Cowboy Tough Page 13

  “I’ve got time for a sandwich.” He patted his stomach. They’d eaten breakfast only a few hours ago, but the Daltons had hearty appetites. Grady could devour two packages of bacon all by himself.

  “I’ll follow you home in case the load comes loose.”

  He gazed at the tie-downs he’d used. “It won’t.” On his way to the cab of his truck, he knocked the mud off his boots and waved his hand in the air to Mr. Maitland.

  Before getting into her own car she walked over to where the old man still perched on the bucket and thanked him again. “It’s going to a good home.”

  It took him a few seconds but he got to his feet, trying without success to straighten his back. “This is what happens when you milk goats for a living.”

  That and age. Charlotte put him somewhere near ninety.

  “All sales are final,” he said in a gruff voice that Charlotte was beginning to realize was a dry sense of humor.

  “No worries.” She reached for his gnarled hand, gave it a shake, and started for her SUV. “I’ll send pictures.”

  “You come back in person, young lady.”

  She would if she was still here.

  At the ranch, she followed Jace to an old barn that had been overgrown with brush. By her last count, there were at least five barns, including a stable for the horses, on the property. This one had a south-facing window that had been boarded up with plywood. And even Jace had to give the door a few hard tugs before it would slide open.

  “It just needs a little oil,” he said and began unloading.

  Charlotte went inside, which was only slightly better than the exterior. Cobwebs hung from the rafters like netting and dried-up bird droppings covered the wooden floor. It was dark and dusty. But it was dry and seemingly rodent-free. And it was only a short walk along the creek from the house. She could hear water gurgling from inside the barn.

  Later, she planned to come back with a broom and scrub brush and set the place up as best she could to serve as her workshop.

  “There’s electricity.” Jace pushed a wheelbarrow piled high with her various treasures into the corner and bobbed his head at a wall outlet. “I’ll see if I can find a window to let some natural light in.” He pointed at the boarded-up one.

  She started to remind him that she was only staying a week, not to go to any trouble. But he already had and she didn’t want to appear unappreciative.

  “I’ll help you with the couch.”

  They went outside and he jumped into the truck bed, lithe as a tiger. He pushed the ratty sofa to the edge of the tailgate and she took the end hanging off the truck.

  “Wait for me,” he said and hopped down, hefting her end onto the back of his shoulders. “I’ve got it.”

  She grabbed the underside of the other end with both hands. “I can help.” But he’d taken the brunt of the weight. It was a heavy couch, well made, which is what had attracted her to it in the first place.

  “You probably shouldn’t be lifting things,” he said.

  She’d had a miscarriage, not a C-section. But his concern warmed her. Why he was single was a mystery.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him, and helped him get the sofa inside the barn.

  He put his end down and came around to her side and lowered that end too.

  “Are you?” He straightened his back. “I don’t know you, Charlie, but there’s a sadness about you. I see it in your eyes, even in your smile. Losing a child…well, it’s got to be the worst thing on earth.” He leaned against one of the open framed walls and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. “Maybe you should talk to someone, get counseling.”

  “This will be my counseling.” She moved her eyes over the couch, then the wheelbarrow.

  He didn’t say anything, just observed her with those piercing blue eyes.

  And for no reason at all she said, “His name would’ve been Davis. It’s my mother’s family name. I thought it would be nice to preserve it.”

  “Davis is a good name. Strong. My parents named me for my late grandfather. Jasper.”

  “That’s nice too.” She turned her face away so he wouldn’t see her cry. “I made him a quilt. Perhaps you know of a family in need of a baby blanket.”

  “Nah, you should keep it.” He’d come up alongside her and touched her arm. “I’m really sorry, Charlie.”

  “Thank you.” She turned back to him, her cheek brushing his shoulder, where she let it rest in the folds of his jacket. His arms moved around her and for a few moments he held her close. There was strength in those arms. So much strength that for just a little while Charlotte forgot to be afraid.

  And then, just like that, he pulled away. “I could find you someone to talk to. A professional.”

  “Not now, but maybe later.” There wouldn’t be a later but it was easier to say there would be. “In the meantime, I appreciate you giving me a shoulder.”

  “I want to give you more than that,” he said and seemed to become flustered. “What I mean to say is I want to help you, Charlie. This thing you’re running from…I could make it so you didn’t have to.”

  She stared up at the cobwebbed ceiling. “That’s the thing, Jace. You can’t.”

  * * * *

  Jace was so goddamned frustrated he wanted to kick something. Why wouldn’t she just talk to him? Have a little faith? He could make whoever was hurting her go away. And he could…hold her the way a man holds a woman.

  Back in the barn it had felt so damned good. And so damned wrong.

  He got up from his desk and shut the door. Today was the kind of day where he wished he could go outside and do real police work—bust in a couple of doors—not push papers. He fired up his computer and did another search for Charlie Rogers, even though it was waste of time.

  There were too many to count. All of them the wrong Charlie Rogers.

  He went back on the NamUs website and got lost in looking at pictures of missing people for an hour. When that got old he perused Bay Area newspapers. For all he knew she’d lied about living there. Yet, her Honda was registered to the Rosie the Riveter Foundation in San Francisco.

  Screw it.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Chris’s cell phone number.

  “Speak of the devil. I was getting ready to call you.”

  “Yeah?” Jace perked up. “You got something?”

  “You were right about that foundation. There’s a detective in our domestic violence unit who works with them occasionally. Off the books, of course.” While providing abused women with fake IDs might be virtuous, it was illegal. “She said she’d reach out to them for you if you need a middleman.”

  “Maybe.” But Jace didn’t want to blow Charlie’s cover. Nor did he expect anyone at the foundation to provide him with information about her. “So this is the deal: I sorta lied. The woman I was talking about is probably already getting help from Rosie the Riveter. She was passing through town and I thought if I knew more about her situation I could help. By now, though, she’s long gone.”

  “Long gone, huh?” Chris hadn’t made sergeant for being naïve. But Jace could trust him. He was solid.

  “Work with me here. I’m just trying to find out who she is…what she’s running from.”

  “And you want me to find out without giving me any more information?”

  That was about the gist of it. “Could you just ask around? See if any women have been reported missing?”

  “I could do that,” Chris said. “But I don’t need to tell you how many people in this city are looking for someone. Parents looking for their adult children who have taken to life on the streets. Family members looking for their mentally ill relatives. Hell, folks get on and off buses every day here just to disappear. This is San Francisco, man. You name it, we’ve got it.”

  Jace let out a whoosh of frustration. Why had he become
so obsessed with Charlie? Angie, he told himself. That’s why. If he couldn’t help his cousin, he could at least look out for Charlie. “I know, I know. Whatever you can do, that’s all I’m asking.”

  Charlie had been pregnant when she’d left. In Jace’s mind, a spouse would move heaven and earth to find his baby.

  “You got it,” Chris said. “Talk to you soon.”

  Jace tried to spend the rest of the afternoon focusing on budgets, reports, and the agenda for the upcoming county supervisors’ meeting. But the memory of Charlie in his arms played havoc on his concentration. He hadn’t been this fixated on a woman since Mary Ann.

  Yeah, and look how well that turned out.

  He should’ve gone with his gut where his ex-wife had been concerned. The more he fell for her, the more she’d acted like a caged animal ready to bolt the minute the door opened. Then they got pregnant with Travis and she was stuck. Stuck with him, is what she’d said. Stuck with Dry Creek Ranch and living in a nothing town.

  Next came Grady, and she was jumping out of her skin, so filled with wanderlust that she spent half her days glued to the Travel Channel.

  Everything he did to try to make her happy only made it worse. Joining the Mill County Sheriff’s Department so he could be closer to home instead of commuting to Roseville. Hiring Mitch to draw up plans for a house so she’d have her own domain, instead of living with Grandpa Dalton.

  Loving her until he thought he’d go crazy with it.

  She’d called his love suffocating. A fortress built to keep her in. So she scaled the walls, ran as fast as she could go, and put an ocean between them.

  This time around, he’d go with his gut no matter what his heart said.

  The watch commander’s voice came over the radio. “Hey, Sheriff. We’ve got a 417 at the Beals Ranch. Thought you might like to handle it.”

  Jace moved closer to the radio. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s unclear, Sheriff. Apparently someone came to repossess a piece of equipment and Mr. Beals pulled a gun on him. That’s all his daughter told the 911 operator.”

  “Is someone there now?”

  “Deputy Anderson.”

  “Tell Anderson to keep everything under control until I get there.” He rushed across the bullpen. “I’m out for the rest of the day, Annabeth. You can forward my calls to my cell.”

  “Okay. Be careful, Jace.”

  By the time he got to Beals Ranch, things had escalated. Randy had taken the man from the repossession company hostage in the equipment barn and was threatening to blow his balls off if he even so much as touched his tractor. Jill was trying to talk her father down but he wouldn’t listen to reason.

  “Randy, give me the gun.” Jace brushed by Deputy Anderson, who’d only been on solo patrol for a few months and was completely out of his depth on something like this. “Dammit, Randy, you want to go to prison and leave your family to deal with this mess?”

  “Get away, Jace. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will if I have to.”

  “Over a tractor? Over a goddamn tractor?”

  Randy pulled the butt of the Remington firmly into his shoulder and gripped the stock. Even from a distance, Jace could feel Anderson stiffen. He motioned to the deputy to stand down. All he needed was for the rookie to intensify the situation.

  “Randy, you’re making everyone nervous. Put the gun down and let’s talk about this.”

  “Nothing to talk about. The bank ain’t taking my tractor. If your grandfather were still alive he’d shoot the son-of-a-bitch too.”

  “No, Randy. He’d let the son-of-a-bitch take the tractor and figure out a way to get it back. Lawfully.”

  Randy let out a rusty laugh. “God, I miss him. We’re all dying, Jace. Every damn last one of us. And you kids don’t give a rat’s ass about the land, about the cattle. It’s all about the money.” He slowly turned to Jill, keeping the repo man in his sight line. “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s in town, Daddy. Don’t do this. Hand the gun to Jace. Please!” She stood there in a pair of hip waders and had probably been mucking out muddy stalls when the trouble had started.

  The repo man inched closer to the bay opening where a flatbed truck had been parked.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Randy’s finger twitched over the trigger and the man stopped in his tracks.

  Jace thought he might’ve pissed himself.

  “Randy, I’m not going to ask you again. Put down the gun.”

  “I’m not letting him take my tractor.”

  Breaking every protocol in the book, Jace grabbed the barrel and pulled the Remington away from Randy, who didn’t put up much of a fight. The repo man sagged against a post and took a few minutes to collect himself, then went to work on loading the tractor onto the truck.

  Randy slid down the wall and sat on the ground, resting his face in his hands. Jace got down there with him.

  “You’ll figure out a way to get it back,” he said.

  Another rusty laugh bubbled out of Randy. “Next, they’ll come for the livestock trailers. Damned bank. A man can’t even catch his breath before they start crawling up my ass, wanting their pound of flesh. You gonna arrest me?”

  “I should.” Jace looked over at Deputy Anderson, who appeared stymied by what to do next. He motioned that the deputy could go.

  “A man has a right to protect his property.”

  “Except it’s not your property. It’s the bank’s. How deep are you in, Randy?” As the sheriff it was none of Jace’s business, but the Beals and the Daltons had been neighbors for three generations. Randy’s father had been Grandpa Dalton’s best friend.

  “Deep enough to drown. I should’ve sold to Mitch after that incident last summer.” That incident last summer should’ve landed Mitch, Jill, and Pete in prison. But Randy and his wife had refused to press charges against their kids. Now, Jill was back living on the ranch, trying to make up for the damage she’d caused by shouldering some of the work.

  “Can you find your way out of this?” Jace asked.

  “I frankly don’t know how. We’re behind on our payments and taxes are killing us. It’s wet now from all the rain, but another dry year and …” Randy trailed off. “Your grandfather was smart not to throw good money after bad when the drought came. We thought taking out a second would help us hold on. Now we owe more than we make.”

  It was the story of the foothills.

  After three years of devastating drought, you either culled your herd or went to the bank, hat in hand. As much as it had killed him to lose close to a century’s worth of breeding stock, Jasper Dalton hadn’t wanted to saddle his grandkids with that kind of debt. As it was, Jace and his cousins couldn’t afford arrears in the ranch’s property taxes, let alone monthly payments on a bank loan.

  “What about debt consolidation?” Jace asked. “You talk to someone about cutting a deal with the bank?”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.”

  Jace doubted it. Cattlemen were a proud lot.

  The repo man finished loading the tractor and drove away, leaving clouds of dust in his wake. Technically, he was only allowed to repossess the equipment from the driveway and had trespassed, so Jace didn’t bother asking if he wanted to press charges, though he probably should’ve.

  “Go on in, Randy. Shower up before Marge gets home.” Jace got to his feet and held out a hand, but Randy stood up on his own.

  He watched the cowboy walk to the house and remembered that Jill was still there. They hadn’t talked since Jace had booked her into the county jail.

  “Daddy wouldn’t have shot ’im,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Thank you for coming. He’s been in a bad way lately and you coming and talking him down, well it helped.”

  He nodded and started to walk away.

&nbs
p; “Brett’s doing well.”

  “I know that too.” Jace talked to Brett at least twice a week while Brett attended a vocational school for disabled war veterans in Sacramento.

  “Are you ever going to forgive me, Jace?”

  “Probably not, Jill. You cheated on my best friend with my other best friend. You stole from your parents. And you and Mitch may have ruined my chance of getting reelected with that bullshit rumor you helped spread about Aubrey and me. So no, Jill, I don’t plan to forgive you anytime soon.”

  “Brett’s forgiven me.”

  “Brett has always been a better man than I. He also happens to be the father of your children, so I’m sure he wants to keep things copasetic between you two.” He crossed the driveway to his SUV, Jill hanging in his shadow. “Me, not so much.”

  “We’ve known each other our whole lives. You have to forgive me.” She was at his passenger-side door now.

  “No, I don’t.” He got in the driver’s seat. “Go check on your dad.”

  On his way to the ranch, he called Cash and conferenced in Sawyer. “Meeting at my house in two hours.”

  When he got home there were fresh flowers on the kitchen table and something that smelled like homemade bread in the oven, and Jace let himself breathe. Seeing Randy lose it like that had stuck with him the whole ride home.

  “Dad, Charlie made rocky road cookies. You know, like the ice cream. You want to taste one?”

  Jace grabbed Grady in a headlock and kissed the top of his head, which was damp and smelled faintly like shampoo. “After dinner.”

  “What about me? Can I taste one now?”

  “After dinner. Homework done?”

  “Almost.”

  “Then giddyup, pardner.”

  Grady let out a groan and padded off to Jace’s office. Jace assumed Travis was already in there, probably using his computer. In the dining room, Charlie had her sewing machine set up and appeared to be working on an elaborate project. There was a stack of fabric at the end of the table and spools of thread in every color on a wooden holder.