Unspoken

by Lisa Jackson

  “You leave your sister alone or I’ll strip you down and take you to a place where the scorpions nest,” his grandfather had warned later while slathering butter on a slice of homemade bread, then drizzling it with honey. With rimless glasses, a bald head, and several missing teeth, Gerald McCallum was an imposing man whose wife, children and grandchildren never raised their voices to him. His word was law. “I ain’t kiddin’.”

  Ross had believed him.

  He’d never laid a hand on Mary Beth again.

  From that point on he’d been more careful, and his sexual fantasies about his sister had been transferred to other girls. He’d gotten laid at fifteen, but found no thrill in it; the girl, seventeen and horny, hadn’t been a challenge and Ross liked a challenge. The harder a woman said no, the more he pushed. Using his football player’s body and promises he never intended to keep, he usually got what he wanted.

  Until Shelby.

  She was the only woman he’d had to force into his way of thinking. And, he’d guessed later, she’d liked it that way. Otherwise she would’ve told her pa and there would have been hell to pay. Ross suspected Shelby liked it rough.

  Now Ross shouldered open the door to the saloon. Outside, the air felt muggy and oppressive, the night as dark as his mood. He thought of Shelby again and would gladly have given his last dime to get her alone. He remembered the rape vividly, had replayed it over and over in his mind as he’d lain in his bunk in his cell for those long, lonely eight years he’d spent behind bars. He’d told himself that she’d really wanted it, that she’d fought him only because she had some hang-ups about sex; the next time she’d be begging him.

  He made his way to his rattletrap of a truck parked near the corner, climbed inside and frowned. When he got some money from that magazine, he’d get himself a new truck and a rifle—which he might just have to buy through the black market. He wasn’t really sure about the laws about ex-cons owning a gun. He wasn’t really a con, though, the way he’d been sent to prison on trumped-up charges.

  But just to be on the safe side, he’d get himself a gun through the want ads. Same way he’d get himself a dog. The car would be different. He planned to get the flashiest set of wheels his money would buy.

  And one way or another, he’d have Shelby Cole again. It was goddamned written in the stars.

  Inside his truck, he twisted on the ignition, then turned on the radio. Nothing. “Shit.” He banged on the dash with his fist until the temperamental speakers crackled to life, then wheeled away from the curb. John Cougar Mellencamp was rocking.

  “I was born in a small town ...”

  “You and me both, buddy.”

  Ross noticed the pharmacy as he drove past, and the feed store down the way. You couldn’t get much smaller than Bad Luck. With the music blaring, he spat out the open window and drove to the very edge of town where there was a pay booth he hadn’t yet used. Mounted on the highway by a vacant building that had once housed a machinist’s shop, the booth was tucked far enough away from prying eyes that Ross felt safe. He snapped off the radio just as ol’ John wailed on about living, being taught the fear of Jesus and dying in a small town.

  Isn’t that what had happened to Caleb? Found Jesus and then died. But Ross didn’t think the old coot had managed to get to heaven. Nope. Caleb was probably roasting in hell right now, and that was just fine. Perfect. That’s what he got for lying through his false teeth and helping send Ross up the river.

  And it had been so easy to kill him. Slip into the room while he was sleeping when no one was paying attention, stuff the pillow over his head and watch his pathetic, skinny arms and legs flail as he struggled and failed to take another breath.

  The old guy shoulda thanked him. The way Ross saw it, he saved Caleb a whole lot of pain and suffering. No amount of chemotherapy or surgery or radiation was gonna save him anyway, so Ross had just helped him die. And it had felt good. Damned good.

  He’d feel even better if he could do the same for Ruby Dee and Nevada Smith. Both of those low-lifes deserved to die after setting him up.

  Softly whistling the refrain of Small Town, Ross drove through a gate that sagged open and parked his truck behind the vacant metal building. Out of sight from the street, he climbed out of the truck. It was dark here, aside from the dim light in the booth, and as he walked to the phone Ross jangled the change in his pocket. Dialing quickly, he turned his back to the street and waited as the call connected. He couldn’t quite swallow the smile that stretched across his chin because he liked nothing better than to rattle Nevada Smith’s cage.

  One ring.

  Two.

  Three.

  Hell, was the guy asleep or dead?

  Or getting it on with Shelby?

  Ross’s smile fell away. He lost count of the rings, and when the answering machine picked up, he didn’t bother to listen, just hung up and wished he hadn’t lost his thirty-five cents.

  His thoughts turned dark as he considered Smith with Shelby Cole. His stomach clenched, and he decided he couldn’t keep pussyfooting around, making anonymous calls and just toying with Shelby.

  Nope. It was time to see her again.

  On his terms.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You sent me the picture,” Shelby said, staring at the housekeeper with new eyes. Shelby, Lydia and the Judge sat at the patio table near the pool of the Judge’s house. Nevada leaned against an exterior wall, his body rigid, his expression grim, his gaze boring into Red Cole’s fleshy face.

  “Sí, niña.”Lydia nodded slowly and took a puff from a cigarette that she’d left burning in the solitary ashtray. Smoke curled toward the sky. Dawn was fast approaching. Already birds were singing morning songs and the first rays of sunlight were dancing across the pool’s smooth surface. “I sent it. Sí. And I lied about it.” Lydia’s eyes became downcast for a brief moment before she slowly lifted her chin in near defiance. She met the silent accusations in her employer’s eyes and said directly to the Judge, “And I would do it again. It was not right that Shelby did not know about Isabella ... Elizabeth. She is her daughter.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Shelby asked, still stunned by the deceptions and lies that clung, as diaphanous and ever-growing as Spanish moss, to this house she’d once called home.

  “I asked her not to,” the Judge admitted, then prodded by an angry look from Lydia, amended his stance. “Actually, I threatened her.”

  “Threatened her?” Shelby repeated and saw Lydia’s dark eyes snap.

  “With deportation?” Nevada guessed.

  Lydia’s lips pursed. She took a final pull on her cigarette, then jabbed it out in the tray. “I—I was not worried about myself, but Carla and Pablo, the children and ...” She shrugged. “And Isabella. They would all suffer.”

  “You would deport your own grandchild?” Shelby’s stomach turned sour. This was too much. Shaking inside, she shoved back her chair and refused to look her father in the eye. “What kind of a monster are you?” she asked.

  “A sick one.” Lydia, finally getting some starch in her spine, stood and carried her ashtray into the kitchen. “Tell her,” she said over her shoulder. “She has the right to know. She is your hija,your daughter. She deserves to know the truth. No more secrets. No more. I ... I cannot deal with them.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Shelby asked, but began to understand. The Judge looked old. Tired. Hadn’t there been some reference to her father’s health before? Hadn’t she overheard Lydia and the Judge talking about it?

  “Oh, hell, I’ve got cancer, Shelby. Not the same as Caleb Swaggert’s, but terminal.” Before she could ask, he waved her question aside. “Prostate, not that it matters.” He leaned back in his chair, the bags under his eyes more defined. “The doctors are giving me a year ... maybe two, but that’s it.”

  The bottom of Shelby’s world fell out. “No ... I don’t believe it. In today’s world there are so many treatments.” She looked to Nevada for encourag
ement, but he only shrugged. Her father dying? She’d considered it before but never had she really thought she’d lose the man who had run roughshod over her and manipulated her life for as long as she could remember.

  “Accept it, Shelby,” Jerome said slowly. “I have. If you hadn’t come back because of Lydia’s doing, I would have called you myself eventually. You’re going to inherit everything I have, you know. The ranch, oil wells, this house and—”

  “No!” Shelby said, her voice raw, her emotions splintered. “I don’t want to hear this. Not now. Not on the day I’m going to finally be reconnected with the daughter you told me died, the daughter you hid from me. Okay? I can’t deal with the fact that when I’m finally going to get to know my daughter, you ... you might be dying.” Her heart was pounding and she felt tears of anger burn behind her eyes.

  “You have a lot to face,” the Judge said, standing slowly, his jaw covered with a day’s worth of silvering whiskers. Leaning heavily on his cane, he swept his tired gaze to Nevada. “And so do you, Smith. Like as not you’re going to be arrested for Estevan’s murder. The D.A.’s got a pretty tight case against you, or so I’ve heard.” His old eyes narrowed. “You ready for that?”

  “I told you. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Well, that may be. Then again, you might be lying.” He frowned, used the tip of his cane to squish an ant that had been foolish enough to wander close to him on the veranda. “Either way, you’d better be ready, so get yourself a good lawyer. You know there’s a woman in San Antonio, knows Orrin Findley. Has her own firm. Stahancyk, that’s her name. She’s a big woman—near six foot tall—and got a tongue on her you wouldn’t believe. Doesn’t pull any punches and isn’t afraid of nothin’. Scares the living hell out of the D.A. She and that partner of hers—oh, hell, what’s his name.” He snapped his fingers and shook his head. “Joe or John Crawford, can’t remember which. He’s as small as she is big—always smilin’ that one. Looks innocent but he’s tough as nails. They’re a helluva team, let me tell you. I could put in a good word for ya.”

  Nevada’s expression didn’t change. “Don’t bother.”

  “Stahancyk and Crawford. They’re supposed to be the best.”

  “Forget it. Right now I’m gonna meet my daughter.”

  “Ha.” The Judge started toward the house. “Someone’s daughter, you mean.” He didn’t wait for a reaction, just hiked his way across the tile and opened the door to the kitchen.

  “What’s a man got to do to get a fresh cup of coffee around here?” he asked Lydia, and Shelby’s heart tore into a thousand pieces. Judge Jerome “Red” Cole had actually offered Nevada a kind of olive branch in suggesting the name of a defense attorney. Not that Nevada needed one. Not for a second would she believe him capable of murder.

  The door closed behind her father. Dear God, was she gaining a daughter only to lose a father—a man whom she despised and yet knew deep in her heart had tried his best to provide for her? A womanizer, a liar, a cheat, the grand manipulator?

  She swallowed back any shred of pity for the man who had sired her. He’d spent too many years attempting to ruin her life.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said to Nevada, already walking across the tile and past half-a-dozen pots overflowing with summer blooms. Elizabeth’s plane was due to land at the ranch within the hour. “I’ll drive.”

  Nevada didn’t argue, just followed her past a rose garden and climbed in the passenger side of the Cadillac, then slid a pair of sunglasses onto his nose. Shelby drove away in a cloud of dust, pushing the speed limit, taking comers faster than they were meant to be.

  “Still a lead foot,” he remarked as they crested a rise just before turning north at the outskirts of town.

  “Scared?” she asked, sliding him a glance.

  “About your driving?” One side of his mouth lifted in amusement.

  “About this whole Estevan thing.”

  “Not for me.” Tilting his head, he looked at her over the tops of his shades.

  “What? You’re worried about me?” she said with a snort. “Well, don’t be. I’m a big girl, I can handle myself.”

  He didn’t say another word, just turned to watch the countryside fly by out of a bug-spattered windshield. The car sped past miles of fence line, acres of range grass, copses of pine and oak gilded by the early-morning sunlight. Cattle and horses grazed in pastures irrigated by above-ground sprinkler systems or ditches.

  Her stomach was in knots, her mind racing ahead as they turned into the lane to the ranch. What if Elizabeth hated her on sight? What if Maria resented her? What if ... oh, hell it didn’t matter. She would find a way to work things out with her child, but dealing with Nevada was another issue altogether.

  He might not be Elizabeth’s biological father. Face it, Shelby, this nine-year-old girl might have been sired by Ross McCallum.

  Her fingers clenched over the steering wheel. No way in hell was that possible. God wouldn’t play such a cruel trick on her, not now, not after she’d come so far.

  Through the gates and over the cattle guard she drove, barely slowing as they approached the main house and out buildings, the very area where Ross had caught up with her ten years earlier.

  “So she was in Galveston all this time?” Nevada asked.

  “Yes.” Shelby nodded and eased up on the gas. “According to Lydia.”

  “And Lydia’s silence was bought by your father,” Nevada clarified as she pulled up near the machine shed. “In exchange for the right to stay in the country and work for him, Lydia and everyone else who knew about the baby had to pretend that Elizabeth had died.”

  “That’s about the size of it”

  “Nice guy, your father.”

  “Always has been,” Shelby mocked as she slowed to a stop and cut the engine. She slid out of the already-warm interior of the Cadillac and walked up a cement path to the door of the ranch house where she’d stolen the keys to her father’s pickup so many years before. A morning breeze swept through the canyons, and horses and cattle dotted the landscape. The ranch foreman, Jeb Wilkins, met Shelby on the front porch. She’d never liked the man, remembered when he was just a ranch hand and, along with Ross McCallum, had, she thought, leered at her, talking behind her back, laughing at the Judge’s little “princess.” He’d been here that night playing cards with Ross McCallum.

  Shelby’s lips tightened over her teeth.

  This morning Jeb was all business.

  “ ’Mornin’, Shelby,” he said, flashing a smile of yellowing teeth. “If ya like, I could ride with ya to the airstrip,” he offered.

  “No need,” she said as he handed her a set of keys, then pointed to the truck with an extended cab.

  “If you’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Just want to help out.”

  “The lady can handle it.” Nevada held the man’s gaze with his own unwavering stare.

  Jeb nodded. “Fair enough, then. I’ll see to the gate.” Shelby snagged the keys from his outstretched hand, walked to the oversized truck and climbed behind the wheel. Nevada sat next to her on the wide bench seat and stared through his shaded glasses at the twin ruts leading to the airstrip as Jeb, true to his word, unlatched the aluminum gate and helped it swing open.

  “Don’t be disappointed if she doesn’t like you,” Nevada said, once the ranch house was behind them.

  “I won’t.”

  “Sure you will.” He eyed the surrounding countryside. High overhead, a hawk circled.

  “I know this will take time.” The pickup bucked as they hit a pothole.

  “It’s gonna be tough.”

  “Thanks for the twenty-five-cent psychology,” she snapped, her nerves frayed.

  “Anytime, darlin’,” he drawled with that damned sexy smile stretching across his face as he turned his attention to the dusty calves who lumbered beside their mothers as the cows grazed or chewed their cuds.

  “You know,” she said, bringing up
a sore subject as the airstrip came into view, “for a man who might be facing a murder charge, you sure don’t seem worried.”

  “I’m worried enough.”

  “But—”

  “I didn’t do it, okay?” He turned to her, his lips suddenly blade-thin as his temper got the better of him. “I don’t know how the gun found its way to my property. McCallum stole my truck that night. The .38 was locked in the glove box. After the wreck, it turned up missing, so either someone took it out before he slid off the road and wrapped the pickup around that tree or it was taken afterward. Either way, I didn’t have it and I didn’t kill Estevan!”

  “I know that,” she said, her throat rough.

  “Good. We’ll worry about it later. Right now, I think we’d better meet your daughter.”

  “And yours,” she said, slowing as the truck neared the cement landing strip that ran along a flat area of the ranch.

  “Maybe.” His eyes held hers for several long, heart-stopping seconds. “But you gotta face facts, Shelby. This child could have McCallum blood in her veins. That doesn’t make her any less your daughter.”

  “I know,” Shelby admitted, her heart growing cold, her eyes locking with the steely gray of his. She was still clutching the steering wheel. Oh, God, she wanted this child to belong to Nevada. “I—I just can’t believe it.”

  “It’s not the kid’s fault.” He grabbed her hand then, his big, calloused fingers closing over hers, and she felt the strength of his grip, realizing that he wasn’t just talking about Elizabeth, but himself as well. He, the half-breed, had suffered the pain of a mother’s rejection, the shame of circumstances he couldn’t control. Her heart ached for him and what he’d suffered. “Okay, Shelby,” he said, glancing through the windshield to the sky. “It’s show time. Your daughter’s here.”