by Janet Dailey
“Fine, I’ll do it. But you promise me something. The more you rest, the sooner you can come home. I need to know you’re taking it easy and letting these good people take care of you.”
“All right.” His jaw tightened as he shifted in the bed. “Now get going before that battle-ax of a nurse throws you out of here.” Will’s voice had begun to strain and fade. Realizing he’d stayed long enough, Beau turned to leave. That was when he heard a commotion in the hall.
“You can’t go back there, ma’am.” It was the nurse Will had just mentioned. “The doctor said—”
“I don’t care what he said! Get out of my way!” The door swung open and Tori burst into the room. Dressed in her black court suit with a fuchsia-pink silk blouse, she was wind-tousled and out of breath, as if she’d crossed the parking lot at a dead run in her high stilettos.
The sight of Will stopped her in her tracks. “Oh, good Lord,” she breathed.
Will managed a grin. “Tori, honey,” he drawled. “You look like a chocolate-dipped strawberry. Sorry I can’t get up and take a nibble.”
She glanced sharply at Beau. “Is he drunk?”
“It’s the pain meds,” Beau said.
Bunching her fists on her slender hips, she glowered at her ex-husband. “You should’ve been more careful, Will Tyler!” she snapped. “How could you have let this happen?”
“You could ask the snake, but he’s blown to bloody . . . bits.” Will grimaced, unable to keep up the pretense that he wasn’t in excruciating pain.
Tori, Beau noticed, was trembling on her high heels. Glancing around the tiny room, he spotted a folding chair and set it up next to the bed. As she moved past him to sit, he glimpsed tears in her eyes.
What happened between these two people who still clearly love each other?
“Does Erin know?” Will asked.
“Only the little I was able to tell her. She’s sleeping over with a friend tonight. But I know she’s worried about you.”
“She mustn’t come. It’d only upset her. Just tell her I’m doing fine.”
“Are you doing fine, Will?” Her hand crept across the sheet to rest on his.
Something glimmered in one swollen eye. “Don’t worry your pretty head about me, girl. I’m too mean and ugly to die.” His gaze shifted to Beau, who stood in the doorway. “Get going, man. I’m here with a beautiful woman, and you’ve got a ranch to run.”
Beau headed back to the waiting room, reassured that Will was in good hands. Tori would keep an eye on him, and heaven help anybody who tried to remove her from his bedside before she was ready to leave.
To Beau’s surprise, the sheriff was still there, over by the coffeepot in the alcove. “I didn’t expect you to still be here, Sheriff.”
“I was just getting me a cup for the road.” He popped a lid onto a cup. “How’s the patient?”
“Well enough to give orders. Tori’s with him.”
The sheriff nodded. “Yeah, I saw her come flying through and charge on back.”
“I need to head back to the ranch. Any chance I can ride that far with you?”
“I don’t see why not. You’re a fellow man of the law,” he replied with a shrug.
“I appreciate it. I’m ready if you are.”
“Let’s go.” The sheriff headed for the exit, cup in hand.
Sky scanned the rugged canyon pastureland, his gaze lingering on the mesquite thickets where cattle might still be hiding. Most people thought cows were dumb, and maybe they were in the ways humans measured intelligence. But long ago their ancestors had been wild, and the old survival instincts were still there, buried deep in their genes. They were smart enough to hide, and to hide well.
The roundup was organized to cover one section of the ranch at a time. When the hands finished clearing the cattle out of an area, they moved, along with everything they needed, to the next site. This lower pasture, on the border of the ranch, was one of the larger sections. It was a grueling place to work cows because of the brush, which would need to be chained and burned over the summer while the cattle were gone.
Now, after three days, the work here was almost finished. One more sweep to gather any loose animals and the branding fire would be doused, the equipment loaded onto trucks, and the whole operation moved to a new spot.
It was the custom to change horses after lunch. Sky had chosen a sturdy buckskin from his string in the remuda. With the cowhands mounted once more, he directed them to spread along the outer boundaries of the pasture and work their way toward the center, driving the last of the cattle ahead of them. He and Lute would check the bog at the lowest corner. Calves had been known to wander into the morass of reeds and cattails and get mired in the sucking mud.
Motioning for Lute to follow, he nudged the horse to an easy trot. Lute had been slacking all day. Any other new hire would have been shown the gate, but Sky wanted to give the boy the same chance he’d been given. He remembered how he’d wandered onto the Rimrock Ranch years ago, young and scared and hungry, and how Bull Tyler had taken him in and given him work. This ranch could be Lute’s one chance to make a decent future for himself.
Lute was family, more like a kid brother than a cousin. Sky barely remembered his own mother, who had died when he was three, and the nameless white man who’d fathered him was long gone. If his mother’s brother hadn’t given him a home, he’d have ended up a ward of the state.
Life in the big, unruly Fletcher clan had been far from perfect. The mother was a descendant of Comancheros, Mexicans who’d traded with the Indians for white captives to sell south of the border. Drinking, drugs, fights, and petty crimes were so commonplace in the family that Sky had come to accept these things as normal. But he’d always sensed that he was different, and he’d held himself apart.
At fifteen, after his uncle had belt-whipped his back to a mass of bloody welts, he’d run away and found a new life. The Tylers had been good to him, and Sky was loyal to the marrow of his bones. But he knew better than to think he could ever be one of them.
“I need to ask you something, Sky.” Lute, who’d been trailing behind, had caught up with him. “What can you tell me about girls?”
The question almost made Sky laugh. He’d dated some attractive ladies over the years, but they’d all ended up moving on. Not that he blamed them. Much as he enjoyed a good roll in the hay, he’d never had the time to invest in a serious relationship. Maybe he never would.
“Do I look like the right man to ask about girls?” he responded to Lute’s query. “How many girls have you seen flocking around me, boy?”
“You’re family. There’s nobody else I can ask.”
Sky scanned the brush for any sign of a rusty-red coat. “So what exactly do you want me to tell you?”
“You know. How to make them like you. What to say. How you know when it’s time to make a move.”
“So you’ve met a girl, have you?”
“Her name’s Jess. She’s a waitress at the Blue Coyote. Wears these sexy little pink boots. Last week she let me take her out for pizza, but I’d like to . . . you know.”
Sky groaned inwardly. He’d never been with Jess, but he could name a dozen men who had. Lute’s naïve young heart was about to get stomped. The lesson would be bitter, but there was one only one way for him to learn it—on his own.
“Just be yourself,” Sky said. “If she likes you, fine. If not, there are plenty of other girls around. The most important thing to remember is, play it cool. Don’t push her. And don’t act like you care too much, even if you do. Make sense?”
“I . . . guess.” Lute seemed distracted. They were nearing the bog, a place Sky had never liked. It was rank with the odors of rotting vegetation and animals that had died trapped in the muck. Today the smell seemed unusually bad. Black vultures, their ugly red heads bare of feathers, flapped in and out of the reeds. A dozen of them roosted in the dead white cottonwood that stood at the edge of the swamp.
“Dammit!” Sky swore. “I�
�m betting we’ve lost a cow. But we’ve got to make sure. Come on, Lute. It won’t be pretty, but this is part of the job.”
Dismounting, they tethered their horses at a safe distance and walked down the slope toward the patch of tall brown reeds where the birds were flocking.
Lute was first to see what they were feeding on. Without a word, he doubled over and vomited in the grass.
Sky breathed an oath as he saw it, too. The body had been here for a few days, he calculated, long enough for the birds to make a mess of it. The head and torso were hidden by the reeds. Only the bare legs were clearly visible—legs that ended in a pair of waterlogged pink boots.
CHAPTER 6
Will was propped on pillows, his expression a thundercloud. “I saw the news last night,” he growled with an eyebrow lifted toward the small TV above his bed. “I hope you’re here to tell me what the hell’s going on.”
Beau took a moment to study his brother from the doorway. The antivenin was doing its work. His gaze was alert and the puffiness was gone in his face and hands. But the bitten leg remained swollen and inert beneath the sheet. According to the doctor, he was still on pain medication and would be in the hospital at least through the weekend.
“You’re looking right perky this afternoon.” Beau walked into the room and took a seat next to the bed. “Sounding perky, too.”
Will swore. “Lord, get me out of this place! Those blasted nurses won’t even let me up to piss!”
“So I see.” Beau glanced at the catheter bag that hung below the hem of the sheet. The teasing banter masked his genuine concern. His brother could have died from the fall off the horse, if not from the bite.
“So what did you hear on the news?” he asked Will.
“I heard somebody found a female body in the bog. And it turned out to be that poor kid from the Blue Coyote. What the hell happened out there?”
“Nobody knows for sure. But the ranch has been a damned circus. Cops and press all over the place. If I hadn’t been needed to deal with them, I’d have been here sooner.” Beau rose, walked to the sink, and filled a paper cup with water. Sitting again, he took a sip. “Sky and Lute found her when they were checking for cows. She’d been there long enough for the buzzards to get at her. Evidently she was shot through the side of the head.”
“You’ve had experience with this kind of thing. Was the girl killed on the ranch?”
“The sheriff doesn’t think so. Since they didn’t find any blood at the scene, I’d agree. Her body was more than likely dumped. But you’re talking fifteen miles from town. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to leave her in that bog—somebody who knew exactly where to take her. When we know why, we should be able to figure out who.”
Will fingered the stubble on his unshaven jaw. Beau could sense his brother’s thoughts, wandering the same paths his own had traveled. Only someone local, most likely someone who’d grown up here or worked on the ranch, would know about the bog. And the way the girl was killed, coldly, almost execution style, didn’t suggest an impulsive crime of passion. Somebody had wanted her dead for a reason—somebody who knew how to kill. But why leave the body where it would attract scavengers and be found?
“Any suspects?”
“Not yet. Lute was one of the last to see her alive, but he’s got a solid alibi. Ralph saw the girl when he picked up Lute outside the bar. They both swear she was fine.”
“Lute was with her that night?”
“Not in the way you mean. He bought her a pizza. The cashier at Burger Shack confirmed they were there. Lute’s pretty broken up, but I think it was just a case of puppy love.”
“What about those two birds that run the place—the woman and the biker with the tattoos?”
“They claim she was alive when they closed up and left that night. Last they saw of her, she was headed for Burger Shack with Lute.”
Will shifted in the bed to ease the pressure on his bad leg. “Damned shame. I’ve had a few drinks and played some pool in that bar myself. The girl was a sweet kid, for all the way she made her side money. Nobody deserves to go that way. I just hope they catch the bastard who did it.” Abruptly, he changed the subject. “What about the roundup? I hope you’re not about to tell me that everything’s shut down for the murder investigation.”
“Relax, everything’s fine.” Beau had been ready to counter that concern. “The operation’s moved to the northwest pasture. Everything’s on schedule to finish next week, and then Sky plans to start looking for colts to train. I know you wanted me to get the ranch records on the computer, so I’ll be spending time in your office.”
“There’s still a lot to do now. Somebody’s got to see to the calving. The heifers will be dropping their babies anytime now. And as soon as the herd’s up on the caprock, the manure’s got to be spread on the pastures, and that mesquite’s got to be chained and fired.”
“I know.” Beau nodded. “Trust us, Will. Everything’s under control. Just take it easy and let yourself heal. As soon as you get home, you can start bossing everybody around again.”
“Fine.” Will winced with the pain. “Now get out of here and get back to work. You’ve got better things to do than sit around here keeping an old grouch company.”
Beau rose, pausing at the door. “Anything else?”
“Call Tori and tell her she can bring Erin to the ranch this weekend. I know Erin wants to see her foal.”
“I will, but you may see Tori before I do. She said she’d be checking on you today.”
Will snorted. “She’s only worried for Erin’s sake, that’s all. Tori doesn’t give a damn about me, and I can’t say I blame her.”
“I won’t even ask.” Beau wouldn’t have minded knowing the full story of their breakup. But this wasn’t the time to put Will through any more stress. With a quick good-bye, he exited the room and started down the hall.
One of the nurses, a husky young man, stopped him short of the swinging doors. “Mr. Tyler, the hospital wants to replace the antivenin Dr. Haskell brought in yesterday. We’ve packed six vials in the cooler she left. Would you be able to get them back to her?”
“No problem.” Beau’s answer came without hesitation. “Since she brought all she had for my brother, I know she’ll appreciate getting her supply back.”
Beau accepted the cooler and carried it to the pickup he’d driven from the ranch. He’d be going through Blanco Springs on the way home. It would be easy enough to drop it off at the clinic, which was built onto her house.
Once he reached Blanco Springs, he drove right to her place, an ordinary-looking redbrick rambler on the outskirts of town with no close neighbors. The clinic was built onto one end at a forward angle, like a wing. Beyond the house he could see a stable and a corral with two horses in it, probably four-legged patients of Natalie’s.
If she wasn’t home, he had already decided to leave the cooler with Tori. He wondered if he should do that anyway. But Natalie’s Toyota was parked outside the clinic, and next to it was a vintage pink Cadillac. Evidently she had a patient. He would just leave the cooler and go.
As he parked next to Natalie’s SUV, the front door of the clinic opened and a blue-haired woman in a lavender pantsuit emerged with a gray poodle in her arms. Carrying the dog to the Cadillac, she climbed in and drove off down the street.
Walking up to the door, Beau gave it a warning rap, then stepped inside. Natalie, who ran her business without hired help, was straightening up the reception area, rearranging the magazines and throwing away a candy wrapper someone had left. She was dressed for work in jeans and a white lab coat, her curls pulled back behind her childlike ears.
She looked around with a startled glance, then smiled as he held up the cooler. “I hope that isn’t empty,” she said.
“No, they replaced your donation. Thanks again, Natalie. Our family owes you a huge debt.”
“Consider it paid.” She took the wrapped vials out of the cooler and placed them in a fridge behind the reception area.
“How’s Will?”
“Looking better, but he’s as grumpy as a grizzly bear with mange.”
“That must mean he’s getting better.” She walked back around the counter to face him, her liquid eyes so vulnerable that it took all his restraint to remain where he stood. “I heard about the body they found on the ranch. That poor girl. Who would do that? Why? It can’t be anyone from around here, can it?”
“I don’t think they have any answers yet,” Beau said. “When you’re on a call out on those back roads, you need to keep your eyes open, and for heaven’s sake, don’t play Good Samaritan. If you know how to use a gun, you’d better carry one.”
“I—” The rest of the sentence died on her lips at the sound of a door opening in the rear of the clinic. It took a split second for Beau to realize it was the door leading from the main part of the house.
Natalie’s face paled. She took a step away from him. “I’m up front, Slade,” she called.
Beau stood his ground, waiting for Slade to appear. He hadn’t meant to get Natalie in trouble. But they’d done nothing wrong, and he’d be damned if he was going to turn tail and run.
“Hello, Slade,” he said as the man stepped out of the hallway.
“What’re you doing here, Tyler?” The tails of his work shirt hung loose over his belly, and one hand clasped an open can of beer. He looked mean enough to spit acid.
Beau kept his calm. “Your wife’s antivenin saved my brother. The folks at the hospital in Lubbock asked me to bring her a new supply. I just dropped it off.”
“So, if you just dropped it off, how come you’re still here?”
“Show some manners, Slade!” Natalie burst out. “We were talking about the murder of that poor girl, and Beau was asking me if I had a gun. That’s all.”
Slade’s eyes narrowed to menacing slits. “If my wife needs a gun, I’ll give her one of mine. You’ve got no business hanging around her. You got a problem with that, feel free to take me on. I’d enjoy beating you to a bloody pulp.”
