Loving the Heartland

by Marjorie Jones

  Mason appeared in the opening. In one hand, he held a pistol. The other formed a fist at his side. There was no sign of Lenise or Casey. One slow step at a time, he moved toward Kendra. Michelle craned her neck to see around the truck. Mason kept moving until he was only a few feet away from Kendra.

  They stared at each other for a full minute, ticked away by Michelle’s heartbeat.

  “So, you think you got the balls to take me in? You ain’t the law. You’re nothing but a goddamn dyke who thinks she’s a man. You plan on taking me down?”

  Kendra nodded. “Yup.”

  “You think you’re going to take me alive?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed and the smile faded from his lips. “You’re not taking me anywhere.”

  Faster than she’d ever seen someone move, Mason raised his gun and fired at Kendra. He missed and Kendra returned the blast, but not before Mason ducked behind the fender of his truck. He fired again and this time, Kendra fell to the ground. Half-crawling, half-dragging one leg, Kendra took cover behind a large rock. Brad opened fire from his perch on the opposite hill. Mason fired back.

  Blood dripped to the ground next to Kendra’s leg. Michelle bit her lip until she tasted her own blood. Kendra grimaced and tied her red bandana around her thigh.

  Shots continued to fill the air and Kendra motioned for Michelle to get down. Michelle fell to her bottom and put her hands over her head. Kendra was hit. Brad was in the line of fire. Her life was in danger and all she could do was to hide behind a tree? Tears burned behind her closed eyelids.

  Metallic echoes hung in the air between the rock canyon walls, intensified by the canopy of trees. Then a silence descended over the hillside, deafening and fragile in the emptiness.

  Strong hands grabbed Michelle from behind. Kicking her legs, she struggled. Hot breath touched her cheek. A vaguely familiar voice whispered. “Knock it off. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Jack. The new hand from the ranch.

  Michelle’s heart beat in her chest like it might explode as the blood chilled in her veins.

  “Mason? You ‘bout done?” Kendra called into the stillness. Her voice was tense, as though she gritted her teeth.

  “Not on your life, you bitch. You’re going to pay for everything you ever cost me!”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Mason? You brought all this on yourself. Let it end here. Give it up.”

  “Your family killed my father!” Mason screamed. “Do know what it’s like to watch your mother die inside, for weeks on end, and then find her –” Mason’s voice cracked again, this time hard enough to make him stop speaking for a moment. “Find her dead? Do you?!” he bellowed.

  “I had nothing to do with that. I’m sorry it happened, but you can’t keep doing this.”

  “Bull shit! It was your fault! Your goddamned lawsuit telling all those lies about my father! You left us with nothing! You left me with nothing!”

  “What do you want me to do about that?” Kendra returned, glancing to Brad’s position in the stand of trees.

  Jack’s arm stretched forward and Michelle followed the length to a gun held firmly in a rugged, experienced grip. The barrel pointed in Kendra’s direction.

  “What do I want you to do?” Mason laughed. “I want you to die!”

  Mason stood, coming into clear view as though he were invincible. He rushed toward Kendra’s hiding place, his gun gripped tightly in his hand, pointed forward.

  Jack loosened his grip around Michelle’s mouth. “Kendra!” she screamed.

  Kendra leapt to her feet, wincing at the pain in her injured leg, and leveled her gun at Mason.

  Jack shoved Michelle to the ground and she hit her knees hard on the rugged earth just as a gunshot tore from the barrel of his gun. The deafening sound ricocheted from one rocky hillside to the other and sent dizzying waves through Michelle’s stomach. When she finally regained her feet, Jack was gone.

  She searched for Kendra and found Jack standing over Mason’s body where’d he fallen within a couple of feet of Kendra. Mason twitched once and then became still.

  In fact, it seemed as though the earth stood still. The breeze stopped and the branches of the trees seemed to freeze. A moment later, a soft wind blew through the branches and a hawk called from somewhere in the blue.

  Michelle rushed down the hill, falling twice before she reached Kendra. Kendra lost her balance when Michelle hit her, arms wide, but steadied when she closed her arms around her. “You fool. You crazy, stubborn fool.” She kissed every part of Kendra she could reach.

  Kendra released her and moved carefully in the direction of Mason’s body. Blood – a lot of blood – pooled in the dirt. It looked black as it formed a layer of thick, macabre mud.

  When she reached Mason’s body, she picked up his gun and tossed it out of reach. “He’s dead,” she confirmed, her voice shaking with a high pitch Michelle had never heard before. She looked at Jack and squinted. “You want to tell me just what the hell is going on here? Jack?”

  Jack smiled, as he turned to Michelle. “I’m sorry I frightened you, ma’am. I couldn’t risk you making noise that would alert the suspect.” He turned back to Kendra. “Ma’am? My name is Jack, but it’s not Robert Jackson. It’s Jackson Ghirardelli. Like the chocolate, but I’m not quite as sweet. I’m a special agent with the Utah Bureau of Investigations. We’ve been working with the feds for the last couple of years, trying to build a case against that particular piece of happiness, right there.” He indicated Mason’s lifeless body with a slight movement of his head. “It may not seem like it, but we take land grabs and rustling just as seriously now as we did a hundred years ago.”

  “Yeah, well you could’ve fooled me.”

  Shrill sirens in the distance sliced the quiet.

  Michelle glanced around the tree line and asked, “Where’s Brad?”

  “Brad?” Kendra yelled suddenly, her voice as frightened as a child. There was no response.

  “He was on the hill, over there,” Michelle pointed in the direction of Brad’s perch. “Where you left him...”

  “Brad?!” Kendra called again.

  This time, when there was no answer, Kendra pulled away from Michelle’s embrace and limped toward the embankment. She pulled herself slowly up the loose dirt and growth while Michelle found she couldn’t move. She couldn’t force her legs to take even a single step.

  Kendra grunted and hissed as she climbed another step and the pain in those sounds, both physical and emotional, ripped Michelle away from her terrified roots. She hurried to Kendra’s side and helped her up the final two excruciating steps.

  Sun filtered through the branches of the trees and created a dappled golden light in the underbrush. Brad looked like he might have fallen asleep there, surrounded by moist, fragrant earth. His face wasn’t tormented like Ken Bastian’s had been. His eyes were closed and his lashes fell like soft fans against his cheeks.

  Kendra stood silently for what seemed like minutes but couldn’t have been more than a second or two before she fell onto her knees beside her brother. Her cry came like a wounded animal; harsh and guttural. It ripped from her entire body, each pore contributing to the emptiness of the sound. “No!”

  Michelle fell to the damp earth beside Kendra, unsure how to hold someone whose entire heart had turned to a vortex of swirling agony. It had been different with Brad last night. She wasn’t in love with Brad. As Kendra’s heart tore into millions of jagged pieces, so did Michelle’s.

  The ground on which they knelt was soaked with blood. The realization choked her as her gaze fell on the wound in Brad’s side. He’d bled out on the hillside, but he’d never cried out; never called for help.

  Kendra picked up her brother’s head and shoulders and cradled him in her lap, her own blood soaking into Brad’s hair and staining his cheek. Her shoulders shook with each sob she released until she sat in statue-like stillness.

  “Breathe, baby,�
� whispered Michelle. “You have to breathe.”

  “Kendra Williams, I swear to God, one of these days I’m going to kick your ass!” Mac huffed his way to where they sat and bellowed through his trembling, thick jowls. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if you are a woman. You and your brothers were supposed to wait for us!”

  Mac’s words vanished in an echo as he apparently noticed his son-in-law’s body cradled in Kendra’s arms.

  “We couldn’t risk it, Mac.” Kendra seemed to come out of a trance, placing Brad gently back on the soft ground and then struggling to her feet as she wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  The sound of shuffling gravel broke the quiet. Casey limped from the mine shaft opening. Blood soaked his shirt and hands, streaming from a gash near his forehead that matted his hair. Brent reached him just in time to catch him before he fell. “Mason...”

  Michelle and Mac rushed to his side, Kendra supported between them.

  “We got him, Case. Take it easy, now,” Kendra said from between gritted teeth as she knelt on her good knee beside him.

  Casey gripped Mac’s hand until his knuckles shown white through his own blood. His brows narrowed and he stared first at Brent and then at his sister. “Don’t let him... go ... don’t let him, ahhh God, this freakin’ hurts.”

  “He’s not going anywhere. He’s dead, Case. Hang on. Help is coming.”

  Mac tried to pull his hand free. “Let go, Casey. I’ve got to find Lenise. Where’s Lenise?”

  Casey wouldn’t let go of Mac’s hands. “Don’t go...”

  “Casey, where is my daughter? Where is she?”

  Mac tried to shove away from the group and head to the opening of the mine. Brent reappeared at the mouth of the mine and intercepted him before he could duck through the low entrance.

  “No, Mac. You don’t want to go in there, man.”

  “Where is my daughter?” Mac’s voice was whiskey rough and pain driven.

  Casey seemed to struggle with his ability to speak. His Adam’s apple bounced against the weight of the words he couldn’t form. His lips parted, but nothing came out.

  “I tried to get to her, Mac,” Casey whispered. He sounded as if he couldn’t breathe, like his throat closed over the words. “I was too late. I’m sorry.”

  Mac tore himself loose from Casey’s grip and rushed into the mine. In the next moment, a bellow made that much more ghostly by the tight walls of the mine ripped across the soft morning breeze.

  Time stood still until Mac stumbled out of the mine entrance, his hands covered in dark crimson. He smeared the blood onto his vest before twining his fingers into his hair. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Went too far,” he mumbled, his voice higher than normal. Panicked.

  “What are you saying? What went too far?” Kendra’s tone held a note of suspicion; a thread of knowledge she didn’t want to admit.

  “Nobody... nobody was supposed to get... hurt.”

  “Mac?” Michelle whispered. “No.”

  “You? You knew?” Kendra’s voice grew hard, filled with pain that reminded Michelle of an injured child.

  Until he moved, Michelle had forgotten Chuck was there. He approached Mac with quick strides as he pulled a set of silver handcuffs from the belt on his waste. He holstered his handgun at the same time. Taking one of Mac’s hands from the top of his head, he attached one cuff. “Sheriff Mac Lawrence, you’re under arrest for conspiracy, filing false police reports, evidence tampering, theft of property exceeding ten thousand dollars, destruction of personal property in excess of ten thousand dollars, aggravated assault, animal cruelty, arson and the murders of Kennedy Bastian and Lenise Lawrence Williams.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kendra heaved a bale of hay from the loft onto the barn floor. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her leg. It wasn’t anything serious, apparently. More like a graze than a gunshot. She’d hurt herself worse branding calves. If she could work through that, she could work through this. The horses didn’t stop eating just because her family was dying.

  She’d spent the last four days coming to terms with who she was; who she was supposed to be. She’d used her new computer to look up newspaper articles about Mason’s family. His mother hadn’t been able to handle the publicity surrounding the trial. Kendra had been too involved in her own life to notice, apparently. She remembered seeing the woman at the court appearances, but of course, had never spoken to her. She remembered seeing her son, as well. He’d only been a teenager then. For some reason, Kendra had always thought Mason was older than her, but he was younger by five years. Only seventeen at the time of the trial, he’d changed greatly over the intervening years. Hate and greed could do that to a person, she supposed.

  Still, Kendra had been so wrapped up in pleasing the state, suing the charter company so she could keep the kids together – with her – she hadn’t been more than passively concerned about the other family. If she’d only known...

  Would she have done anything differently? Would she have stopped the lawsuit? Worked out a settlement that everyone could live with? She didn’t know, she realized as she tossed another bale over the edge of the loft. And now, it was too late.

  For all of them.

  Mac had been on Mason’s payroll the whole time. The essence of the literary inside man. Not only had he not taken her reports seriously, he’d altered them. People who mattered in Randall County, from the Mayor to the judge, had believed she was just a crazy old rancher with too many conspiracy theories and not enough wits to fill a thimble. They knew better now.

  Mac’s greed had cost him everything and nearly cost her everything. With Mason gone, people were prepared to make an example out of him. Murders committed in the commission of other felonies made everyone culpable, whether they’d pulled the trigger or not. Mac hadn’t pulled the trigger on Ken Bastian or on his own daughter, but the prosecutors were going to do their damnedest to see that he paid for their deaths as though he had.

  Kendra wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about that—

  “Crap!” Michelle’s voice rang from the lower level, ripping Kendra out of one nightmare and placing her foursquare into another.

  Michelle.

  Kendra closed her eyes, pulled off her work gloves and placed her hands on her hips. After a cleansing breath that didn’t clean a damn thing, she looked over the edge. Michelle stood in the middle of the barn, almost exactly where Casey had built the water boarding contraption. She wore a pair of jeans that hugged every curve of her hips and thighs, a sleeveless, ribbed t-shirt and boots. Her hair was as wild as that first day she’d arrived, when she’d spent hours driving through the desert with the top down on her Mustang. Only now, the wildness was more natural, coming from the fact that she had grown to be a part of this place. Almost a real cowgirl.

  “You coming in for lunch, honey?” Michelle asked.

  The diminutive sliced through Kendra’s heart. She gritted her teeth again. Pain was pain. Didn’t matter it if was her leg or her heart. “No.”

  “You have to eat something.”

  “No, I don’t. I’m fine. I have work to do.”

  “You’ve been out here for days, Kendra. How much work can there possibly be? You need to come inside and spend some time with your family. This isn’t healthy, and you know it.”

  “Healthy?” Kendra asked, scoffing even as her heart was breaking. “Healthy? You think I give a shit if it’s healthy?”

  “You need to grieve, Kendra. We’ve suffered a huge loss, and—”

  “We? We’ve suffered a loss?” Kendra threw her gloves onto the nearest bale and marched down the back stairs as quickly as she could. The pain in her leg shot through her entire side with each step but still didn’t measure close to pain in her gut. “He was like a son to me, my brother. I was like his mother. Now, I’ve never had a kid of my own, so I can’t be sure, but you can’t tell me that losing a child could hurt any worse than this. So don’t give me
any crap about grieving and loss. Nothing will make this better. Nothing.”

  “I didn’t mean...” Michelle’s lip quivered. “I just meant that you might need some help getting through this. Counseling maybe, or at least let us help. Let your family help you heal.”

  “You’re not my family. And I don’t need any help. Not from them, and not from you.”

  How could she let them help her heal? How could ever allow herself to heal? How could she ever not hurt again when her brother, and his wife, and his baby were all dead; nearly buried? How could she go on loving Michelle, loving the Heartland, when she had failed all of them so miserably?

  “Go away, Michelle. Go back to Las Vegas and your real life. There is nothing left for you here.”

  “You’re here,” she whispered, her voice trailing off into a future past that didn’t exist anymore.

  “No, I’m not. Not anymore.”

  

  Blue skies covered the world in a misleading canopy of pure light and joy. Birds danced about the sky as they raced from the branches of one Russian Olive tree to another. Somewhere in the distance, water sped over the rocks lining the Randall River. Michelle forced one foot in front of the other over the damp grass of the Randall City Cemetery.

  It was done.

  Kendra refused her offer to help her get back to the car. They hadn’t shared more than three words since the fight. For three days, Kendra had been more than withdrawn; she’d been non-existent. At first, Michelle had assumed it had to do with her injuries, or with Casey’s. Casey had been released from the hospital just this morning, while Kendra had never been admitted. Both of them would be fine with some rest. At least, physically.

  Lacey attended the funeral in a wheelchair for no other reason than her doctor insisted. Even now, she fussed at the nurse Kendra had hired to help her for the day.

  Michelle glanced back at the two graves flanked with matching mounds of dirt covered in cheap indoor-outdoor carpeting. The caskets, one gunmetal grey and the other a pink so soft that it looked white in sunlight, would soon be lowered into the ground and covered. It was so... final. Unchangeable.