by Janet Dailey
Ty studied the note again. “Since she wants you to meet her tonight, she must be hiding out somewhere. More than likely, she’s gone to the same place she went the last time.”
“O’Rourke’s?”
“When did he leave here?” Ty asked.
“About the same time Cat did—right after the sheriff took you away this morning. He hasn’t been back since.”
“Come on.” Ty returned the note and pushed away from the truck. “We’re going over to his place and get her.” With luck, things would stay quiet here until he got back.
No time was wasted in the drive to the Shamrock Ranch. They traveled as fast as the condition of the roads would permit. The setting sun was firing the horizon with a cerise hue that grayed to purple where the land met the sky. O’Rourke was on the front stoop to meet them when the truck roared into his ranch yard.
“Tell Cathleen we’ve come to take her home,” Ty announced with firm conviction while he climbed out of the truck.
“Cathleen? She’s not here.” The denial was startled out of Culley. “The last time I saw her, she was at The Homestead.”
“It’s no use covering for her, Cuiley,” Ty declared impatiently. “We know she’s here. She sent Repp a note, telling him she was running away and asking him to meet her. This is the only place she could hide out.”
“I swear she didn’t come here.” His hand made a vague raking scratch of his head. “She wouldn’t run away,” he insisted, speaking his thoughts aloud. “Not when she was so worried about what Dyson might do to you while you were in jail. She wouldn’t have run.”
“In her note, she referred to the plane crash—” Repp
arted to ask if her uncle knew what she was talking about.
“Did she tell you about that?” His gaze jerked to the cowboy.
“What about it?” Ty demanded.
“About Stricklin tampering with the oil line,” Culley answered, then realized neither man had known anything about it. “Oh, no,” he groaned suddenly. “You don’t suppose Stricklin or Dyson found out she knew what they’d done?” There was a wild sawing of his gaze, racing back and forth. “They’ve got her.” He glanced at Repp. “And they’re figuring you saw him, too, that night in the hangar.”
“I think you’d better start at the beginning,” Ty advised, trying to separate the man’s wild rantings from fact.
With the windows boarded shut, the room was pitch-black. Cat’s silent, tearless sobs of frustration and self-pity were noisy breaths that stirred the gritty dust caking the floor where she lay, tied hand and foot. Her limbs ached with a tingling numbness from being forced to hold a single position, and the hard floor bruised her bones. Worse, she could feel things crawling all over her.
Floorboards creaked as footsteps approached the door. She held her breath, her heart suddenly leaping with fear. The door opened and a flashlight beam nearly blinded her. She blinked and tried to turn her head away from the glaring light. Stricklin entered the room and bent down to begin unknot-ting the rope that bound her.
“Your boyfriend will be here shortly.”
She had tried everything from shouting and cursing to pleading and reasoning, but nothing had reached him. This time, Cat tried silence.
When she was freed of the ropes, Stricklin helped her to stand up. Her muscles were so sore and stiff she couldn’t walk without stumbling. He guided her through the rooms to the front door, the flashlight showing the way. The fresh air smelled sweeter than she remembered as she took her first step into the moonlit night. She drank it in, her senses coming alive to savor the sensation of coolness on her skin and the chirrups of crickets in the weeds by the house. Such simple things. Such beautiful things.
“We’ll wait by the truck,” he told her. “And when your boyfriend comes, don’t get any ideas.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the movement of his hand that accompanied the warning. A second later, she caught the sheen of metal in the moonlight and realized he had a gun. A tiny run of panic tautened her nerves. Sometime during those long hours she’d been left tied in the house, he’d acquired a pistol.
As they stood in the shadows of the truck, Cat prayed Repp wouldn’t come. Her hearing seemed to become more acute, the night sounds appearing to be louder—the rustle of grass from some scurrying animal, the flap of wings overhead, and the shrill music of the crickets and buzzing night insects, all joining the cacophony, and over it all the pounding of her heart.
When she heard the hum of a motor, she tried to pretend it was a vehicle passing on the highway, but a pair of headlight beams grew steadily brighter as they approached the abandoned buildings. Desperately, Cat tried to think of some way to warn him; then she felt the hard circle of the gun’s muzzle pressing into her side. She stiffened and watched helplessly as the truck rolled to a stop. Its headlight beams had swept the pickup truck they stood beside but never once invaded the shadows that concealed them.
There was the grinding of metal against metal as the truck door swung open on its hinges, then pushed shut. Cat opened her mouth to shout a warning to him, but the indrawn breath became lodged in her throat when the gun muzzle jabbed her ribs for silence. Footsteps crunched on gravel.
“Cat?” His call broke the silence. “Cat, where are you?”
Stricklin pressed his mouth close to her ear. “Answer him. Tell him to come over here.”
Her teeth were clenched together in a mute protest before she finally complied. Between the gun and the brutal grip he had on her arm, she felt helpless to resist.
“Repp, I’m over here.” Her voice was unsteady. “On the other side of the pickup.”
As Repp came around the hood of the truck, Stricklin shifted his hold on her and forced her to step from the shadows. The gun was pointed at her head. Repp stopped dead still.
“The young lovers meet for their last rendezvous,” Stricklin murmured, then motioned Repp to come closer.
“Then it was you Cathleen and I heard in the hangar that night,” Repp accused and slowly walked forward until Strick-lin signaled him to stop.
Cat stared at him in shock. “Repp, you—”
“It’s no use pretending we don’t know,” he interrupted her quickly, then turned to Stricklin. “You did something to that oil line, didn’t you?”
“It was fairly simple.” Stricklin was very matter-of-fact about it. “It’s unfortunate the two of you happened to be there that night.”
“What have you got planned for us?” Repp sounded so calm that Cat wanted to scream.
“It’s going to be a very tragic accident—two young lovers parked in some out-of-the-way place, unfortunately overcome by carbon monoxide. A little battery acid on the exhaust hose and you have a leak that allows the fumes to get into the ventilation system. It will be very painless, really.” He seemed to offer the comment as assurance. “Of course, afterwards I’ll remove the jacks from the front end—I wouldn’t want you to attempt to drive away—and I’ll reattach the door locks.”
“You won’t get away with it,” Repp countered smoothly.
“No one discovered the last accident—except you two.”
“And Dyson—does he know?” It was thrown out as a challenge, faintly contemptuous. “I suppose this was his idea and you just do the dirty work for him.”
“Is that an attempt to create friction between myself and E.J.?” There was amusement in Stricklin’s voice, as much amusement as ever was allowed into his voice. “It won’t work. Dyson has nothing to do with it.” He used the gun to motion Repp toward the truck. “Open the door and get in.”
There was a long hesitation, as though Repp were weighing his chances of rushing the man. Cat strained toward him, hating the way she was both a pawn and a shield to Stricklin.
“I said, open the door,” he repeated the order.
From the shadows of the house, another voice—Ty’s voice—answered him. “He’s not going to do it, Stricklin.”
Stricklin’s head jerk
ed in his direction. In that second of distraction, Repp grabbed Cathleen’s arm and yanked her out of Stricklin’s hold. “Run, Cat! Run!” His hands pushed at her shoulder blades, shoving her into the moonlit darkness as he threw himself at Stricklin.
Cat stumbled the first few steps, trying to get her balance. Her heart was pumping madly, and breath was screaming in her lungs. Something lunged out of the darkness a step behind her, startling a cry from her throat.
Suddenly, all the scuffling noises, the running footsteps, the wild terror pounding in her ears, were shattered by an explosion. Cat spun around. The scene was momentarily freeze-framed. A figure directly in front of her staggered backwards a step. Beyond him, Stricklin stood by the truck, the revolver at the end of his outstretched arm, a trace of white smoke curling from the muzzle.
A second explosion came. It seemed to push Stricklin backwards, a look of shock freezing on his expression as he slid down the side of the truck to the ground. Cat ran forward as the gray-haired man sank onto one knee.
“Uncle Culley.” She fell to her knees beside him, her hands reaching to support his sagging frame. Casting a frantic look over her shoulder, she saw Repp being helped to his feet by two men. She didn’t know where they came from, but he appeared unharmed. When she looked back to her uncle, she noticed a hand was pressed to his chest. Something wet and dark was oozing from between his fingers. “You’ve been shot.”
“I’ll be okay, girl.” He patted her hand, leaving the stain of warm, sticky blood on it.
His weight seemed to grow heavier in her arms. She had to use her whole body to support. Then Ty was beside her. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Before she could draw attention to Culley’s chest wound, Ty was unbuttoning the shirt and pressing a folded piece of cloth on the dark purple hole in the flesh.
“There’s an ambulance on the way, Culley,” he said. “I’m sorry. Repp was in the way and we couldn’t get a clear shot at him.”
“I ... I couldn’t let him shoot Cathleen. He would have.” His voice sounded very tired, although he made an attempt to smile at her. Cat realized he had deliberately placed himself between her and Stricklin. “I’ve been watchin’ after her for a long time. I always tried to know where she was and what she was doin’. ’Cept today ... I let her down today.”
“No, you didn’t, Uncle Culley,” she declared tightly. “You came. You brought help. And Ty believed you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes as if to consider that. “A Calder takin’ an O’Rourke’s word.”
“Don’t talk anymore,” Ty advised. “Just stay quiet.”
Sirens wailed eerily through the night. There was a confusion of voices and figures, the bright glare of spotlights and headlamps, and flash cameras taking pictures of Stricklin’s lifeless body. Repp joined Cat’s vigil at her uncle’s side. There was an ugly bruise on his jaw where the revolver had dealt him a glancing blow.
The strong black coffee had a reviving effect on him, and Ty wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling the scrape of his beard. It was better than thirty-six hours since he’d last shaven and changed clothes—or slept. The weariness had begun pulling at his bones.
“I don’t know which Dyson had a harder time swallowing” —Silverton was seated across from him at one of the few occupied tables in Sally’s that morning—“discovering Stricklin’s treachery or accepting the temporary injunction which bars him from doing any strip-mining on that land, pending a court ruling on the ownership.”
“I’m sure both were big blows to him,” Ty agreed and lifted the coffee cup to take another sip from it. After spending the last hour giving his account of the night’s events to one of the deputies, he didn’t feel like talking about Stricklin anymore.
Sally Brogan stopped at the table. “Refill?” The coffeepot was in her hand.
“Not for me,” Ty said with a negative turn of his head.
“I was glad to hear that Culley came through his surgery all right,” Sally offered while she topped off the attorney’s cup.
“The doctors are confident he’ll be up and around in no time. The bullet grazed some lung tissue, but luckily it missed the vital organs. Outside of losing a lot of blood, he wasn’t critically wounded.” He drained the last of his coffee and set the cup on the table. Drawing in a breath, he glanced at the lawyer. “If we’ve covered everything you wanted to go over, I think I’ll be going.”
“The rest can wait,” Silverton assured him. “You’ll be wanting to head home.”
“Not right away. I’ve got a stop to make first,” Ty admitted, pushing the chair away from the table to stand up.
“If you’re looking for Tara,” Sally inserted, “she’s been living in one of the company houses, the one with the black shutters on the corner.”
“Thanks.” He dropped some change on the table for his coffee and left.
It was a square and simple one-story building, the endless dust already dulling the new coat of white paint on its boards. There was a weariness to his slow strides as he left the pickup parked on the side of the street and went up the walk to the front door. Ty paused, feeling the ravel of old excitement—the remembered anticipation he’d always known just before seeing her again. His knuckles rapped lightly on the door.
It opened at once, as if she had been on the other side, waiting for him. She stepped back to admit him, the sunlight making a picture of her dark beauty. She had always possessed the power to stir him—and she had it still.
“Hello, Tara.” His whiskered face toughened his looks, darkening the slash of his mustache.
“Ty.” The familiar cadence of her voice reached out to him. She turned with a deliberate grace, her glance leaving him although ail her attention remained with him. “I heard about the injunction.”
“There won’t be any coal mined—not on Calder land, not by our generation. I told you that,” he said.
“Yes.” Her chin dipped slightly. A silence came, pressured by the many things to be said. “I believed my father was right. I believed he would win.” She looked at him. “That was my mistake, wasn’t it? It will always be there between us. It’s all I’ve thought about for the last three hours, since I heard about the injunction.”
“I know, Tara,” he said.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” She came nearer, searching his face with a straining seriousness. “You always believed I was disloyal, choosing to stand by my father instead of you.”
“Yes.”
Her beauty made it easy for him to stare at her. An eagerness came into her dark eyes, and her lips turned soft. “Ty.” She spoke his name in the old way. “Do you remember when we were in college? You were so in love with me then. Life was going to be so wonderful for us. You still feel that way, don’t you?”
A feeling of vague surprise glided through him as he glanced away. She had once been his whole life. She had been in his mind wherever he went, the song he heard in the night wind or the desire in his body. He remembered the hot hunger she had once evoked in him, the tumult of wanting, and the way she responded to his heavy urges. But when he tried to bring back those feelings and sensations, it was Jessy’s strong image, backlighted by the fireplace, he kept seeing.
Tara stared at him, seeing the emptiness of his regard. “How could you forget?” She breathed out the protest in a pained voice.
“I don’t know,” he admitted gently. “All I ever asked was for you to stand by my side. But you were always two steps ahead of me, trying to lead me where you wanted to go.”
“I was trying to help.”
“I know that, too.” Ty nodded slowly. “Everything changes, Tara. And you can’t bring the old times back, no matter how much you might like to.”
“But I loved you.” She protested the finality of his words.
“Once I loved you. I’m not blaming you for what you are. There’s a man out there somewhere who’ll suit you better than I will.”
She shut her eyes for an inst
ant; then they flared open, accusing. “It’s Jessy, isn’t it? I’m sorry, but I hate her.” She turned away, hugging her arms tightly. “Maybe because she thrives under this suffocating sky.”
Ty hesitated, finding nothing more to say. “Be happy, Tara.”
“Oh, yes.” Her laugh was slightly brittle. “I’m sure I’ll play the role of the gay divorcee very well.” Then she sighed. “The next time I won’t make the mistake of thinking Daddy’s always right.”
But it wasn’t only that, Ty knew. They had been traveling separate roads for a long time. He turned and slowly walked to the door.
“I’ll keep the ring, Ty.” Her soft voice traveled after him, a hint of tears in it. “Part of my might-have-been memories.”
The sun was a giant shimmer of white light in the high, summer-blue sky. A wind was picking up speed as it rolled over the undulating plains. When Ty drove away from the house, he didn’t look back.
Like an old horse pointed homeward, instinct made all the turns down all the right roads, and Ty didn’t have to make them consciously. When he came to the cabin nestled in the trees along the riverbank, he stopped the truck and stumbled out tiredly.
Flies made buzzing attempts to penetrate the mesh of the screen door, but he paid no attention to them as he entered the house. Jessy was sitting at the table, hands folded, waiting. She’d heard him drive up. There was color in her cheeks, but a definite reserve in her posture.
“I don’t suppose you have any coffee made,” he said, searching for a beginning.
“I’m sure there’s plenty of coffee at The Homestead.”
“But I like your coffee,” he said.
“Now that this business is practically over with Dyson, have you been to see Tara?” She was almost harsh in her demand.
“Yes.”
Too much was contained inside for Jessy to remain seated quietly. She pushed out of the chair and took a step into the center of the room, then swung to face him.
“Is she coming back?”
“I didn’t ask her to, or I wouldn’t be here.” There were no words to fit the powerful gentleness that filled him. It lay choked in his throat, holding him against the desire to take her in his arms.