The Cowboy's Deadly Mission

by Addison Fox

  He thought about his own father. About the man’s inability to rise to his responsibilities and duties with honor and trustworthiness. Those things still bothered him and he didn’t believe there was any amount of conversation that would change that.

  “It’s not about if it bothers me or not. I hate that my memories of her are poor ones. That I think of her as a duty and responsibility instead of as a loving parent. That I have to live with the knowledge she drove my father away before I ever had a chance to know him or that she spent her life running from the demons that lived in her mind, chasing them with booze or whatever she could swindle a doctor into prescribing. But despite it all, that’s just the way it is.”

  “Sounds awfully forgiving.”

  “Does accepting something mean you’ve forgiven it?” Her gaze was steady across the table and Tate suddenly realized they were no longer talking about her mother. “Or maybe a better question, does forgiveness mean you forget what happened?”

  “I think it all depends on the person.”

  “How so?” Belle asked.

  “I think there are people in this world who are more open-minded. More able to see the forest for the trees.”

  “You don’t think you’re one of them?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Belle’s gaze dropped to her coffee, her shoulders hunched over the mug. He’d known her practically his entire life and in all that time—even during the hard times with her mother as well as during their breakup—he’d never seen her look quite so bereft. In that hunch of her shoulders he could practically see the weight of the world resting there.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I have a suspicion about the killer. And it’s a bad one.”

  Thoughts of her mother, his father and their shared past vanished in the face of what she’d discovered. “From the evidence today?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we have to accept it may be an inside job.”

  She walked him through her suspicions, matter-of-factly and with minimal inflection. The suspicions of her chief and the Feds that they were dealing with a serial killer. The job description of each of the victims. The matched wounds on each victim’s heart.

  Tate took it all in, but could hardly believe what he was hearing. It had all been bad enough when he believed a man had been killed on his land. But a serial killer? One who chose his victims from the underbelly of the drug trade?

  “And there are three kills. That’s what makes it a serial?”

  She nodded. “It’s the accepted wisdom and pattern behavior. And we have three we can connect.”

  “I want to believe that’s all, but that’s not why you came in here looking like you saw a ghost. You’ve known about this.”

  “I have.”

  Tate ignored that subtle thread of betrayal that she’d not told him about the case. It wasn’t logical or right, but it was his land, dammit, and he’d had a right to know. It was him and Belle, for heaven’s sake, and she hadn’t told him. Instead, she’d put duty to her job before him. Again.

  “So what else has you upset? You mentioned an inside job but nothing you’ve said indicates that.”

  “The jewelry I found. In the east pasture.” She stilled, tracing her index finger over the rim of her mug. He let her go, giving her the time she needed. “I think it may belong to Captain Grantham.”

  “Russ?” When she only nodded, he added, “Russ Grantham?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s a cop. And a father. And a damn fine man.”

  “I know.”

  It was that acknowledgment—and the sheer misery that filled her eyes—that had Tate going silent, only one question rushing over and over through his mind.

  Why?

  Chapter 14

  Her suspicions lay heavy between them, an emotional mess hovering in the air over the kitchen table. The tone of Tate’s voice had continued to rise, question after question, until it all faded to silence, one question remaining.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s about Jamie. Or because of Jamie.”

  “Russ has become a killer because his son died? That’s awfully convenient. Or an awfully convenient place to drop blame.”

  “I’m not dropping blame.”

  He waved a hand, his face already as contrite as his words. “That was a low blow. But come on, Belle. Jamie had a problem. That doesn’t make the rest of his family killers.”

  “Come on, Tate. Work it through with me. Is it really that far a stretch? Especially for someone with training and knowledge. Someone with access to police files and criminal records?”

  Belle hesitated a moment, walking through it again in her mind. The questions she’d asked herself on the drive back to Reynolds Station. The memories of how badly Captain Grantham’s family had suffered with Jamie’s addiction. The missing piece of jewelry that could be the linchpin to all of it.

  “Jamie’s drug problem was legendary. The family struggled with it for years, their hope crashing each and every time he had a relapse.”

  She’d seen it, too. Had witnessed it all firsthand. The sadness she’d see in her friend, Reese, every time her brother got into trouble and later, once Belle had joined the force, the pain Russ carried. She’d remained silent, her own experiences with her mother too close to the surface, but she’d understood the pain. The soul-crushing disappointment when one of Jamie’s dry spells ended and resulted in a bender that started the cycle all over again.

  Fire lit Tate’s gaze once again, his disbelief palpable. “But that doesn’t make someone a killer. You saw the body. You know what we found. Can you honestly sit there and tell me you think Russ Grantham did that to another person?”

  “I think I need to pursue that angle and the pendant I found earlier is a part of that.”

  “And you won’t back down?”

  “I can’t. Don’t you understand that?”

  “What if it is Russ?”

  “Then we’ll prosecute him. Punish him just like any other criminal.”

  Tate let out a harsh bark, his heavy exhale dark and deep. “What a load of crap. You can sit there and talk to me about a man. A good man. One we’ve both known our whole lives. And you can sit there and tell me if he’s guilty he should be prosecuted to the letter of the law as if it were no big deal?”

  No big deal?

  It was a massive deal. One that weighed on her as nothing in her life ever had. An hour ago, she’d been diligently pursuing a criminal. And now she had to accept that she might be on a manhunt for a friend.

  Even with that stark truth—and the resulting chaos that would come after if she were correct—she had to move forward. Had to push on.

  “If he’s gone around killing people? Yes, I can.”

  “That’s so typical.” Tate slammed out of his chair, the heavy scraping of the legs over hardwood as jarring as his motions.

  “Typical of what?”

  “Of you. Your attitude. Your devotion to this notion of truth and justice. Add the American way on top of it and you’re a damn freaking superhero, aren’t you?”

  “Insulting much?”

  “Insulting?” He whirled around from where he stood at the counter. “You’ve just sat here and accused a good man of being a cold-blooded killer. How can you talk to me about insults?”

  “And how can you stand there and lecture me like I don’t know how terrible this is? How, if I’m right, I’m going to destroy a family? You think this is easy for me? You think finding justice in all this is a freaking walk in the park?”

  Tate ran a hand through his hair, the edges sticking up along the path of his fingers. “Then what is your goal?”

  “To do what’s right. To stop a killer. To protect the citizens of this city.
”

  “By worrying about someone taking down drug dealers? By blaming a friend for it?”

  “And that’s classic Tate Reynolds straight down the line. It doesn’t fit your view of the world so it must be stopped or ignored or discarded.”

  Belle watched her direct hit land. Saw it spread as he keyed into her words and her innuendo.

  And then she saw him dismiss it all to bulldog right through his point. “So now I’m supposed to feel bad for people who sell drugs? Or believe Russ Grantham suddenly decided he wanted vengeance and has gone on a killing spree?”

  Argument after argument sprang to her lips and each felt hollower than the last as she thought of her family, superimposing her own mother’s face over Jamie Grantham’s. The days of sobriety, followed by a bender over whatever her mother couldn’t handle. The pressure of the outside the world that reared up and forced her to return to the hollow emptiness she found in drugs.

  She’d lived with the results of that and she understood how insidious the problem was.

  “I lived with the same for the majority of my life. I understand the devastation and the pain. That doesn’t change the facts.”

  “And what are those?”

  “That once you justify one kill, it becomes way too damn easy to justify the next. And the one after that. And the one after that.”

  “That’s a cop-out.” The harsh slash of his mouth hadn’t faded, but there was the slightest softening in his tone.

  “Is it? Where does it stop? What happens once you go through the drug dealers? Is it that big a leap to go after the psychiatrist who couldn’t help? The guidance counselor who didn’t do enough? The friend who enabled?”

  Tate bent and picked up his chair, righting it before gently pushing it into its place beneath the table. “You talk like Russ is an animal. Something to be put down.”

  “If he is the one doing this, then he needs to be stopped.”

  “And you’re going to do it?”

  “I’m certainly going to help get it done.”

  When Tate said nothing, Belle knew it was time to leave. Not only had she lost her appetite, but she’d also lost the desire to argue any longer.

  * * *

  Tate paced the kitchen, the lingering scent that was so uniquely Belle still hanging on the air. His family had stayed away from him—suspiciously so—and he wondered what Arden must have told Ace and Hoyt to keep them all out of the house on a Wednesday night.

  It was probably a good thing they were gone. He wasn’t fit for company anyway. The discussion with Belle—from the deeper understanding of her mother’s addictions to the suspicions over Captain Grantham—had left him raw and uneasy.

  Where does it stop?

  Belle’s question had run through his mind, over and over, an out-of-control hamster on a wheel.

  Where did it stop? If Russ Grantham was guilty—and that was still an awfully huge if in Tate’s mind—but if he was, what did that make his choices? A man who’d committed himself to finding justice and to upholding the law, reduced to a killer?

  He hadn’t known Jamie Grantham well, but he hadn’t needed to. For a time, the young man’s problems were all Midnight Pass had talked about. Oh, they’d whispered at first, but those voices had grown louder and louder as the problem became more and more profound. The drug benders that had ended in a car chase through the county, Jamie and another friend twisting his beat-up old truck around a tree. The fire that had swept through the chemistry lab the night Jamie had snuck in and tried using one of the Bunsen burners to melt heroin. Even prom the year he and Belle had gone hadn’t been free of Jamie’s drama.

  All of it had piled on and piled on. On to Jamie. On to his sister Reese, bearing a huge brunt of that at school. And on to his parents.

  Would it be that hard to imagine a parent’s desire to mete out vengeance? To want to see the ones who’d ultimately enabled that behavior—and those like them—to pay for their choice?

  Was he really one to judge? Especially because his own family’s misery had been on full display for the entire town, as well? He knew what it was to be whispered about. For all your personal business to be out on display, like the latest episode of a TV drama.

  Hadn’t there been many a day when he’d wanted the whispers to stop? When all he wanted was to go back to the days when things were normal. Right. Stable.

  And when he didn’t have a worry about anything.

  Instead, he and his siblings had been forced to face the fact that their father was a cheat and a swindler, who’d treated their stock with illegal sustenance and had tried to pass all of it off as premium beef. Who’d defaulted on every loan he’d ever taken and who had done his level best to run Reynolds Station into the ground.

  He, Ace, Hoyt and Arden had worked so hard to overcome that. To rebuild a business from the bottom up and to restore the family name into something that mattered. He knew the soul-searching and the sleepless nights and the seemingly endless days when it felt like you weren’t making any progress at all, only beating your head against a very large, very hard wall.

  Yet they’d done it. They’d come out the other side, stronger and more committed than ever before. They hadn’t become killers. Instead, they’d survived.

  Jamie Grantham hadn’t.

  Belle had survived, too, Tate admitted. She’d worked hard and had gotten past the sadness of her childhood and the poor example set by her parent. Even more than that, she had conviction and the belief that her actions had purpose.

  Had he ever felt that way?

  Certainly he wanted his family name to stand for something. And the work they’d all put into bringing the business back to a good, profitable place had taken a significant amount of purpose.

  But to live with that conviction?

  If what she suspected was true, her beliefs would bring down embarrassment on the leadership of the community. It would create discord and confusion for the Midnight Pass Police Department. And it would crater a family who’d suffered more than their fair share already.

  Even with that knowledge, she was determined to do what was right.

  Determined to push forward.

  Why had he questioned that? More, why had he made her feel—after she’d gone to great pains to confide in him—that her choices were poor ones?

  He believed in her. And he’d already seen how devoted and dedicated she was to doing what was right. He should be proud of that. Celebrating it. And instead, all he’d done was mock it and cause additional pain.

  Whatever else they might be—and their afternoon in the back seat of her car still needed to be dealt with—they were also friends. Allies. And he was the one person on the entire planet she’d chosen to confide in.

  It was about damn time he started acting like he deserved that confidence.

  His gaze skipped to the counter, a fresh idea taking root.

  Along with the potential to forge a truce.

  * * *

  Belle stared at the TV, the medical drama playing out before her nothing but empty noise. Other than the opening scene that had grabbed her with its intensity—and an ax sticking out of the head of an incoming ER patient—she’d managed to miss forty-five minutes of high adrenaline entertainment.

  All because of the drama playing out in her own mind.

  Thoughts of “How dare he?” and “I’ll show him” had given way to her continued anxiety over how to handle Captain Grantham. There was still a possibility—a very large possibility—that the pendant she’d discovered wasn’t his. It was a piece of jewelry, not a signed confession, after all.

  So why did it feel like the truth? Like a real, tangible clue that pointed her toward the one responsible for such a heinous crime.

  The questions had swirled, around and around, picking up steam but never seeming to land anywhere.

  Her p
hone dinged with an incoming text message.

  Are you home?

  Tate.

  She fought the stab of pleasure at seeing his name and quickly tapped out a reply.

  Yes. Why?

  Because I’ve been pounding on your front door for five minutes and you haven’t answered.

  Five minutes?

  She leaped off the couch and headed for the front door, flipping on the porch lights. True to his word, he stood at the door with a bottle of wine in one hand and a few stacked plastic containers in the other.

  “Hi.”

  “I’ve been knocking. Were you doing something?”

  “Um, no. Must have had the TV on too loud.”

  If her comment was puzzling, he didn’t show it; instead, he stepped into the house when she stood back to let him in.

  Her house was small, one of the first single family homes built off one of the main streets running out of downtown Midnight Pass. It had been her mother’s and she’d nearly given it up after her death, but in the end had swallowed the bad memories and figured that a paid-off house she could decorate to her liking was better than hunting for something new that came with a thirty-year mortgage.

  The practicality had paid off, with a renovated kitchen, all new furniture and a look that had become decidedly hers.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Aside from an apology?” Tate turned from his perusal of the entryway.

  “Yes.”

  He held up the stacked containers he juggled in one hand. “I still owed you dinner.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Actually.” He came closer, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I do. It’s horrifically unfair to dangle one of Arden Reynolds’s hamburgers in front of a person and then not deliver.”

  “Oh.” Belle knew his visit wasn’t about a hamburger, but even with her lingering anger, she was so confused by his arrival she was willing to play along.

  “Can I warm these up in your kitchen?”

  “Of course.” She pointed toward the back of the house. “It may look different but I think you know the way.”

  Other than a strange look, he nodded and headed off, wending his way toward the back of the house and the waiting kitchen. “This looks amazing!” came winging back toward her the moment he stepped through the threshold.