A_Wanted Man - Alana Matthews (5 page)

Callie only knew her actual age because Gloria and her mother had been best friends in high school. Not that this mattered much. Gloria visibly stiffened at the sight of Callie as they climbed out of the SUV.

Neither of them offered any pleasantries.

“So what has my little darling done
now
?” Gloria asked. The
little darling
being her wayward daughter Meg.

“Is she here?”

“I haven’t seen her in a good six months.”

“Then what makes you think that’s what this is about?”

Gloria smiled humorlessly. “Experience,” she said. “I don’t need to tell you what a handful that girl has been since the day she was born.”

To put it mildly, Callie thought. Megan Pritchard was the devil incarnate as far as she was concerned. But without the brains. Even her own mother had stopped trying to cover for her.

Not that Gloria was the model of a loving parent. Twice divorced and always shopping for a replacement, she paid about as much attention to her own daughter as she might a pet hamster.

Meg’s grandfather Jonah, on the other hand, would do just about anything for his girl—whether Gloria liked it or not.

“What about your father?”

Gloria seemed to grow even more tense. “What about him?”

“Has
he
seen her? Recently, I mean. Like the last twelve or so hours.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” she said. “This is a big house, and Jonah and I tend to avoid each other as much as possible.”

One thing you could say about Gloria was that, despite her family’s money and the Hollywood housewife exterior, she was always brutally frank and open about her feelings, even when it meant exposing the truth about their not-so-happy family.

Maybe it was the years of AA meetings.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said. “What’s Meg done now?”

Harlan apparently took this as his cue to step forward, reaching into his inner coat pocket as he did.

“Ma’am, I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Harlan Cole. I’d like you to take a look at this, if you don’t mind.”

He brought out one of the surveillance photographs and handed it to her.

“Is this your daughter?”

Gloria took a long moment to study the image, then said, “I think so, yes.”

Harlan nodded. “You say you haven’t seen her in six months, but when’s the last time you spoke to her?”

Gloria returned the photograph. “She called me a few days ago. Just to remind me how much she despises me.”

“She happen to mention she was headed your way?”

“No,” Gloria said.

“Well, we have reason to believe she was, and after last night, she’s in the company of at least one wanted fugitive and may well have participated in a bank robbery and a murder.” He paused, glancing at Callie as if seeking some kind of approval. She wasn’t sure why. He seemed content with running the show. “In light of this,” he said to Gloria, “I’d like your permission to search the premises.”

Before Gloria could answer, a stern baritone boomed. “I’m afraid you’re out of luck, Marshal.”

They all turned to find Jonah Pritchard standing in the doorway, a tall man in blue jeans and a dark flannel shirt. He was close to Nana Jean’s age, but with none of the frailty. In fact, he was as solid as a twenty-year-old and didn’t look even remotely under the weather.

Callie knew she should probably feel something. After all, he was
her
grandfather, too. But feelings are reserved for those you care about, and she’d have to reach down pretty deep to find anything that resembled an emotional attachment to this man.

“
I
own this house,” he said to Harlan, “and permission is definitely not granted.”

Harlan stepped toward him now, once again flashing the badge on his hip. “Then I guess you’d be Jonah Pritchard.”

“That’s right,” the old man said.

“Well, I was only asking to be polite, sir, so if you’ll move to one side, we’d like to get started.”

Callie threw him a look.

Say
what
?

Jonah shook his head. “Without a warrant? If you want to come in, you’ll need a judge’s signature.”

Harlan cocked a brow at him, then turned to Callie and Rusty. “Did you two hear that?”

Callie frowned, not sure what he was getting at. “What?”

“He just asked me if I want to come in. Sounded like an invitation to me.”

Uh-oh, Callie thought. So Harlan was one of those. She was a strong believer in procedure and didn’t appreciate the cowboys who ignored it in hopes of getting a pass from the courts. She should’ve realized he was a “Wyatt Earp” the minute he jumped out of her SUV to confront Landry.

But before she could tell him that neither she nor Rusty were about to play along, Jonah stepped aside, moving out onto the wide front porch. Not to invite them in, but to make room for a couple of burly ranch hands who emerged from the doorway behind him.

He looked pointedly at Harlan. “You take one more step in this direction, I’m within my rights to stop you.”

Callie watched as Harlan studied the two ranch hands. They weren’t carrying weapons, but then they didn’t need to.

Harlan said, “Not like this, you aren’t. The law doesn’t look too kindly on assault against peace officers.”

Jonah shrugged. “It isn’t too thrilled about illegal search and seizure, either. And it won’t keep these boys from putting you three in the hospital.” He gestured to his daughter. “Gloria, get in the house. No reason for you to be here for this.”

In other words,
get lost.

Callie could see the resentment in Gloria’s eyes. Resentment that went back many years. But Gloria did as she was told. And without protest.

When she was gone, Jonah said, “There’s no need for this to get ugly, Marshal.”

Now Callie spoke up. “Tell that to Megan, Mr. Pritchard. And to Jim Farber’s family. She and her friends left him in quite a state.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

He gave her a look that said he was offended by the remark, but she sensed he was feigning it. Nothing she said could offend him. The old guy was bulletproof.

“Meg decided a long time ago that she wasn’t interested in associating with this family,” he said. “Not that that’s any of your business.”

Callie knew that his words were meant to cut much deeper than they did, but after thirty-four years she was immune to him. She’d long been aware that Jonah despised her. By his skewed logic, his son wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for her whore of a mother.

The thought of this suddenly brought to surface another part of her life—her years with Harlan—and she wondered for a brief moment if she’d applied her own skewed logic to that situation.

But no. That was different. And she had no desire to wander into any dark alleys right now.

Focus, Callie.

Concentrate on the matter at hand.

“We could clear all this up,” Harlan said to Jonah, “if you’d just let us do our job. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then this conversation is over.”

“It’s already over,” a voice said, and Callie heard the ratchet of a scatter-gun behind them.

She and Harlan and Rusty all turned to find a smiling Landry Bickham holding a pump-action twelve-gauge. He kept it pointed at the ground, but Callie knew he’d use it if the old man gave him the nod.

Her heart started thumping.

This wasn’t the direction she’d wanted this afternoon to go.

Harlan turned back to Jonah. “You’re making a grave mistake, Mr. Pritchard. I could arrest you for obstruction, right now.”

“I suppose you could try,” Jonah said.

They were all silent for a long moment, and Callie could see the fury creeping into Harlan’s gaze. She’d seen that fury before, when she told him she never wanted to lay eyes on him again.

Jonah gestured. “You go on, now, try to get your warrant. If the judge says I’ve gotta open up my house, I’ll open up my house. In the meantime, you’re just trespassing, far as I can see.”

For a moment Callie thought Harlan might do something stupid, but he held back. Thank God.

“This isn’t over,” he said quietly.

Jonah’s gaze didn’t waver. “I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

Harlan stared at him a while longer, then his fury seemed to dissipate and he turned, moving back to the cruiser.

Then they were all inside, Callie feeling both frustrated and relieved as she started the engine and watched Jonah and the others go back into the house.

“You think they’re in there?” Harlan asked.

Callie wanted to punch him. “Even if they are, unless Pritchard cooperates, there’s not much we can do about it right now.”

“He’s one nasty piece of work, isn’t he?”

Callie jammed the car in gear. “Pot…meet kettle,” she said.

Then she turned them around and headed down the drive.

Chapter Six

“You know what you are? You’re an idiot. An idiot disguised as a fool.”

Good old Callie. She’d never been one to mince words, and Harlan could see that she hadn’t changed.

Back in the day it had been a trait he’d found endearing. Most of the girls he’d known in college had been hesitant to show their true colors until they had you on the hook. They spent far too much time playing the games they’d learned in high school, and the guys they pursued weren’t much different.

But Callie had always been what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Take it or leave it. And that was a large part of what had made Harlan fall in love with her in the first place.

That and the simple fact that she was the single most intriguing human being he’d ever met. Still was.

They were rolling along the highway now, headed toward town, Harlan once again relegated to the backseat while Callie drove and her partner Rusty rode shotgun.

She said, “You do realize you almost got us killed back there.”

Harlan looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror. “Don’t be so dramatic. Pritchard doesn’t strike me as stupid. And technically, he was right.”

“You
think
?” Her hands were gripping the steering wheel as if she had hold of his neck and wanted to snap it. “Then what was with all that cowboy nonsense?”

“Just giving the old guy a nudge, see how he reacted.”

Callie shook her head. “You haven’t changed at all, have you, Harlan?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Forget it,” she muttered.

“No, you opened the box, let’s see what’s inside.”

Callie sighed, glancing at Rusty. He had his cell phone clamped to his ear, speaking quietly into it, pretending not to listen to them.

She said to Harlan, “Maybe Jonah wouldn’t have done anything drastic, but there were no guarantees of that. You make stupid moves, you risk people getting hurt. You should know that better than anyone.”

Harlan knew a lot of things. Like the fact that she wasn’t talking about Pritchard at all.

“Look,” he said, “why don’t we save the recriminations for another day? Right now we need to concentrate on searching that house. And we need to do it legally.”

“That could be a problem,” Rusty said, snapping his phone shut. “Sheriff Mercer tells me the judge went out of town for a weekend hunting trip. He’s trying to track down another judge in Sheridan, but it could take a while. Says we might as well grab some chow, then head back to the station house.”

Now it was Harlan’s turn to sigh. Times like these made him wish real life was more like the movies. Everything happened so quickly on the big screen. Getting a warrant took minutes rather than hours, and the bad guy rarely got away.

He kept thinking about that smirk on Billy Boy’s face, and would like to put a fist in it. But as much as he’d like to play the hero and storm Pritchard Ranch, he believed in the letter of the law and knew that such a move was a mistake for a whole variety of reasons.

One thing you quickly learned in law enforcement was the value of patience. No matter what they might say, Justice was neither swift nor blind.

“Maybe the sheriff is right,” he said. “I haven’t had a bite to eat since yesterday afternoon. By all rights I should be famished.”

Callie eyed him skeptically. “You really expect me to sit down and break bread with you?”

“I expect you to be a professional,” he told her. “Is that too much to ask?”

E
VERY TOWN HAS ITS
cop hangout.

Williamson’s was a place called the Oak Pit Bar & Grill, a name Callie had always found a bit odd, since Wyoming wasn’t known for its overabundance of
Quercus imbricaria.
But she supposed the Cottonwood Pit didn’t have the same ring.