Redemption (35 page)

“You saved my life.”

“If I could have gotten your mother out the moment she knew she was pregnant with you...” He shook his head. “But Cullen was watching her like a hawk. Had the boys keeping an eye on her, too. I think he suspected something was going on with her.”

“You loved her.”

He nodded.

“You risked your life for her.”

He smiled and took her hand. “That is what you do when you love someone. You know that better than I do. Look what you did to save mine. I wish I could protect you.”

She’d brought Claude more time but not near enough. He died less than a year later. His liver hadn’t failed him, but his heart had.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked, looking up from the hole where he’d been shoveling.

She nodded. “I was just thinking about Claude. I wish he was here. He wanted this so badly for my mother.”

This was it. She could feel it and could tell Jack did, too. Crazy as it was, she almost stopped him. She knew why he’d told her he loved her now. Because this could change everything. These stolen hours searching for the treasure with Jack had been the best in her life.

He began to dig around the clasp.

“Jack.” She swallowed as he threw out another shovelful of dirt. “I don’t want this to change things between us.”

He laughed. “Too late for that, Kate.” He kept digging. After a few minutes, the shovel blade clanged against something. “It’s padlocked.”

Jack stopped digging and knelt down to brush aside dirt and inspect the latch and padlock. “I think I can break the lock with the shovel so we can see what is inside.”

She knew what he was saying. He didn’t want to dig out the trunk only to find it had nothing of value in it. Best to see what they had before going any farther.

Raising the shovel, he brought the blade down on the clasp and lock. The sound rang out and seemed to drift across the hollow. Jack brought the shovel down again. Then again. The sound was so loud neither of them heard anyone approach.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

J
ACK’S HEART WAS POUNDING
. Had he ever really believed the treasure existed, let alone that they would find it?

Now, though, he wanted to know what was in the box. Not for the sake of money. His curiosity was killing him. Kate, he’d noticed, had slumped onto the ground at the edge of the hole.

He looked up at her. “Do you want to—”

“You open it.”

He nodded. A rusted padlock hung off one side. He picked up the shovel and again brought it down hard. The blade clanged against the lock, but didn’t break it open. He tried again, putting more force into it.

Metal on metal sang, ending in a loud pop as the latch broke.

Jack swallowed, telling himself not to get his hopes up, but it was impossible. He glanced at Kate. She seemed awestruck, her brown eyes wide with disbelief and something else—awe.

He reached down and was forcing his fingers down along the edges of the trunk’s lid to lift it when the shadow fell over him and he heard Kate let out a cry.

His already thundering heart kicked into overdrive as he looked up. Kate was looking past him, shock and fear in her expression.

Slowly Jack turned to find a man silhouetted against the sky. He couldn’t make out the man’s face, but there was no missing the gun in the man’s hand.

“Jack?” Kate asked, her voice breaking.

Jack froze, his mind racing. The sheriff had said that only three of the four Ackermann boys had survived the raid thirty years ago. Two were now dead and one was in jail. Unless this was a friend...

“Nice work, Jack.”

He felt a chill careen down his spine as he recognized the voice.

“You, too, Kate,” Arnie Thorndike said. “I was starting to lose faith that the two of you would ever find it. Which would have been disappointing, since I put all my money, so to speak, on you.”

“Being a lawyer wasn’t profitable enough for you?” Jack asked. The shovel was in reach, but he was at a distinct disadvantage, since he was in a hole and Thorndike had a gun.

“I thought you were Claude’s friend,” Kate said.

“I was,” the man said, sounding indignant. “His
best
friend. This really has nothing to do with Claude.”

“How can you say that?” Jack demanded. “Kate is his daughter.”

Thorndike nodded. “But the money in that chest is
mine.
Cullen owed me.”

Jack scoffed. “I know lawyer’s charge a lot but—”

“Cullen and I had a business arrangement. He left me holding the bag. I’m here to collect what is rightfully mine.”

“Pot,” Kate said. “Of course. He and his sons raised marijuana. But they had to have someone outside the compound distribute it since Cullen seldom left the property, according to Claude. Who better than an ex-hippie lawyer?”

Thorndike smiled and tipped his hat to her.

“Claude couldn’t have known about your arrangement with his brother,” Jack said.

“Seems Claude and I both had our secrets,” the lawyer said, looking at Kate. His attention quickly shifted back to Jack, though. “Come on, I’m dying of suspense up here. Open the trunk, Jack.”

* * *

K
ATE COULDN’T BELIEVE
this was happening. She and Jack had come so far only to have it end like this.

“Open it yourself,” Jack said.

Thorndike wagged his head as if disappointed. “Don’t be like that. You owe me.”

“How’s that?” Jack asked.

“Who do you think has been saving your girlfriend?” the attorney said. “When Darrell and Cecil got to town, their plan was to kill her, get the map so they could compare it to the one their father had left behind, get the gold and disappear for good.”

“They came to you?” Kate asked in surprise.

“I was their father’s attorney and business partner,” Thorndike said, “plus they’d hoped their old man had left them something in his will.” He shook his head. “I gave them advice instead.”

“Did you tell them to kill each other?” Jack asked.

“No, that was their doing. Apparently Darrell didn’t like my advice. He and Cecil fought.” He shrugged.

“And Gallen?” Kate asked.

“He had to be dealt with after he attacked you. He could have killed you and ruined everything.”

“Isn’t that what you’re planning to do—kill us?” Jack asked.

“The trunk, Jack,” Thorndike said, motioning with the gun. “I’m tired of this chitchat.”

Jack glanced at Kate. She held her breath as he bent over, grabbed the lip of the trunk lid and pulled. The rusty hinges groaned, complaining loudly.

“Wait,” Kate cried.

Jack stopped, the trunk lid open only a fraction of an inch.

“You can have whatever is in the trunk,” she said.

Thorndike laughed. “I know.”

“No, I’m saying, let us go now. Jack and I will walk away. No one will ever know what happened to Ackermann’s buried treasure.”

The lawyer seemed to study her for a moment. “Do you think I’m a fool? You’ll go running straight to the sheriff.”

“And tell him what?” she said. “That we found the gold but you took it away from us? Who would believe that? Even if we did, by the time the sheriff got up here, you and the gold would be gone. There’s a gate behind that bush down there, and a road where you could drive a four-wheeler.”

“You expect me to believe you would give up whatever is in that trunk just like that?” he asked with a snap of the fingers on his free hand.

Kate nodded. “Just like that.”

Thorndike laughed. “Aren’t you even curious what you would be giving up?”

“No.” Kate looked to Jack. “I’ve actually found what I’ve been looking for and didn’t realize it.”

Jack looked at her in surprise. He gave her a smile.

The lawyer studied them for a long moment. “You’ll tell the sheriff I killed Gallen.”

“Even if we did, the sheriff would never be able to prove it,” Jack said. “With all the Ackermanns now dead, Frank isn’t going to keep looking for their killers. You won this one. Quit while you’re ahead. If you kill us, it will be a whole different story and you know it.”

“You should have been lawyers,” Thorndike said as he lowered the gun. “You two make a very convincing argument.”

“Just help me out of this hole and it’s all yours,” Jack said and extended his hand.

EPILOGUE

S
UMMER CAME TO
B
EARTOOTH
on a sweet, warm wind that blew down out of the Crazy Mountains. Three things happened that would be remembered and talked about for years.

The first and biggest event of the season was the wedding of Destry Grant and Rylan West. High school lovers finally reunited, their story was told time and again during the three-day celebration in Beartooth.

Shortly after that glorious reception, the second thing happened. Ruth McCray died from a tragic fall down the stairs at her ranch. At her funeral service Sunday at church, Hitch wept openly. Now who would save Hitch from himself? everyone wondered.

Jack was surprised when he got a call from a Bozeman lawyer telling him he’d been mentioned in Ruth’s will. He’d driven to Bozeman, more out of curiosity than anything else. As he was going into the lawyer’s office, he passed an extremely upset Hitch coming out.

“You all right?” Jack asked, but Hitch only ducked his head and pushed past him, hurrying away.

The lawyer gave Jack the shocking news in a letter, handwritten and signed by Ruth.

“I bequeath Jack French my ranch, although I know it won’t make up for what I’ve done. I will never forgive myself for what happened the night his father died. I am responsible for running Delbert French off the road. Once I realized that he was dead, I panicked. I got rid of the old pickup I was driving and let my son Hitch discover it gone and report the truck as stolen. All these years, I’ve lived with the guilt and fear that I’d be found out. I know the land can’t make up for what I’ve done, but at least I can rest in peace knowing that I bared my soul and gave what I could.”

Jack was too shocked to speak. He’d been so sure it was Hitch who’d run his father off the road, and all the time it had been Ruth. Not even Hitch had known the truth. Until today, apparently.

“I don’t want her land.” He stood to leave.

“It’s yours. You can sell it, give it away, but it is yours,” the lawyer said.

Jack thought of all the years Hitch had put up with his mother’s tyranny so he could inherit the ranch. “What about her son? What did she leave him?”

“She saw to his security,” the lawyer assured him.

It wasn’t until later, back in Beartooth, that Jack heard Hitch had been going all over town saying that he was finally free not just of his mother but the ranch. The last Jack saw of Hitch, he was headed for the Yellowstone Airport, threatening to see the world.

This was followed by the third and most shocking event. Arnie Thorndike’s body was discovered in a deep hole up in Ackermann Hollow.

“He appears to have been killed by a makeshift booby trap after opening an old trunk that had been buried up in the hollow,” the sheriff was quoted as saying in the newspaper. “This is one of the reasons that residents have been warned to stay out of that hollow. The booby trap is believed to have been constructed by the late Cullen Ackermann.

“The trunk,” according to the sheriff, “was found empty, except for the booby trap paraphernalia found inside. The device appears to have been triggered when Mr. Thorndike opened the lid.”

People in Beartooth were shocked by the news.

“I never took Arnie Thorndike as a treasure hunter,” one rancher said at the café after the news came out. “Can’t imagine that old hippie getting off the couch, let alone climbing all over the hollow looking for gold. And then to find something only to get yourself killed.” The rancher shook his head. “Guess there never was any gold up there.”

Jack and Kate never told anyone any different. But Kate threw away all the lost-treasure magazines after that and sold her metal detector and infrared camera on eBay.

Their engagement was hardly mentioned, just like their small wedding, at the café with only a few close friends. The two moved into the apartment over the café until Jack completed the home he was building for them on the French ranch. Carson had talked Jack into taking the land Ruth McCray had given him.

“Do something good with it for your father,” his friend had argued.

Meanwhile Kate was running the café and looking for a waitress to take Bethany’s place. Bethany was pregnant with her and Clete’s first child.

Life in Beartooth was so uneventful after that that there was hardly any gossip to pass along. Nettie had been so upset over Frank being shot by his daughter that she didn’t even get up and look out the window the night Jack and Kate buried a heavy, large box next to that old garage by the café.

To Kate’s and Jack’s surprise—and of course Arnie Thorndike’s—there had been more than a booby trap inside the trunk hidden in Ackermann Hollow. The gold Kate’s mother had wanted her so desperately to have was finally hers for that rainy day when she and Jack might need it.

* * *

“
J
ACK?”

“Yes, Kate?”

The two of them were lying naked up in the hayloft. A light breeze blew out of the Crazies, smelling of summer and pine.

“What would you think about having a baby?”

He turned his head to look over at her. His blue eyes shone like sunshine on Saddlestring Lake. She thought of the picnics they’d had up there, of the long horseback rides, of the garden the two of them were nurturing behind the house.

She had settled well into being a rancher’s wife, the café was thriving and she’d even taken a quilting class from the Beartooth Quilting Society.

“Kate?” Jack rolled onto his side to look at her. “Are you telling me you’re...”

She smiled as she turned on her side to look at him. Only minutes before, he’d made passionate love to her. Now he ran his fingers along the length of her. Desire sparked again as she nodded.