Badlands Beware

by Nicole Helm

  Why was she thinking about that? She pulled her hand away from under his, and only the fact she was at the sink kept her from backing away. She had dishes to finish, so she turned back to them, ignoring the way her body was all...jittery all of a sudden.

  “My theory about Duke seemed to upset you,” he said, in a tone she would have considered his detective voice. Deceivingly casual as he tried to get deeper information on a topic. “Do you know something about what’s going on? About Duke’s past?”

  She laughed, with a bitterness she couldn’t seem to shove away. “No, I don’t know anything.”

  “You’re acting like you do.”

  She blew out a breath. Mr. Detective wasn’t letting it go, so she had to be honest with him even if it was embarrassing. “I had one of those nightmares last night that felt real. I can’t seem to shake it.”

  “Why don’t you tell it to me?”

  She shook her head. How embarrassing to lay out her silly, childish dreams for him to hear. He’d tell her they were natural. She’d had a traumatic experience as a young child and her brain was still dealing with it and blah, blah, blah.

  “Grandma Pauline always said if you explain your nightmare, it takes away its power.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at that. Grandma Pauline had something to say about everything, and wasn’t that a comfort? “Did that work?”

  He was quiet for a minute. “With the things that weren’t real.”

  The word real lodged in her chest like a pickax. Sharp. Painful. Both because Tuck probably had plenty of real nightmares after almost eight years raised in a terrible biker gang, and because hers wasn’t real. No matter how much it felt that way. “It wasn’t real,” she insisted.

  “Then lay it on me.”

  * * *

  TUCKER HAD NEVER seen Rachel quite so...wound up. He understood this situation was stressful, but they’d been in stressful situations all summer, and she’d kept her cool.

  Did she know something? Was the dream some kind of distraction? Something wasn’t adding up.

  He’d brought up Duke’s past because it was a possible answer. If Brady or Cecilia stumbled upon those facts on their own, without him telling them specifically what, then he wouldn’t have betrayed his promise to North Star.

  They probably wouldn’t see it that way, but the more he felt the need to comfort Rachel as she came slowly unraveled, the less he cared about North Star’s approval.

  They’d put him in an impossible situation. All because he wanted to do what was right. Well, getting some of his own answers was right.

  Rachel hesitated as she did the dishes. Finally, she shrugged. “It’s silly. I just... I’ve always had nightmares about the night I was attacked by that mountain lion.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “It does. Usually they’re few and far between. Especially as I’ve grown up. But something about the last few weeks has made them an almost nightly occurrence, and they’re morphing from memory into fiction. But the fiction feels more real than the memory.” She frowned, eyebrows drawing together and a line appearing across her forehead.

  She really was beautiful in her own right. Much as she could remind him of Eva, the older she got, the more she was just... Rachel. He knew her sisters sometimes saw her as the baby of the family, the sweet girl with no grit, but that was her power. A softer Grandma Pauline, she held everyone together. Not with a wooden spoon, but with her calm, caring demeanor.

  And why was he thinking about that? He should be thinking about what she was saying. “Well, what’s different? Between the real dream and the fiction dream?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She looked so troubled that he wanted to reach out and hold her hand. He curled his fingers into his palm instead. Touching seemed...dangerous lately.

  “Instead of a mountain lion, there’s a man. He has blue eyes, and half his face is scarred. Not like mine. Not lines, but all over. Like a burn, sort of. He’s carrying me. We’re...” Her eyebrows drew together again, like she was struggling to remember. “It was the hills in one of the pastures. I don’t know which one, but that’s where the mountain lion attack happened. Outside one of the pastures.”

  “Do you remember if that’s where the mountain lion attack happened or is that just what you’ve been told?”

  She stopped rinsing a plate. “What does it matter?”

  “For the purpose of your dream. Is that part real—what you actually remember when you’re awake. Or is it what you’ve been told so that’s what your subconscious shows you?”

  “I... I guess I’m not sure.” She put the plate in the dishwasher then turned to him.

  He’d hoped getting it off her chest would ease her mind some, but she seemed just as twisted up. Like the more she talked about it, the more it didn’t add up.

  “Mom and Dad didn’t like to talk about it, but I remember sometimes they’d mention something and it didn’t...match with what I thought had happened. But I was only three. Their memory would be more accurate.”

  “Okay, so in your dream the mountain lion usually takes you somewhere?”

  “No. I’m already there. He jumps out of nowhere. I see the glint of something sharp and then I wake up before it swipes at me. But...the dream last night was more involved. I was being carried away. The man’s talking. And the thing glinting in the moonlight isn’t claws. It’s some kind of knife.”

  She whirled away abruptly. “It’s a nightmare, Tuck. It’s happening when I’m asleep. It’s nothing and I’m tired of it making me feel so unsettled.”

  He watched her agitated pacing, decided to hold his tongue and let her get it out. Maybe she needed a full-on breakdown to be able to find that center of calm that was so inherent to her.

  “But I can’t get that fictional man’s voice out of my head. The way he talks. There’s an accent. Like New York or Boston. Why is that so clear to me? What can’t I shake this stupid dream?”

  She raked her fingers through her hair, and Tucker desperately wanted to offer her some soothing words and a hug, but over the past day any physical offers of comfort had gone a little weird. He needed to keep his hands to himself.

  “Secrets always hurt the innocent.” She dropped her hands, wrapping them around her body instead. “I keep hearing this voice say that. Secrets always hurt the innocent. Curtis Washington is going to learn that the hard way.”

  Tucker’s entire body went cold. He didn’t know that name, but having a specific name, a specific voice in her dreams...

  Dread skittered up his spine.

  “Who’s Curtis Washington?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard that name before. It’s just in my head.”

  Tucker had to work to keep his breathing even. To maintain control and a neutral expression rather than let all his theories run away from him in a jumble of worry.

  She gestured toward him. “Say something.”

  He had to be careful about his words. About how he approached this horrible possibility. “Mountain lions aren’t particularly aggressive.”

  “No, but I was three. Who knew what I was doing.”

  “You were three. Why were you so far from your parents? Duke and Eva weren’t exactly hands-off parents.”

  “They...they didn’t like to talk about it. I probably wandered off. Accidentally. Not because they weren’t paying attention. You know how toddlers are. It’s possible... It just happened.”

  She didn’t seem so sure.

  “This voice...this man...”

  “It’s stupid. All my life the dream has been a mountain lion. The man is a recent change, Tuck. It’s a new morph on the old nightmare. If something else happened that night, why would I only dream about it now?”

  Because Duke was in trouble, in danger. And this was his WITSEC life. Which meant he had another name. />
  Could it be the name in Rachel’s dream?

  Chapter Six

  Tucker made himself scarce after Rachel had told him her dream. She could hardly blame him. Why was she coming so unglued over a nightmare? It made no sense, and if it was irritating to her—she could only imagine how annoying it was to the people around her.

  She wouldn’t bring it up ever again. Not to Tucker, not to anyone. Her dreams were her problem.

  She went through the rest of the day without seeing him, though she knew he was there. Then he popped in for dinner, chatting cheerfully though she could tell he was distracted. He helped clean up after dinner, then he disappeared into Dad’s room.

  Door shut.

  She had to admit, she didn’t feel babysat, even though that’s why he was here. Still, it helped that he wasn’t hovering. Which meant she had the space inside herself to recognize Sarah’s irritation simmering off her in its usual fraught waves.

  Rachel had never been to the ocean, but she always associated Sarah’s moods with the slapping waves and whipping winds of a hurricane.

  While Sarah’s moods were often operatic in nature, Rachel couldn’t blame her right now. She was carrying the entire ranch on her shoulders, even with Dev’s help.

  “How about an ice-cream sundae?”

  “I’m not a child, Rach,” Sarah replied grumpily. But Rachel heard her plop herself at the kitchen table.

  Rachel got out all the fixings for a sundae. Her conversation with Tucker from breakfast repeated in her mind.

  Grandma Pauline taught me that you can’t solve anyone’s problems, but you can make them comfortable while they solve their own.

  What about when you have problems?

  She supposed her comfort was making other people food, and she supposed she’d gotten that from Grandma Pauline. She’d never fully realized how much she’d adopted the older woman’s response to stress or fear, or wondered why before.

  It wasn’t hard to put together, though. Grandma Pauline was the last word around here. You didn’t cross her, but everyone loved and respected her. They spoke about Grandma Pauline with reverence or loving humor.

  “What do you think about what Tucker said?” Sarah asked.

  Rachel blinked, remembering she was supposed to be making a sundae. Heck, she’d make one for herself, too. “Which part?”

  “This being more about Dad than the Sons?”

  Rachel scooped the ice cream, poured on chocolate syrup and sprayed on some whipped cream. She set one bowl in front of Sarah, then took her seat at the table with her own bowl.

  They were the two youngest Knight girls, often sheltered from danger. Not just because they were the youngest or because Rachel was blind, but because they hadn’t come from the dire circumstances their sisters had. Rachel had been born happy and healthy to Duke and Eva, their miracle baby. Sarah had been adopted at birth, so Sarah didn’t remember or know anything about her birth parents.

  Neither Rachel nor Sarah had ever left home. No tribal police or park ranger jobs for them. Rachel’s part-time job as an art teacher was a challenge, and Sarah being a rancher was definitely hard work, but they were home. Still sheltered from so much of the bad in the world.

  So, if Rachel could be honest with anyone, it was Sarah, because more than everyone else they were especially in this together. “I really don’t know what to think of it.”

  “He’s a detective,” Sarah said.

  “It doesn’t make him infallible.”

  “No, but it gives him some experience in putting clues together. He also knows the Sons, and much as I hate to agree with Dev, he’s right. The Sons have left Duke alone for all this time.” Her sister released a breath. “So why would they start poking at him now? Especially with Ace in jail. Ace is the one with the vendetta against the Wyatts, not the Sons in general.”

  “I don’t imagine they feel kindly toward the boys who escaped, or the men who put their leader in jail.”

  “Maybe not. I’m not saying it can’t possibly be the Sons. God knows almost all our problems this summer have come from that corner of the scummy world. But... Dad never talks about his parents.”

  Rachel frowned at that. Surely that wasn’t true. But no, she couldn’t remember any stories about Dad’s parents.

  “It never really dawned on me that it was weird since we had Grandma and Grandpa Mills. And I always assumed this ranch was passed down, Knight to Knight, because Dad’s so proud of it, but...wouldn’t there be stories? Heirlooms?”

  “What are you trying to say?” Rachel demanded, panic clutching at her.

  “We don’t actually know anything about Dad, and we never asked. As far as stories I’ve heard, and just being around Dad, his life started when he met Mom. And that can’t be true.”

  Rachel couldn’t eat another bite of ice cream. What was there curdled in her stomach. Sarah was right. She couldn’t think of a thing Dad had ever told her about his life before he’d met her mother.

  “So, you think he’s running from something in his past?”

  “Or running to something in his past.”

  Rachel thought of the gun under his pillow. About Dad not wanting her teaching. “He didn’t want me to teach this session. He blamed it on the trouble with the Wyatts, but I taught all summer through all that danger.”

  “So, he was afraid. Something was making him afraid. I can’t imagine Dad leaving us if he thought we were in danger. Unless...”

  “Unless what?” Rachel demanded.

  “What if he did something wrong? What if there isn’t danger so much as... I mean, he could have run away from something bad.”

  “Dad would never. He wouldn’t... No, I don’t believe that.”

  “He wouldn’t have left us in danger, Rachel. So one of these things he would never do has to be what he’s done.”

  What a horrible, horrible thought. Maybe it was true, and maybe she was naive, but she refused to believe it of the father she loved. This man who had been a shining example of goodness and hard-working truth. “What if he thought only he was in danger? Just like Cecilia and Brady when they were trying to save Mak. They thought staying here would bring trouble to our doorstep, so they took off trying to draw the danger with them.”

  Sarah didn’t respond to that. They sat in silence for ticking minutes.

  “We have to tell Tucker he was right,” her sister finally said. “That we don’t know anything about his life before Mom. The answer is somewhere in there, and Tuck can find it. He’s a detective. He has to be able to find it.”

  Rachel wasn’t so sure. If her father had kept this secret for over thirty years, maybe no one could find it.

  “Rach.” Sarah’s hand grasped hers across the table. “We have to help in whatever way we can. We’re always swept off to the sidelines. But who put out that fire last month? We did. Who always holds down the fort? Us. And we’re damn good at it. But Dad’s gone. He can’t protect us like he’s always trying to do. Whether he’s running away or hiding or whatever, it’s just us. We have to step up to the plate.”

  Rachel knew Sarah was right, and she didn’t understand the bone-deep reticence inside of her. It felt like they were stirring up trouble that would change everything, and she didn’t want everything to change. Maybe she’d wanted a little change, but not her whole world.

  “I can talk to Tucker myself. If you don’t want to—”

  “No...you’re right. It’s just us. We have to work together. It’s the only way to make sure Dad’s safe.”

  “He’s a tough old bird,” Sarah said firmly, and Rachel knew she was comforting herself as much as trying to comfort Rachel.

  “He is. And we’ll bring him home.”

  * * *

  TUCKER CALLED EVERY North Star number he had in his arsenal over the course of the day, and no one would answer. He was too anno
yed to be worried that was a bad sign. He needed to know if Curtis Washington was Duke’s real name.

  It would change things. For North Star, too. He barked out another irritable message into Granger’s voice mail, then threw his phone on the bed in disgust.

  He’d searched Duke’s room, too. No hints to a secret past. There’d been plenty of guns secreted throughout the room, which led Tucker to believe Duke was a man who’d known his past would catch up with him eventually.

  No. He’d fostered five girls, raised one daughter of his own. Duke had been certain he’d left that old life behind. Something must have recently happened to lead him to believe he was in danger.

  And it tied to the Sons. It shouldn’t make Tucker feel guilty. Just because he’d been born into the Sons didn’t make him part of them. His life had nothing to do with Duke’s secret past.

  But the guilt settled inside of him anyway. Luckily, a knock sounded at the door and he could pretend he didn’t feel it.

  “Come in,” he offered.

  Sarah poked her head in. “Hey, can we talk to you in the kitchen for a second?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  He followed her out of the room and down the hall. Rachel was already in the kitchen, washing out some bowls. He wondered if she ever stepped away from that constant need to cook and clean for everyone. He wondered if anyone offered a hand, and doubted it very much. He knew from experience how little kitchen work held appeal after a long day ranching.

  Maybe that explained it. This was her way of helping her family, the ranch. It was how she felt useful.

  When she heard them enter, she turned and smiled. “Did you want some dessert?”

  “No, thanks. What did you want to talk about?”

  Rachel took a seat at the table, but Sarah paced, wringing her hands together. “We were thinking about what you said. About Duke’s life, and the truth is...” She looked at Rachel, so Tucker did, too.