Alaskan Showdown

by Sarah Varland

  Fatal Ranch Reunion

  by Jaycee Bullard

  ONE

  Tacy Tolbert clutched the handlebars of the ATV and swept her eyes across the once familiar landscape of her grandfather’s North Dakota ranch. If the sale went through as expected, some other family would soon own all of this land. The rolling hills. The rocky cliffs. Everything but the dusty trail that marked the border between the Tolberts’ property and the Hunts’. The trail was disputed territory. Never-never-land, they used to call it back in the day.

  Back in the day. Ten years ago. It felt like a lifetime.

  As she leaned into a turn, a strange sort of exhaustion pressed against her brain, and her mind drifted back to all those summers before she turned eighteen. It felt like a cliché to call those days golden, but back then, it sure had seemed like something quite wonderful was there for the taking. Steven. Seb. She closed her eyes and conjured their faces and imagined a life that might have been.

  A bump shook the chassis of the ATV. Her eyes blinked open, and her head jerked up. Instinct guided her fingers to the kill switch under the right handlebar. With a shudder and a cough, the vehicle lurched to a hard stop, jolting her body forward, nearly knocking her to the ground.

  What? Where? One minute she was sightseeing along the trail, and the next, she was stalled in the middle of a pasture. Her hands shook as reality dawned. She had fallen asleep at the wheel of the ATV.

  She swiped a damp palm across her eyes. She needed to move around, to shake off the fog of bewilderment blanketing her brain. She slid down from the seat and forced herself to walk, but her muscles felt like jelly, unable to maintain an upright stance. Why was she so tired? She had logged ten hours of sleep last night in the guest room at the ranch. But somehow, without warning, weariness had crept into her bones, pulling at her eyelids, dulling her thoughts. She looked down at the carpet of withered grass at her feet. Would anyone care if she lay down and took a little nap? All she needed was a couple of minutes to take the edge off, just long enough to keep herself from nodding off again on the ride back home.

  She pressed her face to the ground. That felt good. So good. She stretched out her legs and curled up on her side. The scent of the cool dirt took her back to days of swimming at the water hole, eating fried chicken, and then napping in the shade of the old elm tree. Timmy would love this. Almost ten, he was just old enough to explore on his own and young enough to still revel in the adventure. But it was too late for that. Even if her grandfather changed his mind about selling, she could never bring Timmy here.

  Never. This place held too many secrets. Secrets she planned to keep from her son.

  Bam! A blast of gunfire split the air, followed by the thud of hooves in the distance. She pushed up on her elbows and looked across a meadow dappled with yarrow and coneflowers. And then she saw it.

  A lone buffalo stood on the crest of the hill, its two long horns curving outward from its head. She rubbed her eyes as six more bison positioned themselves alongside him, shaggy in their light summer coats, their unruly tufts of fur flapping in the wind. Behind them, the rest of the Hunts’ herd lined up, ready to stampede.

  She needed to move. And fast. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Go, go. But which way? Should she sprint back to the ATV or head for the trees?

  The trees. She stood up and took a woozy step toward the pines. She staggered. Wobbled. Tumbled to the ground. There was something horrifyingly familiar about this dizziness and exhaustion, the tired muscles, the overwhelming malaise. It brought back a memory of waking in the hospital after the accident. But how was it possible that she was experiencing those same drugged sensations today? She struggled to stand as her legs once again collapsed from under her and her arms flailed ineffectively to break her fall.

  If she couldn’t run, she could crawl. She pushed herself forward, hand over hand, toward the edge of the field. A tall tree in the middle of the stand became her beacon. She’d climb that pine and hide in the branches until the herd passed her by.

  Beneath her palms, the ground trembled. The buffalo were on the move. Her fingers scraped through the grass and the dirt. Faster, faster. She raised her eyes to the sight of dozens of bison streaming over the hill.

  Her stomach lurched as the hopelessness of her predicament became clear. She was less than ten feet from the trees, but she wasn’t going to make it. She was going to be trampled in the stampede.

  “Help!” Desperation knotted in her throat. She couldn’t die like this, groggy and confused in the middle of a field. But the buffalo were close and getting closer, grunting and groaning. Fear exploded in her chest. This was it. There was no way to escape. Her arms trembled as a two-thousand-pound behemoth charged toward her, his long, curved horns capable of tearing her limbs apart.

  No, No. Please, God. Help me.

  “Go away!” she screamed. “Leave me alone.” Marshaling her last reserves of strength, she pulled herself upright and flapped her arms. “Get out of here. Now.”

  A mechanical growl cut through the din. Beams of sunlight bounced off the chrome frame of a red motorcycle rocketing along the trail. Leaning in tight against the handlebars, the rider revved the motor, cutting ahead of the herd as he circled to the spot where she was standing.

  “Don’t move,” the voice from behind the reflective helmet said.

  As if I could.

  She froze in place as the rider spun around and raced up the hill.

  The buffalo veered to the left to get out of the way, snorting as the bike rumbled a thunderous retort. Again and again, the rider drove against the herd, nudging the outliers closer to the rest, until the last of the bison relocated to the far end of the pasture.

  I’m safe. She sank to her knees as relief washed over her senses. Relief and gratitude toward the stranger who had saved her life. Stranger? Her breath caught in her throat. Ten years was a long time, but back then, only one boy she knew owned a red motorcycle. Steven Hunt. He had been her friend until the accident reignited a century-old feud, drove a wedge between their families, and forced her and her father to move away.

  The motorcycle pulled back up beside her.

  “Steven?” The words were on her lips before she realized her mistake. The rider had the same slim build as Steven. The same broad shoulders. The same confident air. But even before he bent his head and pulled off his helmet, she knew.

  Her rescuer wasn’t Steven Hunt. He was Seb, Steven’s twin brother. The boy she had married when she was eighteen. The man who had left her at her darkness moment. The father of a child he didn’t know had been born.

  * * *

  Seb Hunt swung his right leg over the seat of the motorcycle and rushed toward Tacy. Almost a decade serving as an MP on military bases across the globe had taught him to expect the unexpected, but the sight of his ex-wife kneeling in the grass, her face a mask of confusion and pain, shook him to his core.

  Adrenaline fueled the questions clamoring in his brain. How had the bison escaped from the enclosure? Had someone forgotten to close the gate? Why was Tacy here, in the middle of the pasture? And why hadn’t she taken off running when the first of the herd crested the hill?

  He took a deep breath to calm his jangled nerves and knelt down beside her. “Are you okay?”

  She stared up at him, her eyes glazed with shock. Was she as stunned to see him as he was to see her? He shook his head, reminding himself that it wasn’t important now. Whatever her reasons, she was here—and she’d almost died. He needed to know she was all right...but she seemed so shaken that he wasn’t even sure she could hear his voice or understand what he was asking her. He tried again. “Tacy. Why are you here?”

  She tugged at the sleeve of her white cotton shirt and stared at the ground. “I came to see my grandfather. He’s married now, and he’s decided to sell the ranch.”

  “I heard about that.” Carl Tolbert’s decision to p
ack up and leave Chimney Bluff was all folks seemed to talk about these days. “We can catch up on that later. But can you try to tell me what happened here today?”

  She fixed him with a blurry stare. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad since he passed, so I took the ATV for a drive to look at the ranch. I stopped to take a rest. And then...” She shook her head as if she was trying to clear her brain. “I must have fallen asleep because a gunshot woke me up. And the whole herd came charging over the hill.”

  What? Keith Tolbert was dead? Odd, that with all of his family’s talk about the Tolberts, no one had thought to mention that fact.

  “Wow, Tace. I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

  “I miss him a lot.”

  “I bet you do.” Keith Tolbert had lived his life for his only daughter. And Tacy had been on the path of achieving something great. Until... His breath caught in his throat. The details of that last summer burned through his memory like a hot coal. But he couldn’t let his mind go back to that place. Ten years had passed. And for reasons Seb had yet to ascertain, Tacy had come home.

  “When you saw the bison, why didn’t you head for the trees?”

  Her eyes blinked in and out of focus as she tried to hold his gaze. “I tried. But I was having trouble moving my legs.”

  He pulled out his phone. “We need to get you to the doctor’s and have you checked out.”

  “I... I think I’m okay,” Tacy said, pushing herself up. A trickle of blood trailed down her arm and pooled in the dirt. “I’m just...really out of it for some reason. I’d chalk it up to adrenaline, but it started before the stampede.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “If nothing else, that gash on your arm looks pretty deep. It may need stitches. And the grass is covered with buffalo droppings. Have you had a tetanus shot in the last five years?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay. You’ll probably want to get that taken care of right away. In the meantime, I’ll call one of your ranch hands to pick you up.” He punched seven digits into his phone. Hard to believe that after all these years, he still remembered the direct line to the Tolberts’.

  “Hello,” a low voice grumbled into the phone.

  “Hey, this is Seb Hunt. I’m out on the east pasture with Tacy Tolbert, and she’s pretty shook up. Someone may have left the buffalo gate open on our property, and she was almost trampled by the herd... Right, right, I’ll see you soon.”

  He clicked off the phone and looked at Tacy. She still didn’t seem completely aware or alert. If this was adrenaline, it should have started to level out by now. He was starting to get concerned that something was seriously wrong.

  “Do you have any idea what’s making you so groggy?”

  “No. I slept well last night, and I felt well rested when I first woke up this morning.”

  “Could it be low sugar? Did you have anything to eat or drink for breakfast?”

  Her eyes flickered. “A muffin and an apple. And my grandfather’s new wife, Lois, made me a cup of coffee before I left.”

  “Okay.” It was a huge leap to assume that some sort of drug had been slipped into Tacy’s beverage. But how else to explain her reckless decision to nap in the middle of a field? Even after ten years in the city, she ought to have remembered how dangerous it was to lie down in a pasture where horses and cattle grazed nearby and trucks cut an easy path across the open land.

  Of course, there was always the simplest explanation—that she might have voluntarily taken something to help her sleep and the residual effects were still in her system. It seemed unlikely, but anything was possible, especially if Tacy was still grieving the loss of her dad. And those pills could really mess with your head. He’d seen his fair share of senseless stunts from soldiers under the influence of sleep aids.

  “Did you...take anything else? Maybe something last night to calm you down?”

  He could see the dawning light of comprehension—and indignation—in her eyes. “You think I’m on drugs?”

  “No. I’m just trying to make sense of this whole situation.” A shiver shot up his spine as he considered what might have happened if he hadn’t been able to redirect the herd. Tacy might have died.

  He couldn’t even think about that. He needed to figure out what was going on. It was hard to believe, but maybe living in Denver had dulled Tacy’s once-sharp cowgirl senses. Maybe she was embarrassed to admit she’d been using sleeping pills, believing he’d judge her for it. Or maybe she had too many things on her mind, like a job or a new relationship. A sharp pang of jealousy tugged at his heart. Even after all this time, it was hard to accept that she had moved on without him. He blew a long breath through his nose, searching for something to say that wouldn’t upset her or reopen old wounds. “So, did you end up going to law school and fulfilling your lifelong dream?”

  Tacy blinked. “Who said that was my dream?”

  Her father, that was who. But this wasn’t the moment for a deep dive into the past, especially since Keith Tolbert was no longer around to present his side of the story.

  “Sorry. I just thought...”

  “No. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to snap. I did go to law school, so there must be some truth to what you said after all.”

  Tires crunched against the ground as a tan F-150 negotiated the bend on the path toward the pasture. Len Jones pulled to a stop and hopped out of the cab. Despite his age, he was still tall and gangly, the kind of cowboy that used to be featured in the old Westerns Seb and his brother had watched when they were kids.

  Len’s face brightened as it lit upon Tacy.

  “Hi, there, Tacy. You’re a sight for sore eyes. Your grandfather’s sure glad to have you back for a visit. Hey, there Seb. Good to see you, too. On my way out here, I drove by the enclosure and checked out the gate. Just like you said, it was wide open. I don’t get how it happened. Last night when I passed by the border while doing my rounds, everything looked locked up nice and tight.”

  “Did you see anyone this morning in the vicinity of the pen?” Seb asked.

  Len ran a wrinkled hand across the stubble on his chin. “Just your brother. He was there around dawn, checking out the stock and tossing a stick for that new puppy of yours. But I can’t believe he’d leave the gate open. He’d never make that kind of mistake.”

  “Well, somebody did.” Seb clamped his lips shut and resisted saying more. He’d check the gate out himself and then talk to Steve when he got home.

  Tacy turned and walked toward the truck. She climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed. Should he offer to drive her to see a doctor? It didn’t seem likely that she would take him up on it, but it was worth a shot. He poked his head through the open window. “I have to take Steven’s bike home, but how about I pick you up in a half hour and take you to the clinic?”

  Something changed in her countenance, and her eyes clouded with wariness. “That won’t be necessary. I can ask my grandfather for a ride.”

  Her grandfather. Right. Of course, she’d chosen a Tolbert over a Hunt. So that was it, then. Except for the one last question tugging at his brain. “You said something about hearing a gunshot right before the stampede?”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “I did?”

  “Yeah. Could you tell where it came from?”

  She fixed her glance on him, and his heart somersaulted in his chest. He had forgotten that her brown eyes always gave away whatever emotion she was feeling. Joy. Sadness. Anxiety.

  Right now, they were dark and guarded. “Why does it matter?”

  He didn’t have a good answer, just a gut feeling that there were too many odd factors at play to chalk up to coincidence. “I’m not sure it does, but I’m going to check the perimeter of the pen to look for shells and maybe figure out where the shooter was standing. In the meantime, you should ask for a drug scree
n at the clinic. Just in case you accidentally ingested something that could be making you groggy.”

  Tacy nodded. He half-expected her to ask how he thought she might have “accidentally ingested” something strong enough to cause her to fall asleep at the wheel of the ATV. When she didn’t, he was glad. For the moment, he’d keep his concerns under wraps, at least until he had the chance to inspect the area around the gate. He stepped away from the truck as Len revved the engine and cranked the wheel.

  He waited for the dust to settle before heading on foot across the pasture. Before him, the field stretched like a dappled carpet under a canopy of blue, the variegated grasses giving way to the purple and yellow wildflowers along the edge of the hill.

  But he couldn’t allow the beauty of the land to distract him from his mission. He wanted to see the open gate and empty enclosure for himself and draw his own conclusions. It all came down to the question of whether someone had deliberately tried to harm Tacy. And if so, why? But on that particular subject, he wasn’t sure where to start. He didn’t know anything about her life in Colorado. After she left Chimney Bluff, she had ignored all of his attempts to reach out and discuss what had happened between them. He had sent dozens of letters and made hundreds of calls, but she had never replied. Until she sent him the paperwork for the divorce.

  Enough. His MP training had taught him to compartmentalize his feelings, to concentrate his focus on the task before him. When he reached the top of the hill, he trained his glance on the bison enclosure. Sure enough, the gate was open. He studied the ground, but the grass was too dry to reveal footprints. He walked a few paces. It didn’t add up. Could Tacy be wrong about the gunshot? She said that the blast woke her up. But maybe it was some other sound that she mistook for the crack of a gun firing.

  Still, he wanted to talk to his brother. If Steven had left the gate open, that was just plain carelessness. Someone needed to remind him that he was almost thirty now, not some immature teenager obsessed with riding bulls. Seb clenched his jaw. The fact that Steven could be so reckless made his blood boil. Because of his mistake, Tacy had almost been killed.