Treacherous Trails

by Dana Mentink

  * * *

  Owen stood on the shadowed front porch, suddenly unsure what to do. A memory washed over him of the three of them, Ella, her brother Ray and himself, swinging on a rope across the creek behind their house, competing to see who could hang the longest before plunging into the icy water. Owen won enough times to infuriate Ray, which in turn sent Ella into gales of girlish giggles before she took her turn and beat them both. They passed the early years of their lives together, morphing from little kids to high schoolers, to semi-adults, the memories clear and sharp.

  But now the laughter and innocence seemed to be light-years away. An ominous feeling weighed him down like body armor and he found himself entering, passing through the minuscule kitchen and into the family room where he discovered Ella with Betsy. The knot of tension in his gut loosened a fraction.

  As a very young child, Betsy had suffered a brain injury due to some sort of hemorrhage, he knew, though neither Ella nor Ray liked to talk about it. Ella knelt on the braided rug next to her sister’s wheelchair, both their faces wet from crying. Betsy was only four years Ella’s senior, but she appeared much older.

  “I am so sorry I didn’t come home last night,” Ella whispered, stroking her sister’s hand. “You must have been so scared. I was...in an accident.”

  Betsy clung to Ella’s fingers, green eyes a paler shade than her sister’s, hair a light auburn instead of Ella’s flaming red. Owen did not know how much Betsy understood, but she could see relief in the woman’s face, which indicated she’d been plenty worried.

  “I’ll make you some breakfast right now,” she said to her sister. “I know you’re hungry.”

  “I called from the truck,” he said quietly. “The police are on their way.”

  “Have they found Luke yet?”

  “No.”

  She turned those vivid green eyes on him. A shadow darkened their brilliance, fear, and he felt stung by a helpless desire to make it go away. He wished he could take back his earlier question. Ella would not have gone out drinking and left her sister, and even if she had, he was not the one to mete out judgment. Hypocrite, his mind jabbed. Less than a year since you couldn’t stop downing painkillers, or have you forgotten? He went to Betsy.

  “Hi, Betsy. I haven’t seen you since Christmas Eve.” The sisters had attended the annual holiday party hosted by his parents on the Gold Bar Ranch. They all had much to celebrate, since his eldest brother Barrett and his new wife, Shelby, had survived a murder attempt just days before. But all had ended well, and the newly married couple was installed in the ranch pending the completion of the home Barrett was building for her with the family’s help.

  Ella brought in a plate of scrambled eggs and toast cut into small squares and settled a special utensil in her sister’s grip that allowed her better control. The wheelchair was a manual one, with Copper County Hospital stenciled on the back.

  Ella flipped her hair away from her face. “The hospital was discarding them. They said I could take it.”

  He hated that he’d made her have to explain herself. She wasn’t a marine under his command, he reminded himself. She didn’t owe him anything, including explanations.

  Guilt licked at his heart that he’d fallen so far out of Ella’s life. But he’d heard rumors of the trouble she’d gotten into before he’d returned stateside. Rumors he’d never bothered to ask her about. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to know, preferring the distant memories of lazy summer days spent at the creek.

  “I forgot the orange juice,” Ella said, scurrying back to the kitchen.

  While Betsy ate, he wandered to the window that allowed a partial view of the carport and the sprawling backyard, shadowed by massive pine trees that needed trimming.

  He peered closer out the frosted window, his stomach tightening.

  “Ella?” he called.

  She joined him after she gave her sister the juice and stopped in the bedroom to pull on clean clothes and wash up. He jutted his chin toward the carport.

  Her face went pale. “That’s...that’s my van.”

  The muscles in his stomach clenched even more, the same way they had just before the quiet streets in Afghanistan exploded with enemy fire.

  She stared at the van and he could read the tension. She was slight, petite, barely came up to his collarbone. For some reason, in that moment, she looked even smaller. He laid his hand slowly on her shoulder, delicate under his wide palm.

  “Ella,” he said quietly. “Tell me everything that happened last night.”

  * * *

  Ella swallowed as she stared out the window at the carport. The trees swayed and trembled in the winter wind. A set of birds exploded from the foliage, startled.

  “After you left the stables, did you stop anywhere on the way home?”

  She rounded on him. “Owen, I know I messed up in the past but I promise you I did not drink anything except the tea in my thermos. It must have been drugged.”

  “I wasn’t implying anything.”

  “Just go home, Owen. Thanks for the ride, but I’ll figure out what to do on my own.”

  He shifted, taking the weight off his wounded leg, calloused hands on hips. “You need help.”

  It was suddenly too much. “I needed help four years ago when you deployed right after my brother did. Or maybe when my dad died—maybe that would have been a good time for some help, but you weren’t there, and neither was Ray.” Her voice wobbled.

  He winced as if she’d hurt him. Good. He deserved it for thinking she would go out drinking and leave her sister alone and helpless. Even though you did exactly that when Ray and Owen deployed.

  “Go home, Owen.”

  Part of her wanted him to march right on out to his truck and gun it out of the driveway, but another part, a tiny part that she’d hidden away since she was seven years old, wished desperately that he would stay.

  “Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

  Owen strolled through the house and out the front door, hesitating just past the threshold. She thought with a moment of warmth that he’d changed his mind. Instead she saw a police car pull up at the end of her driveway. Her mouth went dry.

  Officer John Larraby nodded to Ella as he got out of his cruiser and walked up the drive. “Got time for a few questions, I hope,” Larraby said. She nodded and Owen moved in closer.

  Ella told him everything in a hurried rush of words while Larraby dutifully jotted notes.

  “Miss Cahill, Candy Silverton is looking for her nephew, Luke Baker. Were you with him last night?”

  Ella blinked. “I spoke to him at the stables in the afternoon when I was shoeing the horses.”

  “I was told you had a heated argument with Mr. Baker.”

  “No, I did not,” she snapped. “Someone is lying about me and I want to know who.”

  Larraby cocked his head ever so slightly and dread cascaded along her spine. “What did you talk to him about?”

  Should she say it? Repeat what he’d said in confidence? Tell the truth, her gut told her. “He had some...reservations about Bruce Reed, about his intentions toward Candy Silverton. I think you should ask him more about it.”

  “As I’ve said, we can’t find him, but we did find something else in the woods outside Silverton’s stables.”

  Again, the tremor of dread. “What?” she forced herself to ask.

  “Blood,” he said. “And lots of it.”

  * * *

  Owen watched the color drain out of Ella’s face until her freckles stood out in stark relief against her milk white skin. Shock, he recognized. He’d seen it in the faces of his marine brothers when they’d taken a round, the befuddled look of a body trying to process that it had just been shot. He grabbed her hand and she let him, fingers small though calloused and tough from her work as a farrier. “Ella,” he said quietly. “You’re not
talking anymore until there’s a lawyer present.”

  “A lawyer?” she repeated dully. “Owen, I didn’t do anything to Luke. He’s my friend.”

  “A friend you borrowed money from?” Larraby asked.

  Her face went from cream to plum. “I...yes. I did.” She looked at the floor. “He offered to loan me five hundred dollars to have Betsy’s wheelchair fixed. I was going to pay him back by the end of the month.”

  Oddly, Owen felt a twist of jealousy. She hadn’t come to him for a loan? She’d gone to some other guy when it was his duty to Ray to help her in any way he could? Duty. Maybe she didn’t want to be anybody’s duty, wanted to stand on her own two feet just as badly as he did. Still, he wanted to snap at her to keep away from the spoiled, soft-handed Luke Baker.

  “Mr. Reed said Baker complained that he wanted the money repaid and you weren’t cooperating,” Larraby said.

  “Bruce Reed is lying,” she spat, irises sparking.

  Larraby wrinkled his nose and raised an eyebrow. “Have you been drinking, Miss Cahill?”

  “No,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes,” she hissed. “I already explained that.”

  He pursed his lips. “Okay. Would you mind letting me take a look at your vehicle?”

  “Got a warrant?” Owen said. “Otherwise she doesn’t have to show you squat.”

  Larraby’s look was poisonous. He and Owen’s youngest brother, Keegan, were biological half siblings, though their father would not acknowledge Keegan. Owen’s parents adopted Keegan at age sixteen. Bad blood boiled between Larraby and Keegan, and spilled over into the rest of the Thorn family. Probably always would.

  “Of course you can see my van,” Ella said, stepping inside to snatch her keys off the table. “Here’s my spare set.”

  “Ella,” Owen said, pulling her close and talking low, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. Everything in him was screaming a danger message, loud as the whine of an incoming rocket. “Don’t.” But she was already pushing away, following Larraby to the back of the house to the carport.

  Larraby strolled around the vehicle slowly, examining every inch of the white metal exterior. He gestured to the driver’s-side door handle. “May I?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “No,” Owen replied at the same moment.

  Larraby gave Owen the whisper of a smile. You lose, it said.

  Above all things, Owen detested losing, always had.

  And Larraby knew it.

  Larraby unlocked the door with the key and swung it open, bending to peer inside. After a moment he straightened.

  “See?” Ella said with a sigh of relief. “I don’t have Luke bound and gagged in my van, okay? I will do everything I can to help you find him, but I did not harm him in any way.”

  Larraby nodded. “I’ll make a note of that, but before I go, one more thing. I’m going to open up the back, if you don’t mind.”

  Ella nodded and Larraby unlocked the rear doors of the old van. Owen had heard from Ray that Zeke Potter, Ella’s mentor and the town veterinarian had sold it to her. Ray didn’t approve of the transaction, since every weekend it seemed his sister reported she was under the hood, repairing something in the aged engine, but Owen suspected she enjoyed that part. She was as at home with engines as she was with horses. A heavy wire grate separated the driver’s area from the back, ideal for housing the collection of rasps, nippers, hammers, nails and other paraphernalia of her trade, neatly stowed.

  Larraby was leaning into the van. After a moment, he turned, his expression hard as stone. “I’d like to hear you explain this one.” He stepped aside. Ella cried out in horror. She and Owen stared into the sightless eyes of Luke Baker.

  THREE

  Owen grabbed her when she shot back, slamming into his chest. He could feel the quick shuddering breaths that shook her. “It’s all right,” he wanted to say, but nothing about the situation was all right.

  Luke Baker’s blond head protruded from under the blanket at an awkward angle. Owen had seen death plenty of times before and although Larraby checked for a pulse, there was zero chance that the man was alive. His eyes were open, staring and dull, a splash of dried blood visible on his neck above the wool blanket where the tip of a broken farrier’s rasp protruded from his skin.

  “I didn’t hurt him,” she whispered. “Please believe me. I did not do this.”

  “Then when my coroner gives me a time of death, you’ll have an alibi.” Larraby lifted a corner of the blanket with his pen. “I’m guessing sometime yesterday. So, Ella, care to change your story?”

  Owen tightened his grip around her shoulders. “She wants to talk to a lawyer.”

  “Time to lawyer up? Not looking too innocent anymore are we?”

  “I didn’t kill him. I was abducted and spent the night in a ravine like I told you.” Tears began to stream down Ella’s face. “He is...was my friend.” Owen held her tight, brain scrambling to find a way to fix it.

  Larraby used the pen to pull the blanket farther away. “That’s a farrier’s rasp, isn’t it?” he said, pointing to the metal shaft that protruded from Luke Baker’s throat. “Yours? Your prints are on it? The other half of the one you gave me that was in your pocket?”

  There was a sound of hushed voices and then Candy Silverton appeared around the corner of the carport. Her hair was swept into a neat platinum chignon, and a short man wearing a dark leather jacket followed one step behind. Bruce Reed, Owen figured.

  Larraby held up a palm to stop her progress but Owen heard her sharp intake of breath as she saw the contents of the van. Her shriek cut through the air like bullet fire.

  “Luke,” she cried, trying to get to his body. “No, no it can’t be.” Her escort held her back.

  “Candy,” Reed said, face grave. “Don’t look.”

  Candy’s eyes went from the tool embedded in the flesh of her nephew’s neck to Larraby and finally her gaze slid to Ella.

  “You...you killed my nephew.”

  “I didn’t,” Ella said, voice hardly above a whisper. “I didn’t. I... I think I was drugged, something in my thermos.” She turned panicked eyes on Owen. “It dropped out of my van. If we can find it...”

  Reed stared at Ella, eyes shifting in thought. Candy’s mouth twisted. “Spare me the lies. You’ll fry,” she spat at Ella. “I’ll see to it that you die for what you did to my nephew or I will kill you myself.”

  Ella turned her face to Owen’s chest and clung to his shirt, barely able to stand.

  “I didn’t kill him...” she sobbed. “I didn’t.”

  He caged her in a fierce embrace. “It’s going to be okay,” he said helplessly.

  She pulled away, eyes bright with tears, shaking hands flat against his chest. “Owen, tell me you believe me.”

  He stared at her naked grief, the unadulterated terror. He saw in her face the little girl she had been, freckled, pesky, fun loving, now a woman, beautiful, desperate, vulnerable.

  But there was the overwhelming evidence against her, her van, her farrier’s rasp, the alcohol...

  Trust was a dangerous thing, he knew, both from his work with horses and his time in the marines. It could blind you, cripple you, make you weak...but sometimes it could save your life.

  He held her close, seeing his own reflection in the tear-streaked green of her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I do believe you.”

  She cried harder then and looked in panic toward the house. “Please...”

  He knew what she was asking. “I’ll take care of Betsy and I’m gonna get you out of this.”

  Silverton was crying on Bruce Reed’s shoulder, loud, gasping sobs. For a split second, Reed met Owen’s eyes and he saw the sly, twisted gleam. Evil, he thought.

  Owen glared full-on at the man and sent t
he message loud and clear. You and I are enemies now.

  Larraby stepped forward, twisted Ella’s hands behind her back and snapped on the handcuffs.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” he began.

  * * *

  In her cell, Ella squeezed herself into a ball. The shapeless tunic, pants and fabric slippers felt strange on her skin. Again, she started to check the time on her old trusty Timex and found it missing, taken by the police when she’d been booked.

  The hours after the arrest and arraignment had blurred, and she could not quite believe it was her second day of incarceration. Every humiliating detail seemed like something from a nightmare; the strip search, the mug shot that left her dazed and finally the arraignment when she’d been marched into a crowded room and heard the charges against her.

  Murder. The murder of Luke Baker, her friend.

  An image of him bloodied and stuffed into her van surfaced before she could stop it, tears pricking her eyes. Then her memory shifted back to the moment when a court-appointed lawyer stood next to her as she made her plea.

  Not guilty. She wanted to shout it, scream the words, stand in the chair and holler, “I am not a murderer. I am being framed,” to anyone who would listen. But there were no friendly faces to appeal to, only people who saw her as a felon, guilty, going through the motions before she was tried and packed off to prison where she belonged.

  And then the judge pronounced the bail at fifty thousand dollars. It might as well have been a million. There was no way she could come up with the required 10 percent to bond herself out of jail. Her bank account hovered just below two hundred dollars, since the doctor had changed Betsy’s medicine to a more expensive variety that sucked up money faster than she could earn it.

  Betsy. What was she thinking right now? She knew Owen would keep his word and find someone to take care of her, but her sister knew no other life except their quiet existence in Gold Bar. Who would cut up her toast into squares? Massage the muscles along her shoulders that tightened up? Turn on her favorite game show every night at seven thirty sharp? Who would pray with Betsy? All the things which had once seemed like chores were now precious connections that brought her closer to her sister than she’d ever thought possible.