Texas Sheriff's Deadly Mission

by Karen Whiddon

  In fact, he still remembered a few of those refreshing ponds from his teenage years, if they were still there. He’d bet it was ninety-eight or ninety-nine in the shade.

  He’d always loved Getaway, Texas. When he’d been a kid and his uncle Sam had been sheriff here, Parker spent almost every summer here. His mother drove northwest from Houston the first weekend after school let out, delivering Parker on her brother’s doorstep with an indulgent and exhausted admonition that he stay out of trouble. Until his teens, Parker didn’t have a problem promising his mother he would. Of course, once he noticed girls and cars, in that order, trouble practically became his middle name.

  Only Sam, with his calm, confident manner, had been able to settle Parker down. Since Parker never had a father figure in his life, he looked up to the sheriff and respected him. What Sam said, went.

  And Sam had known Rayna Coombs, too. In all the summers he’d visited Getaway, Parker knew he’d never met her. He sure as hell wouldn’t have forgotten a woman like her. Ever.

  Sam claimed she was good people, bestowing on her his highest compliment. He’d told Parker he hired her away from the Conroe Police Department, where she’d run into some kind of trouble, though Sam didn’t elaborate on what that might have been. She’d worked as a patrol officer in Getaway for a few years, which must have been during the time Parker had been in the Marines. And when the time had come for Sam to retire, she’d run and won the job of sheriff hands down. If anyone could find Nicole, Sam said, Rayna Coombs could. Even though she’d already tried once and failed, Sam urged Parker to enlist her help again and give her another shot. Sometimes clues turned up that were overlooked or not present the first time, Sam had said.

  Desperate to find Nicole before John died, Parker had agreed. And that was how Parker found himself back in the dusty west Texas town of Getaway after far too long an absence. After getting out of the Marines, he’d kicked around the country for a while. He’d hang glided in Tennessee, rode the waves off the coast of California and mountain climbed in Colorado. He’d somehow managed to forget the arid beauty of the flat, rugged land in west Texas. He’d always loved the expansive sunsets, tinting the sky with vivid oranges and pinks and reds. And downtown Getaway held fond memories, with its lovingly restored old-timey buildings and cafes, bars and shops where even now, folks still remembered his name.

  If he’d been a settling kind of man, Getaway would be the kind of place he’d choose. Instead, he’d come to find Nicole, so John would know his sister was okay. All John wanted was to see her before he died. That hope was the only thing that kept John hanging on. Parker’s gut clenched even thinking about it.

  Both Texans, Parker and John had served together in Afghanistan. Though they hadn’t even known each other before being assigned to the same unit, by the time they’d done their time and managed to get out alive, they’d become best friends. The kind of bond they’d forged wasn’t easily broken. In fact, the instant Parker had learned of John’s diagnosis of late-stage colon cancer, he’d abandoned his rental on Maui, where he’d been teaching scuba diving, and flown on a red-eye to Dallas.

  Even though he’d come immediately, he’d been shocked by John’s condition. A human skeleton, skin stretched over brittle bones. He knew right then John wasn’t long for this world. What really sucked was that colon cancer was easily taken care of with early detection. John had simply not bothered to get himself checked out until it was too late. “I thought I was invincible, man,” John had said, smiling a weak yet sardonic smile. “After surviving Afghanistan, I didn’t think anything else would have the balls to go after me.”

  He had a point. This was why Parker had taken so avidly to extreme sports. He’d survived hell on earth. Nothing else would dare to touch him.

  Clearly both he and John had been wrong.

  Shaking off the melancholy, Parker eyed the road ahead of him. Pavement shimmered in the heat. Heading west, always west, he left downtown, drove through the stately restored Victorian houses, and then left the city limits behind. Past sunbaked fields of brown grass, the old grain silos near the train tracks, and the fruit-and-vegetable stand on Farm to Market Road 1560. He passed the cattle pasture where he, along with several other bored teens, had hauled a keg of Bud Light and built a huge bonfire. Kids started showing up before sunset, many even driving in from nearby towns. The party had been the talk of Getaway for months, especially after the bonfire had gotten out of control and nearly burned down the nearby cornfield.

  If he remembered right, a huge stock pond sat around the curve in the road.

  There. Smaller than he remembered, but easily accessible just the same. Pulling his bike over onto the dirt shoulder, he cut the engine. And sat for a moment, allowing the heaviness of his task to weigh him down. Due to the length of time Nicole had been missing, Parker figured she was most likely dead. If proof of this were found and delivered to John, the horrible news would most likely kill him.

  Parker thought of his friend, dying and worried about his sister, and his stomach clenched.

  As he pulled off his leather vest and T-shirt, his cell phone rang. His uncle’s name appeared on the screen.

  “Uncle Sam,” Parker greeted him. “How are you?”

  “Good. Any news on Nicole?”

  Parker explained he’d met with Rayna earlier.

  “Ah, Rayna.” Sam chuckled. “What’d you think of her? She’s single, you know.”

  Amused, Parker grimaced. “Tell me you’re not matchmaking.”

  “I’m not. At least not much. She’s a pretty little thing, though, isn’t she?”

  Parker conceded she was. “But she’s the sheriff,” he pointed out. “The one who’s going to find Nicole.” Might as well be positive.

  “Hopefully,” Sam replied. “But I don’t see what her being sheriff has to do with you dating her.”

  “Aha! You are matchmaking.”

  “Of course I am,” Sam groused. “She’s alone and stubborn—so are you. You’re both around the same age, and I think you might like each other, if you’d take a chance and get to know her.” He paused, then chuckled. “Plus, she’s easy on the eyes.”

  Parker didn’t reply. No way in hell did he intend to agree with Sam, even though he found Rayna more than easy on the eyes. As far as he was concerned, she was downright beautiful.

  “Maybe, but I’m not going to be here long enough to start dating anyone,” Parker pointed out. “All I care about is locating Nicole. Once that happens, I’ll be taking her back to Dallas to see John.”

  Sam understood what John meant to his nephew. After all, Sam had been the one Parker had talked to when those late-night demons had come calling, urging him to either do something really stupid or drown his sorrows in a bottle of Crown. He often joked that while he might have left Afghanistan, the things he’d experienced there had never left him. He’d often despaired if they ever would.

  John had been the same way. It was one of the things he and Parker had in common.

  But then cancer had come calling, and John had discovered he had worse demons to fight. Helpless, Parker could only stand by and offer support.

  “Keep me posted if you get any new leads,” Sam said. “And if there’s anything I can do for you from a distance, give me a holler.”

  Promising he would, Parker ended the call.

  That night, he grabbed a to-go burger and fries from Hardees, a pint of beer from Quick Trip and stayed holed up in his room watching television.

  Once asleep, he dreamed of the beautiful sheriff, intermingled with John begging to see his sister, and IEDs going off in the desert. He woke sweating, his heart racing, and struggling a moment to remember where he was.

  After showering, he went in search of breakfast and a cup of coffee, finding both at the Tumbleweed Café. Though barely seven o’clock, the café was crowded with ranchers wearing Stetsons and boots, farmers
in overalls, truck drivers with big rigs parked in a gravel lot across the street and several shop owners needing a warm meal before their day started. Most of the customers appeared to be locals, except for maybe the truckers. Parker’s motorcycle was the only one in the parking lot.

  He took a seat at the breakfast bar and ordered coffee while checking out the menu. The waitress poured him a cup, piping hot, and promised to be back to take his order.

  He decided on a basic breakfast—eggs, bacon, toast and hash browns. Order placed, he drank his coffee and listened to the ebb and flow of conversation around him.

  Most of the talk from the table behind him seemed to be about the drought and what that might mean for the crops. From two tables over, he could hear two men discussing the best route to take a load to Kansas without hitting too many weight stations. And he’d be willing to guess that group of men occupying three tables pushed together were talking about cattle prices or some such thing.

  No one discussed a missing woman. Of course, that would be old news. Two weeks had passed since Nicole had disappeared. The local sheriff’s department had investigated, found nothing, and only then had John’s parents called Parker. If they’d told him sooner, he’d have been here much earlier. As it was, he’d come quick. Like, immediately. He’d packed and hopped on his bike the instant he hung up the phone. All he told John was that he was going to get Nicole. John’s parents had been emphatic that John not be told his sister was missing.

  Talk about stress. Not only did they have to worry about losing their son to cancer, but now they had to worry because their daughter had disappeared. Parker couldn’t imagine how it would feel to lose both your children at the same time.

  His food arrived and he abandoned his efforts to eavesdrop and instead focused on his breakfast. While he ate, he figured out what he was going to do with his day.

  The small town of Getaway was known for two things. First, its name. Legend had it that the first settlers wanted to keep strangers out of the area, so they named it Getaway. Despite some people taking the name the opposite way, claiming they’d found their own getaway in Getaway, the name had stuck.

  The other thing was that syndicated advice columnist Myrna Maple lived on a farm about ten miles outside the city limits. Though eccentric, the older woman had been known to dispense random gems of wisdom to people she met on the street.

  One of the reasons Nicole had detoured to Getaway had been a hope of meeting Myrna. Therefore, Parker felt talking to the advice columnist would be a good place to start.

  Except he didn’t know how to find her. He’d done an internet search of the county property tax records and nothing had come up under her name. Which only meant that Myrna Maples wasn’t her real name or she’d purchased property under a corporation. Hell, she might even be a renter, for all he knew.

  He’d bet the sheriff had her location. They’d probably even talked with her. Though Parker knew he could simply call her, the thought of seeing the gorgeous redhead again felt infinitely preferable.

  Plus, he needed to keep an eye on things in person, right?

  Signaling for the check, he slugged down the rest of his coffee. When the check came, he handed the waitress a twenty and told her to keep the change. He’d managed to kill an hour, which put it a little after eight.

  Outside, the early-morning temperature only hinted at the heat to come. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, inhaling the unpolluted air, and then climbed onto his motorcycle. Even with the single stoplight turning red, he made it from the motel to the sheriff’s office in just under three minutes. It wasn’t until he pulled into the parking lot that he wondered if the sheriff would even be on duty this early.

  If not, he’d wait until she came in.

  Parking his bike, he removed his helmet and strode in through the front door.

  “May I help you?” An older woman with steel-gray, close-cropped hair, small silver glasses and a no-nonsense expression greeted him. Her name tag proclaimed her name to be Mary Leeds, dispatcher. She held a disposable up of coffee and took gulps from it as she eyed him. She appeared to be the only person in.

  “I’m looking for the sheriff,” he said, taking a second look around the place just in case he might have missed her the first time.

  “She’s not here right now,” Mary said. “I can take a message or perhaps Officer Newsome can help you?”

  A uniformed man pushed up from his desk behind a cubicle and joined them. Judging from his bloodshot eyes, he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. His name tag read Larry Newsome. Eyeing Parker, Officer Newsome patted his paunch. “What can I do you for?” he asked.

  Parker repeated himself. “I’m looking for the sheriff. She and I spoke yesterday and she’s checking into something for me.”

  Appearing unconvinced, the deputy scratched the back of his neck and yawned. “Why don’t you let me check on that for you? Rayna—the sheriff—always logs everything into the system. That’s how we work. That way, if something happens to one of us, the others can still work the case.”

  Which made sense. “Okay,” Parker conceded. “She’s looking into a missing-person case.”

  “Oh, you must mean Nicole Wilson.” Straightening, Officer Newsome nodded. “Actually, she assigned that one to me. I refamiliarized myself with the files all last night. I got about four hours’ sleep because I got so caught up in poring over them. I’m not even supposed to be here yet, but I’ve got so many people to talk to that I figured I’d give it a head start.”

  While Parker appreciated the other man’s work ethic, one thing stood out to him. Sheriff Rayna Coombs, the woman his uncle Sam said could be relied on, didn’t even care enough to work Nicole’s case personally. She’d assigned it to this guy, Larry Newsome.

  Infuriated and disappointed, he bit back a sharp response. “Any idea when the sheriff will be in?”

  The other two exchanged glances. “Her daughter is sick,” Mary finally said. “She’s taking the day off to stay home with her.”

  “But in the meantime—” the deputy leaned forward, elbows on the counter “—I’ll be more than happy to keep you in the loop on the case.”

  Jaw clenched so hard it hurt, Parker forced himself to nod. “That would be awesome,” he managed to say. “When do you plan to start talking to people?”

  “Unfortunately, it won’t be today,” Mary chimed in, her tone brusque. “With the sheriff out, we like to have an officer here at all times, just in case. We’ve got a couple others who are out patrolling.”

  The phone rang just then and Mary went off to answer it. Both Parker and Officer Newsome watched her go.

  A moment later, Mary came back. “Well, you’re in luck,” she told Parker. “That was Rayna. Her little girl’s fever broke. Wanda’s going to keep an eye on her, so Rayna is on her way in.”

  “Wanda?” Parker asked before thinking better of it.

  “Rayna’s mother,” Mary answered. “She lives with Rayna and Lauren.”

  Interesting. Though he knew he shouldn’t have cared, Parker filed this information away.

  “I see.” Parker walked over to one of the hard metal chairs in the waiting area. “I’ll just sit here and wait until she arrives.”

  Chapter 2

  Nothing hurt worse than worrying over a sick child. Lauren had crawled into Rayna’s bed around one in the morning, complaining of a headache and chills. When Rayna touched her little forehead, she’d realized her child was burning up with fever. A thermometer under the tongue confirmed it.

  She’d dosed her with children’s ibuprofen, gotten her to drink some water, and they’d both finally drifted to sleep shortly before three.

  The alarm clock went off at six. Lauren opened her eyes, bright with fever, and then let them drift closed. She’d been lethargic, refusing water or food. Rayna checked her temperature. Finding it still high, she placed
a cool washcloth on Lauren’s forehead and went and woke her mother.

  As soon as Wanda heard, she called Dr. Delpeccio’s home number, having confided to Rayna that he’d given her both that and his cell.

  “He’ll meet you at his office at eight,” Wanda said once she’d ended the call. “His first appointment is at eight thirty, so he’s going to squeeze you and Lauren in. He’ll get her fixed up and good as new.”

  One thing Rayna envied about her mother was Wanda’s absolute certainty that everyone loved her. With those kind of high expectations, everyone did. And with good reason. Wanda was the kind of mother who was always there for her, without judgment or comment. Just love.

  When Rayna made the foolish mistake that almost cost her the career she’d worked so hard for, Wanda was the one who’d offered comfort. And then when Rayna learned she was pregnant, Wanda promised to help her with the baby, no matter what. That was what families did. Stick together.

  Rayna hadn’t even told Jimmy Wayne he had a daughter. The one time she tried to contact him in prison, he told her he’d kill her if he ever saw her again. In fact, he said, his tone dripping with venom, he’d have one of his friends on the outside do the job for him. Even though she had nothing to do with the huge drug bust that brought him down—hell, she hadn’t even known he was involved with drugs or the cartel—he believed she was behind everything. Despite her denials, both to him and to the police department she worked for, everyone seemed to view her as the bad guy. A compromised cop.

  Everyone, that is, except Wanda. Wanda knew Rayna had simply made a mistake, fallen in love with the wrong man. Lauren was the awesome result of that mistake, like a bonus rainbow after a particularly bad storm.

  When the death threats had started coming in from cronies of the man Rayna had thought she loved, she’d worried about her mother first, before herself. So open and trusting, Wanda would never know what hit her in the event of an attack. That was why when Sam called with a job offer in a middle-of-nowhere town in dusty west Texas, Rayna had jumped at the opportunity. Sam hadn’t even minded that Rayna was pregnant.