Texas Tough (14 page)

Looking at her, thinking how lovely she was, how warm and tender and open, Sky felt an unaccustomed ache. Right now he needed her in a way that had nothing to do with sex. The idea of stopping the car, cradling her in his arms, and sharing his burden with her—who he was, where he'd come from, and why he was so troubled tonight—was tempting. But no, he'd be almost certain to regret telling her. If he needed to talk to anybody, he could talk to Jasper. Or better yet, he could keep his conflicting feelings to himself.

Lauren pulled up to the house without switching off the engine. The message was clear. He was to get out now and let her go.

Sky opened the door and climbed out of the low-slung car. “Call me if you need anything, Lauren,” he said, quietly closing the door. “I'll be here for you.”

“Will you? How charitable of you!”

Those were the only words she spoke before she gunned the engine and sped back down the drive.

CHAPTER 11

T
hree weeks had passed since Lauren's return. The drought that had started as a cause for gut-gnawing worry had become a hell of burning sun and blowing dust. The governor of Texas had applied for federal disaster relief and was likely to get it. But no amount of government money could coax rain from the heavens.

With little water to fight them, wildfires were breaking out to race across the tinder-dry grasslands. So far the Rimrock had been spared, but Beau had posted a notice that any cowhand caught smoking outside the gravel bunkhouse area would be fired on the spot. Though the order made sense, it heightened the strain among the men. Yesterday Beau had broken up a fistfight between two cowboys, sent them packing, and put the rest on notice. Everybody was on edge, even Jasper.

“Hellfire, I've seen it bad but never like this!” The old cowboy sat in his rocker on the porch, sharing a cup of pre-dawn coffee with Sky. He'd survived his brush with death, but the episode had taken its toll. He would never be as strong as before. “It'll damn near break Will's heart to sell those steers off early. I know he was countin' on a good price for them this fall.”

“Better than watching them starve,” Sky said, “or going broke buying more hay to feed them. Blasted hay's become like green gold. At least somebody's making money.”

With even the paddock drying up, the ranch was buying extra hay for the horses as well as the cattle. Given the demand everywhere, the price of hay had skyrocketed.

He glanced toward the house. There was a light on in the kitchen, where Will and Beau would be finishing breakfast. From the bunkhouse, the faint breeze carried the aromas of coffee and frying bacon. With daytime temperatures soaring past a hundred degrees, it made sense to start work in the cooler hours of early dawn.

“How're them colts coming along?” Jasper asked. “You've been working 'em pretty hard, 'specially since that little Prescott gal stopped comin' over.”

“The colts are doing fine. I'll be taking a few of them out today. As for the girl, no comment.” Sky hadn't seen Lauren since the night she'd driven him home. She'd had Beau send her the remaining files so she could finish the work on her own computer. Her message was clear, and Beau was discreet enough not to question Sky about it.

“Right pretty thing, 'specially for a Prescott.” Jasper sipped his coffee. “Beau mentioned that she'd taken quite a shine to you.”

“Like I said, no comment.” Setting his empty cup on the porch, Sky strode down the steps. “Time to get to work. Take it easy, Jasper. Stay out of the sun.”

“Oh, stop mollycoddlin' me. I'll be fine.”

The old man's voice followed Sky as he headed for the barn. He avoided looking toward the drive, where Lauren had always parked her black Corvette. He knew she wasn't coming back, but he couldn't look at that empty space without missing her.

Several of the sharpest colts had finished their training in the round pens, including a few sessions with the docile older cows that kept them company in the paddock. Now it was time for the young horses to be taken out on the open range, to perform their maneuvers on rough ground while dealing with unfamiliar sights, smells, and sounds. After that they'd be trailered up onto the caprock to work the herd, first with Sky, then with other riders. By the time they were finished, they'd know their job almost well enough to do it by themselves. It was a time-consuming process. But that intensive schooling was what made Rimrock-trained cow ponies so prized.

Sky had his hands full, doing it all alone. But finding the right help wasn't easy. He'd hope to train his cousin Lute as his assistant, but Lute had been a disaster from the start. Sky might have considered Marie. She'd always been good with animals, including horses. But she was cut from the same cloth as Lute, and she was already in trouble. As for Coy, even if he were to turn up and beg for a job, Sky wanted nothing to do with him.

The most gifted, natural-born horse handler on the ranch was Erin. She had all the right instincts. But the colts could be dangerous. Will's daughter was too young and precious to risk to their flying hooves and nipping teeth.

By the time Sky hauled his gear out of the tack room in the barn, the dawn was beginning to pale in the east. He was looking forward to taking Quicksilver for his first outing. The cat-footed gray gelding was the smartest of the colts and so responsive that, if the Rimrock hadn't been desperate for money, Sky would have lobbied to keep him.

They rode out across the flat, then circled back across the sun-scorched pastureland, passing the seep where Jasper had wrecked his ATV. A few weeks ago Sky had driven the old man out to the spot to see if it might jog his memory of what had happened. But Jasper could only frown and shake his head. If he'd seen the shooter, the trauma had blotted it from his mind. Now any evidence that remained had blown away with the dust—and Coy Fletcher, the most likely suspect, seemed to be gone for good.

A jackrabbit bounded across their path, almost under Quicksilver's hooves. The gelding snorted but didn't rear or try to bolt.

“Good boy.” Sky patted the dappled shoulder. “Let's see what else you can do.” Finding an open spot, he took Quicksilver through backing and turning and the other maneuvers he'd learned. With minimal urging, the young horse performed to near perfection. Nudging him to an easy canter, Sky headed toward the escarpment to try the moves again on steeper, rougher ground.

A quarter mile to his right, at the bottom end of the lower pasture, was a foul bog that covered more than an acre. Drying in the heat, the stagnant muck gave off a stench that Sky could smell even at a distance. The cattails around the bog's edge were brown and withered. Rotted carcasses of lost calves and wild animals, exposed by the receding water, drew buzzards, ravens, and swarms of carrion-feeding insects.

Sky hated that bog. A miasma of evil seemed to hang over the place, like the clouds of gnats that hovered above the brownish water. He couldn't go near it without remembering the young woman, a waitress at the Blue Coyote, whose murdered body he and Lute had found there during spring roundup.

He was turning aside when he noticed the thick flock of buzzards circling the bog, some flapping in to settle behind the screen of cattails, others perching in the bleached cottonwood that rose like a bony hand on the bog's far side. The place was a hangout for the ugly black birds. Sky was used to seeing a few of them. Today there were dozens, and plenty of ravens, too.

Something was going on and, like it or not, it was his job to check it out.

Sky swung the gray gelding toward the bog. Whatever he was about to find, one thing was for sure—it wouldn't be pretty. If some creature was newly trapped, he might be able to free it. If it was alive but beyond saving, he could at least use his pistol to end its misery.

For weeks the bog had been drying up in the heat. By now the water would be nearly gone. But the reeking mud it left behind smelled even worse. Catching the scent, Quicksilver snorted and tossed his head.

“It's all right, boy.” Sky patted the satiny neck. “I know it smells bad, but it'll soon be behind us. Let's do our job.” Steeling himself against the stench, he rode close enough to see over the cattails. The birds were clustered on a six-foot mound in the middle of the bog. Through the melee of feathered, black bodies, Sky glimpsed long white bones, tatters of faded gray fabric, a pair of mud-encrusted motorcycle boots, and the rusting barrels of two guns protruding from the mud beneath the body.

Turning the horse away, he filled the air with curses. There was no need to go closer, or even to look again. He knew what he'd find.

He'd come across what was left of his missing cousin, Coy Fletcher.

 

There was no question of keeping the discovery private. But Sky took the time to ride Quicksilver back to the paddock, unsaddle him, and turn him loose before telling Will and Beau about the body. Will made the call to Abner Sweeney, who, for whatever it was worth, was the law in Blanco County.

By the time Sky and Beau returned in Sky's pickup, the land around the bog was fast becoming a three-ring circus. Sirens wailing, Abner Sweeney roared up in his sheriff's Jeep, trailed by a Land Cruiser loaded with deputies and crime scene processing equipment. Hot behind them came the TV news chopper carrying the buxom Mindi Thacker and her camera crew.

Acting Sheriff Abner Sweeney stepped out of his Jeep. Pudgy and fortyish, with carrot-colored hair and a bumper crop of freckles, his attention seemed to be focused on the news crew. While one of his deputies began stringing yellow crime scene tape and the other two pulled on rubber boots and gloves, Sweeney stepped in front of the TV camera.

“Sheriff, what can you tell us about the situation here?” Ms. Thacker, dressed in a spotless white pantsuit, seemed to be vying with Sweeney for screen space.

Sweeney looked directly into the camera. “We're still investigating what happened here,” he said. “But I can assure the public of two things. First and most important, with me and my loyal deputies on guard, the good citizens of Blanco County will be perfectly safe. And second, neither I nor my deputies will rest until the monster who committed this crime is brought to justice.”

“I'll be damned,” Beau muttered in Sky's ear. “The man's a born politician.”

“For somebody who's not supposed to be very smart, he sounds pretty impressive,” Sky said.

“It's all hot air. I hear he spends most of his spare time reading sexy crime novels.” Beau nudged Sky out of camera range. “Let's keep our distance. We don't want to be cornered by Blanco County's answer to Diane Sawyer.”

“I'm right behind you,” Sky said, remembering the last time Ms. Thacker had covered a story on the ranch. Beau had threatened her with legal action if she didn't take her crew and leave. But with the sheriff and his deputies here, he didn't have that option.

They circled behind the parked vehicles to a spot from which they could watch without calling attention to themselves. The buzzards had scattered, some to the air and others to the branches of the dead cottonwood, where they watched the drama below.

Wearing high boots, arm-length gloves, and face masks, two men were making a circuit of the body. One had a camera, the other a pole he was using to probe the muck. The deputy who'd been stringing tape prowled the outer edge of the cattails looking for evidence.

“There won't be much to find,” Beau said. “That body looks like it's been in the bog for weeks. You're sure the man's your missing cousin—the one who allegedly shot Jasper?”

“No doubt about it. I recognize the boots from the tracks I saw earlier. And I'm pretty sure one of those guns sticking out of the mud will turn out to be Jasper's shotgun—see the double barrel?”

“How well did you know him?” Beau asked.

“It's been years since I've seen Coy face-to-face, but I remember he was a mean son of a gun. Not the sort who'll be missed much. But that reminds me, I'll need to go and tell his sister before she sees this on the news.”

“Lord, I don't envy you that. Were they close?”

“Nobody liked Coy much, including Marie. She told me she'd only brought him along because he insisted. But things must've been all right between them. She was picking up supplies for him and giving him rides to town and back on her Harley. That's what she was doing when they ran into Jasper.”

Beau scowled. “So she was giving him a ride back from town and they cut across the ranch. Where were they headed?”

Beau was no fool. Sky's jaw tightened as reality sank into place with the weight of a two-ton boulder. This mess wasn't just about Coy and Marie. There was the camp and the marijuana patch he'd destroyed but hadn't reported because he'd wanted to give Marie a break. And there was the land—his land, the deed legally recorded in the county office. The truth was about to come out—and it would be best coming from him.

He planned to tell the sheriff, of course. But first he would tell the Tylers.

“Walk back to the truck with me,” he said to Beau. “There's something I need to confess.”

 

“So how long were you planning to keep this a secret?” Now that Beau had heard the story, he seemed far more interested in the land than in Coy's camp and the marijuana.

“Only until I'd decided what to do about it.” Sky had told Beau about the deed he'd been given in the will. But he hadn't revealed his relationship to Bull Tyler. That was a secret he'd sworn to carry to his grave.

“What's to decide?” Beau demanded. “You get the land, you use it, run livestock on it, even build yourself a home. For once I agree with my father. You deserve that parcel of land. And when we tell Will, I know he'll feel the same.”

Sky gazed past the hood of the pickup, to where the white coroner's van was pulling up alongside the sheriff's Jeep. “And what if I
don't
feel the same? The Rimrock gave me a home and a life. All I've ever done is my job—and for that I've been paid a fair wage. I've never taken anything I haven't earned.” He shook his head. “That land's worth a lot of money. It just doesn't feel right.”

Beau muttered a curse. “Dammit, Sky Fletcher, if I live to be a hundred, I'll never understand what goes on in that crazy Comanche brain of yours. So, what would you do with the land if you didn't keep it?”

“Donate it to the Rimrock—or sell it and donate the money. I know the ranch could use it, especially this year. But to tell you the truth, I've been too busy to do anything about it.”

Beau's response was cut off by a shout from the young deputy who was circling the bog.