High-Caliber Cowboy

by B. J Daniels

  Brandon exchanged a look with Anna. “This isn’t the man who locked you up here?”

  Lenore shook her head.

  “But that’s Dr. French,” Anna said.

  “I might be higher than a kite but I know the face of the bastard who did this to me,” Lenore spat. “He said to call him Dr. French…but that isn’t the man. The other one must have killed him.”

  “The other one?” Brandon asked, afraid of what Lenore was going to say. If Anna was right and her father had killed Dr. French—

  “He must have lied about his name,” Lenore said and turned to look behind her. “That’s the man.”

  They all turned to see the tall man in the dark coat standing in the dim hallway behind them holding the gun.

  “I’ll take that flashlight,” Dr. Ivers said. “And please put down that pipe, Ms. VanHorn. We’ve had quite enough drama for one night.”

  The authority and calmness in his tone sent a chill through Brandon as he handed over the flashlight, the light shining on the floor at their feet.

  Brandon shot Anna a look. Her face was ghostlike in the eerie light, but she looked strangely calm as she dropped the length of pipe to the floor.

  It clattered at her feet. “So if you aren’t Dr. French, then who are you?” Lenore Johnson asked.

  “Dr. Ivers,” he said as he pushed them back toward the door to the room. He stooped, keeping the gun trained on Brandon, to pick up the pipe. “I have been known to use Dr. French’s name, though, when the need arose.” He motioned with the gun for them to step back into Room 9B. “If you would, please.”

  He sounded exactly as he always had at the clinic, all the years he’d stitched up Brandon and his brothers.

  “What the hell is going on?” Brandon asked.

  Dr. Ivers gave him a look that said he didn’t like swearing. Or being talked back to. “I think you’re smart enough to figure out that I’m going to lock you in that room for a while.”

  “Why?” Brandon asked, seeing something in the elderly doctor’s eyes that frightened him more than the gun.

  Ivers sighed. “Please don’t be difficult, Brandon. I tired of you and your brothers’ antics long ago.”

  “You can’t keep us all locked up here,” Lenore said.

  “Give it up, old man. It’s over. Whatever it is that you’re trying to hide, the cat is out of the bag.”

  Anna had been watching the doctor, trying to understand how Dr. French could be dead, why the kindly Dr. Ivers had pretended to be French and, more important, why he was now holding a gun on them.

  Then she knew. “You delivered my mother’s baby,” she said. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? My father let me believe Dr. French must have delivered the baby.”

  He smiled forlornly. “Your father used to tell me what a bright girl you were. He was always bragging about your articles, all those awards for investigative journalism. He was so proud of you. What a shame you had to use all that skill to try to destroy so many lives.”

  “This is more than covering up a baby’s death,” Anna said. “Or my mother’s confinement here. You and my father made some kind of deal. Why else would you go along with it otherwise?”

  Dr. Ivers looked over his shoulder. Was he expecting someone? “Why couldn’t you have just left it alone?” he demanded. “My wife of sixty-two years is very sick. She doesn’t have much time left. I won’t have her distraught by all this. Do you understand?”

  “Distraught, my ass,” Lenore said. “You kill us and I promise your wife will be more than distraught when she finds out.”

  “My Emily only has a few days left,” he said.

  “What about your daughter?” Brandon asked. “Taylor.”

  “My daughter, yes.” He glanced over at Anna. “I won’t be able to protect Taylor. But I can at least spare my wife any further pain. I owe her that much.”

  “Don’t you at least owe me the truth?” Anna said.

  “You delivered my little brother. What happened to him?”

  “He was stillborn, just as your father told you.”

  She shook her head. “My nanny heard the baby cry. Did my mother kill the baby?” she asked with a sob.

  Dr. Ivers furrowed his brows. He seemed distracted and she could tell he was listening for something. A vehicle? “Your father had feared she would. I let him believe she had. Your father was already so upset, he would have believed anything I told him but the baby was stillborn just as I said. I sent him off to bury it.”

  That moment of hesitation. “The nanny heard a baby cry.”

  Dr. Ivers looked startled as if her words had finally sunk in.

  “The nanny was in the room right upstairs.” Anna let out a gasp at a sudden realization. “There had to have been another baby. Twins. That’s why you told my mother to stay in bed during the pregnancy.”

  “Enough,” Dr. Ivers snapped. “Step into the room.”

  “No. Tell me the truth. There was another baby, wasn’t there? What did you do with it?”

  Brandon swore. “He kept it. Earlier at the clinic when I saw you and Taylor together I thought how much—”

  “I don’t want to shoot any of you, but I will if I have to,” Dr. Ivers said, suddenly agitated. “All of you into the room.”

  “Taylor is my sister?” Anna cried. She remembered the competent doctor at the clinic who’d bandaged her head. The woman had dark hair and eyes like Anna’s mother. Like Anna. Taylor, the only child of elderly parents.

  Anna heard a car coming up the road, the whine of the engine a faint buzz. Cash? Was it the sheriff?

  Or was it someone else? Whoever Dr. Ivers was expecting?

  The doctor tilted his head. He heard the sound, too. “Time is up.” He pulled the trigger. The report echoed like a cannon through the hallway. The bullet lodged in the padding in Room 9B.

  Anna jumped back.

  “I’m not going back in that room,” Lenore said, standing her ground. “You can just shoot me.”

  “Have it your way,” Dr. Ivers said and pointed the gun at her.

  Brandon stepped in front of the private investigator. “You don’t want to kill anyone. Think of Taylor. She is going to have to live with whatever you do here today.”

  Dr. Ivers shoved Brandon backward, knocking Lenore back, as well. Lenore stumbled over Dr. French’s body and started to fall. Anna caught her. The doctor reached to close the door.

  Anna saw movement behind him. Her father. He staggered up behind Dr. Ivers, his white hair wet from the rain, his expression pained. Blood ran down one side of his face. He had a gun in his hand. He pointed it unsteadily at the doctor’s back.

  “I can’t let you do that,” Mason VanHorn said. “It’s over, Doc. It’s finally over.”

  “Sorry, Mason, but this time I hold all the cards.” Dr. Ivers swung around, leading with the pipe her father couldn’t have seen in Ivers’s hand.

  “No!” Anna yelled as the pipe struck the gun in her father’s hand and sent it skittering across the worn tile floor.

  Dr. Ivers pulled the trigger. Anna saw her father stagger backward and fall. Before the doctor could get off another shot, Brandon hit Ivers from behind. Ivers stumbled forward, fell toward the opposite wall, caught himself and then kept going down the corridor at a run.

  “Get him!” Lenore cried. “The bastard is getting away.”

  But Anna could have cared less about Dr. Ivers. She ran to her father and knelt beside him. His shoulder bloomed red with blood. She hurriedly stripped off her jacket and put it on the wound. His eyes were closed. She quickly checked his pulse. It was faint.

  “Brandon, get help!” she cried. “We have to get him to the hospital.”

  “Ivers won’t get far,” Brandon assured Lenore as a vehicle pulled up out front; a car door slammed. He ran down the hall and called back to them, “It’s Cash.” Turning to his brother, he cried, “Call 911.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Your old man saved our lives,” L
enore said, sitting down next to Anna on the floor as they waited for the ambulance. “Go figure.”

  Anna held her jacket to his wound, clutching his hand with her free one. “You’re going to make it,” she whispered. “Damn you, don’t you leave me now.”

  Brandon put his arm around her. They could hear the sound of the ambulance siren in the distance.

  Cash waited for the ambulance. As the attendants loaded Mason into the back of the ambulance, he asked Brandon, “I’m going after Dr. Ivers. Where will you be?”

  “With Anna. Christianna VanHorn. At the hospital.”

  Cash looked at Anna standing next to Brandon.

  “So you’re Christianna VanHorn.” He glanced at his brother, a questioning look that said he was going to be demanding some answers. “I’ll want to talk to you both. You’d better take Ms. Johnson to the hospital with you. Who knows what the doc had been giving her drug-wise.”

  Brandon nodded, his hold on Anna tightening. “I’ll take care of them.”

  Cash smiled and dropped his hand on his brother’s shoulder as he left in the familiar-looking black SUV with the dents.

  “I wonder what that’s about,” Brandon said, more to himself than to Anna. She was watching the ambulance pull out. He walked her and Lenore to Mason’s SUV and followed the ambulance to the Sheridan hospital.

  The doctors admitted Lenore for observation against her protests—and took Mason right into surgery.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Anna said as he waited with her.

  “I’d like to. If you want me here,” he said.

  She nodded, tears in her eyes. He put his arms around her. She leaned into his chest, and they waited several hours until a doctor finally came out to tell them the news.

  “He should make it,” the young male doctor assured Anna. “He has a slight concussion from a blow to the head and he’s lost blood from the head wound and the gunshot but no vital organs were affected. He’s strong for his age and in good shape. Now it just comes down to a will to live.”

  “May I see him?” Anna asked.

  “He’s sedated. But you can go in for a few minutes.”

  * * *

  BRANDON WAITED outside as she went into the room. Her father looked so old against the white of the sheets, his face pale and haggard. She stared down at him for a long time, not knowing what to say.

  “I love you. I’ve always loved you.” She touched his weathered hand, remembering how he’d been when she was a girl. If only she could find that man in this one. If only she got the chance.

  “Please come with me home to the ranch,” Brandon said when she came out of her father’s room.

  She wiped her tears and looked at him in surprise. “Are you sure they’ll want a VanHorn under their roof? Especially after they hear what happened?”

  Brandon had been the one who’d said they had no chance because of their families and the feud. “I was wrong,” he said. “Come on.” He reached for her hand.

  She smiled through her tears and took his hand.

  At least he hoped to hell he was wrong about their families, because right now he wanted her with him and there was only one place he wanted to be—on the McCall ranch.

  * * *

  CASH DROVE Davidson’s SUV up to the front door of Dr. Porter Ivers’s house. All the lights were on. Dr. Ivers’s car was in the drive. He’d half expected the doc to run. Ivers had had plenty of time. Cash was a good forty-five minutes behind him, but he hadn’t been able to leave until the ambulance got up the road and he was sure the others were safe.

  Cash was worried. He didn’t have the whole story yet. Brandon had filled him in on some of it, but Cash still had three unsolved murders—Emma Ingles, Dr. Niles French and Helena VanHorn, the Jane Doe in Room 9B at Brookside.

  All Cash knew at this point was that Dr. Ivers had shot Mason VanHorn, held Lenore Johnson captive and threatened his brother and Christianna VanHorn.

  That was enough to pick him up and arrest him until all of this could be sorted out.

  He didn’t see Taylor Ivers’s car and wondered if she was still at the clinic—or if her father had taken her car. Cash climbed out of the SUV, weapon drawn, and approached the house.

  Dr. Porter Ivers lived in one of the large old homes in Antelope Flats. He’d come here right after he’d married his wife Emily and took over the clinic after Dr. Neibauer retired.

  Cash recalled talk around town that Dr. Ivers and his wife had hoped to fill that huge old house with children. When Emily couldn’t get pregnant, the doctor had become interested in infertility.

  He’d helped other infertile couples, including Leticia Arnold’s parents, have children. At least that had been what Cash had believed.

  But as Cash walked up the steps to the front door, he had a bad feeling about how the doctor had “delivered” those babies.

  The door was standing open. He looked through the screen into the lit living room. Everything was neat. No sign of anyone, or anything out of place. No sounds at all.

  He knocked on the door frame, waited and knocked a little louder. He couldn’t help but remember walking by this house on a summer evening and seeing Doc and Emily sitting on the porch trying to catch a cool breeze. No one who’d seen them together would ever doubt the devotion they had for each other.

  Cash knocked again. No answer. A bad feeling settled over him as he pushed open the screen door and stepped inside.

  “Dr. Ivers. It’s Sheriff Cash McCall. Please come down.”

  No answer.

  He checked the lower rooms, then started up the stairs, afraid of what he would find.

  * * *

  BRANDON DROVE home to the Sundown Ranch through the growing darkness. The lights were on inside the ranch house as he parked out front and glanced at his watch, surprised it was only eight-thirty. It felt like midnight.

  He opened his door and Anna slid out after him. He took her hand, felt the tension in her. She was the one who said it didn’t matter how their families felt about them being together. She’d lied and now he knew it.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he tried to assure her.

  She gave him a look that said she highly doubted that.

  “Your father is going to get better,” he pointed out.

  “And go to prison for his crimes, whatever they all are.” She shook her head. “I hate to think that you were probably right about our families.”

  He squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

  She smiled up at him sadly. “Yes, it does.”

  As they started up the steps, the front door opened. Shelby stood framed in the doorway. “Brandon? Who is that with you?” She turned on the porch lights.

  “Mother, this is Christianna VanHorn,” he said.

  Shelby blinked in surprise. Either from the fact that a VanHorn was standing on her porch, or that he’d finally called her Mother.

  “I prefer Anna,” Anna said.

  “Anna.” Shelby extended her hand, taking in the dirty, blood-stained jeans. “Come in, please.”

  Anna let Shelby draw her into the house. Brandon followed. He could forgive his mother everything at that moment. He’d been lying to himself. He was worried as hell what kind of reception they would both get.

  Of course, there was still his father. Asa could be a hard, unforgiving man. And while having Shelby back had softened him, he was still a force to contend with sometimes.

  “Oh, dear,” Shelby said, looking them over once inside the house. “What has happened?”

  “It’s a long story,” Brandon said.

  “Have you two eaten?” Shelby asked. “We were just having a late dessert, but I can have Martha fix you both a plate from dinner. You look like you could use it.”

  “That would be great,” Brandon said.

  Anna nodded. “Thank you.”

  His older brother J.T. came out of the dining room. He seemed surprised to see Brandon with a woman. Brandon realized he’d never brought one h
ome before.

  “Come on in and meet the rest of the family,” Brandon said, his gaze locking with J.T.’s.

  “Anna, would you like to freshen up?” Shelby asked.

  “There’s a powder room right down the hall. Dusty’s about your size. I’m sure we can rustle up some clean clothes.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said as she looked down at her jeans. Her fingers went to her father’s dried blood on her pant leg.

  “Dusty,” Shelby called. “Get a pair of your jeans, a blouse and a brush for Anna.”

  “I should clean up some, too,” Brandon said, but he hated to leave Anna down here alone with his family.

  “She’ll be fine,” Shelby said with a fierce motherly look that made him grin. “You don’t have to worry about her.”

  “I’ll be right back.” As he took the stairs to his room, he heard Shelby giving orders to Martha to set plates for the two of them. Then he heard his mother go into the dining room and announce that Brandon and Christianna VanHorn would be joining them.

  “What the hell?” Asa bellowed before someone closed the dining room door, drowning him out.

  When Brandon came back downstairs, Anna was dressed in a pair of his little sister Dusty’s dungarees and western shirt. Her hair was brushed, her face no longer smudged with dust.

  She smiled as he joined her in the dining room.

  His father showed the most surprise as Brandon sat down. Asa started to speak, but Shelby put a hand on his shoulder.

  Martha served them both plates heaped with roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh corn from the garden and sliced tomatoes.

  They ate as Shelby kept a light conversation going. Brandon felt himself smiling at his mother, appreciating her more than he ever imagined.

  “Are you sure you’re both all right?” she asked when they’d finished their meals and dessert.

  “It was wonderful, thank you,” Anna said.

  “Now are you going to tell us what the hell is going on?” Asa demanded.

  Shelby shot him a warning look.

  “I think we’d all like to know,” J.T. said.

  Brandon nodded and looked over at Anna. He covered her hand with his own and smiled reassuringly at her. “Like I said, it’s a long story. And as far as we know, it doesn’t have an ending yet.”