Branded

by Vivian Vaughan

  “Trev—” She stared from Hunter to Wes Hardin and back, then searched behind them. “Where’s Trevor?” A premonition, heavy and hot, left her weak in the stomach. “Where is he?”

  Before she finished speaking Hunter had taken her in his arms. He walked her backwards into the house, beckoning Wes Hardin. “Come on in, Hardin. You can tell them better than me.”

  “Tell us what?” Panic mushroomed inside Jacy, stirred like sour milk in her weak stomach. “Where is Trevor?”

  “Safe, we hope,” Hardin said. “Selman was hot on his trail.”

  “Constable Selman? How did he know Trevor was…?” Her words drifted off when she realized Hunter had turned her loose and was advancing with purposeful strides across the sod floor toward Drummond. Puzzled, her senses a jangle, Jacy watched her brother come to a halt in front of their father, hands on hips.

  “You tell her, Pa.”

  “Tell me what?” Jacy reached them.

  Drummond glared at Hunter.

  “Tell her how Selman found Trev,” Hunter demanded again. “You did it. You tell her why.”

  “Papa didn’t— He couldn’t—”

  “Damn right he did,” Hunter barked. “Didn’t you, Drummond? You didn’t go feed those gators. You went looking for Selman. You told him exactly where to find Trevor.”

  “So what? He’s an escaped murderer. It’s my civic duty.”

  Jacy stifled a scream with her fist. She bit down on her knuckles so hard they hurt.

  “Civic duty, hell.” Hunter was fuming. “Trevor’s no escaped murderer, but of course you know that. You know exactly who killed Ana Bowdrie, don’t you?”

  “Trevor Fallon.”

  “That’s hogwash. You’ve covered up your tracks for years, but now we’re both out of prison. You bastard. How could you have done it? How could you have let your son go to prison, almost hang, for a murder you committed.”

  Jacy’s scream bounced off the adobe walls. The room whirled. In the next minute, she was on her knees before Drummond. Vaguely she was aware of the family gathered around, behind her, behind Drummond.

  “You couldn’t have done that, Papa. Not you. You wouldn’t—” But even as she spoke, she saw the connection. Right down to his loss of mind. If he had done so despicable a thing, he would have had to lose his mind. How could he have—

  Hunter hovered above them. “Trevor sure as hell called that one, Jacy.” She heard defeat in his voice. “He told me exactly how you would react.”

  Jacy looked up at him. “Me? How?”

  “Defending Drummond.”

  “I’m not defending— I mean…” Oh, God, this was a nightmare. A real one.

  Hunter’s blue eyes bore into hers with an emotion she read as disgust. Disgust, from the brother she had loved so long and hard, worked to free so long and hard. “Hunter, I—”

  “Even before we knew Selman got wind of his trail, Trevor was leaving the country today.”

  “Leaving? He wouldn’t leave. We were…”

  “That’s about the first thing he told me,” Hunter added, his voice no less angry. “He was never going to see you again, or any of us, because he knew if this were true, if Drummond were truly guilty, it would tear your world apart. He decided to get the hell out, keep the price on his own head, rather than have you hurt again.”

  Tear her world apart? Didn’t he know? She told him last night. Why hadn’t he believed her? “But, Hunter, I love him.”

  “Who, Jacy? Who do you love? Drummond or Trevor?”

  “Trevor!” Of course, Trevor. Always, Trevor. Forever. Guilty or innocent. Whether he slept with Ana Bowdrie a hundred thousand times. She loved Trevor Fallon.

  “He loves you too,” Hunter added. “He said that was why he was leaving.” He glared at Drummond. “He didn’t quite get the chance.”

  Jacy jumped to her feet. “Where is he?”

  Hunter never took his eyes from Drummond. “You think I’d tell you around this old man? Give him another chance to betray my friend?”

  Jacy turned back to Drummond, who sat stoically, chin tipped at a defiant tilt, staring vacantly toward the door. Panic lodged in her throat. Drummond wouldn’t relent, she knew him that well. They might never get the truth out of him. And did she want to hear it?

  Yes! No, not want to hear it, needed to hear it. To save Trevor. Anything to save Trevor.

  Drummond still stared into near space. He knew what he was doing. He would have known when he turned Trevor in to expect a confrontation. Confrontations never bothered him. He always came out the winner. Well, this time he wouldn’t, Jacy vowed.

  “It’s time for the truth, Papa. I can’t believe you killed Ana. You were so fond of her.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Well, you sure set the killing in motion, didn’t you old man?” Hunter demanded.

  Drummond glanced up, his eyes sharp with fury. “I had to get that worthless bastard scum away from my daughter.”

  Jacy gasped. “What?”

  “I didn’t kill Ana,” Drummond continued as though she had never spoken.

  “What did you do?” Jacy demanded. “The truth, Papa. We deserve the truth.”

  His shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly. “Ana and I planned it together. She wrote that letter to Trevor, asking him to stop by to discuss a problem with my candidacy. Then she wrote a note to you—”

  Jacy turned from Drummond to Hunter.

  “Tell her,” Drummond demanded. “You had a hand in this, too.”

  “The letter I received was addressed to you, Jacy,” Hunter admitted. “I wouldn’t have been suspicious if I hadn’t seen Trevor’s message. It looked too much like a set-up.” He glared at his father. “I knew someone wanted you to catch Trevor at Ana’s house. No doubt who that was.”

  Jacy had never felt so sick. For five long years she had blamed herself for flirting and teasing Trevor, certain if she had kept her distance, he would have left and Ana Bowdrie would never have been killed. Hunter would never have been convicted of a crime he couldn’t have committed.

  As far as Trevor went, she had never been able to believe in his innocence. Never. And now she learned the bitter truth. She was to blame. To blame for Trevor’s fate, as well as for Hunter’s. More so for Trevor’s, though, because Hunter chose to go in her stead to Ana Bowdrie’s house.

  She glared at her father, struggling to contain her hurt, her anger, her hatred. But the truth was, she didn’t know whom to be angry with, whom to hate—her father or herself.

  “There was never anything between Trevor and Ana, Jacy. Never. He had never set foot in her house until that day.”

  “But those other letters,” she cried.

  “I don’t know anything about them. What did Trev say?”

  “He didn’t know anything about them, either. He swears to this day he had never seen them before the trial.”

  The siblings turned to Drummond.

  “Those letters came later,” the old man admitted sharply. “After everything fell apart. After you were charged with murder, damn you. You, my son. How did I know you didn’t do it?”

  Hunter tossed his head back, glared at the ceiling, lips pursed. “You could have believed me.”

  “Didn’t I hire you a lawyer?”

  Jacy watched Hunter struggle with his temper. He and Drummond had never gotten along. She had hoped with the trouble behind them, things would be different. But the trouble wasn’t behind them. Far from it.

  Now, she wasn’t sure what to hope for. Except to clear Trevor before he was sent back to prison— or got shot evading arrest.

  “How could the letters have come later?” Hunter was demanding. “Ana was dead later.”

  Drummond glanced away again, lips pursed, arms crossed defiantly across his chest. Then Jacy knew.

  “Abbie wrote them.” She spoke without consciously considering the facts, but it had to be true. Drummond didn’t confirm it, but stared off, defiant.

  �
�Abbie who?” Hunter mused.

  “Abbie who saw it all. She was Ana’s neighbor.”

  “Oh, that one. I never knew the connection. Were they sisters or something?”

  “No connection,” Drummond said. “Except in the profession. They came up with those names as sort of a joke.”

  “Abbie was sent away so she couldn’t testify,” Jacy explained. “Her life was threatened. According to her, by Trevor—but I suspect it was by the Selectors.”

  “Those bastards!” Drummond barked.

  “They hated you enough to frame your son. Did they kill Ana?”

  Drummond hurrumphed. “I doubt it. They’re gutless wonders to a man of them!”

  “Abbie’s the one who came forward this week and swore under oath that you were innocent,” Jacy told Hunter. “That’s how you got pardoned.” She thought of the grand house filled with their mother’s furniture and decided to save that for later. More pressing matters faced them now.

  “What did she swear to?” Hunter wanted to know.

  “That you arrived after the murder.” Jacy took a deep breath. Even though it must be a lie, it still pained her to say the words. “That Trevor murdered Ana. That he was seeing Ana regularly.”

  “That’s a damn lie, Jacy.”

  “I know.” She thought back to Gila Bend, to the fear and dread, to how she treated Trevor, wanting to disbelieve the lies, but not entirely able to.

  “Oh, God, Papa, what is the truth? Who knows it?”

  Hunter glared at Drummond. “Out with it.”

  Drummond shrugged. “My simple plan failed. You stuck your nose into the wrong beehive and got stung. That scum Fallon murdered Ana and they set you up to get rid of me.”

  “Trevor did not!” Despair flooded Jacy, filling all the soft and wonderful places that only a short time before joy had filled. An unholy mess, she recalled thinking their problems. Well, it had just gotten worse. Worse than she could ever have imagined. And Trevor was in grave danger.

  “They?” Hunter was challenging. “Who the hell are they? Who killed Ana?”

  “Who were they?” Drummond echoed. “Like Sis said, the Selectors. Ernst, Halloway, Langstrom.” He named political opponents, including the judge who had presided over the trial. “They were afraid I would sell the territory down the river. Didn’t want to join the Union as part of New Mexico.”

  “Tom said the same thing,” Jacy recalled.

  “That’s awful thin grounds for murder,” Hunter hissed.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Drummond barked. “But I don’t know who killed Ana.” The ring of defeat in his voice was convincing, or would have been, Jacy thought, if so many lies had not preceded it.

  “What about the other letters? The ones found in Trevor’s cabin?”

  “They were intended to set the case against Fallon,” Drummond admitted. “It was Tom’s idea. An attempt to save Hunter.”

  “Tom Guest?” Hunter quizzed.

  “Tom is a special friend of Miss Abbie Brownley’s. He helped get you pardoned,” she added absently, her mind on Abbie and the letters.

  “At what cost?” Hunter wanted to know.

  “Nothing. Except I told him Trevor was dead. It was an accident, really. Trevor and I had gone to the ranch for answers.” She started to tell him about Tom owning the ranch, but at this point that seemed superfluous. “We spent the night up at the cabin. The next morning Tom and a couple of cowhands rode up. Trevor hid and I told them a bounty hunter had come in and killed him.”

  “This is making less and less sense,” Hunter admitted. “But I’m sure you had your reasons for lying to Tom. So, with Trevor dead, they figured interest in the case would die, too.”

  “We also had to have a doctor certify that Papa had lost his mind, no hope of recovering.” She looked to Wes Hardin. “Mr. Hardin helped us out there. Again. You see, Hunter, before we left Arizona, Papa signed papers swearing that neither he nor any Kimble would ever cross the territorial lines again.”

  “What about the ranch?”

  She took a deep breath. “Tom has it. Owns it. He said he bought it from Clem Spence.”

  Hunter glared at Drummond, silent for a moment. “Time for you to get this off your chest, old man,” he said finally, in a quieter, emotionless tone.

  “I don’t have anything on my chest.”

  “Then you won’t mind spending the rest of your life locked away in Yuma Prison, will you. I can give you tips on how to survive.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I most certainly would dare. You did.”

  “I had no choice,” Drummond explained in a suddenly tired voice. “You would never hang. That much they assured me, after they made me sign over all property and the promise never to return.”

  Hunter expelled a heavy breath. “Why did they hate you so much?”

  “Like I said, I was a threat.”

  “To everyone,” Hunter replied bitterly. “Even to your children.”

  “I wanted what was best for you.” He squinted at Jacy. “For both of you.”

  “What you thought was best,” Hunter corrected.

  “If I’d known how things would have turned out, I would have found another way to get rid of that worthless scum.”

  “You wanted to control us, Papa,” Jacy accused. “No wonder you lost your mind. You always controlled everyone and everything around you. And here you suddenly had to sign away all control over your own life.”

  “I loved you, both,” he objected. “Enough to want you to find a decent husband, Sis. And enough to give up all I had to keep Hunter from hanging.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” Hunter scoffed.

  Earlier, even an hour before, Jacy would have chided him for treating Drummond with such scorn. She couldn’t count the times she had tried to patch things up between them. But now she realized how Drummond had controlled, or tried to, their every move. Now nothing mattered except saving Trevor.

  She knelt again before Drummond, taking his spotted old hands in hers. “If you didn’t kill Ana, you know who did, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Not really, no.”

  “Abbie never told you?”

  He shook his white head.

  “What do you think she saw?”

  He shrugged again, this time without speaking.

  “She didn’t see Trevor kill Ana?”

  He didn’t deny it. He simply refused to answer.

  “Then who, damnit?” Hunter demanded. He had squatted on his heels beside Jacy.

  “Even if she never told you, you have a good idea, don’t you, Papa?”

  Seconds passed before he answered. “After what you saw and heard in Arizona, yes.”

  “Please tell us.”

  “So you can go save that worthless scum…”

  “So I can save Trevor. I love him, Papa. He’s a good man. You never gave him a chance to prove it.”

  “White trash, that’s what he is.”

  “Poor,” she corrected. “Like us now. Like you were when you started out, if I remember the stories. Whether you tell us or not, I’m leaving. I’m going to be with Trevor, regardless whether he is ever cleared or not. We’ll live on the run, as long as we can. I will never leave him again.”

  Drummond narrowed his eyes, but they were sharp. Not with anger now, but with something she couldn’t name. She had the strangest feeling she had finally gotten through to him, that he finally realized she would put another man, a man he hated, above him.

  “She’s dead serious, Pa.”

  “And dead, she’ll be, too.”

  “That’s all right,” she answered calmly. “I won’t desert Trevor, not again. Even if it means dying with him. Whatever time he has left, I intend to share every minute of it.”

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Sis. You never were—”

  “The last five years got into me, Papa. In spite of what you did to mess up our lives, we’re going to straighten things ou
t, with or without your help. We’re going to live life as we choose from now on. You can help or not. I don’t care anymore.”

  She rose and turned to Wes Hardin. Behind her Hunter tried again.

  “Who knows who killed Ana, Pa? Tell us where to start.”

  “Tom,” Drummond said.

  Jacy froze in place as Drummond finally opened up.

  “And Abbie. Jacy guessed right. Abbie wrote those other letters,” he admitted.

  “That damned Abbie,” Jacy swore. “She was lying all the time. At least she got you pardoned,” she said to Hunter, “but everything she said was a lie.”

  “I don’t understand any of this. Why Tom?” Hunter asked. “He was seeing Ana as much as you. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “He wasn’t seeing Ana,” Drummond barked. “He just stabled his horse over there, so no one would get wise to him seeing so much of Abbie.”

  “Why wouldn’t he want anyone to know about Abbie?”

  “He was married,” Drummond explained, as though to a child.

  “Why would he pretend to be seeing Ana instead of Abbie?”

  “Like most women, Oleta didn’t care how many whores Tom slept with, just so he didn’t appear to be serious about one of them. Tom didn’t want Oleta to get wise to how much he was seeing Abbie.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Jacy retorted. If Trevor had slept with Ana one time it would have hurt her. Just thinking that it had occurred had nearly driven her crazy. If she were a wife, she would certainly care.

  “The old double standard,” Hunter explained. “Doesn’t matter how much the man fools around, just so he doesn’t get too close to anyone but his wife. If Tom and Drummond were sharing the same woman, how serious could that be, Oleta would reason.”

  Jacy watched Hunter while he spoke. His eyes were on Mari, and she would have known, even if Trevor hadn’t told her, that Hunter had never been unfaithful to his wife.

  “So what does Tom know?” Hunter asked.

  “Who killed Ana,” Drummond said. “I’d stake the ranch on it, if I had one. Tom was the one worked out the letters, those extras we planted in the cabin.”