by Lisa Jackson
“I didn’t even know you knew of her.”
“It’s a small town, Judge.”
“Anyway, this was when you were very young.” Guilt riddled his expression, and for the first time Shelby understood him.
“When Mom was still alive?” she whispered, a dull roar thundering in her head.
“Yes. While I was still on the bench.”
Shelby blinked hard, turned disbelieving eyes to Katrina perched on the edge of Jasmine Cole’s settee. “Are you telling me that ... what? Mom found out and ...” She swallowed, her head ringing with denial.
“Your mother was upset,” he said, nodding slowly and sniffing as if he were about to cry. “She, um, wanted a divorce and I refused. Told her it would ruin everything. So she demanded that I pay Nell off, stop seeing her and send her packing.”
“But Nell was already pregnant,” Katrina finished bitterly. “With me. I changed my name to Nedelesky a few years back when I got married and kept it after my divorce.”
“Your mother couldn’t stand the fact that Nell was pregnant,” the Judge continued. “It was one thing that I was unfaithful, another that I’d fathered another child. I should have seen it coming, I guess, forced her into some kind of therapy, or ... hell, let her have the damned divorce. Instead she ...”
“Killed herself,” Shelby supplied, her insides twisting, her stomach threatening to empty when she remembered the rumors that she’d lived with while growing up. “An accident, you said, and Doc Pritchart agreed.” She shot to her feet, advanced upon her father. “The story I was told was that Mom drank too much at a party, was feeling sick and took the wrong medication by mistake—sleeping pills instead of pain relievers, a whole handful of ’em—but there was always a question about whether it had been intentional or an accident.”
“It wasn’t,” the Judge insisted as Shelby angled her face up to his. “Your mother didn’t commit suicide, not on purpose. She left no note, said no good-byes. She just made a mistake.” His spine stiffened and he drew himself up to his full height, transforming himself before Shelby’s eyes from a weak, guilt-riddled old man to the strong, determined, manipulating son of a bitch who had sired her.
“She wasn’t the first to make a mistake, now, was she?” Shelby threw out, stunned and feeling bereft. Alone. Motherless. “And why should I believe you anyway? All my life you’ve lied to me through your teeth.” She was vaguely aware of Katrina, knew that she should hold her tongue, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Well, it’s over, okay? The secrets stop now, and there’s one you haven’t given up yet.”
“This isn’t the time,” the Judge warned, slanting a glance at Katrina who sat, transfixed, on the other side of a glass-topped coffee table.
“No more excuses. I want to find Elizabeth, Dad. And I’m going to do it even if I have to take out an ad in the Coopersville Gazette or even”—she threw an arm out toward Katrina—“the next issue of Lone Star magazine.”
“Who’s Elizabeth?” Katrina asked.
“Elizabeth Jasmine Cole. My daughter. I thought she was dead. I was told she died right after birth, but it turns out that she’s alive.”
“Holy shit!” Katrina’s mouth fell open.
Shelby skirted the coffee table and stared at the younger woman—this intruder who was her half-sister—stared her down. “Now listen to me, you’re not to print a word of this, not one word, until I tell you it’s all right. We had a deal, remember?”
“But—”
“Not until I give the word, or I’ll sue you so fast your head will spin!” She turned on her father again. “Think about it, Dad—either you tell me where Elizabeth is, or I unleash the press and none of this family’s secrets will ever be safe again!”
With that she was out the door and nearly tripped over Lydia and her mop bucket
“Oh, excuse me,” she said automatically.
“No, no, it was not your fault.” Guiltily, Lydia picked up her pail and carried the dirty water and mop quickly out of the foyer. Shelby watched her leave and realized that the housekeeper had been eavesdropping. But why? Idle curiosity? Or did she somehow have a stake in all the secrets as well?
As she stood with one hand on the doorknob, she saw her father watching her from his spot in the living room. What kind of man was he? A lawyer. A judge, for crying out loud and yet a man who bulldozed his way through life without regard to anyone else’s feelings, a man who had abandoned his child and expected her to do the same.
No way in hell!
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where are you going?” Lydia asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Anywhere away from here.” Shelby yanked the door open. Despite her hard words and determination, she felt a sense of unreality and betrayal as she strode across the lawn and grasshoppers flew in her path. She’d known her father lied to her, bent the law to his own needs, played by his own misguided set of rules, but she’d never expected mis—that he would hide his own child, deny his own flesh and blood, inadvertently cause his own wife’s demise, all for the sake of saving his already-blackened reputation.
Well, all that was over.
Shelby’s head was pounding, her muscles tense, her stomach twitching. She had to get away, to think, to put everything she’d just learned into perspective.
“Just take your time,” she told herself as she climbed into her rental car, twisted the ignition and, as the engine fired, opened the sun roof. She could run to Nevada, fall into his arms, unburden her soul and let him hold her all for the sake of hoping that he would tell her everything would be all right and they would find their daughter.
But she didn’t.
This was her fight. She wasn’t going to play the helpless female victim and throw herself at a man.
Nosing the Cadillac north, toward the ranch and the Cole family cemetery, she gunned the engine. The ranch had once been her sanctuary, then later a place she’d avoided for ten long years. All because of Ross McCallum and how he’d defiled her.
But all that had changed, she decided, sliding a pair of sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose and clamping her fingers more firmly around the Cadillac’s hot steering wheel while the sun burned in the hazy sky.
Shelby Cole wasn’t going to allow any man—not her father and certainly not that snake McCallum—to ever manipulate or abuse her again. She’d damned-well die first.
Chapter Fifteen
Like storm clouds gathering over the eastern hills, the sense that something was wrong kept building in Nevada’s mind, causing the muscles in his shoulders and back to tighten. He drove down the lane to the old Adams place, the addition to his current spread, and told himself not to borrow trouble. But the fact that he’d seen Ross McCallum and Shep Marson in Bad Luck within the span of a heartbeat didn’t bode well, not well at all.
As the lane forked, he glanced in the direction of the old gravel pit that was located on the property, thought he spied a cloud of dust, but again told himself he was overreacting. He was hot, tired, and had been fighting the urge to call Shelby Cole all day.
He guided the truck to a stop by an ancient cottonwood that stood near the barn and whistled to Crockett as he climbed out of the cab. As the sun beat down, he started unloading sacks of grain from the pickup. He carried the burlap bags of oats into the barn while Crockett nosed around the fence posts and porch, looking for rabbits or squirrels or whatever else he could scare up. A woodpecker drilled in the copse of live oaks near the barn, and a crow flapped its way to the roof of the barn.
Nevada threw open the door, stacked the sacks of grain, sweated in the heat and tried to shake the feeling that things were going to get worse before they got better. A whole lot worse. Several horses wandered into the barn, and he measured rations of oats, petting sleek noses, feeling hot breath as the mares snorted into their mangers.
Outside, he filled the water troughs; then, satisfied that the stock was taken care of, walked to the old house and unlocked the door. Musty ai
r greeted him as he walked into the entry. A staircase ran up one wall; a parlor, still papered in a faded rose print that was probably pre-World War II, was little more than an alcove. Down a short hallway was the kitchen—the biggest room in the house and complete with wainscoting, a wood stove and a hand pump at the rusted sink. The bathroom was an add-on, just off the kitchen at the end of the screened-in porch.
Oscar hadn’t improved the place, but Nevada thought he just might. Someday he’d gut and remodel the kitchen, add another bathroom upstairs between the two bedrooms and move in. Eventually.
But first things first. On the top of the list was to locate his daughter.
And what then? He scowled and opened several windows, letting the hint of a breeze waft through the empty rooms. What about Elizabeth? What are you going to do about your daughter? And what the hell are you going to do with Shelby?
In his mind’s eye he saw them here, Shelby and their daughter, living with him and the old dog and ... He stopped dead in his tracks. What the hell kind of fantasy was that? He and Shelby were from two different worlds, far removed and getting farther by the day. She’d grown up privileged and when things got bad, left town and made a new life for herself. He’d never known his mother, been raised by a drunk of a father, and was hell on wheels in high school. If it hadn’t been for a stint in the Army, he might never have straightened out.
He and Shelby were worlds apart. Always were, always would be. They might have a daughter together, but they damned sure didn’t have a future. That’s just the way it was.
Outside, he rounded up his dog, noticed storm clouds growing thicker, and again sensed an underlying current of tension in the atmosphere. He drove home, fought the urge to call Shelby and cracked open a beer. Stripping off his clothes, he made his way to the bathroom, and while cool water washed over his tense muscles and splashed on his face, he finished his beer, then twisted off the shower, left his empty bottle on the vanity and walked naked to the bedroom.
He’d just pulled on his jeans when the phone rang. Striding to the kitchen while buttoning his fly, he snatched the receiver, balanced it between his shoulder and ear, and mumbled, “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Who is this?”
Click!
“Damn it.” Nevada slammed down the receiver and felt that same old sense of foreboding creep through his body. Someone was getting his jollies with the calls. But why? Was it just a prank—someone with a sick sense of humor just wanting to rattle him and Shelby—or was it more, something more sinister and evil?
Ross McCallum was back in town.
Someone had deliberately lured Shelby back here.
Staring through the screen door to the coming storm, Nevada clenched his jaw so hard it ached. Something was definitely up. Something godless and malevolent; he could feel it. It was the same sensation he’d experienced when looking into a killer’s cold eyes.
He glanced outside to the coming storm.
Realizing he might be stepping into an intricately baited trap, he picked up the phone and dialed the Judge’s house from memory. On the third ring, Lydia Vasquez answered.
“Cole residence,” she said, her accent still thick.
“This is Nevada Smith.” No reason to beat around the bush. “I’m looking for Shelby.”
“Oh, Señor Smith, I am sorry, but Shelby ... she is out.”
“Where?”
“I ... I do not know. She left here an hour ago. Maybe longer. She said she ...” Lydia lowered her voice. “She was very upset.”
“About what?”
Lydia hesitated. “I do not know.”
“Sure you do, Lydia.” He wasn’t about to be put off.
Lydia cleared her throat, and Nevada wanted to reach through the phone and shake some sense into her. “Where is she?”
She muttered something under her breath. something in Spanish. “I have no idea, really. She said something about just wanting to get away. I ... she worries me.”
Me, too, Nevada thought as he hung up. She worries the hell out of me.
“Damn it!” Nevada slammed the receiver into its cradle so hard that Crockett, startled, leapt to his feet, the scruff around his neck standing straight on end as he barked loudly.
“Hush!” Nevada walked outside and stood on the porch. Some of the mares lifted their heads, noses to the wind, ears flicking anxiously as if they, too, sensed danger.
The bad feeling that had been nagging at Nevada all day got decidedly worse. Light was already fading as the sun was buried behind a thick bank of steel-colored clouds and the smell of a coming storm charged the air.
Finding the murder weapon here would be just too damned easy, Shep thought as the beam from his flashlight swept the cavern floor. Why would someone call now, ten years after Ramón Estevan had been sent to his maker? It just didn’t make any sense. Who would want to tip him off? And why call him at home? Why not the Sheriff’s Department? Nope, this just didn’t feel right.
He nearly stumbled on an old pile of debris, the remains of a long-dead campfire. Charred stones surrounded a pile of cold ashes. Swearing under his breath, his right hand reaching for his sidearm, Shep moved the beam along the floor of the cave. It was starting to get dark outside and bats, ever restless this time of day, were as noisy as hell as they swooped overhead, streaming out for the night, making Shep’s skin crawl. The cave was man-made, dug by Oscar Adams’s grandfather, an over-zealous prospector who wasn’t happy selling stone and gravel and who had hoped to find silver or gold or God-only-knew-what-other precious metal in the hills within the confines of his property. Littered with bat droppings, bleached bones from an old kill, probably dragged in by coyotes or dogs, the floor of the cave gave up no clue.
This could all be a wild-goose chase, a prank or hoax. God knew there were enough people in Bad Luck who would like to see Shep chase around in circles, like a stupid dog trying to catch his own tail.
He threw the beam of light over the rafters, startling more bats before he saw it.
There, on the top of one beam was a plastic sack. Shep sucked in his breath. Using his handkerchief, he carefully removed the package and sure enough, through the folds of clear plastic, he recognized the shape of a .38. A slow smile crept across his face. He didn’t doubt for a minute that this was Nevada’s missing pistol, department-issued and probably the weapon that killed Ramón Estevan.
So who had planted it here? Who would call him now, ten years after the fact? What the hell was this all about? The gears in Shep’s mind cranked, fueled by a dozen questions, but he couldn’t stem the thought that he was about to crack the Estevan case.
Did it really matter who had called and tipped him off? The evidence was here.
Setting the gun back where he’d found it, Shep made tracks to his truck and, using his cell phone, called for a search warrant. The judge, Peggy Sue’s uncle, didn’t ask many questions as he was in the middle of supper. He gave Shep his okay on the spot. Grinning like a damned Cheshire cat, Shep phoned his partner, ordering an investigative team to the old mine. Might as well do this right—by the book. Well, kind of. His partner didn’t ask too many questions and Shep hung up, feeling better than he had since the last time he’d seen Vianca.
Unless he missed this guess, depending on the ballistics tests and fingerprints, he’d soon be able to prove who killed Ramón Estevan.
Her father’s ranch was relatively unchanged. The main house had weathered and sported a new roof and shutters, but the low-lying bunkhouse and outbuildings looked as if they’d been frozen in time, still just as she’d remembered them.
Every muscle in Shelby’s body was tense as she climbed out of her car. From her father’s house, she’d driven to Coopersville, stopped at a locksmith’s kiosk and waited as the man with a hand-rolled cigarette clamped between his lips had created a duplicate set of keys for her. She’d paid him in cash, believed that he had no idea who she was and had driven directly here where now she squinted, using one hand
as a visor while surveying the stables, barn and interlocking corrals. Her chest tight, her throat dry, she remembered that night, so long ago when Ross McCallum had raped her.
There was no reason to sugarcoat the vile act, and her stomach convulsed at the memory of his hot, sweating body pinning her against the bench seat of her father’s truck. “Bastard,” she muttered, walking across the gravel of the parking lot. No dog barked to herald her arrival and only a few vehicles were scattered near the buildings. Shadows were beginning to lengthen over the asphalt and the sky was hazy, clouds blocking the sun.
Horses and cattle grazed in nearby fields as she walked directly to the stables, found a bridle and saddle, and caught the first horse she found in a paddock just outside the door to the tack room. She’d never seen the sorrel gelding before, didn’t bother searching for anyone to get permission to ride him. It didn’t matter. Everything on this ranch belonged to her father—acres of land, sun-beaten buildings, miles of fence line, equipment and even, to some extent, the men who worked here. Again her stomach roiled.
It had been years since she’d ridden, but she saddled and bridled the gelding and without thinking twice, took off through the open gates to the fields beyond. She rode trying to clear her mind, biting back the overwhelming feeling of betrayal that had been with her since learning that she had a half-sister, a child her father had denied, a secret he’d hidden. How many more were left to uncover?
The gelding galloped eagerly, turning up dust, chasing away pheasants and grasshoppers that flew from his path, racing past grazing longhorns who barely lifted their heads as the horse and rider flew by. From the corner of her eye Shelby spied ranch hands rounding up. a small herd of maverick calves. They turned to watch her horse gallop past, then went back to their tasks.
She rode directly to the family plot, the cemetery where generations of her ancestors had been buried. The grounds, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that was beginning to rust, were untended, some of the gravestones toppled over, others crumbling.