Westin Legacy

by Alice Sharpe

  “He’ll sign,” Adam said firmly.

  She popped to her feet. “Wonderful!” Walking quickly around the desk, she chose a large manila envelope from the pile teetering atop a file cabinet and handed it to Adam. “I’ve earmarked all the appropriate spaces so it’s pretty self-explanatory, but call if he has questions. I wrote my number in there at the top. We’ll stop by the ranch at 6:00 a.m. unless that’s too early.”

  “That’s fine. By then I’ll be mowing but I’ll keep an eye out for you. And as I said in the email, there’s a looter at work so you need to enact security measures. He even took a few shots at us yesterday, so please be careful.”

  “We know how to deal with this kind of situation. It calls for speed but not at the expense of methodical procedure. What we have that you probably lack is manpower—lots of enthusiastic students. We’ll keep the place so busy no one will have a chance to create problems.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. Will you need all-terrain transportation or—”

  “No, no, we’ll bring our own equipment. All we need from you is an introduction to the site.” She tapped the envelope. “And permission to excavate.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They shook hands, and Adam left feeling slightly better. Of course the relief was tempered by the fact he would need to get his father’s signature on the right forms; he was sure he could do it when he related the events of the previous evening.

  But the knot was still there. The ominous feeling, as dark as a winter sky creeping over the Rockies, just wouldn’t go away.

  He was barely out of the building when his truck appeared at the curb, Echo behind the wheel. Surprise, surprise.

  He got in the passenger seat and turned to look at her. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked away from him as she pulled onto the quiet street. “I have hours before my plane departs. The taxi would have cost thirty dollars. I’m cheap.”

  “You should have left,” he said, buckling his seat belt. “It’s time for you to get on with your life.”

  “Oh, please,” she said, her voice sharp. “Stop preaching at me. You sound just like my stepfather.”

  “I’m only pointing out the obvious.”

  “You’re being obnoxious. I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself.”

  “Damn, you’re a spoiled brat sometimes.”

  “Just sometimes?”

  “Some men like the spitfire type.”

  “I take it you don’t.”

  “Overrated.” He took a deep breath and chided himself for getting into it with her. Big deal, she was cheap. Airport, doctor, Garvey place, home. Then a big old dust-up, get a signature, done. One thing at a time. He took a few deep breaths.

  They drove through the campus in silence, but when they reached the exit, she turned back toward the ranch.

  “Hey, you’re going the wrong direction,” he said, searching for a good place where she could turn around.

  This time she glanced at him as she spoke. “No, I’m not. Like I said, I have hours to spare and you need to talk to those Garvey men.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you told me, but to heck with that,” she said, accelerating as the speed signs indicated.

  “Wait a second,” he growled. “I will not take you to the Garvey house. Period.”

  “You’re forgetting who’s driving the truck.”

  “And just exactly how is that? Where did you get the keys?”

  “I never gave them back to you.”

  So that’s why she’d hung around, to return his keys. “I don’t want you here, Echo,” he said, trying sincerity.

  “I know you don’t. But you’re injured and someone needs to cover your back.”

  “And that someone is you,” he said, and the tone of his voice let her know what he thought of that idea.

  “I’m better than nothing,” she said, and then added, “Don’t say I’m not, you know it’s true. If these men are as horrible as you say they are, two people are better than one.”

  “Not when one of them is a pretty woman,” he said, “which is why I’m asking you for the last time to turn the truck around and drive to the airport.”

  She spared him another glance. “I’m relieved to hear you say this is the last time you’re asking. It’s getting monotonous. Listen, Adam, I promise I’ll go meekly away after this little visit. You’ll never have to even think of me again.”

  He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again without uttering a word. What was the point? The woman was impossible.

  ECHO PULLED THE TRUCK INTO the Garvey yard.

  So, Adam didn’t want her here. Tough. He needed someone even if he wouldn’t admit it. She’d seen the expression on his face when she touched his shoulder by mistake—thank heavens he was going to the doctor after he dropped her at the airport. Jamie was a nice old guy, but what did he know about medicine?

  Anyway, when she’d seen Adam cringe she’d known she couldn’t sit at the airport while he came to this house by himself. And she’d been trying all afternoon to keep her distance, to put the day before behind them, to mind her own business and think about her own future. And then that kiss. And then his pain…

  She’d found his keys in her pocket and it seemed destiny had forced the issue. Who was she to turn up her nose at fate?

  The Garvey house sat halfway between the road and a substantial-looking grove of trees and underbrush to the west. The yard was mostly dirt with patches of stunted grass here and there—in the winter when it rained, it must turn into a giant mud puddle. Two dozen chickens pecked at the ground, weaving their way under and around the dozen or so broken-down cars and trucks. The house itself was a squat bilious cube of yellow asphalt shingles. There were enough abandoned appliances on the sagging porch to start a junkyard.

  An old barn with a half-caved-in roof loomed behind the house along with tractors and rusty farm equipment. Echo could see a fenced pasture with scant grass occupied by a dejected-looking brown-and-white cow and three goats.

  “Quite the little oasis, isn’t it?” Adam said as he undid his seat belt.

  “It’s pretty desolate.”

  “Wait here,” he said as he opened the passenger door.

  She got out of the truck, smiling when he glared at her but he just shook his head in resignation. On the way to the front door, he detoured a few steps and she followed.

  He gestured at a beat-up old truck with an open trailer hooked to the hitch, an equally battered ATV hunkered in the trailer bed. He walked closer, examining the vehicle before looking over his shoulder at her. “Look familiar?”

  “It looks like the one we saw up on the mountain yesterday.”

  Adam nodded. “I think so, too. If I remind you that he took a shot at you inside the cave, would you reconsider the truck?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “He shot at you, too, you know.”

  “Let’s see if anyone’s home.”

  “How many Garveys live here?” she asked as they threaded their way through the flotsam and jetsam of the yard, which included everything from an old suitcase to a box full of pots and pans.

  “Willet Garvey and his three remaining sons, two well over twenty and the youngest about sixteen.”

  “No women?”

  “Not presently. I think each boy had a different mother, but there’s no one now I know of.” He led the way up a couple shallow steps to the porch, dodging split and cracked boards. The screen door squealed as he opened it and knocked.

  “I hear a noise inside there,” Echo said.

  “I do, too.”

  They waited a few seconds but no one answered. Adam knocked again and called out. “Willet? You in there?”

  Echo stepped along the porch. Shading the window with her hand, she tried to see past the smudged, stained glass. It looked like the living room. She could barely discern the edge of a sofa and an overtur
ned lamp.

  The rattle of a screen door slamming came from around the house. Startled, Echo jumped. “Adam—”

  “He’s leaving,” he said, and immediately turned to retrace his steps down the stairs. Unfortunately, he landed hard on a rotten board and broke through the wood up to his thigh. He swore as he absorbed the momentum of the fall with his elbows, undoubtedly jarring his injured shoulder yet again.

  Echo moved to help him. Her foot caught on another board and it splintered but didn’t break. She had to find a spot stable enough to support her weight in order to give Adam a hand. It took forever but at last she got in position and extended a helping hand and he was able to extricate his leg and boot. He limped for a few steps as he continued on around the house.

  Echo returned to the front door and tried the knob. It rotated in her hand. Without hesitation, she pushed it open and stepped inside.

  The small room was as cluttered as the yard but it was more than that. There’d been a struggle of some kind. The overturned lamp, a card table lying on its side, cards scattered like oversized confetti…

  She called out. “Mr. Garvey? Are you in here?”

  She spied a shoe in the space between the couch and the kitchen. It took her a second to realize there was a foot inside the shoe and a denim-covered leg above the foot.

  She moved quickly. A man lay on the floor, maybe fifty or fifty-five, wiry and gray and unshaven, dressed in jeans and a dirty shirt currently soaked with blood. His face was white though his bare sinewy arms were browned by the sun. One hand lay folded over on itself. The other hand clutched a plastic bag full of white powder.

  He was dead. He had to be.

  She swallowed revulsion, then she saw his eyelids flicker. Not dead, not yet. She knelt in the narrow space next to him, ignoring something hard beneath her knee. Twisting her neck, she looked toward the kitchen where she saw the screen door and nothing else.

  “Adam?” she called.

  Her cell phone was in the truck, buried in her purse. She looked around the room for a telephone but couldn’t see one. For the second time in as many days, she wished she had a medical degree.

  Was this Willet Garvey? She had no idea though it seemed likely. When his eyelids fluttered again, she offered the only thing she could: soothing words. “Hang on. Adam will be back in a minute. We’ll call for help.”

  His bloody hand pawed at her sleeve, grazed her chest and she gently took it in hers. A spasm shook him. His eyes seemed to focus on her face for a second. “Westin…” he said. His voice was very soft.

  She leaned closer. “Please, just relax.”

  “Tell Den…hat… Westin…”

  But that was as much life as he had left. His eyes still half-open, he took a last shuddering breath and lay very still.

  Echo released his hand and got to her feet. Something shiny on the floor explained what she’d knelt on—it was an embossed silver disk the size of a fifty-cent piece with two slits cut in the center.

  And it looked somehow familiar.

  The dead man’s last words ran through her mind and suddenly she thought she knew where she’d seen this disk. Her fingers closed over it as a chill clutched at her heart. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t….

  Chapter Seven

  By the time Adam had crossed the field and crashed into the underbrush, he was too late; a car raced down the dirt road that bisected the grove and led to the main highway, leaving a billowing cloud of dust in its wake. The haze precluded seeing a license plate let alone getting a number. It was even hard to tell what make or model the car was or what color for that matter.

  He’d lost his hat along the way. Wiping a sweaty brow with his good arm, he took a deep breath and turned around.

  Had he been chasing one of the Garveys? He didn’t think so. To a man, they were all short and lean much like the guy wearing the bandana in the cave the day before. The man he’d pursued, seen only from the back and from a distance, had appeared taller and sturdier.

  So why had someone other than a Garvey run away from the house? As he started back across the field, the apprehension he’d been fighting all day was stronger than ever. By the time he whipped his hat off the ground and pulled it back on his head, his gut was telling him that he shouldn’t have left Echo alone at that house.

  He was in the process of rounding the corner when he heard a sound through the screen door at the rear of the house. He doubled back, stepped up onto the concrete porch and looked through the screen.

  Echo must have heard his approach, for the next thing he knew, she appeared at the door, wiping her eyes with a paper towel.

  “What in the hell are you doing inside the house?” he demanded, tension making him short. But honestly, trespassing? That’s all they needed.

  “I saw—”

  “Come out of there,” he insisted, yanking open the screen door.

  “No. You come in.”

  “I’m not going to compound—”

  “Just shut up for a minute and come inside. I think Willet Garvey is lying dead in his living room.”

  For the first time, he noticed the red stains on her shirt and smears of blood on the towel. “Are you okay?” he asked as he went inside.

  He’d never been inside the house and it looked exactly as the outside promised it would look: used, battered, dirty and hopeless. Unfortunately, Echo wasn’t mistaken. There was a dead man in the alcove between rooms and it was Willet.

  Adam knelt and searched for a pulse though he knew he wouldn’t find one. Was this what he’d unconsciously been bracing himself for all day? Not Willet’s death specifically, but murder, an escalation in the violence that had been building in the last twenty-four hours?

  As he stood, he took in the disarray around him. “It looks as though there was a struggle before he was killed,” he murmured as he spotted a shotgun leaning against the wall in the corner.

  “Take a look at what’s in his hand,” Echo said.

  His gaze darted to where she pointed. The dead man clasped a small clear plastic bag sporting a few teaspoons of white powder. Drugs? What else?

  “Was he dead when you found him?”

  She shook her head. Gesturing at the blood-soaked pillow beside Willet’s chest, she said, “I tried—I thought maybe pressure—”

  Damn it. He put his arms around her. She came stiffly at first and then more willingly.

  “Did he say anything before he died?”

  She pulled away, her gaze fastened on Willet’s lifeless form. The shake of her head was almost imperceptible.

  “Look in the box on the kitchen table,” she said, turning away from the dead man.

  He went back to the kitchen. A cardboard box that used to hold canned tomatoes sat in the middle of the table, scraps of packing tape cut away so the flaps lay open. Inside the box were several newspaper-wrapped objects. A couple had been partially opened. Adam saw a pottery bowl and what looked like a human skull, an old one judging by the dark brown color.

  “Things from your cave?” she asked.

  “I think so. Willet must have been the thief.”

  “If whoever ran away from here killed him, why didn’t they take the box?”

  “Maybe we interrupted the theft.”

  She looked perplexed. “Unless that’s a bag of sugar in Willet’s hand, he’s holding something that looks a lot like cocaine. In my business there’s a fair amount of it floating around. What’s he doing with it? Was he a user?”

  Adam shook his head. “I doubt he could afford cocaine. I would think booze would be more…”

  At that moment, the front door banged open.

  They both whirled around to find a teenage boy standing inside the door. He looked a lot like his brother, Lucas Garvey, who had worked on the Open Sky Ranch though he wore his sandy hair longer. Same wiry frame and sharp features.

  “Are you Dennis?” Adam asked, moving to stop the youngest Garvey before he saw his father.

  The boy nodded as he lo
oked from Adam to Echo and back again. “What are you doing here? What’s going on? Where’s my dad?”

  Echo moved toward the boy, as well. “Why don’t we go outside—”

  He ignored her, his gaze fixated on Adam. “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re one of them.”

  Adam hadn’t even been in Wyoming when Dennis’s brothers had died, but he knew all the Garveys tended to blame all the Westins for their woes. He needed to get the kid out of the house before things turned ugly.

  The boy’s gaze went back to Echo. His eyes grew wide as they raked over her, apparently taking in her bloodstained hands and clothes. He looked around the room wildly, then cried out as he tore past Echo and fell to his knees beside his father’s still form. He shook the old man’s lifeless shoulders. “Dad, Dad…”

  “Dennis, come away,” Echo said.

  “You killed him,” Dennis said, his gaze zeroing in on Adam, his voice low and menacing. “You SOB. He knew you were toying with him, he told me that you’d try something. You killed him over some old bones.”

  The boy was on his feet, fists clenched, face strained. He started to advance on Adam.

  Echo caught his arm and he spun around to her, hand raised as though to strike her. “No,” she said sternly but with compassion. “He didn’t kill your father. I was with him all afternoon and I was here when your father died.”

  Adam saw something flash behind her eyes as though an uncomfortable thought had lodged itself in her brain. She all but shook her head as though to get rid it. The boy seemed oblivious to her reaction to her own words, but his hands lowered. Recovering quickly, Echo added, “I’m sorry about your dad. I lost my mother recently. I know how it is.”

  He stared hard at her a moment, then back down at his father. His gaze went to the bag clutched in the dead fingers.

  “Did your father use drugs?” Echo asked.

  “No way. Only one used drugs was my brother Doyle and that was a long time ago. Dad beat the tar out of him when he found out.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying that bag there is full of some kind of drug? Because if it is, Westin put it there. Dad would never—”