by Rose, Amelia
She’d been doing it ever since their mother had died while giving birth to Woody. Technically Shad was the older one, but responsibility had lingered with her. Even as children, people would often remark about how much she acted like the “mother hen.” She knew that without her, they would have gone off and done something stupid years before. But now Melinda was beginning to feel that her role within the family was lost. It was as if everything was restructuring itself right in front of her, and she’d never felt so lost.
Operating without an anchor, she thought as she bent down close to the chair and inspected the strips of tape hanging from its edges. This was where Alyssa had been held. The floor all around the chair showed the evidence of the scuffle between Woody and Sanders. Dirt and hay were displaced, tools were strung about, and a trail of blood ran from one side of the room to the other. Melinda said a silent prayer under her breath, thankful that the damage had not been inflicted on Woody.
Part of her wanted to be angry with Clara and Alyssa for bringing this drama and tragedy into their calm and peaceful lives at Stanhope, but she knew that wasn’t fair. None of this had been their fault. They had not come into town looking to cause trouble. And, if she were being honest with herself, she would have to admit that she had never seen either of her brothers this content with life.
The truth was, when Clara’s truck had broken down almost a month and a half ago it had thrown Melinda’s life into a tailspin. First Shad and Clara had gotten together, and after just a few weeks together he had proposed to her. Now it seemed that Woody and Alyssa were just as inseparable. At first she had been frustrated and upset. This wasn’t how she had envisioned things going for the family. However, after spending a little time with everyone, she knew that they were at peace.
She stood up and went back to her SUV, and just as she did her radio squawked at her. “Sheriff Brandt?”
“Yes?”
“A Mr. Davidson is here from the OSBI.”
Melinda paused mid-stride and looked around. None of the other deputies appeared to have heard the news, but she knew they were listening to see how she would react. She had assured the OSBI that she would be able to handle the Sanders case without assistance, but that was before his escape and the ensuing snafu.
“That was quick,” she muttered under her breath before pressing the radio button and transmitting her official response to the dispatch, “and what does he want?”
“He said he wants to see you,” answered the dispatcher. “He’s waiting here at your office.”
“You tell him he’ll be waiting there awhile. I’m going to be a little busy trying to make sure we get this criminal captured. I’m not going to stop doing my job just to humor him.”
She heard a few noises on the other end and she could tell that the agent was trying to commandeer the radio from Edna. Melinda also knew that was not about to happen. She smiled a little when she heard Edna’s pissed off voice come back over the air waves.
“He said that’s what he needs to talk to you about, so you need to get back here immediately.”
“Sure thing, Edna,” Melinda told her before turning off her radio. She stood in the barn for a moment and enjoyed the silence while she took a deep breath. It would not be long before OSBI agent Davidson and whoever was with him would find her just so that they could take official charge of the investigation. But she was not about to make it easy for them, and she damn sure wasn’t going to walk into that office and hand over jurisdiction right now.
Right now she had a crazy man to catch so that her brothers could return home.
Chapter 2
Cale Winters entered into the sheriff’s office and rounded the desk. “Is it true?” he asked the person behind the counter. He had been present during Charles’ psychiatric review, but as soon as it was done he had left to go to the store to get groceries and supplies. Because the cell phone reception out here was so spotty, he’d apparently missed the call about his brother going missing. It wasn’t until he had finished lunch that he checked the phone only to see that there was a voicemail.
The voice on the other end had been that of Melinda Brandt, asking him if he was aware of the situation and if knew where Charles was. He’d immediately left the restaurant and headed back toward Stanhope, but he hadn’t been able to raise her on the phone.
A small, elderly woman sat on the other side of the desk. Her nameplate said that her name was Edna Miller. “Is what true, sir?” she asked calmly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Cale Winters, Charles Sanders’ lawyer.” He didn’t need to tell them that he was also his step-brother. In a town this small, he was sure that everyone already knew that.
Before she could answer, a large man standing off to the side of the entryway walked toward him. The gait was slow and deliberate, and it was a form of intimidation that Cale had seen several other times in his career as a lawyer. It was clear that he knew his size was that of a football player, and he fully intended to use this to his advantage. The man was wearing a dark grey suit and grimaced as he raised a small Styrofoam cup and took a drink of the notoriously bitter coffee. Cale didn’t have to even hear what he had to say to know that he was from a different agency. By the way he was lurking in the corner and the other deputies were walking around him dismissively, it appeared as if Sheriff Brandt’s staff were giving him the cold shoulder.
Cale knew that wouldn’t last long though. As soon as he got some form of backup he and his other agents would swarm down on the station and overtake it, making it much more difficult for him to be in the loop on their case. It was highly unlikely they would do much to include Sheriff Brandt either. Unfortunately, it was often the name of the game when the top agency took over the situation.
“Sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear the situation. I’m Agent Davidson. I’ll be…consulting on your client’s case.”
“Consulting? I wasn’t aware that Sheriff Brandt had brought anyone in,” Cale said, trying desperately to quash his smirk. He knew that he shouldn’t antagonize the agent, but he also knew how stubborn the sheriff could be. It was highly doubtful that she had put him in the loop. Right now the unfortunate soul was only trolling for information. Cale didn’t see any reason why he should make his life easier by helping him, especially not if he was planning on getting any help from Melinda later.
“She didn’t,” Davidson responded, “but rest assured that we’ll be involved in the case and the retrieval of Mr. Sanders. You can make this easy on your client now and tell us if you know anything about his possible whereabouts.” This time it was the agent’s turn to smirk.
“I do not know where my client is, and if I did I can assure you that I would instruct him to turn himself in,” replied Winters.
“You be sure to do that if he contacts you,” the agent told him before returning back to his corner. He leaned against the wall and gave Cale the cold stare. It was a tactic that he had encountered before. This agent wanted to let him know that he was watching him, waiting to see if he would squirm under his gaze.
He was making the wrongful assumption that Cale was some small time lawyer who might be easily intimidated by his presence. All of this would change as soon as he got his hands on Charlie’s full file, but until then, Cale let the agent believe that he had the upper hand.
Cale had been under the scrutiny of everyone in town as the outsider. However, he was feeling greatly relieved by the fact that someone else was finally on the receiving end of the hostility. Instead of waiting in the same room as the agent, Cale instead left a message for Sheriff Brandt and went back to his car.
He knew that he should have gone back to his hotel, but he kept driving around on the back roads. At least twice he was certain that he had turned so far away from civilization that he would never find his way back, but both times he just drove down the dirt roads until they eventually connected back up to an asphalt road that led back into town.
On the third pass he drove onto a dirt road only to have
three different sheriff deputy’s vehicles go past him the other way. Cale looked up the hill and spotted Sheriff Brandt’s personal SUV parked near the entrance to what looked like an old ramshackle barn.
For a moment Cale parked on the side of the road and weighed his options. He knew that the chances of Melinda Brandt actually pulling him in on the case to help locate Charles were very slim. She was going to assume that he had an ulterior motive.
Not that Cale blamed her. It’s what he would undoubtedly think as well if he were in her situation. However, he needed to make sure that she understood that she didn’t want to help Charles escape. Cale knew how serious the situation was, and he was certain that if they didn’t get Charles back behind bars where he belonged, that things were going to get a lot worse.
The worry, doubt and blame that often gnawed at him in the wee hours of the night had begun to work their way into the daylight hours. As he was watching, he saw the sheriff emerge from the building and walk over to a deputy.
Not for the first time, Cale watched her in awe. She tried hard to hide her beauty with her long dark hair pulled back in a tight bun and her face void of make-up of any kind, but the truth was that she was still one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. However, he also knew that she did not want to be treated like your normal woman. She thrived off of her intelligence and her authority.
From what he had seen and dealt with so far, she seemed to be a force to be reckoned with. One time when they were in the courthouse, he’d seen another lawyer make a pass at her. She had firmly rebuffed him without even a moment’s pause. Cale knew that if he approached her for information she was likely to do the same to him.
Sighing, he maneuvered the car back onto the dirt road leading up to where she stood. It was a long shot, but he had to find a way to make her understand what was at stake.
Chapter 3
Melinda shielded her eyes against the glare from the windshield as another car approached. At first she assumed that it was just another one of her deputies, but then it turned to the right just enough that the glare faded and she saw that it was a silver Ford, not one of her cruisers.
“Hey! You can’t be here!” She yelled out at the car as she approached. As she spoke a tall man climbed out of the parked car. He was wearing a dark grey shirt and blue jeans. At first she didn’t recognize him. When he turned to look at her, she stopped her approach to the car and took a moment to gather herself. He looked so different without his expensive suit.
“Do you know where Charles is?” she asked as she started walking again. While Cale was not one of her favorite people, she seriously doubted that he had anything to do with his brother’s disappearance. When she had first met him, he had seemed genuinely concerned about what his brother had done and he had made no objections to any of the restrictions she had placed on him.
Most lawyers worth their grain would have fought the issue much harder than Cale Winters had, especially lawyers that were so closely connected to the case. Melinda had not yet developed a firm lead on him. Whenever he came near, though, she could slightly feel the warm fingers of attraction spreading through her. She had tried to banish those fleeting thoughts, but they kept creeping in.
Her brothers had both managed to find love out of this whole mess, and for a split second she found herself full of resentment at her career and her need to remain professional at all times. It was almost impossible to be the sheriff in such a small town and have a love life of any kind without gossip and rumors undermining your authority. She also felt that her authoritative manner scared away some men.
“Trust me, sheriff, if I knew I would tell you. I don’t want him out roaming the streets any more than you do.” Cale said as he approached. He closed the gap between them and leaned over her, speaking softly so that the other deputies in the area couldn’t hear him. Melinda found herself leaning forward inexplicably. She stopped short and pulled back a little, flustered at her continuing attraction for this man whose monster of a brother was currently terrorizing her family.
Shame! Her interior voice chided her. You have to be on your A game here. Everyone is depending on you. Every once in a while Melinda just wished that voice would go away, wished it would let her enjoy a day without constantly reminding her that she had to protect everybody, save everybody.
“Was there something else?” she asked, keeping her voice low. It was obvious that whatever information Cale wanted to impart on her, that he didn’t want it to be easily overheard.
For the first time since they had started talking he looked directly into her eyes, and she could sense that his pale green eyes were filled with conflict and sadness. The starkness and purity of those emotions caused her to hold her tongue as she was about to lecture him on wasting her time. They washed over her in a giant wave, and she realized that she may have seriously underestimated her classification of him as someone who had been set up with the easy life.
“Off the record, I know that my brother is a serious threat.” He paused for a second and took a deep breath before continuing. “As bad as he is, he is still family. He is still my responsibility, and I do not want to see him get killed by some gung ho deputy or agent because of this. I will help you in whatever capacity I can.”
Melinda thought about this for a second, her brow furrowing. “I see, and this capacity, does it include open sharing of information?” she asked, curious to find out if he was willing to violate his oath to his brother.
“Not all information,” he replied. “But everything that is relevant to catching him, including all of the hacking information that I had pulled from his personal computer. This isn’t something I am openly discussing with the whole department, especially not if the OSBI is about to get involved. This is a one-time offer directly to you.”
As he finished those words he pushed a small slip of paper into her hand, his touch causing an instant shock of electricity to escalate through her. Melinda bit on the inside of her cheek to stifle an urge to gasp and then pocketed the note. She felt a little like a teenager in high school hiding notes and reacting like a school girl to his touch, but this was an opportunity she didn’t want to pass up. If there was a chance that she could get to Charles Sanders before the men in suits did she wasn’t going to let it go by.
Chapter 4
Dusk had settled over the horizon by the time Melinda made it back to the sheriff’s station. When she pulled in, there were three or more government issued cars parked out front. She had known this was happening because Edna had been texting her throughout the day, keeping her updated on what was going on.
Apparently they had set up a command center in one of the conference rooms complete with graphs, charts and a pegboard they had confiscated from another room. Edna and the rest of the deputies thought it was quite comical. She was sure that this was how operations were done at the agency, but out here it was more of folders and notebooks.
Melinda was sure that they were having a great time trying to decipher her cryptic notes and half assembled case files. She was better at organizing information than her brother, Shad, but her method was more than a little unorthodox. Her sense of control was absolute, and that meant controlling information, too. In this case, she arranged files by a system that was only known by her so that her cases couldn’t be easily commandeered by anyone other than her.
It looked like her system was about to pay off.
“Sheriff Brandt, we’ve been waiting for you,” Agent Davidson told her as soon as her feet hit the pavement.
“I assure you I’ve been busy doing my job,” Melinda replied. “In fact, I’ve been at it all day. Right now all I want to do is drop off and catalogue the evidence we collected and go home.”
“Well we really need to…”
Melinda cut him off with a raised hand. “I’m not going to be able to process any more information today. It’s far better that we hit the pavement running first thing in the morning. Here’s all the paperwork for today. I’ll leave
you to decipher it.” She handed him the catalogue and inventory lists and climbed back into her car.
“See you tomorrow,” she waved as she backed out of the parking lot and got back on the road, leaving the agent staring after her in disbelief. Melinda chuckled to herself. She knew that this would not look favorably on her, but it didn’t really matter. The way most of the locals would see it, it was part of her duty as sheriff to be difficult to outside law enforcement individuals.
When she got to the road to turn off to her house she chose to go left instead, heading up toward the Claremont Inn. A few minutes later she found herself in the parking lot.
The note that Cale had passed to her earlier had simply read, “Claremont Inn – Room 213.” She suspected that he had left it purposefully bland in case anything ever came about later. If he was accused of trying to interfere with a law enforcement investigation they would have nothing except this note, which could simply be read as his way of letting her know how to contact him should Charles be found.
“Damn lawyers,” she muttered under her breath as she walked down the long row of identical rooms until she found his. Raising her hand, she paused a moment before she knocked, uncertain if she wanted to do this or not. For a moment her morality almost got the better of her, and she started to back away from the door.
Just then the door swung open and she found Cale standing on the other side.
“Hello,” he said. “I’d hoped you would come.”
He stepped aside and motioned for her to come into the room. Melinda took a breath and looked down the hall. She realized that this was her defining moment. If she went into that room she was officially leaving the paved road and heading down a different path, cutting out the OSBI and working outside of the mainstream grid.
