“Get the girls and Tory and get out of the house. There’s a fire in the south pasture, and it’s coming this way. You should have time to get dressed. If there’s a change, I’ll let you know. I’ve called 911, as well as Jake, who is rounding up the men to fight the fire.”
“What do I do after that?”
“Stay with the two rangers. I’m getting Hattie and Dad out, then going with Jake to survey the damage. He also saw it and called me. He’s coming back from the north pasture.”
“Have Hattie ring the bell to let everyone know there’s an emergency.” Rebecca shut her door and rushed to throw on some clothes.
A couple of minutes later, spurred by the sight of the fire out the south window, she quickened her pace toward her nieces’ rooms. She woke Kim up first. “Get dressed. Two minutes. There’s a fire in the field.”
Frowning, Kim rubbed her eyes. “Are we going to lose our home?”
“Don’t know. I’m getting Aubrey up. You go and wake up Tory after you get dressed.”
Five minutes later, carrying what she could, Rebecca emerged from the house with Kim and Aubrey flanking her, their arms full of their most prized possessions. Immediately, the two rangers surrounded them and guided them toward their SUV. Tory was sitting in the backseat. Sean and Hattie stood next to the car.
After the two girls climbed inside, Aubrey going into Tory’s embrace, Rebecca turned toward the rangers. “I’m not going anywhere, but you need to take them somewhere safe.”
“No, ma’am. My orders are to take everyone, including you.”
“Whose orders?”
“Ranger Calhoun.”
“Well, he isn’t here. I can’t leave here.”
“And neither can I,” Sean said, stepping forward. “I can help fight the fire.”
Rebecca pivoted toward him, her hand on her waist. “After your hospital visit last night, there is no way I’m letting you exhaust yourself trying to fight a fire. Hattie, make sure he leaves.”
“I’m going to follow in my car. There isn’t enough room in that SUV and I need company.” Hattie pointedly looked at Sean.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked Texas Ranger Parker.
“Brody offered his house. The U.S. Marshals are meeting us there. Even if the hands and the firefighters put the fire out, it will be chaotic around here. Not a safe place for y’all.” Ranger Parker opened the back door. “Please climb in.” His glare challenged Rebecca to defy him.
“Please, Aunt Becky,” Kim said over the blare of sirens coming down the road toward the house.
Rebecca stared south. In the distance, she could see the flames dancing along the ground, sparks caught on the wind and spreading closer. The scent of smoke saturated the air.
“Ma’am?”
“Oh, all right, but I don’t like this one bit.” Rebecca scrambled into the backseat and sat next to Kim, who clung to her.
As two more fire trucks from Dry Gulch arrived in the yard, Ranger Parker drove out to the highway.
“What’s happening, Tor-eee?” Aubrey asked, a sob escaping at the end of her question.
“There’s a wildfire out in the field. We’re getting out of the firemen’s way so they can put it out.”
Kim lifted her head and peered out the window, and then whispered, “What about the animals?”
Rebecca hugged her niece to her so she wouldn’t see the red inferno consuming the ranch. “They’ll run away. They’ll be all right.” She prayed they would be—that they had a place to run to.
Both cowhands watching the herd in the south pasture galloped into the yard ahead of a stampede of cattle not forty feet behind them. The frantic sounds of the animals reverberated through the smoke-thick air. Firefighters and cowhands mobilizing to fight the fire scattered and tried to find a safe place to be as the cows charged through the wooden fence on that side of the house.
Brody hopped up on the back deck, with Jake right behind him. He saw a man trip and go down. Brody jumped down from his perch and raced toward the older ranch hand. The man got to his knees, looked at the wall of animals coming at him, and faltered. Brody flew toward him, picked him up, and kept going, pushing the man under a truck parked out back, then diving in behind him as the pounding hooves of the cattle churned up dust and chaos.
With the children finally in bed and asleep, Tory paced from one end of Brody’s living room to the other. Her sister-in-law’s trembling hands and nervous flitting from one person to the next heightened Rebecca’s panicky feeling. She wanted to shout at Tory to sit down but realized that wouldn’t resolve the pent-up tension they’d all felt for over a week—as though waiting for the next catastrophe to strike. And it had tonight.
They could lose their home—a home built by their grandfather and added on to by their father. The place she’d grown up in gone, not to mention the memories stored inside—the pictures, the treasures.
“I’m just going to say what we’re all thinking. There was no lightning storm tonight, so most likely the fire was arson.” Sean put his arm around Hattie and pulled her close.
Tory paused in her pacing and faced them. “Will we know for sure?”
“Probably. That’ll be for the arson expert to determine, but you can bet that my son will have someone out there looking for the source of the fire.”
“Arson, Thomas’s accident, cattle rustling. What’s going on?” Tory’s voice rose to a shrill pitch.
“Don’t know for sure, but we’ve got help to figure it out.” Rebecca bit her bottom lip and wished she had answers to all that was going on.
“Is this connected to that trial you’re on?” Tory clutched the back of the chair near her, her hands digging into the leather so hard her fingertips reddened.
“I can’t imagine cattle rustling having anything to do with the trial.” She hoped it wasn’t another thing to be piled on top of all the other reasons she had for feeling guilty.
“How about Thomas’s accident or the fire?” Tory came around and sank into the chair across from Rebecca.
“I guess it could, if Thomas’s accident wasn’t really an accident, but there’s no proof it was deliberately done. And if the fire was set, I could definitely see Alexandrov having someone do it.”
“Alexandrov, the Russian mob guy?” Tory twisted her hands together, over and over.
Her sister-in-law was close to the edge. Concerned about Tory, Rebecca kept her voice even and soothing. “Yes, he runs the Russian Mafia in San Antonio and the surrounding area.”
“Arrest him. Get him off the street.”
“I wish we could. Knowing something and proving it are two different things.”
“So this could be happening to us because you’re the judge on that Russian gangster’s trial. Step down. Get as far away from it as possible. Then maybe our life will go back to normal.” Tory’s voice gained volume as anger took hold of her. Her glare drilling into Rebecca, Tory grasped the arms of the chair.
“It’s not that easy. The trial should be over by next week. How long the jury will deliberate, I can’t say.”
“Thomas shouldn’t be . . .” Tory snapped her mouth closed and averted her gaze. Pushing herself to her feet, she stomped toward the hallway. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. I’m sure tomorrow will be long and difficult, even if the house is still standing.”
Rebecca waited a good minute after Tory left before drawing in a deep, fortifying breath, which helped to ease the constriction about her chest. “Have I done this to everyone?”
The question hung in the silence for half a minute before Sean frowned and shook his head. “If the Russian Mafia is behind what happened at the ranch or to Thomas, they are the ones who are responsible. Not you. Do you understand?” His fierce tone and expression hammered home who he felt was the guilty party.
But still the guilt nibbled at her composure, snatching breath from her lungs. Her chest rose and fell as she gulped in oxygen-rich air.
Hattie left the comfort of S
ean’s loose embrace and knelt in front of Rebecca, taking her hands. “You are not responsible. Tory is exhausted and will feel a lot different when she gets the rest she needs. She needs to get some rest, to sleep for a good long while, and to focus on herself. Not spend all her time at the hospital, or she won’t be any good to Thomas when he does wake up.”
Sean spoke next, “The same goes for you, Rebecca. I’ve seen you drag yourself home and try to act like everything is the same as before. I know you’re doing it for your nieces. But maybe you should talk with them. You’ve been so busy avoiding the subject of their father being in the hospital that I’m afraid the girls are scared to bring up the subject.”
Rebecca gazed at Sean, his words sinking in as she thought back to the times she spent with Kim and Aubrey. Even when they went to visit their dad with her, she tried to keep everything upbeat, and any time one of them wanted to know how Thomas was really doing, she focused on the fact that his body was healing and that he’d wake up when he was better. She really didn’t say much else. She didn’t want the girls to continue to have nightmares, especially Kim. But she still did.
“If we’re talking about Thomas, when the girls come into a room, we usually clam up. Kim’s a smart girl. She knows what we’re doing. She needs to feel she can freely talk about her father.” Hattie patted Rebecca’s arm, then rose. “I’ve done the same thing.”
“But shouldn’t we keep their life as normal as possible?” Rebecca’s gaze skipped from Hattie to Sean and then back to the housekeeper.
“Yes, to a certain point, but we have to acknowledge the change, too.” Hattie settled next to Sean as though she’d never left his side.
“You two are right. I’ll have a talk with Kim tomorrow.”
“Oh, no.” Hattie covered her mouth, her eyes round.
“Rob is supposed to eat with us Wednesday night, and we might not have a place to do that.” Rebecca didn’t want another problem that needed solving.
“I know this is Brody’s home, but I’m sure my son wouldn’t mind if we had dinner here if we can’t at the ranch. Kim has been looking forward to seeing him.”
“Yeah, we can always make the cake here tomorrow, or even Wednesday. Before we start worrying about what to do, let’s see what happens at the ranch.”
Rebecca checked her watch. “I’m calling Brody. I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on.”
“What’s going on, Brody?” Rebecca asked the second he answered his phone, holding it in one hand while using a shovel to keep any sparks that were landing in the yard around the house from catching on fire.
“Some of the cowhands and I are making a stand at the house, trying to keep the fire from spreading to it. The firefighters are out in the field directly to the south, trying to stop the fire, but with this wind some of the sparks are jumping the line.”
“What happened to the cattle in the south pasture?”
“They came through here. Jake and a few other ranch hands are rounding them up and settling them down. We don’t need another stampede.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“No, not yet.” The scent of smoke filled the air. “Gotta go.”
When he hung up, he put his bandana up over his nose and went after another spark that had flared into a small flame when it landed on the grass. He pounded his shovel into it, extinguishing it before it became a raging inferno. With the wind, it wouldn’t take much for that to happen.
In the glow from the fire in the nearby field, he looked around at the holes that he and the other men had created trying to put out the sparks, and it was as though they had gone treasure hunting and didn’t have the exact location, and so they had dug everywhere.
“Over here,” one of the cowhands yelled over the crackling of the fire. “I can’t stop it.”
Brody raced to help the man, trying not to suck in too much of the smoke-laden air.
Wearing the same clothes she had on when she left the ranch last night, Rebecca rolled out of the bed she shared with the girls and stood next to them for a moment to see if her movements had disturbed either one. They still slept.
In the dim lamplight, Rebecca watched her nieces sleep. Her heart swelled at the sight. The king-sized bed had easily held her and the two girls. Brody’s bed. His smell on the pillow. When she’d finally lain down three hours ago, she hadn’t realized she was sleeping on his pillow, but waking up a few minutes ago, his musky scent surrounded her as if he were there holding her through the night.
She wished he were.
Had he come home yet?
With it still dark outside, Rebecca tiptoed from Brody’s bedroom, passing the other two closed doors. She must be the only one up. She hoped the others slept better than she had. As she made her way toward the kitchen, the scent of coffee perfumed the air. Hoping it was Brody who was up, she quickened her step.
Entering the room, she found him standing at the counter, his hands clutching the edge, his head dropped down.
“Brody,” she whispered, not wanting to startle him.
He didn’t move for a long moment.
Worry pushed to the foreground. What was wrong?
Then he shifted around, black smudges on his face, his expression solemn, his eyes filled with weariness.
She hurried to him. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. The coffee behind him on the counter finished perking. He poured himself a mug and shuffled toward the table as though he were too tired to even pick up his feet. He plopped down onto the chair.
She needed caffeine and was desperate enough to drink the coffee. After filling her cup, she sat next to him. Brody reeked of the odor of smoke. But she didn’t care. He was here and not hurt. That was the most important thing to her.
She laid her hand on his arm. “Was anyone hurt?”
“A couple of guys were treated for smoke inhalation, but other than that, no.” His voice roughened with each word he spoke. Coughing, he continued, “We lost a few cattle that were caught in the fire. It’s too hard to know the full extent of the damage since it’s still dark, but men are guarding the area. I’ll be back out there with the arson specialist. I doubt this was an accident.”
“Me, too. Today is another important day for the trial. Short of something happening to me, I’ll be at the courthouse on time. I want this trial over with as soon as possible. The prosecutor will rest his case after this last witness.”
“I called Charlie to let him know what was going on. He was letting the detail on the witness know and telling them to add a few more men. This trial needs to end.”
“How did Charlie feel about being woken up?”
“Someone had to let him know what was going on at the ranch. He was getting dressed and going to head in to work early.”
“Early? I’d say that was an understatement. What time is it?” She scanned the kitchen, searching for a clock. On the stove the digital time proclaimed 4:45 a.m. “You know you shouldn’t drink that coffee. You should get a few hours of sleep at least.”
“This caffeine drink won’t stop me when I finally lie down. I don’t think anything will, but I want to take you to the courthouse and see Charlie, then I’ll come home and crash until I have to pick you up.”
“You don’t have to. Randall can.”
“No. I’m going to. Did you get any sleep?” His finger caressed the skin beneath her eye.
“A few hours. I was worried about you and everyone else at the ranch.”
He brushed his fingertips across her other cheek. “Go back to bed now that you know we’re fine. The house is still standing. The stables and barn, too.” One corner of his mouth hiked up for a second before it fell back into place as though the effort to smile was too much. “I promise I’ll wake you up in time to go to the courthouse.”
His palm curved along her jawline. She pressed it against her face, relishing the feel of his touch. “Thank you, Brody, for all you’ve done for me. For us.”
“I couldn’t do anything
less. We go way back. You’re a—friend.”
When he paused at the word friend, her lungs seized her breath and held it for a few seconds. “You’ve gone beyond the call of friendship or duty. How do I ever repay you?”
His features tensed into a frown. “Repay me? You don’t. I’m glad to help you.”
She smoothed her fingers over the lines at the side of his mouth, trying to coax a smile out of him. “I’m sorry. I know that. It’s just that when I think of this past week you’re always foremost in my thoughts.”
He reached across and caught her face between his large, roughened hands. “I care for you, Rebecca. I’d forgotten how much until this past week, but . . .” He swallowed hard, his eyes shimmering.
“But what?”
“Nothing.” He pulled her to him while at the same time leaning toward her.
His arms gathered her against him, and his mouth slanted across hers. The kiss started as a gentle mating, but soon it evolved into a possession that threatened her peace of mind, breaking down all the barriers she’d erected. Tired of fighting her feelings, she surrendered to his kiss. She let herself enjoy the pure pleasure of the tender feel of his lips against hers.
When he pulled back slightly, his breathing heavy, he laid his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. Linked together in an embrace, she savored the moment for what it was. Soon real life would intrude and all her defenses would go back up. But for the few minutes she reveled in the femininity he provoked in her. They were just a man and a woman—no past history, no people trying to harm them.
He sucked in another deep breath, his chest swelling. “You need to go back to bed.”
“It would be nice to have my life back.”
“Yes. Back to normal.”
She chuckled. “I’m not sure that will happen.” Normal? When he had disrupted her life emotionally? If he pursued a romantic relationship, she might give in and want more. Then what? She would have put herself in the same position she’d been in when Garrett was killed three years ago. Garrett’s job had been dangerous. So was Brody’s. Someone had already tried to kill him because of his involvement in this case. What if they succeeded? How could she live with that?
Scorned Justice: The Men of Texas Rangers Series #3 (Men of the Texas Rangers) Page 17
