High-Caliber Cowboy

by B. J Daniels

  It was afternoon, but not as late as he’d first thought. Dark clouds hunkered on the horizon, making it seem later. A thunderstorm was headed this way.

  He couldn’t see much through the crack in the wall. Just the corner of another building, but he recognized the red-and-white barn. He was on the VanHorn Ranch.

  His head began to clear.

  He’d known it had been VanHorn’s men who abducted him but he hadn’t expected them to bring him to the ranch. Why had they? He would have thought they’d have taken him to Mason. Or taken him out somewhere and either shot him or just dumped him.

  Instead, he’d been put here as if on hold. What were they waiting for?

  In an instant, he knew.

  Anna. VanHorn had Anna.

  He slammed into the door again with the same result as the first time. Swearing, he looked around the shed. He had to get out of here. Anna was with a monster. There was no telling what the man might do to her. It didn’t matter that she was his flesh and blood, his only daughter. Look how he’d treated her all these years. And now she was on to him—and he knew it.

  * * *

  MASON VANHORN was waiting for her in his office. “Thank you, Red,” he said without even looking up at them from his desk.

  Red left, closing the door behind him and she was alone with her father. “What have you done with Brandon?”

  He lifted his head slowly.

  For a moment, she was too stunned to speak, amazed at how much he’d aged. She’d always remembered him as being big and powerful, his hair black like her own, his face tanned and strong.

  His hair was almost completely white now, his face sallow and lined, but it was his eyes that made her wince. They were dull and dark, lifeless.

  She had wanted to see this man suffer, had come all the way out here to make sure that happened. But one look at him told her he already had suffered more than he ever would at her hands.

  “Please sit down.”

  She shook her head and remained standing.

  “I have no idea where McCall is,” he said.

  “You’re lying.”

  His eyes darkened. “Brandon sold you out,” he said quietly. “He went back to his family. He doesn’t want any part of this.”

  She shook her head. “He wouldn’t do that.” She hated the lack of conviction she heard in her voice. Wasn’t that her greatest fear? That she could be wrong about him? Just as she had been about her father?

  “Wouldn’t he? Then where is he?”

  She stared at her father. “I know you did something to him. If you hurt him—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “You act as if I had him killed.”

  “Isn’t it easier after the first time?”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “Chrissy, what are you doing?”

  “Don’t call me that. My name is Anna now. Anna Austin.”

  “You changed your name just to hurt me?”

  She laughed but the sound held no humor. “Everything is about you, isn’t it? Why did you have me brought here?”

  “I don’t understand your anger at me,” he said, sounding genuinely confused. “What have I done to you?”

  “Give it some thought. It will come to you.”

  Mason wagged his head sadly. “McCall put you up to this. He’s the one feeding you these lies.”

  “McCall? I should have known you’d blame him. He tried to stop me from finding out the truth about you. I knew this would be a waste of time. All you’re going to do is lie to me again. Well, save your breath. I don’t believe anything you tell me because I know what happened to my mother. I have proof you put her in Brookside.”

  All the color drained from his face as he reared back as if she’d slapped him.

  “I know you put her in there to punish her. I know what a heartless bastard you really are.”

  He rose from his chair and started toward her.

  Her heart lunged in her chest. She couldn’t help but step back, the look in his eyes terrifying her.

  He stopped as if shocked. His face seemed to crumble. “Chrissy, I wouldn’t hurt you. You can’t believe that I would hurt you.”

  The ridiculousness of his words struck her as funny. She let out the breath she’d been holding. It came out on a laugh. “You killed my little brother or sister, then sent my mother to an insane asylum because she cheated on you. And you don’t understand why I’m afraid of you?”

  He stared at her, his face a mask of white. “Where would you get the idea…”

  “Sarah Gilcrest, my nanny. She heard it all from the room upstairs.”

  He stumbled back, dropping into the chair behind his desk. He seemed small and she wondered why she’d been afraid of this man only a moment ago. “I don’t know what she told you—”

  “She told me the truth. She heard the baby cry. It wasn’t stillborn. She heard my mother begging you not to put her in that place. She heard the doctor take my mother away.”

  He shook his lowered head without looking at her. “Sarah misunderstood what she heard.”

  “Like she misunderstood the next morning when you told her the baby was stillborn and my mother had run away?”

  He raised his head. “This is why you’ve done the things you have? Because you believed…” He waved a hand weakly through the air. “Oh, Chrissy—Anna,” he corrected. “I see that I should have told you the truth years ago. I swear on everything I hold dear that isn’t what happened.”

  “Everything you hold dear?”

  “You hate me.” He seemed surprised by that.

  “I don’t know you,” she snapped. “You sent me away when I was ten. I begged you to let me stay here….” Her voice broke. She looked away, hating the tears that burned in her eyes. She would not cry.

  “I was trying to protect you.”

  “Or protect yourself?” she snapped back. “You have a habit of getting rid of things you don’t want.”

  His dark eyes swam in tears. “Is that what you think? That I got rid of you because I didn’t want you? Please sit down. I will tell you everything. No more lies.”

  She knew she couldn’t believe him, but she wanted to and that’s what frightened her. “I know about Dr. French.”

  He looked up at her, something in his eyes saying more than she knew his words ever would.

  Guilt. She saw the answer. She stumbled back, spinning about to run out the door, out of this house, out of this state. Red stepped into the doorway, his broad chest blocking her escape.

  “I can’t let you leave until you hear the whole story,” her father said flatly.

  Anna felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck as she turned to look at him. His expression told her he meant every word.

  But once she heard the whole story, what then? He couldn’t let her go. He had to know she would go to the sheriff. He couldn’t let either her or Brandon go. He had too much to lose.

  * * *

  THERE WAS NO WAY to break down the door, Brandon realized as he looked around the empty space. Nothing to use as a battering ram and he wasn’t foolish enough to try again with his shoulder.

  The walls were thick square logs. He doubted dynamite could blow through one of them.

  He looked up and saw what looked like dim light coming through a corner of the roof. He moved closer. The roof appeared to be the original—only single-thickness sheets of wood nailed across the rafters.

  Unless his eyes were playing tricks on him, one corner of the roof had leaked, the wood rotting enough to let in a little light.

  The rotten corner was a good ten feet above his head, though, and there was nothing to stand on to reach it.

  He looked around for a spot where the chinking between the logs had worked out and climbed up into the open rafters. Clinging precariously from one of the rafters, he swung back and forth until he had enough momentum, then he kicked at the corner of the roof. The wood gave a little.

  Hope soared through him. He swung again. And again. T
he wood broke away at the corner. He could see daylight, smell the storm headed this way. Lightning flickered, thunder boomed. The storm just might hide the noise he was making. If only he could make a hole large enough to get out before he was discovered.

  Another thunderous boom overhead. He stopped for a moment, his hands burning from swinging on the rafter, his legs aching. Just a little more.

  He heard the crunch of footsteps. Someone tried the door.

  * * *

  “PLEASE, SIT DOWN,” Mason VanHorn said, motioning to a chair. “Red, would you close the door?”

  Anna pulled the chair to her, putting as much distance as she could between them. Her father saw the movement, knew what she was doing. The pain in his expression gave her no pleasure. He was holding her here against her will. Just as she knew he was holding Brandon. She just prayed he hadn’t hurt him.

  “Your mother was never strong.”

  She told herself she wouldn’t believe anything he told her but the moment he started to speak, something in his voice told her she was finally about to hear the truth.

  “It started before—” he waved a hand through the air “—before her affair, before her pregnancy. Then, when the baby was born… The baby was horribly deformed. When your mother saw it, she just…lost her mind.”

  “What did you do with the baby?”

  “The doctor wrapped him in a towel—” His voice broke. “I couldn’t bear to look….”

  “You didn’t see him?” Anna asked.

  He shook his head. “I took him out and buried him in the VanHorn graveyard on the hill. At the very last moment I parted the towel and looked into his face. He was beautiful. Just like your mother.”

  As hard as she tried not to, she started to cry.

  “Helena had been hanging on to reality by a thread. After that…” He looked down at his hands. They were weathered and covered with age spots. The hands of an old man. “She fought me, throwing everything she could get her hands on. I tried to console her but she…” He shook his head and she saw that he was crying.

  Anna had never seen her father cry. It was a shocking sight. She didn’t want to have any sympathy for him. “How can I believe you?”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “She’d been seeing Dr. French. For her…problems. That night…there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t let you and Holt see her like that. I was afraid that she might…” He looked up and she saw the fear in his face. He thought she might hurt her other children? “Dr. French took her to Brookside.”

  Anna sat motionless. “How long was she at Brookside?” she asked into the silence that followed.

  “Until she died. When you were nine.”

  Anna had known her mother had to be dead but still, it hit her hard. She was too stunned to speak for a moment. “That’s why you sent me away?”

  “I wanted to protect you.”

  “Does my brother know?”

  “Holt?” He shook his head.

  “Why did you lie all these years?” But the moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew. “The baby was alive at birth, just like Sarah said. You had the doctor kill it.”

  * * *

  AT THE SOUND of someone at the door, Brandon froze, hanging from the rafter. An engine fired up nearby. He used the sudden noise to cloak the sound of his boots hitting the floor as he dropped down and curled back up on the floor.

  He heard the lock click. The door opened a crack. Someone called out. A truck door slammed. The door closed and whoever had opened it locked the door again and moved away, his footfalls retreating. The truck motor revved and then there was silence again.

  Climbing back up the log wall, Brandon grabbed the rafter and kicked again at the roof, praying he could get out of here and to Anna before it was too late. Unless someone had just taken her away in that truck.

  The roof splintered under his boot, the hole large enough that he should be able to wriggle through.

  Climbing across to the end rafter, he reached an arm out and grabbed the corner of the overhang. Holding on, he shoved his shoulder and head through the hole, then worked his other shoulder out.

  Bracing himself with both hands on the remaining roof, he pushed upward until he was sitting on the roof.

  He could see the ranch complex up the road. Mason VanHorn’s car was parked in front of the ranch house.

  Jumping down, Brandon ran along the back side of the buildings, headed for the ranch house. If anyone knew where Anna was, it was Mason VanHorn.

  * * *

  “ANNA, YOU HAVE TO understand—”

  She was on her feet again. “You were covering up a murder.”

  “I didn’t kill that baby. He was so badly deformed that he only lived a few moments.”

  “Then why lie?”

  Her father rose from the chair but didn’t come toward her. Instead, he moved to the window at the rear of his office and stood with his back to her. “I am ashamed, but the truth is I couldn’t bear for anyone to know about your mother. I didn’t want her…sickness to make people in town treat you and Holt differently. There is so much about mental illness that we don’t understand. It was worse thirty years ago.”

  “You shut her away in that place because you were embarrassed?”

  He turned to look at her. “You don’t understand. She was violent. She—” His eyes filled again with tears—and a look that froze her blood with horror.

  “No,” Anna cried. “My mother killed the baby!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cash put down the twenty-year-old Jane Doe murder file next to his notes on the Emma Ingles murder.

  He could find no connection. Not that he’d expected to find one.

  But he’d discovered when he talked to the motel clerk where Lenore Johnson had been staying that his brother Brandon had been asking about her, too. Lenore had also asked for directions to Brookside the last night she was seen.

  Cash had been trying without any luck to find his little brother. He couldn’t wait to ask him what he’d been doing at Brookside with Frank Yarrow and why he’d let the Realtor believe the McCall family might be interested in buying the place.

  Brandon was also seen with a dark-haired young woman.

  Yep. Cash couldn’t wait to get his hands on his brother. Whatever Brandon was up to, he just hoped it had nothing to do with Emma Ingles’s murder.

  Molly had called earlier and was holding dinner for him. Just the thought of her made him close the file and reach to turn out his light.

  The phone rang. A 911 call forwarded to his number. He picked it up. “Sheriff Cash McCall.”

  “Help me. Please help me.” The whispering voice of a woman made him sit up straighter. “My name is Lenore Johnson. I don’t have much time before he comes back.” Her words were slurred, he could barely hear her. “I’m being held at Brookside. I think he’s a doctor. He—”

  The line went dead.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Cash hung up the phone, his heart pounding. He quickly picked up the receiver again and dialed his home to tell Molly dinner would have to wait.

  * * *

  THE LOCK on the bathroom window behind the VanHorn ranch house was still broken, just as Brandon had suspected. Mason’s men either hadn’t had time to fix it or had left it hoping to catch the vandal.

  Carefully lifting the window, he slipped inside. He could hear voices coming from down the hall.

  At the door, he looked out. He hadn’t seen any of VanHorn’s men. Not even Red. Maybe he’d sent them all off, wanting to be alone with his daughter. The thought chilled Brandon.

  The hallway was empty, the door to VanHorn’s office closed. He could hear voices behind the office door. Mason was talking quietly, almost reassuringly.

  Brandon moved silently down the hallway and put his ear against the door. He couldn’t hear what was being said but it sounded as if Anna was crying and Mason was trying to soothe her.

  He knew he would have hell getting Anna out of her
e without a fight and unfortunately, he had no weapon. Playing hero now could just get them both killed.

  But there was no other option. He could call his brother but it would take Cash too long to get here.

  He gripped the doorknob, listening.

  * * *

  “ANNA, I’M SO SORRY that I didn’t tell you the truth before,” Mason said in a monotone, his head down. He looked horrible, as if reliving all this had aged him more.

  Anna didn’t know what to say. Or what to believe. If he was telling the truth… “What about my mother?”

  He raised his head to meet her gaze and she knew at once that she didn’t want to hear this. “She’s dead.”

  “You already told me that.” She bit her lip. “Where?”

  He looked away and she knew he’d had to cover up her death, as well—with Dr. French’s help.

  She sighed. “So many lies. Was it worth it?”

  A spark lit in his dark eyes. “To protect you and your brother? Yes. I would do it all over again.”

  She stared at him. How much of it had been for her and Holt? And how much for her father? “Who was the man?” she asked, thinking about the feud between her father and Asa.

  He shook his head. “Just one of many cowboys.”

  Anna felt sick. “She died at Brookside?”

  “Twenty years ago.”

  That long? She knew she should feel relieved that her mother hadn’t suffered for years in that place.

  “She was starting to get better,” Mason said. “She knew who I was and she even asked about you and Holt.” His voice broke.

  The phone rang. He jumped as if it were a rattlesnake on his desk. It rang again. He seemed to be trying to ignore it and something in his expression made her suspicious.

  “Go head, answer it,” she said as it rang again. “Isn’t that your private line?”

  It rang again. Clearly, he wasn’t going to answer it.

  Before he could stop her, she stood, reached over and picked up the phone. All she wanted was to see who was calling, to verify her hunch on the caller ID.

  “Dr. French’s number.” She hit Talk but said nothing, her gaze going to her father’s.