AK-Cowboy

by Joanna Wayne

  “Sorry, but that was some scene back there.”

  “Get over it. Are you back in the States for good?”

  “Afraid not.” Tyler decided it was time for a few questions of his own. “Why didn’t you let Troy Ledger know you were coming?”

  “I was afraid he wouldn’t see me since I want to question him about his wife’s death.”

  “Can’t say that I’d blame him.”

  “Yes, but actually, I’m even more interested in the murder of Muriel Frost. She was about the same age as Helene Ledger and murdered in a similar manner in a neighboring county just six months before Helene was killed.”

  “Do you think Troy Ledger killed both women?”

  “It’s possible, but judging from the way he’s been looking for Helene Ledger’s killer, my gut instinct is that he didn’t kill either one.”

  “A jury convicted him,” Tyler reminded her, the way his aunt and grandparents had reminded him countless times over the years.

  “Innocent men go to jail all the time.” She turned to face him, talking as much with her hands as her mouth. “You see the thing is, Troy Ledger was convicted almost entirely on circumstantial evidence. I mean, sure, Helene Ledger was shot with his gun, but anyone could have found the gun in the bedroom and then shot her with it.”

  “Circumstantial evidence can still be accurate and anyone can claim to be looking for his wife’s murderer.”

  “Yes, but Troy Ledger was a model citizen, at least he had been ever since marrying Helene. Before that, he was a bit of a maverick—drinking, partying and riding the local rodeo circuits. But that’s what youth is for.”

  “Does that mean you’ve sown a few wild bales of hay?”

  Julie struck a defiant pose. “I’ve been around.”

  Tyler seriously doubted that. She was much too innocent looking. “Guess that’s where you learned the Indiana Jones routine,” he teased.

  But the mood between them grew more serious as he made the turnoff to the ranch. “Why are you so interested in old murders?” Tyler asked. “You don’t look like a detective.”

  “I’m an investigative reporter.”

  Tyler let out a low whistle. “No wonder you don’t think Troy Ledger will welcome you with open arms.”

  Tyler stopped at the entrance to the ranch and stared at the weathered, wooden sign above the old iron gate. Willow Creek Ranch.

  Haunting memories attacked, bringing things to the forefront of his mind that he hadn’t thought of in years. The smell of chicken frying in the skillet atop the gas range. The family gathered at the big dining room table. His mother’s voice singing along with the radio.

  The tears in his father’s eyes when Troy had been literally ripped from his arms on the night his father had been arrested. And that was pretty much the last time Troy had acted like a dad.

  Tyler pushed the troubling images from his mind. Forget the past. In minutes, the present would become an arsenal of weapons all firing in his direction with no visible means of escape.

  Tyler was home, yet even the hard, rocky ground of the war zone had never felt so alien.

  JULIE CLOSED AND LATCHED the squeaky gate and then hopped back into the front seat beside Tyler. An unexpected rush of uneasiness churned in her stomach as they bumped along the hard dirt road. Either the ranch itself put off eerie vibes, or Julie was not nearly as undaunted by the prospect of coming face-to-face with Troy Ledger as she’d tried to convince herself.

  “They say the Ledger ranch house is haunted,” she said.

  Tyler continued to stare straight ahead without bothering to respond. She started to say more, but his demeanor had changed. His fingers wound tightly around the steering wheel and his neck and facial muscles were taut.

  “If you don’t like the idea of visiting a convicted killer, you can just drop me off here and you can turn around and leave,” she said.

  “Too late for that.”

  His tone was brusque, but he seemed so lost in his own world that she wasn’t even sure the words were meant for her. Her feelings of anxiety swelled. Now not only was she on an isolated ranch with a convicted killer but with a stranger who demonstrated drastic mood changes.

  He could have post-traumatic stress disorder. She’d heard that was common with military personnel just home from the battlefront.

  Julie understood trauma. She’d lived through her share of it. A few short weeks ago, she’d fully expected to be sleeping with the fishes in Lake Pontchartrain. Surviving that had given her the courage to take on her current task.

  She spotted the roofline of the Ledger house first, jutting over the tops of the low trees that surrounded it. The full house didn’t come into view until they rounded the last curve and pulled up the gravel drive.

  The house where Helene Ledger had been murdered in cold blood in the middle of the day. Killed by three shots fired at close range when any one of them could have ended her life. The mother of five young boys, loved by everyone in the community, all but worshipped by her parents.

  The hairs on the back of Julie’s neck stood on end as they stopped in front of the house. The claims that Helene’s ghost still haunted the place drew vivid images in her mind. She could all but see the woman in white standing at the window, waving for help, just as the locals described her.

  Julie took a deep breath and opened her door. She was not a believer in ghosts. Even if they existed, she imagined dead people had better things to do than hang around tormenting people they’d probably never liked anyway or grieving those they’d loved and been loved by.

  If people had seen anything at all here while Troy was in prison, it was likely shadows from the mulberry tree that grew next to the house or from the nearby cluster of squatty mesquites.

  Before she could thank Tyler for the ride, he had opened his own door and was already sliding from beneath the wheel.

  “You don’t have to stay,” she assured him.

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Suit yourself.” She walked in front of him, climbed the steps quickly and was about to ring the doorbell when heavy boots clomped through the wet grass to her left.

  Troy Ledger rounded the side of the house and stopped a few feet from the freshly painted wooden steps. She knew it was him from photographs she’d seen, one taken as recently as a few months ago.

  It had appeared along with pictures of this house in some paranormal magazine called Beyond the Grave. Julie had found the article while doing her research on Troy Ledger.

  And here he was, a few feet from her. Tall. Thinning brown hair with touches of gray. Gaunt, with a jagged scar that ran down the right side of his face.

  She started to speak, but Troy was staring at the cowboy who stood a few feet behind her.

  “Tyler.” Troy’s gruff voice cracked on the name.

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  The tension between the two men left no doubt that they were not strangers.

  And once again, she had talked far too much.

  Chapter Three

  A choking lump in his chest all but cut off Troy’s ability to breathe. Tyler was standing a few feet in front of him. Tyler, his daredevil son who had tried Helene’s patience with his tough and mischievous ways. Tyler who had followed Troy around like a shadow from the day he took his first steps.

  Not one or two awkward steps in the beginning, the way their other sons had learned to walk. No, Tyler had stood and waddled all the way across the kitchen to grab Troy’s leg before he stepped out the back door. Troy had swung him into his arms and taken him with him to the barn.

  At two, when Tyler should have been content riding his jump horse, he’d begged to ride the biggest horse they had. At four, he’d kept up with his older brothers and mimicked all their antics while swinging from the rope at the swimming hole. At six, he’d broken his arm while trying to rescue a kitten from the top of an oak tree. At eight…

  He stopped himself before he dropped into the abyss.

  “Good t
o see you, son.”

  “I guess I should have called.”

  “No reason to, except that I might not have been struck speechless.”

  “So my showing up like this is not an inconvenience?”

  “It’s…” Troy searched for the right words and settled on the truth. “I’ve been waiting for this day.” He climbed the steps and joined Tyler and his lady friend on the porch, awkward and embarrassed by the onslaught of emotions that were tearing around inside him like crazed cats.

  He’d love to hug his son, but the man staring back at him with the piercing brown eyes seemed all but untouchable.

  Tyler rocked back on his heels and looked around. “Ranch looked good when I was driving in.”

  “Dylan gets a lot of credit for that. He’s running the ranch with me. Fact is, he did it all for the first few weeks after my heart attack. Sean helped, too, until he moved out.”

  “I heard Sean bought his own spread,” Tyler said.

  “Yeah.” Troy wondered if Dylan and Sean knew Tyler was planning this visit. If so, they’d kept it quiet.

  “Sean started a horse farm over in Bandera.”

  “How is that working out for him?”

  “Good. He’s got lots of plans, but he’s getting so many calls to work with and train other folks’ horses, he hardly has time to work with his own. Did you hear he got married?”

  Tyler nodded. “Both him and Dylan.”

  “Right. You have two new sisters-in-law and a step nephew. Family’s growing. Do Sean and Dylan know you’re here?”

  “No. I thought I’d just surprise all of you.”

  “You definitely did that.”

  The silence grew awkward. Troy turned his attention to the woman standing next to Tyler. Nice looking. About Tyler’s age, or maybe younger. No wedding band.

  “I’m Julie,” the woman said.

  “And I’m Troy Ledger. Glad to have you.”

  “I hate to intrude this way.”

  “You’re not intruding at all. Any friend of Tyler’s is welcome here anytime.”

  “Actually, I only met her a few minutes ago,” Tyler said. “I just gave her a lift. She’s here to see you.”

  Troy saw the look that passed between Julie and Tyler, but he couldn’t read it. Could be attraction. Might just be tension that had to do with why she was here to see him. If so, he probably wasn’t going to enjoy the encounter with her. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t let her ruin this moment with Tyler for him.

  “Why don’t we go inside,” Troy offered. “It will be easier to talk in there.”

  He opened the unlocked door and followed them inside. Tyler had changed a lot but somewhere inside, there had to be a trace of the boy Troy remembered. Hopefully they’d reconnect soon and then he’d feel comfortable clapping him on the back or giving him a fatherly punch to the arm or a quick hug.

  But not yet. The past separated them as surely as if they’d been carved apart by a hunter’s knife.

  ONCE TYLER ENTERED THE HOUSE, images seemed to seep from the walls themselves. He and his brothers constructing elaborate Star Wars sets out of Legos that stretched across the entire family room. Watching Scooby-Doo with his brothers while sitting on that same old leather sofa. It was amazing that it had survived when so little from his old life hadn’t.

  Tyler stopped and stared out the window just behind the pine end table. He’d once hit a baseball through that top right pane. He’d dreaded what would happen when his dad came home. But instead of being punished, Troy had been impressed with the hit that had sent the ball sailing over the hedges and mesquite trees and all the way to the house.

  So many good memories overshadowed by the horrifying one. A sick, hollow sensation rolled in the pit of Tyler’s stomach as they passed the stone hearth.

  His brothers Sean and Dylan had found a way to merge the past with the present and face that reality every day. Tyler was pretty sure that he never could, though he’d been younger than them at the time of his mother’s death. Out of the five sons, only Dakota was younger.

  Fortunately, Troy led them straight to the kitchen. He got cold beers for himself and Tyler. Julie opted for water.

  “So exactly how did you two hook up?” Troy asked.

  Julie explained how her car got stuck when she was forced off the road by a truck that had swerved into her lane. She left out the best part. There was no mention of the whip.

  “And the first person to stop was Tyler,” Troy said, once she’d finished her animated description. “Strange, fortunate coincidence, considering you were both on your way to Willow Creek Ranch.”

  “It was, especially when Tyler failed to mention he was your son.” She shot Tyler a quick, accusing glance before turning her attention back to his father. “I’m really glad for this chance to talk to you.”

  “Then we should get down to brass tacks,” Troy said. “But I should warn you that if you’re a reporter, I’ll call you a tow truck and send you on your way.”

  Undaunted, Julie took a sip of her water, wiped the condensation from her glass with the napkin Troy had provided and smiled as if she were about to hand him a check from Publishers Clearing House.

  “I’m an investigative reporter, but you’re not the subject of the investigation.”

  “So why come here to talk to me?”

  “Because I know that you’ve been covering some of the same ground I have.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Word gets around and you’ve made no secret of the fact that you’re actively searching for your wife’s killer.”

  Troy rubbed his jaw. “Go on.”

  “I’m investigating the murder of Muriel Frost,” Julie explained. “Have you heard of her?”

  Troy’s brow furrowed. “Yeah. She was murdered six months before Helene. What of it?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll share what you’ve learned with me. Frankly, I can use all the help I can get. A case this cold won’t be easy to solve.”

  “You’re right about that. The people who want to talk don’t know anything. The people with information won’t talk.”

  Tyler studied Troy. His expression gave nothing away, but the deep grooves around his eyes and mouth and the jagged scar did. His years in prison had killed all signs of the young, energetic father who used to outrun, outride and outswim all of them.

  “So what got you interested in the Frost murder case, being as it’s icy cold.”

  “It remains unsolved.”

  “So do lots of more prominent murder cases.”

  “Actually, you’re partly to blame,” she admitted. “You made news when you were released on a technicality and again when one of your fellow inmates escaped and went after the former prison psychiatrist you were protecting.”

  “Eve. She’s my daughter-in-law now.”

  “I know. She married your son Sean.”

  “You have done your homework. I still think you’re going to have your work cut out for you. That’s over in Llano county, and Sheriff Caleb Grayson is very protective when it comes to anything that falls under his jurisdiction.”

  “He’s a public servant. And Muriel Frost deserves the same justice everyone else is entitled to.”

  “And you’re out to get it for them? That’s a pretty big order.”

  “I can’t get it for everyone, obviously, but I can start with Muriel Frost.”

  “Sounds admirable, but if you’re here because you think I had anything to do with killing my wife or Muriel Frost, you’re wasting your time and mine.”

  The guy was no easy sale, Tyler concluded. Definitely not a pushover for a cute face and hot body. Or maybe he was. She’d admitted to being a reporter and his dad hadn’t ushered Julie to the door.

  Julie crossed her mud-splattered legs. “Like I said, I’d just like to collaborate a bit. But in all fairness, if I find out you did kill either one of them, I’ll come after you with everything I’ve got.”

  Troy rubbed his chin and stared into spa
ce. About the time Tyler figured the interview was over, Troy began to nod.

  “Fair enough,” Troy said. “Tyler and I will get your car out of the ditch. Then we’ll set a time to meet and share notes. Are you staying here in Mustang Run?”

  “If there’s a cheap motel.”

  “Not one I’d recommend,” Troy said. “You can stay here a couple nights if you want. There’s plenty of room. Nothing fancy.”

  Julie glanced at Tyler as if expecting him to protest.

  “The more the merrier,” he said, not completely sure it would work out that way. But at least with Julie around, he wouldn’t be forced into nothing but awkward moments between him and a father who’d become a total stranger.

  “I’ll get your luggage and confidential material out of my trunk,” Tyler offered.

  Julie followed him to the car. When they reached it, she grabbed the heaviest piece of luggage as if asserting her independence. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were one of Troy Ledger’s sons?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Will my staying here bother you?”

  “All depends on what you mean by bother.”

  “Then just tough it out,” she stammered, getting his point and turning away as one of those disarming blushes turned her cheeks an enticing red.

  She bothered him plenty already, and for more reasons than the obvious. For one, she didn’t look or seem like a hardened investigative reporter. Nor did he think she was totally convinced Troy was innocent.

  But then, neither was Tyler.

  JULIE ACCEPTED TROY’S invitation to stay at the house and unpack while they went for her car. Which meant the inevitable one-on-one father-son encounter could be put off no longer. The awkwardness was not only tangible when Tyler crawled into the front seat of Troy’s new double cab white, pickup truck, it was as solid and impenetrable as a cement wall.

  The silence hovered until they’d rumbled over the cattle gap and left the ranch.

  “We need to let Sean and Dylan know you’re here,” Troy said. “They’ll want to get together right away.”

  “I’ll give them a call once we get Julie’s car out of the ditch,” Tyler promised. “Good idea.”