Dangerous Legacy

by Valerie Hansen

  “I trust you,” Flint said. “I’m just surprised you let that dog wander loose where he can bite people.”

  Maggie huffed. “I don’t suppose you’d believe he’s hardly ever growled at anybody else in the four years since I rescued him.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Scout’s honor,” she replied. “He usually barks to tell me someone’s here, but that’s about all.”

  Flint swallowed hard. Maybe he should have stayed in Serenity almost six years ago, for Maggie’s sake, but when she’d refused to even consider eloping he’d decided she didn’t truly love him. In retrospect, he’d wondered if she’d simply been defying her parents by dating him in the first place.

  As the years had passed, he’d been forced to admit that their teenage romance had been doomed. Perhaps they’d been overly attracted to each other because the relationship was forbidden by both their feuding families. It was certainly a possibility.

  And now? Flint studied her closed expression. He and Maggie were very different people. Besides, plenty of gossip had made its way to him since his recent return, and her phone call to her mom had confirmed it. Maggie was a single mother. Clearly, she had moved on and he’d better do the same. Too bad he’d been assigned to renew their acquaintance.

  What puzzled Flint was how Captain Lang had learned about their ill-fated romance. Stories about it could have come up when the department had been researching Elwood Witherspoon and his kin, he supposed. There was no way to discuss Witherspoon and his relatives without mentioning their long-standing feud with the Crawfords. And the way Flint had chosen distance as a means of defusing the mounting tension would certainly have come up.

  Maggie’s deep-seated anger surprised him, though, particularly since he had yet to broach the subject of her uncle’s whereabouts. Hadn’t she read any of his letters? Didn’t she understand he’d acted in the best interests of them both? Even if she disagreed with his choices, surely she could see things from his perspective.

  Flint pushed those thoughts aside. Until the police figured out who had taken a potshot at them, they’d both have to be on guard. He had combat training. Maggie did not. Therefore, since the sheriff wouldn’t take special precautions to protect her, he would have to look into the cause and come up with some answers. Whether she liked it or not. And stay alive in the process.

  And speaking of things she was not going to like, he figured he might as well get it over with so he said, “By the way, can you tell me where your uncle Elwood is living these days?”

  “What does he have to do with this?”

  “Probably nothing. I just need to locate him and have a little talk.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea where he is, nor do I care.”

  This was not going to be easy at all.

  TWO

  Maggie phoned her mother again to make sure Mark was safe, then fidgeted until Flint and the police finally finished their rainy investigating and drove away. If the sun had not set, she wondered if they’d have prowled around even longer.

  Combing her long hair more to one side to cover the tiny butterfly bandage on her cheek, she grabbed her purse and headed for her truck. Wolfie leaped in before she finished saying, “Yes, you can go.”

  Smiling, Maggie slid behind the wheel and started for town, noting how her fingers didn’t want to hold still. She wasn’t wired because of seeing Flint. No, sir. Being shot at was the problem. It had made her “jumpy as a baby chick at a possum party,” as her daddy used to say.

  Harlan hadn’t mentioned any names, but she knew who he probably blamed for the shooting. It hurt to think that the most likely suspect was her own great-uncle, but there was no getting around it. Elwood Witherspoon was a throwback to the days when country people had settled their own quarrels. A lot of old-timers still talked a good fight, but they weren’t serious. Elwood was. He delighted in using history as an excuse to break current laws. Worse, he was teaching his three grandsons to follow in his footsteps.

  Maggie grasped the wheel tighter. Even a mean-looking dog was no protection against an enemy with a rifle, kin or not. And if the target happened to be wearing the forest green uniform and badge of a game warden in Elwood’s neck of the woods, he might as well have a bull’s-eye painted on his back.

  Since the shooting, she had begun to feel as vulnerable as she had after her testimony at Abigail’s competency hearing. The old woman’s niece and nephew, Missy and Sonny Dodd, had threatened to shut down the sanctuary as soon as they got the chance, and had blamed Maggie for their loss in court.

  Now somebody else was threatening her and Flint was involved this time. In a rural place like Serenity, danger could lurk in every shadow, behind every tree. Her agitated state caused her to picture new threats at each twist and turn of the nearly deserted road.

  Already wired, Maggie overreacted when headlights gleamed behind her, blinding her with their glare. She accelerated. It didn’t help. The vehicle kept closing the distance between them.

  Maggie’s heart began pounding so hard she could count the beats at her temples. Every muscle was taut. The nearer the follower drew, the higher his headlights appeared. It had to be a truck—a lot bigger than hers.

  A highway passing lane was coming up. Suppose the other driver’s actions were nothing more than a result of her slower speed and overactive imagination? Maybe if she hit her brakes...

  She whispered, “Please, God?” and lightly tapped the brake pedal to flash her stoplights.

  The larger truck slammed into her rear bumper and sent Wolfie flying at the dash despite her outthrust arm. Dazed and shaking his huge head, he climbed back onto the seat beside her and licked her cheek.

  “Oh, baby, I’m sorry.”

  Normally she’d pull over and see if there had been any damage to her vehicle, but not this time. Not here where there were no houses or lights. And certainly not after what had happened earlier, at home. She swung into the far right lane as soon as the road divided for easy passing.

  “No, no, no!” The lights were coming at her again! Faster than before. She held tight to the wheel with her left hand and grabbed Wolfie’s collar with her right. “Lord, help us!”

  As if in answer to the frantic prayer, the headlights swung to her left. Had her panic been for nothing? What a foolish mistake.

  Releasing the dog, Maggie put both hands back on the steering wheel. As the other vehicle drew even, she glanced over at it, expecting to see young men, waving beer cans and whooping it up.

  There was only the driver. What a surprise. She could tell he’d turned his head to look at her, but it was too dark to make out his features.

  “As soon as he passes I’ll get his license plate number so I can report reckless driving,” she told herself, reaching into her purse to feel around for a pen.

  In that split second of inattention the other driver swerved. The trucks collided. Metal scraped, bent, squealed.

  Maggie fought to stay on the pavement. An inch more to the right and her tires would slip onto the muddy shoulder!

  The truck shimmied. Wolfie barked. Maggie did her best to maintain control. It was no use. She hollered, “Hang on, boy,” as the outside wheels edged a fraction too far and carried them off the road with a lurch.

  They bent a mile marker post, then bumped and jostled down the rain-slick grass slope and slid diagonally toward a barbed-wire fence at the bottom.

  If Maggie tried to steer while sideways on the steep incline, she knew, she would lose control and roll. All she could do was ride it out. And pray.

  * * *

  Flint was finishing an enjoyable evening meal at the Allgood residence and discussing who might have been behind the shooting at the animal rehab center when the sheriff’s phone rang.

  Harlan answered and listened briefly. “Well, what’re you calli
n’ me for?” Flint saw him begin to scowl. “Okay, okay. I’ll head out there ASAP. Where’d you say it was?”

  Flint pushed back from the table. “What’s happened?”

  “Single-car accident. A truck skidded off Highway 62 out by the Anderson place.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “The witness didn’t know.”

  “Why are you responding? Can’t the highway patrol handle it?”

  The sheriff nodded as he buckled his utility belt and checked his gun. “Probably. They’ve been called, too.” He tilted his head at Flint. “You might wanna grab your gear and come along.”

  “Why? Was a deer involved?” That kind of collision occurred often during the fall of the year.

  “Don’t know. Don’t think so.”

  Puzzled, Flint pulled his jacket on over his bulletproof vest. “Okay. If you think you need me, I’ll come with you.”

  “It ain’t for my sake,” Harlan said as he kissed his wife’s cheek and hurried to the kitchen door. “It’s for yours. The witness says the truck’s from Maggie’s job. Nobody drives it but her.”

  * * *

  The vehicle that had slammed into Maggie had kept going. As soon as her truck stopped sliding, she turned off the ignition key and unbuckled her seat belt. She and Wolfie were okay. That was the important thing.

  Taking a moment to collect herself, she buried her face in her pet’s ruff and silently thanked God, then sat back. “Well, what do you think, Wolfie? Shall we hike up to the road and flag somebody down?”

  As Maggie’s random thoughts began to sort themselves out, she realized she had a better way to summon help. She reached for her phone. Her purse wasn’t on the seat anymore. Feeling around on the floor of the cab didn’t help, either.

  She tried to shoulder open her door. It was stuck. Thankfully, the passenger side worked. Wolfie cleared her with a bound and began leaping through long, wet grasses and wildflowers like a spring lamb at play.

  “Stay with me, boy, while I find my phone.”

  Ignoring her, he began to sniff at their surroundings while she stood in the thigh-high grass to explore beneath the seat. Her fingers touched soft leather. Got it! However, as she pulled her purse out she noted that it felt far too light. Half its contents were missing.

  “Rats!” She leaned in and patted along the floor mat. The cell phone had to be there. Too bad she didn’t have a flashlight.

  Wolfie’s sharp yelp made her jerk. The barrage of angry barking that followed was unmistakable. He was defending her. But from what?

  Maggie had held very still when he began to bark. Now she slowly backed out of the truck cab and scanned their surroundings.

  Hackles up, her dog was looking past her toward the road. A vehicle was idling on the shoulder of the highway and someone was getting out. She cupped a hand around her mouth and shouted, “Have you called 911?”

  The dark figure merely stood there. Wouldn’t an innocent passerby answer? Ask if she was injured?

  “Hello? Do you have a phone?”

  Flustered, she peered up at the other truck. Not only was it the same size and color as the one that had hit her, but the part of it that she could see looked uneven!

  Maggie reached across and clicked off her headlights. Suppose that was no Good Samaritan up there? Suppose it was her unknown enemy? Had he come back to finish the job he’d started?

  Frightened, Maggie gave up the search for her missing phone and edged around the front of her truck. Wolfie was already on the opposite side of the barbed-wire fence separating the roadway from a pasture. Climbing back up to the pavement to flag down a passing motorist was out of the question at this point. So, what options were left?

  She could stand there until her nemesis decided to make the next move, or she could take matters into her own hands. Undecided, she studied him. She had Wolfie on her side and the other driver had...a gun! The glint of a chromed pistol in his hand was brief but quite enough incentive.

  Maggie whirled and raced to the section of fence her dog had shimmied under, dropped onto her stomach and crawled through the way a commando would.

  A gruff shout echoed. “You can’t hide.”

  That actually helped. She rose to all fours, sprang to her feet and ran, positive she heard someone in pursuit. Wolfie paced her for a few moments before diverting toward the nearest patch of woods.

  “Good boy.” Maggie followed, panting. At least one of them was thinking straight.

  Forest shadows swallowed her. She slipped on wet leaves beneath the trees, falling and recovering over and over until her energy and adrenaline were spent.

  Hands resting on the muddy knees of her jeans, she gasped for breath. Wolfie circled back and licked her face.

  Prayer was called for, she knew, but her heart was too dispirited to even try.

  Kneeling in the wet leaves she slipped an arm around her dog’s neck and let tears be her unspoken plea.

  Nobody knew where she was but God.

  And her enemy.

  * * *

  Flint used his emergency flashers and made better time than the sheriff. Spying a cluster of headlights along the opposite shoulder, he knew this was the accident scene. Maggie had almost made it into town. Why in the world had she run off the road? Was she speeding? Talking or texting? Had she lost focus for some other reason?

  None of those ideas made sense. The teenage Maggie he remembered had been conscientious to a fault. Surely her basic nature hadn’t changed that much.

  Flint parked in an open spot on his side of the highway so he wouldn’t have to make a U-turn and left his hazard lights on as a warning to passing drivers.

  Traffic was sparse. He jogged across all four lanes in seconds. Several civilian motorists had stopped and were pointing to the wreck. A uniformed police officer at the base of the incline cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, “No sign of the driver.”

  Flint’s heart beat hard and fast. If Maggie wasn’t there, where was she? Had she been kidnapped? No. That idea was too far-fetched. But why leave her truck? Nothing made sense.

  He stepped off the outer berm, slipping and sliding his way to the bottom. Plenty of others had obviously been down there, because the vegetation was trampled. What if their carelessness had destroyed evidence that would lead to finding her?

  Pulling the flashlight off his utility belt, he played the beam over the scene.

  Someone touched his arm. “Simmer down,” a deputy said. “As soon as the sheriff gets organized, we’ll form a search party. We’ll find her.”

  “What about her dog? Has anybody seen a big dog that looks like a wolf? They’re usually together.”

  The officer radioed to the top of the embankment, “Any of you guys see Maggie’s dog?”

  Flint felt like a fool. They all knew her and Wolfie and probably cared more than he did. She was one of their own. So why was the urge to track her down so strong in him?

  He walked away, playing his light over the ground as he went. Except for the trampled area around the truck, there was no sign of her. Still, he refused to give up. The minute a search party formed, he’d join it, whether anybody liked it or not. He was going to help hunt for her, period. He was...

  The beam of his light reflected off drops of rain clinging to the barbed wire. The whole fence glistened, except for one narrow place on the bottom strand! Flint’s breath caught. If nobody else had knocked off the water, there was a chance that Maggie and her dog had done so in passing. Hopefully, they were the only two.

  He waved his light like a beacon and shouted, “Over here! I think she went through here.”

  Nobody paid attention. He tried again. A few bystanders waved back and continued to talk among themselves, but other than that, he was ignored. Delaying only long enough to shout at the closes
t officer, “Tell Sheriff Allgood that I think the victim went through the pasture fence just south of here,” Flint went into action.

  Once he got through the fence, it was harder to tell which way Maggie and Wolfie had gone. The pasture was already springing back. That slowed his progress. Bent grass, broken stems and an occasional crushed weed were all he had to go by.

  The faint path turned so abruptly Flint almost missed the clues. It looked as though Maggie was headed for the woods where her passing would leave no crushed grass.

  That should make it harder for him to track her. Fortunately, it would do the same for whoever she was fleeing from—unless there was more than one person after her and they could fan out to cover a wider area.

  Picking up his pace, Flint prayed he’d reach Maggie before anyone else did. Before it was too late.

  THREE

  Being born and raised in the country gave Maggie an advantage. Not knowing exactly where she was took much of it away. Most Ozark homes and farms weren’t located too far apart, but there were also untouched acres of forest that had claimed canyons, and any other land too rocky for pasture or crops.

  Spent and discouraged, Maggie sat on a protruding shelf of shale while she caught her breath. Moonlight came and went as wind from the earlier storm pushed lingering clouds across the sky. Sheet lightning flashed in the distance, providing a snapshot view of her surroundings.

  She closed her eyes and folded her hands to pray, but only chaotic thoughts resulted. They darted madly through her mind like tiny fish in the shallows when a shadow fell over the water. Thoughts of rescue kept recurring. So did divine guidance. And—Flint?

  Maggie’s eyes popped open. “No. Not Flint. Anybody but him.” Surely God could send someone else to save her.

  The soft sound of her voice drew the weary dog and she draped an arm across his shoulders the way she would have a human friend. “Yes, Wolfie, I have you, don’t I? And if I was sure you wouldn’t stop to chase rabbits all the way home, I’d let you lead me.”

  She sighed. “We couldn’t stay with the truck. But I kind of wish I’d aimed for the lights of farmhouses along the highway instead of following you into the wilderness.”