Hard Ride to Dry Gulch

by Joanna Wayne

  Travis started back to the party. He’d lost the mood for celebrating, but he couldn’t haul ass without letting Leif know he was leaving. His boots stirred up loose gravel as he neared the sprawling ranch house. Music from the band wafted through the night, competing with the cacophony of thousands of tree frogs, crickets and the occasional howl of a coyote.

  Welcoming lights spilled out from every window of the old ranch house. The glow did nothing to make Travis feel more at home, but oddly, he didn’t experience any rancor toward the house or the ranch.

  Even more surprising, he didn’t hate R.J., not the way Leif had at first or the way Travis had expected to before he’d met the man. Hard to hate a dying man, even a father who hadn’t bothered to find out if you were dead or alive or being daily abused after your mother died of cancer.

  Not hating R.J. didn’t mean Travis gave a damn about him or wanted anything to do with him or the bait R.J. was casting out to lure his estranged family home.

  Bottom line: if home was where the heart was, the Dry Gulch Ranch didn’t make the cut for Travis.

  He spotted R.J. rounding the side of the house. The old man hesitated, then swayed as if he was losing his balance. Travis rushed over and caught him just as he started to crumple to the hard earth.

  R.J. looked up at him, but his expression was blank and he looked pasty and dazed.

  Travis kept a steadying arm around his waist. “Do you need an ambulance?”

  R.J. raked his fingers through his thinning gray hair and looked up at Travis. “An ambulance?”

  “You almost passed out there.”

  “Where’s Gwen?”

  It was the first Travis had heard of a Gwen. “Why don’t I get you back inside and I’ll see if I can find her?”

  R.J. muttered a string of curses. “Just get Gwen. And tell everyone else to go home. Don’t know what the hell all these people are doing here, anyway.”

  His words were slurred, difficult to understand. There was no smell of alcohol on his breath, so Travis figured this had to be related to the tumor.

  Leif said R.J. had occasional moments when he wasn’t fully lucid, but he hadn’t indicated R.J. totally lost it like this. Could be the tumor had shifted or increased in size.

  Travis looked around, hoping to see someone who knew more about R.J. than he did heading back to the house or to their car. No such luck. Everyone was obviously still in the party tent.

  “Let’s go inside,” Travis said again. “Maybe Gwen’s in there.”

  He began leading the old man toward the back porch. “Just a few yards to go,” Travis said. He walked slowly, supporting most of R.J’s weight. When they reached the steps, R.J. grabbed hold of the railing.

  “Take a second to catch your breath,” Travis told him.

  R.J. shook his head, then straightened, still a bit shaky. He looked back toward the area where the reception was going full blast and then up at Travis, as if trying to figure out what the devil was going on.

  “Did I drag you away from the party?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Travis said. “I walked someone to their car and ran into you a few yards from the house. You looked like you could use some help.”

  R.J. scratched his chin. “Damned tumor. Can’t make up its mind if it wants to kill me or drive me crazy. Gets me so mixed-up I don’t know if I’m shucking or shelling.”

  “Do you want me to drive you to the emergency room?”

  “Hell no. Nothing they can do. I’ll just go inside and sit down awhile. Tell Leif that if you see him. I don’t want him worrying about what happened to me while he should be celebrating.”

  “Shouldn’t I get someone to come stay with you? You probably shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Nope. Tumor’s going to kill me and that’s a fact, but it ain’t gonna rule me. I’m okay now. You go back to the party afore that looker friend of Joni’s you were dancing with hooks up with some other guy.”

  So the old man didn’t miss much when he was lucid. “If you’re talking about Faith Ashburn, she’s already left.” Probably to hook up with another guy. Hopefully not one picked up anywhere near the Passion Pit.

  “C’mon. I’ll walk inside with you—not that I think you need help,” he added before R.J. could rebuke him. “I could use a glass of water. Then I’ll let Leif know where you are and see if I can find Gwen for you.”

  “Gwen?”

  “You mentioned her a minute ago.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did.”

  “Don’t that just stitch your britches? Far as I know, there ain’t no Gwen around these parts.”

  But there had been one wherever R.J. had gone in his mind. By the time they were inside the house, the old man seemed as alert as he had at the start of the evening. He walked on his own to the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a bottle of milk. Travis reached into the cabinet, took out a glass and set it on the counter for him.

  “Join me in a drink?” R.J. asked. “There’s beer or whiskey around here somewhere or you can just get water out of the faucet. We don’t drink that fancy bottled designer H2O around here.”

  Sitting around drinking like old friends with R.J. had about as much appeal as being invited to shovel manure out of the horse barn.

  “Another time,” Travis said. “If you’re okay, I need to be going.”

  “Sure. I’m good. You head on back to the party. You know your being here tonight meant a lot to your brother.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it. Leif’s family.” All the family he had. Meeting R.J. hadn’t changed that. “You take care,” Travis said. Eager to clear out before the man started talking family or brought up his bizarre will, he turned and started back to the party.

  “Thanks, son,” R.J. called after him.

  Travis didn’t stop or turn around. But the word son clattered in his head, knocking loose some bad memories as he pulled the front door shut behind him. Memories he’d banished to the deepest, darkest abyss of his mind years ago and wasn’t about to let R.J. rekindle.

  But Travis had accomplished one thing tonight other than doing his duty by Leif. He now knew the mystery woman from the Passion Pit’s name.

  First thing tomorrow, he’d start his own investigation of Faith Ashburn—which might plunge him into a new set of problems.

  If he discovered that she wasn’t as innocent as his hunch indicated and she was involved in some kind of criminal behavior, he’d have no choice but to arrest her.

  News that your brother had just arrested your wife’s maid of honor would no doubt ensure a dynamic beginning to the honeymoon. Leif would love him for that.

  * * *

  FAITH PULLED ON the cotton T-shirt, drew her bare feet onto the bed and slipped between the crisp sheets. The once-cozy home felt even lonelier than usual tonight.

  Perhaps it was the contrast between the glorious future filled with love and happiness stretching in front of Joni and Leif, and the heartbreak that filled these walls that made the desperation almost too much to endure.

  Whatever the reason, the fear for Cornell pressed against her chest with such force she could barely breathe. Tales of past real-life abduction horrors roamed her mind like bands of deadly marauders. Victims kept against their will, sometimes for years. Abused. Tortured. Killed.

  She shuddered and beat a fist into the pillow. Knowing she’d never find a shred of peace on her own, she finally gave up and retrieved the bottle of antianxiety medication the doctor had prescribed.

  She shook two pills from the bottle and swallowed them with a few sips from the glass of water she’d placed on her nightstand earlier. She switched off the lamp and lay in the muted moonlight that filtered through her window. The branches of the oak outside creaked in the wind and sent eerie shadows creeping across her ceiling. />
  Counting backward, she tried to force her mind to dull and welcome sleep. Instead, her thoughts shifted to Travis. The instant attraction she’d felt in his arms was difficult to figure. Not that his rugged good looks wouldn’t have been enough to grab almost any woman’s attention, especially one who hadn’t been with a man in over two years.

  Only it was more what she sensed with him than what she saw. Strength. Determination. Protectiveness toward his niece.

  And a promise that she could trust him. She’d wanted to believe that, wanted it so badly that she’d almost turned around and driven back to the ranch after fifteen minutes on the road.

  But she’d tried the police. They saw things in black-and-white. Her son had left home. His friends had suggested he was on drugs. He’d been seen in the seedy area of town and inside a strip club where he’d appeared to be enjoying himself.

  Their deduction: no foul play suspected.

  The police might be right to a point, but she knew her son. He might have caved in to peer pressure and smoked a joint, but he was not an addict. He might even have gone along with friends for a night of carousing, but unless something terrible had happened, he would have come home.

  The black of night had eased into the gray of dawn before sleep finally claimed her.

  She woke to the jarring ring of the phone. Anticipation stabbed her heart the way it did at every unexpected call, and she grabbed the receiver, knocking over the glass of water. The liquid splattered her arm and the side of her bed as she clutched the phone and put it to her ear.

  “Hello.”

  “Mom.”

  Chapter Three

  Faith’s heart pounded against her chest. Her breath caught. She jerked to a sitting position and forced her words through a choking knot at the back of her throat.

  “Cornell. Is that you? Is it really you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. Only...”

  “Tell me where you are, Cornell. I’ll come get you. Just tell me where you are?”

  “I can’t, Mom.”

  “Are you having seizures? Have you been taking your meds?”

  “I have a new prescription. No seizures in months.” His voice shook. “I’m so sorry. So sor—”

  His voice grew silent. Curses railed in the background. The phone went dead.

  “Cornell! Cornell!” She kept calling, but she was yelling his name into a lifeless phone. Her insides rolled sickeningly.

  “Please call me back. Please, Cornell, call me back,” she whispered. The phone stayed silent.

  There had to be a way to reach him. A hard metal taste filled the back of her throat as she punched in *69. A brief sputter of interference was the only response to her attempt to reach the number Cornell had called from.

  Her head felt as if someone had turned on strobe lights inside it. A pulsing at the temples tightened like a Vise-Grip. She buried her head in her hands in an attempt to stop the dizzying sensation.

  Was this just another nightmare or had she actually heard her son’s voice?

  No, even trapped in the shock, she was certain the call had been real. Tears burned in the corners of her eyes and then escaped to stream down her face.

  Cornell was alive. Finally, the truth of that rolled over her in waves. Her son was alive.

  But where was he and what could he possibly be sorry for? For taking drugs? For drinking? Was he staying away because he thought she was mad at him? But if that was all there was, who had yelled the curses in the background that had frightened Cornell into breaking off the call midsentence?

  He was not alone and whoever was with had him under their control.

  Possibilities exploded in her mind, all of them too frightening to bear.

  There had to be a way to find out where that call had originated. If she knew where Cornell was, she could rescue him. She could bring him home.

  His interrupted call was proof he was being held or at least intimidated by someone. Even the Dallas Police Department couldn’t deny that.

  Call me. You can trust me.

  Travis’s words echoed in her mind. But was it Travis Dalton she should put her faith in or a man she knew only as Georgio?

  * * *

  OFFICIALLY, IT WAS Travis’s day off. Unofficially, he strolled into the precinct about 7:00 a.m. No one in the front office seemed surprised to see him. Homicide detectives never kept normal hours.

  Neither did crime.

  Jewel Sayer raised one eyebrow as he passed her desk. “I thought you were partying in Oak Grove this weekend?”

  “Just stayed long enough to get my brother married.”

  “What? No hot chicks at the wedding reception?”

  “None as hot as you, Jewel.”

  “Can’t go comparing the rest of the mere mortals to me, Travis. You’ve got to learn to settle for someone in your league.”

  “So you keep telling me.”

  Jewel was in her mid-thirties and a far cry from the beauty-pageant types who filled the Dallas hot spots six nights a week. She had a boxlike face hemmed in by dark, straight hair cropped an inch from her scalp. Her breasts were lost beneath boxy, plain cotton shirts. Her trousers bagged. Her face was a makeup-free zone.

  Jewel was, however, a wildcat of a homicide detective. She could tear more much meat out of a seemingly useless clue than most of the men who’d had years more experience. And she had great instincts. She also had a husband who adored her.

  Her phone rang. She lifted her coffee mug as a sign of dismissal before answering it.

  Travis stopped at the coffeepot, filled a mug with the strong brew and took it to his office. He dropped to the seat behind his cluttered desk and typed Faith Ashburn into the DPD search system.

  A few sips of coffee later, her name came up as having filed a missing-person report a few days under ten months ago, on June 25. That would have been approximately six months before he ran into her at the Passion Pit.

  He pulled up the report she’d filled out. The missing person was her eighteen-year-old son, Cornell Keating Ashburn, a high-school student about to start his senior year.

  According to the report, Cornell struggled with academics and received special help with his classes in a mainstream setting. He made friends easily but he was easily influenced by his peers. He was also on medication for seizures and reportedly needed daily meds to prevent them.

  According to the report, Faith Ashburn had gone in to work early the day he’d gone missing, leaving before Cornell got out of bed. She’d come home from work to find a note from him saying he was hanging out with some friends from the neighborhood. He might spend the night at his friend Jason’s, but he’d call later and let her know.

  He’d never called. He’d never come home. He’d never showed up at Jason’s.

  That explained the torment that haunted her mesmerizing eyes.

  Now that Travis thought about it, Leif had questioned him a couple months ago about how effective the police were with following up on missing-persons cases. Travis had assured him that they were thorough and professional.

  No doubt Joni had told him about Faith’s missing son and that had prompted the questions.

  Travis printed the original report and a series of follow-up notes by the investigating detective, Mark Ethridge. Mark headed up the missing-persons division and reportedly had handled Cornell’s disappearance himself. Ethridge was one of the best in the business at tracking missing or runaway teens.

  Travis skimmed for the most pertinent details. Faith and Cornell’s father were divorced. He’d died two years ago in a work-related accident, so that eliminated any chance he’d run away to live with him. His maternal grandmother lived in Seattle. His maternal grandfather lived
in Waco. Neither had seen Cornell in years. Nor had his paternal grandparents. Ethridge had checked that out thoroughly.

  Faith had called everyone Cornell ever hung out with. No one had seen him that day.

  His clothes were still in the closet except for the jeans, shirt and sneakers he’d obviously been wearing when he went missing. His iPad and computer were still in his room. Only his phone was missing. She’d called it repeatedly. There had been no answer.

  Easy to see why she feared foul play.

  Of course, it was also possible the young man had decided to chuck it all and run away from home. At eighteen, he wouldn’t technically be a runaway. In the eyes of the law, he was an adult with the right to live wherever he chose.

  Travis finished off his coffee and then moved on to the notes Ethridge had provided. There was no final report, as the investigation was ongoing.

  Not good, Travis decided as he delved into the investigation discoveries. Although Faith had insisted that her son had no issues that would cause him to run away, his friends from school painted a different story.

  Several of his classmates, including Jason, had said he’d started acting strange in the days before he’d disappeared. They said he’d stopped hanging out with them after school, always said he was busy.

  Ethridge had checked out the local drug and prostitute scene. Two strippers from the Passion Pit had recognized him from his picture, said they’d seen him in the club a couple times over the past few weeks, but not since his disappearance. One claimed he was hot for one of the dancers.

  Even Georgio admitted to having seen him. Said he’d caught Cornell trying to touch one of his dancers inappropriately, and kicked him out. Claimed he realized then the kid was underage, and had told him to go home before he got into trouble.

  After that, the clues ran dry.

  Ethridge would have told Faith what he’d discovered. That explained her hanging out in the city’s scummiest dive. She’d been looking for her son or someone who could tell her where to find him.

  The only good news was that Cornell’s body had not turned up at the local morgue.