview mirror, certain sirens and lights would appear behind her at any moment.
She would go to her cabin, pack up her things and start driving. It didn’t matter where she ended up. She just had to escape.
Dimly, in the back of her mind, Hazeleigh understood this was blind panic. She couldn’t really disappear. She needed time to think. To settle and think.
She parked in front of her cabin. It wasn’t safe here. They’d come for her here. She couldn’t go to Zara. Zara would call Thomas, their cousin, who was a police officer. Zara would think he could help.
But Hazeleigh wouldn’t get her sister and cousin wrapped up in this. Or Jake, one of the Thompson brothers who’d been shot trying to unravel the whole mystery revolving around her other sister’s murder.
Jake, who she’d just gone to the jewelry store with yesterday to help pick out a ring for Zara.
It had taken some time, but Hazeleigh had finally felt comfortable around him. He’d won her over with patience and kindness and space.
She didn’t feel comfortable around men as a rule. Her father had blamed her for Amberleigh’s disappearance long before the murder, and he sometimes got violent when he could hide it from Zara.
The two men she’d trusted enough to date had both turned violent in the end—Douglas had even murdered Amberleigh, thinking it was Hazeleigh.
Hazeleigh shuddered. No, she didn’t trust men—at least ones who showed any interest in her.
But Mr. Field and Jake were fine. Even the Thompson brothers had gotten easier to be around. They ran the Hart Ranch now, after all. She had to be around them.
And they would all want to help. Hazeleigh knew every last one of them would try to help her. But no one would be able to prove she hadn’t done it. She would end up in jail.
She couldn’t. She couldn’t.
Panic was its own beat inside of her now. No amount of reason could penetrate. She packed a bag.
Where are you going? Where can you go?
She surveyed the ranch outside her cabin. She wasn’t safe on the ranch, but there was an awful lot of land to cover, and would they think to cover it? If she wasn’t in her cabin, if she cleared everything out, wouldn’t the police expect her to get as far away as possible?
She blinked at the horizon. No, she wouldn’t run away. She’d hunker down right here.
And no one would ever know.
LANDON DAVIS-THOMPSON, these days, let the horse beneath him run.
When it came to the six men who’d come to run the Hart Ranch, Brody was more than proficient on a horse. Jake and Dunne were sidelined by injuries, but both could ride in a pinch. Henry and Cal were both too stiff and too bitter not to struggle, but they did what had to be done.
Landon, though... Landon loved it. He’d always loved horses. Growing up dirt-poor on a farm that barely fed its tenants, let alone its animals, he’d never dreamed this would be his life.
Even when he’d dreamed of escape, it had been to join the military. To strive for excellence there and make something out of his life—anything other than ending up like his family. His abusive father drinking himself to death, his mom grieving herself to death and all his brothers winding up in jail or six feet under.
So when Landon had been recruited by Team Breaker, a secret, elite military group meant to bring down various terrorist rings in the Middle East, he figured he’d succeeded. He’d peaked.
Then hell had broken loose, and military mistakes had turned Landon and his military brothers into direct targets. So they’d been erased. Sent to Wyoming to disappear. New identities. A new life.
Landon Davis was dead, but Landon Thompson had a future. Even if it was ranching this big spread in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming.
Landon figured he’d hate the cold northern winters, figured ranch work would be too similar to that farm life he’d grown up on, drowning in everyone else’s rage and bitterness.
But as it turned out, he was happy here.
Horses. Ranching. His military brothers, this small-town life. It suited him, surprisingly enough.
Then there was Hazeleigh Hart, the pretty and far-too-skittish woman who lived in a cabin on the property the “Thompson brothers” now owned. Something about the woman had tied him up in an uncharacteristic number of knots.
Strange, considering he’d never once had a problem attracting female attention.
Except when it came to Hazeleigh. She’d never looked at him twice. Didn’t even notice that he sometimes looked for too long, paid too much attention, tried a little too hard to get her to smile and stop being so nervous around him.
Which was why when he saw the telltale tangle of dark hair trailing behind a running form, pink scarf fluttering behind her, he thought maybe he’d conjured up the image in his imagination.
Because what would Hazeleigh be doing running around the far edge of the property line? Landon had spent many an afternoon running the horses out this way and never saw anyone that wasn’t bovine this far back.
But it was someone, not a figment of his imagination, and he honestly couldn’t fathom it being anyone else. “Hazeleigh?” he called out.
She looked over her shoulder, but she didn’t stop running. There was terror in her eyes, which had his instincts kicking in.
He urged the horse into a run until he caught up with her, stopping the horse and swinging off in one fluid movement. He didn’t grab her, like he might have with just about anyone else who appeared to be running for their life in the middle of nowhere.
He’d learned to give Hazeleigh space, so he merely placed himself in her path and held out his hands in a stop gesture.
She slowed, but she didn’t stop, passing him on the side as she shook her head. “Please don’t, Landon. Go back to the house and pretend you never saw me. You can’t tell anyone you saw me.”
She was breathing hard, clearly struggling. But she just kept moving, the backpack she was wearing slapping against her back. He fell into an easy jog beside her.
“Hazeleigh, I think you need to stop and take a breath and tell me what’s going on.”
She kept shaking her head. She was obviously running out of steam, but she kept propelling herself forward.
“I can’t. I can’t. You just have to go. Don’t tell Zara. Don’t tell anyone. Please.”
When he didn’t do as she asked, she finally stopped and pinned those big, brown eyes on him. “You don’t understand.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Mr. Field is dead.”
“What?” he said, brain kicking into gear. Was this grief? Should he leave her alone to deal with it?
“Someone killed him.” Her voice broke. “His blood...” She shook her head like she couldn’t bear to say the words. “They’re going to think it was me.”
“I don’t...” He trailed off, because her hand gripped his. Hazeleigh, who usually did everything she could to put distance between her body and his, reached out and grabbed him like he was a lifeline.
And then he heard the same thing she did.
Sirens.
