by Marie Force
His cousin’s wife, Alex, the sheriff of Harmony, stood waiting, none too patiently as he unlocked the door. She didn’t say a word, just walked in, turned, and glared at him.
“What?” he snapped. Alex tended to frown when she was unhappy with him, which was most of the time. The sheriff was only kin by marriage, but she’d been big-sistering him since he’d hung up a shingle and started practicing law.
“Why didn’t you let me know Marshal Trace Adams was in town? She charged into my office three hours ago and the dust hasn’t settled since.”
“What do I look like? Instagram? Maybe she just came in to see me.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “She thinks your life is in danger. That’s why she’s back.”
He guessed the fact that he’d slept with Trace couldn’t look more obvious. “You’ve talked to Trace this morning then.” It really wasn’t a question. Of course she’d been filled in on the shot that hit Lizzie. If she hadn’t, Trace wouldn’t be in town, and Alex wouldn’t be in his office.
Sheriff Matheson grinned. “I saw her. She looked just like you, exhausted with a permanent smile stuck on her face. Let me give you some advice, Rick. When you sleep with a woman, take some time out and sleep.”
Great, Rick thought, now the whole family would know his business. He hated small towns. And relatives. And coffee that hadn’t kept him awake. Coughing, he muttered, “I think I’m coming down with a cold. Maybe you should go.”
She walked past him and sat in the chair in front of his desk. “I’m not going back to the office. Trace is there going through files and hinting that I’m not doing my duty. Half the deputies are afraid of her, and the other half are following her around like lost puppies.”
“What duty are you supposed to be doing?” Rick wasn’t interested, but Alex didn’t appear to be leaving.
“The one of taking care of you. She thinks someone’s out to kill you, and she’s mad at me for not already solving the case. Which is hard to do, counselor, when no one reports being shot at.”
He circled the desk and dropped into his napping chair. “It was just one shot. Probably a stray bullet. Lizzie said it just scratched her. You can ask her.”
Alex leaned forward. Her long catlike movements reminded him a little of Trace. They were both tall and slim and beautiful enough to have been models, if they hadn’t picked fighting bad guys for a living.
“I would ask Lizzie, but she’s not at home or at her workplace. Don’t you think it’s a little strange that she’s disappeared when she doesn’t even have a car?” Alex frowned as she confessed. “I even broke into her house to make sure she wasn’t in there dead.”
“I’ve done that,” Rick admitted. “Did you check with the vet who lives in front of her place? Maybe he’d know where she’s gone.”
“I didn’t know they were friends.” Alex looked surprised. “I did see a note on his door saying anyone with an emergency should call his cell. He jotted down something about visiting a few ranches and being at the rodeo arena around five when the rough stock came in.”
“Rough stock?” Rick couldn’t remember much about the rodeo. He’d played football all the way through high school and college. Jocks and cowboys usually only met in the emergency room.
Alex, with a brother who’d been a real rodeo star, knew all about it. “Rough stock is the bulls and horses that are provided for the guys to ride. They’re raised to be in the game. If the doc’s checking out the stock, he’s in for a hard afternoon.”
Rick really didn’t want a lecture on rodeo problems. In truth, he’d like to get back to his dream, but Alex wasn’t here to gripe about Trace or look for Lizzie. She had something else on her mind—he’d bet on it. “Say what you came to say, Alex. I know you didn’t walk over here just to wake me up so you could give out advice on my love life.”
She leaned back in her chair again and steepled her fingers. “Did it ever cross that thick Matheson skull of yours, Rick, that maybe, just maybe, you weren’t the target last night? Maybe whoever was shooting hit what he aimed at?”
Rick came wide awake. “Why would anyone want to hurt Lizzie? She does dress like she’s trying out for a part in Sweeney Todd and her hair changes color regularly, but she’s a kind person. Word is she doesn’t charge near enough for the grooming and does all the pound dogs free to help them get adopted. Who would want to hurt her?”
“I know. It didn’t make sense to me at first. I agree that she’s kind. The family might not have said much to her, but we all admired her for taking care of her grandmother. She gave up two years of her life to stay home and be a nurse. That’s why I want to get to the bottom of this fast, before someone tries again.”
Rick leaned closer. The sheriff had his full attention.
Alex pulled out three letters from a folder she carried. “Six days ago, Davidson called me over to the post office and said Lizzie had opened a P.O. box and asked if he would cancel all delivery to her house.”
“Lots of folks do that.” Rick picked up a pen and began jotting down notes. If this was going anywhere, he wanted to have the facts right.
“He said she’d come by about once a week to clear the mostly junk mail out of her box. Then last week she just came in, stopped at the trash, and tossed all the mail she’d pulled from her box. He claimed, near as he could tell, she didn’t look at a single letter.”
“Maybe she pays her bills online.” Rick used reason. “I wouldn’t think she’d get many letters. Everyone she cares about lives around here. She was probably just tossing junk mail.”
Alex didn’t look happy. “Davidson pulled three letters she’d gotten out of the trash. It’s not illegal to look at mail tossed in a public trash.” Alex placed the letters on the desk.
“None have return addresses, but the postmark came out of the Dallas area.”
“That’s not much to go on,” he said. “I assume you opened them.”
Nodding, Alex pulled the single sheet of paper out of the first envelope. “It’s not exactly a threat on her life, but it is close. We’ve already run tests on them. Only one had a fingerprint on it, and that belonged to Davidson.”
Rick took the note: No one knows how long they have to live. Like daughter, like mother. Maybe it is your turn to go to sleep.
Silently, he glanced at the second and third. Enjoy your last summer, Lizzie. It’s time to finish what you started that night in the dorm room. The last said simply, There is nowhere to run. Think about how peaceful pills would be. You already have them with you.
Alex just stared at the letters. “I checked the records. Her mother committed suicide the year after Lizzie’s father was killed by a land mine.”
“Someone wants her dead,” Rick said, stating the obvious. Inside he felt sorry for not spending more time with her. Lizzie was different, but no one really believed she was insane.
“Someone who knows her,” Alex added. “I called the college she went to, and after a little digging, found a dorm mother who remembered her. She said she had a serious injury her freshman year. Lizzie claimed it was an accident. She’d been trying to hang a curtain across her part of the room and slipped off a chair. One of the cords wrapped around her neck. The roommates told everyone that she’d been depressed and they’d heard her crying. That had to be soon after her grandmother died, I’m guessing. The dorm mother said a report was filed and they called a few relatives. The next thing she knew, Lizzie showed up with a tattoo of ivy running from her shoulder to her neck. It covered up any scar the cord would have left.”
“Any of the Mathesons know about the accident?”
“No, I called Aunt Fat and Aunt Pat. They would know if anyone would. They were close to her grandmother and still go visit with Lizzie. Aunt Pat said she’d never heard of such a thing, but she did know that Lizzie took pills to get to sleep. She told them once that she’d had nightmares all her life.”
“What about the other side of her family? Her mother had a sister. Maybe that was ‘the
family’ the dorm mother said was notified. I heard Lizzie say once that her granny had two other grandchildren who never visited.”
“It took about five minutes to trace that.” Alex folded up the letters as if she couldn’t tolerate looking at them. “Lizzie’s mother died shortly after Lizzie came to live in Harmony with her granny. Evidently, according to Aunt Fat, Granny and her other daughter had a falling-out over Granny taking Lizzie in. No one has heard or seen the daughter or anyone in her family for almost twenty years. Aunt Fat said she thought the daughter had two children, boys. Last name, Rogers. As far as anyone knows, they’ve made no effort to ever contact Lizzie.”
Rick stood and began to pace. “I’ve heard from a few old lawyers that Granny’s other daughter tried to fight the will after Granny died, but it was solid.”
“I’ve heard that, too.” Worry wrinkled Alex’s forehead.
“How can I help?” Rick wanted in on this hunt. “We’ll turn this town upside down until we find Lizzie, but that still leaves us with no clue as to who is sending the notes.”
“That’s where you come in. If we can locate Granny’s will, we might find a lead.”
Rick didn’t think so, but he went downstairs to the county clerk’s office. Fifteen minutes later he found the clue he’d feared. According to the will, after Lizzie’s death the oil rights to the land her grandparents owned would pass to Granny’s other grandchildren, two men who’d be in their thirties.
He looked up at Alex. “We’ve found motive. Now all we have to find is the Rogers boys.”
Alex shook her head. “You find Lizzie. It’s going to take me a while to find the right two men in Texas when their names are Fred and John Rogers.”
“How many do you think there are?”
“Hundreds, but the only two I’m worried about are the two that are in my town. I know nothing about them except that one is armed.” Alex looked straight at Rick. “Get your marshal over here. She’ll have resources we could use that might make this go much faster.”
He pulled out his phone as Trace stepped around the open door.
Rick couldn’t hide his smile. She looked great, as always. He wondered if the sight of her would ever be common enough that his heart didn’t stop every time he saw her. “There’s my marshal, my lady,” he said, loving that she didn’t deny it as she joined the group.
SEVEN
DUST COVERED LIZZIE from head to toe. Her white tennis shoes with rhinestones on them were so brown they didn’t even sparkle. Lizzie looked up and smiled at McCall. She’d never had so much fun in her life.
“You’re doing great, partner,” he said. “You almost caught that one.”
Lizzie knew she was no good at rounding up calves, but she didn’t care and she had a feeling McCall didn’t either. They might be working in a dusty corral with half-wild cattle, but Lizzie grinned like she’d been dancing at a grand ball in glass slippers. She was helping him, or at least trying her best to. Having someone to talk to while he worked was as rare for him as it was for her.
Looking down, she giggled. A grand ball indeed. They were standing in a pen with mud and manure all over the ground. He’d been doctoring stock for an hour. Only with her at one hundred pounds trying to control a month-old calf, it seemed an even game. Sometimes she won. Sometimes the calf knocked her down and ran.
At first when he’d laughed it sounded like a cough, but as the day passed she liked to think that the doc was learning how to laugh all over again. She didn’t even mind that he called her “partner” sometimes, like they were a team.
As he vaccinated the last calf, he handed her one of the medicine bags and gripped her arm to make sure she made it out of the corral without falling down again. “We got one more stop, then we’ll head home. If I can take a rain check on that dinner you offered to cook, I’ll buy you supper in town tonight. Where would you like to eat?”
She hadn’t had anything since breakfast at dawn. “Anywhere that brings the food to the pickup. I’m too hungry to take the time to clean up.”
He took both medical bags as they left the pen and crossed them over his shoulder as if they weighed nothing.
She slipped her hand around his arm and walked through tall grass toward the truck.
He slowed to her pace and leaned close. “I’m starving. Fast food sounds great.”
She patted his dirty shirt. “I’m thinking if you get any more dirt layered on, you could be your own dust devil.” When he slapped his jeans and dust flew, she added, “I’ve had a ball, Doc. It’s been a wonderful day.”
Now they were out of range of the other cowhands helping with the branding, McCall asked, “How’s that wound on your side?”
“It’s fine,” she lied. “I haven’t felt it all day.” Twice she’d winced when it pulled, and she knew that a few of the butterfly stitches he’d put on were loose. She just hoped it wouldn’t bleed through on his shirt that she’d worn all day with the shirttail tied around her waist. If McCall had seen the blood, he would’ve made her stop.
He opened the pickup door and shoved the bags toward the middle of the seat, then helped her in. “I promised I’d check out the stock coming in for the rodeo before dark, then it’s off to the nearest hamburger joint that delivers food to the pickup.”
As they drove back to town, he mostly answered questions. She’d discovered a whole new world and wanted to know all about it. She learned that no two days as a vet were the same. He told her about how great it feels to see a newborn colt stand for the first time and how when he had to put an animal down, he always prayed they were heading to a special heaven.
Lizzie saw McCall’s gentle kindness and understood. He wasn’t a man used to talking, but as the day wore on, she noticed he liked to touch her. First he’d help her up or offer her a steady brace of his hand along her back, but as time passed she found he often communicated with a pat or by brushing close. Even now, as they rode side by side, his hand, leaning across the bags, rested easy next to her leg.
When she slid her fingers beneath his hand, he lifted her hand and moved it to his leg, then slowly spread her fingers out. She smiled, too shy to look at him. He kept his eyes on the road, but she knew he was smiling also.
When he pulled into the rodeo grounds at the edge of town, he said, “How about you sit this one out, Elizabeth? Just relax. I won’t be long.”
Lizzie didn’t want to miss anything, but exhaustion and lack of sleep were getting the better of her. With the window down, the afternoon breeze was just right for a nap. “All right, but if you need me, I’ll come running.”
He brushed his hand along her shoulder. “You’ve been great today. Rest up or we’ll both sleep through the Western tonight.”
She made no comment as he climbed out and headed toward the corrals at the far end of the small arena. She couldn’t have said a word without crying. He talked about watching the Western tonight, like they’d done it a million times. Closing her eyes, she let herself hope. All her life she’d been one of those people trying to have fun but never quite making it. She was always the person at the party who never really had a group to laugh with, and when she tried too hard, it only made her awkwardness worse. Today, she hadn’t tried at all to fit in. She’d been her uncoordinated self, and he’d liked her just fine.
She closed her eyes thinking of how she’d curl up against his side tonight.
A pickup pulled up next to her, but she barely opened her eyes. Lizzie was too busy reliving the perfect day and dreaming of being next to him for a Western. Maybe she’d spread her hand out over his leg again. She would like the feel of his muscles beneath the rough fabric of his jeans.
As she drifted off to sleep, she was aware of the dirt parking lot filling up. Horses were being unloaded. Men were talking. Somewhere in the distance, a crew was testing the mics. The rodeo wouldn’t start until seven thirty, but hundreds of things had to be ready.
“You Lizzie?” A voice invaded her sleep.
She opened on
e eye and saw a short man in a cowboy hat standing at the driver’s-side window. “Yes,” she said, trying to see his face in the shadow of the big hat.
He nodded and turned toward the arena. “Doc says you’re needed in the holding corral. Just follow the chute at the back gate and you’ll find it.”
Lizzie scrambled. “Does he need the medical bag?”
No answer. The stranger was gone.
She ran across the parking lot, the bag banging against her leg. At the back of the arena was a gate that led off into an even smaller chute tunneling around smaller stalls. Without hesitation, she ran in. The ground was soft, cut up by hooves and still muddy from the rain. Shadows were long across the high wood fences. She couldn’t see the back corral, but it had to be in front of her.
Suddenly she heard the click of the gate she’d just closed behind her, and then the thunder of hooves rolled toward her down the chute.
Lizzie turned. Bulls. Huge horned bulls were coming after her.
For a few steps she tried to run, but the muddy ground was too slippery. Considering that she couldn’t see the end ahead, instinct told her the bulls would reach her before she could get into the holding corral. Even if she did make it, she’d still be trapped with the bulls.
Holding to the bag, she tried to climb the fence. One board, another. More stitches at her side jerked free as she pulled herself up with one arm. She couldn’t lose the doc’s bag. She couldn’t go fast with only one arm.
She heard the bulls coming closer. Too fast. As she turned, she saw them ten feet away and knew she was out of time. Even if she made it one more step, she’d still be scraped off the fence by their huge heads and horns.
Closing her eyes, she lifted the doc’s bag and tossed it over the fence. The bag would be safe, and if she was lucky she would survive with only a few broken bones.
As she gulped in her last breath, someone grabbed her from above and jerked her up just as the bulls hit the fence where she’d been. The force of their attack was so hard that it felt like the ground shook, and for a second, Lizzie thought she was flying, out of control.
