by James, Ranay
The plan was simple. The stunt doubles would be dropped off in the wooded area about a mile from the house. Once they arrived he and Kate would ride out and exchange mounts with the stand-ins. Chase had the fresh horses and supplies waiting for them at the predetermined site knowing they could be gone four or five days before returning.
The two hired stand-ins would ride back to the house and then immediately leave making it look like they were heading back into Dallas, but all this needed to happen before Candice returned from her latest shopping spree.
Hopefully, by the time they returned at the end of the week it would be with a stash of booty so heavy it would require the tractor to pull it all. Either way, this madness was going to end before the week was out. He needed to settle this and maintain Kate's safety. He certainly needed to get Candice out of his house. That was a given. Then after, he needed to date Kate properly. They might already be married, but he still had a ways to go with her. The last thing he wanted was to watch her walk out of his life before he could fully allow his relationship with her to grow.
Candi had been a huge setback. There was no denying as much. Kate had taken it all amazingly well, and he was not sure what to make of her nonchalant attitude. She seemed to understand it was an event he could not undo and had nothing to do with their relationship even if it would impact their lives. A child would be a bridge to Candice, just as Kate pointed out. Maybe she did not want to have to deal with Candi for the rest of their married life. It was not something he had given thought to until just that moment. She did happen say something to that effect the day in her room. He had just been too tired to let it register. Something about not standing by and watching as Candice devastated his life. She had not said devastate our lives.
He knew deep down when he went to her room she had already made the decision to leave. She did not say as much, not then. However, he did not fail to miss the printed electronic airline tickets laying beside her new computer and backpack she asked him to purchase for her. The suitcase packed and ready for travel was another dead giveaway. The papers to dissolve the marriage were just the final piece. He had not asked, but was very grateful she had put off her leaving, or maybe she had even changed her mind for good. She was still here and he was not about to look that gift horse in the mouth.
“You ready?” Robert asked her as they saddled the horses.
“You have no idea,” she said dryly.
Actually, he did.
Chapter 45
The trade went off without a hitch and they were currently on the trail to the creek.
He was looking forward to having her all to himself for the next several days. Immensely having enjoyed the time with her in Tahoe, the idea of selfishly having her undivided attention was heady. He could have ridden straight to the place Gage’s instructions said to go, but that was not the idea of this venture. He wanted her alone. He wanted time with her.
Kate did not mind the time alone either.
“If memory serves me from what I remember in the red book, the first clue we need to be looking for is any sign in the shape of a turtle. Rock formations or carvings are the usual method of marking,” she said to him over his shoulder as he led the way.
“I wonder if the creek was named Turtle creek because of the treasure?” she asked wishing she had more history from which to pull more information. At this point it was all supposition. The fire had destroyed any hope of finding the origins of this creek and how it came by its name.
Robert nodded. “It is possible, I suppose. My grandfather told me when the highway came though in the early 20’s, the civil engineers rerouted the flow of the creek to keep it from undermining the new road. Now, they would just put in a culvert. Back then it was damned up back on my land serving as the holding pond until the severe drought and Dust Bowl of the thirties dried up what was left of it. To my knowledge it has never flowed since.”
Robert thought she was unusually quiet as they continued to make good progress further into the interior of the ranch. The sun was rising high and the humidity was beginning to lessen as the Texas temperatures rose. Even in spring the weather was not something to be taken lightly. Periodically, he would look back checking her progress and he noticed she was lagging behind, slowing her pace. He slowed as well.
There must be a reason, he thought, and it was not the heat.
He matched her slower pace on his own mount. Then he noticed her stop altogether turning slowly in the saddle.
She was studying her surroundings as if she had never been here before, when in fact, he knew Kate was well versed in this section of the ranch. She had come out this way every day he was gone to Mexico, and they used to come out this way as kids. There was something else on her mind.
“Where exactly did you and Sheriff Maxwell find him?” she asked softly.
Damn, Robert thought. He had really hoped to avoid this conversation with her. He should have known better.
Robert turned his horse around pulling up alongside. She was strong, resilient, and a fine Texas woman. However, he wavered on whether she was ready to see the exact place her brother was found dead after the exhaustive search tragically ended. He honestly did not feel it was a wise idea to show her where he and Maxi found Kyle’s badly decomposed body.
It was not prudent.
The fact Kyle died alone probably had failed to register in her mind with all that had happened. Otherwise, she would have vocalized it before now. This was not the time or the place for the revelation to dawn. Unquestionably, he was certain what the understanding would cost her, and she was running low on emotional reserves as it stood.
“I don’t know, baby. I think it is too soon for you.”
“Well, I don’t,” she said digging in her heels.
Trying unsuccessfully to cover her uncertainty with false bravado, Robert saw right through it. He was either getting better at reading her, or she was no longer as guarded with him. Either way, the openness made it easier for him to understand her moods and reactions.
He would take her if she really wanted to go. He just had to be sure she was positive and knew what she was asking of herself.
“Are you sure you want to see the place, Kate?” he asked wondering what she would say.
“No, of course I don’t want to see the place my brother died. But I need to see it, nonetheless.”
She needed to solidify in her mind the fact he really was gone, cut down in his prime. The world was just a little less bright without Kyle. Also, lately she was feeling guilty being alive while he was gone. It was not logical. Any sane person knew it. However, she was coming to understand emotions seldom were logical. Her feelings for Robert were a good example. She felt strongly about him, yet it was not a smart hand to play with her whole pot out in the middle of the poker table.
Robert understood her need for some closure. He had gone through the same thing when he forced himself to return to the spot his parents died six years earlier by a seventeen-year-old drunk driver. Every year on the anniversary he, Eve, Mason, and Chase would return for a moment of remembering. It was eight months before he was ready to see the spot, and still it had been difficult.
“We can always come back at a later date,” he encouraged. “The spot is not going anywhere. Why not give yourself a little more time?” Robert leaned over and placed a reassuring hand on her thigh.
Time was something she was running very short on at the precise moment. There were exactly four days left before her thirty days were up. After that, unless she and Robert could come to terms, the land would be his to do as he pleased. If she had the opportunity, she needed to seize it. There might not be another.
She had to face the facts, and the fact was the loss of her brother was a starkly new and ragged patch in the fabric of her existence. She could not separate herself from Kyle’s death any more than she could separate herself from Kyle’s life.
“I need closure and this is a part of it,” she said bravely.
It wa
s the truth. She did need closure with more than just Kyle’s death. She needed to come to grips with her relationship with Robert, too.
Very well, he thought, nodding his consent. “Okay, Kate.”
He would be there to pick up the pieces. There was no getting around it. The last few weeks she had made great strides in coping with the events, but even with the progress she made he knew and understood her healing was fresh. The raw and jagged edges of her wounds were still delicately knitted together. Seeing the place her brother, his friend, lay alone and dying would not be an easy thing to assimilate into her fragile psyche. She was tough, he conceded, but not that tough. She was still a woman of deep passions and feelings and she loved Kyle totally. It would take a person completely dehumanized and totally devoid of emotion not to feel the loss. The ghosts lingering there were tangible even still. It was a wide, open space full of rock and sagebrush, a lonely and abandoned section of the ranch.
He had witnessed first hand the scene where Kyle spent those final hours and still had issues sleeping because of it. Each time he closed his eyes he saw those stark images that he would surely carry in his brain for the remainder of his natural life. It was not pretty. Death seldom was pretty, he thought, especially not when the devastation of violence was thrust upon the human body. He and Sheriff Maxwell both agreed. They would not share the details of the condition in which they had discovered his friend’s body. That knowledge they would hold between them. The animal life and the elements had already taken a severe toll on Kyle. It was not surprising. Still, he would take those details to his own grave, never daring to share any of it with her. It served no purpose. Besides, he carried enough remorse and dismay for the both of them. The moment he discovered Kyle and the condition of his body, he vowed to protect her heart at all cost from those grisly facts, even if the cost was to his own soul. He had made that vow even before seeing her. It was his obligation doubly so now that she was his wife. However, the longer he was with her and the more time they were together, he was finding another fact to be more to the point than the fact she was his wife. Kate was also his friend and companion making it his deepest honor to keep her sheltered where possible.
She saw his indecision.
He is trying to protect me, she thought. Somehow she found it sweet, but unnecessary. Life was hard. Life was unfair, but life could also be generous. She had grown up on this land with a childhood full of both hardship and bounty. Her life as an adult was no different. That same life had made her a realist giving her strength where logically there should be none.
“I understand what you are doing and I appreciate the sentiment, but you cannot protect me from the ugliness of life forever, Robert.”
“I’d like to try.” He smiled boyishly, silently begging her to indulge him. He needed her to know he was willing to be her shield from all the heartache the world could dish out, and where he could, that extended to keeping her from hurting herself. It wasn’t that he thought he would always know what was best for her, at least not all the time, but he was more objective in certain circumstances. This was one of them.
I don’t deserve you, she thought, smiling pensively.
You deserve him more than Candi ever will, her heart countered, weighing in heavily for the first time. Yet, her mind was quick to remind her Candice was the one he ran to Mexico for after a single phone call, and Candice was the one whom he was going to share a child by all accounts.
Where does that place me in his life, she wondered? Did she, as the wife, make a fourth in this instance? She feared she would never come first. Candice would never allow it as long as the baby was in her arsenal of weapons to use against him.
A split second later she was wondering why she would even ask herself such a question. She was going to be gone out of his world once the insurance payout hit her bank account in New York. After that happened what he did or did not do would not matter. She would start fresh, leaving it all behind. It was the best for everyone.
He watched her study him wondering what was going on behind those brown eyes. With a sharp mind and face like hers he needed to teach her how to play poker. She gave nothing away. However, he was learning when she was like this she was deep in thought.
She sighed. So did he.
“I just worry, Kate. Humor me. It is just what I do for a living that heightens my senses in this sort of situation. Just give yourself a little more time.”
His comments only served to remind her she actually did not have more time.
“Don’t waste your energies on me, cowboy. You have a baby to think about.”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” he countered furrowing his brow. Her statement confused him.
“Wow, it must be nice to compartmentalize your life so effortlessly.” She gently tapped the side of her mount easing her forward.
Robert was not given opportunity to counter her volley which made him sound less of a human and more a machine.
Fine, whatever, he thought.
He would just let it go for now. Furthermore, she was several yards ahead of him, not a safe place for her to be in his experience. He needed to be closer to her. They were, after all, still out in the open, and he still needed to proceed as if she were a target. He was not going to forget she was his client first and foremost. The fact she was his wife only increased the risk factor.
Pushing his thoughts aside, they were getting close to the place Kyle died. If she were going to be stubborn about this, then he would grant her request and see where it went.
Pulling close enough to her that his stirrup rubbed her boot, he inclined his head. In silent understanding Kate pulled up short.
Watching her closely, he looked for any signs of distress as she stiffly dismounted from the saddle handing Ginger Snap’s reigns up to him. Her back was ramrod straight as she walked a few paces ahead surveying the lay of the land, taking the surroundings into her brain. Bending down she placed her fingertips into the tire marks Kyle’s truck made as it had skidded to a halt. Not getting as much rain way out here as they did the night of the fire, those tire marks were still very evident in the gravel and natural growth. As she closed her eyes, he watched, cringing in the knowledge she was playing the scenario out in her mind just as he had done a thousand times before.
Kate opened herself up to the land, letting it speak to her. She could see Kyle's truck skidding to a stop, and him opening the driver's side door to throw up. She was seeing him getting out of his truck, taking five or six steps, and then collapsing from convulsions.
Robert sat by horrified as he watched her acting out the scene, bringing it to life before his very eyes. As if she knew the sequence of events, she staggered, stumbling drunkenly on her feet going several yards from the spot she imagined his truck to have stalled. Collapsing to the ground, he watched her go down first to her knees and then face forward into the ground. He jumped off his horse running to her as she lay motionless face down in the dry creek bed. Turning her over, she lay there staring blankly up at him. Her lifeless look frightened him as much as anything in his life, and he had seen some scary things in his time.
“Kate?” he questioned frantically. He was wrong to bring her here. They could have passed right through and she probably never would have known it.
Throwing her arms around his neck she crushed him to her.
“He died right here didn’t he?” she questioned. “I can still feel him.”
Robert nodded.
She wept just as he knew she would. What had he been thinking to stop here? Why did he think she would possibly gain anything positive seeing this spot so soon?
He felt horrible. He knew she would turn to him for consolation. Maybe on some unconscious level he was using this to get closer to her, his own behavior repulsing him.
“I’m sorry, Kate. I never should have stopped here. I’m so, so sorry. I was wrong.” He rocked her as they sat there on the ground with nightfall quickly approaching. He could never camp here. Not now. N
ot after this.
“Alone, unable to cry for help, and choking to death. Is that how he spent his last hours on this earth? Oh God, Robert, he died alone. He died completely alone.”
What could he say? It was the truth. Agreeing would not make it go away, so instead he said nothing.
He should have put his foot down, he thought having the benefit of hindsight. Nonetheless, it was way too late at this point, and all he could do was damage control.
Gently pulling her to her feet, he urged her back to her horse.
“Kate, we need to go. Nightfall is approaching, and we both know our camping here is out of the question.”
All she could do was nod in agreement not trusting her voice.
He tried to put her up behind him on his mount thinking the nearness would help her. She refused. Throwing off his offer of help, she swung herself up in the saddle.
He watched as she took a couple of deep breaths and narrowed her eyes. There was a stillness washing over her. It was one he instantly recognized having seen it countless times in his own family. She was slipping on the proverbial battle dress. Someone had issued an invitation to war by taking something precious belonging to her. She was just about to R.S.V.P. in typical Katherine style.
“I vow, as God as my witness, Robert, those bastards who did this to my brother are dead men walking,” she pushed the words out through clinched teeth.
She was angry. It rolled off her in waves.
She was incensed almost beyond coherent thought at how someone could just leave another human being to die like they had left Kyle. She was unsure whether or not she would have been just as angry if it had been a complete stranger. However, it wasn’t a stranger. It was her flesh and blood, and she would have her revenge. The responsible parties would pay. An eye for an eye, blood for blood.
She held out her hand. “Are you with me? Or are you going to try to talk me out of it?”
He took that hand and raised it to his lips.