Blue Sage (Anne Stuart's Greatest Hits Book 3) Read online

  All the color drained from her face, her big brown eyes widened, and her generous mouth dropped open. Without a word she wheeled the horse around and took off across the open meadow, racing across the thick grass as if the devil himself were after her.

  Tanner watched her go. So it was going to be like that, was it? Well, things had never been easy, and he no longer expected them to be. He looked at her disappearing back, and a grim, determined smile lit his face. Ellie Lundquist had just sealed her fate. He was damned if he was going to let a woman run like that at the sound of his name.

  He picked up the pack and slid it over his shoulders, scarcely noticing the weight. He should have remembered. It was the seventeenth of June. Charles Tanner had opened fire on the town square on the Fourth of July, fifteen years earlier. So they were setting a monument up to mark the spot? Maybe he could be guest of honor.

  His lips curled in contempt. He hoped to hell Alfred knew what he was doing, sending him up here. If it had been up to Tanner he could have spent the rest of his life avoiding the huge state of Montana. And from Ellie Lundquist’s reaction, it looked as if the townspeople would have appreciated the same thing.

  It was too late now. He couldn’t turn around and walk back over the mountains, all the way back to Santa Fe. He’d promised Alfred. And while he had no objections to lying when it suited him, he never broke a promise. The town of Morey’s Falls was just going to have to accept him, for as long as he chose to stay there. Ellie Lundquist was going to have to accept him. Because he had absolutely no intention of taking no for an answer.

  He looked in the direction she’d ridden, anger still simmering in his gut. If he was any judge of the matter, that headlong, terrified flight might be the closest thing to a welcome he’d get. He took a deep breath, steeling himself. And then he headed after her, his long legs eating up the distance, heading down the mountain to his father’s hometown.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  Ellie’s heart was pounding so hard it hurt, slamming against her ribs, twisting inside her so that everything felt tight and strangled. Her hands were gripping Mazey’s reins as if they were her only hold on life, her legs trembled as they gripped the horse’s heaving sides, and the two of them raced down the rough mountain trail at a dangerous speed.

  It wasn’t until Mazey slipped and was barely able to right herself that Ellie calmed enough to pull back, to slow their terrified descent. It would do no one any good if they fell on the loose shale, breaking their legs, breaking their necks. Mazey was an old lady; she deserved better than an ignominious death on a mountainside.

  He wouldn’t be able to catch up with them, even with those long legs of his. They were safe enough, and they’d be back in town long before he made it there. She could warn people...

  What in the world was she thinking of? Warn people of what? What made her think the man up in the meadow had any connection with Charles Tanner?

  But of course he did. Morey’s Falls was too small a town, and Tanners had lived there since its founding in the late eighteen hundreds. Charles Tanner’s grandparents and parents were buried in the small hillside cemetery just outside of town. Charles Tanner himself even had a small corner, away from everyone else, away from the graves of the people he’d killed.

  He’d had a wife and a son. They’d left long before the massacre, even before Ellie had been born. She would have thought they’d change their name and never come anywhere near Morey’s Falls again.

  But the man sitting there in the shade of the aspen didn’t look like a man who was going to change his name to suit anybody. Despite that easy smile of his, he didn’t look like the kind of man who gave a damn whether he was welcome or not.

  She could still feel the cold sweat of unreasoning fear drying on her back as the sun baked down. She didn’t trust that easy smile, those guileless eyes for one moment. For all his feigned innocence he’d probably been watching her as she’d ridden across the field with her shirt off. For eight years she’d been going up to that isolated field, swimming in the creek on the edge of the meadow, certain that no one would be around to stare at her. It was the only place where she’d felt free, the only place where she wasn’t weighted down by expectations and the past. Now that freedom had been ripped away from her, and by Charles Tanner’s son.

  She had no doubt at all that was who he was. She’d never been a strong believer in coincidence, and if that was all it was, he would have shrugged it off with a laugh and said, “No relation, of course.”

  But he’d looked her squarely in the eye and said, “My name’s Tanner.” Calm, cool, defiant. Good God, why did he have to show up now?

  And why did he have to look like that? He was much too handsome for his or anybody else’s good. His dark-blond hair was too long, his mouth was too sexy, and those bedroom eyes were too blue and too masked. For all their lazy seductiveness, there was a coldness, a distrust lurking behind their innocent gaze.

  He had one of those lean, compact bodies that was stronger than it looked. He wasn’t more than six feet tall, with long legs, muscular forearms and wiry shoulders beneath the faded flannel shirt. Which reminded her of her own flannel shirt, or lack thereof, and she felt the color flame into her face. It was a hell of a way to begin a relationship.

  And that’s what it was going to be, whether she liked the idea or not. Tanner wasn’t going to stroll through town and leave. He was there for a reason, and any reason involving Charles Tanner’s son would most likely end up involving her.

  She needed to get back to the house, to the inadequate shower in the old claw-footed tub, to the proper clothes and proper underwear and layers of protection from the outlaws of this world. Was Charles Tanner’s madness hereditary?

  She was no longer hot, she was cold as ice. Fifteen years earlier Charles Tanner had taken a gun and opened fire on the town square, shooting anyone that moved, shooting them with the marksman’s skill he’d learned in Korea. The first person he’d shot had been Nils-Jacob Lundquist. The second had been a sixteen-year-old girl.

  The third had been the girl’s father. And so it had gone on, until sixteen people were left dead and dying, the only survivor the sixteen-year-old girl, lying hidden beneath Nils-Jacob and her father’s bodies, her knee shattered by Charles’s bullet.

  She reached down and rubbed her knee. It always troubled her when she was tense, and God knows, Tanner’s appearance was enough to ruffle a saint. And that was just what the town of Morey’s Falls thought of her. Eleanor Johnson Lundquist, the martyr of Morey’s Falls. Every family had lost someone that day, every family now thought they owned a piece of Ellie. Somehow her surviving made it not so bad for all of them. She wasn’t quite sure how it made it for her.

  Fifteen years later she was still there, still trying to live for other people. She probably always would, she thought wearily, pushing her hair away from her damp face. If only she hadn’t married the Judge. But it had seemed the logical thing to do at the time. She’d been in and out of hospitals, mostly in, for more than a year, the money had run out, her gentle father had left nothing but debts, and she had nowhere to turn. The townspeople had collected money for her, but in that remote little town there was never much to spare. Sixteen funerals had dug deep into everyone’s pockets.

  And there was Judge Lundquist, on the far side of sixty, a widower with his only child the victim of a madman. He offered a home, he offered security, he offered a father’s love and protection and name. It would take months and thousands of dollars to adopt her. It took forty-eight hours and a two-dollar license to marry her.

  Everyone approved. The martyr of Morey’s Falls would be well-provided for by the richest man in town. And she’d remain that way, an untouched survivor of a bloody massacre, never to be defiled again.

  Ellie bit into her lip. What in the world had made her start thinking of that? The Judge had been kindness himself, generous with himself and his money, pampering her and protecting her a
nd asking nothing in return. Except her company, year after year after year in that dark old house.

  So here she was, almost thirty-one years old, a wealthy widow, the town pet, still in that dark old house, still alone, still untouched. At this rate she’d probably end her days just as she was now.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t had offers. Offers she was getting desperate enough to consider. There was Bernie Appleton, who ran the dry-cleaning business. He was sixty, with three grandchildren and a large dark house of his own. There was Lonnie Olafson, the editor of the local paper. Poor Lonnie. No, he wouldn’t do at all. And then there was Fred Parsons. He had two teenage boys, a grain business on the edge of bankruptcy and a tumbledown ranch on the edge of town. All decent, worthy marriage prospects.

  They all respected her. If it were up to them she’d stay pure.

  Now if someone like Tanner were around...

  But someone like Tanner was around. And he was very definitely the last thing she needed. Behind that sexy smile, behind those bedroom eyes was a coldness that chilled her to the bone. No, she didn’t need a man like Tanner. Not at all.

  She tried to think back, to remember his father. She hadn’t seen much of him—Charles Tanner had been a recluse, living alone in that rundown shack off Town Road 5, skulking around, watching, waiting. The only one who ever got close to him was Doc Barlow, and even he wasn’t welcome. Charles had been a small man, much shorter than his son, with pale, furtive eyes and an air of despair around him. Apart from the dirty-blond hair, there was no resemblance to his son as far as Ellie could recall. Maybe that would work in Tanner’s favor.

  She’d gone back a few years before to the newspaper accounts that Lonnie always kept handy in his office for the few tourists he sometimes got. At that point she couldn’t recall what Charles had looked like, and for some reason it became terribly important to remember. The newspapers only had two photographs of him. One of Charles, motionless in death, the high-powered rifle at his feet. And one of him in uniform, young, innocent, never knowing how life and history would twist him into a killing machine.

  She’d cried when she’d seen the pictures. And then she’d walked away and never looked at them again. If only the entire town could forget the past. She hated the idea of the memorial, hated the macabre dredging up of memories, and she had only gone along with the plans in the hope that this event would be the last of it. The granite monolith was already in place—in a few weeks they’d dedicate it, and then maybe they could forget that Charles Tanner had ever existed.

  If only his son would get out of town. He wouldn’t be made welcome, that much was sure. If he had any sensitivity at all they’d drive him back to where he came from so fast his head would spin.

  But she didn’t pin any great hopes on it. Tanner would leave when he was good and ready. It wouldn’t matter to him if he was hated. He must have had negative reactions to that name of his before. It wouldn’t matter to him that he was rejected. With that face and body of his he wouldn’t have had too many women turning him down, but he didn’t strike her as the type to have close friends. And it wouldn’t matter to him that his presence would tear the town apart a little bit more. He’d do what he came for, whatever that was, and leave when he was finished.

  He’d have his partisans, even though everyone else hated him. Doc was unflinchingly fair with everyone. He’d been Charles’s friend and tried to help him. He’d be Tanner’s friend too. There was old Maude, who’d befriend him out of fairness and deviltry and reasons of her own.

  And then there was the martyr of Morey’s Falls. She was just as fair-minded as Doc and Maude were. It wasn’t Tanner’s fault his father had gone crazy. Somehow people would have to accept that, much as they’d appreciate being presented with a scapegoat. And she would have to set an example.

  That example would put her in close proximity to Charles Tanner’s son. A man far too sexy for his own good, and surely the best-looking thing to set foot in Morey’s Falls for many a year. Trouble, she thought again, sighing. Mazey looked back, nodding her head in seeming agreement. Trouble indeed.

  * * * * *

  Ellie Lundquist was long gone by the time Tanner made it to the outskirts of Morey’s Falls. He’d had more than enough opportunity to think about her during the hour and half it took him to make it down from the high ground into the flat grasslands below. He’d been so busy thinking about her that he’d almost forgotten why he was there. Looking at the bleak, dusty little western town ahead, he thought about Ellie Lundquist and her possible sunburn. Had she gone racing through the town shouting “Tanner is coming!” like a latter-day Paul Revere?

  Somehow he didn’t think so. Despite her initial, insulting panic, he doubted she’d give in to it. She might not even live anywhere near this dreary little town. She and her husband probably lived in one of those stifling little developments over the other side. He’d have to make it his business to find out where.

  But that could wait. For now he had other things to do.

  Morey’s Falls was like most western towns—a big, wide main street, a small square of green grass in the center, a couple of residential side streets, a bank, two gas stations and a number of fly-specked businesses that looked as though they were on the edge of bankruptcy. The big old houses on the street behind Main looked dark and deserted, the depressing reminders of a once prosperous past.

  Charles hadn’t lived in town. He’d owned some twenty acres to the west of the town limits, had even tried to make a living from them for a few years. Once Marbella left, taking her baby son, he hadn’t made much of an effort. But the land was still there, waiting.

  First things first. He was damned hungry. A hot meal would help. It was a shame there was no motel—he wondered where all the reporters had stayed when they’d flocked around like buzzards. Serve ‘em right if they’d had to camp out in their cars. There’d been reporters chasing after Marbella and Charles’s son. At eighteen he’d decked one of them, smashed another’s camera before he’d taken off. At least Marbella was with Alfred then. Alfred had taken care of her, as he had since he’d picked her up in a honky-tonk five years earlier where she’d been spending too much time with the wrong kind of man and the wrong kind of bottles.

  Alfred had put a stop to that. Tanner had always wondered why she hadn’t agreed to marry him sooner. He’d been good to her, better than anyone she’d ever known. He suspected that was part of the problem. She was so used to being abused, to being belittled and used and discarded that she’d become convinced she was as worthless as she’d been told she was. All Alfred’s tender care couldn’t prove her wrong.

  This damned town, he thought, moving down the deserted streets. No one had helped her when she was stuck out at the useless ranch with a man already half-crazy. Her parents had turned their backs on her for marrying the wrong man, and she’d had no one to turn to when Charles starting sitting in the corner for days on end, eating nothing, drinking nothing, saying nothing until Marbella would be ready to scream. It wasn’t any wonder she went looking for someone to talk to, no wonder she found herself heading for the bars when Charles didn’t notice.

  She’d been ready to leave for good when she’d found herself pregnant. For the baby’s sake she’d held out a couple more years, all alone out there. The car broke down and there was no money to fix it, Charles shot their mangy cattle one by one so they wouldn’t starve. It was the night he got the gun out, the M-l he’d used years later on the townspeople, that Marbella had run, taking her two-year-old and racing into the night with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

  But someone had helped. Someone had given her enough money to get as far away from there as she could. Doc Barlow had come up with a thousand dollars, and Tanner now had that same amount tucked in a belt, next to his skin. He always paid his debts, and Barlow’s was long overdue.

  Pete’s Fireside Cafe was closed. Tanner looked around him, mouth thinning in frustration, when he saw the open door across the street. M
OREY’S FALLS GAZETTE, it read in gold lettering on the window. All the news that’s fit to print.

  The man sitting at the desk wasn’t much older than he was. At least he couldn’t have been working here when Charles Tanner had staged his bloody attack. Tanner stepped into the room, setting his heavy pack down on the floor, and met the man’s welcoming smile.

  “I was beginning to think this was a ghost town,” Tanner said.

  “It sure seems like it sometime,” the man behind the desk said. “We don’t see many strangers around here. Something I can do for you?”

  “When’s the diner open?”

  “Who knows? Essie went home with the back miseries and Pete’s gone hunting. If Essie gets better she’ll be back for the supper crowd. Otherwise it won’t be till tomorrow morning, and you’ll have to make do with Davidson’s Market. At least you won’t starve.” He leaned back in his ancient swivel chair. “You walk here?”

  “Yes.”

  The man was undaunted. “You got business here? If you do, I can help you. I know as much about Morey’s Falls as any living resident. My family’s owned this paper for generations, and there isn’t anything I either don’t know or can’t find out. So what can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Town Road 5.”

  “Out past the edge of town. Though I can’t imagine what you’d want out there. The road doesn’t go anywhere. There’s nothing out there but a broken-down ranch and empty acres.”

  “Thanks,” Tanner said, turning to go.

  “Listen, you won’t find anything out there,” the man said, leaping out of his chair and heading for the door. “If you want, I can give you a ride out. My name’s Lonnie Olafson.” He held out his hand, a friendly puppy dog of a man with thinning blond hair and a nervous, eager smile.

  Tanner looked down at the outstretched hand. If Lonnie really knew everything about this town, he’d be a good place to start. Even if he hadn’t worked on the paper at the time of the massacre, he’d probably remember it. His father would have covered it—maybe he could meet him.