Under Threat

mother couldn’t take care of him. Muriel was going through cancer treatment. He’d been honorable even at a young age. He wasn’t the kind of man not to call and tell her about a fiancée.
So his not calling or writing felt...wrong. And it left her with nagging questions.
That was only part of the problem and she knew it. She’d hoped that Dillon Ramsey would take her mind off Chase. They’d been dating regularly, and most of the time she enjoyed herself. They’d kissed a few times but that was all. He hadn’t even made a pass at her. She couldn’t imagine what it was about Dillon that had worried her father. At one point, she’d wondered if her father the marshal had warned him to behave with her.
The thought made her cringe. He wouldn’t do that, would he?
She’d asked Dillon last night how he liked working for her dad.
“I like it. He’s an okay dude,” he’d answered.
She’d laughed. No one called her father a dude.
Now, she had to admit that Dillon was a disappointment. Which made her question what it was she was looking for in a man. A sense of adventure along with a sense of humor. Dillon didn’t seem to have either.
Was that why she felt so restless? She looked around her apartment, which she’d furnished with things she loved from the turquoise couch to the weathered log end tables and bright flowered rug. But the spectacular view was the best part. The famous Lone Peak, often snowcapped, was framed in her living room window. The mountain looked especially beautiful in the moonlight.
Which made her think of Chase and how much she would have liked to stand on her back deck in the moonlight and kiss him—instead of Dillon. She groaned, remembering her hesitation again last night to invite Dillon up to her apartment. He’d been hinting that he really wanted to see it. She could tell last night that he’d been hurt and a little angry that she hadn’t invited him up.
Standing here in the life she’d built, all she could think about was what Chase’s opinion would be of it. Would he be proud of her accomplishments? Would he regret ever leaving her?
She shook him from her head and hurried back downstairs. She still had work to do, and all she was doing right now was giving herself a headache.
By the next morning, news of the hit and run death of Christy Shores had spread through most of Big Sky and the canyon.
As Marshal Hud Savage walked into Charley’s, the last place Christy Shores had been seen alive, he saw the bartender from last night wasn’t alone.
“Mike French, bartender, right?” Hud asked the younger of the two men standing nervously behind the bar. Twentysomething, Mike looked like a lot of the young people in Big Sky from his athletic build to the T-shirt and shorts over long underwear and sandals.
If Hud had to guess, he’d say Mike had at least one degree in something practical like engineering, but had gotten hooked on a lifestyle of snowboarding in the winter and mountain biking or kayaking in the summer. Which explained the bartending job.
He considered the handsome young man’s deep tan from spending more hours outside than bartending. It made him wonder why a man like that had never appealed to his only daughter.
He suspected Mary was too much of a cowgirl to fall for a ski bum. Instead, she was now dating his deputy, Dillon Ramsey. That thought made his stomach roil, considering what he suspected about the man.
The bartender stepped forward to shake his hand. “Bill said you had some questions about Christy?”
Hud nodded and looked to the bar owner, Bill Benson, before he turned back to Mike. “I understand she was one of the last people to leave the bar last night?”
Mike nodded as Hud pulled out his notebook and pen. “I was just about to lock up when she came out of the women’s bathroom. She looked like she’d been crying. I hadn’t realized she was in there since I had already locked the front door.” He shot a guilty look at his boss. “I usually check to make sure everyone was gone, but last night...”
“What was different about last night?” Hud asked.
Mike shifted on his feet. “A fight had broken out earlier between a couple of guys.” He shot another look at Bill and added, “Christy had gotten into the middle of it. Not sure what it was about. After I broke it up, I didn’t see her. I thought she’d left.”
“Christy’s blood alcohol was three times the legal limit,” Hud said.
Again Mike shot a look at his boss before holding up his hands and quickly defending himself. “I cut her off before the fight because she’d been hitting the booze pretty hard. But that doesn’t mean she quit drinking. The place was packed last night. All I know is that I didn’t serve her after that.”
Hud glanced toward the front door. “Her car is still parked outside. You didn’t happen to take her keys, did you?”
The young man grimaced. “I asked for her keys, but she swore to me that she was walking home.” He shrugged. “I guess that part was true.”
Hud had Christy’s car keys in a plastic evidence bag in his patrol SUV. The keys had been found near her body next to the road after she was apparently struck by a vehicle and knocked into the ditch.
“I’m going to need the names of the two men who were involved in the fight,” he said. He wrote them down, hiding his surprise when he wrote Grady Birch, but Chet Jensen was no surprise. Chet seemed to think of the local jail as his home away from home. “What about friends, girlfriends, anyone Christy was close to.”
Mike shook his head. “She hadn’t been working at Lone Peak Perk very long. I’m not sure she’d made any friends yet. When she came into the bar, she was always alone. I think