Bitter Rain (Kate Fox Book 3)

by Shannon Baker

  She blinked at me. “A cop?” One elbow knocked into Marty’s rib while the other hand was hidden behind her back. “What did you do?”

  They both spoke with a nasal twang, their words a hard accent we only heard on TV shows like The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Not that I ever watched it, but when I lived with Mom and Dad last winter, my nieces and nephews tuned in when they visited.

  He swung his arm to shove her elbow away, and the gun he’d been hiding slipped out of his pocket, the barrel pitched my way. I ducked against the wall.

  He spoke pointedly to her. “I’ve been riding my dirt bike.”

  She sneered at him. “You’ve been…” She stopped and nodded. “R-i-ight. Like you do every morning.” The toothy grin leveled at me looked less than sincere.

  She grabbed the barrel of his gun and yanked it toward the ground. “Put that away.”

  Marty jerked away from her but kept the gun down. “Back off, Rhonda.”

  She shot him a look that could stop a buffalo stampede. She pulled her arm from behind her nightgown and sat a pistol on the table inside the door. Rhonda looked to be far more hospitable than Marty.

  When Marty backed up to set his gun inside, she turned to me. “What do you want?”

  Another gun? How many did they own? I’d sauntered into an armed camp.

  I started a new tack. “I think a woman might need help. I wondered if she came here.”

  She nailed me with dead brown eyes. “We finally got so the goddamned chickens don’t wake us up at the crack of dawn, and now you bang on our door with this bullshit?” She held out her hand and waved it around the yard behind me. “No fool is here except you. So you can turn around and leave.”

  This was about as far from a Sandhills welcome as a body could get. For one thing, any Sandhiller worth his salt would have been up an hour or two ago. Not to mention the inhospitality of getting shot in your boots on the front porch. “Sorry to wake you.”

  She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Move along.”

  I would’ve loved to turn tail, but that wasn’t my job. It’s not normal to hold up visitors, especially law, even if I didn’t carry my badge or gun today.

  Obviously, Marty had been the charmer of the two.

  I couldn’t have been less prepared for this encounter. Every experience was a chance to learn and improve, if I didn’t end up getting killed along the way. I pulled up a big ol’ bluff, like they didn’t scare me. Walking unannounced onto someone’s ranch might be rude, but I was the sheriff. Seemed like I ought to know what was happening in my county. “How many people live here?”

  Rhonda scanned the yard behind me. “Where’s your car?”

  “On the highway.” I pointed to show where I’d followed the tracks.

  Behind her, a door slammed. Marty whipped his head over his shoulder and disappeared into the dark house.

  Rhonda tilted her head, let her eyes travel down to my boots and up to my wild curls corralled by my ponytail. “You’re trespassing.”

  She was starting to get my dander up. “I’m investigating an accident. Now, can I get your names?”

  She leaned closer to me, invading my space in an aggressive way. I could probably slap some cuffs on her and take her in for threatening me. It would be an iffy charge at best, and considering I had no car to put her in, no gun to back me up, and really no reason to escalate the situation, I didn’t think too hard along those lines.

  Voices rose inside the house. Sounded like Marty and a younger guy. I jerked to the right, glancing behind Rhonda in time to see a tall, skinny kid with bushy dark hair shoot down the hall and through another door. It slammed, and then heavy footsteps stormed down stairs.

  Rhonda pushed me and stepped over the threshold, pulling the door behind her. I nearly shoved her back before remembering who had the firepower. She kept her face close to mine, and I nearly gagged on a wave of garlic-laced morning breath. “You come back here with a search warrant and probable cause, and I’ll tell you whatever I’m legally obligated to explain. Until then, get the hell off my property.” Sounded like she had experience with the United States legal system.

  But the bike and hidden kid? And what about the caller? I leaned around Rhonda again, trying to peer through the slit between the door and jamb. “Is someone else here?”

  She snicked the door closed behind her. “You’re too nosy.”

  She was right, but this was what the county paid me for, despite the perspiration and terror. I met her deadpan face with The Look. “I’m concerned about a citizen in distress, and I want to make sure everything is all right.”

  She took a step forward and bumped me back with her chest. “We haven’t seen anyone.”

  At least the gun was on the other side of the door.

  A car engine sounded in the quiet morning. Rhonda’s eyes sharpened and she trained her attention on the road leading to the compound. Within seconds Barnett’s beat-up pickup rumbled to stop in front of the house.

  Rhonda’s eyebrows, too dark for the blond she tried to pull off, dipped to hood her eyes. “Now what?”

  Barnett slid out, all six foot two and 250 pounds of mean, and sauntered to my side. He held out his hand to Rhonda. “Don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “It’s a growing club,” I said, relieved he’d shown up and had a gun.

  Rhonda mimicked Barnett’s Western drawl. “Don’t believe I care. How the hell did you get past the lock?”

  “Bolt cutters.” He pulled a padlock from his brown coat pocket and held it out to her.

  She snatched the lock from him and sniffed as if smelling spoiled fish. “Of course, you farmers carry bolt cutters at all times.”

  I didn’t enlighten her about Sandhillers. We were ranchers, and calling us farmers, as Dad would say, is fightin’ words.

  She scowled and pointed at me, acting as if she wished her finger were a gun. “Arrest him for destruction of property.”

  Barnett beamed one of his I’m-an-asshole grins, except this time I didn’t mind. “Thought we had an officer in trouble here. It’s in the line of duty.”

  I tipped my head his way. “Lee Barnett, Spinner County sheriff.”

  “Fuck me.” Rhonda threw her head back at the cloudless spring sky. “Haven’t had my damned coffee this morning and I’ve got two cops on my doorstep.”

  Coffee sounded mighty fine. If she’d been a decent Sandhiller, we’d all be enjoying a cup right now.

  Barnett stood with his legs apart, hands on his hips. Probably confident with his weapon in his holster on the back of his right hip. “How about you give us the names of everyone living here, show us some ID, and we’ll be on our way.”

  Rhonda folded her arms across her chest, hiking up her nightgown above her knees. With a sneer, she said, “How about you go to hell.”

  Barnett’s arms popped to his sides and he lunged at her. “I ought to take you in for obstruction.”

  Rhonda didn’t flinch but instead laughed. “Okay, Deputy Fife. You try that and see what a shit storm of legal trouble you land in.”

  I held up my hand. Much as I wanted them corralled behind bars and to know why they barricaded themselves in the hills, I figured we’d gone far enough for now. We could return and go all Waco on them later if we needed to. “All right. If you think of something, give me a call. That’s Kate Fox, Grand County sheriff.” Of course, I had no business cards to hand out, in the unlikely event they’d consider calling.

  Rhonda gave me that dead stare.

  Barnett didn’t seem inclined to leave.

  I turned around, hoping I wouldn’t get shot in the back by either of them, and breezed to Barnett’s pickup. I climbed inside and watched Barnett and Rhonda stare at each other for a few more seconds. Movement behind the window caught my attention. The sun spoked a ray into the house and someone pulled a shutter closed inside. Not blinds or curtains, a solid shutter. With a slit about the right size for a gun barrel and another for a peephole. These folks were
ready for Armageddon.

  Barnett stomped back to the pickup, threw himself inside, and gunned the engine, spraying gravel in Rhonda’s direction. I glanced in the side mirror to see her flipping us matching birds with both hands.

  Around the first curve from the house, we came across a steel-paneled gate with a loose chain dangling from one side where Barnett had cut the lock.

  A thought occurred to me. “Why are you here?”

  Did he hesitate? “Sally sent me to Ogallala to pick up a prescription. I saw your car on the road and figured you’d come this way. Why are you here?”

  “I followed dirt bike tracks.”

  “And?”

  “Interesting folks.” Would they have shot me if he hadn’t arrived?

  “Damned preppers.”

  There were a few ranchers around who believed the end of the world loomed, or distrusted the government enough they hid and stayed off the grid. If I wanted to live independently, grow my own food, create my own energy, keep my own company, I couldn’t pick a better place than the empty spaces in the Sandhills. Even then, I think I’d want community around me. The settlers staked claims in this lonesome region less than two hundred years ago, but they stayed semi-sane by having barn dances every now and again.

  Rhonda and Marty seemed more like thugs than end-timers. “Do you know anything about them?”

  Barnett sped down the gravel road, rattling my bones as we bumped over the washboards. A platoon of semi-trucks, the kind that would haul building equipment and tractors, would cause wear on a gravel road like this. His voice warbled with the rough road. “Didn’t know anyone took over after old man Olson passed. This is all new to me.”

  It didn’t seem an accident that these folks retrofitted a sizeable compound without anyone in Spinner or Grand County passing along gossip that wafted its way to either Barnett or me.

  “You’re new to the job, so listen to wisdom here. The car belongs to some drunk Indian. End of story.”

  I hated that he sounded so pleased I hadn’t found anything. “Something was going on inside the house that Rhonda didn’t want me to see.”

  Barnett huffed and shifted his gaze back to the road. “They’re spooks. They wouldn’t want you to see if they had tomatoes sitting on the kitchen counter. It’s all a big secret to them.”

  I didn’t tell him about the hot dirt bike or the kid fighting with Marty. And I certainly didn’t mention the single car key on the table where Rhonda had set her gun. The key attached to a fob with the three lines of the Mercury logo.

  4

  The sun declared full-on morning by the time I returned to my cottage. I was more than ready for strong coffee. Too bad I hadn’t remembered to buy any. Yeah, I’d taken to calling it a cottage on the lake instead of a dumpy little house stuck out in the country. It made me feel as if I’d purposely sought this solitary life and career as county sheriff. I didn’t like thinking of my choices as consolation prizes for a failed marriage and losing the ranch I loved.

  I shouldn’t scoff at my progress, though. In the year since Ted and Roxy had jerked the rug out from under what I considered a near-perfect life, I’d gone from unemployed, living with my parents, and unsure how to move on, to being Grand County sheriff, owning a home on a lake, and most days, feeling some optimism about life.

  After growing up one of nine kids in a cramped and chaotic house, I treasured the peace of Ted’s and my home at Frog Creek, even after Carly moved in the last year. I loved my family, but trying to eke out any privacy at Mom and Dad’s resulted in nine months of frustration. The solitude at my new house might weigh a little heavy at times, but generally, it suited me fine.

  Glowering clouds gathered in the west like giant dark beasts, so I’d best enjoy the sunshine while it lasted. Buck naked, I wandered across my spring grass, goose bumps running over my skin despite the sun. Pride swelled when I greeted the seedlings breaking the crust in my garden.

  After admiring my green thumb, I retreated to the house. Because I had no neighbors, I’d taken to dressing on my screened porch, and I pulled on my brown uniform while watching the ducks bobbing on the lake. The birds raised a ruckus in the three old elms that stood sentry at the edge of my yard. Leaves that were buds a week ago now spread with summer’s promise.

  The threatening storm clouds accented the blue sky stretching over Stryker Lake. “Lake” being a generous term for the puddle barely long enough to get a good head of steam to ski and only deep enough to keep an outboard engine from spewing up sand. A coyote trotted, his yellow coat waving in and out of reeds at the water’s edge. Aside from the raucous gossip of the yellow-headed blackbirds, no sounds carried on the soft breeze.

  Heaven. Or lonely. Depending on the day and my mood. Today my thoughts tumbled.

  Were Rhonda and Marty hiding the driver? Had the driver returned to the rez unharmed?

  Barnett’s conclusion that the abandoned car didn’t necessarily mean trouble made sense. No blood or anything to identify the owner. No emergency 9-1-1 calls, or dispatch would have notified us both.

  However, Barnett hadn’t heard the caller. Please help me.

  What about the key on the table? It could belong to any ranch vehicle. Not the pickups or the muscle car, but an old Mercury could be stored in the barn. Or the key on the fob might not necessarily belong to a Mercury. The key to Mom’s VW Vanagon hung on a BMW ring.

  I jumped back to Marty and Rhonda. From what I knew, all the Olsons were towheads. Blue-eyed, big-boned Swedes. Neither Marty nor Rhonda—proven by her dark roots—fit that description. Why all the secrecy and the fortified compound?

  Was the girl in trouble? All of this stirred up my constant worry about Carly. Why had she run away in the first place? Where was she? Was she safe? The same questions that looped constantly in the back of my brain now thrummed insistently. Before I stuffed my feet back into my damp boots, I padded into the house to retrieve my phone and punched Baxter’s number.

  He answered before the second ring. “Is everything all right?” Glenn Baxter was a classmate of Carly’s father from military school and took a keen interest in Carly’s safety. Since he owned one of the largest cable news networks in the country, I’d gratefully allowed him to pay for a top-notch investigator to track down Carly. After a little over a year, he’d only uncovered meager leads.

  Hearing his confident voice calmed me a little. “Fine. Just checking in.”

  “Whew.” He sounded relieved. “It’s getting late, and I was afraid something happened.”

  “What?”

  His voice floated over the miles. “You usually call earlier on Sunday mornings.”

  I wasn’t aware I had a schedule or that Baxter kept track. Since most weeks I didn’t go to the courthouse on Sundays, maybe that’s when I worried the most. I didn’t know how I felt about Baxter knowing my schedule better than I did.

  It sounded as if he sipped something, and I stepped one foot into a boot, suddenly in a hurry to get to the Long Branch and some of Aunt Twyla’s chest-hair-growing java.

  “I’m always happy to talk to you, of course, but I’ve got no news,” he said.

  Even though I knew he’d have called me if he had anything to report, hearing it disappointed me. The ducks paddled into the middle of the lake, keeping a good distance from the coyote prowling the shore. “Is the investigator still in California?”

  Carly’s mother, my oldest sister, Glenda, had died of cancer when Carly was only twelve. Two years after that, not long after her father, Brian, had remarried that thorn in my side, Roxy, he’d crashed his Cessna 182 into a hill. If that tragedy wasn’t enough, just over a year ago, Carly’s beloved granddad had been murdered. I hadn’t seen her since. She’d called me once last January, and though she sounded sad and lonely, she was safe.

  She’d convinced herself that her father’s death wasn’t an accident and, for some reason, she’d run away to find his killer. I didn’t believe in a phantom murderer and figured Carly’s quest had mor
e to do with her grief than with reality. What I knew for sure was that I missed her, worried about her, and wanted her safe.

  Baxter scolded while I looked out on the lake. “Obsessing about Carly isn’t good for you. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  The coyote pounced on something, probably a mouse. “It’s just…” Just what?

  “I know.” He sounded as if he actually did know. All the frustration, the anger at her running away, the fear she’d get hurt, my aching desperation not to lose her forever.

  Both feet in my boots, I clumped down the porch stairs without lacing them. “You don’t think someone really killed Brian, do you?”

  Baxter and Brian had been as close as brothers, having attended military school together. Baxter didn’t rip open his chest and let his heart spill all over me, but I knew Brian’s death had been a blow. He sighed, probably because we’d been over this question so many times. “No. I don’t think someone tampered with her father’s plane and caused it to crash.”

  I climbed into the cruiser. “See? When you say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous.”

  His voice on the other end, like strong coffee with thick cream and a splash of Irish whiskey, loosened my tight chest. “She’s confused and in mourning for her parents and grandfather. She’s smart enough to evade the investigator, but we’ll find her, or she’ll come home soon.”

  The engine fired up with a roar. “If the investigator is as good as you say, why can’t he find her?”

  “He is good. Maybe Carly is hanging out with other young people. They would cover for her. From everything you’ve told me, Carly is smart and resourceful. She’s fine.”

  He asked about my family, I asked about the latest celebrity gala, and we chatted for several minutes while I maneuvered the cruiser down my bumpy country road and the clouds dropped lower. As he always did, Baxter lopped the jagged edges off my worry. When I started to feel guilty about taking up too much of his time, I said, “Let me know if you hear anything about Carly.”