Chance Reddick Box Set 1

by David Archer

  “Ugh—do me one favor. Please don’t ever call me that again. I hate it. It makes me feel like I’m a hundred years old, and I’m certainly not that old yet. Gabriella will do just fine.”

  “Sorry, Gabriella,” he remarked with emphasis, as he watched a mild look of disgust change into a small smile. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  “I know. It’s not your fault. It’s just that every time I hear that word, something inside me wants to rebel. Okay, that’s it for the barn,” she replied, shifting to another topic, and slowly sauntering back to the entryway.

  He followed, taking his cue from her, but at the same time making sure that he kept his distance behind her. As attractive as she was, Chance didn’t want to allow himself to develop any kind of affection for her, since it would only make it harder to do what he had come to do.

  Still, it was impossible to ignore the fact that he was walking along behind a beautiful woman. The more he noticed her sensuous curves and the grace with which she walked, the more he was regretting his decision to try to get close to her. Maybe he should have simply followed her back to her ranch, made it a blitz attack. Hold a gun to her head and demand to know where the money was, then squeezed the trigger before her looks and her pleas could get to him.

  “Stop noticing her!” he said angrily to himself, without uttering a sound. “Keep your mind on business and away from any kind of fantasies. You know the job, so concentrate on getting it done. Somewhere, this femme fatale has three million dollars stashed away. Keep your eyes peeled for clues, because that’s the whole reason you’re here.”

  When they stepped outside, the warming air helped to wrench his mind away from the lascivious thoughts that had invaded it. They walked in the tire tracks and headed to the far side of the barn.

  “That’s the garage,” Gabriella said. She pointed to a low wooden structure big enough to house at least three vehicles. There were no windows visible from this side and by the looks of the siding, it didn’t seem to be all too sturdy. Still, it seemed to serve its intended purpose.

  Directing his attention to the right, she pointed her finger at an addition that had been made to the north side of the barn, indicating that that was where they stored their tractor implements for the winter. It was a rather clumsily built attachment. There were large gaps all the way up to the top of the twenty-foot wall. The roof hadn’t been shingled, and the weight of a heavy winter snowfall had collapsed in the west side. Large pieces of canvas served as a barricade from the rain.

  “How long has the roof been caved in?”

  “It happened back in January, when we had a big blizzard that lasted for two full days. There was about a foot of snow on the roof, and it just couldn’t hold up. After the storm was finally over, we found it that way. As far as the doors go, we just haven’t had the time to do anything about them. I was thinking that I’d probably have to hire a carpenter to do the work if I want it done this year.”

  “Well, we’ll see how much work you have planned for me this week, and if I have any time left over, I may get a chance to start on those repairs. Now, you said something about a herd of cattle?”

  “Yes, but we’ll have to use the truck to get out there. We’ll have to take some feed out to them tomorrow, so I’ll take you out there then.”

  Chance nodded. “Fine. So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

  “Well,” she replied as she turned toward the house, “the tractor gave us quite a bit of trouble the last time we had it running, and the last man that worked for me didn’t know a thing about mechanics; I think it’s the injector pump, but maybe you could take a look at it. Then there are a few holes in the barn that I would like you to board up to keep out the pigeons that have been nesting in there lately. There’s fire wood to be cut for the fireplace, and we’re running low on meat, so we’ll have to butcher another steer.”

  TWENTY

  Chance was looking around, burning the image of his surroundings into his memory, when all of a sudden Gabriella let out a yelp. Immediately he reached out to grab her, but it was too late. She had stepped in some mud and slipped, and her foot went out from under her. She reached down and began rubbing her right ankle.

  “Are you all right?” asked Chance.

  “Yes—Ow. Dammit, I think I sprained my ankle.”

  Chance reached down and helped Gabriella to her feet. She took a couple of steps, favoring her left leg. It was quite obvious that the sprain was a serious one.

  “You can’t walk on that,” Chance said. She turned to look at him and he picked her up in his arms and began carrying her toward the house. When they reached the door, Gabriella turned the knob and pushed it open. Once inside, Chance kicked the door shut with his foot and walked through the porch and over to the kitchen table, were he gently set her down on one of the chairs.

  He turned away and started digging through the cabinets. He looked at several different pots and pans, and finally selected a big one. He put it in the sink and began running hot water into it.

  “What are you doing?” she asked when he picked up the pot and brought it to where she was sitting.

  “I learned a long time ago that when you sprain something, the best thing you can do is soak it in warm water. Here, let me get your boots off.”

  Gabriella grunted when he tugged on the boot on her injured ankle. “Oh, that hurts.”

  Chance got the boot off and rolled up her pant leg, then gently lowered her foot into the pot. “Do you have any Epsom salts?” he asked.

  “Yeah, under the sink. I feel like an idiot, hurting myself on your first day.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Chance said. He opened the cabinet under the sink and found the Epsom salts, then dumped a generous portion into the water. He stuck his hand down into it to stir it up, and she winced when he bumped into her ankle.

  “Sorry. Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

  “Um,” she said. “Maybe a cup of coffee?”

  “A cup of coffee sounds great.” She told him where to find the coffee filters in her cabinets, and he dumped out the remnants of their earlier pot while he made another. When the brew was finally ready, he poured them each a cup and then sat at the table.

  Carmelita came into the kitchen then, and the scowl on her face told Chance that he’d been right in his earlier assessment. Carmelita didn’t trust him, and it was all he could do to keep any sign of guilt out of his face.

  “What happened to you?” Carmelita asked Gabriella.

  “I slipped in the mud and twisted my ankle,” Gabriella replied. “Chance was nice enough to bring me in and try to fix me up.”

  Carmelita snorted. “Should you go to the doctor?”

  “I don’t think it’s that bad,” Gabriela said. “Believe me, I’ve hurt myself a lot worse than this out here. If you’re going to live on a ranch in this kind of country, you gotta be tough enough to handle a few little injuries.”

  The old woman looked at her for a moment, then gave Chance a look that reminded him of the lasers in a science fiction movie. She held his gaze for several seconds, then turned and walked back toward the living room.

  “I’m not sure she likes me too much,” Chance said lightheartedly.

  “That’s because you’re a man,” Gabriella said. “As far as Carmelita is concerned, men are all the spawn of the devil. And don’t let her get to you, she’s not nearly as mean as she looks.”

  Chance grinned and saluted her with his cup. “I’m not all that worried,” he said.

  “Well, we might not get much work done today,” Gabriella said. “I’m really sorry about this.”

  “Hey, you didn’t hire me to sit around on my butt. You said something about chopping firewood. Do you really need firewood in the summertime?”

  “Well, you might not have noticed last night, but it does tend to get pretty cold out here when the sun goes down. Even in the summertime, there are very few nights when we don’t have a fire in the firepla
ce.”

  “Okay, I guess I can see that. This is the desert, right? Well, then I can go out and get some firewood chopped, and you can think about what else you might want me to do.”

  He finished off his coffee, then rinsed out his cup and put it in the drainer. He bent down and checked the temperature of the water her foot was soaking in, but it was still pretty warm. “When you get tired of sitting there, be sure to dry your foot off well. Just take it easy for a while, and I’ll be back after I get the firewood chopped.”

  He went out to the back again and found where she chopped firewood. There was an ample supply of wood to chop, but it needed to be split down into manageable sizes. He hefted the big ax and grinned; it was like the one his grandpa had made him use many, many times.

  His thoughts swept back to the memory of the night he had killed Colom and Molina, and the awesome sense of power that had come upon him. He tried to imagine that same feeling coming to him when he killed Gabriella, but there was only a sense of sadness that flooded his mind.

  Something isn’t right, he thought. All those nights at school, every time I thought about killing someone I felt that rush, that excitement, but just the thought of killing Gabriella brings me down.

  There was no help for it, though. He had taken the job, and he wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he wouldn’t have to go through with it. The last thing he wanted to do was go back to Baldizon and explain that he just couldn’t pull the trigger. Chance didn’t need anyone to explain to him just how stupid that would be.

  The more he thought about it, the more frustrated he became. He forced his emotions into his work, and was surprised when he realized he had already chopped up all the firewood. He set down the ax and gathered up a double armful to carry into the wood bin.

  “Chance?” Gabriella asked.

  There was no response. Chance was staring off into nowhere, and didn’t seem to hear her.

  “Chance,” she repeated once more, this time changing the inflection in her voice to a louder tone.

  He blinked and seemed to become aware of his surroundings once more. He turned to her and smiled. “Sorry. I guess I was just kinda lost in thought.”

  “It must have been quite some daydream. You seemed like you were a million miles away! Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No. It’s just something personal. Something, I guess I have to work out for myself.” He pointed at her ankle, which she had dried off and wrapped with an ace bandage. “How’s the foot feeling?” he asked, in an attempt to change the subject away from himself.

  “It feels a little better,” she said. “It was getting all wrinkly, so I decided to get out of the water.”

  He nodded. “Well, I chopped up all the firewood. What else can I do?”

  Her eyebrows rose slightly. “All of it? There was an awful lot cut up. It was one of the last things Alonzo did before he left.”

  Chance shrugged. “I find that manual labor like that is a good time to let your mind wander,” he said. “Before you know it, the work is done and sometimes you figure out an answer to your problems.”

  “But you still seemed to be pretty deep in thought when you came in,” she said, still smiling. “I meant what I said. If you ever want to talk about whatever is bothering you…”

  “I’m good,” he said, but then an idea struck him. “It’s really just a personal problem, but nothing that couldn’t be solved with a lot of money. Now, if only I knew a way to come up with a lot of money, I’d be fine.” He grinned at her.

  “Well, unfortunately, I can’t pay that good. Benny didn’t leave me with much, he’d already spent everything on buying this place. Sometimes, when I’m cleaning the house or something, I daydream about finding an insurance policy I didn’t know about, or some money he squirreled away, but it’s just a fantasy. The only time it really bothers me is when the kids need something, because I always have to decide what we can do without in order to give them what they need.”

  Chance looked at her. “That’s too bad,” he said. “Would’ve been nice if he had left you set up for a while.”

  “Yeah, wouldn’t it? It’s only…” She trailed off suddenly, as if she started to say the wrong thing. Chance cocked his head and looked at her.

  “It’s only what? You started to say something, what was it?”

  Gabriella leaned her head over to peek into the living room, making sure the boys and the two older ladies were occupied. When she was satisfied, she turned back to Chance.

  “Look, this is something I’ve never really talked about before,” she said. “My husband, Benny, he was—well, he was involved in some things that we don’t need to talk about. Not long after he bought this place, he and the people he worked with had kind of a falling out, and he was actually accused of stealing a bunch of money from them. Now, I don’t know if he really did steal the money or not, but I can tell you this much. If he did, the secret of where he hid it went to his grave with him. I have searched this place high and low, looked everywhere I could possibly imagine money could be hidden, and I can guarantee you it’s not here.” She laughed, but it was sour. “If I found it, I’d have to give it back, but those people are pretty generous. They’d probably give me at least a reward of some sort, And that might make it easier to get by for a while.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chance stared at her for a long moment, completely surprised by her sudden revelation. The last thing in the world he expected was for her to even mention the possibility that the stolen money might exist, but she had blurted it out as if it was just a fairytale she was tired of hearing.

  “Well,” Chance said. “Did anybody ever come and ask you about it? I mean, is this something people seriously believe?”

  Gabriella made a face, as if she wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’m not really all that certain,” she said. “Benny wasn’t necessarily a nice guy, but I never would’ve believed he was a thief. One of his former associates claimed that he admitted to him that he stole the money, but Benny always denied it. I can tell you that, after he died, I went through all our financial records. This place? He bought this with money that he had stashed away in the bank for years. We’ve really only got 25 acres here, but cattle can run on the free range around here. That makes it seem like we have hundreds of acres, because most of our cattle are in the box canyon to the west.”

  He stared at her face for a moment, trying to see any sign that she might be lying to him, but his gut said she was telling the truth as she knew it. “Those people know about this place? I mean, have they ever been here or anything?”

  “One of them used to come here,” she said slowly. “That was back before Benny died, and they used to have these terrible arguments about something, probably the missing money. I wasn’t allowed to know exactly what was going on.” She shrugged. “After Benny died, he came by once and asked me if I knew where the money was. I told him I didn’t, and never heard from him again.”

  Chance was floored. If Baldizon or one of his men had known about this place, then why had they gone to the lengths of telling him that Gabriella was hiding? According to Oscar, Baldizon had bribed an employee at the post office just to find out that she was living in this area. He decided he needed to think about this, and maybe check in with Oscar.

  He looked outside at the sky, and saw that the sun was pretty high. “Well, I think maybe it’s getting close to lunchtime. I’m sure your boys will be hungry before long, so how can I help here in the kitchen? And don’t give me that look, I’m not that bad a cook.”

  Gabriella giggled. “We tend to do lunch pretty easily around here,” she said. “If you go out on the back porch and look in the big freezer, you’ll find some frozen pizzas. How about grabbing a couple of them and sticking them in the oven?”

  “That sounds like a plan. Any particular kind?”

  “No, I’m not picky. The boys tend to like pepperoni the best, but they’ll eat just about any of the ones out there.”

  Chance we
nt out the back door and found the big chest freezer, opened it and pulled out a pair of large pepperoni pizzas. He read the directions as he carried them inside, then walked over and checked the oven to make sure there was nothing inside it. Once he was sure it was empty, he set the oven to preheat according to the directions on the pizza boxes.

  “Pizza pans?” he asked.

  “They’ll be down in the cabinet next to the refrigerator,” Gabriella replied. Chance dug them out and wiped away some dust, then set them on the counter and opened the pizzas. He laid one on each tray and waited for the oven to signal that it was ready.

  “Hey,” Gabriella said suddenly. “Are you a hunter?”

  Chance turned and looked at her, his eyes wide. “Why would you ask that?” he asked. “I mean, I am, I used to go hunting all the time when I was younger. I just wondered what brought that question on.”

  She gave him a sheepish grin. “One of the few good things about Benny was that he loved to go hunting. It’s a little out of season, but hunting for meat is generally accepted around here. The game wardens don’t really say anything about it, because it’s hard enough to survive in this region. We can't hunt big game until August, but there are plenty of wild turkey around here, and I absolutely love wild turkey.”

  Chance grinned from ear to ear. “Really, now?” he asked. “And would you have a shotgun around here?”

  “In the living room, beside the fireplace. Did you see the gun cabinet when you were dumping wood in there?”

  “Ah, I was lost in thought, remember?” He glanced at the evidence that the oven still was not ready, then walked into the living room and found the gun cabinet. There were three long guns inside, and the cabinet was unlocked so he opened it to take a look.

  Examining the guns, he found the first one to be a twenty-two caliber semi-automatic, complete with a scope. The second was the most beautiful of them all. The dark, glossy, walnut finish was expertly accented with its gold plated mechanism. Reading the caliber size engraved on the barrel of the well-maintained, antique Winchester, he found this one to be a 44.40 in the true western tradition, right down to the lever action. The third weapon was the shotgun, pump action. By the looks of it, it had been used quite a few times.