by Laurie Paige
“What’s with you and my niece?”
Ah, the expected inquisition. Apparently every man on the place was protective of the young heiress. He gave Lockhart a frigid look and said nothing.
The man’s eyes narrowed. He flicked his hair, which was brown with red highlights, off his face as the breeze picked up. Vanessa’s fiery tresses came from her Lockhart genes.
Dev checked the sky. Clouds were forming. There would be an afternoon thunderstorm. He wanted to get to town and talk with the sheriff and the old man who made good-luck pieces into spurs for cowboys.
“Just watch that you don’t overstep yourself,” Lockhart warned with a snarl, and strode off. He exited the courtyard through the garage door.
Dev mulled the threat over on the way to his SUV. The man had a chip on his shoulder about something. A grudge against the family?
According to local gossip, Clint had been furious when his father had sold their hundred-thousand-acre ranch to the Double Crown. He’d been a kid at the time, but he had made it plain he expected to inherit the place and run it. His father had been a competent attorney, but a lousy rancher.
A carouser and hothead, Clint Lockhart had been a handful as a boy. As a man, he lived in a cabin about a mile from the Perez house and still had an interesting social life. Dev wondered if the Fortune patriarch knew his brother-in-law was one of his wife’s lovers. One among many, Dev added.
The lovely Sophia got around, one might say.
“Okay, I’m ready. Sorry, I had a call from my sister.”
He nodded, only half listening to her chatter. He simply liked the sound of her voice with its unfailing good humor, her concern for others a deeper chord running through the melody of her words.
Swallowing against the knot that rose in his throat, he admitted he was getting sucked in. She was the one thing he couldn’t refuse. Knowing it was hopeless didn’t stop the need, didn’t dim the glow that came from her light shining into his heart. Ah, God…
“There’s Dallas,” Vanessa said. “Blow the horn.” She reached over his arm and gave a couple of taps.
Dallas, repairing a section of fence along the drive that led to his house, looked up and waved. The young widower was only two years older than Vanessa. His wife had died a couple of years ago in childbirth. As far as Dev could tell, the young man never dated, rarely left the ranch, and lived the life of a recluse in his adobe home, which was a smaller rendition of the main house.
“He’s lonely,” Vanessa murmured, looking back at her brother with a worried expression. She settled in the seat with a sigh. “Like you, he’s shut himself off from close attachment to anyone else. He was devastated when Sara died. The baby was stillborn.”
Dev steeled himself against the emotions her sorrow generated. “Life can be tough,” was all he said.
“Yes.”
He hated the thread of sadness that sometimes overlaid the lilt in her voice. He wanted to smooth life’s path for her so she would always be happy. But that was wishful thinking. He hadn’t been able to do a thing for his mother or for Stan’s wife. The cost of living was pain. The truth was as simple and inescapable as that.
“What are we doing in town?” she asked.
“We’re not going to San Antonio. Your father told me about a man in Leather Bucket who might be able to help us with the rowel.”
“Oh, Mr. Tomahawk, of course,” she said.
“Why didn’t you mention him?”
“I didn’t think of him in connection with kidnapping. He’s ancient. I’d be surprised if he’s still in business.”
“He was in last week,” the man at the saddle shop told them. “He’ll drop off his new stuff in a couple of weeks.”
“You know where he lives?”
“Sure. Take the old El Paso highway out past the new church, take a left at the intersection, go about five miles, then look for a road that drops off sharply to the right into a narrow limestone canyon. Old Tom lives at the end of the road.”
“Let’s pick up lunch and some drinks,” Vanessa suggested. “It’s a long drive.”
“Five miles?”
She laughed. “You’ll see.”
They stopped at a local diner in Leather Bucket and ordered club sandwiches to go. Dev bought a foam cooler and put a six-pack of soda and a bag of ice inside.
The highway was paved, but old and potholed. Dev found the top safe speed was around forty. They passed the church. A half mile later he turned left at an intersection. The road was gravel instead of blacktop.
It went around a curve and the road narrowed to about one and half lanes. Another quarter mile and it petered out into one lane. They wound around blind curves and limestone outcroppings. He had to stop twice to roll boulders that had fallen from a rocky bluff out of the way.
Their speed averaged ten miles an hour on the good parts. Vanessa snickered when he stopped for the third time.
Dev surveyed the winding road behind them. They had picked up a tail when they’d left Leather Bucket. He wondered who was following them and why. The road was dangerous in and of itself. He didn’t want to enact a chase for their lives, too.
It took the better part of an hour, but they finally came upon a tiny adobe house set in a grove of native oaks. The narrow valley was verdant at this end. There was a fruit and pecan orchard, plus a lush garden.
An old woman in a large straw hat and a long skirt picked beans. Her smile was toothless when she straightened and waved to them. She headed for the house.
“Is Mr. Tomahawk in?” Vanessa asked politely.
“In his shop. He is working,” the old woman explained. “Come with me.”
She led them around the house to a log structure with a canvas roof. An old man, his face as furrowed as the country they had just driven through, rose to greet them.
“Mr. Tomahawk, I’m Vanessa Fortune. You know my father,” Vanessa said. “Once, when I was young, I met you at the saddle shop in Leather Bucket.”
Dev raised his eyebrows at her formal manner of speaking.
The old man nodded. “There were two of you.”
“Yes, my twin, Victoria, was with us.”
“Your father is well?”
“Yes, thank you. This is Special Agent Devin Kincaid with the FBI. My father’s grandson has been stolen. Mr. Kincaid is helping us find him.”
The old woman gave a keening cry and made the sign of the cross as if to ward off any evil they might have brought into the peaceful valley. Dev thought of the person following them and felt guilty.
“This is a sad thing. How can I help you?” The old man looked his way.
Dev removed a photo from his pocket and showed the picture of the rowel to the craftsman.
Tomahawk nodded at once. “This I have seen.”
“Do you know the man who ordered the medal mounted on a spur?” he asked. “Did you see him?”
The old man turned to his wife and spoke in his native tongue. She nodded. “I will return,” she said.
After she went into the house, the old man brought chairs for them. They sat in the shade of the hogan. Vanessa exclaimed over the boots set neatly in a row on a shelf.
“These men died before they could claim them,” he said. “I make one pair a month now. When I was younger, I could do a pair in two, maybe three, days. I am thinking of retiring and drawing the social security my grandson has told me about. But I don’t know. It is good to be busy.”
Dev suppressed a startled snort. The man was ninety if he was a day. The old lady…she might be a young eighty-nine. He wondered how long they had been married.
His gaze went to Vanessa. Her fiery red tresses contrasted brilliantly with the old man’s long white hair, neatly braided at his nape, as they examined a pair of boots from the shelf.
“Dev, I think these would fit you,” she told him, holding up a pair of black boots with intricate carvings of tan in the leather. “Try them on.”
The next thing he knew he’d bought a pair
of fancy boots for a thousand bucks. “They’ll last forever if you take care of them,” she assured him.
“At this price, they’d better last two lifetimes,” he murmured while writing out the check. He’d have to transfer funds from his savings by phone when he returned to the ranch. “Don’t cash this for a day or two,” he advised.
The old man gave him a gummy grin. “Bossy woman.”
“You got that right.”
“He loves it,” Vanessa told Mr. Tomahawk.
Mrs. Tomahawk brought an order form from the house. She also brought a pot of tea sweetened with the honey from wild bees, she told them. Perspiration soaked the back of Dev’s shirt while he sipped the brew. A sheen of moisture glowed from Vanessa’s face. The old couple didn’t sweat a drop.
Mr. Tomahawk studied the order, then handed it to Dev. On it was a picture of the medallion attached to the rowel.
“Yes, this is the one, but the man’s name doesn’t match the cowboy’s or the hotel guest’s names.”
“He used a lot of aliases?” Vanessa suggested.
Dev spoke to the couple. “May I keep this? I’d like to have the handwriting to compare to another.”
“Yes, but I must have it back. For the taxes. My grandson is an accountant. He says we must have paper. A handshake is no good anymore.”
The many lines in his face slanted sorrowfully. Dev knew the feeling. Sometimes, dealing only with the bad facets of society, he began to believe there were no honest people left.
And then he had met Vanessa Fortune and the promise of springtime had fallen into his arms. He cast her a worried glance, before speaking to his host.
“Is there a way to go back without using the road we came in on?” He didn’t have any hope that there was.
“Yes, but it is rough,” the old man warned.
Dev laughed wryly. “Worse than that one?” He nodded toward the gravel road.
The wife laughed behind her hand. “If you keep on this road, you will come to a place where the spring flows. There, you will look up and see the way.”
Dev thanked them for their help and hospitality. Tucking the order form into a plastic bag and storing it safely in the inner pocket of his suit, he led the way to the SUV. They took off down the canyon.
“Oh, my heavens,” Vanessa murmured when they came to the spring. They did, indeed, have to look up. A trail, apparently made by wagon tracks, angled at an impossible slant along the rock face.
Dev switched to four-wheel drive and dropped the gear into its lowest range. “If a mule pulling a wagon can make it, so can we,” he reasoned.
“Why are we going this way? At least we knew how bad it was on the other road.”
“I never like to take the same path twice.”
He didn’t tell her he was worried about an ambush waiting around one of the many bends on the narrow road back to town. If he’d been alone, he would have relished the chance to possibly catch the person who had followed them. But not with Vanessa along.
She was silent as they started up the trail. Dev carefully kept the truck tires in the twin ruts that formed the road. From the corner of his eye, he saw her knuckles whiten as she clutched the edge of the seat, but there wasn’t a peep out of her.
Pride swelled his chest. She was so brave.
A half hour later they came out at the top of the canyon wall. The trail widened and, under the shade of an oak that looked as gnarled and ancient as the couple they had left, he stopped. “Let’s have lunch.”
“I can’t,” she said. “My hands won’t let go.”
He laughed at her admission of fear and popped the top on a cool can of soda. She accepted it quick enough. They ate lunch there at the lip of the canyon and listened to the quiet. Only wind and the rustle of tree leaves interrupted the peace of the moment.
Across the narrow canyon, Dev picked out the trail of dust caused by another vehicle on the gravel road toward the couple’s home. He watched until he was sure it was heading back toward town.
After eating, they traveled another quarter mile and picked up a gravel road that turned into a paved one, then joined the highway back into Leather Bucket. He didn’t relax until he had the Fortune heiress in a traffic jam caused by a faulty stoplight.
“Ah, civilization,” he murmured, then laughed, pleased that he’d at least thwarted the other guy.
“Was there someone following us?” Vanessa asked, her face pensive when she turned to him. “That was why we came back a different way, wasn’t it?”
He couldn’t lie to her. “Yes.”
The brilliant green of her eyes clouded. “Why? Who hates us this much?”
He didn’t explain that there were probably many people who hated them simply because of who they were and all that they had. “Envy is a hateful thing.”
“And dangerous.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said soothingly. “We’ll find the snake and make Eden safe once more.”
She smiled at him, but her eyes were downcast. She was learning there was more than one beast in the world.
Vanessa watched Wyatt study the new evidence. He removed the card the cowboy had signed at the motel from the case folder. “Ah,” he said.
“Same initials,” Dev remarked, looking over his shoulder.
“Yeah. He probably has a belt buckle with J.M. on it, so he chooses names to go with that.”
“The handwriting is the same,” Vanessa noted from the other side of the sheriff’s chair. “Look at the slant of the letters. The ‘J’ on James, Jerry and Jeremy has no loop, just a downstroke like a spear.”
Dev nodded. “Ruben said the man took a lot of ribbing at the bunkhouse with a name like James Madison.”
Wyatt pulled the card and order form closer and peered at the signatures on each. “The name he used at the ranch might be the real one. He had a social security number to go with it.”
“They can be obtained with a fake birth certificate,” Dev said. “He could have several.”
Wyatt bounced a pencil, eraser end down, on his desk, catching it each time it rebounded. “I could get a court order to check his account for an address.”
Dev nodded. “We need all the help we can get.”
“What will that help?” Vanessa asked, discouragement eating at her.
“It may get us a permanent address. Someone there may be able to tell us something.” Wyatt shrugged, then bounced the pencil again. “He’s our only lead.”
“Our only unknown, at any rate,” Dev added. “I need to make a copy of the order and send it to the Tomahawks for their file.”
“Are those Tomahawk boots?” Wyatt demanded, rising and staring over the desk at Dev’s boots.
“Yeah. They ought to be gold-plated for the price.” He gave Vanessa a stern glance for talking him into such an extravagance.
Wyatt snorted. “I’d give my left arm to have a pair. The waiting list has over a hundred people on it. Tomahawk boots will last a lifetime.”
“That’s what I told him,” Vanessa put in. She explained how Dev got the boots.
“That road is terrible,” Wyatt mused, a gleam in his eyes. “Maybe I’ll mosey out that way tomorrow and return his receipt in person.”
“It seems a bit morbid to buy a dead man’s boots,” Dev mentioned.
“Why?” Wyatt tossed the pencil into a cup that held an assortment of writing utensils. “He won’t need them.”
He grinned unrepentantly as Dev grimaced. Vanessa patted Dev’s shoulder. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.”
She assumed an innocent expression at his glare.
“If you really are going out to Tomahawk’s place,” Dev said, returning to business, “you might see if you can pick up a set of tire prints. Someone followed us out there.”
Wyatt’s smile faded. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll send a deputy out that way now. There’s a storm brewing, according to the weatherman. Tornado warnings are out in the northern part of the state now. It�
�s supposed to hit here by nightfall.”
“Hmm, we had better head out, then. I’d appreciate any help you can give us on our missing cowboy. He’s been underground for over six weeks. That seems strange behavior for a rodeo rider.”
“I’ll keep in touch,” the sheriff promised.
Vanessa said goodbye to her friend after the two men shook hands. “Take care,” she murmured, and kissed his cheek.
“You, too.” He walked with them to the big room where several deputies worked at their desks. “Tanberg, can I see you a minute?” he called. “Bring your partner.”
Outside, Vanessa looked at the clouds. They were dark and menacing. Lightning streaked through them, producing a low rumbling over the city noise. “Rain,” she said, pointing toward the gray veils that obscured the horizon.
“We had better get back to the ranch.”
“We could spend the night at your place,” she suggested. “It’s closer.”
“No,” he said.
She leaned toward him and gazed into his eyes. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want the memories of you there,” he stated bluntly.
“After we go our separate ways.”
“That’s right.”
His tone was harsh, unrelenting. She sighed. Like this case, he considered her a temporary assignment in his life. “Okay,” she said softly.
He gave her a surprised glance. “No argument?”
“I don’t feel up to it.”
“Good.” He opened the door to the SUV and helped her up with a hand under her elbow. “Dinner before we go back?” he asked when he was inside.
“The storm might break before we get home.”
“I’m not afraid of the rain.”
“I am. I might melt if I get wet.” She injected teasing laughter into her voice.
“You’re not that sweet,” he replied dryly.
She leaned close and breathed in his ear, “That’s not what you said last night.”
His ears turned somewhat pink. “A man says fool things at crucial times.”
Satisfied at getting back at him for refusing to take her to his home, she fastened the seat belt and watched the familiar scenery glide by on the trip back to the ranch.
