by Jodi Thomas
When he didn’t turn away, she moved an inch closer and slowly relaxed.
“Yesterday afternoon, when the snow started again, a section of the back storage room caved in.” Tess kept her voice low, as if they were lovers whispering, and it dawned on him that she probably didn’t know how to talk to men any more than he knew how to talk to women. But with her so close, it didn’t seem to matter.
“Too much weight on the roof, I think.” She lightly touched his arm.
“I’ll fix it when I get home.” He relaxed, deciding to forget his problems and just enjoy this dream. He covered her fingers with his hand. He thought of asking her to come closer, but right now just not having her leave seemed enough.
“Well...” She hesitated, and he wondered if she knew something about his condition that he didn’t.
“Well, what?” How bad could any news be? He already hurt all over. “Did the doctor tell you something they’re not telling me?”
“No.”
“Then what, Tess?”
“The roof, it’s taken care of, Cody. It’s fixed with double the braces.”
He moved his hand and brushed his fingers along her side from just under her well-rounded breast to the flare of her hips. Their conversation had nothing to do with what they were communicating to each other.
She might be a strong woman, but there was no way she’d fixed a roof in bad weather. Maybe this whole conversation was just part of his dream. “How’d you do that? Fairy dust?” His hand moved along her side once more, bumping into the bottom of her breast before he switched directions and moved back down.
There was a catch in her voice and her breathing quickened, but she tried to calmly answer his question. All she had to do was move away; he was in no shape to follow. “I... I...”
Cody grinned. She wasn’t moving away, and this wasn’t a dream. Tess was real, and he was touching her. He rested his hand at her waist and waited.
Slowly, she calmed, but she didn’t retreat. “I called the bank to ask if there was a cosigner on your account who could tell me what to do. They weren’t open yet, but one of the tellers had come in early. She was so sweet when I told her who I was and how badly you were hurt. She said the whole town is worried about you. She’s Melanie Miller’s father’s second cousin, so she’d heard all about your accident.”
“Is this going anywhere, Tess? I don’t know how long I have to live. I’d hate to die on you and miss the end of this story about what happened to the storage room.”
“Oh, sorry.” She didn’t sound the least bit sorry. “Anyway, Melanie’s father’s second cousin called her boss, and the bank president called me back and told me he was sure it would be all right if I signed on your account if checks needed writing. And he had a brother-in-law who was out of work and would probably handle the job right away.”
“What!” Cody found it impossible to believe some banker gave her permission to write checks on the ranch account.
“That’s what I said, but he assured me the brother-in-law was a good carpenter.”
Cody leveled his voice. “Not the carpenter, Tess. How could the banker allow you to write checks?” Not that she could write many. He doubted there was more than a few thousand in the account. He hadn’t balanced it in months.
“Oh, that. When I asked how that could possibly be, he laughed and whispered that it was a secret.”
Cody would have rolled his head to the side and confronted her, but his brain would have probably exploded. This had to be illegal. The bank couldn’t just pick someone to take over when a man has an accident. He’d never signed any papers or given over power of attorney. She wasn’t even kin to him.
He gulped in what he feared might be his last breath. Surely a heart attack or brain aneurism was on its way, and he wouldn’t even fight. He deserved whatever hit him. When he took another breath, a light came on in in his mind. He was too dumb to die.
The secret! He’d told the nurse that first night at the hospital that Tess was his wife. Somehow the news had already reached Crossroads. He’d asked the lady in scrubs to not tell anyone that he and Tess Adams were married. He’d said they were keeping it a secret.
A secret the bank president obviously knew.
Tess was talking. He realized he hadn’t been listening, so his drugged up, tired pea-brain tried to catch up.
“...so after I got the brother-in-law out to fix the roof, I decided you’d want me to pay all those bills stacked up on your desk and deposit several checks made out to the ranch.”
“Thanks,” he managed to say, still not believing what he was hearing. “Do I have any money left?”
“Several thousand. I started a list of repairs around the place you might want to start on when the weather calms.”
“Good,” he said and almost added, like that was going to happen. He moved his hand along her side, making sure she was still real because what she was saying seemed impossible.
“I tossed all the junk mail and some of the magazines, too.” Tess talked now, obviously comfortable with his touch. “Are you aware there are probably libraries that don’t keep copies as long as you do? One stack I thought was on the coffee table I was surprised to discover they were the coffee table.”
He’d lost the ability to form words. No one had ever tried to run his life or tell him what to do. From the time he was in double digits, his parents simply asked him what he wanted. He’d been an only child of parents who seemed to be counting the days until he’d grow up and move away. When he didn’t leave by seventeen, they signed the ranch, which he didn’t want, over to him and moved to Galveston. His father had decided to shift his career to small animals, and his mother said she’d always wanted to live by the sea.
The ranch pretty much ran itself. Money from leased grassland paid the taxes. Cody kept his personal accounts separate just in case his parents ever decided to come back or he took off. Neither option seemed likely. They were happy on the coast, and he had nowhere else he wanted to go.
From the time his parents left, they were on the fringes waving, wishing him well as he left for college, the army, the war. They’d been there in the background when he’d won a Silver Star, graduated from the police academy, got accepted into the Texas Rangers. But they didn’t want to participate in his life. They apparently had their own to live.
When he’d been in the hospital with three bullet wounds, they’d visited him once a month and stayed all day. His mother fussed over him, and his father read every paper the gift shop had. After three months, they switched to weekly calls.
The sandman was pulling a wool blanket over his mind. He’d deal with the problems at Wild Horse Springs in the morning. After all, how much damage could she do to a run-down ranch?
In the few minutes he had left awake, he wanted to feel her next to him. His hand slid up her side and gently bumped into the bottom of her breast. Through the layers of clothing he could barely feel her softness, but his hand settled here.
She started that rapid breathing again, but she didn’t pull away.
He moved his head toward her. “Kiss me good-night.”
She put her now warm hand on his cheek. “I thought you’d never ask.” Her words brushed his lips as she kissed him softly.
Somewhere between dream and reality, he added, “Sleep beside me, Tess.”
“I will for as long as they’ll let me. I don’t know why, but the nurse said she’d give me a little extra time to visit.”
She touched his lips with hers, and he wished he had the energy to kiss her deeply.
He drifted then, thinking how grand it was to have someone by his side.
“Good night, honey,” he whispered as if he’d said the words to her for years.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LAUREN’S CELL MUST have rung a dozen times before
she finally woke up enough to answer. Watery sunlight streamed through her west-facing window.
Afternoon. She’d slept the morning away.
“What’s up, Pop?” she said, glancing at his office number on her cell. “I’m trying to get some sleep.”
“It’s not your father, Lauren, this is Deputy Fifth Weathers.”
“Hi, Fifth.” She tried to clear her head. He sounded so formal; surely he hadn’t forgotten her since last summer. “I guess you’re back from Austin. Great, Pop needs the help. How was training?”
Fifth, always polite, answered, “Fine. Training went just fine. Can you come up to the sheriff’s office as soon as possible? We have a situation here.”
“What’s wrong?” She was wide-awake now. As the daughter of an officer of the law, the call she never wanted to get was always lurking in the corners of her thoughts. “Has something happened?” When he’d been shot, she’d gotten the call while she was walking across the Tech campus.
One call and her world shifted. Lauren squeezed her eyes closed as if bracing for another blow. “Is Pop all right?” The words scratched across her heart before they came out.
“He’s fine, Lauren. I swear, nothing has happened to your dad. I just talked to him. He’s over in the next county working another case.” Weathers’s words came fast now, almost panicked. “But we have a problem here at the office, and the sheriff wants everyone who might know anything to be present as soon as possible for questioning.”
Lauren did exactly what she’d heard her father do a hundred times. She lowered her voice and said calmly, “Start from the beginning.”
To her surprise the deputy didn’t argue. “Thatcher Jones is missing from his cell.”
“Don’t tell me the kid broke out?” She jumped out of the bed, swearing if she could get a good grip on Thatcher, she’d slug him. After staying up watching him all night, worrying about him, even calling Lucas to come home to help with his case, the kid escaped. His cell door was probably left unlocked. Tim let him out twice yesterday to go to the bathroom because Thatcher said he wasn’t peeing in public even if the facility was in the cell with him. The last time, Tim was too tired to even go downstairs with him. He just threatened the kid and told him he’d better be back upstairs in five minutes.
When Thatcher came back, maybe Tim forgot to lock the cell door. They’d already stopped locking the two outside doors that led to the jail. It was too much trouble to keep locking or unlocking them every time someone needed to go for coffee or snacks.
Lauren tried to get her sleep-deprived mind to work as she dug through clothes. “Maybe Thatcher was released earlier. Lucas said he’d get him out on bond, if not freed sometime today. Maybe Lucas dropped by and Pearly let him out. She knows where the key to the doors and cells are, and she might have forgotten to call Pop or Weathers to inform them.”
Closing her eyes, Lauren imagined Thatcher going downstairs to the restroom, slipping past Pearly, taking the keys off the wall in her father’s office and then waiting for his chance. Easy, but why? Thatcher didn’t seem worried about being a prisoner.
“You’re right about one thing, Lauren,” Weathers agreed. “He would have been free to go today, but before Lucas could get here with the paperwork, he disappeared.” Fifth sounded like he was gulping down a bucket load of swearwords.
Lauren rolled her eyes. Weathers was a great deputy, and someday he’d make a great sheriff, but right now everything had to be done exactly by the book. She was used to this kind of talk. If Fifth Weathers wasn’t younger and a foot taller than her pop, she’d think the two lawmen were clones.
She pulled on an old sweater, grabbed a coat and headed for the door. “I’ll come down to the office, but I don’t know how much help I’ll be. He was locked up when I left this morning. That’s all I know. Lucas and Tim were eating breakfast with him, or more accurately eating his breakfast.” She grabbed her purse and keys off the bar. “Have you called Charley Collins? If Thatcher left, he’s heading somewhere safe. The Lone Heart Ranch is as near a home as he’s had for years.”
“Charley is standing right in front of me,” Weathers said. “He hasn’t seen Thatcher. He was the first person I called. Thatcher’s old pickup is still parked out in front of the office with two days’ worth of snow piled on top.”
Lauren slipped into her muddy shoes and headed toward her car. “What are you not telling me, Fifth?”
“Pearly checked on him an hour ago. He was fine. Reading one of those paperback westerns he always keeps in his pocket.”
“Pearly reported that he said he was hungry. She came downstairs and called the Franklins to see if they could deliver lunch a little early. Thirty minutes later when she took it up, he was gone.”
As she opened the front door, cold snow and one chilling fact hit her at once. Weathers had sounded panicked when he called. Now he was rattling off way too many facts. Like people do when they’re nervous or scared.
“I walked in about the time she was running down the stairs screaming that there had been a bloody jailbreak.” Weathers’s voice shook a little. “Rose and Daisy Franklin were in the lobby waiting for their dishes, and they started screaming, too. As soon as I got them settled down and checked out the crime scene, I called your dad. He told me to round up everyone who’d seen Thatcher today as fast as possible. The sheriff’s on his way now.”
Lauren started her car and headed toward the office.
“What else?” Something was wrong. Too much screaming and police procedure talk for it to be a simple story.
Fifth hesitated, then lowered his voice so much she pressed the cell hard against her ear. “When I went upstairs, there was blood all over the cell. Something happened in there, something bad.”
“Thatcher hurt himself?” She pushed the accelerator, ignoring the stop sign as she left the little lake community outside town.
“I don’t think so. Charley and I agree he didn’t seem in any hurry to get out. He wasn’t suicidal or anything. The sheriff said to call in CSI, but they won’t be here for an hour. Pearly’s out in the snow marking off the whole building with crime-scene tape.”
Lauren was halfway there. The windshield wipers shoved snow around as the road blinked in and out of sight. “Two scenarios.” She tried to think like her father. “If he didn’t hurt himself, then someone hurt him. Someone broke into the jail cell and hurt Thatcher!”
“The offices were empty. All but Pearly went home because of the snow. The sheriff was thirty miles away at another crime scene.” Fifth was silent for a moment, then added, “There is a third scenario, Lauren. The third one is Thatcher hurt someone. The blood in the cell might not be his.”
Lauren forced herself to slow. She could see Crossroads. If she went any faster, she’d slide off the highway. “How could he do that? He’s the one locked up. You think someone snuck past Pearly, made it up two flights of stairs, opened two locked doors and broke into Thatcher’s cell so the kid could beat him bloody?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Weathers sounded just as confused as she felt.
A few minutes later, Lauren pulled into an empty parking spot, jumped out of her car and ran into the county offices.
Pearly was sitting at her desk as usual, but she didn’t look so good. One of the volunteer firemen was giving her oxygen from the tank they kept at the firehouse. Someone must have brushed her hair away from her face, and without her glasses, Pearly had a wild screaming monkey kind of look about her.
Lauren decided not to ask the lady how she was doing. The answer was obvious.
So, she marched into her father’s office, looked up at Fifth and finished her argument. “What makes you think the blood in the cell was not Thatcher’s?”
Fifth straightened to his giant height and said simply, “It wasn’t his ear.”
She followed the
deputy’s gaze down to her father’s desk and a white paper towel spotted with blood. In the middle, looking almost dainty, was one ear.
The room started circling. If Lauren had had the energy, she would have run out to the reception room and fought Pearly for the oxygen tank. Suddenly she felt there was way too little air in the building.
Charley Collins stepped forward and circled his arm around her waist just in case she toppled. His concerned look wasn’t much help, but his arm gave her the support she needed.
Fifth covered the ear with paper and pulled up a chair for her.
She continued to stare at the corner of the desk where the evidence rested. She’d seen it, a human ear not attached to anyone. One layer of paper couldn’t erase what she’d seen. “How do you know it’s not Thatcher’s ear?”
“Charley said he’s cut Thatcher’s hair enough times to remember what his ears looked like. He swears it’s not Thatcher’s.” Fifth moved away from the desk. “Plus, I think I would have remembered if the kid had hairy ears. We’re guessing the head this ear was attached to has seen many more than eighteen summers. But seeing an ear alone like that is creepy.”
“I should have left it at the crime scene, but I didn’t want anyone to step into the cell unaware that it was there.” Weathers was looking a little pale. “There is blood everywhere and three sets of footprints tracking down the stairs to the second floor.”
Just hearing the words made her want to throw up. Right now someone, somewhere close probably, was missing what had been on the side of his face for all his life.
“Right ear,” Fifth added as if he’d left out an important fact.
Tim rushed in, and Lauren had to relive every detail. Every clue. When they showed Tim the ear, he threw up in the trash can. Now her father’s office not only had a detached ear on the desk, the whole room also smelled of vomit.
Lauren just sat in the corner. The CSI team arrived about the same time Pop did and clomped up the stairs like a herd behind him. Then, an hour later, they clomped back down. They took the ear with them. Pearly fainted when they asked her questions, and two firemen carried her off to the clinic next to the fire department’s shed.