Wyoming Cowboy Ranger

by Nicole Helm

  Her store. Dad had threatened to sell her store. Jen sank onto the couch behind her. No, her father had never told her that. He wouldn’t have, for one simple reason. “He wouldn’t have sold the store. It was a bluff.”

  Ty raised a pitying eyebrow. “Sure, darling.”

  She wouldn’t fall apart in front of Ty. Not when he was being so dismissive. Not when it proved what she’d always felt but tried to talk herself out of.

  He hadn’t left out of malice, or even to save his own skin. He’d left the way he had out of love. It changed nothing in the here and now, but somehow it changed her. Something deep inside her.

  She didn’t understand the shift, the feeling, but she figured with enough time she would. She glanced up at Ty, who looked like a storm encased in skin.

  Time. They needed more time. So, she’d stay until the threat against her—against them—was gone. Then...

  Well, then she’d figure out the next step.

  * * *

  THEY’D DISAPPEARED. A morning skulking around town and he hadn’t seen hide nor hair. They’d tried to escape him.

  It was nearly impossible to swim out of the black, bubbling anger threatening to drown him. But he couldn’t let it win, because then he wouldn’t succeed in his mission. In his revenge.

  Using the prepaid phone he’d picked up at a gas station in Fremont, he dialed the old familiar number, trying to focus on the help he would find.

  When the perky secretary answered, he tightened his grip on the phone. Some old memory was whispering something to him, but he couldn’t understand it with the fury swamping him.

  “I need to speak with Dr. Michaels.”

  There was a pause on the other end, and he snarled. He narrowly resisted bashing the phone against his steering wheel.

  “I’m so sorry,” the secretary said soothingly. It did nothing to soothe. “I thought we’d contacted all of her patients. Dr. Michaels will be off for quite a bit. We have a temporary—”

  “I need to speak with Dr. Michaels. Now.” He closed his eyes against the pain in his skull. It smelled like blood, and for a moment he remembered the singing joy of knocking the life out of that uppity doctor.

  Hadn’t that only been a dream?

  Yes, just a dream, sneaking into her house and waiting for her to get home. Just a dream, standing in her closet and waiting for her to open it to hang up her coat.

  Stab. Stab. Stab.

  A dream.

  The secretary was lying, that was all. Covering for her boss who was off vacationing. He’d put them both on the list.

  On an oath, he hit End on the phone and threw it against the windshield. It thudded but didn’t crack the glass like he’d hoped.

  He needed to hurt something. Someone. Now.

  But he wanted Ty. Jen. So maybe he’d just save up all the anger.

  When he found them, they’d pay.

  Chapter Eight

  Ty didn’t care for the tightness in his chest, but he wasn’t about to let the woman sitting quietly at the small kitchen table see that. She’d already seen too much, disarming him with the gentle way she’d touched his heart and asked him to explain.

  Who cared? So old man Delaney had told him he’d sell Jen’s dream out from under her if Ty didn’t disappear. So, Ty had listened. Didn’t make him good or right. It was simply what had happened.

  Why’d Jen have to bring it up? How had she not...known for all these years?

  “You know, we have bigger fish to fry than our past,” he snapped into the edgy silence they’d lapsed into while he’d put together some food for dinner.

  “Yes, we do,” she agreed easily. Too easily.

  He shouldn’t look at her. He knew what he’d see and what he’d feel, but he was helpless to resist a glance. Her expression was placid, reasonable even, but her hands were clasped tightly on the table and there was misery in her eyes.

  He’d always known he’d bring her misery. He just hadn’t known it would last so long.

  “I’m going to call Grady. Tell him we’re lying low for a few days.”

  She didn’t look at him as she nodded. “Yes. All right.”

  She wasn’t listening to him. She was lost in a past that didn’t—couldn’t—matter anymore.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Grady’s number as he walked into a bedroom. He stepped inside, closed the door and let the pained breath whoosh out of him.

  What the hell did he think he was doing? Saving her? It wasn’t his job or place. Maybe she was in danger because of him, but that didn’t mean...

  “You know Laurel’s going to kill you, right?”

  Ty might have laughed at his cousin’s greeting if he didn’t feel like he’d swallowed glass. “She should probably hear me out first.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Which is why I called you, not her,” Ty said, keeping his voice steady and certain. “We’re just going to lie low for a few days. Let the cops find the guy. Sensible plan if you ask me.”

  “Since when does a Carson do the sensible thing and leave it to the cops?”

  Ty wanted to be amused, but he was all raw edges and, if he was totally honest with himself, gaping wounds.

  But wounds could heal. Would. Once this was all over.

  “Your wife seems to have a handle on finding this guy,” Ty explained. “Plus, a Delaney is in the line of fire, not me. Let Laurel and her little deputies figure out who this guy is and—”

  “Who this guy is that’s targeting you, Ty. Why aren’t you trying to figure out who it is?”

  The blow landed, and Ty refused to acknowledge it. “The cops have his DNA now. What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “You’ve got the brain in your head, which I used to think was quite sharp. Now I’m wondering.”

  It hurt, and Ty would blame it on already being raw. “I don’t know who it is. Not sure how I’m supposed to magically figure it out. I’m not a cop. Look. Jen and I will stay out of sight for a few days. Let the law work, much as it pains me. Safest bet all the way around.”

  “Then what?”

  “What do you mean, then what? Then things go back the way they were and everyone’s safe.”

  Grady was silent for too many humming moments. “You can’t run away every time you don’t know what to do, or how to face what you have to do.”

  Shocked, knocked back as if the words had been a physical blow, Ty did everything he could to keep his voice low. “Are you calling me a coward?”

  “No, Ty, I’m noticing a pattern. One you’re better than.” He sighed into the phone.

  Ty searched for something nasty or dismissive to say, but Grady’s words had hooks, barbs that took hold and tore him open.

  “Stay out of town and keep Jen safe if that’s what you have to do,” Grady said, with enough doubt to have Ty bristling. “I’ll convince my wife it isn’t such a bad idea. I’ll do that for you because I love you, but I think you’re better than this. Maybe someday you’ll figure that out.”

  Ty didn’t have any earthly idea what to say to that, and he was someone who always knew what to say—even if it was a pithy comment designed to piss someone off.

  In the end, he didn’t have to say anything. Grady cut the connection and Ty was left in the small bedroom he’d snuck Jen off to for very different reasons their junior year of high school.

  Grady didn’t understand. He hadn’t gotten out of Bent like Ty had. He didn’t understand the world out there was different from their isolated little community in Wyoming. He didn’t understand that sometimes a man had to get out and let someone else handle the aftermath.

  Grady could think it was cowardice, but Ty knew it took a bigger man to do the right thing without concerning himself over his ego. Carsons ran on ego, and Ty had learned not to.

  He�
��d keep Jen safe, and Grady might never understand, but Ty had never needed anyone’s understanding. Ever.

  Temper vibrated and he ruthlessly controlled it as he stepped back into the cabin’s living area.

  Jen sat in the same exact place at the kitchen table, looking at the same spot on the wall, fingers still laced together on the glossy wood Addie always kept clean. She’d barely eaten any of the canned chili he’d fixed earlier. She looked like a statue, regal and frozen and far too beautiful to touch without getting his dirty fingerprints all over her.

  He shook that thought away. The days of loving her and feeling inferior to her were over. All that was left was keeping her safe from trouble he’d unwittingly brought to her door, and if he had to wade through some past ugly waters to do it, well, he’d survive.

  “Grady’ll handle Laurel.”

  Jen’s all-too-pulled-together demeanor changed. She looked over her shoulder at him and rolled her eyes. “Handle. You don’t have a clue.”

  “So she’s got him wrapped up in her. Doesn’t mean he can’t handle her.”

  “Do you pay attention at all? They work because they talk. They don’t agree on everything, they don’t handle each other, they communicate. And sometimes they still don’t agree, but they love each other anyway because if you actually try to understand someone else’s point of view, even if you don’t share it, you’re both a lot better off.”

  “Is that some kind of lecture?”

  She snorted. “God, you’re such a piece of work.”

  He flashed his easy grin and didn’t understand why everything seemed to curdle in his stomach. “That’s what they all say, darling.”

  She stood carefully, brushing imaginary wrinkles out of her shirt. “I want my phone back.”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I’ve agreed to stay with you. There’s no reason for you to keep my property from me.”

  She’d never used that Delaney disdain on him. Not back then, and not even in the time since he’d been back now. Snarky sometimes, yes. Irritated, always. But not that cold, haughty voice as if she was a master talking to a servant.

  He’d deal with a lot to keep her safe, to keep his own wounded emotions safe and locked away, but there was no way in hell he was putting up with that.

  So he kept walking toward her, grinning the grin that made his soul feel black and shriveled. “Make me, darling.”

  * * *

  JEN KNEW OF absolutely no one else who made her consider bodily harm on a person more than Ty. Being stuck in this cabin with him for even a few hours was already torture, and she’d shown admirable restraint if she did say so herself.

  She would not lower herself to try to physically best him again. There was no point in a shouting match or demanding her phone back. So, she’d take a page out of her father’s notebook and play the better-than-thou Delaney.

  She didn’t feel better than anyone, but she supposed that didn’t really matter.

  “Fine, if you want to play your childish games, keep my phone.” She shrugged as if it was of no consequence. “We’re not going to sit around here like lumps on logs,” she decided. “We’re going to do our own detective work. We’ll start with a list of people who would have reason to threaten you, and me through you. You’ll need to get a piece of paper and a pen so we can write it all down.”

  “You’re not very good at the lady of the manor crap. You’ll have to practice.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him and knew her face didn’t betray a flicker of irritation or hurt. “Lucky for me, I have all the time in the world to do so.”

  He held her gaze for a long time. Too long to win the staring match. Still, she thought the move to get situated on the couch in the most dismissive manner she could manage was a good enough substitute to staring him down.

  Then she simply waited, fixing him with a bland stare of expectation. His jaw worked before he finally gave in and walked over to the kitchen silently. He jerked open a few drawers before pulling out a pad of paper and a pen.

  “Thank my sister-in-law for these homey little touches.” He returned, dropping the paper and pen on the coffee table in front of her.

  “I like Addie,” Jen returned.

  “She’s a Delaney, so I don’t know why you wouldn’t.”

  “She makes Noah happy,” Jen persisted, wanting something to get through that hard shell of his. “She and Seth make Noah as happy as I’ve ever seen him.”

  “Your point?”

  “Maybe you should thank Addie for the homey touches without being so derisive.”

  He held her gaze, but nothing changed in his expression. “You wanted to make a list?” he said, just the tiniest hint of irritation edging his tone.

  She picked up the paper and the pen, because she did want to do this and there was no need to belabor points about love and happiness in this little hell she found herself in. She poised pen on paper and ignored the way her heart hitched. “I suppose my father would be on the list.”

  Ty heaved out a sigh. “It ain’t your father.”

  “No, it seems unlikely,” Jen agreed, doing everything to sound calm and polite. “But we’re starting from nothing, which means no stone left unturned. My father dislikes you. He’s threatened me to get to you before apparently. He fits.”

  “He’s not the man who’s been skulking around your store or my saloon.”

  “No. He isn’t. But that man could be working for my father. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

  Ty didn’t argue with that, but he paced the small living room area. “I don’t recognize him. If he was someone I’d known, someone who knew me personally, wouldn’t I recognize him? In your tape. In Rightful Claim. There’d be some recognition.”

  She could see the fact he didn’t know the man bothered him on a deeper level than she’d originally thought. The fact there was even the smallest ounce of helplessness inside him softened her. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, something gentle and friendly and reassuring. She even lifted her hand, but then she let it drop back onto her thigh.

  “It’s not unheard of for someone to pay someone else to enact some sort of revenge or whatever this is.”

  Ty shook his head. “I saw him, Jen. There in Rightful Claim. He hated me. I saw it on his face. He hated me. But I don’t know who he is.”

  She stayed quiet for a few humming seconds, reminding herself it wasn’t her job to comfort him. She was angry with him and she would give him no solace in this, no matter how impotent he felt—not something a man like Ty Carson was used to.

  Not her problem, and not something she was going to care about. “You don’t recognize him, but he hates you. So, who hates you? If you just start naming people it might dislodge a memory. It’s also possible this man is connected to someone on the list. Sitting here waiting for Laurel to figure it out—”

  “I’d settle for any half-brained cop to figure it out, or a lab to get DNA on that blood.”

  “I’m sure they’d settle for that, too,” Jen replied primly. She wanted to defend Laurel, considering her older sister was the strongest, smartest, most dedicated person Jen knew, but it would land against that hard head like a peaceful breeze and fall on deaf ears. “For now, we write a list.” She smiled sweetly over at him. “Even if the police figure it out first, you’ll have a handy reference for the next time someone tries to...” She trailed off and frowned.

  This person wasn’t trying to hurt Ty—not physically. The person who wrote the notes, if he was the same person stalking her store, wanted to cause fear. Worry—not for Ty’s own welfare, but for hers.

  “They don’t want to hurt you—they want to cause you pain,” Jen muttered, working through the problem aloud.

  “I think that’s the same thing, darling.”

  “No. No, it isn’t. If they hated you, they’d want to hurt
you.”

  “He does hate me, that’s what I’m saying.”

  She waved him away, trying to think and connect the dots she was so close to connecting. “This person you don’t recognize hates you, but wants to hurt someone he thinks you l-love.” She tripped over that l-word a bit, but she hurried past it and didn’t look at him. “So, it would make sense that you didn’t hurt this individual. You hurt someone he loved.”

  “You really want a list of all the women I’ve hurt, Jen?”

  “It doesn’t have to be a woman, Ty. There are lots of different kinds of love. But yes, if you hurt someone enough that they hated you—that someone who loved them might have hated you—then we should put it on the list. Again, my father qualifies.”

  “It’s not your father.”

  Jen couldn’t see it either, but it fascinated her that Ty was so insistent. Ty, who’d always hated her father, and surely still did. But he refused to consider her father might be behind this.

  So, she kept poking at it. “Then who is it?”

  Ty shook his head, but in his next breath he started naming names, and Jen went to work to write them down.

  * * *

  WITH THE POLICE SCANNER, the cops were easy to thwart. They only had three on duty in the area at any given time, so he always knew where they were or where they were headed.

  The detective was a little bit harder to track, but knowing she was sister to Jen and married to one of Ty’s relatives gave him some intel.

  He’d followed the detective around a bit in the afternoon on foot. She’d been in her patrol car, but the town was small, and with his radio she was easy to find.

  To watch.

  To wait.

  She looked like Jen. She might do as a substitute. He’d hurt her just a little. Just a little. It’d take the edge off.

  He considered it as he got back in his car when he realized her shift was over. He followed, taking a few turns out of her line of sight so she didn’t suspect anything. When she turned off the highway, he parked his car along the shoulder. He slapped one of the abandoned-vehicle tags he’d stolen weeks ago on the back window so no one would think twice about his car being there.