Lone Star Redemption

by Colleen Thompson

  “Yes.” She nodded, half choked on her own tears. “But someone must’ve followed us. I was back here, and Henry shouted. There was a boom—and he was falling, and I—I was hit, too, and then I watched him—I saw him—”

  She couldn’t make herself say die.

  “I know,” Rayford told her, just as if she had. “But right now, I’m worried about you. Now tell me, Jessica, are you hit anywhere else? We need to see if we can stop this bleeding.”

  “Only—only here.” She glanced down at the hand she cradled, then sucked in a sharp breath and jerked her gaze from the bloody hole and the white glints of bone in it.

  “Try not to look at it, all right? Any other injuries?”

  She shook her head, her stomach threatening upheaval and the pain spiraling in on her. “I don’t think so. I only remember hearing one shot, anyway.”

  “Then I’m going to move you outside now, where there’s more light and the air is better. Can you help me get you up?”

  “I—I’ll try.”

  Taking her uninjured arm, he got her to her feet.

  “Now close your eyes,” he instructed.

  “Why? I don’t want—”

  “Just close your eyes, Jessica. I need you to trust me.”

  Something in his voice made her obey, made her follow his lead, though her legs were so wobbly she only made it a few steps.

  “That’s fine,” he said, lifting her in his arms and carrying her outside, to the fresher air.

  Carrying her past Henry’s body, she realized, when she unclenched her eyelids after he’d set her down a few steps from the bunkhouse’s front porch, beside the old barbecue grill she’d spotted earlier.

  “Th-thank you.” Her teeth chattered, her limbs so shaky, she had to cling to him to keep on her feet.

  He wrapped an arm around her, giving her a squeeze before easing her to the ground. “I need you to sit right here for a minute, Jessica. We’ve got to get this bleeding stopped now before you black out again.”

  “We have to go!” she tried to tell him, but he was stripping off his shirt already. The bright moonlight revealed the chest of a man who kept himself in peak physical condition.

  Shrugging back into his jacket, he tore the shirt along a side seam.

  “Now!” she begged, peering all around the darkness. “Before he comes back to finish this.”

  “Whoever shot you isn’t coming back,” Zach Rayford reassured her as he tore another strip from the shirt. “Not the way he lit out of here. Nearly crashed into me. Ran my truck right off the road.”

  That must have been what happened to his chin, she thought, unable to believe how calm and in control he seemed. How focused on her welfare while he, too, was bleeding and in danger. “Did you see him? Did you see who did it?”

  “I’m sorry, no. Nothing but a pair of headlights. Happened way too fast.” He squatted beside her, warning, “Sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

  “No! Don’t touch it,” she begged, but he was already grasping her wrist and shining the flashlight at the hand with a bloody hole drilled through its center.

  Drilled through—she was sure of it—by the same bullet that had first torn through Henry’s body.

  Because of me, she thought, collapsing into sobs at the thought of how she’d verbally pushed at Hellfire before he’d pushed back, how she’d disobeyed Zach Rayford’s order to leave his ranch and ignored the sheriff’s warning to leave town.

  “All my fault,” she wept. “It’s all my fault—poor Henry.”

  “Shh,” he told her. “Hold still, Jessica. I need you to hold still for me right now so I can get this bandaged, so you can live. So you can live to figure out who would do this to your friend.”

  Both firm and kind, his voice punched through her despair. Reached through to offer her the courage to draw another breath.

  “So you can make who did this pay,” he said.

  “So I can—make him pay.” She looked up into his face, her body going still as she repeated the words. Words that gave her purpose, even as the strength drained from her.

  But the respite didn’t last long. As the rancher bound her injured hand, agony and anguish forged a pain so overwhelming, she cried out and fought to pull away from his grasp. Fought until the blackness rose up, offering the only real release from pain and guilt.

  Chapter 6

  “C’mon, Doctor. You can tell me,” Zach coaxed as he sat on an exam table in the E.R. “Is she going to be all right? Has she been admitted?”

  The harried older doctor gave him a look of pure exasperation. “If you don’t hold still and be quiet, I swear these stitches are going to end up looking like somebody’s second grade craft project. I’ve told you again and again, there are privacy laws. We can get in trouble.”

  Seeing that he was getting nowhere, Zach held his peace for the moment, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the size of that bloody puddle, where he’d found Jessica Layton, or hearing the grief in her sobs as she’d broken down. He felt her, too, the warmth of her in his arms, the tight curves that had felt so right against his body. Even if he felt like a total jerk for noticing under such horrific circumstances.

  She could be dead right now, he told himself, though he suspected they would have told him that much. And even though some selfish corner of his brain realized that might solve a lot of problems, he couldn’t wish it on her, couldn’t do anything but pray that she’d pull through.

  The doctor had just finished stitching up Zach’s chin when George Canter strode into the exam room, carrying the brown Stetson he always wore with his sheriff’s uniform. Except for the patches of gray at his temples and a few more creases at the corners of his brown eyes, he looked nearly the same as Zach remembered, right down to the contempt etched into his face.

  It reminded him uncomfortably of those times Canter had dragged his drunken ass home, reckoning that Zach’s old man would be a hell of a lot harder on him—and often as not, his brother, Ian—than a night inside a jail cell.

  He’d figured right, as Zach remembered, recalling the bruises he had worn the day he’d stuffed a few clothes and what little money he’d saved working part-time for neighboring ranchers and hitched a ride to see the marine corps recruiter in Amarillo. The next time he’d come home was for his father’s funeral.

  Remembering his mother’s tears, her gratitude, the day he’d knocked at the front door like a stranger, it still shamed him to realize how he’d punished her for his father’s sins. Punished a woman who had never had the strength to stand up to John Rayford, even when she’d been young and healthy.

  Still, Zach couldn’t resist asking him the question foremost on his mind. “Is she gonna make it? Jessica Layton, I mean?”

  As badly as he wanted to shake an answer out of Canter, Zach forced himself to sit there, while the man considered.

  Finally, he nodded. “Yeah, she is. But I’m only telling you that much to get you off the staff’s backs. That her blood you’re wearing?”

  Zach glanced down at the dark stains on his pants and jacket. “Lot of it.”

  “Well, you’d better plan on changing before your mama catches sight of you, if you don’t want to scare the liver out of her.”

  It grated on Zach the way the sheriff treated him—both here and when they’d spoken at the scene—as if he were the same know-nothing high school punk he’d dragged home years before. “One of the hands is driving over, bringing me a change of clothes.”

  Earlier, he’d phoned Miss Althea and asked her to bag up a fresh shirt, a pair of jeans and another jacket to be delivered. If Zach’s mother were to wake up, she would be told that Zach had stopped by to visit a friend and would be home late, since he’d already caused her enough grief to last a lifetime.

  “Hellfire’s got an alibi,”
said Canter. “The way his latest girlfriend tells it, he was home with her the whole time.”

  “You believe it?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Lisette to bend the truth for her meal ticket.”

  “So are you holding him?”

  “At least till morning, but it’s no good. He’d just climbed out of the shower when I got there, so there’s no gunpowder residue to test for, and Lisette had just thrown his clothes in with the wash that she was doing.”

  “Pretty convenient timing,” Zach said.

  Canter nodded. “They don’t own a pickup, either, and I’m not optimistic that any of his useless friends is about to admit a loan. Unless, maybe you could come up with some details, like what kind of truck it was that ran you off the road tonight? Or whether you happened to see his face behind the wheel?”

  There was an edge to Canter’s questions, a suggestion that Zach might “happen to” remember enough to convince a prosecutor that McFarland should be charged.

  But convenience didn’t cut it, not when accusing a man of murder. “Sorry, Sheriff. All I saw were those high beams, and just enough of the vehicle to get the impression of a pickup.”

  Canter’s brows knit as he considered, “You know the make, at least?”

  Zach shook his head, “I only got a glimpse, and then I was too busy trying to keep my truck from flipping over.”

  “And a fine job you made of that, too.”

  With a shrug, Zach said, “My jet could’ve handled a simple barrel roll like that, no problem.”

  The attempt at humor fell flat, partly because it reminded him too sharply of the last occasion he had flown and mostly because he couldn’t forget that a man had been brutally killed, and Jessica Layton seriously injured, on his property this evening.

  “You think he’s good for it?” Zach asked the sheriff. “Danny McFarland, I mean.”

  “It’d be easier if he was. Then at least this might make sense. Reporter comes to town, asks questions about his missing brother. Maybe Hellfire figures Frankie’s in some sort of trouble, wants to head it off.”

  “Seems a little drastic, following them to a remote spot, gunning them both down. Especially for a guy who’s got something to lose.” Though Zach hadn’t set foot back in the Prairie Rose in years, Danny McFarland’s buyout had been big news around Rusted Spur for months now. Nobody could believe an ex-con from one of Rusted Spur’s poorest and most troubled families could pull off such a feat.

  “Hellfire might’ve cleaned up his act long enough to fool the bankers, but you give a McFarland enough booze, and he’s bound to revert to form. And now that he’s got his own bar...”

  “So was he drunk when you picked him up?”

  Canter gave him an indecipherable look and then shook his head. “I’ve already said more than I should’ve, this being a murder investigation.”

  The words were innocuous enough, but the tone behind them had suspicion prickling at the back of Zach’s neck. For all he knew, there might be some other reason Canter had decided to close down the information pipeline. After what Zach had told him about the reporter and her cameraman showing up with questions about her missing sister, had he made himself a suspect? Was it even possible?

  Testing the theory, he said, “I figure I’ve got a dog in this hunt, too, what with the killing taking place on my land.”

  “You want to press charges against the Layton woman for trespassing?”

  In his mind, he saw her looking up at him, her large green eyes dilated with terror and the darkness: a woman who his every instinct demanded he protect. “Hell, no, I’m not pressing charges. She’s been through enough already.”

  “You sure? Might be a good idea, discourage her from coming back.”

  “If she wasn’t discouraged by a bullet, I can’t imagine some two-bit nuisance charge would do the trick.”

  Canter’s expression soured. “Fine, then. Do what you want. Or better yet, step back from it entirely.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Sheriff?”

  “It means, don’t go running off to investigate on your own like you did tonight. Because in case you hadn’t noticed, it nearly cost your mama one more funeral.”

  “You seem awfully concerned about my mama this evening.”

  “Somebody ought to be, after everything she’s been through.”

  “I’ve got it covered, Canter.”

  “Just like I’ve got this investigation covered.”

  “I hope so. ’Cause this murder’s hit a little close to home.” Zach gestured toward his stitched and bandaged chin, though the injury was a small thing compared to the real worry gnawing at him. The worry that somehow at its root, this crime might involve the only family he had left.

  Canter leaned forward to look down on him, a look more grating than Zach remembered from his youth. “I’m not asking you to steer clear, I’m telling you, Rayford. And don’t think for a minute that just ’cause you’ve come back to play lord of the manor on your daddy’s spread, I won’t toss your carcass in my jail if you don’t keep out of my way.”

  * * *

  Admitted for overnight observation in Marston’s small hospital, Jessie drifted in the darkness on a raft of strong narcotics. So long as she lay absolutely still, the pain in her right hand was no more than a whisper, a dull reminder of the wreckage of tendon, ligament and bone—damage that the doctor had informed her would require a specialized hand surgeon to put the pieces back together, if she were to have a chance to regain even partial function.

  Despite the drugs, her sleep was fitful, as time after time, memories crowded in on her: Henry’s shouted warning, the arc of blood from his back, the sweet kiss his wife had planted on his cheek when Jessie had picked him up that very morning. With each fractured shard of nightmare, she jerked awake, fresh torment connecting hand and heart.

  To guard against it, she fought to stay awake, haunted by the sense of isolation, the feeling that the tether that linked her to her own life had been severed. Somehow, she had been marooned out here, six hours from anyone she’d ever known or loved. Because she was absolutely certain Haley was no longer here, not even in spirit. When Jessie had reached out, feeling for the slender thread of a connection that had been part of her as long as she remembered, she’d felt only an absence, a terrifying void.

  Too long. I waited too long, she realized, cursing all the time she’d wasted agonizing over her career and the breakup with her longtime boyfriend. And then there had been the fallout from her father’s death and her mother’s cancer to deal with, pushing whatever concerns she had about her sister to the backburner.

  Now, remembering the bloody T-shirt and the fine spray on the mirror, Jessie shivered. Did the man you loved kill you, Haley? Was her twin’s body buried somewhere on the empty plains, the coyotes her only mourners?

  Sometime after midnight, a dark silhouette filled the doorway. Too large to be the nurse on duty and too broad-shouldered to be female, her visitor hesitated, and Jessie’s blood ran cold. Had the killer—perhaps Henry’s and her sister’s both—come to finish what he’d started?

  There was a soft knock, followed by a quiet voice. “You awake in there?”

  “I’m awake,” she confirmed, relief flooding her. “Is that you, Mr. Rayford? I thought I heard you’d be admitted, too.”

  “I think we’ve moved past the formalities by this point,” he said, his deep, rich tones somehow reassuring. “Call me Zach, why don’t you?”

  “Only if you call me Jessie.” At his nod, she asked him, “So Zach, are you all right?”

  He moved to her bedside. “Got a few stitches in my chin, maybe a little shook up in the wreck, but it’ll sort itself out.”

  “There’s no concussion or anything?” She vaguely remembered overhearing one of the EMTs questioning him at
the scene, asking how many fingers he was holding up, but couldn’t recall anything more. What she did remember was how strong he’d been, when she’d needed strength the way she needed oxygen to breathe, how he’d taken care of her wound, taken care of her. Made her want to lean into his strength and close her eyes.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, “but they wouldn’t tell me much of anything about you.”

  “Thanks to you, I’m not in any danger. But I’ll have to see a hand surgeon back in Dallas if I’m to regain any sort of function.”

  “You should go then, right away. You don’t want it to heal wrong.”

  “But my sister.”

  “Your sister isn’t here,” he said. “And your friend—”

  Moisture made a soft smear of her vision. “I know. I’ll need to go for him. For his family.”

  “They’ve been told?” he asked quietly. “Or do you need someone to make the call?”

  The genuine concern she heard in his voice moved her. “Sheriff Canter’s taken care of it. I think he called someone in Dallas. But it should’ve been me. I should have told them....” She sucked in a deep breath, and bit her lip to keep from crying. “H-Henry begged me to leave, to drive us to the motel. If I’d only listened—”

  Zach’s big hand reached out to cover her uninjured left hand. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t, Jessie. It changes nothing.”

  His warmth spread over her like a warm blanket, along with the understanding that he spoke from hard experience. She wanted to thank him for it, and for what he had done at the bunkhouse, but before she could think of what to say, he withdrew abruptly.

  “Listen,” he said bluntly, “I can’t stay much longer. My mother wouldn’t take it well. Not since my brother was killed.”

  “I read about that,” she said, realizing that whatever connection she’d imagined, he was cutting it off right now, reminding her—or maybe himself—that nothing had really changed between them. “I’m sorry for your family’s loss.”