by Jodi Thomas
Bryce Galloway wanted her back, and he seemed willing to do whatever it took to get her.
“My only question to you is, which one of these guys do you want me to follow tomorrow?”
“Bryce. The other must be just working for him, and from the sound of it Bryce tried to push him too far.” Cord flipped back through the book, noticing there were pictures of Nevada in every spot on the ranch. “But why the pictures? He was married to her. He knows what she looks like.”
“Not part of my job, figuring out nutcases, but if I was guessing I’d say Bryce is waiting for her to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wants her in his sights. That much is obvious. Maybe he just wants to talk her into leaving you and going with him. He strikes me as the type who’s always gotten whatever he wants, when he wants it, and you are pushing him, making him go to extremes.”
“Maybe he’ll get tired and quit?”
Cameron shook his head. “He’s like an addict and your wife is his drug. Maybe she’s the only one who ever said no to him. Maybe he thinks she belongs to him. I’ve been around a lot of druggies in my life. If he thinks he has to have your wife, he’s not stopping.”
Cord nodded and moved to the door.
“One other thing,” Cameron added. “I found a couple of high-powered rifles hidden in the trunk of Bryce’s car. They were new, looked like they’d never even been tested.”
“Lots of men in this part of the country hunt,” Cord said, without turning around.
“Yeah.” Cameron’s answer wasn’t reassuring.
Cord walked out of the old downtown theater with more questions than answers. He drove around for a while after he left Cameron. He even stopped in front of the house Cameron had described behind the mall. It was easy to guess which one it was. Just an abandoned house with an old dirt bike parked among the trash near a crumbling carport, a perfect meeting place. No one passing. Not any occupied houses close enough to see a light.
An hour later when Cord slipped back into bed, Nevada rolled in his direction. He held her to him until dawn, knowing that trouble was riding full out toward them and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He didn’t have enough proof to go to the sheriff, and Cord knew without asking that Nevada wouldn’t run for cover.
But what Bryce didn’t know was that he’d have to go through Cord to get to her.
At dawn, while she dressed, Cord kept his voice casual. “What are your plans today?”
She wiggled into her jeans. “I’m staying around the house this morning.”
He wondered if she was trying to act normal, the same way he was. “I’ve got to go check a few things. If you’ll wait here, I’ll go into the vet’s with you in an hour.”
“Make it two or three hours. I want to start a painting of Starlight for my study. Then we can go check on her and have lunch in town. I’m starting to like the daily special at the diner.”
She moved into his arms, laughing as she kissed him lightly. “I’m getting used to a lot of things lately.”
He tightened his arms around her, wanting to keep the conversation easy but unable to hide how much he needed her close. Part of him could almost understand Bryce being obsessed with her. The woman was addictive. He wasn’t sure that leaving her wouldn’t break him as well. Only, unlike Bryce, if she said good-bye to him, Cord would walk away. He didn’t want to own her or control her; he only wanted to love her.
“I’ll be back before noon,” he whispered against her hair. “Wait here for me.”
“You’d better be back.” She pulled away so she could smile at him. “I’m already starving.”
He could tell by the look in her beautiful blue eyes that her starvation had nothing to do with the special at the diner. He grabbed his hat to stop himself from undressing her. “Bye, Babe.”
He ran from the house, not in a hurry to be away, but in a hurry to be back.
Cord drove out to where he’d seen the dark spots on the earth when they’d flown over. The sun had dried the ground, but he knew he was still leaving tracks an inch deep. Whenever he crossed open land he hated the way his truck tires scarred the earth, even temporarily. The only good thing seemed to be that the land always went back to nature.
Cord spotted burn spots in what had been tall natural grasses. Too many circles of blackened grass for it to have been lightning strikes.
When he walked the burned area, he found a charred pack of matches, as though someone had struck them all aflame and dropped the pack. The grass must have caught fire and burned across the rocky uneven ground, and then stopped suddenly. The only reason he could think of was that rain had put the fires out.
As Cord drove back to town he went over the details. All he knew was that whoever set the fires had done so on a stormy night, hoping the fire would be blamed on the lightning, only they hadn’t planned on a rain coming so soon. Cord grew up with prairie fires. On backland like this they could spread for miles before anyone noticed, and by then they’d be so wide a hundred men couldn’t stop them from spreading. Someone might have noticed Bryce’s rental roaming over the land, but no one would have paid much attention to a man on horseback. Maybe the man Cameron had described as a cowboy had set the fires. He could have parked his truck and trailer on a back road and ridden in from the border of the property.
He drove into Harmony hoping to talk to the sheriff but found Travis Salem in her office instead. The ranger looked the same as he had when he’d investigated the horse poisoning, but Cord no longer found him frightening. For a second when Cord first saw him that day, he stepped back to being seventeen again, but now he remembered who he was. The boy no longer existed.
“McDowell,” the ranger yelled when he saw Cord walk past the dispatcher’s desk. “Glad you came in.”
Cord couldn’t think of any person he wanted to see less. But other than being rude, he couldn’t turn and leave. “Salem. I thought you’d be back in Fort Worth by now.”
“I was just packing up. No leads on your wife’s case. I’ll let you both know if anything turns up. We did find Joey Mason, the trainer, last night. I was planning to call you before I headed back. The trainer showed up on a flight passenger list at DFW and about panicked when he found out everyone was looking for him.”
Cord waited for Salem to get around to the facts.
“Security talked to him but didn’t hold him. He said he’d gotten a letter firing him as of last week. It was on Boxed B stationery and included a thousand in cash if he’d go quietly. Joey said he went over, cleaned out his gear, and left. The security officer faxed me the letter if you want to see it.”
“Who signed the letter?”
Salem dug in a box and handed him the fax. “You did.”
Cord glared at the paper. “Not my—”
“I figured that. I asked to have the original sent, but it’s probably been handled so much there won’t be any fingerprints on it that can help with the investigation.”
“I understand.”
“Joey Mason didn’t question it. He claimed he never fit in on the ranch and was glad to leave. You said you hadn’t gotten around to meeting him.”
Cord didn’t argue. “I should have. I’d seen him from a distance several times.” If he hadn’t listened to Nevada’s rule, he would have ridden over to her barn and met Joey.
“We never had that cup of coffee,” Travis Salem finally said as he folded his glasses and slid them in the case clipped to his vest pocket. “Any chance you got time for it now?”
Cord wanted to say no, but he hoped somehow he could let go of some of the anger that had kept him breathing all the years he’d been locked up.
“I’ll be at the Blue Moon Diner as soon as I leave a message for Sheriff Matheson. If you want to talk, I’ve got time for one cup of coffee.”
Salem nodded and returned to boxing up papers.
Cord walked away. He headed straight for the dispatcher and asked if Alex would contact him as soon as she had a few free minutes. No emergency.
He wasn’t sure what he could tell her. Cameron had stolen the photo album, and the letter to Joey still didn’t make enough to arrest Bryce.
Cord drove to the diner and parked out front. When he walked in, the breakfast rush was over, so the place looked deserted except for dirty tables. He took a seat in the first clean booth and ordered a cup of coffee. If the ranger wasn’t there before he finished, there would be no next time.
Cord’s cup was half empty when Travis Salem entered. Even though he’d put on a stomach the size of a basketball, Salem looked so much smaller than he had that night at the lake. That night he’d had a rifle in one hand and a flashlight in the other. That night Cord had been more kid than man.
“Thanks for waiting,” the ranger said as he slid in and motioned to the waitress that he’d have a cup.
Cord was silent. He had nothing he wanted, or needed, to say.
Salem took a few deep breaths. “I’ve been needing to say something to you for a long time. It took me a while to figure everything out. I was madder than hell at you for years. When I finally got up the nerve to talk, I drove out to the prison and they said you’d been released. After that, I guessed I’d be the last person you wanted to see.”
Cord held the coffee cup so tightly he was surprised the mug didn’t shatter in his hands.
Salem thanked the waitress for his coffee and waited until she walked away. “I lost ninety percent of the sight in my left eye that night. I thought my life was over. All I’d ever wanted to be was a deputy sheriff, and you ended that dream.”
Cord stared at the man, not knowing whether to feel guilty or angry. Did he think he was the only one who lost something that night?
“I sat at home recovering and feeling sorry for myself for months. One day, out of the blue, your parents showed up at my door. I figured they were going to beg me to help get you out early, but all they wanted to do was give me your college fund. Said they’d had an argument with you over going to college, and that was probably why you were drinking that night.”
Cord didn’t breathe. Memories poured like liquid lead over him. His parents not listening to him, the argument, the feeling that they didn’t care what he wanted.
The ranger continued, “I took the money and, more out of anger than want, I decided to go back to school and use every dime of it. Four years of school and two eye surgeries later, I walked out with a master’s degree and enough sight in my left eye to pass the test to try out for the Texas Rangers. They saw me as a hero, injured in the line of duty. I got a job I never would have worked my way up to on my own. It’s more business and paperwork. Not the fun of being out there fighting crime, but I’ve settled into it and surprisingly I’m good at it.”
“You got a point to this?” Cord asked. “I’m almost finished with my coffee.”
“Yeah.” Salem stared at his cup, still untouched. “One of the first things I did after becoming a ranger was go back and look at the file we had on you. I listened to the tape of your testimony and heard something I hadn’t heard before. You sounded scared. I ran what you said over and over in my mind. I remember walking into the camp of drunks and kids high on who knows what. It was dark and the smell of fireworks reminded me of the army when I was nineteen and deployed straight into hell. That same kind of terror filled my mind that night at the lake. I must have been yelling as I headed toward you.”
“What are you saying?”
Salem straightened, and Cord knew no apology would be coming. He didn’t expect one. He didn’t want one. What good would it do now?
The ranger’s voice hardened slightly. “I found a note in the file. Apparently, a teenage girl had come forward, to one of the other deputies, after I was sent to the hospital and you were arrested. She claimed I came at them with a bright light and in charge mode like I was ready for a fight. No one knew who I was. They didn’t even know it was the cops. She said she thought I either stepped on your leg or kicked you, and you came up swinging wildly.”
Cord froze. Exactly the story he’d told. The story no one believed.
Salem shrugged. “The deputy who took the statement told her to come by the station the next morning, but she never did. When they checked on her, her father swore she’d never been out of the house that night. Since she was a minor, her statement was dropped.”
“Why tell me now?” It was too late to change anything. “I don’t care who she was or what she said. She didn’t help when it counted.”
“Oh, I figured you knew who she was.” Salem raised his eyebrow in surprise. “You married her.”
Cord didn’t remember saying good-bye to the ranger. He sat in the diner for an hour in the dungeon of his thoughts.
When he drove back to the ranch, he went straight to the bunkhouse, gathered up equipment, and headed for the south pasture.
At sundown, he was still working as hard as he could, pounding in fence posts across the uneven ground when Galem found him.
“Putting in a hard day, aren’t you, Boss?” the cook shouted, without getting out of his pickup.
“Shouldn’t you and Ora Mae be gone to the lake?” Cord stopped long enough to wipe the sweat off his face with a shirt he’d ruined hours ago.
“We decided to stay here this weekend. Ora Mae says she don’t think she can eat another bite of fish or one more hush puppy for a while. I took her into town for Mexican food, and when we got back I noticed your truck was still gone. If I hadn’t seen your headlights shining out here, I never would have found you.”
Cord pulled the next fence post from his truck.
“You plan on stringing barbed wire in the glow of your headlights?”
“I might.” Cord didn’t want to talk any more than he wanted to think. “You want to help?”
“Nope.” Galem shoved his hat back. “You want to talk about what’s bothering you?”
“Nope,” Cord answered.
Galem took the hint and shifted into gear. “Well, I’ll see you back at headquarters. I’m guessing if your battery don’t run down, you’ll be finished about dawn. Anything you want me to tell Little Miss?”
“Nope.”
Galem pulled his hat back down almost to his eyebrows. “Well, nice talking to you.”
Cord didn’t stop to wave as the cook drove off.
Chapter 35
SEVERAL HOURS LATER CORD DIDN’T HAVE TO LOOK UP TO know his wife’s Jeep was flying across the land at twice the speed she should be driving. He could hear her coming, and dread filled him to the core.
He watched her as she shot out of her seat without turning off the engine or the lights. She headed right toward him. Storming, he thought, there was no doubt.
“Cord, what do you think you’re doing out here in the middle of the night? The wire is dangerous enough to pull from post to post in daylight.”
“There’s work to be done,” he said, without stopping the pounding. “That’s what you married me for, isn’t it? To work your ranch. Don’t worry, you don’t have to come out to sleep with me, because I don’t plan on sleeping. In fact, I’m thinking I might just work until I drop dead. Then you could be a widow for a change.”
She stormed around in and out of the beams of light like a moth. He guessed she had to be pretty confused right now. The last time she saw him, he’d kissed her good-bye so deeply she’d tried to tug him back to bed. She didn’t know about the pictures or the trouble she might be in or that someone was setting fires in the back pastures hoping to burn the entire ranch down. She didn’t know what Salem had told him. She didn’t know that he knew she hadn’t bothered to even try to keep him out of prison. Her silence had ruined his life just as Salem’s lies had.
His whole body and mind were being drawn and quartered into pieces. Six years he’d sat in prison because not one person had come forward to back up his story. Of course the jury took the deputy’s side. Cord had known there were others around the campfire, but he’d figured they all ran. Nevada must have stayed long enough to see what happened to h
im. She even talked to the other deputy, but she hadn’t said a word when he needed someone to back him up.
She marched back to her Jeep and pulled out something, then marched back. “Galem said you ruined your shirt. I brought you another one. At least take the time to put it on.”
“You spend too much time worrying about what I wear. Don’t you have anything better to do?” He twisted the wire around, nicking his hand for the tenth time. Cord barely noticed. “What difference does it make anyway?”
She waited for him to take the shirt. He could hear her pouting like she always did when things weren’t going her way.
He stuck the wire cutters in his back pocket and reached out for the denim shirt. In the lights he could see her face and hated himself for making her so unhappy. She’d grown up on a ranch. She knew he was putting himself in danger to be out here alone after dark. She’d probably worried for hours before finally coming out.
“You got a gun with you? There are wild hogs on this back land.”
“No. It’s been my experience that people are far more likely to hurt me than wild animals.”
She walked halfway back to the Jeep, then turned to face him. “I hate it when you’re like this, Cord, all closed off and cold.”
He almost said he hated it when she wasn’t honest. She played him and he didn’t even know the rules.
Hell, he hated them both. What kind of game were they playing anyway? If she wouldn’t stand up for him, why would she marry him?
Suddenly, he remembered one detail about the night at the lake. One fact he’d stored back in his whiskey-washed head drifted forward. Cord remembered the cop who’d cuffed him and shoved him down in Salem’s blood and his own vomit. When he jerked him up to frisk him, he had ripped Cord’s shirt. By the time they made it to the office it had fallen completely off.
