Cowboy Reckoning

by Barb Han

  Levi walked her through a massive kitchen. One wall was basically a wall of every kind of oven imaginable. There was a wood-fired stove in the corner. The paint hues could best be described as light and warm. The place was something she could see the famous Texas designer couple who lived north of there designing. It had that modern farmhouse feel that made her think of big family gatherings on the holidays with cookies baking and lots of laughter.

  He cut through the room and down a massive hallway. There were three doors on each side and the hallway lit up just in front of them as they walked. Levi stopped in front of a door.

  “I’ll let you get settled in and then I’ll be back to check on you in a couple of minutes.” He stepped aside to allow entry.

  Thank you didn’t begin to cover the appreciation she felt for what he was doing for her but it was a good place to start.

  He reached in and flipped on a light before nodding toward the door opposite hers. “I’ll be in there if you need me.”

  He walked across the hall with Karma at his side. The two looked so at ease with each other. She thought about what he was doing for the dog. Dealing with Karma’s issues would frustrate a lot of people. It didn’t seem to bother Levi. It was easy to see that he was good with animals. He had a way with them. There was something about his calm demeanor that drew her to him even more.

  Stepping inside her room, she was immediately taken back. There was a large four-poster anchoring the room, with wood that looked hand carved. There were two other doors in the room. She went to the nearest one and discovered a nice-sized closet. It was empty of clothes but there were a couple of blankets in varying thickness, folded, along with extra pillows stacked on top.

  She wheeled her bag next to a chaise lounge that was positioned near the bed. Next, she walked to the opposite door. It was the one farthest away. She opened it and flipped on the light to reveal a nice-sized en suite bathroom. Everything she could need was there, including a clawfoot tub. In fact, the guest bath at the McGannon home was about double the size of her own and felt more like a spa.

  Again, she was struck by how down-to-earth Levi was despite growing up with everything a person could want. Growing up in a place like this, it would be easy to walk around like they owned the place in school.

  Granted, they’d been popular but that had more to do with their athleticism and overall hotness. Most of them were decent students. They were what most would consider the total package. Plus, they had that whole carved-from-granite jawline and hawk-like nose with near-perfect bods bit down.

  In her humble opinion, Levi was by far the most attractive. There was something magnetic about him. The draw to him was hard to explain. He had that kind of spark that drew moths to flames. She tried to convince herself the attraction was simple biology. He’d shown up at just the right time in the meadow to save her from whatever was lurking there.

  She’d been shaken up enough to accept his offer to stay over, not wanting to be stuck at the motel with no transportation after her car battery had died.

  But she couldn’t ignore the fact that she’d had a crush on him years ago. A teen’s crush. She was an adult now. Crushes were for that young girl she’d once been. What she felt now toward Levi McGannon was a full-blown attraction. She shook off the unholy thoughts trying to creep in about what she’d like to do with Levi alone in the bedroom.

  Instead of going down that road, she refocused on the bathroom cabinets. She opened the first drawer to reveal many items a guest might need during a stay. There were toothbrushes and a fresh tube of toothpaste. She opened a cabinet to reveal a brush and hairspray. There was shaving cream, a razor and deodorant.

  They really had thought of everything. It reminded her that Levi was helping out of a sense of duty and not because she was special. He would go out of his way for any stranger or, heck, animal in need. That was just his way.

  So, why did that make her chest deflate when she’d been convinced she didn’t do needing anyone?

  6

  Once Ensley had freshened up, she stopped to catch a really good look at herself in the mirror. She should be going on vacation with those bags under her eyes. Her hair was a hot mess. She revisited the cabinet that held a brush, and ran it through her unruly mane.

  Everyone wanted curls who didn’t have them, it seemed. She’d managed to wrangle hers enough to look like waves instead of kinks. And that was progress.

  On a hook behind the door, two robes were hanging. She retrieved her pajamas from her weekend bag and changed, grabbing one of the softest robes she’d ever encountered.

  By the time she returned to the bedroom there was a soft knock at the door.

  “Come in.” She moved to the foot of the bed near the chaise as Levi opened the door and then stepped inside.

  For a split second, she saw an emotion pass behind his eyes she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Could it have been desire? A part of her really hoped so.

  She watched as Levi took in a breath. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He cleared his throat, relaxed his shoulders and his easy-going demeanor returned.

  But hold on a hot second. Had she actually affected Levi McGannon?

  For years she’d walked down the street right past him when she was younger and never once had he given her second look. Rightfully so, considering the age difference back then. Fast forward a decade and the years between them seemed like nothing.

  Was it wrong that she was secretly satisfied that she could get a reaction from him?

  She’d gone on to date a few boys, then men, not really thinking much about Levi. He’d been shoved aside in her memories, overshadowed by a tragedy. What the tragedy took from her, time would’ve stolen anyway. Seriously, who remembered the person they’d had a crush on when they were twelve and especially after moving out of town?

  Names maybe. But even that was a stretch at that age.

  “Why did they go out there that night? And why were they alone?” Levi crossed the room holding a laptop that had been tucked underneath his arm.

  “Great question.” She actually didn’t know. “Cooper’s birthday was in a couple of days. Oaklynn said she was sleeping over at Alison’s. The boys each said they were sleeping over at the other one’s house. They carried with them a small tent that belonged to my family and sleeping bags.”

  “Didn’t someone drive them?”

  She was already shaking her head. “No, they said they’d meet up at the park. The one on Fitzhugh and First Avenue.”

  “I know that one. It’s a popular place.” He made a noise. “Town kids used to meet up at that park for sleepovers back when I was in high school.”

  “Which is why I didn’t think anything about it when I told him to go. I convinced Stella to let him go. She never liked him to sleep over at anyone’s house, so Cooper came through me.”

  “He also must’ve realized you wouldn’t ask as many questions.”

  She nodded, and then swallowed in an attempt to ease her dry mouth. Her body trembled and her stomach clenched. Guilt was a physical punch.

  “You couldn’t have known.” Levi’s quiet reassurance washed over her and through her.

  “I wish I could go back.” A sob threatened and Ensley stopped right there. Tears wouldn’t bring her brother back. If they could, that would have already happened because she’d cried her eyes dry after seeing him, lifeless, like he was asleep or something. Gone was a better word.

  “Don’t do that to yourself.” His warning came too late. About ten years too late in her estimation. She’d been blaming herself since day one.

  Overhearing her stepmom ask her father if there was a relative on Ensley’s mother side of the family who would take her so they could move away and make a fresh start hadn’t helped matters.

  Hearing her father apologize on her behalf and then tell his wife that he doubted any one would take her since she was so close to becoming an adult had felt like knife stabs in an already open wound.

  N
ope. Her parents weren’t exactly what she’d call supportive. She’d forgiven them, realizing they were dealing with their grief in the best way they knew how. Her father had stood up for her and she hoped he’d made up an excuse to keep her around.

  Anything else was unthinkable.

  “So, we know they were in the woods and we know they were all three together. Three best friends. One relationship had developed into something more,” she needed to redirect her thoughts and get back on track.

  “I heard something about a love triangle,” he said.

  “That’s not right. I don’t know how to prove it, but no one’s come up with any evidence that was true.” Teenagers with a crush weren’t exactly subtle. There would’ve been some indication. Hearts with their initials scribbled in a notebook or diary.

  “What else could’ve happened?” he asked.

  “I have more questions than answers there. Could someone have found them? Or did someone know about their plans?”

  “The answer to that seems obvious.” Levi opened the laptop.

  “Were they tortured?” The question was hard to ask.

  “Are you suggesting some kind of sadistic ritual killing?” he asked, absently stroking Karma’s fur.

  “The cuts on my brother’s and Grayson’s throats…they were the same.” Even now, it was difficult to distance herself and talk about the details.

  “Were there any other deaths like that in Texas after?”

  “None that I know of. The other marks on their bodies were said to have been from the same animal.” She appreciated Levi’s tact.

  Levi nodded.

  “There were other theories. Every half-cocked philosophy had been fair game. Some believed it was a ghost. Others contended a prisoner had escaped from Huntsville. At least one theory had to do with an escaped mental patient.”

  “Rumors those woods are haunted have been around forever,” Levi confided.

  “What did others think of my brother?” If anyone had been mean to Cooper he most likely would’ve kept it to himself.

  “That he was a good kid and a really good soccer player.”

  She nodded. That, he was. “What about parents?”

  Her stepmom, Cooper’s mother, didn’t know him as well as she did. For instance, he hated scrambled eggs, but she’d made them for him anyway. Every morning. She’d say he needed the protein.

  Cooper liked eggs over medium on a bagel with slices of ham and cheese.

  And the picture that Stella had blown up and put on a stand in front of his coffin—the one with him wearing the tie Stella had forced him to wear every Sunday for brunch at the country club—he would’ve hated that.

  His favorite was the one Henry Murphy Jr.’s dad had taken during a game. Mr. Murphy had captured the kick Cooper got off to score the winning goal causing the team to end the season undefeated. He’d pretended like the picture was no big deal, but Ensley couldn’t count the number of times she’d walked past the living room and caught him staring at it, smiling, before quickly returning to the inside of the top of a stack of books. Stella kept it tucked inside the book on top, the one about gardening despite the fact she couldn’t keep a houseplant a live.

  That was the picture Cooper had looked at and smiled when he thought no one was around. When Ensley had brought the subject up, Stella had blown like a kettle full of water that had been sitting on the stove too long.

  Levi watched as Ensley seemed deep in thought. His fear was that she was heading down a rabbit hole of despair.

  “Come over here. I want to show you something.” Levi patted the seat beside him.

  Ensley moved over and took the spot as he pulled up the photo he’d taken earlier and then uploaded to his cloud storage.

  The screen on his phone was too small for him to be able to pick up details and he wanted to blow it up as soon as he’d gotten home.

  “See that?” He pointed to the far right corner of the truck’s back window.

  “A sticker?”

  “Looks like there used to be one there.”

  “Someone must’ve torn that off in a hurry,” she said.

  “It looks that way.”

  “What do you make of it?” she asked.

  “It’s a popular sticker. It’s not uncommon in these parts and represents a popular brand of farming equipment. It doesn’t tell us who was responsible for the run-in, but it’ll help us figure it out when we find our guy.”

  “A black truck in these parts is common,” she said.

  He nodded. “The color is not going to help us. Put them both together and we’ll get closer.”

  Ensley gasped. “Do you think that person was the person?”

  “He’s connected. I have no idea how but I plan to find out starting first thing in the morning by interviewing Andy Whitfield.” Levi knew people took care of their own in Cattle Cove. Would someone cross the line in a legal matter? “He seems like a good place to start. If his uncle is guilty of tampering with evidence he may not know, or he may do anything to protect family. Also, he was one of the only people who knew where you were at the time you called in to book the tow truck.”

  “I never got a chance to speak to Oaklynn. I’d like to hear from her what happened,” she said.

  Ensley had to know that was a long shot.

  “We can try.” He didn’t want to give her false hope. The last he’d heard Oaklynn’s mother had moved away and Oaklynn had a very protective father. She also had a slightly older brother who Levi had never really cared for much.

  “Unless Lowell Whitfield covered for someone else, what would he have to gain by tampering with evidence or covering up the details of your brother’s murder?”

  “The sheriff had been up for re-election that year. Unsolved crime and especially one as heinous as this one wouldn’t be good for campaign purposes. Blaming the boys wrapped up the case nice and neat. Two pre-teen hormonal boys get into a fight over a girl and kill each other. Or one kills his friend and then turns the knife on him. The only thing missing from that fabrication is a bow.”

  “And a murder weapon. I’m still surprised people bought that story. I was already overseas and I know how traumatized everyone was by the loss of life and especially with such young people. Fundamentally, I heard all three were good kids,” Levi said.

  “People wanted closure. They wanted the deaths to make sense. The sheriff fed the community a nice, neat story and then everyone could move on with their lives.”

  “Everyone except the people who mattered…the victim’s families.”

  A half laugh, half sigh slipped out. “My family wanted to run away. They figured this put a blight on us. We’d be labeled as unlucky. That’s what people say when a kid dies.”

  Levi didn’t buy the pre-teen hormone explanation. He and his brothers had gone through puberty along with everyone else in town over a certain age. They all managed to stay alive. But, man, his heart took a hit at the impact that leaving everything familiar, everything she’d come to know and love must’ve had on Ensley at that age. All his protective instincts flared, and he wished like hell he could go back in time and find a way to right this wrong.

  “I knew my baby brother. He didn’t own a knife and neither did Grayson. Neither house had any missing knives. The whole theory is absurd and still didn’t explain why Oaklynn was found three days later, starved and dehydrated. She was babbling incoherently.”

  “Dehydration can explain her confusion at the time. What did she say happened?”

  “That she doesn’t remember anything.”

  “It’s possible she blocked it out.” Levi had heard of traumatic situations where a grown adult had blocked out details of an event. He could only imagine what this might do to a developing brain. Panic might have shut her down.

  He’d been involved in a car crash not long after he got his license. One of the varsity football players had run a stop sign and T-boned him at the intersection of a drive-in fast food hangout. It was the kind of old
-fashioned burger place people still wore roller skates to deliver food to a car.

  There’d been a dozen witnesses to the accident and a dozen different stories of what had happened. Levi learned that day witnesses couldn’t be trusted.

  Levi stared at the picture of the truck. This close, he could breathe in Ensley’s clean and citrusy scent. He could also smell peppermint toothpaste and had never wanted to taste it so badly. He also reminded himself that he didn’t need to be noticing these things about her.

  This seemed like a good time to remind himself that she was breezing through town and would be gone the minute she had her answers. Besides, he wasn’t in the best situation to add anyone to his life. Karma deserved Levi’s full attention. Living on the outskirts had suited Levi better than he should probably admit.

  It wasn’t until her that he’d wanted to come back to the big house at all. Ever since his Uncle Donny had moved back last year, Levi wasn’t in the mood to be home.

  His father had welcomed Uncle Donny back with open arms, a move Donny’s sons hadn’t been inclined to follow. How anyone could blow through the kind of inheritance the two brothers had received was beyond Levi.

  Clive McGannon had stuck around and worked the ranch when he could’ve sold and retired. The McGannon name meant something to him. Unlike Uncle Donny who only seemed to like the family name when he could cash in on it.

  Still, Levi could relate to his father’s need to protect his younger brother. He’d done the same thing for his six siblings and still was.

  In Texas, a successful ranch meant the owners had claim to the mineral rights on their land. But McGannon Herd was one of the few highly profitable cattle ranches and that had everything to do with Clive’s business sense.

  There’d always been something about Uncle Donny that had rubbed Levi the wrong way. Not the least of which was the fact he’d seemed more than happy to dump his five sons on his brother and sister-in-law when his own wife had taken off.

  Ensley, who had been studying the picture on his laptop, broke the silence. “Most people think what happened to my family, Greyson’s and Oaklynn’s was sheer bad luck.”