Rustled. B.J. Daniels

      The bed was empty. With a jolt she opened her eyes. Two thoughts hit her at once. She wasn’t in her bed at the main house of Chisholm Cattle Company ranch and it wasn’t morning.

      Through the boards that had been nailed haphazardly over the only window in the room, she could see daylight, but from the angle of the shadows it appeared to be afternoon.

      Emma struggled to sit up, taking in the unfamiliar small room with its paint-peeling faded walls, the mattress resting on the scarred wood floor, the tiny closet with two buckets, one full of water, and the tray near the door with a sandwich in plastic wrap, an apple and a thermos.

      As her memory came back, she was suddenly aware of the cold air coming in through a broken pane at the window. She hugged herself for a moment before getting to her feet.

      Her head swam and she had to drop back to her hands and knees. Crawling over to the tray, she opened the thermos. Coffee, and it was still hot. She poured herself some into the plastic cup it came with. Her fingers trembled as she took a sip and considered the situation she found herself in. It wasn’t the first time she’d been drugged and 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 crazy woman, who she suspected was also a killer.

      Aggie had caught her off guard at the main house at the ranch this morning. It had been just this morning, hadn’t it? She thought so. She’d been expecting her. She’d even gotten a small pistol out of Hoyt’s gun safe.

      But then Aggie had appeared in the kitchen doorway and said, “I think it’s time I told you the truth.”

      Emma had held the gun on her as Aggie had sat down across the table from her. “You framed my husband.”

      “I did much worse than that.” Aggie had looked at Emma’s coffee cup sitting on the table next to a small plate with cake crumbs on it. “I’ll tell you everything, Emma. You deserve to know the truth. Is there any coffee?”

      Emma thought she’d been watching Aggie the entire time she went to get another cup and the rest of the coffee in the pot. But that must have been when Aggie put the drug into her half-empty coffee cup.

      Aggie had begun talking. Emma had listened, getting more drowsy by the moment and having a hard time making sense of what the woman was saying. It wasn’t until she’d dropped her coffee cup that she realized she’d been drugged. She’d grabbed for the gun, but her movements had been too slow by then and Aggie had been much quicker.

      She remembered Aggie walking her out to an old pickup and buckling her in. Emma couldn’t be sure how far they had gone when Aggie got her out and up the stairs into the old farmhouse. That’s the last she remembered until waking up thinking it was morning.

      “What now?” Emma asked as she picked up the sandwich and took a bite.

      “We wait,” Aggie said.

      “What for?”

      Aggie merely smiled and turned to leave.

      “You realize my family will be looking for me,” Emma said.

      “I wouldn’t count on that. You left a note that said you couldn’t deal with all of this.”

      “Hoyt won’t believe it,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

      “Oh, I think he will. Along with the note, everything you brought into the marriage is gone from the house. If they bothered to check, which I don’t think they will, they’d find that you bought a used pickup the day after Hoyt was arrested. The title is in the name of Emma Chisholm.”

      ZANE