Cowboy Justice (8 page)

“You don’t have anything to prove to me, Vaughn. Never did. It’s better this way, for both of us.” With a nudge to Growly Bear’s flank, she lit off across the valley.

A pang of longing hit him. He wanted to ride with her. He wanted to change out of uniform, saddle a horse, and for a few hours forget about Wallace Meyer and reelection worries and all the reasons he and Rachel couldn’t be happy together.

He watched the swish of her ponytail against her straight, proud spine, and knew—as certain as the passing of time—that even if he lived to be a hundred, he’d never feel more alive than in the stolen moments he’d spent with Rachel in his arms.

Rachel raced home, exhausted and defeated from the confrontation with Vaughn, cutting through the barren wasteland of weedy fields that had once been the dream she’d had for her life—still did, despite the shame she carried for being incapable of salvaging their alfalfa business from the mess her father had made of it.

Dollar signs in his eyes, he’d gambled away every penny of his savings and leveraged the value of the ranch to the limit on one get-rich scheme after another, allowing one field after another to go to weeds while Rachel had watched helplessly as her future went down the toilet. She knew he loved his family, but he’d never given her a straight answer any of the dozens of times she’d confronted him about why he’d done that to them.

To her.

Why he’d taught Rachel how to be a top-notch alfalfa farmer, and got her believing it was her future—the legacy she’d leave to her children and nieces and nephews—only to let it all go to waste. It was one of the many things she wanted to ask him, but she knew if he came down from the heavens today to stroll with her in the fields, she wouldn’t dare waste time confronting him about his mistakes. Love didn’t work that way, especially with those who’d passed on.

The discovery of oil under their southwest fields a few months back, when she and her sisters were on the verge of losing their property to foreclosure, provided her with the means to rebuild. Just about every property in Quay County had at least a couple derricks. Hell, royalties earned from oil leases was the only way most folks made ends meet on their ranches and farms, but, for decades, Rachel’s family had thought their property was dry—a Catcher Creek anomaly—but it turned out the existence of the oil was one more truth her father had tried to take to his grave. The four derricks had been erected in January and were the new heart of the ranch, pumping petroleum that was the lifeblood for the farm.

Jenna and Amy took the oil discovery as a sign from above. Rachel reserved judgment about that, but she did seize on it as the opportunity it was for her to rebuild her dream one field at a time, as soon as they’d finished paying off the last of Dad’s debts. They were so close to settling the last of the bills that she could almost smell the fresh alfalfa scent she grew up loving.

Inside the stable, she groomed Growly and tried her best not to look at Lincoln’s empty stall. An inspection of his hooves revealed that one of his shoes had come loose, so she pried it the rest of the way off and fitted him with a soft boot to keep his weight balanced. Chuck, their farrier, usually came around on Fridays, and he’d reshoe Growly then.

Once she’d settled Growly in she was fresh out of excuses to postpone going indoors. The sooner she went inside, the sooner she could get on with her interview at the sheriff’s department. If all went well, she’d be home in time to supervise the evening chores. She might even photograph the rising moon behind Sidewinder Mesa.

With a sigh of resignation, she washed her hands and headed out. She paused on the threshold and reached her uninjured arm above the door frame, running her fingers over her lucky horseshoe. The smooth iron fortified her, reminded her of what was important in her life—her sisters and nephew, the land that’d been in her family for sixty years.

The lesson she learned that fateful day she walked out of John Justin’s wasn’t one of self-preservation. It wasn’t about the feeling of freedom from turning her back on her mom and sisters. The liberation she gained was the bond she’d forged with her dad, and her discovery of her true path in life as a farmer, as the keeper of her family’s home and history. She learned that she could be the spine of the Sorentino clan without the paralyzing anxiety of standing in the thick of their drama. She could provide without the constant wounding to her spirit.

She pressed the pad of her finger into a nail hole of the horseshoe, fortifying her resolve. She had a way of life to salvage, along with a family to support—responsibilities that superseded her selfish desire to run from her problems or to seek comfort in a man’s arms. She knew with unflagging certainty with whom her loyalties lay and what her core values were. The first and only time she had lost sight of those fundamentals had been catastrophic. Never again would she so egregiously disregard her responsibilities—no matter how tempting the vice.

No matter how heavily that choice weighed on her heart.

Stepping from the stable, she popped an antacid and watched Jenna direct one of the two families staying at the inn into corny poses for a picture with Tulip, Amy’s flower-adorned pet cow. Dang. She nearly gagged, thinking the words. Who in their right mind domesticated a heifer? Only Amy would come up with such a ridiculous idea.

Of course, the farm’s guests ate it up. Jenna had posted Tulip’s photos on the Heritage Farm Web site, and she and Amy had changed the farm’s logo to include the cow’s silhouette.

Most of the time, Rachel was fine with this new path their family home had taken, but it felt like a scam, advertising their farm as a place for families to get a taste of authentic farm life when each day’s guest activities included playing dress-up with the livestock, sleeping in until ten, and lazing around all day.

“There you are,” Jenna said as soon as she saw Rachel. “Billy and April, this is our farm’s number one cowgirl, my sister Rachel.”

Oh, joy. Time for the cowgirl act. She tipped the brim of her hat at them and kept moving toward the house, hoping to avoid getting sucked in to a conversation.

“Wow,” said a boy who looked a year or so older than Tommy. “You’re a real cowgirl.”

No dice. She stopped walking and turned around, smiling like she meant it. Wasn’t the kid’s fault she was having a rough week. “Sure am. And you look like a cowboy with that bandana and those shiny red boots.”

He puffed out his chest. “I am.”

Jenna crowded close to her and whispered, “You should be resting.”

Rachel shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “So, Amy had Kellan running all over the place in his truck looking for you.”

“He didn’t need to do that. It’s not like I’m in danger of getting lost on my own ranch.” Jenna got that mothering look in her eye, like she was winding up for a lecture. Time for a topic change. She gestured to catch the visiting kids’ attention. “Did Jenna here tell y’all about Tulip’s favorite treat?”

The two children vigorously shook their heads. “What’s her favorite treat?” asked the youngest, a little blond girl of maybe three or four.

Rachel knelt next to the girl. “What do you think it is?”

“Cookies? That’s my favorite.”

Rachel nodded. “Good guess. Tulip doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but she loves carrots. Jenna, why don’t you help these cowpokes feed Tulip some carrots?”

Judging by the raise of Jenna’s eyebrows, she knew she was getting played. Rachel smiled sweetly and inched away from the scene.

Pushing through the kitchen door, she was greeted by the aroma of baking sweets.

Amy’s head shot up. She slammed her knife onto the cutting board. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”

Rachel surveyed the telltale mound of diced celery on the counter, Amy’s favorite form of stress relief. “Yep. Pretty good idea. Sorry about that.”

“Where have you been?”

She sat on the bench near the door and took off her boots. “I tried to leave flowers where Lincoln died.”

That stopped her “Oh. You tried? Does that mean you didn’t?”

Rachel buzzed by the table, where two trays of scones sat cooling, and snagged one. “Couldn’t. It’s a crime scene. The sheriff turned me away.”

“It’s just as well. You shouldn’t have been out riding in the first place.”

She bit into the scone. “I told you, I needed fresh air.”

Amy dumped the celery in a bowl with a bit more zeal than necessary. “We’ve got fresh air right outside this door. There’s no need for you to saddle a horse and go riding over the countryside to find it.”

Quarreling was her and Amy’s natural state of communication, but Rachel didn’t have it in her at the moment. She edged toward the door to the dining room. “I promised the sheriff I’d bring in some photos of the ranch, so I’d better get on that so I can get to the evening chores.”

“Rachel, you were shot. You need to rest. Let us handle the workload today. Kellan can take the photographs to Vaughn.”

Tempting. Then there’d be no chance of her running into him inadvertently, no inquisitive looks by Vaughn’s deputies or rumors to dance around. Problem was, she couldn’t take a chance of her sisters or Kellan discovering the content of the photographs. She hadn’t managed to keep the vandalism under wraps for four months only for them to find out by a careless slip-up on her part. “Nah, I’ll take care of it. I think he’s got more questions for me. Anyhow, I rested enough in the hospital. You know I don’t have the temperament to sit around twiddling my thumbs.”

Amy clucked in protest, but didn’t press the issue, thank goodness. “Stop by the kitchen on your way out. I’ll send scones with you for Vaughn. Cinnamon raisin is his favorite.”

Rachel stopped midstride with her hand pushing on the kitchen’s swinging door. “It is?”

“’Bout the closest thing to a fruit or vegetable he’ll eat, in fact. Makes him impossible to cook for.”

Rachel chewed the inside of her cheek as a pulse of ridiculous, misplaced jealousy rippled through her. This was her sister, not some romantic rival. Still, it hurt to think Amy knew something about Vaughn that she didn’t. Hard not to wonder what else she didn’t know—what she’d never know since she’d never let herself get that close to him again.

“Are you feeling okay, Rachel? You look pale. Maybe you should sit down.”

“I’m fine.” She flashed Amy a smile to prove it. “When have you ever cooked for the sheriff? At Kellan’s house?”

Amy leaned her butt against the sink, her brow creased with concern as she looked Rachel up and down. “Yes. Every Sunday he and Vaughn and the Bindermans get together to barbecue and watch sports on TV. I thought you knew that. And by the way, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you calling him Vaughn. He’s practically family, as close as he and Kellan are.”

If Amy only knew. She kept the reassuring smile on her face and shrugged the shoulder of her good arm. “Guess his title stuck in my head from all those years he hauled Jenna home in his cruiser after she’d been out whooping it up. Hard to think of him as family.” Which was God’s honest truth, even if it was technically a lie of omission.

“Oh, that reminds me! With everything that’s happened, I didn’t tell you we’re moving the barbecue here this Sunday so I can try a new barbecue ribs recipe I’m experimenting with for the restaurant. Kellan and I debated about canceling it, with what happened to you, but we both agreed that in times like this, it’s even more important to surround ourselves with family and friends. To celebrate all the things we’re grateful for and show those trespassers that nothing slows the Sorentinos and Reeds down.”

Vaughn. In her house—for an entire afternoon. The room started spinning. Rachel braced her other hand on the doorframe, squeezing the wood so hard it made her wound throb with renewed fury. “The inn’s guests leave Friday morning, so I figured it was a good time to host. Matt Roenick, Jenna, and Tommy will be here too. It’ll be fun.”

She heard Amy’s footsteps approaching, but she couldn’t make her body work.

Amy slipped an arm around her waist. “You’re not okay. I’m taking you to the sofa.”

She twisted out of Amy’s grip and started toward the stairs. “I’m fine. Never better. I’ll stop by the kitchen for the scones before I leave.”

The stairs left her winded, her muscles achy. Closing the door to her room, she spied the double bed in the corner and exhaustion, sudden and swift, made her whole body feel heavy. Maybe a short rest was in order after all so she’d be at the top of her game when she delivered the flash drive to Vaughn’s office.

She dropped her jeans and shirt to the floor, pulled the band from her hair, and crawled into bed in her underwear. Her room’s window faced the afternoon sun. It speared through the cracks of the blinds, glowing yellow. She studied the pattern of light until the warm quiet dragged her into slumber.

Chapter Six

Vaughn’s younger sister Gwen was a riot. A brazen loudmouth with a wisecracking sense of humor like the rest of their mother’s side of the family, the Italian side.

Of the three Cooper kids, Gwen had received the highest concentration of Finocchiaro blood, complete with olive skin, curly black hair, and a fiery temper. Vaughn and his youngest sister, Stephanie, shared the black hair, skin tone, and loud mouths, but they’d missed out on the temper, thank goodness.

The way he and Stephanie figured it, the temper trait must be a hit-or-miss phenomenon because Mom was as mild-mannered an Italian as ever existed, while Vaughn’s nonna was as much of a surly spitfire as one might expect from a four-foot-nothing grandma who, as a child, had immigrated from the Mediterranean climate of Sicily to the Texas desert. Then again, by some relatives’ account, her temper hadn’t truly triggered until her only daughter married Gregory Cooper, a local, poor-as-dirt Irishman.

Nevertheless, Gwen’s temper came with her out of the womb and hadn’t simmered down yet. When she got herself wound up real good, she even got to looking like Nonna—her face red and scrunched, her gestures wild, and her long, curly hair tossing around like a black-leaf tree in a hurricane. Once, when she was a teenager, he told her as much, which nearly made her head explode from the pressure of her indignation. She’d given Vaughn the silent treatment for weeks.

No one knew who Gwen inherited her kleptomania from. It was the one Finocchiaro-Cooper family anomaly. First time she was ever caught stealing in public, at least in Vaughn’s memory, she was four years old to Vaughn’s ten. After a morning spent in the family’s blacksmith shop on the campus of Tucumcari’s farrier college, Gwen had come home with a pocket of horseshoe nails. During a lengthy interrogation by Mom, Gwen led them to the room she shared with baby Stephanie. Under her mattress, she dug out dozens of stolen shoe nails.

Shoe nails evolved into trinkets lifted from their nonna’s house and odds and ends from her school. Their parents’ reaction was abject horror. Vaughn remembered eavesdropping on a lot of whispered, heated discussions about Gwen and her
issue
through the years. He’d sense the mood shift on the other side of his closed bedroom door and creep out to listen.

Stealing from friends and family became shoplifting when Gwen was a teenager. That’s when therapy started. What a waste of money those quacks had been, because no matter how many hours she spent on a counselor’s sofa, no matter what kind of antidepressants they pumped her with, her impulse to steal only grew more powerful.

Vaughn earned his police badge with the Albuquerque City Police Department when he was twenty-two. That year marked Gwen’s first arrest, after she shoplifted a necklace from a Tucumcari jeweler. Wallace Meyer himself did the honor. Didn’t matter to him that Gwen’s parents had tended his horses every week for years. He recommended the maximum sentence to the judge for a petty misdemeanor—ninety days in juvenile hall and a five-hundred-dollar fine.

Vaughn pulled his patrol car into the driveway of the house he grew up in, parking behind his dad’s four-by-four Chevy. He knew by the collection of beat-down, piece of crap cars lining the street that Dad was holding class in his workshop. He’d retired from service as a farrier and now taught at the college full-time. When the mood struck him, he held class at his personal blacksmith shop in the house’s original garage.

Vaughn stepped from the car and adjusted the brim of his hat. The aroma wafting out of the kitchen windows told him Mom was home too, and baking cookies. Good timing on his part.

When Vaughn and his sisters were growing up, Mom worked alongside Dad as a farrier. They’d met while his dad was going through farrier college in Texas, and his mom had taken to the profession like a termite to wood. Eager to establish their own business, they’d picked up and moved west, to Tucumcari. A year later, Vaughn was born.

Mom gave up her career when she decided her firstborn daughter needed more rigorous supervision. Vaughn sometimes wondered if she ever missed her job. He liked to believe she regularly stole away to the blacksmith shop when no one was paying attention to craft trinkets out of forged steel for her church’s craft sales the way some women knitted hats or painted. Working with metal had been her favorite part of the job. Her hands looked too soft and fragile to handle the hammers and heat anymore, but a guy could dream.

Rounding the corner of the walkway that cut between the house and the garage, he saw a half-dozen folks gathered around his dad. Most looked college age, with a couple middle-age guys thrown in.

Small-time ranchers, when they scaled back their businesses or passed the work on to their children, sometimes signed up for farrier school. Probably the first time in their working lives they had time to learn how to shoe a horse. For the most part, professional farriers were called upon for horseshoe maintenance around ranch country. It was a skill that took a lot of know-how to master, and it was easier and more cost-efficient for a rancher to hire a farrier than learn the trade himself.

Vaughn leaned against the wood siding of the house, watching. He never got tired of listening to his dad teach, like he’d taught Vaughn so many years ago.

Dad bent over an anvil, tongs in one hand and a rounding hammer in the other, giving a lesson on shaping a toe clip. “Make the first blow a hard one. That’ll seat the shoe against the anvil.”

He demonstrated with a whack of the hammer that made the two older men in the class flinch from the noise.

“Hey there,” his dad said when he noticed him. “My son, Vaughn,” he said to his class in that proud father way that made Vaughn feel eighteen again.

He gave a two-finger wave.

Dad held out the rounding hammer. “Want to show them how a sheriff does it?”

“Nah, I’m on the clock. Besides, I never was as good as you.”

Dad beamed at that, his bushy salt-and-pepper mustache curving up at the ends. “Are you staying for dinner?”

Vaughn shook his head. “Need to have a word with Gwen, then get back to work.”

Dad paused, midswing of the hammer. Guess he read Vaughn’s tone and phrasing correctly.
Having a word with Gwen
meant she was in trouble.

Straightening, Dad passed the tongs and hammer to the nearest student. “Go ahead and take a few practice swings.”

Walking to Vaughn, he doffed his gloves and wiped his hands on his leather apron. “Everything okay?”

His code for
What did she do this time?
Up close like this, he looked old, with more gray hairs than brown, and his skin grizzled from too many years working near high heat and smoke.

“Nothing new.”

Dad nodded and smoothed his mustache, his eyes radiating a weary sorrow. Damn, Vaughn hated to cause his parents more grief. They’d suffered enough because of Gwen’s illness. Not much he could do about it now though. Not with Meyer ready to punish Vaughn by lashing out at his sister.

“Class is almost over,” Dad said. “Stop by the workshop before you leave. I’m forging a new sole knife tonight and could use your input.”

What he really wanted was the scoop on Gwen, and Vaughn respected him enough to give it to him straight. “Will do.”

As Dad resumed his lesson, Vaughn opened the kitchen door, then took his hat in hand. Mom was at the sink washing dishes.

“Hey, Ma.” He bussed her cheek with a kiss as his eyes trolled for the cookies he’d smelled from the driveway. They weren’t cooling on a rack, and they weren’t on the kitchen table. He checked the cookie jar. Empty.

She shooed him away with her drying towel. “Get on with you, now. They’re still in the oven.”

“Aw, you didn’t even give me a chance to use my advanced detective skills,” he said with a smile and wink. “Gwen around?”

She eyed him suspiciously, her face turning guarded. “In her room.”

He squeezed her hand. “Everything’s fine. I need to tell her some news I heard yesterday.”

A frown tugged at her lips, but she nodded and returned to the sink. Vaughn walked down the hallway, twirling his hat on his finger, his eyes passing over innumerable framed family photos. The trip they took to Texas when he was little. Vaughn in a big red cowboy hat sitting on a pony. Stephanie and Gwen sitting on Santa’s lap, screaming their fool heads off. Pictures that had been hanging there his whole life, but that he couldn’t resist glancing over every time he visited.

He stopped outside Gwen’s door, wondering, as he had the whole drive over, what the hell he was going to say. Thirty years old and she was living in the same room that held her crib when she was a baby. She’d been in and out of this room her whole adult life, depending on the boyfriend of the moment or whether she’d been fired for stealing from the stores she worked at.

A television was on inside. He knocked three times and waited.

She opened the door and gave him the once-over. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I haven’t left the house all week except to go to a party last night.”

Great. A real high achiever. “Yeah, that’s good. May I come in?”

Giving the door a shove to open it all the way, she turned and walked into the room. Vaughn followed, closing the door behind him.

At least she wasn’t a slob. No piles of clothes on the floor, and her desk had only a stack of papers on one corner. She clicked off the television and perched on her neatly made bed. Vaughn took the desk chair.

“I’ve got a problem and I need your help,” he said. Bullshit all the way, but as a cop he’d learned that everybody loved to feel important.

She rolled her eyes. “Spare me your condescending cop-speak.”

Oh, sheesh.
God help a man with sisters.

His throat reminded him that a cigarette would feel real good right about then, and really steady his nerves. He swallowed a few times. “A situation’s come up at work, a disagreement between my department and the Tucumcari police on how to prosecute a crime.”

That got her attention. “You and Wallace Meyer have hated each other’s guts for years. What is it this time?”

“The crime involved his son.”

“Junior? He wasn’t at the party last night, and everybody had a different opinion about why. He’s in jail, isn’t he?”

Vaughn leapt to his feet, blinking fast and whipping up the air with his arms. “Whoa, now. You party with Wallace Meyer Jr.?”

“Not last night, I didn’t.”

Oh, hell, no.
“He’s . . . he’s . . . a friend of yours?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Why?”

Vaughn crossed the room in two strides to hover over her. “Gwen, listen to me. Junior’s bad news. He’s into some scary stuff that could get you in trouble or maybe even killed. What about his pals, Elias Baltierra, Shawn Henigin, and Jimmy de Luca? Are you friends with them too?”

“Jimmy, yeah, we’re cool. Eli and Shawn come around sometimes, but I wouldn’t call them friends.”

He leaned in closer. “Any idea where I could find them right now?”

“How should I know? I only see them around parties, is all.”

He hated that he had to ask this next question, but couldn’t see a way around it. “Tell me the truth—are you using drugs?”

Sneering, she gave him a shove that backed him out of her face. “Don’t be a jackass, Vaughn. Do I look like a junkie?”

He knelt, hands on hips, right up close to her, and gave her the same thorough looking over he might give someone he’d pulled over for erratic driving. Her skin was tan, not ashen, and free of scabs and sores. Her eyes weren’t bloodshot. No dark circles under her eyes or weird bruising anywhere. But her hair smelled faintly of pot.

He fluffed her hair and took another whiff. Yep. Eau de Ganja.

“Hey!” she squealed, swatting at him.

Swabbing a hand over his face, he paced to the other side of the room and watched his dad’s class through the window, reining in his fury. When he could speak without shouting, he rounded on her. “Damn it, Gwen. Pot? You’re thirty, for Christ’s sake! When are you going to grow up?”

She vaulted from the bed, and he knew by the fire in her eyes that he’d tripped her temper switch. Lovely. Just what he needed.

“You don’t get to waltz in here with your fancy sheriff badge and that big brother smirk and boss me around,” she yelled. “I have my shit together, and I don’t need you or anyone else lecturing me on what I do in my free time.”

“You’ve got nothing but free time,” Vaughn hissed as quietly as he could manage. “You have nothing going for you at all.”

“Screw you!”

“Kinda feels like that’s what you’re doing—screwing me over at my job, putting me in a position where I either got to sit on my hands while the police arrest you over and over again, or set aside my ethics as a sheriff to keep you out of jail.”

“I don’t need your help,” she shouted, shoving him again.

He planted his feet right in the middle of her room, his hands in his pockets, and let her push on him. It wasn’t like his little sisters hadn’t beaten on him a million times when they were kids, and maybe it would wear her temper out faster. “Is that right? Then tell me how you’re going to play it the next time Wallace Meyer or one of his gophers arrests you for possession of drugs or stolen merchandise? Because, right now, they want to catch you. They’re on the hunt.”

The head of steam she’d worked up deflated. “You don’t know that.”

Vaughn scoffed. “You know what I’m doing as soon as the warrant comes in from the judge? I’m going to the hospital to arrest Wallace Jr. for a violent crime. Chief Meyer knew it was coming to this, and the first chance he had, he got in my face with a threat against you.”

She dropped to her bed again and wrapped her arms around her knees. “What?”

“That’s why I’m here. You think I want to talk to you about this shit? Wallace Meyer told me straight up that if he catches you with so much as one foot stepping outside the law, he’s putting the full power of his position into prosecuting you. I came here to warn you. If you feel the sudden need to go shopping, or however the urge starts inside you, do me a favor and head to Albuquerque, okay? Stay out of Tucumcari.”