All the Lost Little Horses (A Desperation Creek Novel Book 2)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “I was off today,” she explained. “Anyway, I’m still wired.”

  Niall shook his head in obvious disbelief. “You’re kidding.”

  Jed frowned. “Why would I kid? You have to work in the morning, too. Erin doesn’t.”

  “You’re going to send her out in the middle of the night to check camera feed and walk the property line.”

  Erin bristled. “Why would you have a problem with that? I’m a cop. Or is it that you don’t think women should be cops?”

  Niall looked right over the top of her head at Jed. “I don’t care if she went through the police academy. We know the asshole who went after Linette is a big guy. What if this little girl meets up with him out on the far end of the property?”

  “I’m armed—”

  “You gonna have that on your conscience?” Niall snapped, still ignoring Erin as if she hadn’t spoken. Wasn’t there.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this discussion.” Jed looked thoroughly annoyed. “Erin may be young, but she has good instincts. I never expected you to be biased.”

  Linette stood very still, shocked in one way that this scene had blown up, yet also not. Niall had a sharpness about him she had glimpsed on rare occasions in their earlier acquaintance. These past days, she’d seen flashes of anger that seemed out of proportion. Very likely he suffered from PTSD…but did that explain his complete dismissal of another police officer’s competence? No, not just Erin’s competence – he hadn’t so much as looked at her since his first scathing evaluation.

  “You’re being a jerk,” Linette told him. “Get over it.”

  The flare of real anger in his eyes took her aback. A sidelong look told her Jed hadn’t seen it, or he would have reacted.

  “Fine,” Niall snapped. “Guess it’s none of my business. I’m going to bed.” With that, he strode toward the staircase.

  They all heard him stomp upstairs.

  Brows knit in perplexity or something stronger, Jed gazed after him. He let out a long breath before saying to Erin, “Forget him. I’ll make the rounds once with you, then hit the sack if you’re still up to handling a few hours.”

  She squared her shoulders. “You bet.”

  “Good.” Jed touched Linette’s hand lightly. “Why don’t you get to bed. Shouldn’t take me a half hour, and I’ll be in, too.”

  Message received. Linette nodded, resisted the temptation to lift her hand to his bristly jaw, and thanked Erin. “After this is all over, if you’re interested in riding, give me a call.”

  “Really? I’d love that!”

  Unsure if they could become friends or not, Linette found she was willing to try. She hadn’t done that in a good long while. She smiled and echoed Jed. “Good.”

  Upstairs, she saw Niall’s door was closed. She almost knocked, but refrained. Whatever burr had bit into him, he could deal with it himself.

  As tired as she was, Linette decided to read until Jed came to bed. She might have to re-read these pages tomorrow, but at least she stayed awake until she heard the rushing sound of water moving through the pipes. Several minutes later, Jed quietly opened her door and slipped in. He’d shaved, she saw, which served as another message. Or maybe reinforcement of the first one.

  Linette lifted the covers for him and watched in silent appreciation as he stripped. Not until he slid into bed beside her did she switch off the lamp and reach for him even as he gathered her close.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Midmorning, Jed walked out of a conference with Mason Thayer and his attorney, a local man named Rodney Wallace, to find Grant waiting.

  Grant let his gaze move coolly over Mason before he asked in a quiet aside for Jed, “A word with you?” He did greet the attorney.

  Mason had paid bail, the source of which wasn’t clear, so Jed couldn’t stop him from leaving. Would he bolt? Jed thought it was a possibility.

  Watching the two men cross the parking lot outside the double glass doors, Grant said, “Get anywhere?”

  “Not as far as I’d like. Mason stumbled over his idiocy in reporting his own cattle stolen, and finally admitted he was involved with stealing other ranchers’ animals, but not for money.”

  Grant gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

  Jed continued, “All those rich ranchers deserved to find out what it’s like to face real trouble. His rage just poured out. Even the attorney couldn’t shut him up.”

  “Did you point out that the really rich ranchers carried insurance and he hasn’t hurt them all that much?”

  They started down the long hall that took them from the county’s prison into sheriff’s department headquarters. “I did, but he kept ranting. A lot of years of anger stored up there.”

  “He wouldn’t give you any names?”

  “Interestingly, only one. Rob Fullerton.”

  Grant’s eyebrows climbed. “Fullerton’s name does keep cropping up.”

  “The spite makes me doubt Fullerton is involved at all.” Except, if Jed was wrong about that and Fullerton also held a grudge against Linette for resisting his advances, the crimes would all be linked again. Jed could rule out Theo Willis, who scared him a lot more than Rob Fullerton ever could.

  “You ask him about Calderon?” Grant asked.

  “He and Hinton both claim they don’t know the man, have never heard his name. I believe Hinton but not Thayer.”

  Grant didn’t raise the subject that had sent him in pursuit of Jed until they entered his office and closed the door.

  “Chief Seward heard we set up a sting last night and made some arrests,” he reported, as he circled his desk and sank into his big leather chair. “He doesn’t understand why he was kept out of the loop. Aren’t we working together?”

  “Because he’s been so deeply involved?” Sitting seemed like a really good idea. If there’d been a cot or bedroll in here, Jed wouldn’t have been able to resist it. Exhaustion had become his chronic norm. I’m getting old, he thought, settling for a chair. Of course, if he could resist making love with Linette when he crawled into bed with her, he’d get more sleep.

  “You tell him who we arrested?”

  “No reason not to. He went kind of quiet.”

  “I swear he’s dirty.” Jed thought. “Did he comment on yesterday’s flyover?”

  “Not a word.”

  Had the bastard not dared, knowing a complaint would be an ill fit with his sudden burst of brotherhood, law enforcement style?

  “Damn, I’ve been too busy to look at any footage Bernie sent.” Jed had only met Bernie Strotz in person once. An energetic, older guy with white hair that made Jed think of a dandelion puff, Bernie had let his son take over his well-drilling business. Instead of retiring, he and his wife started a lavender and herb farm on his acreage. He farmed, she distilled oils and oversaw the retail part of the business. An ardent photographer, Bernie sold some of his work to the County Courier. He’d eagerly volunteered to help when word got out about the patrols. The guy seemed tireless.

  Jed wished he was.

  “Let me grab my laptop.”

  He came back only minutes later, pulled up a chair to Grant’s desk and logged in. Three emails from Bernie, the ‘observer’ Jed had personally requested for last night’s flight, appeared immediately, all three with attachments.

  Using detailed maps, he had labeled batches of photos by location. Jed skimmed through until he found those taken in Seward’s sector. He flipped through…to find he was looking at empty roads, some fence lines, and finally one photo of the large, modern home and ranch buildings.

  Swearing, he said, “Apparently Seward is untouchable.”

  Grant stood and circled the desk to look over Jed’s shoulder at the handful of photos. He bumped Jed’s hand aside and skimmed through the more helpful images showing nearby ranches, before venting his own curse. “Maybe Bernie and Seward are friends.”

  “Close enough friends that Bernie volunteered in the first place so that he could nudge pilots to take safe ro
utes when he was along?”

  They stared at each other in dismay. Grant muttered something under his breath as he returned to his own chair.

  “Getting a warrant for Seward’s place will be tricky, anyway.”

  Jed quit grinding his teeth to say, “Politics?”

  “Not sure that’s the right word for it. Seward has been the Fort Halleck Police Chief for a lot of years now. He knows everybody. You and I seem to be the only people who have noticed that he stinks at the job.”

  Jed told him about Niall’s observations. “Cops who work together should be tight. We have to trust each other. But Niall thought this was more of a…clique, I guess. There’s a secretive inner circle. Those in favor get some kind of…well, favor. The outsiders aren’t sure what that is.”

  Grant nodded. “We don’t have a lot of judges in this county, and even though I grew up here, I’m still the new boy compared to Seward. They’re not going to want to believe anything like this about him. Bernie Strotz may be an honest man who thought he was being respectful. Show us access to the ranch but not intrude on the police chief’s privacy.”

  “I want to find a pilot who’ll take me up now.” Screw Seward’s privacy. Jed would do it if he didn’t also know how it could backfire.

  Grant’s grimace suggested sympathy. But he was shaking his head at the same time. “Even if we find some nugget of information that gets us a warrant, what happens if he’s involved but not holding stolen cattle? We’d end up with egg on our faces, and that would be the end of any inter-agency cooperation at all.”

  Jed gusted a sigh. “What do we have to do to get a warrant?” He hadn’t hidden his frustration, which stemmed from a lot of causes.

  Grant stared into space for a minute that drew on. Finally, he shook his head. “We’ll know it when we see it. In the meantime, I need to figure out who best to approach for that warrant.”

  “What if Seward panics because of the arrests? Damn, I don’t want to give him time to move the cattle off his place.”

  “No, but will he? If he were suddenly pulled over in the middle of the night hauling a big stock trailer, full up, that would look bad.” Grant’s eyes met Jed’s. “I can find room in the budget to add patrols for the next couple of nights so we’re not so stretched. I’ll have a deputy linger in the vicinity of Seward’s property each night unless they’re pulled away by a call.”

  “Good.” Jed closed the laptop and rose to his feet. “Any of those judges long-time friends of Gary Webb?”

  Grant’s expression changed. “Don’t know, but I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “I’m meeting with Hinton and his attorney at two. That gives me time to talk to Rob Fullerton first.”

  “Don’t come back with a black eye.”

  Jed snorted and left.

  *****

  Mid-afternoon, Linette happened to glance out of the barn to see an older black pickup truck pulling a four-horse trailer pass by on the road out front, seemingly heading toward town. It was loaded, giving her a glimpse of horses’ heads. Probably, it was coming from the Arrowhead Creek ranch – they did both sell horses and train cutting horses for outside owners – but the rigs she usually saw passing were gleaming and pristine. Their animals and services didn’t come cheap. Analyzing her uneasiness, she felt sure she’d recognized the thick mane of one of the horses, with silver and black mixed while the head was a silver-gray. No other breeds seen locally had such long manes, either.

  Her sudden certainty shifted into fear, making her stomach knot.

  Jed had asked her to stay close to the barn. Actually, ordered was probably a better word. She wished she’d downloaded the app that would allow her to check camera images onto her phone. She suspected that he hadn’t suggested it because he didn’t want her to charge out to confront an intruder.

  But that meant her only way to check all the cameras was to walk or ride out to the open shed in the back pasture where the second receiver had been set up. Or call Niall or Jed and have them take who knew how long from their work shifts to view images from at least four of the cameras.

  No, this was something she could do. If the horses in that trailer were hers, it meant Theo – or whoever else had stolen them – was long-gone. And she did have backup of sorts.

  She started thinking she’d have been happier to have Alex Burke as her helper today, but made a face. He had too much in common with Jed and Niall. He’d insist on going instead, once he’d locked her into the house for safety.

  Okay, maybe it was a good thing that a young man named Ken Fields had showed up this morning. Long and skinny, he had also proved to be quiet. When she told him what to do, he nodded and went off to do it. Tempting as it was to leave him out of this altogether, she didn’t want to do anything really foolish, either. So she asked him to accompany her out to check fences.

  “You know we’ve had trouble.”

  He nodded. “Curt felt real bad.”

  “It wasn’t his fault.”

  She chose a nimble-footed three-year-old gelding she intended to sell in the next year for Ken to ride, and a mare for herself. Ken briefly disappeared into the barn, returning with a Remington rifle he’d apparently kept close today. That was comforting, Linette discovered, but her unease didn’t relent as they swung onto the horses’ backs and rode across the pasture that held mares and foals. The gate into the far pasture was padlocked, for what good that did. Linette reined Felicidad close enough to allow her to unlock and drape the chain over the fence before opening the gate.

  A sparse grove of trees, ponderosa and – she was told – lodge pole pines along with some western larch covered the rising land to the north here. None were very large – her ranch apparently straddled the boundary between high country desert and forest. A few quaking aspens followed the small stream that bisected the ranch, and had been the deciding factor when she bought this land instead of any of the other ranches she’d seriously considered.

  Because of the trees, as they approached the three-sided shelter where Jed and Niall had stashed the receiver, she couldn’t see most of the fence that defined the eastern edge of her property. She dismounted in front of the shelter, leaving Ken holding Felicidad’s reins, and pulled a tattered piece of gunny sack off the receiver. Calling up current views from the nearest cameras, she frowned. Was that—? A slip-knot around her chest tightened. She wanted to race for the cut stretch of fence, but more important was seeing what had happened.

  Going back in time, she found images stopped and started, since the cameras were motion-activated. Niall and Jed had both grumbled that, between the horses and the wildlife, they were activated often.

  She continued until she reached a time-stamp that showed almost an hour ago. A black-clad man with his face shadowed by the brim of his hat strolled beside the fence until he found whatever he’d been looking for and dropped a pile of – something – to the ground beside him. He then used a mallet and his booted feet to break the three boards that formed the fence between two solid posts. He clearly wore work gloves when he wrenched the broken boards out of the way. Even if the boards had provided a smooth enough surface, there wouldn’t be any fingerprints.

  She squinted, but the details didn’t sharpen. Maybe Jed or Niall could do something to bring his face into focus. Heart in her throat, she saw the man pick up what she immediately identified as a halter and rope and enter the pasture, going out of view from the camera. He reemerged a minute later leading a horse on a lead-line. Sickened, she saw that it – he – was almost silver, with darker mane and tail – a blue dun. Ramón, almost three years old. Before all this started, she had just started riding him.

  Hate almost choked her as she watched the unknown man lead Ramón along the other side of the fence, and out of sight. He must have parked the trailer there.

  Unknown? That wasn’t true. The walk, the breadth of shoulders, the way he carried himself...all triggered memories. Denial had been soothing, but she had to let it go now. This was Theo.


  He reappeared, led away a second horse, a third, a fourth.

  He’d stolen them. Would he even have a place to pasture them, or did he intend— Her stomach lurched. It wasn’t too late. He might still be on the road.

  Her phone was in her hand without her having consciously taken it from her pocket. She touched Jed’s name, and it rang.

  “Linette?” he said sharply.

  “He’s been back. Theo. I’m sure now. He broke down a stretch of fence and stole four horses. I came out here to check the video after I saw an old pickup go by pulling a four-horse trailer. It’s been—” She had no sense of time. “Half an hour? Can you look for him? Please, please.”

  “Of course we will. Tell me what you know.”

  Grateful he’d skipped any lecture about her personal security, she did: black pickup and white trailer that had both showed their ages. Only one man.

  “You’re certain this was Theo?”

  She swallowed, made herself take a mental step back. Had she seen what she thought she should, or what she feared? “Not a hundred percent,” she admitted. “Let’s say ninety percent. I couldn’t see his face. But…the way he moved, his height and bulk… Yes, I think it’s Theo.”

  Jed swore. “I’ll get the word out, to our deputies and to FHPD officers. Neighboring counties, too.”

  “Maybe I should go out looking.” She had to do something, not just wait.

  “No.” He sounded harsh. “Go back to the barn—”

  “I have to fix the break in the fence.” She didn’t even know where that came from, but it was true.

  “You have someone helping you out today, don’t you?”

  “Yes, a young guy you haven’t met.”

  “Send him out to do it. That son-of-a-bitch could unhitch the trailer and come back for you.”

  “I’m scared. And so angry.” Yes. Her voice shook, and so did the hand holding the phone. “He owned guns. He didn’t even bother to lock them up. Why didn’t I kill him the last time he hit me?”