The Loner (23 page)

“Your father’d have my hide if I let anything happen to you,” the cowboy said.

“Then get a fire extinguisher from one of the trucks and keep an eye out for smoke!” Summer retorted.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The cowboy stepped aside and Summer walked the rest of the way to the crushed helicopter on unsteady legs. She expected a lot of blood. She braced herself for some sort of mutilation. But her mother sat upright, belted into the seat without a visible wound. She might have been sleeping, except her mouth was contorted in a grimace of pain, and her eyes were wide open.

Summer reached out a trembling hand and closed her mother’s eyes. Then her knees buckled, and she sank onto the grass near the crumpled mass of metal. She heard her cell phone ring and dug it out of her breast pocket.

“Summer? Are you all right?”

She sobbed at the sound of the one voice she’d wanted to hear. “Billy? How did you know to call me?”

“One of your dad’s men called and told me what happened. I’m on my way. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

“Hurry, Billy. I need you. Please hurry.”

“I’m coming, Summer.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry about your mother.”

“I never forgave her, Billy. For Russell Handy. I didn’t get the chance.”

It wasn’t until she blurted that admission to Billy that Summer realized her unfinished business with her mother was responsible for so much of the anguish she felt. Now she would never have the chance to confront her mother about the affair with Russell Handy that had resulted in her birth. Or forgive her and find some sort of peace.

Summer’s bitter grief was also fueled by the way her mother had died. It seemed so senseless.

What had made her mother so desperate to spend time at this roundup with her father? How had she ended up so jealous of Lauren Creed?

Summer would never understand why her father hadn’t been able to love her mother the way he loved that other woman. It seemed awful that her mother should end up dying this way—flying a helicopter she wasn’t qualified to pilot—so she could spend time with the husband who’d abandoned her.

That also meant her mother had to take a great deal of the blame for her own death. She should have been more careful, Summer thought angrily. She should have found some other way to be with Blackjack. She should have let herself be persuaded not to fly!

The forty-five minutes Summer waited for Billy seemed endless. She spent the time with her knees pulled up to her chest, her head down. No one spoke to her. No one bothered her. She was aware of the hot sun on her shoulders, the breeze feathering her hair, the cattle lowing in the pens where work had ceased.

“Summer.”

Summer looked up to find Billy bending toward her and launched herself into his welcoming embrace. He held her against him, crooning solace in her ear, rocking her back and forth.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

When she resisted, he stopped and held her at arm’s length. “There’s nothing more you can do for her, Summer.”

“I don’t want her to be alone. I can’t just leave her here. I have to stay until… I have to stay.”

She prepared herself for an argument, for a physical fight, if need be.

Billy kicked aside a shard of metal and sat down on the grass, pulling her into his lap. “All right. We’ll wait here till someone comes to get her.”

“Thank you, Billy,” she murmured against his throat.

Her tears had dried. The sobs seemed stuck in her chest. “I wish…”

“I know,” he said.

She let the warmth of his body and the strength of his arms comfort her. She heard the siren long before the paramedics arrived. She wondered why they bothered announcing their presence. There was no traffic out here. No suffering victim listening for the wailing siren that promised surcease from pain.

To her surprise, her brother Owen led a cavalcade of vehicles that included the sheriff, the paramedics, and her father. She struggled upright and helped pull Billy to his feet, then faced the oncoming horde.

Owen had his arms open when he reached her, and she walked into them and held him tight around the
waist. She saw his eyes were red-rimmed, though there were no tears visible now.

“Are you all right?” he asked, glancing at Billy, who stood to the side with his hands in his back pockets, one hip cocked.

“Are you?” she replied, looking up into her brother’s face.

His eyes were tormented. “She wasn’t a good mother,” he bit out. “Why the hell does this hurt so much?”

“I don’t know,” Summer admitted. “Did you reach Clay? Has someone called Trace in Australia?”

“I called Clay. Dad contacted Trace. He and Callie will be here for the funeral.”

A fresh spurt of tears blurred Summer’s vision. What a sad reason for her eldest brother to be coming home. She blinked the tears away in time to see the sheriff and her father examining the cockpit, while the paramedics freed her mother from the seat belt and lifted her onto a wheeled gurney.

“Accident, you say?” the sheriff said to her father.

“She was flying erratically,” her father said. “Taking dangerous chances.”

“Didn’t know your wife did any flying these days,” the sheriff said.

“Eve had a mind and a will of her own. There wasn’t much I could do to stop her.”

The sheriff lifted an eyebrow but didn’t contradict Jackson Blackthorne. “You call anybody from the NTSB or the FAA to come look at the wreckage?” the sheriff asked.

“No. I didn’t think of that.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the sheriff said. One of his
deputies was stringing crime-scene tape around the helicopter. “Don’t let anyone touch anything before they get here,” the sheriff said.

The crime-scene tape caused Summer to stare. “Why are they doing that?” she said to Owen. “There hasn’t been any crime. This was an accident.”

“All accidents like this have to be investigated,” Owen said. “It’s the law.”

It dawned on Summer what that meant. Her mother’s body would have to be cut up by a medical examiner. The thought made her feel nauseated. She tried to swallow the bile that rose in her throat, but lost the battle, and leaned over and vomited onto the grass.

A moment later Billy was beside her, a handkerchief in his hand. She grabbed it and wiped her mouth.

“Come on, Summer. You need to lie down,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Which was when Summer realized that her mother’s death hadn’t done a thing to change Billy’s circumstances. He still didn’t have a job. And the only way her father would give it back to him was if she left Billy and moved home to the Castle.

She had the perfect excuse to make the break without Billy even knowing that it was going to be permanent. It made sense for her to stay at the Castle for a few days to help her father with arrangements for her mother’s funeral, and to be there to mourn with her family and accept the condolences of their friends and neighbors.

Once Billy had his job back with the TSCRA, he’d be able to support his son and himself. And once she was gone from the house, Emma would surely come home to take care of Dora.

“I need to go back to the Castle,” she said. “You understand, don’t you, Billy? Daddy will need someone in the house until the funeral, and maybe for a little while afterward.”

She watched the struggle on Billy’s face. And realized he’d been expecting her to break and run for so long that even a good excuse couldn’t camouflage her desertion. He obviously believed this was the beginning of the end for them. And he was thinking about whether to fight to keep her.

“All right,” he said at last. “I suppose the whole family will want to be together to mourn.”

She opened her mouth to say
You’re my family now
, but the words wouldn’t come. Billy would never be welcome at the Castle. He was a reminder of how her father had betrayed her mother, a reminder of all the things that had gone wrong with her parents’ marriage, all the things that had led to her parents’ estrangement, and finally to her mother’s death.

The sound of her father’s angry voice tore her attention from Billy.

“How the hell would I know how it got there!” Blackjack said.

“You can see it’s an explosive device,” the sheriff said. “Who’d want to kill your wife?”

Summer started toward the helicopter at a brisk walk, but she was running by the time the sheriff finished his sentence. Her brother and Billy were right behind her.

“What’s going on?” Owen asked.

The sheriff pointed under the seat where her mother had been sitting. “Take a look at that.”

Owen bent down for a closer look, then rose and
turned on Blackjack. “Do you know anything about this, Dad?”

“Why the hell would I?” her father said angrily.

Summer looked from her father to her brother and asked, “What is it, Owen?”

“Some sort of explosive device.”

“What is it doing there?”

“At a guess, somebody wanted to make sure this helicopter didn’t come down in one piece,” Owen said, staring at their father. “But it must have malfunctioned. Which makes me wonder if there’s any other evidence of foul play that device was supposed to destroy.”

“Why are you looking at Daddy like that?” Summer asked her brother.

“Who else has a reason to want Mom dead?”

“Maybe that device wasn’t intended for Mom. She isn’t the only one who’s been flying this helicopter. Who knows how long it’s been there?” Summer argued.

Owen looked speculatively at the device, then at his father. “Who else has been flying this thing?”

“Randy Tucker,” her father answered. He turned and called for the pilot, who was standing among the cowboys who were waiting for further orders.

“What is it you need?” the pilot said when he reached Blackjack.

“You got any enemies you know of?” Owen asked.

“No, sir,” the pilot said.

Owen pointed out the explosives and said, “You know anything about that?”

“Shit, no!” the pilot said. “It wasn’t there when I checked the helicopter before Mrs. Blackthorne’s flight this morning.”

“You have some reason to check the floor around the seats?” Owen asked.

“I wouldn’t normally, but this morning I spilled my coffee and had to wipe it up.”

Owen turned to Blackjack and said, “Seems Mom was the target after all.”

“Are you accusing Daddy?” Summer asked.

“You know anybody else who wanted Mom dead?”

“The device didn’t even explode, but the helicopter crashed anyway,” Summer said heatedly. “Doesn’t that prove it was an accident?”

One of the paramedics said, “I’d say she died before the copter crashed. Heart attack, maybe.”

“There was nothing wrong with my mother’s heart,” Owen said.

The paramedic shrugged. “Then stroke maybe. An autopsy will tell the tale.”

“Daddy didn’t want Momma dead,” Summer said. “He’s innocent.”

“But a heap of people heard him say last night that he wanted to be rid of her,” the sheriff said quietly.

Summer stared at the sheriff, then at her father. Everyone might have heard her parents argue last night, but everyone wouldn’t know that they’d had the same argument a thousand times over the past ten or fifteen years. That they’d said the same things—and worse—to each other time and again. That didn’t mean either really wanted the other dead. Even though theirs hadn’t been a love match, her parents had been committed to one another.

At least, until recently they had.

“Stay close to home till we get this straightened out,” the sheriff told her father.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Blackjack replied.

“Come on, Summer,” Billy said as he gripped her elbow. “It’s time to take you home.”

“There must be some explanation for this, Billy,” she said as he led her toward his pickup. “That device must have been intended for someone else.”

“Take off those rose-colored glasses, Summer, and take a good look around you. Blackjack has always done what was necessary to get what he wanted. This time he just got caught at it.”

Summer jerked her arm free and turned to confront Billy. “You’re wrong. I know my father. He isn’t capable of murder.”

“That’s where we differ. I think he’s a ruthless sonofabitch, capable of anything.”

Summer’s neckhairs bristled. “Why would he need to kill her? He’d already left her. He’d already given her everything.”

“Exactly,” Billy said. “Can you see a man like Blackjack, who’s spent his life building a place like Bitter Creek—a ranch that’s been in his family for generations—just giving it all away?”

“He said he didn’t care about the ranch. He said it wasn’t important.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Besides, Lauren Creed has a ranch where they could live.”

“Three Oaks isn’t Bitter Creek,” Billy said. “Not by a long shot.”

“Blackjack is innocent,” Summer said. “You’ll see.”

They’d arrived at the back door to the Castle. When Billy shut off the engine it ran for another thirty seconds
before it quit. “Need to tune this damned thing,” he muttered.

They sat in silence for another thirty seconds before Summer said, “Will you come for the funeral?”

“What is your family going to think if I show up?”

“You’re my husband, Billy. It would cause gossip if you didn’t come.”

“All right,” he said.

“You can meet me at the church, and we can go together from there to the cemetery,” she said. Which would avoid the awkwardness of having Billy show up at the Castle with her whole family there.

Summer leaned over and kissed Billy on the cheek. She was surprised when he caught her shoulders and pulled her close and kissed her hard on the mouth.

“I’m coming to get you when this is over, Summer.”

She didn’t say anything. It would be easier to turn him away once she was behind the solid walls of the Castle. But she was aware for the first time of what she was giving up to help him. There hadn’t been many men like Billy in her life. When she’d needed him, he’d put her first, just dropped everything and come running. And provided a rock-solid shoulder to lean on.

And, glory of glories, he was willing to fight to keep her. It had been sweet to hear him swear he was coming back to get her.