9. Thad

Before we headed over to speak with our tattooed guest, we'd stopped in the office to look at his registration paperwork. We learned his name was Dan Cutter with an address in Austin, and he had paid for a week in advance. Nothing suspicious there.

Regardless, Finley had worked for me long enough I knew her instincts about people were good. She wouldn't have come by if she hadn't picked up on a worrisome vibe.

We'd then done a quick internet search, leading us to a website for a private detective. Alarms firing in both our minds, we'd looked at each other in alarm.

"Let's go talk to this Dan Cutter," Soren said.

We found Cutter sitting outside on his cabin's patio. He did indeed have a bald head tattooed with a spiderweb.

"Evening," I said, greeting him as I would any guest. We introduced ourselves and asked if he needed anything.

"Can't say as I need much of anything at the moment." Cutter had a head shaped like a pumpkin and a thick neck. Deep-set, beady eyes narrowed further as he looked from one of us to the other. "I'm enjoying myself so far." He lifted a bottle of beer from the arm of the Adirondack chair. "Enjoying one of your local brews and the peace and quiet."

Soren casually leaned against a post. "Is this your first time in Montana?"

"Yep, first time here." He tipped back his beer, still watching us with small eyes.

"Finley said you were asking a lot of questions," I said, more bluntly than I'd meant to. "Like maybe you were looking for someone."

He looked slightly taken aback. "I can't say that I am."

"What do you do, if you don't mind me asking?" Soren hadn't taken his laser-like gaze from the man.

"Why do you ask?" Cutter peeled back a corner of the paper label on his beer bottle.

"We're always curious what brings folks to the ranch," I said.

Soren crossed his arms over his chest, still leaning against the post. "We get worried when a guest asks one of our employees a bunch of nosy questions." Leave it to Soren to get right to the point.

"Excuse me?" Cutter sat forward, still gripping his beer bottle. "I don't follow."

"Finley said you were unusually curious for a guest," I said. "Leaving us wondering why."

Cutter rose up from the chair—all muscular six feet of him. "What's it to you?"

"We're wondering what you're doing here," I said. "Are you looking for someone?"

He blinked. "Why do you ask?"

"We looked you up, and we know you're a private detective," Soren said. "We don't want any trouble here at our place of business."

"I see, you think I'm here investigating," Cutter said. "Can't a private dick take a vacation? Anyway, all my questions were a sorry attempt at flirting with Finley. I'm not very good at it, obviously. I didn't mean to scare her."

Neither Soren nor I said anything. Cutter tugged at the collar of his shirt and shifted weight from one foot to the other.

Cutter set his empty beer bottle on the railing of the porch. "Guess that begs the question—why are you interested in what I do for a living? Do you interrogate all of your guests?"

I felt a twinge of embarrassment. Why were we harassing this poor guy? He probably had no connection to any of us. "You're right. My apologies."

"Are you looking for a detective?" Cutter asked. "I might be of some help. If you're in need of my skills."

"What kind of services do you provide, exactly?" Soren asked.

"Mostly I work for women who suspect their husbands are having an affair. Bread and butter, so to speak. Sometimes it's men suspicious of their wives, but it's less likely."

"How did you get into this line of work?" I asked.

"Same way you got into ranching, most likely. My dad was a PI. Guess you could say I inherited the business and the knack for sniffing around." Cutter looked from one of us to the other. "Which one of you suspects your spouse is having an affair?"

"Neither of us is married," Soren said.

"Okay, cool, something different." Cutter's eyes lit up. "What do you need to know? I'm happy to look into something for you."

An uneasy feeling brewed in the pit of my stomach. Was this guy here on vacation, or had he come looking for Sammie? If he were searching for her, he'd found her. In addition, that meant he'd probably already sent the Underwoods word. The family could be on their way now to hurt her or turn her over to the police. The only way to deal with this was to ask him a direct question.

"Did the Underwoods hire you?" I asked.

Cutter tried to hide it, but the truth flashed in his eyes for long enough that I saw it. So did Soren, apparently, because he moved closer to the porch.

"What do you know?" I asked.

Cutter sank back into his chair. "Fine, yeah, the Underwood family hired me to look for Sammie Wilson. I've been looking for her the better part of a year. She did a darn good job of disappearing."

Wilson. She hadn't told me her real name, I realized now. She was still Sammie, though, even with a different last name.

"Have you told them you found her yet?" Soren asked, a threatening tone in his voice.

"No." He reached into the small cooler by his feet and took out another beer. "I haven't."

"Why not?" I asked, nearly out of my mind. Could it be any harder to get information out of this guy?

"Because I didn't know she had a kid," Cutter said. "That fact changes things for me."

"You mean to tell me they never mentioned her daughter?" Soren asked. "That seems unlikely."

Cutter lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. "Truth is, I don't know anything about these people, other than they paid me to look for a wife who flew the coop. John Underwood told me it was simply to get back something she'd stolen from them, but I got a real bad feeling about the whole thing today. They've been really pushy, threateningly so. It occurred to me they might want to hurt her and the kid. Frankly, I'm scared of them. This afternoon, I started thinking about the woman and that cute little girl, and I thought to myself, there's a reason she left the SOB. He hurt her. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out. I don't make it a habit to work for abusive husbands. The last thing I want on my conscience is to be the one who tells them where she is and be responsible for her or the kid getting hurt."

I softened somewhat toward our pumpkin-headed, tattooed private dick. "What're you going to do, then?"

"I'm going to tell them I can't find her. Unfortunately, that means I won't get paid. The Underwoods gave me enough for expenses, but my payment was promised upon delivering the location of the woman. I can live with that, but it's not going to stop him. The minute I tell them I'm out, they'll hire someone else. The Underwoods want to know where she is."

"Do you know why?" Soren asked.

"Like I said, from the way they described it, I figured she'd stolen some jewelry or art they wanted back. But that theory doesn't pan out. If she had something of such great value, would she really be working as a waitress in the middle of nowhere? Do the math. She's not living high on the hog. Nor is she a harlot who cheated on her husband and took off with something that didn't belong to her. This is no cheater or liar, only a mother trying to keep her kid safe. If it was just divorce papers, that would be one thing, but there's no way I'm telling them where she is because I don't trust he won't try to finish her off."

"Wait a minute," Soren said, interrupting. "Why would Sammie's husband want a divorce when he's dead?"

"Dead?" Cutter asked. "What are you talking about?"

"What are you talking about?" Soren's forehead creased. "You're telling us that all these months you've been under the assumption that John Underwood's alive? I mean no disrespect, but you kind of suck at your job. Isn't curiosity one of the tenets of detective work? His family wants revenge, not a divorce for a guy who's dead. What kind of detective are you?"

"I have no idea what you mean." Cutter appeared completely baffled. As we'd witnessed earlier, the guy wasn't that great an actor, so I doubted he was putting us on. In fact, I was amazed he'd managed to find Sammie at all. He'd obviously been working without all the facts.

"I don't know what they told you, but John Underwood's dead," I said.

"Um, nope. Not dead. I talked to him yesterday." Cutter stared at me as if I were the one with the pumpkin head.

"Oh my God," Soren muttered. "He's alive."

Cutter scratched behind one ear with his free hand. The other still held the beer bottle. "Seems that way to me, unless he has someone impersonating him, which I suppose is possible."

"You're telling us John Underwood's alive?" I asked, thinking out loud. The idea of it was so hard to get my head around.

"Yeah, that's what I just said." Cutter shook his head, clearly still bewildered.

"We saw an obituary in the newspaper," Soren said. "You thought you were finding a woman in order to give her divorce papers and/or take back whatever she'd stolen from them. We thought he was dead."

"I've seen him with my own eyes," Cutter said. "I've talked to him countless times over the last few months. More than I wished to, I can tell you that."

I rocked back on my heels, understanding finally. "John Underwood's alive. He didn't die from the gunshot wound."

"What wound? You sure we're talking about the same case?" Cutter asked.

I had to be careful. If we admitted to Cutter that Sammie had killed John Underwood, he could testify if it ever went to trial. I reached out to the railing to steady myself. "Do you have any voicemails from John Underwood?"

"Sure. I keep most of them in case I end up dead," Cutter said. "The guy's always threatening me, and I have a daughter, you know. If I'm murdered, I want her to know what happened to me."

"Why are you working for a guy like this?" Soren asked.

"My daughter's in college," Cutter replied. "Those tuition bills keep on coming, and I can't let my baby girl down again. But even I have my limits."

"I'm going to need to hear those voicemails," I said. "No, Sammie's going to have to hear them and tell us if it's her husband. You willing to do that?"

Cutter sighed and took a quick swig of his beer before answering. "I'm already way too involved in this. If I had a lick of sense, I'd walk away."

"But you won't?" Soren asked. "Because Sammie ran away to keep her little girl safe. You wouldn't do anything to hurt either one of them, would you?"

"That's right. I can't do it. I may be a lot of things, but I don't hurt women and children. At least not on purpose. I hurt my own family enough as it is. Don't need to add anything else to the list of mistakes I've made."

"Will you come with us to the house?" I asked. "I want Sammie to hear those voicemails."

"We can offer you a glass of good whiskey," Soren said. "To thank you for your cooperation."

"Yeah, sure. I'll do what I can to help, even though I don't know how I'm going to get away from these people," Cutter said. "If they find out I'm helping her, I'm toast."

"We can protect you," Soren said. "Somehow. We'll figure it out."

"Good. Otherwise, I'm going to be the one on the run," Cutter said.

* * *

Sammie and Finleywere in the living room when we arrived back at the house. Finley had fallen asleep on the couch, but Sammie was awake, sitting in an armchair staring into the fireplace. She startled when we came in, clearly lost in thought, but sprang to her feet when she saw we had a guest with us.

"Are you all right? I've been worried. You were gone so long," Sammie said, sounding breathless.

Finley stirred and then woke, sitting up to see what was happening.

"We have something to tell you," Soren said. "You better sit back down."

Sammie did as suggested, as did Cutter, taking a spot at the end of the couch where Finley had been napping.

"Okay, I'm sitting," Sammie said. "What's going on?"

"This is Dan Cutter," I said. "He's a private detective hired by the Underwoods."

All color drained from Sammie's face. "Okay."

"He's not going to hurt you." I crossed over to perch on the wide arm of the chair. "It's a long explanation, but he wasn't given all the information about why he was looking for you."

Soren had gone to the bar and poured our guest a whiskey. After he delivered it to Cutter, my brother took the chair next to Finley and looked over at me. "You want to tell her?"

I nodded, turning to Sammie. "This is going to come as a shock. I don't know how to say it, other than to just spit it out. John's still alive. The bullet wound didn't kill him."

Sammie went very still, other than her pupils dilating. She clasped a hand over her opposite wrist, as if to take her own pulse. "A-alive? That's impossible. He was dead. I saw him die."

"Nope, he's alive," Cutter said. "Very much alive. Still a bastard, as far as I can tell."

"The obituary was fake," I said. "We think, anyway, but we need you to confirm that it's him on the voicemail he left for Cutter yesterday."

Cutter had taken his phone out of his pocket and cued up the voicemail while we were talking. He now set his phone on the coffee table. "It's ready when you are."

Sammie drew in a deep breath and slipped a clammy hand into mine. "Go ahead."

Cutter pushed Play, and a rough voice came from the speaker.

"I've had about enough of your incompetence. We've waited long enough. If you don't have news within a week, we'll make sure you regret betraying us. And it will be a painful death, you hear me?"

Sammie trembled, and her breathing hitched. "That's him. I can't believe it. That's him."

"They faked his death," I said, "to fool you into thinking you killed him."

"That's why there was nothing about it in the papers," Sammie said, sounding as though she was talking more to herself than anyone else. "Not because they were hiding it but because he was alive. The fake obituary was meant for me—so I would think he'd died and come home to confess. If I had, he'd have grabbed me and done God knows what. John thought I'd be susceptible to guilt, but he didn't understand the extent I would go to protect Chloe."

"But this means you're not guilty of anything," Finley said. "You don't have to hide any longer."

"Except that he's alive and wants me found so he can finish off the job he started," Sammie said. "I'll never be free as long as he and his family are around."

"Yes, but this gives us a fighting chance," I said. "We know that whatever happens next, it's not going to involve prison time. All we have to do is trap him and turn him in to the police."

"How are we going to do that?" Sammie asked.

"I have an idea," Soren said. "I think we should lure him out here and get him on video threatening Sammie. She can goad him into confessing to everything."

"I don't know," I said. "It seems dangerous. Wouldn't it be better just to call the police? We have the voicemail proving he's alive."

"No. We need visible proof to take to the cops," Sammie said firmly. "There can't be any doubt it's him or what he wants to do to me. Otherwise, he could wriggle out of it like he's done so far."

"Right, but this time he'll be in Montana," Soren said. "Which means he's within our jurisdiction, not protected by his corrupt family." He turned to Cutter. "You call him and tell him you found Sammie. Give him the location. He'll show up here shortly afterward, and we'll nail him."

"He won't be ready for the Moon brothers," I said.

"He might bring his daddy and brothers," Sammie said. "And they're a whole lot meaner than you boys."

"You might be surprised what we'll do for the people we love," I said. "We'll lure him out to the ranch and get him on video threatening you."

"And confessing to what he's done so far," Soren said.

Sammie shook her head. "Having him come to the house here at the ranch won't work. It has to be someplace he thinks is totally private. He won't try anything if he thinks one of you will be home at any moment." She held up a hand before anyone could speak. "I know what I should do. I'll rent a room at the motel. It would be easier for us to control his movements that way. We can get him on video much easier in a small space."

"You're right," I said. "And it keeps him away from the ranch and our innocent guests."

"We'll hang the cameras in the room," Soren said. "Once we have it on video, we can send it to our sheriff. He's a good friend of Mama's from high school. We can trust him to do the right thing. He's not in anyone's pocket, here or otherwise."

"Brilliant," Finley said. "Cameras can save lives. Take it from me."

Soren looked at her funny but didn't ask her what she meant. I made a mental note to ask her about it later.

"I'll call Maxine right now and book the room. That way Cutter can tell him exactly which unit she's in. Hang on." Soren pulled his phone from his back pocket and took a few seconds to locate the number, then called.

"Hey, Maxine. Soren Moon here." He paused, clearly listening. "Isn't that something? Good for him." Another pause. "Yeah, I'm calling to see if we can book a room starting tonight for Sammie Scott. If anyone calls looking for her, make sure and tell him she's been staying there for months." He nodded as she said something on the other end. "Yeah, it's her estranged husband, and he's not coming for a happy reunion. We're fairly certain he'll arrive at your motel tomorrow asking for Sammie. When he gets there, and if he goes to the office first, we want you tell him what room she's in, but he'll probably go straight to her." He nodded, listening. "That's perfect. You're the best. Room 6. Got it. I'll tell Sammie. She'll check in tomorrow morning early if that's okay?"

Soren hung up. "Maxine's son got into the Naval Academy, but that's neither here nor there at the moment."

"Maxine's good people," I said. "She'll do what we need her to."

Sammie withdrew her hand from mine and got up to stand by the window, looking out into the last of the evening light. "Chloe will stay with someone here at the ranch. I want her safe in case anything goes wrong." She slowly turned away from the glass, wearing a resolute expression on her pretty face. She was ready to fight. At long last, she had the upper hand. "Mr. Cutter, make the call."

"As long as you're sure you're ready to unleash the beast, so to speak?" Cutter asked.

"Do it," Sammie said, coming back to sit in the chair. She placed her hand on my knee and leaned her weight against me.

"I'll pretend like I still think he wants an address to deliver papers to and give him the name of the motel." Cutter picked up his phone, clicked a few buttons and set it on the table in speaker mode.

"Don't forget the room number," I said.

"Yeah, got it."

The phone rang. We waited, no one moving until John Underwood answered.

"It's about time you called me back," John growled. "Where have you been?"

"Sorry about that. I was in an area with bad cell coverage. But I have good news. I found her. You ready for an address? Your attorney can send the papers here. I'll make sure she gets them."

"Yeah, sure. Where is she?"

"She's working as a waitress in Bluefern—a small town in western Montana," Cutter said. "She's living at the Fireside Motel. Room 6."

"Montana? She's in Montana? I'll be damned. Didn't think she'd get that far. All this time I figured she was somewhere in Tennessee."

"No idea what led her here, Mr. Underwood. All I know is that she and your daughter are here in town. Bluefern Motel, room 6. From what I gather, she's been here for a while—using a different last name. She's going by Sammie Scott, which made it more challenging to locate her."

"Scott, huh? I figured she'd use her maiden name."

"Your assumption made my task more difficult," Cutter said piously. "But I found her eventually."

"You're full of excuses, Cutter. I'll take it from here."

"The address for the motel is on the website," Cutter said. "I'll send you the link. There's a Maxine at the front desk who?—"

Underwood hung up before Cutter got the rest of the sentence out.

We all looked at one another for a few seconds until Sammie spoke. "I want to call the local sheriff and tell him everything. As much faith as I have in you guys, I think we need help from the cops."

"I agree," Finley said. "From all accounts, these are very bad guys. We need backup."

"It's safer to get help," Sammie said. "But still it scares me to get the sheriff involved."

"We'll call him," I said. "Sheriff Winthrop's a good friend of Mama's, so he'll want to help."

"Plus, it's his job," Soren said drily.

We agreed that Sammie and I would call him after everyone left.

"Make sure and tell him our plan," Soren said. "He might have a better idea, but I'd be surprised if he did."

"I think we should all head to bed and get a good night's sleep," Finley said. "Who knows what tomorrow will bring."

"Yeah, good idea," Soren said. "Cutter, we appreciate the help."

"It's the least I could do, considering," Cutter said. "Thanks for the whiskey. I'll see myself out."

Finley and Soren also rose to their feet. Finley leaned down to give Sammie a quick hug. "Don't worry. We've got your back. This is almost over."

"I hope you're right," Sammie said.

Everyone but Sammie and I emptied from the living room.

"You ready to call?" I asked.

She nodded as she took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. For the second time that night she said, "Do it."