Unbound Pursuit

by Lindsay McKenna

  Twisting back a look at Cathy, Tal felt sorry for her. “What’s this all about?” she asked her, keeping a sympathetic expression on her face.

  Growling under breath, Cathy went back to peeling the potatoes in the sink with quick, skilled movements. “When I was eight years old, I still believed in Santa Claus. Being the big mouth that I am, and so sure of myself, I went around telling everyone that Santa existed. Now, no one said he did or didn’t. Wyatt kept saying it was a myth. A legend. And I just didn’t want to hear it. When I went to sleep in my room, Wyatt snuck in there with a huge roll of red ribbon that Mom was going to use to wrap packages for Christmas. I never heard him. When I woke up the next morning, Wyatt had ‘papered’ my bed. I had a hundred feet of red ribbon tied from one post to another across my bed.

  “I was so excited about the ribbon that I ran downstairs to tell Mom and Dad that Santa had visited me last night. Wyatt was down there with them and he started laughing.” Cathy gave him an evil look. “And that’s when I realized he’d done it.”

  Daisy wiped her eyes and went over to hug her daughter. “I’m sorry, honey, I couldn’t help myself. It was funny in one way, but in another way, it wasn’t.”

  “Which,” Hank Lockwood said as he came down the hall from the office, “is why Wyatt got his butt tanned out in the woodshed for that mean prank he played.”

  “Rightly so,” Tal agreed, giving Wyatt a really dark look. “That was mean of you to do that to Cathy. Children should be allowed to have their dreams and fantasies, Wyatt. How could you?”

  Wyatt gave her a hangdog look. “It was,” he confessed. “I’ve pulled a lot of jokes on family members, but that wasn’t one of my finer moments.”

  Hank went into the kitchen, his height and bulk dwarfing the area. “Actually,” he said, “it was the only time you got your butt paddled, son.” He rolled up the sleeves on his shirt and then washed his hands in the sink.

  Wyatt grinned, perking up as he held Tal’s accusing green stare. “See? I learned. Butt paddled only once. That’s a pretty good track record considering how many jokes I played on my poor siblings.”

  Cathy smiled. “Mom rescued me from your joke.”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt grumbled, “by telling a lie.”

  “Now, Wyatt,” Daisy warned, shaking her finger in his direction, “it was a white lie. There’s a difference.”

  “Sure is,” Cathy agreed. She shifted her focus to Tal. “Mom lied and told me that only children who had been especially good in the last year were given the gift of red ribbons by Santa himself. It was his way of saying I’d been a really good girl all year long.”

  Wyatt snorted. “I know where I got my storytellin’ from.” He waved his finger in the direction of his smiling mother, who was drying her hands on her dark green apron.

  “Yes, son, you did,” Daisy agreed amiably.

  “Do you know what else they did to me for playing that dirty trick on Cathy?” Wyatt asked Tal.

  “I feel like all the family skeletons are coming out of the closet, Lockwood. And you probably own ninety percent of ’em,” she murmured, a grin edging her lips.

  “I love a woman who gives as good as she gets,” Wyatt said, leaning forward and kissing Tal’s cheek.

  “Go on,” Cathy goaded, smirking, “tell her, Wyatt. What else happened to you that day? Five days before Christmas, I might add.”

  Wyatt’s grin grew, and he looked at Tal. “I woke up the next morning and sitting next to my pillow was this gunnysack. I never heard anyone come into my room to put it there, but it was there when I woke up. Of course I was curious, so I jumped out of bed. It was a hundred-pound oat gunnysack, and there was something in the bottom of it. It was wrapped up in twine, so I quickly untied it, excited. I thought it was a gift of some kind.”

  Cathy snickered. Daisy and Mattie began to laugh uncontrollably again, bent over, hands on their knees.

  Tal frowned. “What was it?”

  Hank ambled over to the table with his long, casual stride. “Somethin’ real special for a firstborn son to learn from,” he rumbled, a sour grin on his face as he pulled out the chair at the end of the table and sat down. “Tell her, son.”

  Tal saw ruddiness coming to Wyatt’s cheeks. He rarely blushed, but he did now. And there was some humility in his expression. “What was it?” she asked.

  “A bucket of coal.”

  Tal blinked. And then she got it: coal in the sock at Christmas for kids who were not good. And then she started howling right along with Daisy and Mattie.

  Hank rolled down the sleeves on his cowboy shirt, snapping the pearl buttons shut around each thick wrist. “Yep, me and Daisy figured out we had to stop this brainy son of ours who just loved to pull jokes on people, get him to understand there was teasing and then there was mean teasing. And that any form of teasing had to be seriously thought out beforehand.” Hank gave Wyatt a warm look. “He knew that Santa always gave bad boys and girls a sock full of coal for Christmas. And that’s what he got that Christmas. Only, he got it five days early, and it came in a gunnysack, which is a lot bigger than any sock.”

  “Yeah, that kinda took the air out of my balloon,” Wyatt agreed, smiling a little, giving his dad a loving look. “I got out of hand, and you and Mom figured out a pretty smart idea on how to teach me the error of my ways.”

  “You sure did. And we needed a way to make it sink into you.”

  “It did,” Wyatt assured them. He looked at Tal, who had sympathy in her eyes for him. She was such a marshmallow beneath that tough Marine game face of hers. “The rest of the story is that I wanted a new red bike for Christmas. I needed it to pedal back and forth from school. My old bike was worn out. Mom had said that ‘maybe’ Santa would bring me a new one this Christmas. And of course, I was really full of myself, and I told her there was no such thing as Santa Claus.”

  “And then you pulled that mean trick on Cathy.”

  “Yeah. Strike two.” Wyatt smiled and shook his head. “Strike three came Christmas morning. All us kids got up, racing down the stairs to the Christmas tree. We were all excited. Mom and Dad would make us sit in the chairs or on the sofa, and they’d pick up a wrapped gift and hand it out to one of us. That way, we weren’t like little wild animals ripping through everything, paper and ribbon flying everywhere.”

  Tal grimaced. “What did you get, cowboy?”

  “Nothing.”

  Her heart dropped and she could still see the effects of that event deep in his gray eyes.

  Hank spoke up. “He didn’t deserve anything, Tal. I told him before I paddled him out in the woodshed that he has no business destroying anyone’s dreams. That if people believed in Santa Claus, he was to let them believe. Doesn’t hurt anything. And our boy knew that our family believed in Santa. But, as he was getting older, he had that brash confidence a lot of boys his age get, and he was choosing to use it in a way that hurt someone else. In this case, Cathy.”

  Tal nodded. “I understand.” She felt bad for Wyatt, but she agreed with the lesson he’d had to learn, too. Tough love.

  Cathy came over and stood next to Tal, placing her hand on her shoulder. “The rest of the story,” she said, her voice softer as she looked at her older brother, “is that I was the one that got the red bike for Christmas, not Wyatt.”

  Tal’s eyes widened with surprise. And then she smiled. “Brilliant strategy, Hank and Daisy,” she said.

  Hank grinned over at his wife. “We thought so. You shoulda seen Wyatt’s face drop when the bike was brought out from behind the tree where we’d hidden it. And there was a great big tag on the handlebars. It said: ‘To Cathy, from Santa Claus.’ And we’d wrapped the handlebars in that same thick, wide red ribbon that Wyatt had tied up her bed with.”

  “Wow, what lessons you two handed out,” Tal murmured, shaking her head. “My mom, Dilara, and my father, Robert, if they were here? They’d be clapping their hands in agreement.”

  “Sometimes,” Hank said, giving Wyatt a dr
illing look, “you gotta reach children, and you gotta watch their growth patterns in case they start to stray off a righteous path and down a dark one. Daisy and I had been watching him pulling meaner and meaner pranks on the girls, and we knew we had to put a stop to it.”

  “And I walked right into your trap,” Wyatt said, giving his dad a grin.

  “Well, you did it yourself, son. We just got lucky enough to pick up on it at the right time and place, and you got it.”

  “I sure did,” Wyatt said, giving Tal a knowing look. “You can tell them how nice I was to you those years you and I were at Bagram together.”

  “Oh, sure,” Tal snorted, giving him an amused look. She said to Hank, “Your son was an absolute pest in my life. Every time I’d come in off an op and get back to Bagram, there he was. He’d ask me out. He’d wheedle me. He’d tease me.”

  “And I made you laugh, too. Don’t forget that.”

  Tal rolled her eyes. “Yes, you did.”

  “And I made you smile.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, suddenly choked up with emotion, “you did that, too.”

  Daisy came over, placing a huge salad in a teak bowl on the table. “Wyatt’s little Santa Claus lesson really sobered him for a while. He did a lot of thinking, and he made the changes we hoped he would.”

  Cathy patted Tal’s shoulder. “You know, our parents always taught us to share. So I went to my mom one day—this was probably in April—and I asked her if I could loan Wyatt my bike to use to go to and from school.”

  Daisy wrapped her arm around Cathy’s waist, hugging her a little. “You were always a very smart young girl, Cat. And I really loved that you were willing to share your bike with Wyatt even though he stole your belief in Santa Claus from you and wrapped your bed in red ribbon.” She gave her daughter a look of gratitude. “What you didn’t know was that I talked to your dad that night. We both felt that since the request had come from your heart, we were going to let you handle it with your big, cocky older brother.”

  Wyatt’s eyes gleamed. “Well, Cat’s not exactly innocent here,” he told Tal in a loud whisper. “Are you, Cat?”

  Cat grinned. “I told Mom everything. I didn’t hide anything from her.”

  “That’s true,” Daisy said. “You were going to make Wyatt a deal. You had to earn your weekly allowance by keeping the hog pens cleaned out.”

  “You ever been around hogs?” Wyatt asked Tal.

  “No. Why?”

  “Ever smelled their poop?” Cat asked mildly.

  Tal hesitated for a moment and then admitted, “No.”

  Eyes glinting, Cat said, “I went to Wyatt and made a deal with him. He could use my new red bike five days a week, but he had to clean out the hog pens for me each week.”

  Snickering, Mattie came over, all smiles. “I’m sure one of us will show you the hog pens sooner or later, Tal. Pig poop has a pretty outrageous odor. Not one you want to be around for long.”

  Tal looked over at Wyatt. “Did you agree?”

  “Sure, I wanted to ride to school, not walk three miles one way,” he said, smiling over at Cat. “I made the deal. And I didn’t regret it. I already had the horse stalls to muck out every week. It only took a couple more hours to keep the hog pens cleaned up.” He shrugged.

  “But you gotta admit,” Cat said, “pig poop smells awful. Ugh.”

  Everyone tittered, nodding their heads knowingly. Except for Tal, who was a city girl in comparison. She took it with grace. “Now I realize where you got your humility.”

  “Yeah,” Cat jibed, “he finally got it. Before the Santa Claus event, he was so full of himself I couldn’t stand to be around him sometimes.”

  Tal smiled at Wyatt, her heart bursting with love for him. “I’m so glad we came home to meet your family. This gives me a whole new perspective on you, cowboy.”

  Wyatt took her teasing in stride. “I knew you’d enjoy it. These are the people I love and who were right there to set me back on the correct path when I got too full of myself.” He reached over, lightly rubbing her shoulder. “And look what it got me: you. You’re a much better gift to me than a red bike at Christmas.”

  *

  After dinner, the family drifted into the living room to finish off their dessert of homemade fruitcake slathered in warm vanilla sauce and served with coffee. Tal sat with Wyatt on the green velvet settee, her dessert plate resting on her knee, a fork in her hand. Wyatt had thoughtfully brought over a TV tray and set it next to her so she could place her mug of coffee on it.

  “What’s the latest dirt floating around Van Horn?” Wyatt asked, looking around the room at his family. In one corner was a huge, black potbellied wood stove that cast warmth throughout the lower level of the house. It had been in the family since the 1930s, and everyone, including the women, took turns chopping wood for it during the winter months. Daisy was the only one who didn’t have to do it anymore, because she had some arthritis in her wrist joints.

  Hank grumbled, “It’s that Reuss kid, Mark, again.” He gave Mattie, who sat in one of the two flowery overstuffed chairs, a look of apology.

  “Oh?” Wyatt said, spearing another chunk of his fruitcake with his fork and then running it around in the vanilla sauce.

  Tal noticed Mattie had suddenly become antsy. She cleared her throat a couple of times, crossing her legs one way and then the other. There was a subtle tension in the room, and Tal didn’t understand it until Wyatt leaned over and said, “Mattie, me, Mark, and his younger sister, Sage, grew up together. We were best friends. Mark is a local, and his father, Jeb Reuss, owns the Reuss Ranch, which shares the southern boundary of our ranch. Mark and Mattie were best buddies from the beginning. They’ve always had a close friendship.”

  Mattie’s cheeks reddened. “His father beat the living tarnation out of him as a kid, Tal. He was abused. Terribly. Sage, his younger sister, told me one day in the grocery store in Van Horn how Mark would stand between her and their father when he went after her. Mark would take the beating for her instead.”

  Tal heard the strain in Mattie’s voice, saw her clench her fist in the lap of her dress. If she didn’t miss her guess, Mattie was in love with the guy.

  Daisy shook her head. “Just because you get abused doesn’t mean you take it out on others, Mattie. I’m sorry Mark got beat up a lot. Unfortunately too many kids in the U.S. still get abused. And do they all turn out like Mark? No. They go on to lead good lives and do the right things for the right reasons.”

  “You just don’t understand,” Mattie whispered brokenly. “He’s not a bad person. We grew up with him. And we all saw his good side.”

  Hank cleared his throat. “Yeah, until he came in one day and announced without warning that he was going into the Marine Corps, Mattie.”

  Mattie lowered her head, her mouth thinning. “That’s true. I didn’t see that one coming. I thought he’d graduate from high school and then stay on the ranch.”

  Tal felt sorry for her. She could see that the whole family was upset for Mattie’s sake.

  Wyatt spoke up. “Well, last I heard, he was in the federal penitentiary for transporting drugs from Mexico into the U.S. He was part of a Mexican gang that operated out of the border area.”

  “He’s out of prison now,” Cat muttered, casting Mattie a look of apology. They were close, and she didn’t mean to hurt her big sister, who had a heart the size of Texas. Cat knew Mattie still considered Mark a good friend, even though they rarely saw one another anymore. Mattie was the idealist, the one who always saw the good, even in Mark after he’d served a prison term. But he had simply dropped out of Mattie’s life. Sometimes, he’d show up out of the blue. And every time he did, Mark didn’t stay long. Cat knew that Mattie loved him, even though they’d never broached the topic. It was the unacknowledged elephant in the room.

  “A couple of our wranglers were out on ATVs in the northeast corner of our property two weeks ago and saw Mark’s black Jeep and four white Toyota pickups driven by Lat
inos. Mark was leading them, hightailin’ it down one of our dirt roads, heading north to the highway,” Cat told Wyatt.

  “That dirt road on the east side of the Guadalupe Mountains,” Wyatt explained to Tal, “eventually hooks up with a major highway about twenty miles north of our ranch.”

  Hank stirred, placing his empty plate on a nearby TV tray. “Yeah, it appears Mark is starting to use that route for his drug smuggling activities. He went back to drug running as soon as he got out of prison.” His brown brows dropped. “And he’s on Rocking L property committing a crime. And I’m not puttin’ up with him doin’ it. I won’t have part or parcel of drug runners. Mark was always a good kid, but somethin’ changed him, and no one knows what it was. I don’t know why he threw his lot in with that drug gang out of Nogales when he left the Marine Corps. Makes no sense to me. But we have a problem, and it has to be resolved.”

  “Did you call the Border Patrol?” Wyatt asked. He saw Mattie give him a distressed look. He’d always known that Mark and Mattie were sweet on one another. Regret stirred deeply in Wyatt. Mark, his little sister Sage, Mattie, and himself had grown up close. They were always a foursome from age six onward. Through twelve years of school, Wyatt considered Mark another brother. He had been a good kid growing up, despite the abuse his father, Jeb, constantly doled out on him.

  “They’d like us to get video or photos before they act, Wyatt. The problem was the four pickups had mud on their rear license plates. That’s a drug runner tactic,” Hank said.

  “What about getting a drone to fly over?” Wyatt asked. He felt alarm that a major drug cartel was thinking they could use his family’s property with impunity. It broke his heart that Mark was involved in it. He felt Tal stir, sensed her discomfort, too. Damn, he was sorry that this topic had been brought up tonight. He wanted this to be a vacation for her, not get her involved in this kind of shit. And it was shit of the worst kind. It just didn’t make sense to Wyatt that Mark had once been an honest, caring person with integrity but turned to the dark side. What the hell?