Rugged and Restless

by Saylor Bliss

  “Just a little farther now.”

  The track had become next to nonexistent. Light spilled through a break in the trees up ahead, so I aimed for that. Loose sand sucked at the tires, sending them into a sideways slide. I struggled with the wheel and played with the accelerator. If they stopped, the sand would swallow the wheels. Maybe even the truck.

  They burst out of the woods amid more scratching branches. About twenty feet ahead, blue sky loomed —and nothing else. I jammed my foot on the brake, stalling the truck’s engine but coming to a stop in a spray of shale only a few feet away from the edge of a cliff.

  I took a deep breath and blew it out. Leaning forward over the dashboard, I chuckled nervously. “Okay, that was definitely a wrong turn, Phyllis.”

  “No, it was the correct turn.” I angled a glance toward my passenger, smiling. “Are you sure? It must have been—”

  The long barrel of a very large revolver was leveled directly at my chest.

  My smile deserted me as chills settled low in my belly.

  Phyllis MacKay’s mildly anxious countenance had been replaced with grim determination. Emerald eyes, cold and calculating, watched mine. They were the eyes of someone who had nothing left to lose.

  “I’m sorry, I, I really am.” Phyllis apologized as though expressing regret over missing a social engagement. “But you’re about to have a terrible accident, and I’m afraid you won’t survive.”

  “Phyllis… what are you doing?”

  “You’ve just become too big a liability. I overlooked it when you helped the McGees with starting their horse boarding business. That wasn’t going to save their ranch. But you shouldn’t have started going about with Travis McGee. That just got you more attention than was good for you.” Her gun hand jerked with her agitated speech. “Oh, I know you talked to DC about your concerns for Wyatt and my daughter-in-law. But I’ve been putting people off that trail for years.” Drawing a deep breath, Phyllis seemed to calm herself. She shrugged and added in a considering tone, “Now I’m thinking that losing you will devastate Travis. He’ll probably drive that fancy car of his over this same cliff in his grief. That’s even better than shooting him.”

  I struggled to breathe against the dread filling me. I frowned, unable to follow all of Phyllis’s disjointed rambling. “Phyllis, are you and Robert responsible for the incidents at the Hawk MC?”

  “You like those? Some of them were pretty creative.” A serene smile curved Phyllis’s mouth. “Robert… he didn’t think any of it would work.”

  “But why? Were you trying to get Travis to come home?”

  Phyllis’s face clouded and the barrel of the gun dipped slightly. “It was Grant I wanted to kill. I almost had him when he was up there moving the herd off the range. He had to come up with fancy plans to expand their ranch. I figured with Grant dead and Travis still gone, old Justin would never follow through. If the McGee ranch goes under or near enough, they’ll sell that range land along the Green River. Got a buyer all lined up for MacKay land up there, but they aren’t interested unless they can get all of it or at least the mineral rights. Grant McGee flat out refused to sell to them so they stopped the deal.”

  “You want to kill Grant over a land deal?” That was straight out of a Western movie. I forced myself to breathe slow and easy. “What’s up there that makes it so appealing? It’s almost impossible to get to.”

  “Coal,” snapped Phyllis. “Green River’s got a rich vein but not many folks around here want a mine in their back yard.”

  “The McGees will never sell.” I remembered the sheer love for the land I’d seen on Travis’s face.

  “Justin will, once he’s got no more sons to leave the great McGee legacy to,” said Phyllis coldly. She shook her head. “Those McGees. Always in our way. Always acting like they’re better than everyone else in the county. I’m glad it’s them I had to deal with. Means I can finish what I started years ago. I was going to kill one son. Now I can get them both. I really didn’t think Travis would ever come back here. But then he did and right away he took up with you.” She brightened. “Now that he’s here, I won’t have to worry about him showing up later. I wanted to get you together but my son had to go off on him.” Her teeth flashed in a cunning smile. “He did good that night, though, even if it was too soon. If people would have just minded their own damn business and stayed inside, he might have finished it.”

  No denying it anymore. Phyllis was completely insane. The way her emotions ran her up and down like a roller coaster, it was a wonder no one had ever noticed her instability before. And she was clearly losing what shaky hold she had on reality.

  “What did Travis do?” I tried to swallow but my throat seemed paralyzed. “Do you hate him for taking Mac away?”

  “Goodness, no.” Phyllis’s smile and pleasant tone made their conversation an obscene parody of afternoon tea between friends. “I hated Johnny. Never wanted him. But Travis taking him off like that drove the final wedge between our families. I made sure of that.” The chill in her eyes intensified as she spoke in a falsely sorrowful tone. “Oh, I just don’t know why he’d take off with my boy like that. My poor, poor baby. What could Travis McGee want with him?”

  I stared. How could that wonderful man, I’d fallen in love with, have possibly come from this madwoman? “But Mac was your child.”

  “So?” Phyllis tilted her head and regarded me thoughtfully.

  “Then is this about Catherine’s death? Travis was only twelve. He tried to save her. She was his mother.”

  Phyllis’s laugh reverberated in the pickup’s cab. A startled hawk took off from its perch on the top of the pine tree just outside my window. “I was glad he couldn’t save her.” She leaned toward me, her tone becoming conspiratorial. “How do you think my sister came to slip into the creek in the first place?” My jaw slackened.

  “You killed your sister.”

  “Now see that? You’re a lot smarter than these local folks, aren’t you?”

  “Why?”

  Phyllis shrugged. “She caught my husband’s eye.”

  “They were having an affair?” Keep her talking, stall for time, look for a way to escape.

  A snort from Phyllis echoed the contempt reflected in her eyes. “I doubt she would have seen it that way, but sooner or later, he’d have had her. He wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you do. My Robert takes what he wants. Who he wants. He wanted my sister, and I couldn’t have that.”

  Surprise propelled me forward a couple of inches. “So you killed her?”

  The gun jerked.

  “Sorry.” I held up my hands. “You surprised me.”

  “You’re in no position to judge me, the way you parade around half-dressed. You’re a tramp, just like all the others. It was only a matter of time before Robert turned his eye on you, the way you carry on at that bar. But you whoring yourself with a McGee, brought it on that much sooner.”

  Despite my attempt to remain calm, the bitter taste of bile gurgled into my throat. “Phyllis, there’s nothing between your husband and me.”

  A bark of harsh laughter shook Phyllis, and she rolled her eyes. “You think this is about a relationship? It’s all about what he hungers after. And you being with the McGee boy, that’s made him hungrier than he’s ever been.” Her smile faded; bitterness settled over her face. “He’d come at me brutal ’most every night, but it was your name he was moaning as he finished with me. Same as when he wanted my sister. Why do you think he was in your parking lot the other night? He’d have come for you then, but you were with Travis.”

  “Did Robert tell you about that?” Panic swelled, choking off my oxygen. I struggled to steady my breathing. Fear wasn’t going to get me out of anything.

  “No. He keeps that part quiet, unless things get out of hand, and I have to clean up. My daughter-in-law’s mother works in the sheriff’s office. She’s such a shameless gossip. It hel
ps to know what investigations are active and the direction they’re taking. Helps me keep tabs on who’s going to be where.” Phyllis’s smile was cunning and self-satisfied, and I wanted to wipe it off her face. “She couldn’t wait to tell me you were going to pick Travis up early this morning. She thought I’d be relieved he was going to be okay.”

  So that was how Phyllis had known where to catch me. My hands turned to ice. Each revelation tightened my anxiety. Things couldn’t end well. Keep her talking. “Your husband has liked other women, hasn’t he?”

  Phyllis shook with silent laughter, her eyes glazing. “He’s taken a few companions up to the McGees’ cabin for a nice little getaway.”

  “He hurts them, doesn’t he?”

  This time Phyllis MacKay’s laugh was loud, bordering on maniacal. “Nothing but trash. He takes what he wants when I let him. By the time Robert’s finished with them…” She shrugged. “Believe me, I’m doing you a favor ending it this way.”

  “No, you’re not.” I kept my voice even. I had to find a weapon of some sort, or I had to figure out how to open the door and get out of the truck before Phyllis decided to shoot me. “You don’t care about me any more than you cared about your sister. You can’t let him hurt me because if he starts hunting women in Pine Haven, that investigation’s going to end up on your front porch.”

  “See? I told you, you’re smart.”

  “Where does Wanda fit into this? Why did you let her stay?”

  A flare of nostrils and a very slight narrowing of the eyes were Phyllis’s only reactions.

  I leveled my gaze on the crazed woman. The more she talked, the less attention she seemed to be paying to her surroundings. Was it possible to reach the tool belt behind the seat without drawing attention?

  “Mac isn’t Wyatt’s father, is he?” I asked quietly, holding Phyllis’s eyes with my stare. “You didn’t have a choice. You had to let her stay. Did Bull force your hand?”

  Phyllis sighed heavily. “Bull always did exactly what I told him. Until Wanda had that child.” Her eyes were looking in my direction but focused on something she saw in her head. “I wanted Wanda to die in childbirth.” Again her voice took on false sorrow. “So sad, my boy’s gone, and now so is my daughter-in-law and her baby… my grandchild…” She snorted. “When she went into labor and started having trouble, I thought she would. But Bull defied me that day. He took her to the hospital himself.”

  Slowly, without taking my eyes off Phyllis, I slid my hand toward the rear of my seat. If I could just keep Phyllis occupied and off balance long enough to get my hands on that tool belt. A screwdriver wasn’t much of a weapon compared to a gun, but it was all I had. I stretched a little more, almost there.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Sunlight flashed on the gun’s barrel just as the butt smashed into my forehead, leaving me stunned. Vaguely I heard Phyllis rummaging around in the truck’s cab. Then I was alone. Seconds later, the driver’s side door was wrenched open.

  I tried to sit up, but my brain couldn’t seem to animate my body. Rough hands shoved my forward into the steering wheel. I connected with a painful jolt. My teeth sank into my bottom lip and the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. Phyllis was coming at me like a wild woman, carrying something big. Move!

  Moaning, I rolled my head, managing to dodge the worst of the blow as Phyllis slammed a rock into the back of my head. Pain exploded like a bomb. Little star bursts of fiery agony blurred my vision. Dimly I saw Phyllis raise the rock again.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Travis

  Dressed in the stiff new jeans and dark pullover shirt, my father had insisted on purchasing for me the night before, I waited. I paced from the bed back to the window, looked out at the parking lot, seeking any sign of my dad’s bright red truck. The wall clock registered noon. I’d been waiting four hours.

  Something’s wrong.

  She’d left a message at the nurse’s station that she would be there at eight. It took just over an hour to get from Pine Haven to Jackson. Even if she hadn’t left her place until eight and had run into traffic, she wouldn’t be four hours late.

  I dialed her cell number again, and again it went straight to voicemail. Did that mean her phone was off? Or was she in the mountains with no service?

  I erupted into a string of violent cursing, that I punctuated by an open-palmed slap on the marble window ledge. I had to get out of there. Still cursing, I punched the speed dial for Grant.

  “Sissy’s waiting at the bar for a delivery,” said my brother. “Let me call over there, find out when she left. Maybe she was delayed.”

  When the nurse came to check my vital signs, I waved her off then called her back.

  “Is there someplace close I can rent a car?”

  “About a block away,” the young nurse replied. “But your discharge instructions recommend against driving.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  By the time my phone rang again, I was just signing the papers on my rental. Grant got right to the point. “She left just before seven.”

  That was no surprise. If she promised to be somewhere at eight, she would be there at seven-fifty. But it was more than that. Something was wrong. I felt it with everything in me.

  “Do you want me to come up and get you?” Grant asked.

  “I want you to drive up this way and watch for the silver Grand Prix I just rented,” I said, slipping behind the wheel. “We’ll probably meet halfway, but if she’s stranded on the road, you might reach her before I can.”

  Tossing my phone onto the passenger seat, I stomped the gas pedal and squealed out of the rental company parking lot, heading toward home and, I hoped, the woman I loved.

  “Damn it,” I muttered as I hit the main highway. The brush along there was so thick in places, it could easily swallow a vehicle whole and pop back into place. If she’d gone off the road, finding her would take keen eyes and patience to look thoroughly. I definitely had none of the latter.

  As I had predicted, I met up with Grant at the halfway point between Pine Haven and Jackson. I pulled my rental into a scenic overlook and waited for Grant to turn around and join him.

  “I didn’t see anything on the way up,” Grant said in response to the unvoiced question. “I saw Phyllis MacKay coming back from Jackson, flagged her down, but she said she hadn’t seen anything. She must have been about thirty minutes ahead of you.”

  I paced to the road, looked in both directions, willing my father’s red pickup to appear from around either of the bends in the road.

  “Bull still in jail?” I asked without turning around.

  “Transferred to Jackson late yesterday evening,” said Grant with a hint of satisfaction. “I got the impression that’s where Phyllis had been.”

  “Damn it!” I punched the hood of my rental, not caring about the fist-sized dent I left. “Where is she?”

  Grant touched my good arm. He held the radio from the cab of my truck. “Trav, it’s time to call DC,” he said gently.

  The sheriff was already in his office when we pulled in, one behind the other.

  “I’ve reported her missing under suspicious circumstances,” DC told them before the door finished closing. “They’re going to take a long, hard look at Robert MacKay Senior, because of Christine’s visit to Bull yesterday, and the report I filed about concerns for the welfare of Wanda and Wyatt.”

  “Wait, wait!” I held up a hand. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  DC brought them up to speed about the events of the previous afternoon. My gut began to eat at itself.

  “The boy had fresh burns on his arm,” DC reported grimly. He looked at me as he spoke. “Six round burns in a line on the underside of his arm between his elbow and his wrist. He said he got them from fighting the fire at your place.”

  I shook my head. “No way. I asked if he was okay, looked him over before he left. I would have noticed burns like that.” My mind w
as racing. Burns on the kid, probably Mac’s kid. “Old man Robert has a history of using cigarettes for discipline,” I murmured, more to myself.

  But DC heard me. “I know,” he said, meeting my eyes with a haunted gaze.

  “Did you tell the MacKays it was Christine showing concern for Wanda and Wyatt?” asked Grant.

  DC shook his head. “No. The request to check welfare came from Bull.”

  I started as though he’d been slapped. “Bull?”

  “He seemed pretty worked up after Christine left,” admitted the sheriff.

  In a lightning move, I swept the pile of papers from the edge of DC’s desk. Sheets of white glided to the floor like dozens of unfolded paper airplanes. “What did they do to her?”

  The sheriff pushed the papers into a pile with the toe of one boot.

  My cell phone rang. Christine! I fumbled to answer it, saw Dan’s number, and hit reject, my spirits deflated. “I should be out looking for her. But I don’t know where to start.” I pressed the heels of my hands into my temples. My head was killing me. Not knowing what had happened to Christine was killing me quicker.

  The door to the office opened and a pair of state troopers entered. The one in the lead shook his head in response to DC’s question of whether they’d made any progress. The building closed in on me. With profound claustrophobia assaulting me, I stepped outside while DC spoke with the troopers.

  I used my cell to check in with dad while I paced around the parking lot.

  “Have you tried calling her?” He asked.

  “Several times. It just goes straight to voicemail.”

  “On the radio, son. The other day, I sent her off with one of our handhelds.” At last, something else I could try. I sprinted to Grant’s truck, reached in and grabbed my radio.

  I checked the frequency on my way back inside.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Christine

  A deep, throbbing ache swelled in the base of my neck, flowing like molten lava up over the top of my head and down into my shoulders. I desperately wanted to go back to sleep. Instead I began taking inventory.