Texas Thunder

by Kimberly Raye

  She hadn’t been able to get him to wear his glasses to drive or to watch TV, or even to heat up his favorite Eggo waffles, but he’d worn them out by the still.

  Because he was careful when it came to his shine. Too careful to go out in a blaze of glory because of a dumb mistake like a loose fitting.

  “It happens,” Sheriff DeMassi had told Callie when he’d given her the findings of his initial investigation just yesterday. “There was a loose gasket on the copper tubing. When the shine heated, the alcohol fumes spilled out and ignited. We’ve seen it time and time again around these parts. It’s a common story.”

  For a rookie maybe. But James had had eighty years of experience under his belt. He’d had spills and shoot-outs with the law, and he’d even lost a still to a flood back during the summer storms of 2000, but never a fire.

  He’d been too good for that.

  That’s what her gut told her.

  Then again, her gut had also told her to trust him when she’d handed over the money to pay the taxes.

  She’d been wrong to put her faith in him and her mistake had cost her, just as he’d obviously been wrong with this last cook and his mistake had cost him. He’d been old, after all. Maybe the years had made him slow and careless.

  She thought of Brett and his pappy. The whole town knew the PBR champ was back to salvage the ranch after his sick grandfather had let it go to hell in a handbasket. Pappy Sawyer had made mistake after mistake thanks to his Alzheimer’s, and now Brett was paying the price for it.

  Callie knew the feeling and damned if it wasn’t ironic. They’d been so different back then, on opposite sides of the battlefield, yet here they were walking the same path.

  Not that it mattered.

  He was still a Sawyer and she was still a Tucker and, as the saying went, never the twain shall meet.

  She glanced one last time at the sneaker before pushing it to the furthest corner of her mind. Because as well as she knew her grandfather, she really hadn’t known him at all.

  Maybe he had worn sneakers. Hell, maybe he’d worn them when he’d walked into the nearest Piggly Wiggly instead of the tax office, and handed over her hard-earned money to buy more sweet feed, sugar, and yeast for his damnable research.

  No, she hadn’t really known him at all, but then that was the story of her life, wasn’t it?

  She’d been so sure of Brett way back when and he’d disappointed her most of all.

  Never again.

  No matter how good he looked in a pair of Wranglers.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was after four in the morning when Brett climbed off the cutting horse and walked the animal into the large barn that stood behind the main house.

  Once he’d left Callie at the Bachmans’, he’d headed back to the ranch, unloaded the feed from the truck, and taken a horse out to the back forty. He’d spent the hours since combing every inch only to come up empty-handed.

  No lost steers moseying around the rocky canyons that edged the far side of the ranch. No telltale remains indicating a scavenger attack or any sort of freak accident. There’d been no tracks. No blood. No bones. Nothing.

  As if the cows had vanished into thin air.

  Or into somebody’s cattle trailer.

  The thought struck again and this time he didn’t drop-kick it to the curb. He knew his pappy wasn’t in the best shape—for now—and the ranch had certainly suffered, but what if there was someone adding to the demise of Bootleg Bayou? What if there really was someone stealing from them?

  Pappy may have simply made a mistake when he’d documented the number of cows received last year. Maybe the Alzheimer’s had reared its ugly head even then and he’d scribbled in the wrong numbers.

  But that wouldn’t explain the extra vaccinations used, or the surplus of feed consumed, or the fact that they had ten actual tags unaccounted for.

  Those cows had been clipped with their corresponding number at the same time they’d been vaccinated and branded with the ranch’s signature double B. They’d then been documented on the master list, and now they were gone.

  Vanished into thin air.

  The notion echoed in his head as he unsaddled the animal, brushed her down, and walked into the ranch house.

  Every light blazed inside and he soon found out why.

  “Somebody’s burning the midnight oil.” The comment came from the young brunette who sat on the leather sofa, a bowl of popcorn in her hands. The TV screen blazed a rerun of MTV’s hit show Catfish, the sound on low.

  “Karen?” Brett stared at his younger sister. She was twenty years old and the spitting image of his mother at that age with her long dark hair, and tall, thin build. Only her Sawyer blue eyes gave any clue that she was Brett’s only sibling. “What are you doing here?”

  Her smile faded for a heartbeat before she shrugged. “It’s Spring Break this coming week and I figured you could use some help around here.”

  “I’ve got everything under control.” A clatter of pots and pans punctuated the sentence, luring Brett to the kitchen, Karen on his heels.

  They found Pappy on his hands and knees, rummaging through a cupboard as if his life depended on it. The old man wore a pair of striped pajama bottoms and a red button-down starched shirt, the buttons mismatched as if he’d been trying to get dressed and given up the task halfway through. Worry tightened the old man’s face and narrowed his jaw.

  Brett frowned. “What’s wrong, Pappy?”

  “I need my cup.” He waved an arthritic hand. “It was here the last time I saw it. Right here.”

  “I’ll get you a cup—”

  “I need my cup,” Pappy insisted. “It’s mine. I need it.”

  “But—” Brett started, his words dying when he felt the touch on his arm. He turned to see his sister. “Let him be,” she mouthed.

  “He wants a cup. I can get him a cup.”

  “That won’t help. He needs his cup. The cup that Grandmother gave him for their twentieth anniversary,” Karen told him. “He’s been looking for it ever since I came home last night. He said he needs his coffee and he can’t drink it out of any other cup because he promised her he would always use it.”

  “It’s blue with a Texas flag.” Pappy paused before moving a Crock-Pot and shoving it off to the side with the stack of dishes he’d already rummaged through. “She bought it last month at the state fair when I wasn’t looking and surprised me last week. I gave her a new toaster and she gave me my cup. It’s my favorite.”

  Brett’s mind riffled back through his memories and he remembered his grandfather sitting in front of the Christmas tree, a mug of coffee in his hands. A mug that had been shattered when Berle had thrown it at Brett’s mother back when Brett had been seven years old.

  “You remember, don’t you, son?” Pappy lifted cloudy blue eyes. “You were right there. You saw her give it to me.”

  Brett shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

  “Sure, you do.” The old man waved a hand. “You were right there with us, son. It was just the three of us,” he told Karen. “Me, Martha, and Berle, here.”

  “This is Brett,” Karen told him gently. “Your grandson. Berle isn’t with us anymore.”

  “Brett?” Confusion twisted his face and jabbed at Brett’s gut. “I ain’t got no grandson named Brett. Why, Berle, here, just got married a month ago. Ain’t that right, son?”

  “Why don’t you let me get you some coffee in a different mug?” Karen jumped in before Brett could respond. “Just until we can find yours. Berle, here, can look for it while I take you back to your room. Isn’t that right, Berle?” She gave Brett a pointed look.

  He fought down a rush of denial and gave a tight nod.

  “Good then. Let’s get you to your feet.” She leaned down and took the old man’s hand while Brett helped him to his feet.

  “You’ll make some fine-looking sons one day,” Pappy told him as he stalled, the glimmer of a smile on his old face. “Mighty fine-looking. You ju
st need to remember to control your temper. Mona, here, is a good woman.” He pointed to Karen. “She won’t stick around if you keep yelling at her all the time. Now I know it’s not my business, but these walls are thin.”

  “I’ll be nice,” Brett vowed, fighting down the urge to deny Pappy’s words. The old man was lost in another time and place and there was no convincing him otherwise.

  In Pappy’s mind, Brett was Berle.

  But tomorrow would be a good day. A lucid day and Pappy would realize his mistake.

  Brett wasn’t Berle. Not now. Not ever.

  The truth followed Brett as he headed to his room and sank down on the edge of the large king-sized bed he’d slept in while growing up.

  “He’s been like this ever since last semester.” Karen’s voice drew his attention and he glanced up to see her standing in the doorway. “I was home at Easter and found him digging in the garden out back in the middle of the night. He kept insisting that someone had stolen his tomatoes and trashed his garden.”

  “He hasn’t kept a garden in years.”

  “I know that and you know that, but he doesn’t. Not when he’s like this. I talked to Dolly tonight at dinner. She said it’s happening more often. She barely gets a full night’s sleep these days.”

  “He’s just stressed because things with the ranch aren’t adding up. Once I straighten everything out, he’ll feel better.”

  Karen looked as if she wanted to say something, but then she shrugged. “I hope so.”

  “You don’t need to hope. I’ll get it all worked out and he’ll start feeling better.”

  She nodded. “It’s good to see you home.”

  Brett grinned. “You, too.” The grin faded. “Although I’d rather you head to the beach for your break like every other college student this side of the Rio Grande instead of stressing about all of this.”

  “I burn too easily. Besides, it looks like you could use a hand.” She glanced around. “Don’t you think it’s high time you cleared out all this crap?”

  He followed her gaze to the large shelf filled with rodeo trophies. His first calf rope looped over the edge of the dresser mirror. A half-finished replica of a Model T car sat on the corner of a crowded chest of drawers. In the ninth grade he’d started the model as a class project, but he’d never been able to sit still long enough to finish the engine, never been good at anything that kept him chained to a desk or chair.

  Which was why he’d always struggled in school.

  He’d managed to creep by, but only after a lot of extra homework and the Rebel High Tutoring Team—a group of smart kids who’d come up with the idea to tutor their not-so-smart peers as a form of community service. An extra accomplishment to round out their already lengthy college applications. Callie had been their ringleader and his tutor.

  “Dolly tried to pack up some of this stuff last year, but Pappy had a fit. He always hoped you’d come back one day and he wanted everything to be exactly the same.”

  Because Pappy had never given up the hope that Brett would turn out to be a better man than his no-good dad.

  He thought back to the church that afternoon and the mahogany casket sitting up at the front of the sanctuary. Today had been the first time Brett had been inside the church since the day of his own father’s funeral.

  He’d been thirteen at the time and his pappy had practically dragged him down the aisle to the front pew. There’d been no cheap plastic daisies for his father.

  Only full bloom roses were fancy enough for a Sawyer. With lots of greenery and pinecones spread out across the stained wood. It had been close to Christmas and so the pinecones had made sense.

  At least to Brett. No one else had really noticed the pinecones. They’d been too stunned by the fact that at the age of forty-five, Big Berle Sawyer was dead.

  Splattered all over the interstate by an eighteen wheeler after an all-night drinking binge.

  The drinking hadn’t come as a shock. No, it had been the fact that another driver would dare take the life of Rebel royalty. The Sawyers owned the town. They lived on the biggest spread and drove the fanciest cars and trucks and had the biggest egos. Especially Berle.

  He shouldn’t have been behind the wheel at all, but Brett’s old man had been too headstrong to admit weakness. He could handle his liquor. Lord knew, he’d had enough practice.

  He didn’t need anyone taking his keys or telling him what to do. No one stood up to Berle Sawyer.

  Even his wife.

  Especially his wife.

  Mona Sawyer had been pretty headstrong herself, even after living with an overbearing man like Berle. She’d tried to take the keys that night even though she’d known it would lead to a fight. To a beating.

  She’d stepped up anyway, and he’d knocked her back down, literally, and the situation had escalated. Berle had yelled. Mona had screamed. Brett had tried to intervene, to lure Berle off Mona, but it had only made the older man angrier. He’d knocked Brett clear across the room and then he’d hit Mona while Karen had crouched in the corner.

  Brett had passed out from the blow to his head and by the time he’d opened his eyes, the sheriff had arrived with the news of Berle’s accident.

  A shock to folks, only because they’d realized that the Sawyers were just people like everyone else. They had their own problems.

  But Brett had always known. He’d lived with it. Sure, he’d tried to pretend otherwise. He’d bought into his own hype, just like his old man. He’d been a handful back then. Wild. Volatile. Crazy. A Sawyer. He’d done whatever he pleased, always thinking he was above the rules.

  That he made the rules.

  His father’s death should have been a wake-up call, but it had only made matters worse. His mother left, eager to put her abusive marriage behind her, even if it meant leaving her children.

  Especially if it meant leaving them.

  She’d wanted no reminders of Berle, and Brett had been his spitting image. Likewise for Karen with her Sawyer blue eyes. Mona had left them both with Pappy and moved to Las Vegas.

  While Brett spoke to her every now and then and saw her whenever he made it to Nevada for a rodeo, that was the extent of their relationship. She didn’t show up for holidays or special occasions. She kept her distance, and Brett couldn’t blame her.

  His father’s death should have been a wake-up call, a push to change his ways before he followed the same tragic path. But it had only made things worse.

  He’d been even wilder. More volatile. Living on the edge, pushing his luck. He’d driven his truck too fast. Broken too many rules. Bedded too many women. And drank way too much moonshine.

  More. That had been his motto back then.

  There wasn’t a dare he wouldn’t take or a thing he wouldn’t do or a woman he couldn’t have.

  Except Callie Tucker.

  She’d been the exact opposite of the girls he’d always taken a shine to. She’d been pretty in a quiet, natural way. No overabundance of makeup or skin-tight jeans or slinky tops. She’d been far too mature to play into society’s stereotype. Rather, she’d been fixated on college, on getting the hell out of Rebel and making something of herself and so she hadn’t given a lick about pep rallies or parties or football games.

  Instead, she’d read and studied and kept her nose to the grindstone. She’d worn plain jeans and shapeless T-shirts, her hair always pulled back into the same lifeless ponytail. Her parents hadn’t had much money and so she’d never worn the latest designers or driven a hot car. But none of that had mattered. She’d still looked at him as if she knew something that he didn’t, as if she were better than him.

  The notion had snagged his attention faster than any short skirt or low-cut blouse. Because Brett had had his share of both by the age of eighteen, and what he’d really needed was something else. Something different.

  Someone different.

  He’d signed up for tutoring and then he’d spent the next six weeks sitting across from Callie Tucker every day
after school. He’d turned on the charm, smiling and flirting and chipping away at the wall she’d fortified between them.

  But there had been more than just the cat-and-mouse game between a boy and a girl. They’d actually talked, too. She’d told him about her grandfather’s addiction to the shine he brewed up in the woods behind their house, and he’d told her about his dad’s abuse and his mom flying the coop, and how Pappy was trying to make up for both.

  Of course, it wasn’t all the talking that had convinced him to ask her to prom. He would have asked anyway because Callie Tucker was the only girl he’d wanted back then.

  He just hadn’t realized exactly how much.

  Until that night.

  Until she’d kissed him and touched him and turned him on to the point that he’d gone over the edge.

  He’d grabbed and groped and come right there in his pants.

  He’d felt the helplessness deep inside of himself at that moment. The same feeling he’d seen in his dad’s eyes that night right before he’d slammed his fist into his thirteen-year-old son’s face.

  Because he’d been beyond control.

  He’d been a slave to the anger roiling inside of him, a slave to the alcohol, a slave to his own damned shortcomings, just as Brett had been a slave to his lust that night with Callie.

  He’d known in that instant that if he unfastened his pants and sank deep inside her, he wouldn’t be able to stop. There would be no pacing himself, no slowing down to help her accommodate him.

  He would have taken her hard and fast, and she would have hated him for it because she’d been so young and innocent. Because he would have hurt her, just as his father had hurt his mother.

  And so he’d shoved her out of his pappy’s prized Caddy, gunned the engine, and peeled away. Not the most gentlemanly thing to do, but better than rip her clothes off and push her past the point of no return.

  That’s what he would have done.

  What he’d wanted to do.

  And why he’d packed his bags and hit the road shortly thereafter.

  He’d been too much like Berle and it had been time to turn things around. To change the course of his life before he followed his old man beyond the point of no return.