Rustled. B.J. Daniels

that the accommodations aren’t delightful.”

      Aggie stepped into the room, closed the door and stood against it. Emma could barely see her in the dim light that came through the hole between the boards over the window.

      “I like you,” Aggie said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

      “That’s good.” She figured she knew what was coming next.

      “But I can’t let you go back to the house and Hoyt.”

      “Why is that?” Emma asked.

      Aggie let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve told you. It’s too dangerous.”

      “We both know that Hoyt is not a killer.”

      To her surprise Aggie said, “You could be right.”

      Was the woman merely trying to pacify her?

      “Aggie, if you turn yourself in—”

      She let out a laugh. “I haven’t done anything.”

      Emma would beg to differ. “You abducted me, drugged me and are holding me prisoner.”

      “For your own good.”

      Now it was her turn to laugh. “And who are you protecting me from, Aggie?” When she didn’t answer, Emma said, “Hoyt didn’t kill anyone.”

      She heard Aggie slide down to sit on the floor and thought about trying to overpower her. But she knew that by the time she threw off the blankets and got up and launched herself at the woman, Aggie would be ready for her. Aggie was armed, probably with the same gun she’d been carrying earlier, and Emma wasn’t in the mood for a suicide mission.

      Also a part of her hoped that Aggie was finally going to tell her the truth.

      “Do you know why I was such a good insurance investigator?” Aggie asked, seemingly out of the blue. She didn’t wait for Emma to answer. “I studied everything about the people involved, and not just the surviving spouse. I wanted to know the deceased as intimately as if that person was alive.”

      “You’re saying you got to know Hoyt’s other wives?” Emma said. She had wondered what they had really been like. Nothing like herself, she would bet. They were probably tall, willowy and beautiful, not to mention young.

      “I’m not sure Hoyt knew Laura as well as I have come to know her,” Aggie said. “I could say the same for his two other wives, as well. But Laura …” She sighed. “She was like you, apparently totally enamored by Hoyt. At first. But I’m sure you’ve heard about how close the emotions are between love and hate.”

      “If you’re telling me she grew to hate him, I don’t believe you. I can’t imagine anything Hoyt could have done that would have—”

      “She believed he’d fathered his first three sons.”

      “I don’t believe it. A simple DNA test would prove—”

      “There wasn’t DNA testing yet when Laura died.”

      “But there is now. And anyway, if he was the biological father to those boys, Hoyt would have admitted it.”

      “Why do you keep defending him?”

      “Because I love him.” She waited for Aggie to admit her own feelings for Hoyt. She heard the woman get to her feet again and quickly said, “I think you fell for him, as well.” She didn’t add that she thought Aggie had killed his other wives because she was jealous.

      “I’ll admit your husband is …charming. But historically, he is also dangerous to be around.”

      Not half as dangerous as you are, Emma thought. “So you’re just trying to protect me,” she said as she heard Aggie open the door to leave.

      Aggie chuckled but didn’t respond.

      Emma lay back down on the mattress and pulled the blankets over her, but she couldn’t fight off the chill Aggie had left in the room.

      DAWSON HEARD JINX behind him. She was as surefooted as an expensive filly as she climbed up to the cave. He told himself that he could almost hear the wheels in her head turning. She would try to get away when the rustlers came back for her. Or at the very least, give away their location—if he let her. He was already outnumbered. He’d have to find a way to even the odds.

      As he moved a piece of dried brush away from the entrance to the cave, he heard her come up beside him. He turned on his flashlight and shone it into the cavern. To his relief it wasn’t occupied by any animals.

      “Ladies first,” he said with more gallantry than he felt.

      She smirked at that as she bent to step through the small opening. Once inside, she stood to her full height of about five-seven.

      Dawson stepped past her, going around a corner in the cave to the hidden cavern room. As he lit the kerosene lantern he’d left there on one of his trips to the high country, she followed him.

      In the golden light he studied her, wondering what she’d try next. The one thing he knew for sure, there was plenty of fight left in this woman. He’d have to watch her closely or suffer the consequences.

      “What now, Chisholm?” she asked as she glanced around. He could see that she’d been surprised by the size of the cave, surprised that he’d furnished it over the years with not only a lantern but with a cot, a collapsible table and stool, a few pots and pans and a Coleman stove.

      “Sit down over here and take a load off,” he said, opening the folding stool he used when he came up here.

      “Take a load off, Chisholm?” she asked with amusement. She was slim, curved in all the right places, and she knew it.

      “So to speak,” he amended.

      He didn’t go far from the cave, not trusting her, but he had to take care of their horses. When he returned with some firewood, he found her sitting where he’d left her, which surprised him. But he didn’t doubt she’d taken a look around for something to cut the rope binding her wrists behind her. Before he’d left he’d been smart enough to make sure there was nothing sharp she could use.

      The way the cave was structured, the opening turned just inside, which meant that light from the stove or a fire couldn’t be seen from the meadow. The cave was ventilated through a crack at the back that opened to fresh air on the cliff above them, so the smoke from a fire would draft upward high on the cliffs, on the same principle as a fireplace in a home.

      If and when the rustlers returned for Jinx they might catch a whiff of smoke, but they would never be able to find the cave. He doubted they would even smell the smoke if they stayed down in the meadow.

      He made a small fire at the back of the cave near the vent and close to Jinx. It would be getting cold once the sun went down. Then he started the Coleman stove and dug some food out of his saddlebag.

      This cave had been a retreat for years, his own private sanctuary in the high country. A part of him resented that he’d had to bring her here, resented it even more when she asked, “So you come up here and play house by yourself a lot?”

      He shot her a warning look before concentrating again on his cooking. He figured she was right about the other rustlers coming back to look for her—but not for a while, he thought. They’d have to secure the cattle. It would take a while for them to even realize they’d lost her after all that confusion earlier.

      Dawson suspected that the main reason they would come back for her was that they wouldn’t trust her. At least one of them, the boyfriend, would have another motive.

      But given all that, he felt they were relatively safe in the cave, at least for the time being. He’d hidden the horses around the side of the mountain and covered the opening to the cave again with the dried brush. Even if they were found, the cave was high enough on the mountainside that he could hold them off for a long time. He hadn’t brought an arsenal, but he