by Rachel Lee
Micah was very still and very silent for a moment. When he spoke again, there was a slightly different note in his voice. "Things like that can play hell with a man. You got a minute to show me where you saw that biker?"
"Sure." A feeling close to relief settled over him. He set the pitchfork aside and led the way. "Out behind the bunkhouse, up in the trees."
"What were you doing when you saw him?"
This time, Gideon realized, the accusing tone was missing. Somehow his answer about Barney's accident had settled doubts in Micah's mind. "I was washing up at the spigot in the back."
"And Zeke?"
"He and Chester Elk Horn were at the corral there." He pointed. "I guess Chester was just getting ready to leave. I went around to wash up, and just as I was finishing—shaking the water off my arms—I looked up and saw the glint from the trees."
Whey reached the back of the bunkhouse, and Gideon pointed. "I knew right away it wasn't a piece of glass lying on the ground, because it flickered and winked. Had to be moving to do that. So I started up that way to investigate. Zeke and Sara don't mind hikers, but they hate ATVs and dirt bikers."
Micah nodded. "I feel the same myself. Some of those folks seem to think that just because they can go off the road, they have a right to go anywhere, including private property."
Halfway across the grassy pasture to the trees, Gideon paused. "Right here is where I was when the guy took off. It sounded as if he went up and to the left."
"Toward the county road, probably three miles as the crow flies."
Gideon nodded. "About that far. Zeke caught up with me here right then. Said to ignore it, that it was only one biker and not much we could do." With his thumb, he shoved his hat farther back on his head and looked up into the trees. "I was kind of mad," he admitted. "Anyhow, we went back to the house and had coffee."
"So nobody's been up there?"
"Not as far as I know."
Micah nodded and began to stride upward toward the trees. The pasture was on a gentle slope, not particularly taxing, but Gideon hadn't fully adjusted yet to the altitude here, though he was better adapted than a week ago. He got a little winded by the time they reached the line of trees, but Micah wasn't even breathing deeply.
Micah gestured for him to stay back a little, and Gideon complied, understanding that the deputy didn't want any tracks or other signs disturbed. Micah moved in slowly, crouching often to study what appeared to be only a blade of grass or a twig.
Watching him, Gideon realized that his brother had training in tracking that far exceeded the ordinary. "LRRP?" he asked suddenly, pronouncing it "lurp."
Micah never even glanced up. "Special Operations Branch. Twenty-one years."
Special Operations Branch said more than Special Forces. Special Operations covered a lot of things the public never heard about, and included the most elite units. Gideon looked at Micah with new eyes. "That's a long time."
"Seemed like it upon occasion." Micah eased forward again, checking out some more blades of grass.
Ten, maybe fifteen minutes passed while Micah studied the area. Gideon, left with nothing to do but hook his thumbs in his belt loops, tipped his head back and watched a couple of fluffy clouds grow slowly in the deep blue sky. Maybe they would get some rain later. They sure could use it. The pasture was beginning to look a little dry, and the dust was getting thick in the yard.
"He was here for a while," Micah said abruptly. Straightening, he came back to Gideon.
"He?"
Micah nodded. "Size-eleven shoe, maybe 180 or 190 pounds, probably between five foot ten and six feet. Lots of prints, tramped back and forth for some time. Long enough to smoke half a pack of butts." He held out his hand, showing Gideon the filter tip of a popular brand of cigarettes. "He kicked dirt over it, but not carefully enough."
"Not just a dirt biker, then."
Micah shook his head. "Somebody was watching this place. Looking for someone or something, or looking for someone to leave."
Together they walked back to the house. Micah spoke again.
"I'll have to go check along the road and see if I can tell where he came out of the woods."
"That'll take forever."
Micah glanced at him. "Probably not. I doubt he was being as careful out there as he was up in those trees. If Sara's not awake yet, I'll go out and look into that first. No point getting her up unless I have to."
But Sara was already up. She had heard Micah's vehicle pull into the yard and now was waiting for them in the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee.
She looked a lot fresher, Gideon thought. A few hours of sleep had done wonders, bringing the color back to her cheeks and the sparkle back to her warm brown eyes. She wore a denim skirt and white blouse. Gideon, who had never seen her in a skirt, couldn't help taking an eyeful of slender calves, delicate ankles and pink-tipped toes peeking from her sandals.
God, he thought, looking away, she was some woman. An armful. No twiggy model with legs so thin they were practically sticks. No, Sara was curvy. Curvy calves that led right up to thighs that would be soft and… He sighed and forced himself to pay attention to business.
"How are Faith and the baby?" Sara asked as she filled three mugs with coffee and joined the men at the table.
"Doing great," Micah replied. "Sally's just about the happiest baby ever born. Takes after her mother, I reckon."
Gideon thought about that for a minute, taking in Micah's obvious pride and pleasure in both his wife and child, and decided that even if the baby wasn't Micah's, it didn't matter to Micah. Unexpectedly, he thought of his uncle, William Lightfoot, and how delighted he would be to learn there was a baby girl in the family. He wouldn't have a problem with the baby's paternity, either. He would welcome the child as readily and warmly as he had long ago welcomed Gideon.
"I've got some chores to finish up," he said abruptly, rising from the table. "You let me know when you want to go through the bunkhouse, Parish."
He climbed the fence into the corral with the mustang and then stood still, giving a coaxing little cluck. The stallion's ears pricked and he took a tentative step toward the man.
Ironheart. He'd taken the name shortly after his eighteenth birthday. The judge who granted the request had been bored with the proceeding and had hardly glanced at the boy. Gideon had taken it with purpose, refusing any longer to bear the name of the father who had abandoned him. At the time the name Ironheart had been a statement of the man he intended to be. Now look at him, getting all bent out of shape over Sara and her grandfather, over the brother he had just met, and the child his brother hadn't sired but was fathering. He swore under his breath.
It wasn't that he wanted to be hard so much as it was that he didn't trust all those soft feelings. They were fleeting, fanciful, and all they did was weaken a man, make him vulnerable to some shaft or other. They were aberrations, not to be relied on. People said they loved someone, and the next thing you knew they were moving on without a backward glance. How many times had he seen it?
So it was just best not to let yourself be deluded by the momentary soft feelings.
He ducked again, and the mustang pranced a little closer. A game, he realized suddenly. That damn stallion was teasing him.
Gideon grinned then, suddenly feeling pretty good, forgetting all his musings about the unreliability of gentler feelings. "You better look out, boy," he told the horse. "I'll ride you yet."
* * *
Sara went to town to visit her grandfather right after Micah finished up and left. She invited Gideon to join her, but he told her he didn't want to leave the place unattended.
"There's no reason why they should come back," she argued. "They know we haven't got whatever they wanted."
He shrugged. "Say hi to Zeke. Tell him I'm thinking about the vision quest, but I'm going to need some convincing."
She took two steps toward her Blazer, then turned again to face him. "I don't feel easy about you being here alone. If they come ba
ck—"
She bit the word off as if she wished she could take it back, but Gideon had heard her, anyway, and the fact that she was concerned about him touched some long-locked place in him. He ignored the warm, syrupy feeling that tried to bring itself to his attention.
"If they come back, I'll hold 'em for questioning," he told her teasingly. "Go on, Sara. I'll be okay."
She looked at him standing there in the bright afternoon sunlight, his hands on his rakishly cocked hips, and realized that she had come to care for him. Foolishly, stupidly, she cared. She wanted, she realized with a sad, desperate ache, to always see him standing in the sun like this with his hips cocked and his hard, harsh face shadowed by the brim of his hat. She wanted to know that he was going to be there tomorrow and tomorrow.
And he had already told her that he wouldn't be.
"Sara?" His hands fell from his hips, and he stepped toward her. "Sara? What's wrong?"
She caught her lips between her teeth and shook her head. "Nothing. Really. I'll see you later."
Too late, she thought as she tooled the Blazer down the rutted driveway. Too late. She had been sabotaged by all the years that she had refused to have anything personal to do with men. The one man who had refused to be put off by her barriers had managed to slip beneath her guard because she hadn't been prepared. She'd had no defenses against a man who wouldn't take no for an answer. A man who could tease her out of her fear of him simply by being outrageous.
Well, she promised herself shakily, she wouldn't let him know she cared. And if she didn't let him know, didn't let anyone know, he could hardly make a fool of her, could he?
Gideon's image seemed to dance before her all the way to town, and all she could think was that all that raw masculinity ought to come with some kind of warning. She sure as hell didn't know how to handle it.
* * *
The clouds that had started out as a few white puffs in late morning had, by late afternoon, turned into the dark gray steel of thunderheads. Gauging them, Gideon decided to stable the saddle horses. The mustangs would manage on their own. Even the stallion would do better, so he let the horse out of the corral. The mustang hesitated only a moment before trumpeting his approach to the mares and then taking off across the pasture toward the woods.
That horse would have gone crazy if he were trapped during a bad storm, Gideon thought as he watched the roan disappear into the trees. He was a wild creature, more terrified of confinement than the elements. The saddle horses, used to stabling, would feel safer indoors.
Thunder rumbled hollowly, bouncing back and forth on the mountains and out of ravines higher up. The wind picked up a little, blowing a cold gust or two right off the snowfields above the ranch. He had to reach up to hang on to his hat and then decided to ditch it in the bunkhouse and get his slicker out. It would be a far sight more useful if those clouds dumped.
He had no sooner finished securing the barn and the bunkhouse when it hit. Hail fell, stones the size of marbles pelting the yard and denting his truck as he watched from the porch of the house. The roar of falling stones and rolling thunder was almost deafening, and he hoped to God it didn't panic the mustangs too much to take shelter beneath trees.
As suddenly as it had started, the hailstorm stopped. The hush was almost unreal after the racket, and only the rumble of thunder kept Gideon from thinking he'd gone deaf. The sky was leaden from horizon to horizon, and clouds seemed to scud along the very treetops. The temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees, he thought, feeling chilled and damp.
Well, he would go in and close up Sara's house completely before it started to rain, and then he'd settle in for the night. Little else could be done today.
The phone rang just as he was walking through the kitchen. Reaching out, he snagged the receiver and leaned against the wall. "Double Y Ranch," he said.
"Gideon, it's Sara. I'm at the hospital with Grandfather."
"How is he?"
"He's doing really well. They're going to move him into a regular room tomorrow morning. But that isn't why I called. One of the nurses just told me the weather service has issued a stockmen's advisory and a storm warning."
"Hardly surprising. We just had five minutes of marble-sized hail. I don't think my truck is ever going to look the same again."
"Oh, Gideon…"
He laughed. "Hey, Mouse, if that's the worst that ever happen…! The saddle horses are safe in the barn, and I assume the mustangs are safe under the trees. I was just going upstairs to check the bedroom windows before the rain hits. The temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees. You're going to wish you'd worn a jacket."
She gave a small laugh. "The Blazer has a good heater. I'm going to be down here a couple more hours, I guess. I forgot to tell you that there's a pot of stew in the refrigerator for dinner, and some homemade bread in the bread box. And ice cream. Just help yourself to whatever looks good."
She'd thought of him, he realized a few moments later as he hung up the phone. She'd thought of him and worried about what he would do for dinner. That warm, syrupy feeling returned, and this time he didn't find it quite so easy to dismiss. With all she had on her mind right now, the woman had still worried about him. That was pretty damn special, and for once he didn't argue with himself about it.
Upstairs, he walked from room to room, closing windows and securing the latches. In Sara's room, he found a loose latch. It wasn't much to worry about on the second story, but he pulled a screwdriver out of his back pocket and went to work on it, anyway. He didn't like leaving things undone, and it gave him a sense of satisfaction to fix what was broken and mend what needed mending. He always had a screwdriver in one hip pocket and a tape measure in the other, and as often as not a small wrench tucked somewhere.
Beyond the window, heavy dark clouds moved slowly, looking almost low enough to touch. Above the pasture, the pines had turned almost black in the gray light, and beneath them shadows loomed mysteriously.
It was beautiful, he thought, pausing. Beautiful. Wild. Thunder boomed hollowly, lightning forked dazzlingly in the distance, and thunder cracked again. A fat raindrop hit the window with a splat, and moments later another joined it.
Something—a sense of unease—made him look toward the spot under the trees where the biker had hidden. There was no one there now, he was sure, but he reached for the shade anyway and lowered it. He didn't want Sara walking in here after dark and flipping on the light, becoming visible to anyone who might care to watch. He knew she would just cross the room and draw the shade—from the porch of the bunkhouse he'd watched her do it every night—but he didn't want anyone else to watch her. See her. Know that this was her room.
The feeling was rooted in some deep, dark instinct, and he didn't analyze it. Once the shade was closed, he was done, and he left her room without another glance, without in any way trespassing on her privacy.
He checked all the downstairs windows, too, and found a couple of other loose latches. He fixed them, then drew the blinds everywhere except the kitchen. She would be here alone, he thought, and he damn well didn't want anyone else to know that.
And maybe, he found himself thinking, he shouldn't stay in the bunkhouse tonight. Maybe he should sleep on the couch or get his sleeping bag and curl up on the porch.
Damn it, he didn't like this at all. If something valuable had been taken, he could at least feel easy about the motive for the break-in and be at least reasonably certain that the creep wouldn't return.
On the kitchen porch, he took the screen door down so he could work on the bent hinges. Thunder rolled down the hillside, bringing another gust of frosty air from the snowfields. Occasional big drops of rain continued to fall, one or two at a time, making little craters in the mud of the yard between the slowly melting hailstones.
The hinges were only a little bent, he saw, but the screws had been stripped out of the wood door. He would need some glue and sawdust, and both were in the barn. Grabbing the hinges, he shoved them into his po
cket and snatched up his slicker. While he was there he could check on the horses and straighten the hinges, too.
The barn was still warm, redolent of horses, hay and manure. In the workshop beside the tack room, in the golden light from the overhead fixtures, he forgot the storm, forgot his worries for Sara and Zeke, and lost track of time. Once the hinges were fixed, he didn't stop. There was a broken kitchen chair, solid oak, that needed mending, an old dresser that needed new drawer bottoms, and a dozen or more other things, big and small, that needed fixing.
He lost himself in the smell of the sawdust, the solid feel of the wood, the pleasure of holding and using tools. Thunder rolled, rain hammered loudly on the roof, and the horses whickered softly. They were good sounds, a soothing background to his satisfaction in working with his hands again.
* * *
Sara found him there. It was after nine, dark, windy, cold and wet outside, and she had arrived home to find no sign that Gideon had even eaten his supper. She waited for a while, sure that he must have heard her Blazer pull into the yard and would come over to ask about Zeke, but he didn't show. Finally, concerned that he might have gotten hurt somehow, she went looking. The bunkhouse was empty, his bed untouched. That left the barn, she thought.
Lightning zigzagged through the dark, illuminating the puddled ground briefly as she hurried that way, guided as much by instinct as the little bit of light from the house. The lights were off in the barn, so she saw the yellow glow from the workshop immediately. Flipping the switch just inside the side door, she checked the horses quickly, noting they'd all settled for the night. Columbine snorted a little when the light came on, but other than that, all four animals ignored her.
On the threshold of the shop, she stopped in amazement. Gideon had his back to her, and he was singing quietly, in a deep, resonant voice, some country ballad of lost love. He wore her father's old safety goggles, he was covered head to foot in sawdust, and he had repaired two chairs, a table and her grandmother's old cupboard, by the looks of it. And now he appeared to be building drawers for the old dresser.
