Seth pulled the tarp forward to uncover the hood. The engine was cold.
“The gentleman who’s the registered owner of this sweet little baby girl already has three tickets for joyriding and a bench warrant for a DUI and poaching an out-of-season doe,” Earl said.
“You got an address?”
“And an arrest warrant all ready to be made out and signed. Would you like to take us on a little joyride, too?” Earl asked. “House is only a mile down the road.”
“He hears us coming, he’ll book it sure as this world,” Seth said.
“We can park the cruiser across the road where he can’t get past. Can’t fit an SUV between the pines.”
“But he can T-bone us, shove us out of the way and total the cruiser. How about we park his ATV crossways up ahead of us, take the keys and remove the plugs. Either he stops or he hits his own vehicle.”
Ten minutes later, the two men walked down the track along the edge of the trees where their green uniforms blended in so perfectly that only their movement gave them away. Whoever was in the house would have to be looking hard to see them.
The low farmhouse desperately needed painting. The porch stairs sagged on one end, and the window in the storm door was covered with a square of cardboard. But at the doorway sat a shining, silver crew-cab diesel pickup that was in showroom condition. The two men could see a gun rack through the rear window holding what looked like a shotgun and two rifles.
Both men loosened their sidearms and stepped behind the truck to keep it between them and the front door of the house. With luck, the only guns available to the owner were safely on that gun rack, or if not, McKee wouldn’t want to put bullet holes through the cab of his truck on the off chance of hitting a game warden or two.
“Mr. McKee?” Earl called. “Tyrell McKee? Game wardens here. Would you come out and talk to us a minute?”
Nothing. Seth made the same request. His baritone was deeper and louder than Earl’s tenor, but both men sounded calm and reasonable. Neither wanted a gunfight. Lord only knew who might be in that cabin. The two of them wouldn’t fire the first shot—or any shot if they could help it.
“He’s not here,” came a female voice from inside. “He’s at work.”
“Ma’am, his truck’s here,” Earl said.
“You think he drives his good truck to work? Let it get repoed?”
“Where would we find him?” Seth asked. “Ma’am, could you open the door so we can talk to you?”
Nothing happened for more than a minute, then the front door opened. At least the family isn’t starving, Seth thought when the lady barely fit through the door sideways. Inside Seth glimpsed a restaurant-size freezer and saw a propane tank around the corner of the house. He didn’t have a search warrant to allow him to check the freezer, since it was inside the house, but he had no doubt it was filled with venison, squirrel, possum, raccoon and probably bass and crappie, as well.
“Where’s Tyrell working?” Earl asked.
“He’s working construction downtown. Don’t know where exactly.”
“When will he be home?”
“This evening sometime. He generally stops off for a couple beers after work.”
Or more, Seth thought. He’d be unlikely to go nuts joyriding with his ATV and shotgun in the middle of the night if he had only a couple of beers under his belt. More likely a six-pack and a few shooters.
“Ma’am, we do need to talk to him. We’ve had reports his ATV’s been driving through people’s fields and front yards full throttle at all hours of the night, and he’s been shooting off guns and scaring people to death.”
“It ain’t Tyrell.”
“It’s his registration, ma’am.”
“Quite a bit out of date,” Earl added. “Need to see a current registration and proof of insurance. He has to move his ATV up here, park it in his yard and not hide it in the brush at the side of the road where somebody could run into it. And he needs to come into our office and take care of his fines. Bring his paperwork up-to-date and clear this matter up before he drives it anymore. It’s only because we didn’t actually see him driving it that he’s not getting fined right now.” Best not to mention the DUI. The chances that he’d come in on his own were slim anyway, but if he had an inkling that he could be arrested for the bench warrant, he’d be halfway to New Orleans before they saw him.
“Huh. Yeah, I’ll tell him. He’s mighty busy, though.”
“Ma’am,” Earl said and handed the woman a folded piece of paper. “This isn’t a subpoena—yet—just a friendly reminder. If we have to come back here again, though, ma’am, things might get real unpleasant. I don’t expect either one of you would like sitting in jail waiting to be arraigned. Sometimes that takes weeks.”
It didn’t, but it could, so they weren’t actually lying.
“Jail? Now, you lookee here! I got kids in school.”
“Child protective services would take care of them, unless you got kin to look after them.”
“Kin?” she screeched. “My good-for-nothing brother-in-law is why Tyrell’s in this mess. Fool likes to drink and joyride, and sometimes Tyrell goes along with him.” She snatched the letter from Earl’s hand. “I’ll go move the ATV right now, and I’ll get Tyrell to come by your office tomorrow morning. I ain’t never been to jail, and I don’t plan to go now. And no child protective anybody is going to look after my kids. Plus every bit of the meat in that freezer is legal with stamps and everything. Whatever y’all may think, Tyrell and me’s not trash. Tyrell’s got him a bad back, can’t work all the time. Sometimes if Tyrell don’t hunt, we don’t eat. Y’all said your piece. Now git.”
“Would you like us to accompany you to the ATV?” Seth asked.
“Oh, for… Just git.”
They got.
They replaced the plugs and keys before Mrs. McKee reached them. She climbed aboard, backed around and gunned the ATV up the road toward her house. Even the engine sounded irate.
“Think he’ll come in?” Earl asked. “She’s bound and determined to protect him.”
“If she has her way, he will,” Seth said. “She doesn’t want him in jail. If that freezer is full of legal meat like she says, why did he poach a doe? I suspect he’s processing illegal meat and selling it. But we can’t check without a search warrant.”
“No judge will give us one unless we have more evidence.”
“Pity. If we could prove that, then he would be going to jail. We’ll need to keep an eye on him. Lord, Earl, life would be so much simpler if people just did right and obeyed the rules.”
“It’s natural to protect the people you love,” Earl said. “Even from themselves.”
Seth’s mind gave him a swift kick. The way I have with Emma and her skunks. But that wasn’t love. He hardly knew the woman. He felt protective of her because she was so obviously out of her depth here in the country with no family, no friends, no job, no fiancé and, for all he knew, no money. Maybe Barbara could find that out. Seth didn’t have any idea how to go about it.
“How you coming with your kennel?” Earl asked. The two men had a tacit agreement that was what Emma’s enclosure would be called. For a dog, say. Anything but a skunk.
“I think we’ll be ready to tack the wire on and hang the door Saturday,” Seth replied. “You and Janeen bringing the kids over? We’ll come up with something for lunch. Hot dogs, probably.”
“The kids’ favorite. They’d live on hot dogs if Janeen would let them.”
“I’ll keep the skunks out of sight in the pantry. The kids don’t even need to know they’re around. If they catch a glimpse, they’ll go ape. Those little devils are seriously cute and completely tame at this point. Their idea of heaven is curling up in Emma’s lap.”
“How about yours?”
“My lap?”
“Your idea of heaven, ol�
�� buddy. From what I’ve heard, curling up in her lap sounds like an appealing proposition.”
Seth felt himself blushing. His ears burned. Men didn’t blush. “We’re friends, period. She’s a thorn in my flesh right now. I want to get those babies in the woods and Emma back in the city, so I can go back to doing my job without worrying about her.”
“You’re telling me you haven’t hit on her?”
“None of your business, ol’ buddy.”
“Woo-hoo, hit a sore spot, didn’t I? Tell you what, how ’bout we fall by your house for a beer on the way back to the office. If she’s at home, I can meet her and give you my honest opinion as a serious connoisseur of ladies if she’s worth all the problems she’s causing you.”
Seth grumbled, but complied. He didn’t know if he wanted to see her SUV in the driveway or not. When he drove around the curve in the gravel road and saw the SUV outside her front door, he felt a jolt of anticipation that he didn’t like.
He told himself he didn’t give a darn if Earl approved of her or not.
But in reality he wanted Earl to be as knocked out by her as he was. Like winning a blue ribbon at the fair with your Duroc sow. Not that she looked like a sow. But she was no cuddly bunny either. More like a swan—beautiful, graceful and capable of removing your head from your shoulders if you provoked her. They climbed out of Seth’s truck, expecting her to come to the front door when she heard them.
Seth rapped on the door, checked around the side of the house, but saw no sign of her.
“She’s got to be here somewhere,” Seth said. “Maybe she went across to my house to ask me for something.”
He stood on her front steps and surveyed the big front yard. He did not have a good feeling about this.
“You hear that?” Earl whispered.
“No, what?”
“Listen. Sounds like somebody…” Earl held up his hand for silence.
“Emma!” Seth shouted. Earl had ears like a fox. He could hear things no other ranger could. If he heard a sound, it was there to be heard.
“Help, somebody!”
CHAPTER TEN
SHE KNEW BETTER. She’d promised Seth she’d wait for him to show her the way to the pond and the barn, but it was her pond and her barn. She didn’t need his permission or his assistance to check out her own property. He’d sworn he’d be home soon enough this afternoon to take her back there. Still, he’d said it was less than half a mile from her back door. Even a dilapidated barn was a sizable structure and should be simple to spot through the trees and brush. She couldn’t get lost in half a mile. She was unlikely to fall in the pond either. You could see water before you walked into it.
She was sick of his “countryier than thou” stance. She’d sneak out on her own, be back before he got home and prove she could handle herself.
People who promised to do a job, then when push came to shove, didn’t deliver, annoyed her. The heck with Seth. She’d show him.
Okay, she was scared. That was nothing new. She couldn’t remember a time since her mother died that she hadn’t felt a modicum of fear. It was a point of honor to keep going, whether it was riding horses or learning to drive a car, or auditioning for the school play, or walking into a big party where she didn’t know a soul. None of that mattered so long as nobody could tell she was scared. Her father had taught her that. If she failed, she disappointed him, and he didn’t deserve a disappointing daughter.
As far as he was concerned, his daughter could take on anything. She’d tried to convince Seth of that, too, and she wasn’t about to back off now.
She did not, however, intend to be stupid. She collected her cell phone and made sure it was charged. She checked the batteries in her big flashlight, sprayed herself with sunscreen and bug repellent tough enough for the Amazon delta, pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, then her theoretically snake-proof knee-high boots. She stuck her Swiss army knife in the front pocket of her jeans, along with a wad of tissue. Then she picked up the heavy gloves Seth had given her to work on the cage, ran over her checklist in her mind and turned on the porch light in case she did need a light to guide her home. Finally, she headed out the back door.
A very small voice in her mind dared to whisper, “Why are you doing this?”
Because I’m mad and scared and I have no intention of letting either one control me.
The Mulligans, or whoever had attempted to keep the yard up, had stopped mowing at the edge of the azalea beds near the back of the property. The azaleas were old, as tall as Seth and as thick as a grizzly bear.
Past the barbed-wire fence, as far past the tree line as she could see, the abandoned pasture was choked by brush and scrub trees and nettles and all sorts of greenery she didn’t recognize.
Before she attempted to climb through the three-strand barbed-wire fence behind the azaleas, she tried to spot either the pond or the collapsing barn, but could see neither through the brush and trees.
Seth had told her the barn was to the northwest, so she headed in that direction.
She should’ve brought Aunt Martha’s fox-headed Malacca cane. And maybe her binoculars.
Okay, two things that should have been on her list but weren’t. At this point she was not walking back to the house for either one.
She’d considered bringing a bottle of water, then told herself she wouldn’t be gone long enough to get thirsty. Probably because she was uptight, she already felt like spitting cotton with thirst. She’d simply have to put up with that.
She did twist off a straight branch from one of the trees and strip it of leaves and twigs. It would be an adequate walking stick. She had no idea what kind of wood it was. Not locust, because it bore no lethal four-inch thorns. She could recognize oak or pine trees—one because of the acorns, the other because of the cones.
Now she could sweep her stick ahead of her to brush aside some of the taller meadow daisies and Johnson grass. And scare off the snakes. She was beginning to agree with Seth’s ex-wife. At this point, a snake was a snake.
The ground beneath her feet wasn’t hard, but it was dry enough that her boots didn’t sink in but left shallow prints. Actually, it was pretty back here, if too overgrown. It would take a giant bush hog to even begin to clear it. Bringing in expensive equipment to reclaim land she didn’t need was way down on her to-do list.
If she only knew where she was going. She caught the glint of water a dozen yards to the left at the same moment she buried her boot ankle-deep in ground that a minute ago had seemed hard.
Drat! She managed to pull her boot out, although the mud tried to suck it off her foot. She backed up and turned in a 360-degree circle to get her bearings. She could no longer see either the barbed-wire fence she’d climbed through, or The Hovel. No big deal. She knew where they both were, of course she did.
She pushed aside the lower branches of what she thought was a sycamore tree and spotted an obviously man-made structure some distance ahead. The old barn was the only structure back here, so that must be it. The building was draped with vines and creepers. A good many looked like poison ivy. She sidestepped, careful to trust her weight only to ground that didn’t give. Before each step she pushed her stave into the ground ahead of her. So far, the ground was solid. She had seen no snakes. Yet. She got about twenty feet from the structure, then hesitated.
The walls of the old barn were, as Seth had said, built of concrete block. They looked in remarkably good shape. A few at the corners had crumbled, but the walls were structurally sound, although she could see daylight through the roof.
She pointed her flashlight into the barn, heard a rustle up in the rafters and froze. Raccoons, maybe, or rats. Possibly doves. Surely nothing big enough or bad enough to be dangerous.
Did snakes rustle?
She hesitated to move closer in case the remaining rafters in the sagging roof collapsed…
&nb
sp; She should’ve left a note for Seth on her windshield to tell him where she was. What if he showed up before she made it back to The Hovel? Her SUV was there. Surely he’d figure it out. By then she’d be back inside the house with her babies, anyway.
He’d never need to know she’d made this crazy trek that seemed more and more like a bad idea. Nonsense. Nothing bad had happened—the muddy boot didn’t count. Not like it was quicksand.
Off to her left side, the pond looked placid and calm in the setting sun. All around its edges were giant lily pads, not yet in bloom. In another month the whole lake would be covered in blooms and redolent of perfume.
As she watched, a turtle with a shell big enough to cover the hood of her SUV surfaced in the center of the pond, floated for a moment, then disappeared under the water again like Moby Dick luring Ahab. Guess which one I am?
She choked back a scream. How many more giants lurked just under the water?
Or out of it? On the banks, among the lilies, under the brush?
I need to get the hell out of here. This place, these creatures, do not want me here. I don’t want me here either, and definitely not alone. Why didn’t I wait for Seth?
She took a deep breath to calm down. As she turned to retrace what steps she could see in the mud, two does and a fawn exploded from under the shadowy barn eaves and bounded straight at her.
She screamed.
The deer—no doubt more terrified than she was—spotted her, turned their white tails in midair and splashed across the end of the pond to disappear into the trees.
For the first time in her life, she understood true panic. The great god Pan held her in his atavistic grip and she wanted out!
She ran back the way she’d come—or at least she thought it was the way she’d come. She stumbled out of the trees and up to the muddy edge of the choked pond. When she turned away, she could see the faintest trail, where she’d come through what seemed like hours ago but must be only minutes. Nothing looked familiar except her own barely discernible footprints.
Then she glimpsed the roof of The Hovel straight ahead, past the barbed-wire fence separating the pasture from the azaleas. Once through the fence and the shrubs to the back door she’d be home. She pulled her gloves back on to get through the barbed wire.
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 38
