AK-Cowboy

by Joanna Wayne

  “Oh, my god, Dylan. You’ve been shot.”

  The few strangers who realized what had happened began to crowd around them, all talking at once.

  “It’s nothing, just a flesh wound,” Dylan said to no one in particular. He lifted his bleeding arm to prove his point.

  “We need an ambulance,” someone called.

  “I’m calling 9-1-1,” a man holding a cell phone to his ear assured them.

  “I saw a guy running off between those flagpoles on the other side of the parking lot,” a woman said, her voice edging on hysterics. “I think he was the sniper.”

  Tyler opened the car door and started pushing Julie inside. Stabs of pain radiated from her left ankle all the way up her leg. But there was no blood on her.

  Tyler took a closer look at Dylan’s arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Then stick with Julie. And call Sheriff McGuire. He already knows about the threats.”

  Tyler disappeared into the crowd. Julie jumped from the car to go after him. Dylan grabbed her and pushed her between him and the car.

  “Then you go after him, Dylan! Stop Tyler before he gets shot!”

  “You heard what he said. He wants me here with you.”

  “I don’t need you. Tyler does. Please go with him.”

  “Take it easy. You’re drawing a crowd.”

  As if she cared. She tried to break from Dylan’s hold, but even hurt, he was too strong for her.

  This was all her fault. This was her fight. But it was Dylan who’d been shot and Tyler was chasing a sniper.

  Her hardheadedness might get them all killed.

  TYLER CUT ACROSS THE PARKING lot and raced past the flagpoles, constantly scanning for any sign of the shooter. Some kids on bikes were riding in the middle of the road. A man walking a poodle crossed the street. He yelled at them all to clear the area.

  Tyler jumped to the top of a panel bakery truck for a better look at the surroundings. The crunch of tires and the squeal of brakes grabbed his attention. He turned, just as a car backed from between two trucks, turned and took the corner on two wheels before speeding out of sight.

  The disappointment of defeat crashed down on him like a wall of rocks. So much for his ability as a protector. The guy had missed Julie by inches.

  Two deputies ran toward him as he jumped down from the roof of the vehicle.”

  “He’s heading west in a black car,” Tyler yelled.

  “I’ll call for a patrol search,” one of the deputies yelled. “We’ll take it from here.”

  But they were too late to do anything about the sniper. He was long gone.

  Dylan was sitting on the front fender of Tyler’s rental car talking to Sheriff McGuire when Tyler made it back to them. Collette was standing next to Dylan, leaning on his good arm and holding tight.

  Julie was still sitting in the car. She made no move to get out.

  “I take it you didn’t find the sniper,” McGuire said.

  “I saw him drive off, but I was too late to stop him.”

  The two deputies who’d chased after Tyler joined them. “I called in the location to headquarters,” one of them said.

  “Good work. From here on out, this is our responsibility, Tyler. We’re dealing with a man who’s armed and dangerous.”

  “I second that,” Collette said. “I’m taking Dylan to the emergency room.”

  Dylan shrugged. “I told her it’s nothing. She won’t listen.”

  “Nothing would be if we didn’t have reporters stirring up trouble and getting you shot at,” Collette protested.

  “This isn’t Julie’s fault,” Tyler said. “If you have to blame anyone, Collette, then blame me.”

  “I do,” Collette said furiously. “In the future, just leave my husband out of your stunts.”

  Dylan put his good arm around his wife’s shoulder. “I think I’d best get Collette out of here.”

  “Go ahead,” McGuire said. “I know where to find you if I have more questions. I need you to stick around for a few more minutes, Tyler.”

  The sheriff asked several questions, most of which Tyler had answered when they’d talked by phone earlier that night.

  “I’m having second thoughts about issuing you that concealed weapons permit, Tyler.”

  “I’ve probably had more experience with firearms than all your deputies combined.”

  “Which is why I agreed to your request. But I don’t like the idea of private citizens taking over the jobs my department should be able to handle. How much longer are you planning to be in Mustang Run?”

  “Six more days.”

  “Then stop by my office tomorrow. I’ll deputize you. But don’t expect any pay. This is just to make you legal.”

  “You may get some static for deputizing one of Troy Ledger’s sons.”

  “I get static if a cow finds a broken fence and wanders onto the road. Besides I’m not deputizing Troy. I’m deputizing you, a loyal member of the U.S. Army.”

  McGuire started to walk away but stopped and shook a short, pudgy finger at Tyler. “But don’t take any foolish risks. I don’t want any private citizen caught in a cross fire.”

  “Neither would I.”

  When McGuire left, Tyler slid beneath the car’s steering wheel. Julie didn’t say a word.

  He leaned toward her and let his head rest against hers. “Guess I’m a lousy bodyguard.”

  “You’re not a bodyguard, Tyler. You’re just a super nice guy who got caught up in my problems. If I hadn’t insisted on defying the threats, none of this would have happened.”

  “Does that mean you’re giving up the case?”

  “No. It means that I have to leave Willow Creek Ranch before I tear all of your lives apart and mine, as well.”

  “Do we have to start this again tonight? We’re both too tired and frustrated for this kind of discussion.”

  “Fine. We won’t discuss it.”

  She closed her eyes tight and a lone tear escaped to trail down her cheek. Tyler kissed it away, and then kissed her hard on the mouth, not coming up for air until he could feel her frustration melting away.

  Tonight had taken a toll on her, but she wasn’t even close to giving up her search for the truth in the Frost murder case. That’s why he had to work fast. He had six days left to find and stop the man who’d fired that bullet tonight.

  He wouldn’t leave Julie unprotected, not even if it meant…

  AWOL.

  The possibility of that was as impossible as leaving her to face a killer on her own.

  The clock was ticking. He had to work fast.

  JULIE WINCED IN PAIN AS SHE stepped out of the car.

  Tyler jumped from the vehicle. “What’s wrong?”

  “I must have sprained my left ankle when you were trying to shield me from sniper fire.”

  She took a step. “I can walk. It just smarts.”

  Tyler rushed around the hood, crouched and lifted the red skirt. “It’s swollen. We better get some ice on it.”

  “It’s not crip…” Her words were swallowed by a moan as she tried to take another step only to have to lean on him for support.

  Tyler scooped her up and kicked the car door closed behind them. The skirt billowed over his arms and caught the evening breeze as he carried her up the steps and to the door.

  The door was unlocked. He’d rectify that tonight. Even the ranch couldn’t serve as a haven now.

  The light in the family room was on, but the house was desolately quiet.

  He suspected Dylan had not called Troy to fill him in on the night’s close call. If he had, Troy would be up waiting for news.

  Tyler carried Julie to her bedroom door. She turned the knob and pushed it open.

  The curtains at the sliding glass door had been left open. Filtered moonlight painted silver streaks across the antique dresser and added an eerie glow to the bed’s reflection in the mirror.

  Tyler crossed the worn hooked
rug and threw back the blue and white quilt, settling Julie atop the crisp white sheets. He bent and kissed her. One salty sweet taste of her and the defeating fatigue he’d dealt with on the drive back to the ranch evaporated.

  He only hoped the kiss did as much for her and that she didn’t start in again about leaving the ranch.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll be right back with an ice pack.” He picked up a pillow, fluffed it and placed it under her swollen and bruising ankle. “What else can I get you?”

  “A glass of cold water.”

  “How about a chaser of peppermint schnapps?”

  “That might help,” she admitted.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He didn’t locate a legitimate ice pack, so he filled a plastic zip bag with ice and wrapped it in a clean terry kitchen towel. He took down glasses for the water and liqueur and even found a tray to carry it all.

  By the time he’d returned to the bedroom, Julie had wiggled out from the skirt and blouse and was working on unclasping her lacy white bra.

  His need for her hit so fast and hard that the tray shook in his hands, rattling the glasses. “You started without me. No fair.”

  The clasp released and she yanked off the bra and tossed it to the floor. In the next move she covered herself with the sheet. “I think we should talk, Tyler.”

  “Talk. With you naked?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. Don’t you know that We should talk are the three scariest words in the English language. Ask any man.”

  “Our making love tonight won’t change anything. It won’t change the situation. It won’t change us.”

  He fit the towel-covered ice around her ankle. “Neither will my sleeping alone while I ache to hold you in my arms.”

  “You make this so difficult, Tyler.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” He kicked off his boots and lay down beside her. “I don’t take making love to you lightly, Julie. I’ve never met anyone like you, never met a woman who I trusted the way I do you.”

  “Then let me be part of you. Talk to me about the real you. What you think. What you believe. Why you keep so much bottled inside you.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “At least try.”

  Tyler sat down on the edge of the mattress. This time when the memories slipped from their carefully guarded mental lockboxes, he let them. “I don’t know who I am, Julie. I spent my life being manipulated by other people’s needs and fears. ‘Hate your father. Love your mother. Pretend to like living with Aunt Sibley. Pretend you hated your life on the ranch. Forget you had brothers, unless we tell you it’s time to see them.’ There was no end to the pretense.”

  “Then it’s time you start finding out what you feel and what you need.”

  “Right now, I need you.” He lay down beside her and kissed her again. This time the tremors of anticipation were shared and she lifted the sheets and invited him closer.

  He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her nose and mouth and kept going. When he reached her breasts, he cuddled, licked, nibbled and sucked.

  Finally he slipped his hand inside her panties and explored until he found the spot that made her tremble and moan in pleasure.

  “These have to go,” he said. He removed the scrap of white lace panties and then crawled out of the bed to undress himself.

  Julie threw her good leg over the edge of the bed and dragged the other one behind it.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  She pressed her good foot to the floor. “Hobbling to the bathroom.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  “That’s going a bit above and beyond.”

  “I don’t know why. It’s not like I thought you were exempt from bodily functions,” he teased.

  “Okay, help me in there,” she agreed.

  He did and while she took care of business he shed his clothes. He opened the small drawer in the bedside table so that he could put the gun in it. That would keep it out of sight, but near at hand.

  A snapshot of Julie in her red skirt and white blouse caught his eye. He pulled it out for a closer look. It was the same skirt, the same—or almost the same—blouse. It was even the same hairdo.

  It was not Julie.

  “You can help me back to bed,” Julie said.

  He looked from the picture to her.

  “Who is this?”

  She stared at him, staying silent until he asked again.

  “Who’s the woman in this photograph?”

  “That’s Muriel.”

  “Muriel Frost?”

  “Yes. I found it in the attic at the old farmhouse.”

  “She’s wearing the same outfit you wore tonight, and you look so much like her, I thought it was you.”

  “I know.”

  Julie hobbled toward the bed and took a deep breath. “And Muriel looks exactly like my mother did at that age.” Her voice grew weedy thin. “They were twins.”

  Tyler struggled to make sense of what she was saying. “Are you telling me that you’re Muriel Frost’s niece?”

  She nodded. “I’m the little girl who was afraid to talk.”

  Tyler reached for his jeans. “So you’ve been lying to me all along.”

  ONCE BACK TO THE BED, JULIE hugged the sheet around her naked body while Tyler wiggled back into his jeans. He reached to the floor and picked up the ice pack that had somehow been knocked to the floor. And in a room consumed by tension and angst, Tyler carefully wrapped the ice pack back around her ankle.

  His thoughtfulness multiplied the guilt she felt for keeping so much from him.

  Tyler stood at the foot of the bed, clutching the ornate post. “Did you see your aunt beaten and murdered?”

  “Not beaten,” Julie said. “Or if I did see that I blocked it completely from my mind. I remember slinking out of my bedroom and crouching behind the upstairs banister. And I remember the shots.” She put her hands over her ears. “I can still hear them when I think about that day.”

  “Do you remember anything about the man?”

  “I remember that he was big and that he had greasy hair that hung down in his face.”

  “That’s all.”

  “I was seven years old and scared. My mother had just been murdered at work. And now a guy with a gun had just shot and killed my aunt. I doubt I was searching for identifying marks.”

  Just stay calm, though he certainly wasn’t, at least not on the inside. “So you never were able to give any kind of description to the police?”

  “That’s what it says in the police report and what was printed in newspaper accounts at the time. Supposedly I was traumatized into an almost comalike state. All I remember are the shots and being inside that house with my dead aunt for what seemed like days, hiding under my bed in case the man came back.”

  “The police file said it was only a matter of hours until the body was found,” Tyler said.

  “It seemed days to me.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I was placed in a series of foster homes. Each worse than the one before. Miraculously, a single woman, a retired teacher, adopted me when I was twelve. That’s when I became Julie Gillespie instead of Lenora Frost. She died instantly of a brain aneurysm when I was sixteen. Under no circumstances was I going back into foster care, so I stole some money she kept at the house, moved from Beaumont, Texas, to New Orleans and set out on my own.”

  “How did you support yourself?”

  “Working for anyone who would hire me. I washed dishes, waitressed, worked the night shift in twenty-four-hour liquor stores. I did everything but prostitute myself and I considered that a time or two. In the meantime, I managed to earn my GED and pick up a few journalism credits at UNO. That gave me the nerve and the know-how to start my column. You know the rest.”

  “So everything you told me about being a spoiled rotten only child was lies?” Accusation smoked his eyes and made his voice edgy.


  “I liked to think of it as erecting a protective shell.”

  “That you kept up, even after we kissed. And made love. And you would have kept on with the lies if I hadn’t found that picture tonight.”

  His disappointment in her cut deep. “I did what I had to do, Tyler. Surely you can understand that. If I’d come here as the niece of Muriel Frost, I’d have had zero clout. Sheriff Grayson definitely wouldn’t have turned over the police records to me. I seriously doubt Candice Cameron would have come to me with her story.

  “Even Muriel’s friend, Kara Saunders, would have blown me off. In fact she did, when I was only sixteen and sought her out. I was desperate for answers about the nightmares that haunt me to this day. She said I should forget the past and move on with my life, that asking too many questions could be dangerous. That’s when I first began to think that there was some kind of cover-up involved in the case.”

  “So you kept your fake identity and moved into the Ledger home. My brothers and Collette warned me then that I shouldn’t trust you. I ignored them.”

  Tyler let go of the bedpost and started to pace. “You were hoping Troy would be involved, weren’t you? You probably still are. It would make your story that much more intriguing.”

  “I never hoped that, and it was never about the story.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Julie fought the tears, but the fight that had kept her going all her life surfaced, too. “You think you have the corner on trust issues, Tyler Ledger? Well, you don’t. All my life, I’ve been kicked in the teeth every time I tried to get up. But I still put myself out there. If I had a father who was reaching out to me, I’d at least go halfway to meet him.”

  “I don’t see you forgiving the man who killed your aunt.”

  “Troy didn’t kill your mother.”

  “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “I can and you’d know it, too, if you talked to him and really let yourself listen to what he says. He loved your mother with the kind of love you may never even be able to understand. He loves her still. No matter what happens to him for the rest of his life, that will never change.”

  Tyler quit pacing. “I didn’t come in here to talk about Troy.” He walked back to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, the weight of his body tilting her toward him.