Tucker

by Emily March

  Boone sat staring into the fire, his elbows on his knees, holding his cup with both hands. “I don’t know where to start.”

  Tucker sipped his drink, and once the smooth, smoky bourbon had toasted its way down his throat, he asked, “I’m guessing that your past has somehow intruded into the nice little present you’ve created for yourself in Eternity Springs. Am I right?”

  “Got it in one.”

  “What happened?”

  Boone tossed back the remainder of his drink, then set down his cup and stood. He paced back and forth in front of the fire, rubbing the back of his neck. “I hardly know where to start. The last time I heard from Waggoner, Thompson, and Cole, I learned we’d inherited this property, so when the firm’s name popped up on caller ID, I assumed it had something to do with Enchanted Canyon and I answered. My assumption proved wrong.”

  “Boone, if Malcolm Waggoner is coming after you again—”

  “No. This has nothing to do with the Waggoner family or the law firm. A former colleague had my number, so he called to give me a message.”

  “About what?”

  Boone pinned Tucker with a sharp look. “Cone of silence here too, Tucker. I need some reciprocity until I figure out what I’m going to do. If the family found out before I’m ready…” He shuddered. “It wouldn’t be good.”

  Tucker nodded. “Cone of silence. You have my word.”

  “Okay, then.” Boone scooped up his cup, grabbed the whiskey bottle and poured a double shot, then tossed it back in one motion. His voice was hoarse and grim as he said, “It’s a kid. I’ve been named the guardian of a baby boy who was surrendered at a Safe Haven fire station in Fort Worth. The mother told the firefighter who accepted the baby that she wants me to take him and to raise him. She wants me to be his father.”

  “Whoa. Well, hell, Boot.” Tucker didn’t know what to say. Boone had a complicated and heartbreaking history with fatherhood. This was a road he probably wouldn’t want to travel. “The Safe Haven law doesn’t work that way, does it? Where the mother picks a guardian?”

  “No, but you know how closely I worked with Child Protective Services in Fort Worth. The social workers all know me. Know the history. They’re willing to let me make the call.”

  “Who is the baby’s mom? How does she know you?”

  “I don’t know. She provided a medical history, but she wouldn’t give her name. She gave them my name and told them I was a prosecutor.”

  “That makes no sense. You left Fort Worth over five years ago.”

  “I know.” Boone shrugged. “That’s all I got.”

  “Wow.” Tucker rested his hand on Boone’s shoulder, a silent offer of comfort and support. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

  “No. Not yet. You know the baggage I have when it comes to kids.”

  Tucker gave Boone’s shoulder a squeeze. “You’ll figure it out, man. You always do. You know we’ll have your back, Boone. Jackson and me. Un pour tous, tous pour un. We’re still the Three Musketeers, even if we’re all growing our families at the moment.”

  “I haven’t said I’ll take the boy,” Boone snapped.

  Tucker knew his cousin. He might fight against the inevitability, but the conclusion was forgone. Whether he’d admit to it or not, Boone had a baby on the way.

  But now was not the time to press the point, so Tucker gave Boone’s shoulder a shove. “No, but I’m doing my best to keep my girl.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tucker didn’t sleep worth a damn and awoke the following morning with a niggling sense of unease that he chalked up to Boone’s situation. The two men had stayed up late into the night talking about the past events that had altered the course of Boone’s life, and the ramifications that decisions he made today would have upon his future.

  Tucker wanted to talk to Gillian, not to share his cousin’s secrets because he wouldn’t do that, but because he simply wanted—needed—to hear her voice. He’d missed her last night. He’d wanted her in his tent cuddled up next to him in the sleeping bag.

  The idea made him smirk. As if Gillian Thacker would ever go tent camping in Enchanted Canyon. She considered his top-of-the-line equipped Airstream to be roughing it.

  He waited until her usual wake-up time to phone her, but the call went straight to voicemail. He tried her again after the morning hike he and Boone took up to the waterfalls. This time, too, it went to voicemail.

  The niggle of unease grew to something bigger. It wasn’t like Gillian not to answer his calls or at least text him back. He sent her a text asking her to contact him, then returned his phone to his pocket and tried not to worry. When noon came and went without any word from her, he surrendered to his concern and called Bliss. Barbara answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Barbara. It’s Tucker McBride. I need to speak with Gillian about something, but she’s not answering her phone. Do you—”

  “I know,” Barbara interrupted. “She didn’t come into work this morning either.”

  Tucker’s mouth went dry, and he closed his eyes. Dammit, he’d known something was wrong! Why had he ignored his instincts?

  Gillian’s mother continued, “I just left her place, and her car isn’t there. Honestly, I’m worried. I was just about to call her father. This isn’t like her.”

  He shot his question like a bullet. “When did you last speak with her?”

  “When we closed the shop the day before yesterday. Yesterday was my morning off and her afternoon off, so it’s not unusual that we didn’t speak.”

  The anxiety in Barbara Thacker’s voice made him want to soothe her fears, so he said, “I spoke with Gillian yesterday morning, and everything was fine.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. I’m wondering if she decided to go into Austin to shop. Maybe she had car trouble and didn’t make it back to town in time to go to work. But that doesn’t explain why she didn’t call or doesn’t answer her phone.”

  No, it didn’t. Tucker sensed Boone’s questioning gaze as he rubbed the back of his neck and debated how to proceed. The first step would be to search Gillian’s house for clues. Barbara probably had a key, but he’d do a better job of it. He decided that for now, he would attempt to reassure her mother. “I’m sure she’s fine. She probably hasn’t realized her phone is dead. Have you checked her office? Maybe she decided to take the day off and left you a note.”

  “No. I haven’t thought of that. I’ll go upstairs right now and look for one.”

  “Let me know when you hear from her or find that note, would you, please?”

  “Yes. Of course. Thank you, Tucker.”

  The moment he disconnected the call, he explained the situation to his cousin. “I’ve had a knot in my gut since I woke up this morning. Something’s wrong. I’m going to start by searching her house.”

  “Want me to help?”

  “Please.”

  Under normal circumstances, the hike back to the truck and drive into town would have taken thirty-five minutes. Tucker asked Boone to drive so he could make some calls, and by the time they arrived at Gillian’s home just over twenty minutes later, he’d spoken to both Maisy and Caroline. Neither woman had heard from Gillian today.

  Tucker vaulted from the passenger seat before Boone had the truck in park in Gillian’s driveway. He didn’t try to be stealthy. If someone saw him use his key, well, tough. He was ready to end this secrecy business anyway.

  Right after he gave Gillian a severe lecture about scaring him half to death.

  He opened the door calling, “Glory? Are you here?”

  He wasn’t surprised that a quick walk-through revealed the house was empty. He took it as a good sign that Peaches wasn’t around either. If someone had abducted Gillian, they wouldn’t have taken the dog too.

  “What can I do?” Boone asked.

  “Look for anything obvious. I’ll concentrate on the subtleties.”

  He started in the bathroom. Gillian wouldn’t take Peaches on a walk
without wearing her makeup. No way she’d go somewhere overnight without it.

  The case she’d filled with stuff when they went to Vegas and any time she stayed at his place sat in its usual spot. He spied no empty spaces in her precisely organized makeup drawer.

  He’d look for her suitcase next, but he knew without a doubt that Gillian had not made a solo overnight shopping trip to Austin. His stomach made a slow, sick roll.

  From the bedroom doorway, Boone spoke, “Think I have something, Tucker. This list was on the desk in her home office on top of a drugstore receipt dated yesterday morning at 8:48 a.m.”

  She would have been on her way into work. That meant she’d come home before she’d gone missing. “Let me see the list.”

  He took one glance and turned on his heel, headed for the closet. Sure enough, her backpack was gone. “What the hell, Gillian,” he murmured. To Boone, he asked, “No other notes? Nothing handwritten?”

  Like something saying where she was going and when she’d be back—a fundamental lesson that he’d damned well taught her.

  “Not so far, but I didn’t get past the office.”

  Tucker took a quick look around the bedroom, then headed for the kitchen. Nothing on the counters, nothing on the table, but as he stood with his hands on his hips and turned in a slow circle making a visual study, something poked at him. Something was off, but what?

  Peaches’ dishes were where they belonged. “Her leash is missing,” he murmured as his gaze landed on the rack beside the kitchen door. But the leash wasn’t all. The extra key to the shop that he’d left hanging there was missing too. “Let’s go,” he told Boone. “She went to the shop.”

  Eight minutes later, he found her note. “It’s an easy hike,” he told Boone. “She took her dog. She should have been home by dinnertime. Something happened.”

  Tucker’s career had placed him in some hairy situations on numerous occasions and under live fire more times than he wanted to remember. In the heat of the moment, his training had always kicked in. Never once had he suffered a brain freeze of indecision and inability to act.

  In this moment, he’d turned into Frosty the Snowman, frozen in fear. Thank God his cousin was there to kick his ass into action.

  Boone grabbed the keys to Tucker’s truck from his hand and headed for the door. “Let’s go find her.”

  * * *

  To Gillian’s surprise, she’d ended up sleeping like a baby in the literal woods. When she awoke with the sunrise to birdsong, she took stock of her situation and did a fist pump. She was seriously proud of herself. She couldn’t wait to show Tucker what a good job she’d done.

  She figured she probably had eight to twelve hours to wait for the opportunity.

  “My ankle isn’t much better this morning,” she told Peaches when she set out the morning portion of the kibble reserve. “If I had to do it, I could get us out of here on my own. However, I still think we’re better off waiting for help. Besides, I sort of want Tucker to see our camp, don’t you?”

  Her attention on her kibble, Peaches didn’t react to the question.

  Gillian grinned, gave her dog’s head an affectionate rub, then hobbled her way to the creek to wash.

  The water was a deep shade of green in the morning light, and it drifted along slowly. Peacefully. Gillian filled her lungs with air and exhaled a contented sigh. Six months ago had anyone—even Angelica—tried to tell her that she would have spent the night in the woods with only her dog for company without greeting the dawn as a raving lunatic, she would have chortled with disbelief.

  All in all, this misadventure had been a positive experience. So far, anyway.

  Yesterday after soaking her ankle in the pool for a bit, she’d wrapped it with the hairband that was part of the personal survival bag that she had transferred from her purse before leaving her house. Then she’d pulled on her jeans, one hiking boot, and a leather ballet flat, one of the pair that she’d carried ever since her cotton field march last fall. Next, she’d hopped and hobbled to a nearby cedar tree, where she’d used the knife from her pack to hack off a low hanging branch, which she’d fashioned into a makeshift crutch.

  Over the next few hours, she had set up her camp. Since it was early summer in Texas, she hadn’t concerned herself with Tucker’s survival triangle and the need to maintain body temperature. However, knowing that late afternoon thunderstorms often blew up in early summer in this part of the state, she’d recognized the need for shelter. She’d used the tarp and paracord from her backpack, and the knowledge she’d learned during the Girls Getting Grubby weekend to construct it. She gathered leaves and vines to use as a mattress, covered them with her black trash bags, collected firewood, and refilled her water bottle from the stream.

  Darned if those purification tablets didn’t come in handy.

  When the storm blew through just before sunset, she and Peaches had remained cozy and dry.

  She’d built a fire more for aesthetics than need, though she’d known that if Boone and Tucker chanced to be camping in this part of the canyon, firelight might have led them to her. She’d held out hope for a couple of hours after dark, but when her eyelids got heavy, she didn’t fight sleep.

  Now refreshed after her morning bath, Gillian hobbled back to camp and tried to figure out something to do to pass the time. Her fitness tracker read 7:22 a.m. She figured she could expect rescue sometime this afternoon, probably after 3:00 p.m., but no later than 6:00 p.m. The earliest her mother would raise the alarm would be noon. She’d call Maisy first, then Caroline. Eventually, the ripple effect would extend far enough that someone would call Tucker. Once Tucker learned she’d gone missing, she was as good as found.

  Within an hour, she was beyond bored. She decided to kill some time by trying to recreate the bow drill tools from the GGG weekend, and see if she couldn’t start a fire totally on her own. “If I can pull this off, that will really show him,” she explained to Peaches when she began eyeing the surrounding trees for appropriate materials.

  It proved to be the perfect way to eat up the hours. She successfully made her handhold, her fireboard, and her bow. The spindle, however, gave her fits. She couldn’t find an appropriate piece of wood within hobbling distance. When she found a straight bit, it had too many knots, and her knife skills weren’t good enough to smooth it out. By noon, she was ready to give up.

  “Wonder if I could catch a fish?” she said to Peaches.

  She could fashion a hook from a hairpin, but what would she use for bait? She could dig for worms, but did she really want to kill a worm just to pass the time? Not to mention the poor fish. It wasn’t like she and Peaches were starving or anything. Now, if they were still sitting here this time tomorrow, she might revisit the question.

  “So, what do we do this afternoon, Peaches?”

  Yip. Yip. Yip.

  She fashioned a ball out of vines, covered it with the sock she wasn’t wearing with her ballet flat, and began playing catch with Peaches, who yipped and yapped with delight in the game.

  It ended when a sound distracted Peaches, and she stopped, and her ears perked up. Gillian sat up straight. Was that a dog bark?

  She reached for her whistle and began to blow.

  * * *

  Tucker heard the whistle seconds after Jackson’s dog River took off. Gillian!

  Relief ghosted through him. If Gillian could blow a whistle, she was alive. Injured, they could deal with. He followed the dog at a jog, and when the whistle’s shrill sound ceased, he hollered, “Gillian!”

  His voice echoed through the canyon. He listened hard, his pulse hammering in his ears.

  “Tucker!” came the faint, fabulous sound. “I’m here.”

  Thank God. Thank you, God. “Gillian? Are you hurt? Where are you?”

  “Over here! Down here!”

  The sound reverberated off the canyon wall so “down here” didn’t really help. He asked Boone, who was coming up behind him, “Can you tell which way?”

&nb
sp; “No.”

  Tucker yelled, “Keep blowing your whistle!”

  Ahead of the two men, River took a fork on the trail that led away from the cave that Gillian’s note said had been her destination. Rounding a bend about a hundred yards from the fork, he saw River veer off the trail onto an arroyo. Tucker didn’t hesitate to follow. This was why he had stopped by the Last Chance Hall to pick up Jackson’s dog. River had roamed the canyon as a stray before attaching himself to Jackson, and he knew the lay of the land. He might be a yellow Lab, but he had the hearing of an owl and soul of a bloodhound. He’d found Gillian. God bless him.

  “Oh! River! I see you,” Gillian called. “Here we are, boy!”

  There. She was there. Safe. Dry. Smiling that beautiful smile of hers and flinging out her arms in welcome, she was the most beautiful sight Tucker had ever seen. As he scrambled to the canyon floor, he took the first easy breath he’d managed all day.

  “Glory.” He reached her and wrapped her in his arms, buried his face in her hair, and shuddered. “Oh, hell, Gillian. You scared me to death.”

  “I sprained my ankle, but I knew you’d find me,” Gillian continued. “You’re earlier than I expected too. Tucker, you’ll be so proud of me! I’m so proud of myself!”

  Proud. Tucker dragged his hand down his face as she babbled on. Proud wasn’t the first word that came to mind.

  “I was Anna Acronym, I’ll have you know. S.U.R.V.I.V.A.L. Queen, that’s me. I kept my cool and made good decisions that didn’t make the situation any worse. Look at the shelter I built. It kept us nice and dry during the thunderstorm last night.”

  She continued to talk, parroting back lessons he’d taught her during the Survival 101 class. Tucker knew he should be happy that she’d managed so well, that she’d taken his lessons to heart and put them to use them when she’d needed them the most. But now that his fear was easing, the fog dissipating, temper stirred.

  He interrupted. “Where the hell is your phone?”

  She winced. “Well, see, the screen shattered, so when it fell into the pond, it died.”