Gambling on a Dream

by Sara Walter Ellwood

  Goddamn, he hated change.

  He wanted his life the way it had been before things were all fucked up because he failed to protect what was important.

  Thinking about Dawn was as crazy as remembering his life on the ranch way back when. Neither one could be changed.

  Inside the foyer, Crystal Gayle’s Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue drifted to him from the direction of the kitchen. His mother was frying chicken and baking homemade bread and maybe apple pie, if his nose could be trusted. He hung his hat on the rack in the corner by the door and followed the smells into the kitchen.

  Jeannie Burton McPherson looked up from the electric frying pan she only used to fry chicken. A cheerful smile brightened her still-pretty face. From the tight curls her graying red hair was wound into, she’d visited their cousin’s beauty salon earlier that day and gotten a perm.

  He rounded the counter and bent to kiss her on the cheek, the odor of the perming solution lingering in her hair, and the delicious aroma of the foods wrinkled his nose as they mixed. He pulled away and smiled. “Ma, Dad’s gonna have to keep an eye on you. You keep getting prettier. I like your hair.”

  She laughed and swatted at his shoulder, but he didn’t miss the slight blush. “You’re such a charmer.”

  With a grin, he looked into the frying pan at the batter dipped chicken pieces frying in what was undoubtedly lard and butter. “You’re gonna make me as big as a linebacker if you keep up all this cooking.”

  She flipped a crispy drumstick. “You could use some more meat on your bones. You always look half-starved when you come home. I swear you don’t eat when you’re living on your own. I remember that time before you quit the police in Dallas, when you were so skinny, I could almost see through you.”

  He didn’t want to think about that time in his life. After Dawn took a bullet meant for him, he stopped caring about much except going after the thugs who had almost killed the only woman he’d ever loved. But it went deeper than that, she hadn’t only put her own life in jeopardy, she sacrificed the child he hadn’t known she’d carried.

  His son.

  Goddamn, now wasn’t the time to take a trip down that particular rocky memory lane.

  The last thing he wanted was his mother noticing the searing pain he was sure reflected in his face. He picked up a lid on one of the pots to find boiling potatoes. “I eat. I just take after the Ferguson side of the family. I’m tall and lean, but I’ve never been skinny.”

  He carried the hundred-ninety pounds of hard muscle on his six-foot, two-inch frame to prove it.

  A timer went off, and she opened the oven door to pull out a golden brown apple pie. She set it on a cooling rack. The rich apple and cinnamon scents filling the kitchen made his belly grumble with hunger.

  “We’ll be eating in a few minutes. Why don’t you go get your sister? She hasn’t been out of her room all day.” He didn’t miss the sadness in her voice or the pleading in her faded denim eyes. “You’ve always been good with her.”

  He left the kitchen and headed down the hall to stop before the door across from his. He’d packed up his dive of an apartment in Waco, sent his stuff to storage, and moved into his parents’ home temporarily to help with Rachel, but he wanted a place of his own.

  He took a deep breath as the day his parents brought Rachel home from the hospital drifted into his mind. He and Audrey were only three, but they had both been excited to have a real live baby in their midst. Audrey wanted to dress her up like her favorite doll. He’d wanted someone else to play with, but to be honest, he’d been a little disappointed she wasn’t a boy. He’d never dreamed he’d become her protector. Although he loved his twin sister, and technically, was her older brother too--if you can count a whole four and a half minutes as being older--Rachel held a special place in his heart.

  Sounds of his father chatting with his mother from the kitchen brought him out of his thoughts, and he knocked on his sister’s door. “Rach, Ma’s got dinner ready.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Her voice sounded muffled and distracted.

  He looked to the ceiling and sent a prayer to heaven to give him the strength and the knowledge to help his baby sister. “I’m coming in.”

  When she didn’t respond, he turned the knob and entered the room. A modern-looking pine queen bed and Rachel’s sophisticated styles had replaced the twin canopy beds and white girly furniture. Everything that had been Audrey’s was long gone. After all, the few times Rachel came home from her stints as an Army nurse, this was where she’d come.

  She sat huddled under an old crocheted blanket in a stuffed chair and stared out the window. What he could see of her face behind her short auburn hair was pale and splotched red, as if she’d been crying. Her hands were curled into fists and tucked in close to her body. Her prosthetic lower left leg sat in the corner with her crutches.

  He let out a long breath and sat on the edge of her unmade bed. When he glanced up, he noticed what had her riveted outside the window. In the yard on the other side of the rail fence, two young children played on a swing set while their father and mother worked in the yard. A picture of the perfect family. He closed his eyes and hung his head low.

  God, how much more can she take?

  “All I ever wanted was a family of my own.” Her voice rasped as if coming from her soul.

  Yeah, me too. He swallowed hard, but his voice still came out sounding like a frog’s croak. “Ladybug, I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know how to make this better.”

  She turned red-rimmed blue eyes on him. “You haven’t called me that in years.”

  He’d given her the nickname when she was only a baby because, with her bright red hair, she reminded him of a ladybug. For years, the whole family called her by the nickname. He sniffed and swallowed again. Damn, his sinuses burned.

  “Everyone thinks it’s because of Audrey and Lance that I’m such a mess.”

  “I know it has to be hard seeing them…”

  She shifted her shoulders as if she shrugged, or maybe she took a deep breath. “The lieutenant colonel who was killed in the attack wasn’t just my commander.”

  From the report, he knew Rachel had been attacked by an Afghani national who worked on the base where she’d been deployed.

  She and a doctor had been working together late when the Afghani found them. He’d shot the lieutenant colonel and Rachel while they were talking in his office. She’d taken a high-powered bullet in the pelvis area and her lower left leg, which shattered the bone beyond repair. The doctor had died from his wounds, and Rachel had been flown to Landstuhl, Germany, where her leg had been amputated, her pelvis repaired, and her uterus, where the bullet lodged, removed.

  The terrorist had committed suicide. His body had been found in his room along with the weapon he’d used to kill the doctor and to shoot Rachel.

  Wyatt moved off the bed and kneeled beside her. He took her icy hands and held them. “You weren’t working, were you?”

  She sniffled and shook her head. As she turned to look out the window again, she whispered, “Alex was my fiance. We planned to get married as soon as I could put in for promotion, but we had to keep our relationship secret since he was my commanding officer until then. No one can ever know about it. I’d never risk his name being dishonored.”

  Which meant she would never discuss it with her shrink at the VA hospital. The air went out of him, and he bent his head over their joined hands. “Oh, God, Rach. I’m so sorry.”

  “I wish I’d been killed too,” she whispered in a faraway tone that sent an arctic shiver through him.

  He squeezed her hand and forced her to look at him by turning her head with his thumb under her chin. “Don’t you ever say such a thing. We love you. We need you here with us. You hear me? I need you.” He swallowed hard and sniffed back the hot knot clogging his sinuses. “I understand how you feel. But that isn’t the answer.”

  She shook her head and yanked h
er hand from his. “How could you know what I’m going through? You have no idea what happened to me. What it was like to watch the man I love die.”

  He glanced out the window at the happy family. The little boy was Mason, the girl Katie. He was five years old, and she was almost three. The same age his son would have been. He’d met the family on several occasions since they moved into the recently built home three months ago. “Dawn Madison and I were all but engaged while we worked vice on the PD.” He met his sister’s gaze. “She took a bullet that was meant for me and almost died.”

  She huffed. “But she’s still alive. Alex is dead.”

  “True.” He averted his gaze to his hands. “But I’ll never forgive her for what she did. She was five months pregnant and lost the baby.”

  “Wy, I’m so sorry.” She took his hand and squeezed it.

  He sniffed again, but he couldn’t look up. “She lost our son simply because she wouldn’t take herself off the case. The captain would’ve never allowed her on the sting if he’d known. Hell, if I had known about the pregnancy, I would’ve had her taken off the case.” He shook his head and wiped his nose with the back of his free hand. “I know that isn’t the same as what happened to you. But there isn’t a day that goes by I don’t wonder what my little boy would’ve grown into.” Or what life with Dawn would’ve been like.

  “Why do bad things always happen to good people?”

  The only answer he had was to take her into his arms and hold her as he closed his eyes against the tears he wouldn’t dare let fall.

  “I don’t know, Ladybug. I don’t know.”

  * * * *

  That evening, Dawn got out of her Ford F-150, her boots hitting the dusty ground with a thump. Her brother’s old Dodge pickup and a horse trailer were parked next to the old-line cabin on his third of the M bar C.

  The old shack wasn’t more than termites holding hands. The roof sagged on one side, and a black tarp covered the rusted tin where a leak had weakened the boards beneath. Half the porch had rotted away. The bold tanginess of deterioration mingled with the scent of creek water, horse, fresh hay, and lumber. Someone, probably Talon, had replaced the steps with a concrete block and laid a sheet of plywood over the decaying wood from the step to the door.

  East of the cabin, the west branch of Oak Springs Creek meandered along slowly. As kids, she and her two brothers would fish from the bank. On the other side of the shack, a lean-to with a small corral barely contained a massive bay stallion--her brother’s horse, Ugedaliya. Or Ugly, as the whites called him, since the Cherokee word was hard for them to pronounce. Talon never told the poor bastards that the word meant tornado. Which fit the monster of a horse perfectly.

  She closed the door of her truck and walked to the correl. Ugedaliya came up to the railing and snorted. When she petted his velvety nose, he nickered. She’d taken care of the contrary stallion while Talon had been in prison last year. “Fierce Ugedaliya,” she cooed in her mother’s native Cherokee. “I’ve missed you.”

  Once Ugedaliya realized she wasn’t offering carrots or apples, he tossed his big head and moved away to nibble on the short grass growing around the corral posts.

  Unable to stall any longer, she took a deep breath and headed across the rutted path, serving as the driveway to the framework of a barn, rising from the ground like a giant skeleton.

  Just like Talon to be living in a shack while he built a mansion for his horse.

  “I wondered how long you were gonna stand there taking in the sights.” Her brother’s deep voice came from behind her. “What do you want?”

  She turned to Talon coming out from around the lean-to, carrying a feed bucket.

  The horse trotted over to him. He stroked the stallion’s face. “I doubt this is a social call.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He dumped the contents of the dented bucket into a trough for his horse, then wiped his hands on a rag he pulled from the back pocket of his faded jeans. His plaid shirt hung open, revealing his deep tan. A bandana was tied around his neck, and his long black hair was held back in a ponytail under an old straw hat.

  Hazel eyes, set in a face sharp with the hard angles he’d inherited from his white father, narrowed as he looked over her uniform. “Do I need my lawyer present?”

  She straightened her back and wished she and her brother had remained as close as they’d once been. “That depends. I hoped you’d tell me the truth because I’m family and that used to matter to us.”

  He wiped the back of his hand over his forehead. “That was a long time ago. What the hell do you want? I’m busy.”

  Sighing, she fought the hurt pinching her heart. “You hear about Sam Larson’s son?”

  He glanced toward the cabin. “I read something in the paper. But what’s it got to do with me?”

  She folded her arms in front of her to ward off the sudden chill. Gene Murphy had brought in the surveillance videos from his gas station. The only incriminating thing on them was the perfect view of Talon walking in front of the Longhorn. “Chris Larson was found dead yesterday morning by a garbage man behind the Longhorn.” She waited for his response, but when he only stared at her with something akin to impatience in his dark eyes, she said, “We have a witness who puts you near the scene at the time he was murdered.”

  He turned and headed toward the front of the cabin.

  “Talon?” She hurried after him.

  After a few steps, he spun and bore down on her. The contempt and harsh anger, turning his handsome features into unforgiving stone, had her stepping back. “So what?”

  “Did you see anything?”

  He made a disgusted sound between his teeth. “What you really want to know is if I killed that boy. I read he was probably killed over dope.” Glaring at her, he asked, “Tell me, Sister, do you think I’m a drug dealer?”

  “No, of course not!” She fisted her hands to the point her nails bit into her palms. She hadn’t read the local paper, but she could only imagine what the article contained. “But people do, and I want to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen here that happened in Amarillo. Answer my question. Why were you in town yesterday morning?”

  “I was in town. But the why of it is none of your goddamned business.” He turned and headed up the makeshift steps to the porch.

  “You’re going to force me to bring you in for formal questioning.” She shook her head. “If I don’t follow through--”

  When he looked over his shoulder, she knew she’d destroyed whatever was left of their relationship.

  He finished her sentence with a sneer. “You’ll look like you’re playing favorites like Tom did when he was sheriff.”

  She jerked back at the reference to her father.

  He reached for the rusty, torn screen door. “So much for family trust. Get the hell off my land, Sheriff.”

  Chapter 3

  Dawn sat on her couch and shook the colorful woven blanket over her knees. Her grandmother had made it for her when she’d graduated high school. It always reminded her of the cozy warmth that comforted her when she’d visit Nana in Oklahoma. As she picked up the remote from the end table, Taco, her beagle, waddled over from her doggy bed in the corner by the bookshelf.

  Taco looked up at Dawn and barked, her tail swishing back and forth. She had more white then brown on her muzzle and face, and her old joints were slow with arthritis. Dawn leaned over and helped the aging pup up onto the couch beside her.

  “You’re getting too heavy, ole girl. Doc Evans is going to have a fit the next time I take you for a checkup,” she said, referring to the town’s veterinarian.

  Taco’s response was to lay her head on Dawn’s lap and close her eyes.

  As Dawn flipped through the channels, she stroked over the smooth fur of the dog’s head. With a chuckle and a glance at Taco, Dawn turned up the volume of the TV so she could hear it over the beagle’s snores.

  She paused the clicki
ng long enough to stop at the eleven o’clock news on Channel Ten out of Dallas. Dawn frowned as she stared at the anchor, Vanessa Burk, while she talked about a fatal multiple car pileup on Interstate Twenty. She was a beautiful blonde with gleaming hair, cut in the hottest Hollywood style, with straight white teeth and big green eyes. Dawn turned off the TV and set the controller on the end table.

  She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Wyatt had dated Vanessa for over ten years. They’d met in college and had even lived together for several years, but when she wanted to get married, Wyatt called off the relationship.

  Two months later, Dawn had sex with him after a stakeout, and her life became everything she’d ever wanted. Had things gotten too serious between them? Had he been afraid of getting tied down with a woman? Was that why he’d left Vanessa? Had Wyatt planned to dump her too? Was that why he’d left her after she’d lost their baby?

  She shook her head to dispel the litany of questions she’d asked herself for years and glanced down at the sleeping dog. Had Wyatt ever loved her at all?

  As she took a deep breath, she stood, folded the blanket, and put it in its place over the arm of the couch. Taco woke up, and Dawn helped the dog to the floor. “C’mon, time for bed.”

  Taco lumbered back to her bed in the corner while Dawn headed for the kitchen. She put the dishes from the drying rack away in the overhead cabinet. As she dumped the last of the day’s coffee down the drain, she turned off the coffee maker. After she rinsed out the sink and turned off the kitchen lights in her trailer, she made her way back through the living room to the bedroom at the end of the singlewide.

  Someday she’d have a big house, but for now, the trailer she’d moved onto her third of the ranch was enough.

  She turned on the lamp hanging on the wall by the full-sized bed and changed into the T-shirt and shorts she slept in. Her knees were only inches from the oak dresser when she sat on the end of her bed. She opened the top drawer to take out a pair of socks when the corner of an old photo album she had in the bottom caught her attention.