by Sharon Sala
“Yes, and the cable is barely four feet off the ground. I don’t know how the county thinks that’s protecting anyone. I know Dad has brake fluid in the shop because I’ve seen it. He probably knew the truck had a leak. We’ll get you fixed up after we find Jesse.”
“I just talked to Mama. She said she heard a couple of shots not too far away from the house.”
Aidan shook his head.
“Leslie and I talk about this all the time. I don’t know how Mama is going to cope with him on her own.”
“No, don’t worry about that,” Bowie said. “She told me the other day that taking care of Jesse was going to be what saves her.”
“Really?” Aidan said.
Bowie nodded. “She’s one strong woman, brother, and you know it. She’ll find a way, and for the times like this, there are three of you within driving distance.”
“You’re right. Dad would have said we’re just borrowing trouble, thinking like that,” Aidan said.
A couple of minutes later Aidan took the turn off the blacktop onto the long graveled driveway leading up to the house.
Leigh was waiting for them on the porch, and she frowned when she saw Bowie was alone.
“Where’s Talia?”
“She wanted to change clothes. She’s probably already on her way here.”
“You need to change out of your good clothes, too,” Leigh said.
“Yeah, all right. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll be right back,” Bowie said, and hurried into the house.
“I’m sorry I was late,” Aidan said. “Johnny fell and cut his lip. I had to make sure he didn’t need stitches before I left.”
“Oh, no!” Leigh said. “Poor baby. I shouldn’t have called. You need to be home with your family.”
Aidan frowned.
“Mama, stop! This is what family does for each other. We worry as much about Jesse as you do. We would be hurt, even angry, if you didn’t include us in your lives.”
Leigh hugged him. “You’re all such good sons.”
“We had good parents to raise us,” Aidan said, as Bowie came running back out of the house.
He’d changed from the dark pants and white shirt to jeans and a blue denim work shirt. He had on his old boots and had pulled his hair back in a ponytail.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“Okay then,” Leigh said, and pointed into the woods behind the garden. “He went in back there. You can see his tracks until they disappear farther up into the woods. I heard shots down that way about a half hour ago. I’m going to lock up every gun in the house when I get him back home.”
Bowie grinned.
“We’ll find him, Mama. Just remember what you told me. He’s still a crack shot, and if he’s still good at tracking, too, he’s not going to get lost.”
Leigh sighed.
“I know that. I guess it’s just knowing I don’t have your daddy for backup that’s making me so anxious.”
Bowie gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“We’ll see you soon, and if we need any help, we’ll call.”
She patted her pocket to feel for her cell phone, and then watched them jogging across the backyard and into the trees.
* * *
By the time Talia had changed clothes and pulled her hair up and away from her face, she was feeling grateful for the invitation to the Youngblood house. Staying here alone right after the service would have been difficult, and there was no longer a reason not to leave the house. She’d always loved Leigh and for years had assumed one day she would belong to her family. Getting this second chance with Bowie meant getting his family back, too—except for Stanton. She still couldn’t believe he was gone.
She left the house through the utility room, exiting into the carport. She slid into the car and tossed her purse into the passenger seat, then buckled up before backing out of the drive. There was a part of her that felt guilty for being happy. Her father was gone, and Bowie’s father had been murdered. Tragedies, and yet she’d been given this wonderful second chance.
She drove toward Main Street, and she was thinking about the visit ahead when she slowed down for the stop sign at the end of the block. Within seconds a robin flew across her line of sight. It was summer in Eden, and robins were everywhere, so it wasn’t all that unusual. Except that wasn’t how she took it.
There had been a robin at her mother’s funeral, then today she’d buried her father and here was another one. She took a quick shaky breath as her eyes welled with tears. No matter what anyone else might think, it felt like a message from her dad, giving his approval that she was right to be moving on with her life.
“Thank you, Dad. Say hello to Mama for me.”
A little tearful, she drove through the intersection and then eventually out of town. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone anywhere without a need to hurry home. By the time she reached the road that would take her up the mountain, she was smiling. The windows were down, the radio was on. Bowie Youngblood was on her mind. Even though it had been years since she’d driven this road, it was as familiar to her as the man she loved. She knew exactly how much to accelerate as the incline grew steeper, and she knew where the easy curves were, and where the sharp ones appeared with little warning.
When she reached the first hard curve her fingers automatically tightened on the steering wheel. She tapped the brakes as she took the turn and frowned when they felt soft.
“What on earth?” she mumbled, and glanced down at the dashboard, looking for some kind of warning light, but she saw nothing.
A couple of minutes later she came up on Bowie’s truck parked off the side of the road and frowned. It looked like he’d had engine trouble, and she wondered if she would catch up to him walking home. She thought about calling him, but when she picked up her phone and saw there was no signal, she tossed it aside and kept driving.
She was still keeping an eye out for Bowie as she approached another curve. Once again she tapped the brakes, then felt sheer terror when the pedal went all the way to the floor.
“No, no, no! Oh my God!” she cried, still stomping the brakes and thinking this couldn’t be happening. She was holding on to the steering wheel with every ounce of her strength, trying to pull the car into the curve, but she was going too fast. There was a huge jolt when she hit the cable, and just when she thought it would save her, it popped. The cable was suddenly in the air, coiling and recoiling like a dying snake. From the corner of her eye she saw it flying backward into the trees and had no more than a split second to realize what was happening before everything turned into a nightmare. She was in the air and screaming, dropping, down, down, down toward the trees growing out of the side of the mountain.
She threw her arms up in front of her face just as she hit the first tree, snapping it off at the point of impact. Then the car nosed downward, sliding almost perpendicular to the slope until it caught between the trunks of three tall pines and stopped. The engine was smoking. The door on the passenger side had popped open. Except for the repetitive ding ding ding from the open door, there was nothing to be heard but wind through the trees.
* * *
Bowie and Aidan were less than a hundred yards from the house when they heard another rifle shot off to their left.
“That was a rifle,” Aidan said. “Has to be Jesse.”
Bowie nodded. “I think we need to start shouting his name to let him know we’re in the area.”
“Good idea,” Aidan said. “I’ll head for the creek, then walk north, and you head for the spring above it and walk south. I think he’s somewhere in between.”
“Agreed,” Bowie said, and took off at a lope, calling Jesse’s name every few yards.
At first he could hear Aidan doing the same, and then his brother’s voice got fainter and fain
ter, until Bowie could no longer hear him.
The pine trees on this part of their land were thick and straight, like toothpicks in a shot glass. Bowie moved as quickly as he could through them, knowing Jesse wouldn’t be hunting in here and was more likely closer to the water.
He thought of Talia as he searched, wondering if she was already at the house with his mother and imagining what their first conversation would be like after so many years.
He paused to get his bearings and called again, “Jesse! Jesse! Where are you?” then waited without an answer. “Dang it, Jesse, where are you?” he said, and kept moving until he finally reached the spring.
Within seconds of his arrival he saw footprints and breathed a sigh of relief. Jesse had been here.
“Jesse!” he shouted again.
And then he heard something faint in the distance, and ran another couple of hundred yards before he stopped and shouted again. “Jesse! Where are you?”
He heard a faint voice and the words, “I’m here!”
“Stay there! I’m coming toward you!” he shouted, and began following the flow of water downhill.
He was still going downhill when he heard another voice. It was Aidan.
“I found him!” Aidan yelled. “We’re here!”
Bowie lengthened his stride and soon came up on Aidan and Jesse cleaning squirrels.
“Look at all my squirrels,” Jesse said proudly.
Aidan looked up. “He nailed five...all clean head shots. I can’t do that.”
“I’m a good shot,” Jesse said. “Just like Daniel Boone.”
“I see that,” Bowie said, and then gave Jesse a big hug of relief. “You know, Mama is worried about you.”
Jesse frowned. “I know how to take care of myself,” he muttered.
“Did you tell her you were leaving to hunt?” Aidan asked.
Jesse frowned but didn’t answer.
Bowie took out his phone to check for a signal, then made a call to Leigh. Her voice was shaky when she answered, “Hello?”
“Mama, it’s me. Aidan and I found him. He’s fine. We’re cleaning squirrels, and then we’ll be home.”
“Thank goodness,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay. Hey, Mama, is Talia there yet?”
“No.”
Bowie frowned. “Okay. I’ll give her a call.”
He disconnected and then made a quick call to Talia. The phone rang and rang until it went to voice mail. He left a brief message for her to call and hung up.
It took another fifteen minutes to clean the last two squirrels. They washed the blood off their hands in the creek and headed home.
Jesse’s stride was long and sure. His head was up, and there was an expression of satisfaction on his face that Bowie hadn’t seen in a long time. He wondered what it felt like to be Jesse now, a grown man and yet a boy again.
* * *
Leigh was standing on the back porch watching for her sons to come out of the woods, and when they finally appeared she said a quick prayer of thanksgiving, then went back into the house and cried.
By the time they all came in the back door, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee between her hands.
Jesse looked at her, and then ducked his head and plopped the field-dressed squirrels into the sink, got out a big dishpan and ran it full of water to clean them again.
“Thank you, Bowie. Thank you, Aidan,” Leigh said, and got up and hugged them both.
“You’re welcome, Mama,” they echoed.
“Do you need us to stay?” Bowie asked, wondering what was keeping Talia.
“No, and I’m sorry I called you away from what you were doing.”
Jesse’s shoulders slumped. He might have lost some of his acumen, but he still knew enough to know he was in trouble. And when Leigh turned around and took the gun he’d left in the corner and headed out of the room, he was instantly wild-eyed and worried.
“What’s Mama doin’ with my rifle?”
His brothers shrugged.
“You need to be asking her that,” Bowie said. “I told you she was upset that you left without telling her. That’s called running away, Jesse, and Youngbloods don’t run away from home.”
Jesse’s eyes welled.
“I didn’t run away. I wouldn’t ever leave Mama.”
“Well, she didn’t know that, buddy,” Aidan said.
Jesse took a shaky breath.
“I gotta go say I’m sorry, don’t I?”
“That’s what a man would do,” Bowie said.
Jesse straightened his shoulders and dried his hands. “I am a man,” he said, and left the kitchen.
“Lord,” Bowie said.
“Glad you were here to help,” Aidan said.
“I need to check on Talia,” Bowie said. “She should have been here by now.”
“I’ll run out and get the brake fluid,” Aidan said. “Meet you out front.”
Bowie called Talia again and got her voice mail again, and now he was worried. She’d said she was coming. If something had changed that plan, she would have let him know. He went through the house to find his mother. She was sitting on the bed with Jesse, letting him apologize because it was important for him to acknowledge he was wrong. Bowie hated to interrupt, but he didn’t want to leave without telling her goodbye.
“We’re leaving now, Mama. I’ve got to go get the truck, but I’ll be back. And I’m worried about Talia. She should have been here by now.”
Jesse stood abruptly.
“I’m a good tracker. If she’s lost, I can find her,” he said.
Bowie smiled. “I know you are, Jesse. I don’t think she’s lost, but she might have had some kind of trouble.”
“Uh... Bowie...” Leigh hesitated, as if debating with herself about what she was about to say, and then she blurted it out anyway. “Like the trouble you had coming here?”
The idea startled him. “What made you say that?”
“There wasn’t anything wrong with Stanton’s pickup before. If it had been leaking fluid for a while, we would have seen it on the ground where he parked. There’s nothing there, and there’s nothing where you’ve been parking. I went to look after you called.”
“Why would you do that?” Bowie asked.
“Because Justin threatened to get even with us. Once you make an enemy of that family, you always have to watch your back.”
“Well, hell,” Bowie muttered. “But when could he possibly have done that?”
“Where did you park when you went into Eden?”
“At Talia’s house. In her driveway.”
And then he panicked. She was late. She wasn’t answering her phone.
“You don’t think—”
Leigh stood up.
“I don’t know what to think. I keep going over and over in my mind that decision Stanton and I made to help his sister and his brother to keep their homes. If we hadn’t, Stanton would still be alive.”
“You can’t second-guess yourself on that,” Bowie said. “That was nothing but pure love, helping them keep their homes, and everything that happened after that is all on the Wayne family. I love you, Mama, but I have to go. I need to find Talia.”
Jesse stood up.
“I will go with Bowie. I have sharp eyes.”
Leigh was getting ready to say no, and Bowie could plainly see her eyes were red from crying. Between the murder, her grief, and the stress of how the investigation was playing out, he guessed she was nearing her breaking point.
“It’s okay, Mama. Let him come with me. I’ll get the truck and refill the brake fluid. It’ll be enough to get us back into Eden, and if the brakes were tampered with I’ll get them fixed. And on the way we’ll look
for Talia. We’ll be coming back this way later, so it’s no big deal.”
Leigh frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure. Jesse does have sharp eyes. He shot five squirrels right through their heads.”
Leigh relented.
“Okay, Jesse, you can go. But you have to promise to do everything Bowie tells you to. He’s the oldest brother, remember?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s in charge,” Jesse said. “Like my lieutenant in our unit. He gives the orders, and I say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ and I do my job right.”
Aidan honked.
“There’s our ride, Jesse. We need to go now, Mama. We shouldn’t be long, but if we get held up I’ll give you a call.”
Leigh nodded, then followed them to the door, but there was a knot in her belly as she watched them leave.
* * *
Jesse was sitting in the backseat of Aidan’s car, and true to his word he rolled down the window and set up watch as if he was on patrol. He scanned the trees as they drove down the drive, and when they reached the blacktop, they had to caution him to not hang his head out the window.
He quickly obliged, but he sat as close to the door as he could get to watch the cliff side of the road as they started down the mountain.
Bowie glanced back and smiled at how seriously Jesse was taking his job.
“What are you looking for, Jesse?”
“Looking for your girl,” he said.
“Do you remember what she looks like?”
Jesse shrugged. “Kind of, but I’m not really looking for her. I’m looking for what’s not right.”
Bowie frowned. “What do you mean, little brother?”
Jesse just shrugged and leaned his head a little farther out the window to look at the road as they passed a big curve.
“The truck is just a little bit farther,” Bowie said.
All of a sudden Jesse shouted, “Stop the car! Stop the car!”
Aidan slammed on the brakes, making the car fishtail before coming to a stop. Before Bowie and Aidan knew what was happening, Jesse was out of the car and running.
They got out and followed him, grabbing him before he got too close to the edge of the cliff.
