Hard Ride to Dry Gulch

by Joanna Wayne

  She stared at him without saying a word, which was pretty much answer enough.

  “I’m going to the kitchen for another beer,” he said. “You decide if you want me to hang around long enough to finish it.”

  Travis cursed himself under his breath as he walked to the kitchen. He hadn’t reacted like a cop. He’d reacted like a man. Police investigations and lust were a mix guaranteed to create chaos. Every cop knew that. The smart ones stayed clear of it.

  Normally, Travis was one of them.

  He opened the fridge, took out one beer and then reached back in for another. A time-out might help both of them get the burrs out of their saddle blankets.

  As angry as she’d made him, he didn’t want to just walk away and leave things like this. Even if she kicked him out, he couldn’t stop looking for Cornell.

  He wasn’t sure where Angela Pointer fit into the scheme of things, but whatever had sent Cornell on the run was most likely connected to Georgio Trosclair.

  And if Travis’s theory about Georgio was right, he ordered a person’s murder as easily as most people ordered a pizza. Travis had spent the past year trying to prove that. He wouldn’t stop until he did.

  * * *

  FAITH WALKED TO the railing and watched a bluebird swoop from the branches of a redbud tree to the tiny box where its babies waited to be fed. A protective, nurturing mom. Doing what came naturally, acting on instinct.

  Faith wondered if she was doing the same. Acting on instinct where Cornell was concerned, jumping to conclusions, attacking Travis without even hearing his side of the story. But she couldn’t just blindly trust him or let her attraction for him affect her in any way. Nor could she afford to turn away from him if he was actually trying to help her find Cornell.

  Travis stepped out the back door, an open bottle of beer in each hand. He held one out to her. “I thought you might need this,” he said.

  She never drank beer. Bad for the waistline. This time she took it. She sipped it slowly and then walked over and sat down on the wide, wooden steps that led down to the lawn and her neatly planted butterfly garden. The blue phlox were already in bloom.

  Travis dropped to the step beside her, not too close, but near enough she caught the light, woodsy fragrance of his aftershave. He leaned against the railing post, his long legs stretched in front of him, as he watched a honeybee flying among the blossoms sampling the nectar.

  Faith studied his profile and then looked away quickly when she felt her resolve not to be affected by his heady masculinity begin to dissolve.

  “Sorry for the explosion,” she said, determined to keep everything in perspective. “I had a rough day.”

  “So I gathered. Is that why you left early?”

  She nodded.

  He didn’t push for more. She drank a few more sips of beer, rehearsing in her mind what she had to say. Finally, she took a deep breath and dived in.

  “The information about Angela Pointer preyed on my mind all day and I guess I let my imagination get out of hand.”

  His expression indicated he wasn’t buying it, and the lies were starting to ferment and turn to acid in the pit of her stomach.

  “I was so upset I became paranoid,” she added.

  He turned to face her. “And decided I couldn’t be trusted. You sure jumped to that conclusion fast.”

  “Worse. I was paranoid about everything. When I came home from the office I thought someone had been in my house while I was away. I even picked up a knife to fight off the intruder who didn’t exist.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Never.”

  He leaned in closer. “What made you think there had been an intruder? Was something out of place?”

  She shrugged, hating to admit what a wreck she’d become. “No. I detected an unfamiliar piney scent that reminded me of a man’s aftershave, probably the smells of spring that came in with me when I’d opened the door.”

  Travis’s expression darkened. “Anything else?”

  “I was barefoot when I went into the kitchen and I stepped on what felt like spilled salt on the floor under the ceiling light fixture. When I looked closer, it was more like a chalky sand, no doubt something I tracked in myself.”

  “Makes sense. I wouldn’t worry.”

  The grimace on his face didn’t match his tone. He stood and studied the roof of the deck as intensely as if he were looking for killer spiders.

  He put his finger to his lips to shush her even though she wasn’t talking, and shot her a warning look she didn’t understand. “I gotta be going,” he said. “We can talk later if you want, but if you don’t trust me, you should find someone else to look for your son.”

  Still holding his finger to his lips, he took her hand, tugged her to a standing position, and led her off the deck and onto the cushiony carpet of grass. He didn’t speak until they reached the back gate of the fenced yard.

  “Do you have a stepladder handy?” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  “What’s going on, Travis?”

  “Probably nothing, but I want to make sure that’s the case.”

  “Do you think there actually might have been an intruder?”

  “Yes, but I’m a cop. We tend to suspect the worst.”

  “Why the stepladder?”

  “Playing a hunch, but just a hunch, so don’t get upset yet. Just tell where to find the ladder.”

  “It’s in the garage. I’ll get it for you.”

  “No, I want you to stay in the yard until I get back. Don’t even walk back to the deck.”

  If this was some trick to scare her into doing everything he said, it wasn’t going to work. Yet her heart was pounding as she watched him walk away.

  She grew more nervous by the second. By the time he returned twenty minutes later, her emotions were vacillating between fear and doubt. Without saying a word, he opened his hand so that she could see what he was holding. It was no bigger than a penlight battery.

  “What is that?”

  “A microphone. Turns out you’re not paranoid. Your house has been bugged.”

  “Bugged. Who would do such a thing? What would they expect to learn from me?”

  “I’m not sure, but I intend to find out. In the meantime, you can’t stay here.”

  “How many spy boxes are there?”

  “I found four. I don’t think there’s one on the deck, but there could be.”

  “Can’t you just remove all of them?”

  “I’d rather they stay in place while I find out who had reason to bug you. That way we can feed them false info if we need to. I’ll put this one back in its original position.”

  “I’ll be careful what I say, Travis. I’m here alone every night. It’s not like I do a lot of talking. But I can’t leave home. Cornell may try to call me again. If he does, I have to be here.”

  “Your landline is likely wiretapped, as well. Even if it isn’t, they would be able to hear your conversation with Cornell. That might give them exactly what they’re after.”

  This made no sense. Who would need to listen in to a conversation with Cornell? Not Travis, looking to arrest her son, or he’d never be telling her to move out. But if someone was this desperate to find Cornell, that might be why he was on the run. If she stayed, she might lead him into danger.

  But danger from whom? This had to be linked to Angela Pointer. “Do you think Cornell and Angela ran away together because they were afraid of what her abusive boyfriend would do to them?”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  She was convinced Travis knew more than he was saying.

  “Who knows about the phone call you got from Cornell?” he asked.

  “You. Joni. Probably your brother. Joni tells Leif everything.”


  “Who else?”

  Joni’s words pounded in her head and in her heart like beating drums. Trust Travis. Trust Travis. Trust Travis.

  Faith couldn’t keep playing both ends against the middle. The situation had grown too dangerous. Forced to choose between Travis Dalton and the mysterious Georgio, she decided there was only one way to go.

  “Georgio knows.”

  “Georgio Trosclair of the Passion Pit?”

  She nodded.

  “How would he?”

  “I told him.”

  * * *

  ANGER ERUPTED INSIDE TRAVIS. He slammed his right fist into his other palm while he tried to turn on his brain and turn off the fury and frustration.

  “I told you to stay clear of him.”

  “He saw one of the flyers I put up. He called me and offered his help in finding Cornell. I couldn’t turn that down.”

  “So he’s the one who poisoned your mind against me. What part of evil and dangerous do you not understand, Faith? The bastard’s the biggest drug smuggler in Texas, and nobody crosses him and lives to tell about it.”

  “Then why isn’t he in jail?”

  “Because no one lives to testify against him, either.”

  “Are you accusing him of murder?”

  “Not directly. He has others do his dirty work for him.”

  Travis raked the hair back from his forehead. He hadn’t expected things to heat up this fast, though he’d figured Georgio would find out that Travis was working with Faith to find Cornell. But even before that, Georgio had contacted Faith, so something else had changed.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  He let everything roll around in his mind as they walked side by side, but not touching. No more illusions of romance or lusty fantasies where Faith was concerned. He had to be all cop while he figured out a way to keep her and Cornell safe.

  They took a walking trail that ran through her neighborhood, stopping at a bench in the shade of a gnarled oak tree.

  He’d expected resistance, but Faith started talking the second they were seated. Her voice was unsteady, so the words spilled from her like water over a rocky creek bed.

  The more she told him about her two meetings with Georgio, the madder Travis got. The man was definitely playing her, trying to discover exactly what she knew.

  She finally took a deep breath, leaned against the back of the bench and stared into space. “None of this makes sense. Why would the dancers think Angela was murdered? And why is Georgio pretending to be helping me now when he’d refused to talk to me before?”

  “I don’t know, but right now we have to get you out of your house. How difficult would it be to take a few days off work?”

  “I have some vacation time coming. I’ve been saving it so that I could spend it with Cornell when he comes home.”

  “Take it. You’re going under unofficial protective custody.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “There is now.”

  “Where will I stay?”

  “Someplace where you’ll be safe and near enough to the city that I can keep an eye on you.”

  Only one spot like that came to mind. A location where his nightmares and resentments of the past would collide with the fears and pressures of the present. The last place he’d ever expected to spend even one night.

  “I’ll walk you back to your house, and I want you to go in and turn your TV or music up loud so that the sophisticated bugs won’t pick up the packing sounds.”

  “What should I pack?”

  “Jeans, shorts, T-shirts, boots if you have them, nothing fancy. Whatever you think you need on a ranch.”

  “What ranch?”

  “The Dry Gulch.”

  * * *

  CORNELL HELPED LOAD the last horse into the carrier, then wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. He didn’t understand half of what the Mexicans who were helping him said, but he understood enough to know they thought he was crazy for heading to the border with this load of smuggled goods.

  More money for Georgio. More risk of arrest for Cornell. How long could this go on before one of the border patrol recognized him? How long before an agent figured out that the horses were not the only thing he was transporting into the U.S.?

  Five trips. That was what Georgio had promised. The man lied as easily and with the same careless disregard as he manipulated lives. But no one crossed him. No one dared.

  Cornell might.

  What did he have to lose? Spend the rest of his life on the run or spend it behind bars? Killed by one of Georgio’s thugs or facing a death sentence?

  At least if he escaped Georgio’s clutches he had a chance of staying alive. But never back in the U.S. Never would he return home. Never see his mother’s face again.

  He couldn’t go running back to her, couldn’t bear to see the pain in her eyes if she knew what he’d done.

  He was eighteen, a man. Men fought wars at that age.

  Only Cornell didn’t really feel like a man.

  This time when he brushed away the sweat, his sleeve caught a couple salty tears. Showing that kind of nervous weakness would get him arrested for sure.

  He pushed the Stetson back on his head and pretended to be the tough, long-haired, bearded cowboy that looked at him every morning in the mirror.

  “Secure that door,” he ordered. “Time to roll.”

  Maybe for the last time, if he could get his nerve up to make a run for it.

  Chapter Ten

  R.J. sat in the worn front-porch rocker, grateful for his neighbor’s company. There was no one quite like Carolina Lambert to help him sort out a few things in his mind. Prettiest grandma he’d ever seen. Smart, too.

  Carolina fitted one of the small flowered throw pillows behind her back as she settled in the creaky porch swing. “Do you have any idea why this change of heart with Travis?”

  “Nope. I’m as confused as a golf ball on Astroturf.”

  “But he did say that he and Joni’s friend Faith would be staying with you for a few days?”

  “He asked me if I had room. Knows darn well I do. Got nothing but room in this rambling old house now that Leif and Joni moved into their own cottage.”

  “But you’re never really alone these days. Your family is coming home.”

  “Some of them are taking their own good time about it. If they don’t get a move on, it’ll be too late to be any good. I’ve already outlived my oncologist’s prognosis. Brain tumor’s as stubborn as a mule in clover.”

  “But not as stubborn as you. And your methods for getting your family to move back to the ranch were a bit underhanded.”

  “Nothing underhanded about it. They want my money, they dance to my fiddle playing, at least as long as I’m this side of the red Texas clay. ’Sides, I got the idea from you.”

  “I suggested you leave them the ranch. I never mentioned letting them think you were dead and then showing up at the reading of your own will.”

  R.J. chuckled. “Sure was worth it seeing the looks on their faces when I walked in. Thought my oldest son, Jake, was going to swallow his tongue.”

  “Speaking of Jake, have you heard from him lately?”

  “Yep. Still complaining about the terms of the will. Thinks I’m a conniving son of a bitch.”

  Carolina smiled. “Wonder where he’d get an idea like that.”

  “Don’t you start on me, too.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “More likely he’s been listening to his mother. Pretty as a red heifer in a flower bed, that one. Stole my heart the second I met her.”

  Never gave the dad-blasted thing back, either. Not even when she’d left him.

  Not that he hadn
’t loved all his wives in his own way. Just something about the first time... Now he was getting sentimental. Never did that when he was younger and healthy.

  “I remember Joni saying that the best man and the maid of honor had never met before the wedding,” Carolina said. “They must have hit it off fast if they’re taking a mini vacation together.”

  “I got the feeling this is more business than pleasure,” R.J. said.

  “Police business.”

  He nodded. “I talked to Leif last night. He says Travis is helping Faith find her teenage son, who went missing months ago. Never a dull moment around the Dry Gulch.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. Faith’s heart must be breaking. I’ll be praying that Travis finds him safe and alive.”

  “You pray about everything.”

  “Everything that matters, including you. And whatever brings Travis here, at least you’ll get the opportunity to connect with him.”

  “I’ll see him. Not so sure about connecting. He sounded more guarded than friendly.”

  “He can’t be any more reluctant to have a relationship with you than Adam and Leif were, and look how well that worked out.”

  “You’re right. Reckon two out of six adult kids forgiving me for being a lousy dad is better than I deserve.”

  “Forgiving is not related to deserving. And call me an optimist, R. J. Dalton, but I have this sneaking suspicion that all six of your children will at least make a visit within the next few months. If not, it’s their loss.”

  “I won’t be holding my breath for Jake to show up. If he does, it will be to harangue me.” R.J. scratched his jaw, thinking that even his face felt unfamiliar now. He’d lost thirty pounds since the doc had handed him the death sentence.

  The only real pleasure he had was having Adam and his family and Leif and Joni around. Those two adorable twin girls of Leif’s were a pure joy.

  “I’d best be going,” Carolina said. “I’m on my way to my Bible-study class and just wanted to drop off some of the vegetable-beef soup I made this morning.”

  “Appreciate that. You know how I love that soup. Rich, beautiful and you cook. Don’t know how you keep the men from breaking down your door.”