Gunfire on the Ranch

by Delores Fossen

  Nathan made a sound of disappointment. In his case it was probably because he’d been expecting cake and party food. But Ivy figured what he felt was a drop in the bucket compared to what Jodi and Gabriel did. They’d waited a long time for this wedding, and now it might have to be delayed indefinitely.

  Jodi stood, stretching, and she set the laptop aside. “I’m getting a bottle of water. Anyone else want one?”

  Theo, Nathan and Ivy shook their heads. Gabriel had already brought in burgers from the café just up the street, and the only one who’d touched any of it was Nathan. Nothing seemed to dampen his appetite.

  Jodi stepped out, closing the door behind her. A precaution no doubt, so that Nathan wouldn’t be able to hear anything that was being said in the squad room where Gabriel, Jameson, Wesley and two deputies were working.

  “It’s like there are a bunch of secrets going on,” Nathan said, snagging both Ivy’s and Theo’s attention. Nathan looked at both of them, probably waiting for them to verify that.

  They didn’t.

  Mumbling something she didn’t catch, her son got up from the desk and went to the small bed that Ivy had made for him on the floor. Basically, it was a couple of blankets and a pillow that she’d gotten from the break room. It wouldn’t be long before Nathan was sacked out—which was a good thing, considering the loud voice she heard out in the squad room.

  Not August Canton.

  But it was a familiar voice.

  “Lacey,” Ivy provided when Theo looked at her.

  Ivy got up, and with Theo in front of her, they stepped into the hall. Yes, it was her stepdaughter all right, though it was hard for Ivy to think of Lacey as any kind of daughter since they were practically the same age.

  “You did this,” Lacey snapped the moment her attention landed on Ivy.

  Ivy first checked on Nathan. He was indeed going to sleep, so once Jodi was back in the office with him, Ivy pulled the door shut so this wouldn’t disturb him. The trick, though, would be to keep Lacey’s voice in the normal range. She looked ready to start yelling.

  Gabriel stepped in front of Lacey, but she just tried to go around him. “I want to have a little chat with Mommie Dearest. Because of her, the cops want to talk to me.”

  “And I want to talk to you,” Theo snarled right back, and there was no shred of friendliness in his tone.

  Lacey peered around Gabriel, and the moment she actually looked at Theo, her eyes widened a little. She didn’t smile exactly, but it was close.

  “Theo Canton,” Lacey provided.

  Because Theo’s arm was against Ivy’s, she felt him tense a little. “How do you know me?”

  “I’ve made it my business to know you and anyone else associated with my dad’s wife. Your name and picture were in the papers. You were a suspect in the murders of Ivy’s parents.” The slight smile stayed on her face.

  And Ivy knew why. Even though she’d never told Lacey about Nathan’s father, Lacey could no doubt see the resemblance. Of course, the papers that’d covered the murders had gone into the fact that Theo and Ivy had broken up that night and that was his possible motive for murder. It wouldn’t be a stretch for Lacey to do the math and realize that Nathan had been born nine months later.

  “So,” Lacey said, dragging that out a few syllables. Her attention stayed fixed to Theo. “What’d you want to see me about?”

  He went closer. “Someone tried to kill us. What do you know about that?”

  Despite Theo’s harsh tone, Lacey hardly reacted. Instead, she turned to Ivy. “You put him up to this. You want him to suspect me of something I didn’t do so you can get me out of the way. Well, it won’t work. I’m not stopping the fight to get what’s rightfully mine.”

  Ivy groaned softly. “Chad left everything to Nathan and me in his will,” she explained to Theo.

  “Because you brainwashed him,” Lacey insisted. “I’ve filed a lawsuit to rescind his will and give me what’s rightfully mine.”

  “Your father didn’t want you to have that money,” Ivy reminded her. This was old news to Lacey, but Ivy repeated it, anyway. “He thought you already had too much from your mother’s trust fund and that you needed to learn some responsibility.”

  Lacey cursed. “You don’t know me, and you don’t have a right to say anything like that to me. He was my dad.”

  “And he was my husband,” Ivy pointed out just as quickly.

  “Are you here for your interrogation?” Gabriel asked when Lacey opened her mouth, no doubt to return verbal fire.

  Lacey gave him a withering look. “By you? I think not. You’re Ivy’s brother. And not you, either,” she added to Theo. “I won’t have Ivy’s ex-boyfriend trying to pin something on me.”

  “What about me?” Wesley asked, standing. “I’m not related to Ivy or Theo. And the sooner you answer questions, the sooner we can clear your name. Or maybe you’d rather I take you into custody now and drive you back to my San Antonio office.”

  Maybe in that moment it occurred to Lacey that it hadn’t been a good idea to come storming into a sheriff’s office with wild accusations against the sheriff’s sister. She was almost certainly weighing her options, and considering her expression, she didn’t like any of them.

  “I’m not talking to anyone unless my lawyer is here,” Lacey concluded.

  “Then you’d best be calling him or her right now,” Gabriel said, and he added a glare to it.

  Lacey glared back. Cursed. But she took out her phone to make the call to her attorney.

  “Get her into the other interview room,” Gabriel told Wesley and Jameson. “She can wait for her lawyer there.”

  When Gabriel looked out the window, Ivy followed his gaze and realized why there’d been some urgency in her brother’s order. That’s because August had just gotten out of his car and was making a beeline for the sheriff’s office.

  Round two was about to hit.

  Wesley and Jameson had barely enough time to get Lacey out of there before August came waltzing in. Ivy braced herself for August to unleash some anger on Theo. After all, August had always said that Jodi and Theo hadn’t done nearly enough to help clear their father’s name. But unlike Lacey, there was no anger on August’s face or in his body language.

  “Ivy,” August greeted. “Welcome home. It’s been a long time.”

  Yes, it had been. Ten years. She would never be able to make her brothers understand why she’d cut them out of her life. Sometimes, she didn’t understand it, either.

  August was the same as he had been ten years ago, and he still didn’t look as if he ran his brother’s ranch. He dressed more like a rich businessman, emphasis on the rich. And he was. In fact, he probably had as much money or more than Ivy’s family thanks to August’s wealthy mother, who’d died shortly after marrying Travis’s father and giving birth to August. Travis, on the other hand, had been a cowboy. One with a drinking problem. And despite the fact that August and Travis had been as different as night and day, that hadn’t stopped August from spearheading the fight to clear Travis’s name.

  August turned to Theo next, and while Ivy wasn’t sure how the man would react, she certainly hadn’t expected him to go to Theo and hug him. Clearly, Theo hadn’t expected it, either, because she saw him go stiff.

  “Good to have you home, Theo,” August said.

  Ivy was instantly suspicious. August had always been somewhat of a hothead, and from everything Ivy had heard from Jodi, August had plenty of resentment for Theo.

  “Will you be seeing your dad?” August asked when he stepped back from that hug.

  “No,” Theo said without hesitation.

  Now there was that flash of anger in August’s eyes that she’d been expecting. He aimed some of that anger at her. “Then why are you here?” August didn’t wait for him to answer. “Oh, I get it. You came for Jodi’s wedding. That
figures. Instead of her saying ‘I do,’ you two should be helping me. Did you know your dad has been stuck in prison all this time?”

  Ivy knew that, of course, but it caused her breath to go thin just thinking about it. She wanted Travis to pay for her parents’ murders, but nothing they did now, including Travis spending the rest of his life behind bars, would bring them back.

  “I know,” Theo answered. “But he was convicted of murder.”

  More anger went through August’s eyes. “On circumstantial evidence. Heck, he doesn’t remember anything about that night, and that’s why it was so easy for the Becketts to pin this on him.”

  Since there were three Becketts in the room, August obviously didn’t mind letting them know he thought they had railroaded his brother. They hadn’t. She started to remind him that when Travis had been found that night, he’d had her father’s blood on him. But August knew that, too, and he probably thought they’d planted it there.

  Or else maybe August had been the one to do the planting.

  “There was another attack at the ranch,” Ivy said.

  August nodded. “Yeah, whenever somebody goes after you or your kin, your brothers start hauling me in for questioning. They have this warped notion that if I kill one of them, or you, then it’ll get Travis out of jail. It won’t. The only thing that’ll do that is for the truth to come out.”

  Both Jameson and Gabriel huffed as if this were old news. It gave her a glimpse of what they’d been having to deal with for the past decade.

  “So, is that why you told me to come?” August went on. “Because you want to pin this latest attack on me?”

  “Yes,” Theo readily admitted. “Did you have anything to do with it?”

  August tossed him a glare before he gave one to Gabriel, Jameson and her. “No. Of course not.” He turned to Theo to finish that. “Your father loves both your sister and you. Why, I don’t know, since you rarely go to see him. But if I were going to do something to help him, it wouldn’t be by harming one of you.”

  Gabriel stepped closer to August. “Then explain your connection to the man who hired the two gunmen who came after us.”

  No glare this time. August’s eyes widened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Birch McKenzie,” Gabriel said.

  Ivy carefully watched August’s reaction. First, there was more surprise, and then he cursed. “Birch didn’t hire those men. Someone’s setting him up, and by doing so, they’re setting me up, too.” He cursed again, snapped back to Theo. “I wouldn’t have done this.”

  August was so adamant about it that Ivy almost believed him. Almost. But then she remembered that his loyalty wasn’t to anyone but his brother. Why, she didn’t know. Since Travis was a lot older than August, maybe he saw Travis as more of a father than a half brother. Of course, there was another reason, too.

  August had had motive to kill her parents.

  Like Theo and Travis, August had also had a recent run-in with Ivy’s father. August hated him, and there’d been a long feud between them over land rights. Maybe August had killed them, and if so, his guilty conscience could be causing him to do everything humanly possible to free his brother from jail.

  That wasn’t a new theory, either. Both of her brothers had been investigating it, especially now that the threatening letters and emails had started. Someone was sending those, and it wasn’t Travis since he didn’t have computer access in his maximum-security cell. Also, his mail was being monitored.

  While August stood there still mumbling profanity, the door to Gabriel’s office opened. Both Ivy and Theo instantly looked over their shoulders to see Jodi pulling Nathan back into the room.

  “Sorry,” Jodi said to them. “He woke up and got to the door ahead of me.”

  “Mom?” Nathan rubbed his eyes and yawned. “When can we leave?”

  “Soon,” Ivy assured him, and Jodi took him back into the office and shut the door.

  But not before August had gotten a glimpse of her son.

  Just as Theo and everyone else had done, August saw the resemblance, and he smiled. He moved as if he might go to Nathan, but both Theo and she stepped in front of him.

  “So, I guess things weren’t as over between you two as you thought,” August said. “Are you two back together?”

  “No,” Theo and she said in unison. It was Theo who continued. “I came back because I got a warning about an attack at the Beckett Ranch. Ivy could be the target.” He leaned in closer. “But if she’s the target, then her son is in danger, too.”

  “Your son,” August corrected.

  Theo didn’t confirm that. Didn’t deny it, either. “If Travis really doesn’t want Jodi and me hurt, then how do you think he would feel about someone harming that little boy?”

  Travis’s grandson. Theo didn’t spell that out, but August clearly understood what Theo was saying. And his eyes narrowed again.

  “What will it take to convince Jodi and you that I’m not behind the attacks?” August asked.

  “Proof,” Theo said. “Proof of who’s doing this. And if it’s not you, then I’ll owe you an apology. For now, though, you have some questions to answer.”

  “Questions that I’ll be asking in the interview room,” Gabriel stated, and he motioned for August to follow him.

  Thank goodness Jodi had shut the door so that August couldn’t get another glimpse of Nathan. It wasn’t pettiness on her part. Ivy just didn’t want her son to be exposed to his great-uncle until she was certain August was indeed innocent.

  Theo looked at her. The kind of look that asked if she was okay. She wasn’t. Her nerves were right there at the surface, and Theo must have seen that, because he muttered some profanity under his breath.

  “Why don’t we go ahead and take Ivy, Nathan and Jodi to the safe house,” Jameson suggested. As they’d done in the house, he kept his voice at a whisper.

  “It’s ready?” Ivy asked.

  Jameson nodded. “Just don’t expect too much. I didn’t have a lot of time to put it together.”

  Ivy was about to say she didn’t care about that, but then it hit her. “What if Nathan gets hurt because of me?” she asked. “The gunman said I was the target.”

  “And he could have been lying,” Theo pointed out just as quickly. He huffed. “I’d rather Nathan and you not be under the same roof as our suspects.”

  He had a point. Of course, the real culprit could be out there, waiting for them to leave so he or she could attack again. Maybe it was someone who wasn’t even on their radar. Her parents’ murders had drawn a lot of press, and it was entirely possible this was a sicko who’d glommed on to them. A sicko who was not only sending threatening emails and letters, but a person who could also hire thugs to kill them.

  “I’ll pull the cruiser up to the back door,” Jameson offered. “Once I have all of you settled, then I can come back here and help Gabriel with the interrogations.”

  Jameson headed off to do that, but before he made it into the hall, his phone buzzed. “SAPD,” her brother said, looking at the screen.

  He took the call but didn’t put it on speaker. Since this could be an update on the case, Ivy decided to wait to go in and tell Jodi and Nathan about plans to leave for the safe house. She couldn’t hear Jameson’s conversation, but whatever the caller had said to him, it caused Jameson’s forehead to bunch up.

  “What?” Jameson snapped a moment later. He paused, listening. “You’re sure?”

  Ivy glanced at Theo to see if he knew what was going on, but he only shook his head.

  “Birch McKenzie’s dead,” Jameson said when he finally ended the call. “Murdered. A gunshot wound to the head.”

  Ivy hadn’t known the man, of course, but he’d been the link between the gunmen and the person who’d hired them. A link, too, to August.

  “Who killed him?” Theo
asked.

  “SAPD doesn’t know. They went out to question him about his possible involvement in this, and they found him dead. The cops also found his phone, and they glanced through his recent calls. The last call he made was to one of our suspects.”

  “August,” Ivy muttered.

  But Jameson shook his head. “No, McKenzie called Lacey.”

  Chapter Seven

  As little sleep as Theo had managed to get, he figured Ivy had gotten even less. After they’d arrived at the safe house, she’d quickly taken Nathan to the room they would share, but since Theo’s room was right next to theirs, he’d heard someone moving around in there most of the night. He figured that someone was Ivy.

  He showered and made his way into the kitchen to get some coffee started, but got confirmation that Ivy hadn’t slept when he saw her at the kitchen table already sipping a cup. Her eyes confirmed his theory, too. She looked exhausted.

  And beautiful.

  Yeah, Ivy was probably one of the few women on the planet who could have managed that. Despite her rumpled hair and tired eyes, she still looked amazing.

  He felt that old ripple of attraction. Always did whenever he was around her. But he told that attraction to take a hike. It would only distract him at a time when he needed no other distractions. And besides, he still hadn’t cooled off from her not telling him about Nathan.

  “Are Jodi and Nathan still sleeping?” he asked.

  She nodded. “But I figure they’ll be up soon. Anything new on the case?” she added. “I heard you talking on the phone a couple of times.”

  He had, but Theo felt he’d gotten nowhere. “Gabriel questioned Lacey, and she denied knowing McKenzie. Lacey said he called her to set her up.”

  Ivy groaned, and Theo silently groaned with her. With his coffee in hand, he went to the window to look out. The safe house was on an old ranch, only about thirty miles from Blue River, and it was out in the middle of nowhere. Which was a good thing. The pastures were flat, and he had a clear view of the road. That meant it’d be hard for someone to sneak up on them. Added to that, Jameson had put out a motion detector on the road to alert them if anyone drove up.