Almost Home

by India Masters

  The closer she got to the Dooley house, the deeper the dread, and Haley was running full tilt when she rounded the corner. In those first seconds, her mind couldn’t connect the bloody lump of fur with her beloved dog. “No, no, no.” She moaned as she dropped to her knees beside her battered pet. A sob escaped her as she gathered him close. Someone had clubbed the animal to death with a tree limb. Wyatt picked up the weapon and tossed it under a tree, out of sight.

  “Oh, Snoopy.” The dog lay stiff and still in the grass, bits of gray matter beside him. “It’s okay, buddy, you, Snoopy. It’s gonna be okay.” She rocked the dog as she would a sick child, softly singing her mamma’s favorite lullaby. He’d been her only friend for so long.

  At long last, she looked up at Wyatt and Dooley. “Who would do something like this? Snoop never hurt a fly. He was just a big, goofy dog that loved everybody.”

  Wyatt placed a gentle hand on Haley’s shoulder. “Come on, sweet pea, let me and Dooley take care of him. You go on back to the house.”

  Haley shrugged away from his touch. “He’s my dog,” she said fiercely. “I’ll take care of him.” She struggled to get up but couldn’t make her legs work. Sinking back down to the ground, she rocked her dog some more, sobbing. “Oh god, Wyatt. Why? Why would somebody kill my dog?”

  Dooley squatted down in front of her. “Haley, honey, you need to let me take him now. You don’t want the kids to see what happened. Let Wyatt take you back to the house and get you cleaned up so you don’t scare the young’ns. I’ll bury Snoop for you and then we’ll set down and see can we figure out what happened.”

  Haley wiped her dripping nose on her shirtsleeve and nodded. She stood up and Wyatt whipped his t-shirt over his head.

  “Take that bloody shirt off, honey, and put this on.” He helped Haley with her buttons and eased the shirt off her. Her bra was stained with sticky blood but at least his shirt wasn’t soaked through like hers was. He wiped blood from her face and tossed her ruined work shirt to Dooley.

  Haley looked at her foreman, who had also removed his own shirt and was gently wrapping her savaged pet with both garments.

  “Go on now, girl, let Wyatt take care of you. I’ll be up to the house soon as I put Snoop in the ground.”

  Haley nodded, still crying softly as Wyatt led her away from the gruesome sight.

  Her sweet, loving, one-eared dog was gone and Haley felt as if a vital piece of her was missing. Snoop had been her constant companion for the past five years. Finding him had been a fluke, an accident of fate that brought her into the orbit of an Arizona ranch woman who rescued Irish Wolfhounds. He was ugly enough to sour milk, but he drew her in with his sweet disposition. Seemed as though he’d recognized a kindred spirit when he saw one because Snoop had taken to her immediately, without the shyness and fear he displayed around strangers. So she’d taken him with her, scars, bald spots, torn ear and all, and they’d loved one another unconditionally. It was unthinkable that he was gone and yet he was.

  She preceded Wyatt up the stairs, shucked off her clothes, and stepped beneath a hot shower. She sensed her father’s hand in all this, though she didn’t know just how. Her stomach roiled at the thought. Conner would have told him about her taking the stock, leaving him to fend for himself. But was her brother capable of such viciousness? Until tonight, she would have said no. But after seeing Snoop, she wasn’t sure anymore.

  * * * * *

  “Somebody went to considerable trouble to send Haley a message,” Wyatt said when Dooley met him on the front porch. “Has to be what this is about.”

  Dooley scratched his morning stubble. “The brother?”

  Wyatt looked over his shoulder to see if Haley had followed him out. “Only one I can think of would be Conner but he didn’t strike me as having the stomach to do something like that. He’s no-account and lazy to boot but…” He jerked his fingers through his hair. “Maybe if his Pa told him to.”

  “You think Conner did it?” Haley asked.

  Wyatt stifled a groan when she stepped onto the porch. When she was standing beside him he put an arm around her shoulder and sighed. “I don’t know, sweet pea. Offhand, I’d say he wouldn’t have it in him. He don’t strike me as having the stones for that kind of savagery. And that’s what a thing like that takes. Whoever done it, seems like they enjoyed it.”

  Haley nodded. “I’m just grateful the kids didn’t find him. They loved that hound as much as I did.”

  “Been thankin’ the good lord for that, myself. Didn’t much care for finding him but if it had been Ezzie—” Dooley shuddered.

  “What do we tell the kids?” Haley asked.

  Dooley scratched his stubble. “Can’t see my way around not telling the truth. If somebody’s sending you a message—someone like your Pa—like as not we got trouble brewing and the young’ns need to be on the lookout.” He nodded, making up his mind. “Yup. I reckon we got to be honest so they’ll pay attention to what’s going on around them.” He took off his battered Stetson and smacked it on his thigh. “Danged if I know what the world’s coming to if a body can club a sweet old dog like Snoop to death.” He settled his hat on his head. “Come on up to the house. We’ll have some breakfast and talk to the young’ns.”

  More than anything in the world, Wyatt didn’t want to have to see the looks in the children’s eyes when their daddy told them someone had deliberately killed Snoop. Not that he didn’t think Dooley was right. He was…it was just that the kids were so young and a thing like this set them on the path to growing up too soon to suit him. Worse yet was the underlying threat to Haley. Killing someone’s pet was personal and implied a level of viciousness everyone at the One-Eyed Jack needed to take seriously. Especially Haley.

  Ezzie and Carlita were crying, wrapped in their mother’s arms. The older boys took on their father’s stern expression. Harlan especially, having just started middle school, had seen with his own eyes just how mean-spirited people could be if they took the notion.

  “But why?” Ezzie asked, sniffling. “He was a good dog. He never hurt nobody, not ever.”

  Haley squatted in front of them, taking one of their hands in each of hers.

  “Sometimes bad things just happen, girls. There ain’t no accounting for how some folks are gonna act. But old Snoop, he sure loved the two of you.” She nodded at their trembling smiles. “He sure did. He loved playing with you. I was always so busy, you know, so it made him real happy that he had y’all to play with. That’s what’s important to remember when you think about him. Remember the fun you had together and how much he loved you. And one day, when we’re all feeling happier, we’ll call the wolfhound rescue folks and get us another dog.”

  The wobbly smiles reappeared. “Really? You’d want another dog after Snoop?”

  Haley shrugged. “Sure. Once we’re feeling better. I think Snoop would want us to find another homeless animal to love. It’s where I got him and he turned out to be a pretty good old dog, don’t you think?” Haley smiled when the girls nodded. “Good. Now, do you think you could eat some of that food you ma’s cooked up for us?”

  The girls nodded, then Ezzie whispered loudly, “What’ll I do when ma serves liver and onions for supper and Snoop ain’t there to eat it for me?”

  Haley laughed and gave the child a wink. “Well, we may have to get a dog in here quicker than I thought.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Liver and onions. Imagine that.”

  * * * * *

  Later that night, as she lay in bed with Wyatt’s arms around her, Haley nodded to herself, her mind numb over what happened to her dog.

  “I don’t understand that kind of meanness. It’d be different if Snoop had been the kind of dog that raided the chicken coop or tried to bite strangers but he wasn’t. He liked everybody. I’m scared, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt squeezed her shoulder. “I agree and I got to tell you, it’s got me rattled, honey. Seems like someone’s wanting to scare you. Any ideas who could do something like this?” He was
silent for a few minutes then asked, “You think your brother could have done it?”

  Haley shook her head. “No, I don’t. Conner don’t have that kind of meanness in him. He can be spiteful and he’s damn sure lazy but he ain’t wolverine mean. Whoever did that to Snoop…. But my Pa? He’d know men who could do something like that without blinking an eye. I expect I should hire some more help. You’re already wearing yourself to a nub running between my place and yours. You can’t be here twenty-four hours a day and if there’s gonna be trouble, I aim to see to it the Dooley kids are safe.”

  He turned his head and kissed her temple. “I’ll make some calls tomorrow.”

  “Need more for ‘em to do, though.” She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Wyatt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “A ranch should run some cattle, don’t you think? Seeing as how I’m gonna hire more men. ‘Specially if I decide to train cutting horses too.”

  The resulting chuckle rumbled from deep in his chest. “I was wondering when you might get around to that. I’ll have the hands cut your herd out and run them over soon as you get more help.”

  “I’ll pay fair market value.”

  He kissed her temple again. “I’ll sell them to you for what I gave for them but I get to keep the spring calves. Deal?”

  “Deal. Is there a bull?”

  Wyatt snorted. “No, there ain’t a bull. Jack used my bull.”

  “Oh, okay.” She paused. “Is he a handsome bull? Because a lady likes her bull to be handsome.” She ran her hand down his flat belly, fingers raking through the tuft of hair at the base of his cock.

  He shouted with laughter and rolled her onto her back. “Are you comparing me to a bull?”

  Haley opened her legs. “Well, you’re hung like one.” She sighed when the head of his cock nudged her opening.

  “And you like that, do you?”

  “I’d like it more if you covered me like you meant it.”

  “Got no condom handy, sweet pea.”

  Haley drew his head down to her lips. “I know we was jokin’ around just now but…I need you Wyatt.”

  “Ah, honey…” He entered her slowly. “We’re gonna have to get you to that doctor soon and I need to get tested again, but so you know, I was negative last time and I always used a condom.”

  “Okay. Wyatt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  * * * * *

  The moment Wyatt’s truck pulled out, Haley gathered her purse and keys. If Conner had anything to do with Snoop’s death, she’d know it just by looking at him. He might fool other people but he’d never been able to get past his big sister’s internal lie detector. Pulling the door shut behind her, Haley bounded down the stairs, throwing up her hand in greeting to the few hands Wyatt had sent over to keep an eye on the main ranch compound.

  “Tell Dooley I got some errands to run and I’ll be back later today,” she called, hopping behind the wheel of the ranch truck. She slammed it in gear when she saw her foreman come around the side of the house and sped away in a cloud of dust. Two hours later she was jouncing up the rutted lane to the ramshackle ranch Conner called home.

  A rusted-out Chevy pickup baked in the morning sun. Conner’s truck was parked next to the barn. So Conner had company. If it was a woman, she was in for a rude awakening. Literally. It was only eight in the morning and Conner was not an early riser, neither were the barflies he brought home. Haley smiled. Might as well start his day out right. She stomped across the porch. The door bounced off the wall when she flung it open.

  “What the fuck,” a male voice snarled.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded, kicking the door shut.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the man shot back. “Reckon you should go first since you busted into my house.”

  Haley’s lip curled. His house? “Last time I checked, I paid the rent on this dump so I reckon that makes it my house.” Credit where credit was due, he was a good-looking bastard. Tall and cut like a weightlifter, his sleep-mussed hair was the color of a shiny sable pelt. But there was something menacing about the man—something besides the baseball bat he held in his grip. There was a hint of cruelty around his chiseled mouth, scowl lines on his brow, and a split in his left earlobe where an earring had been torn out. She glanced at his hands. Scarred knuckles. A brawler and probably meaner than a hot skillet full of rattlesnakes. Still, he smiled and set the bat on the floor so she figured he had to know who she was.

  “You must be Conner’s sister. Haley, ain’t it?”

  She gave him a terse nod. “And you would be?”

  “Friend of Conner’s. Name’s Rafe.”

  She turned and headed for Conner’s room. “Uh, you might not wanna go in there, ma’am. He probably ain’t alone.”

  She glared at the man over her shoulder. “Do I look like I give a shit?”

  Rafe, whoever he was, laughed. “No ma’am, you surely don’t.”

  Haley turned the knob and kicked Conner’s door open. A woman screeched and yanked the covers up over her breasts. At the same time, Conner sat up and shouted, “What the fuck?”

  “Get out,” Haley said, snatching up the woman’s clothes and tossing them at her. “Rafe will give you a ride home, won’t you Rafe?”

  Conner’s friend stood in the short hallway outside his room. “Sure I will. Come on, sugarplum, get them clothes on and I’ll see ya home.”

  She didn’t give her brother time to gather his wits. “Did you kill my dog?”

  Conner’s mouth dropped open. “Snoop’s dead? And you think I did it? Damn Hales, I know I can be an asshole but I’d never hurt an animal.”

  Haley glared at him. “You hurt my horses by leaving them in filth and not feeding them. Why wouldn’t I think you’d hurt Snoop?”

  Conner’s bottom lip jutted out, just like it always did when Haley called him on his shit. But she knew by looking at him that he hadn’t killed her dog.

  “Will you go out to the front room ‘til I can get dressed?” Conner pleaded. “And I swear, sis, I didn’t do nothing to your dog.”

  “Fine,” Haley said, turning away. “I got to get back.”

  “Wait!” Conner called to her. “We need to talk. It’s about Pa.”

  Haley stopped in her tracks. “Not interested.”

  She heard the rasp of a zipper and then Conner was behind her, nudging her into the kitchen. There was nothing Conner could say that she hadn’t already heard a million times before. Pa’s pissed. He wants to see you. He wants money. Same shit, different day and Haley was fed up.

  “I’m not sending him any more money, Conner. I won’t go see him and I don’t give a fart in the wind if he’s pissed. He can rot in jail for all I care. He should rot in jail for what he done to us.”

  “Will you just sit down and hear me out?” He went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, twisted off the top, took a long gulp and belched. “He knows our aunt died and left you some big ranch in Kimble County. He aims to have it for himself.”

  Haley snorted. “Not a chance in hell of that happening and you can tell him I said so.”

  Conner sat down beside her on the ratty couch. He traced a tiny scar over her right eyebrow with his index finger.

  “I remember the night he give you that,” Conner said, his almost dreamlike. “He was coming after me. You stepped in front of me, told me to run. I was five and you were eight. It was summer and we were on the road.”

  “Yeah. So?” Haley said with a shrug.

  “So he ain’t above doing worse and you know it.” He sighed and took another long pull on his beer. “Hell, he sent that asshole, Rafe Winslow, to live here so he could keep me in line.”

  Haley closed her eyes, shoulders slumped. “Is he the one who killed Snoop? Did he club my dog to death with an oak limb and leave him where my ranch hand’s children could find him?”

  “I don’t know, Hales,” Conner said. He looked her in the eye, something he never did when he
was lying. But he looked scared. “I can’t say he did or didn’t but I wouldn’t put it past him.” He reached out and touched her knee. “Please, Haley, just pay the old man off when he gets out so he’ll leave us both alone.”

  Haley stood slowly. Poor Conner. He actually believed a single payoff would get the old man out of their hair forever.

  “You don’t get it, Conner. He’ll never leave us alone. Not ever. Not ‘til he’s rotting in the grave. But I’m done with him, you hear me? He can make all the threats he wants but I won’t give him nothing. You tell him that and you tell him I said he can go to hell for all I care.”

  Chapter Nine

  Life moved on, the hours taken up with the daily routine of ranch life, but the pall cast over the ranch with Snoop’s death weighed heavily on everyone. Wyatt came and went as usual and their relationship was settling into a pleasant routine they both knew would eventually result in the merging of the two properties. Fat cows once more dotted the One-Eyed Jack’s pastures. Dooley taught Haley how to use the tractor and she planted a huge vegetable garden, working in it on a daily basis with Maria and the wives of the other ranch hands. But there was a heaviness in the air, a sense of anticipation, of dread. The place was an armed camp, the ranch hands going around with rifles in their trucks, pistols attached to their belts. Wyatt and Dooley had cleaned out the apartment over the roadhouse, and Maria had moved in with the children. All of a sudden, the laughter was gone from her life, replaced by a sense of some looming disaster. And still, nothing happened.

  Haley left the day to day running of the ranch to Dooley and concentrated on training her horses, spending countless hours with the new colt and working to condition Geronimo for the upcoming rodeo. Already, she had several customers—parents wanting her to teach their daughters to barrel race. She was disappointed that she had to turn down the parents’ requests for lessons. It would have been fun to have a bunch of kids running around the ranch but she couldn’t take the chance that innocent children would be around when the other shoe dropped. So she focused on conditioning her stallion and on racers wanting Geronimo to stand stud for their mares and waited. By the time the rodeo came to Austin, Geronimo was ready to race and the Dooley children were jumping out of their skin in anticipation of watching Haley in action.