Conard county murderous.., p.1
Conard County--Murderous Intent, page 1
“Okay. But why are you so sure it’s a message, Mr. Healey?”
“Why else would anyone drag that injured animal to our wall? Think about it, Ms. Metcalfe.”
Then he turned and walked back into his stockade, leaving her to wonder how she could be so wrong. Or maybe so right?
Maybe someone had a grudge against someone inside that stockade. Maybe the people inside had drawn danger to Cash Creek Canyon.
She turned to recross the stepping stones and tried not to think of someone stalking these woods seeking vengeance.
She looked around as she reached her cabin and shivered, as if the day had suddenly turned colder. The first splatters of icy rain hit her face.
The woods no longer seemed as friendly.
Conard County: Murderous Intent
New York Times Bestselling Author
Rachel Lee
To the far-too-many veterans who struggle daily
with reentering civilian life.
Rachel Lee was hooked on writing by the age of twelve and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.
Books by Rachel Lee
Harlequin Intrigue
Conard County: The Next Generation
Cornered in Conard County
Missing in Conard County
Murdered in Conard County
Conard County Justice
Conard County: Hard Proof
Conard County: Traces of Murder
Conard County: Christmas Bodyguard
Conard County: Mistaken Identity
Conard County: Christmas Crime Spree
Conard County: Code Adam
Conard County: Killer in the Storm
Conard County: Murderous Intent
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Krystal Metcalfe—Writer and part owner of the Mountain Writers’ Retreat in Conard County, Wyoming. She has a problem with the stockade built on the other side of the creek, a stockade that has invaded the privacy of what she calls her Zen Zone.
Josh Healey—Owner of the land across the creek. It’s been in his family for generations and now he’s building on it to create a safe place for veterans who are dealing with issues related to returning to regular civilian life. Josh is both a veteran himself and a licensed psychologist.
Mason Cambridge—An irritable, annoying and egotistical author of bestselling horror stories. No one is terribly surprised that he’s the first murder victim, given he’s made a lot of enemies.
Darlene Dana—Mason’s agent on an annual visit. She is the most surprised by the murder of her number one client.
Joan Metcalfe—Krystal’s mother and the other owner of the retreat where artistic types come for the peace and quiet of the woods.
Sebastian Elsin—Second murder victim.
Mary Collins—She believes Mason stole her book idea and cost her a bestseller.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Excerpt from Peril in Piney Woods by Debra Webb
Prologue
Krystal Metcalfe loved to sit on the porch of her small cabin in the mornings, especially when the weather was exceptionally pleasant. With a fresh cup of coffee and its delightful aroma mixing with those of the forest around, she found internal peace and calm here.
Across a bubbling creek that ran before her porch, her morning view included the old Healey house. Abandoned about twenty years ago, it had been steadily sinking into decline. The roof sagged, wood planks had been silvered by the years and there was little left that looked safe or even useful. Krystal had always anticipated the day when the forest would reclaim it.
Then came the morning when a motor home pulled up beside the crumbling house and a large man climbed out. He spent some time investigating the old structure, inside and out. Maybe hunting for anything he could reclaim? Would that be theft at this point?
She lingered, watching with mild curiosity but little concern. At some level she had always supposed that someone would express interest in the Healey land itself. It wasn’t easy anymore to find private land on the edge of US Forest, and eventually the “grandfathering” that had left the Healey family their ownership would end because of lack of occupancy. Regardless, it wasn’t exactly a large piece of land, unlikely to be useful to most, and the Forest Service would let it return to nature.
Less of that house meant more of the forest devouring the eyesore. And at least the bubbling of the creek passing through the canyon swallowed most of the sounds that might be coming from that direction now that the man was there. And it sure looked like he might be helping the destruction of that eyesore.
But then came another morning when she stepped out with her coffee and saw a group of people, maybe a dozen, camped around the ramshackle house. That’s when things started to become noisy despite the sound baffling provided by the creek.
A truck full of lumber managed to make its way up the remaining ruined road on that side of the creek and dumped a load that caused Krystal to gasp. Rebuilding? Building bigger?
What kind of eyesore would she have to face? Her view from this porch was her favorite. Her other windows and doors didn’t include the creek. And all those people buzzing around provided an annoying level of activity that would distract her.
Then came the ultimate insult: a generator fired up and drowned any peaceful sound that remained, the wind in the trees and the creek both.
That did it. Maybe these people were squatters who could be driven away. She certainly doubted she’d be able to write at all with that roaring generator. Her cabin was far from soundproofed.
After setting her coffee mug on the railing, she headed for the stepping stones that crossed the creek. For generations they’d been a path between two friendly families until the Healeys had departed. As Krystal crossed, she sensed people pulling back into the woods. Creepy. Maybe she ought to reconsider this trip across the creek. But her backbone stiffened. It usually did.
She walked around the house, now smelling of freshly cut wood, sure she’d have to find someone.
Then she found the man around the back corner. Since she was determined not to begin this encounter by yelling at the guy, she waited impatiently until he turned and saw her. He leaned over, turning the generator to a lower level, then simply looked at her.
He wore old jeans and a long-sleeved gray work shirt. A pair of safety goggles rode the top of his head. A dust mask hung around his neck. Workmanlike, which only made her uneasier.
Then she noticed more. God, he was gorgeous. Tall, large, broad-shouldered. A rugged, angular face with turquoise eyes that seemed to pierce the green shade of the trees. The forest’s shadow hid the creek that still danced and sparkled in revealed sunlight behind her.
This area was a green cavern. One she quite liked.
Finally he spoke, clearly reluctant to do so. “Yes?”
“I’m Krystal Metcalfe. I live in the house across the creek.”
One brief nod. His face remained like granite. Then slowly he said, “Josh Healey.”
An alarm sounded in her mind. Then recognition made her heart hammer because this might be truly bad news. “This is Healey property, isn’t it?” Of course it was. Not a bright question from her.
A short nod.
“Are you going to renovate this place?”
“Yes.”
God, this was going to be like pulling teeth, she thought irritably. “I hope you’re not planning to cut down many trees.”
“No.”
Stymied, as it became clear this man had no intention of beginning any conversation, even one as casual as talking about the weather, she glared. “Okay, then. Just take care of the forest.”
She turned sharply on her heel without another word and made her way across the stepping stones to her own property. Maybe she should start drinking her morning coffee on the front porch of her house on the other side from the creek.
She was certainly going to have to go down to Conard City to buy a pair of ear protectors or go mad trying to do her own work when that generator once again revved up.
Gah!
* * *
JOSH HEALEY HAD watched Krystal Metcalfe coming round the corner of his new building. Trouble? She sure seemed to be looking for it.
She was cute, pretty, her blue eyes as bright as the summer sky overhead. But he didn’t care about that.
What he cared about were his troops, men and women who were escaping a world that PTSD and war had ripped from them. People who needed to be left alone to find balance within themselves and with group therapy. Josh, a psychologist, had brought them here for that solitude.
Now he had that neighbor trying to poke her nose into his business. Not good. He knew how people re
But he had more than a dozen soldiers to protect and he was determined to do so. If that woman became a problem, he’d find a way to shut her down.
It was his land after all.
Chapter One
No.
Nearly a year later, that one word still sometimes resounded in Krystal Metcalfe’s head. One of the few words and nearly the last word Josh Healey had spoken to her.
A simple question. Several simple questions, and the only response had been single syllables. Well, except for his name.
The man had annoyed her with his refusal to be neighborly, but nothing had changed in nearly a year. Well, except for the crowd over there. A bunch of invaders.
At least Josh Healey hadn’t scalped the forest.
Krystal loved the quiet, the peace, the view from her private cabin at the Wyoming-based Mountain Artists’ Retreat in the small community of Cash Creek Canyon. She was no temporary resident, unlike guests in the other cabins, but instead a permanent one as her mother’s partner in this venture.
She thought of this cabin and the surrounding woods as her Zen Space, a place where she could always center herself, could always find the internal quiet that unleashed wandering ideas, some of them answers to questions her writing awoke in her.
But lately—well, for nearly a year in fact—this Zen Space of hers had been invaded. Across the creek, within view from her porch, a fallen-down house had been renovated by about a dozen people, then surrounded by a rustic stockade.
What the hell? A fence would have done if they wanted some privacy, but a stockade, looking like something from a Western movie?
Well, she told herself as she sat on her porch, maybe it wasn’t as ugly as chain-link or an ordinary privacy fence might have been. It certainly fit with the age of the community that had always been called Cash Creek Canyon since a brief gold rush in the 1870s.
But still, what the hell? It sat there, blending well enough with the surrounding forest, but weird. Overkill. Unnecessary, as Krystal knew from having spent most of her life right here. Nothing to hide from, nothing to hide. Not around here.
Sighing, she put her booted feet up on her porch railing and sipped her coffee, considering her previous but brief encounters with the landowner, Josh Healey.
Talk about monosyllabic! She was quite sure that she hadn’t gotten more than a word from him in all this time. At least not the few times she had crossed the creek on the old stepping stones.
The Healey house had been abandoned like so many along Cash Creek as life on the mountainside had become more difficult. For twenty years, Krystal had hoped the house’s steady decay would finally collapse the structure, restoring the surrounding forest to its rightful ownership.
Except that hadn’t happened and she couldn’t quite help getting irritated from the day a huge motor home had moved in to be followed by trucks of lumber, a noisy generator and a dozen or so men and women who camped in tents as they restored the sagging house. A year since then and she was still troubled by the activity over there.
The biggest question was why it had happened. The next question was what had brought the last owner of the property back here with a bunch of his friends to fill up the steadily shrinking hole in the woods.
No answers. At least none from Josh Healey. None, for that matter, from the Conard County sheriff’s deputies who patrolled the community of Cash Creek Canyon. They knew no more than anyone: that it was a group residence.
The privacy of that stockade was absolute. At least the damn noise had quieted at last, leaving the Mountain Artists’ Retreat in the kind of peace its residents needed for their creative work.
For a while it had seemed that the retreat might die from the noise, even with the muffling woods around. That had not happened, and spring’s guests had arrived pretty much as usual, some new to the community, others returning visitors.
Much as she resented the building that had invaded her Zen Space, Krystal had to acknowledge a curiosity that wouldn’t go away. A curiosity about those people. About the owner, who would say nothing about why he had brought them all there.
Some kind of cult?
That question troubled her. But what troubled her more was how much she enjoyed watching Josh Healey laboring around that place. Muscled. Hardworking. And entirely too attractive when he worked with his shirt off.
Dang. On the one hand she wanted to drive the man away. On the other she wanted to have sex with him. Wanted it enough to feel a tingling throughout her body.
How foolish could she get?
* * *
ACROSS THE CREEK, Josh Healey often noticed the woman who sat on her porch in the mornings drinking coffee. He knew her name because she had crossed the creek a few times: Krystal Metcalfe, joint owner of the artists’ retreat. A pretty package of a woman, but he had no time or interest in such things these days.
Nor did he have any desire to share the purpose of his compound. It had been necessary to speak briefly with a deputy who hadn’t been that curious. He imagined word had gotten around some, probably with attendant rumors, but no one out there in the community of Cash Creek Canyon, or beyond it in Conard City or County, had any need to know what he hoped he was accomplishing. And from what he could tell, no one did.
Nor did anyone have a need to know the reentry problems being faced by his ex-military residents.
Least of all Krystal Metcalfe, who watched too often and had ventured over here with her questions. Questions she really had no right to ask.
So when he saw her in the mornings, he shrugged it off. She had a right to sit on her damn porch, a right to watch whatever she could see...although the stockade fencing had pretty much occluded any nosy viewing.
But sometimes he wondered, with private amusement, just how she would respond if he crossed that creek and questioned her. Asked her about the hole in the woods created by her lodge and all the little cabins she and her mother had scattered through the forest.
Hah! She apparently felt she took care of her environment but he could see at least a dozen problems with her viewpoint. Enough problems that his own invasion seemed paltry by comparison.
As it was, right now he had more than a dozen vets, a number that often grew for a while, who kept themselves busy with maintaining the sanctuary itself, with cooking, with gardening. And a lot of time with group therapy, helping each other through a very difficult time, one that had shredded their lives. All of them leaving behind the booze and drugs previously used as easy crutches.
Some of his people left when they felt ready. New ones arrived, sometimes more than he had room for but always welcomed.
Most of the folks inside, male and female, knew about Krystal Metcalfe, and after he explained her harmless curiosity to them, they lost their suspicion, lost their fear of accusations.
Because his people had been accused. Every last one of them had been accused of something. It seemed society had no room for the detritus, the problems, their damn war had brought home.
He sighed and shook his head and continued around the perimeter of the large stockade. Like many of his folks here, he couldn’t relax completely.
It always niggled at the back of his mind that someone curious or dangerous might try to get into the stockade. Exactly the thing that he’d prevented by building it this way in the first place.
But still the worry wouldn’t quite leave him. His own remnant from a war.
He glanced at Krystal Metcalfe one last time before he rounded the corner. She appeared to be absorbed in a tablet.
Good. Her curiosity had gone far enough.
Chapter Two
The rusticity of the peaked dining room at the Mountain Artists’ Retreat recalled a much earlier era. Dark wood covered the walls, wood planking covered the floor and the arched ceiling. Heavy beams bore the weight of exterior walls made of stone and glass. Two huge stone fireplaces decorated a pair of the walls. Wood tables, sofas and comfortable chairs, plus self-serve food bars, completed the room.
