“No,” Zach croaked out. “Of course not. I’d never take my niece without telling my mama and Althea. I’ve gotta get back home now.”
He started for the door, panic snapping at his heels. Hard as it was to imagine Eden going outside in this weather, could she have been tempted to explore the sooty ruins of the old barn? Ruins that could easily collapse to trap and injure or even kill a small child?
“I’m coming, too,” said Jessie. “Let me grab our jackets.”
Zach barely heard her and didn’t slow down until Canter blocked his way. “Hold on just a minute—”
“I can’t. I have to find her.”
“I’ve got three deputies there looking, and Virgil’s got every hand out helping, too. They’ve been turning the place inside out, both indoors and the property. Found the puppies, locked up safe in the tractor shed, but no girl.”
Zach’s pulse thumped wildly in his head, so hard he heard it beating in his ears. “Tell me from the start. What happened?”
At the base of the staircase, Jessie froze to listen.
Canter nodded. “During the storm, she was curled up in the family room with a movie. Some kids’ thing she was watching with her puppies right beside her. Nodded off after a bit, so your mama left her—I guess she had some sewing project she was keen on getting back to upstairs. A little while later, Althea came through, and she felt a cold draft.”
“An open door? A window?”
“That back door closest to the den, wide-open, with the TV in the family room still running. No sign of Eden anywhere.”
“Did she have her shoes? Her coat on?” Margie interrupted, her eyes bright with apprehension. She glanced toward a gloomy window, toward the low, cold clouds beyond.
“I’m not sure about that,” Canter admitted.
“She could’ve gotten bored, decided to go outside exploring.” He shook his head, thinking of how proud she was of the new clothes she’d gotten, how she liked to keep them nice. “More likely, we’ll find her holed up somewhere nice and warm inside, hiding before falling back to sleep. She likes to make herself a mouse sometimes. That’s what she calls it, finding hidden nooks and crannies. Lots of good ones in that big house. She could just be—”
“Eden’s not in the house. And it turns out she’s not all that’s missing.”
“What else?”
“Your father kept a handgun. You didn’t move it, did you? Althea told me it was locked up in a drawer in his desk.”
“We’ve always kept a gun or two around the ranch, for emergencies. But I saw to it myself, put a combination trigger guard on it, just in case,” Zach confirmed, the drumbeat of his pulse grown louder. Because a child lost was one thing, even with this weather; a child missing with a handgun was something else entirely.
“Well, that drawer was partly open, the gun nowhere in sight.”
Still frozen on the staircase, Jessie asked, “You don’t think Eden could’ve somehow—?”
“Not by herself, she couldn’t have,” Zach told them. “We keep the key to that drawer way up on the top of the tallest bookcase. No way a four-year-old could’ve reached it. Even my mama’d have to stand up on a chair to get it. And I can’t imagine that Eden would’ve known to look for it in the first place.”
“Maybe she was playing mouse and saw you hide it one day?” Jessie suggested.
“Definitely not.” He was certain of it. “I triple-checked to be sure she was out of sight the day I put on the trigger guard, and I haven’t touched it since.”
But he had been in that drawer, he realized. Had gone there for another reason. “My father always kept some cash in there, too, in a box underneath the drawer’s false bottom. His ‘horse-trading stash,’ he liked to call it.”
Canter shook his head. “We didn’t find it. How much was there?”
“Last time I checked, about five thousand.”
“Well, it’s gone now—and so’s this intruder’s real chance to score big Rayford money.”
Margie’s hand flew to her mouth, but it was Jessie who cried, “So you’re thinking this was a kidnapping? That there could be a ransom call?”
“Deputy’s standing by the phone, waiting with Althea and your mama, just in case.”
“But this is Rusted Spur!” Margie burst out. “We get the break-ins and assaults, drunks and bar fights, that’s all. We don’t have kidnappings. It’s just a little town.”
“Used to be,” said Canter with a glance toward Jessie, “we didn’t have any murders, either. Not until your sister—”
“My sister?” Jessie blurted. “Now you’re blaming a murdered woman for a murder? A murdered woman I’d bet money that you knew about.”
Canter glared at her, shook his head and turned back to Zach. But Jessie wasn’t finished with him yet.
“I’ve seen the proof,” she said, “or photos of it from before you had it buried. So tell me, are you really most afraid of some random, out-of-the-blue kidnapper who took Zach’s—no, my niece, from the ranch? Or are you really worried that Haley’s killer’s come back to finish off the final witness? Because I am.”
Her accusation slammed down like a thunderbolt, spreading shockwaves across the room. Margie blinked hard, and Canter’s hand dropped to the butt of his gun, swift as reflex.
“I saw her bones, too, in that old grill,” Zach admitted, gambling that, as much as Canter disliked him, he wouldn’t dare to arrest a Rayford. “Human bones, it turns out. The same ones you and my mama arranged to have hauled off and buried.”
Canter’s face flushed, but he looked confused to be tag-teamed by the two of them, and even less pleased to have it done before a witness. Witnesses, it turned out, as one of the land men who had come downstairs for supper was standing in the doorway, gaping at the scene.
“I don’t know what—” the sheriff stammered. “What the hell are you two jabberin’ about, when we’ve got a child missing? Now that I know that Eden isn’t with you, I’m heading to the car to get an Amber Alert going. If we don’t find her pretty quick, anything could happen.”
“Please, then. Get it done,” Zach said. “And think hard about adding the name and description of Frankie McFarland to the BOLO.”
Canter shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. McFarland’s long gone, I’m telling you.”
“Stop trying to cover your own rear, and let’s get this child found now,” Jessie demanded. “We can straighten all the rest out later. Eden’s life is what’s important.”
Zach shot her a grateful look, though he feared that there’d be hell to pay when that later came around.
“I don’t have time to stand around here arguing.” Canter turned on his heel and said, “Out of my way!” to the bewildered land man, who nearly tripped over his big feet in his hurry to comply.
Moments later, the front door slammed, and Zach watched through the window as the man stalked toward his marked SUV. Then he turned on Jessie, saying, “I’m heading home. Still coming?”
Nodding, she said, “Just try and hold me back.”
* * *
Jessie turned and headed for the staircase, nearly bowling over another land man who was trudging down for dinner.
Ignoring the gawky older man’s startled exclamation, she made quick work of the errand, her pulse careening out of control. By the time she climbed into the running truck with the jackets and her purse, she was breathing hard. Paying her no heed, Zach was talking on his cell phone, trying to calm someone from the sound of it.
“No, definitely don’t wake her if the doctor’s finally got her resting,” he was saying as just ahead of them, Canter sped away, his flashing emergency lights and siren slicing through the twilight gloom. “If I have my way, she’ll stay asleep until I can put Eden back in her arms. Just let her know, if she does wake up
, that I’m on my way home. And try not to cry, Althea. It’s not your fault. I know it isn’t.”
Jessie’s heart twisted, and she thought of every tragedy she’d ever covered. Thought how vastly different it was to watch from the inside, and how crude and intrusive her questions must have seemed to those with lives and loved ones hanging in the balance.
As he ended the call, Margie came running out of the house, a woolen poncho wrapped around her. Jessie lowered the passenger-side window at the older woman’s approach.
“I just wanted to say I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I only wish I could’ve made more of a difference for your sister.”
“You damned well might’ve made a difference,” Zach ground out, “if you’d told us what you knew before. Told me about Eden. You know as well as I do that this secret you and Nate and, for all I know, half the town’s been keeping is the reason that she’s gone now. Because she’s not a Rayford by blood, never has been. You all just figured she’d be better off that way. Isn’t that right?”
Pain filled Margie’s eyes as she nodded, hugging the fuzzy poncho tight around her. “I—I recognized her, of course, when your mama first started taking her out and introducing her as Ian’s daughter, Eden. Haley mostly kept her close to home, but she’d been here with her mama, when she couldn’t find someone to watch her.”
Though Jessie and Zach had guessed as much, this independent confirmation rocked her to her core. Her sister had really had a child, a beautiful and bright daughter she’d never shared with them or mentioned. A child she’d been too proud or hurt or angry to ask her family to help care for.
Or had it been that Jessie and her father, with their anger and their judgment, had made her feel so unwelcome that she didn’t dare?
“You have to understand,” Maggie continued. “It was a total transformation. That sad, scared little ragamuffin I’d known, the one who startled at every new voice and tried her best to disappear into the shadows, was gone. This new version was so clean, she squeaked, and absolutely adorable in her new clothes and haircut. Bubbly and outgoing, with smiles to break your heart—the first smiles I’d ever seen on her face. And it was all because she had someone to love her, someone who saw her as a miracle instead of a burden and a nuisance.”
Jessie closed her eyes, tears burning as she was stricken by the thought of this child’s neglect—terrified she’d never get the chance to make things right. To show Eden all the love her biological mother should have. Because regardless of what Jessie felt for either of the Rayfords, Eden was her flesh and blood, a child to love when every other member of her family was gone....
If they could only find her safely.
“What’s my niece’s real name?” Jessie managed, her voice trembling.
“Go ahead and tell us,” Zach called when Margie hesitated. “Maybe it’ll help us find her.”
“It was Bree,” Margie admitted, tears trailing down her pale cheeks. “Short for Brianna, I think. Brianna McFarland.”
“So she was really Frankie’s child?” Jessie asked.
Margie nodded. “So Haley claimed, not that that sorry devil ever cared a fig about her.”
“So how was it my mother came to have her?” Zach asked. “Especially if Haley’s really dead?”
“Then you meant what you said earlier?” Margie looked from him to Jessie. “You’re sure she’s dead?”
“I—I’m sure,” Jessie answered, feeling again that icy absence at her center, the spot she’d always hoped her sister would one day return to fill.
Margie shook her head. “I tried so hard to warn her, to tell her how those kind of stories always ended. But she’d just smile and tell me she knew how to give as good as she got. And she loved that Frankie, plain and simple. Or maybe she’d forgotten who she was without him.”
Or who she could have been, thought Jessie, if the same life she’d survived hadn’t left her twin so damaged. But who could say why lightning forked to strike one tree and not the next?
“I always figured she’d dumped off poor little Bree for free sitting and taken off for a new start with no encumbrances. Or with none but the worst company that poor foolish girl could’ve picked.”
“We have to get moving,” Zach said, shaking his head in frustration. “It’s getting colder and darker by the minute. If Eden’s somewhere out in that...”
A wave of dizziness hit Jessie like the hard dip of a roller coaster at the thought of the child Zach loved so deeply, the child of her own blood, tiny and vulnerable somewhere out there in the freezing darkness. But as dangerous as these endless plains were, with their bitter winds, hidden pitfalls and heaven only knew what desperate predators eager for an easy meal, the animal Jessie feared most was the one who’d killed her sister. The one who’d as callously kill a child, to be certain she would never talk, instead of leaving anything to chance.
But where would Frankie take her? Would any lonely stretch of road do, or would he be drawn to the familiar? To someplace with a special meaning? A place that held some memories for a man who no doubt planned to run off, a man who’d never see his home again?
So before the window rolled up, she cried out, “Wait! Wait, Margie. Was there anywhere that Haley ever mentioned? Any place Frankie liked to hang out? Anywhere that he might go with Eden?”
Zach made an impatient sound, but she stayed him with a raised hand.
“Racing off after Canter might feel good,” she told him, “but you heard the sheriff. He has his people at the ranch, and all your guys are all out looking. We need some other place to look, some place they won’t think of. And when backs are to the wall, people don’t run away—they run to the familiar. Even when it’s bound to bring them grief.”
She’d seen it a hundred times while covering the night beat. Wanted men and women, even prison escapees, caught in the flypaper of their old attachments. Returning to show off or say goodbye, unable to resist one last glimpse of home or loved ones—where the cops, the U.S. Marshals and the bail bondsman’s bounty hunters so often caught up to them.
Margie shook her head and answered Jessie. “I don’t know where his kind goes. I don’t even want to know. In the summertime, Haley mentioned a cookout or two with Hellfire and his family at the bunkhouse. And sometimes Frankie and his brother’d head over to Elam’s garbage pit and shoot off fireworks.”
Jessie winced at the mention of what might have become her sister’s final resting place. Could Danny be thinking of dumping that poor child there, as well, like trash? Or of killing her in the same forlorn spot where he’d ended Haley’s life?
“Either that, or they were off drinkin’ up a storm and stirrin’ up trouble at the Prairie Rose. Probably left that poor sweet child at home half the time to do it.”
“Hard to imagine he’d be stupid enough to show up someplace he’d be known,” Zach said.
“But people can be stupid,” Jessie argued, “especially people under stress. I’m telling you, he’ll be close by, with old contacts. That’s how the Frankie McFarlands of this world are always caught.”
“All right,” Zach allowed as they sped off toward town. “On the way back to the ranch, we’ll swing past the bunkhouse site to check for any vehicles, or tire tracks since the ice storm. Then we’ll talk to Canter about sending a deputy to Danny’s and Clem Elam’s, if he already hasn’t thought of it himself.”
“Maybe we should try the bar first. In case he wants to show off to his old friends, buy ’em one more round on you—”
“It’s Monday night. That bar’s closed, and we can’t run all over the county, chasing shadows.” Zach’s voice was harsh, the look he sent her even harsher. With a grunt of anguish, he popped the dash with the heel of his hand. “Damn it, I should’ve been there. Should’ve been there for them, for Eden and my mama, like I promised. There at home where I belong, keeping that child safe
instead of wasting time with—”
“With me,” she said, her gaze glancing off his long enough to catch the world of hurt there. The blame, resentment and the anger already poisoning what they felt for one another—or thought they’d felt—in those few foolish hours they had reached out for each other in their weakness.
Even if they found Eden soon, found her utterly undamaged, Jessie knew their situation was impossible, too burdened with conflicting loves and loyalties to do anything but crush them. How would he ever look at her again, without thinking of what that time might have cost him and his mother, how the mess her twin had made of her life had reached out to shatter their peace? And how would Jessie herself ever get past what had been stolen from her family, let alone the quiet conspiracy meant to keep the truth from them forever? Meant to leave her twin interred in a garbage pit?
“I get it,” she told him, “I do. But before we rip each other’s hearts out—”
“Our hearts aren’t what are important. Not now,” he said as he mashed down on the accelerator. “All I can think about is what if we’re too late already? What if it doesn’t matter whose plan we pick, or where we go first, because Eden’s gone already? I swear, I’m back in Kabul again, hanging underneath that parachute, watching everything go up in flames below me.”
“You can’t think like that, can’t talk like that,” she said, her voice racing to keep up with her mounting desperation. “We can’t, because we’re going to bring her home. I know it. Besides that, I was probably wrong before, about him coming back to silence the only witness to my sister’s killing. Maybe it really was about the money all along, like Canter said. Frankie tried to get away from here, and when he ran out of cash, he came back with a plan to get some, even if it meant exploiting his own daughter.”
“Yeah, that’s gotta be it,” Zach said, grasping on to her words like a lifeline. “And whatever Frankie asks, I’ll pay it. My money, my land, my life itself—that kid’s my family. Maybe she’s not blood. I’ll admit that, but Eden is my family, and that’s the only legacy I give a damn about.”
Lone Star Redemption Page 21
