Callie had jumped off her horse and was running to the car. Peter was there, too. Mase jogged his mount up and got off stiffly. He tried to make his legs run, but he could only limp awkwardly.
“It’s empty,” Callie panted as he neared the car. “They’re gone.”
Mase checked the license plates. Colorado. He pulled open a door with difficulty because of the angle of the car and checked inside. No one, nothing but an empty soda can on the floor. He opened the glove compartment; the vehicle was a rental car, no papers giving the name of the renter. Nothing.
“This is it,” Callie said, “isn’t it? They got stuck, got out of the car and had to go on foot.”
Mase backed out of the slanted front seat and stood there. “Maybe. Probably.”
“I told you. Joey was in the car,” Peter said.
“Where is he now, Peter?” Callie asked, desperation in her voice.
“I don’t know,” Peter told her, his voice subdued. “I can’t see that far.”
“I’m calling Sheriff Hatcher,” Mase said. “He needs to know.” He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. It was a poor connection, but he got through to Donna in the Lightning Creek office and filled her in on what they’d found. “Tell the sheriff we’re going on. They can’t be far. If he can make it up the road, we’re about eight miles past the ranch.”
Mase clicked off the phone and stood there in the gray, relentless rain wondering how, in all this immensity, they would ever find Joey.
Reason told him Berry would have stayed on the road, and since they hadn’t passed him and Joey on the way in, Mase figured they should just keep going.
They rode on into the storm along the badly rutted road. The rain was letting up a little, Mase thought, but how long could they stay out here in this weather? What would happen when it got dark?
He peered up at the leaden sky so often his neck was getting stiff. Could a chopper make it in before nightfall? No way, he realized, not unless the conditions improved drastically.
“Whoa,” he heard Callie say, and he saw her horse shy at something lying in the road. She reined in, then one of the dogs ran up to sniff at it. Whatever it was looked like a snake to Mase.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, getting off her horse. She bent down toward the object, and Mase heard her give a startled cry. She picked it up and held it, her eyes shining, a smile spreading on her glistening wet face.
“It’s Joey’s!” she said. “It’s his belt.”
“Let me see.” She handed it to Mase. Yes, it was Joey’s. Tooled leather, a cowboy belt given to him by his grandparents. He held it, the rain pounding on his head, a wet strip of leather in his hand, and he knew the first real stirrings of hope.
“That’s Joey’s, yup,” Peter was saying. “I remember it. That’s his.”
“He left it for us,” Callie said. “Somehow he got it off and dropped it. Oh, Mase, he’s one smart kid.”
Mase held on to the belt, his heart squeezing.
“Show it to the dogs,” Callie said breathlessly. “Maybe they can follow the scent. Maybe. I mean, they’re not tracking dogs, but they know Joey.”
She took the belt and called the dogs over. They sniffed at the leather while Callie crouched in the mud, an arm around each dog’s neck. “Find Joey,” she coaxed. “Find Joey. This is his belt, you dumb mutts. Where is he? Where’s Joey? Go on, find him.”
They looked up at her with big brown eyes, their tails making circles in the air, their bodies quivering with excitement.
“Find Joey,” she said again, and the dogs raced off along the road, noses to the ground.
“Oh, dear Lord,” Callie breathed. “Oh my goodness.”
Mase watched in amazement until the dogs disappeared around a bend in the road. “It’s going to be okay,” he dared to say aloud. “My God, Joey’s all right.” And for once, for just a heartbeat, he actually believed it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CALLIE WATCHED the change come over Mase as if she were in the throes of one of her fantasies. No longer was he the troubled father on a life and death quest—now he was a cop. Professional, emotionless. The menace she’d first seen at the bachelor auction was back in those cool blue eyes.
She could see the metamorphosis take place; she watched as he took his gun from his vest pocket, ejected the clip into his hand, checked it and rechambered it. Then, instead of putting the gun in his pocket, he shoved it into the waistband at the back of his jeans.
She shivered. “Do you think you’ll…need that?”
But Mase didn’t reply. Instead, he started to remount.
“Mase, what about the sheriff? Shouldn’t you…” Callie began, but Mase was already moving, on the hunt.
It was Callie who used the cell phone to contact Reese and give him their location. Sheriff Hatcher covered in an hour and a half the territory it had taken them half the day to ride on horseback, and his vehicle paid the price. By the time he reached them, the Blazer was covered in mud halfway up the fenders and an acidic smoke was rising from beneath the hood.
Reese stuck his head out the mud-splattered window and said, “Caught up with the dogs yet?”
“Not yet,” Mase said, “but they can’t be far now.”
Reese led the way in the Blazer and the rest of them followed on horseback. Within a mile they came across the dogs, waiting, their tails still going like propellers.
Callie rode up to them and they took off across a broad, grassy plain, away from the road. The rain had let up a bit, with the sudden lifting of clouds that occurred in the high country, but mist hung on the hillsides in eerie masses.
It was slow going across impossibly rough terrain. The horses skidded down the sides of gullies, then stumbled up the other side. Reese often had to drive around the gulches and meet them on the opposite side, taking up precious time. And the smoke leaking from under the hood was ominous.
Mase was impatient to the point of anger. Not that Callie blamed him. She herself was scared, tired and wet, and frantic for Joey. She didn’t say much and kept busy watching the muddy trail, listening to the grinding of the Blazer and trying to keep Beavis and Butt-Head from running too far ahead. Reese and Mase were afraid the dogs would alert Joey’s captor to their presence.
It began to rain again shortly after five. A cold drizzle that seeped out of a hazy sky and straight into her bones. She was worried about all of them, but especially concerned about Peter. He was awfully young to be undergoing this ordeal, although, if truth be told, Peter’s excess energy was standing him in good stead.
It wasn’t long before Mase pulled up his horse and dismounted. “I’m going to walk. Reese can ride my horse. That Blazer’s holding us up.”
She would have protested and insisted she walk, but he was already striding toward the smoking car, stepping over rocks and bunchgrass, his head down and his shoulders hunched.
“Okay, whatever,” she said under her breath as she wondered if this wasn’t the craziest thing she’d ever done. Shouldn’t they use the cell phone, call for backup no matter how long it took? It was a futile notion, though, because any fool could see there was no stopping Mase. He’d walk till he dropped, and then he’d crawl. Reese gave her a look and then shook his head as he mounted Mase’s horse and kicked it into a trot. He knew. They all knew this was crazy. Still, they stumbled on into the gathering dusk while the rain kept beating away at them.
The cabin emerged from the haze as if it were a camera trick, a refocusing of a lens by a skillful operator. Callie blinked, wondering if it was one of her fantasies.
Next to her, Reese reined in his horse and said softly, “Whoa there, boy,” so she knew it must be real.
At the sheriff’s words Mase looked up. He froze, and Callie saw that dark menace take hold of him. He slipped a hand under his vest, around to the small of his back. Just checking. Callie shivered.
The dogs almost gave them away. Both mutts started racing toward the cabin, and Callie had a devil of a time whistling them in. When they finally came back to her side, she snatched them both by their collars.
The mist was moving in patches across the plain, and for a moment the cabin came into clear view. Callie’s heart stopped. There was smoke curling into the leaden sky from an old rusted stovepipe. Someone was in there.
“Sheepherder’s cabin,” Reese said next to her, and Mase turned and nodded. Then he pulled the gun out and clicked off the safety. Reese had his own weapon, the shotgun he’d brought along from the Blazer.
Oh, dear Lord, Callie thought, this is real.
“Peter and Callie, you stay here and hold the horses and those mutts,” the sheriff said. “Don’t move, don’t come any closer to the cabin. You hear shots, just wait. You got that?”
Peter nodded, wide-eyed, and Callie muttered some kind of an assent. Her lips were trembling and her mouth was dry. What if somebody got hurt? What if somebody got… Oh, my God.
Mase was already moving toward the cabin, crouching. There was a tension to his movement that frightened Callie almost more than the gun in his hand. Sheriff Hatcher sent Callie one last warning look, then took off after Mase.
“Joey’s inside,” Peter whispered in a scared voice, his hands gripping the reins of all three horses.
“Is he all right?” Callie whispered back.
But Peter only shrugged.
* * *
MASE DIDN’T SHOW an iota of fear. But inside, in his head and his gut and his heart, he’d never been more afraid in his life.
He sensed Hatcher behind him now as they neared the side of the cabin, the side with no window. A thousand scenarios beat at his brain—the thousand things every cop knew could go wrong. He forced himself to put them aside, but it was hard. God, but it was hard. Joey, he kept thinking. It was his boy in there, his son, the only thing he had left.
He felt Hatcher touch his elbow as they stole up to the cabin wall. Mase knew what the touch meant—to hold up for a moment.
The rain was coming down again with a vengeance. That was good. The racket it would be making on the tin roof would cover them. If only he could see inside, see where Joey was, where Berry was.
He turned quietly, still crouching, and signaled that he was going to try to get a look inside. Hatcher frowned then nodded, and Mase slowly edged around the corner toward the window near the front door.
Mase wiped the rain from his eyes, then reclasped his gun in both hands, keeping it lowered. Slowly, carefully, he positioned himself so that he could get a quick glance through the dirty glass.
It took only a fraction of a second to look in and back off. He stood next to the window, still crouched, and let out a calming breath, assessing what he’d just seen: Berry poking something into a potbellied stove and a tiny figure curled up on a sagging cot—Joey.
Hatcher was next to him now, and Mase gave him a sidelong glance, then whispered, “Berry’s at the stove, back to us, left-hand corner. Joey’s on a cot, right side.”
Hatcher nodded. “Okay,” he whispered back, “you force the door, I’ll take Berry out.”
Mase returned his nod. He took a long breath, then met Hatcher’s eyes. “On three,” he whispered, his muscles tensing.
Hatcher nodded again.
Mase ducked beneath the window, then straightened in front of the door. Hatcher followed. Quietly, the sheriff pumped a shell into the chamber of the shotgun.
Mase took another breath and whispered, “One… two…”
* * *
…THREE. CALLIE COULD hear his voice in her head as she watched in dread, her heart bucking in her chest.
It was over in a few seconds. Mase broke down the door with one well-placed kick. Hatcher rushed in past him, shotgun raised, then Mase disappeared inside, too. Callie heard the sheriff thunder out his warning, there were a couple of yells, a thump loud enough to make her jump, and then utter silence.
She couldn’t help it; she couldn’t stop herself no matter what the sheriff or Mase had said. She told Peter to stay put, then sprinted across the muddy field to the open door of the cabin and burst inside, panting.
“Joey!” she cried, and flung herself on him. He sat huddled in a corner next to a cot, looking scared to death. But okay. He looked okay.
“For God’s sake, Callie,” she heard Mase growl angrily, and she glanced over to where he was holding his gun on a thin-faced man dressed incongruously in a muddy, rumpled suit. A man Sheriff Hatcher was handcuffing.
She hugged Joey, she laughed and cried, and finally she held him out at arm’s length. “Oh, we were so worried, Joey.”
“I’m okay,” Joey said, “but I’m hungry. Me and him, we finished all the M&M’s this morning.”
“The…?” Callie began, but then she laughed and wept again as Mase strode over and gathered Joey into his arms, clutching him so tightly that Joey finally protested.
“I knew you’d come, Daddy,” Joey said when Mase set him down. “I knew it.”
Mase started to say something, but nothing came out, and Callie could tell he was holding in tears. She looked from Mase to Joey and back and felt her own tears start all over again.
* * *
IT WAS A LONG NIGHT, one that Callie would always remember. The state troopers and local deputies arrived in four-wheel-drive vehicles with tire chains shortly after midnight. There was some confusion then, because Callie insisted she lead the horses out in the morning, and Mase argued that a trooper could do it. But she held firm, and in the end Reese stayed with her, and the cops transported Mase and the Hitman and the two boys out in the Jeeps. It was a quick leave-taking. Mase grumbled that Callie was being stubborn about the horses, and Reese took Callie’s side. Then they were all climbing into the vehicles, headlights piercing the blackness on the high prairie.
Callie cried until the grinding of the departing engines was only a memory. Then she sat on the cot and sniffed, angry at herself for being such a wimp where Mase was concerned.
“Mase is an all-right guy,” Reese growled, handing her a sandwich brought up by his men, “but he don’t understand about horses.”
Callie took the sandwich and devoured it. Reese was right. And she was awfully glad to have a skilled horseman with her to get the three animals back to the ranch. But watching Mase and Joey leave, with only quick, impersonal hugs… Well, it felt a lot like having her heart torn right out of her breast.
“Love,” Reese reflected, eating away.
* * *
THEY WERE NEARLY BACK at the Someday Ranch by noon. Neither Callie nor Reese had gotten much sleep, and they’d left the cabin at six in the morning, a rare summer frost lying on the ground and tingeing the sagebrush silver in the first light of day.
They made excellent time despite their exhaustion, only stopping to water and rest the horses twice. Reese used his cell phone to keep everyone abreast of their progress and to check on the status of Hank Berry, w
ho was being held in jail in Lightning Creek. The plan was for Reese to escort the Hitman to Denver within the next couple of days.
Callie did get to speak to Mase once, but only briefly, since the phone battery was low and Reese wanted to save it in case of an emergency. The words she spoke to Mase were trite: “Are you okay? Is Joey okay?”
To which Mase had replied, “You sure you don’t want someone to ride up and meet you? God, Callie, you must be wiped out.”
What she wanted to say was how much she missed them, how terribly relieved she was. Instead, they said a hasty goodbye.
She and Reese plodded along on the horses, taking turns ponying the third horse down the muddy road. At least it had stopped raining, and the sun was trying to break through the thick clouds that clung to the hillsides. It was a heartening sight. It seemed to Callie that the storm had brought nothing but misery to everyone. It was over, though, and she had to believe everything was going to be okay now. Even with Mase. Things had to work out. They had to.
They were greeted by the entire ranch and what seemed like half the community when they finally rode in. Everybody hugged Callie and had to hear the whole story of how Peter had “seen” Joey and the car and how Mase and Reese had gotten the drop on Berry at the cabin.
Callie ate a huge lunch, and with Joey and Rebecca sitting on either side of her, she related her version of the heroics of Mase and Reese and all the law enforcement troops who’d braved that dangerous drive up to the cabin.
“Of course,” she said between bites, “the sheriff’s Blazer is history.”
“Aw, we’ll get it towed down soon as the road dries,” Reese said.
“Like next spring,” Tom added, and everyone laughed.
Callie was acutely aware of Mase, who appeared in the door and stood quietly listening, his gaze on her. Oh, how desperately she wanted to be alone with him. There were so many questions, but the opportunity never arose. Not that afternoon or even the following morning. And then she heard from Sylvia—not from Mase—that he and Joey were leaving for Denver after lunch. Her heart stopped beating entirely. She’d known, of course, that they had to go. Mase still had to testify; the trial was in full swing. But somehow the news came as an awful blow. What was going to become of her and Mase?
Courting Callie Page 20