Last Chance Cowboy Read online

  “That’s why you bought me ice cream?” Ava’s mouth turned down. “I didn’t even want to come today. I’m supposed to spend the night at Kaitlyn’s house and watch movies. Her mom doesn’t care how late we stay up.” She dumped the rest of her cone into the nearby trash can. “I’ll miss the birthday party. I can’t go with you!”

  “Wait. I didn’t mean this minute, Ava.”

  She voiced Jenna’s concern. “School isn’t even out for the summer. How could I move? I’d miss the end-of-year field trip and my class picnic and all my friends!” She jumped up from the bench they’d shared. “I won’t go with you!”

  In that same moment Jenna’s car swung back into the parking lot. Ava’s eyes brightened. Before Shadow could say another word, she’d bolted and was running across the pavement to her aunt’s SUV. She didn’t look back.

  * * *

  LYING ON THE bed Aunt Jenna had bought her, shut in her upstairs room at the house she loved in Shawnee Mission, Ava curled around the stuffed horse in her arms and held on tighter. Stormy was hers, now and forever. Someone—she couldn’t remember who—had given him to Ava when she was a baby. Well, she wasn’t a baby anymore, and no one could tell her to get rid of Stormy. She wouldn’t leave him behind. The adults, meaning her mother, shouldn’t be able to make Ava move to Barren as if she was still small enough, light enough, to just carry around or tuck into a stroller.

  Barren was little, and mostly rural, and even its name sounded weird to Ava. She preferred Kansas City. It was big and busy and full of fun things to do. She’d never spent more than a few hours at a time in Barren and that hadn’t been often.

  The only thing she liked about it were the ranches everywhere with horses eating grass in pretty green fields. What else did Barren have? There was no movie theater, no shopping mall other than the outdoor one with the ice cream shop where her mom had told her they were leaving Aunt Jenna’s house for good. Ava wished she’d said no to that cone with sprinkles and caramel.

  Wiping a tear from her face, she picked up her cell phone—a hand-me-down from Aunt Jenna this year so she could call for a ride home after soccer practice—then put it down again. How could she call Kaitlyn? Tell her she was practically being kidnapped?

  I won’t leave this house. I’ll lock my door and stay right here.

  She didn’t think Aunt Jenna would mind.

  Ava wasn’t as sure about Uncle David. He still wasn’t home from his trip, but he never had much to say to her, anyway.

  After arranging Stormy on the pillows, she scooted off the bed then padded down the stairs on bare feet. This couldn’t happen. She needed help.

  Her aunt was in the big, high-ceilinged family room that was usually sunny in the late afternoon. But the blinds were drawn over the wide windows that looked out onto the new swimming pool and Ava frowned.

  “Aunt Jenna?”

  She had the TV on, staring at the screen. Images danced across it, looking dimmer than they should because some light still leaked through the blinds. It took a moment for Ava to realize she was watching something they’d seen a hundred times. Finding Nemo. Once, that had been her favorite with her mom.

  Her aunt started. “Ava. Hi, sweetie.” She flicked the remote to shut off the sound, and Ava’s frown darkened. Her mother used that nickname and she didn’t want to think about her right now.

  “I like it here,” she said. “I don’t want to move.”

  “Oh.” When Aunt Jenna turned her head, Ava saw tears in her eyes as she patted the cushion beside her. “Let’s talk about that.”

  “Why can’t I stay with you?”

  Her aunt sighed. “I wish you could.”

  She leaned against Jenna’s side. “Just tell my mom.”

  “Ava, when you moved in with us, your mother needed a place to stay—a place that would be better for you than the apartment. I know you like your school here. You have your friends, but...”

  Ava watched the tears streak down her face. She laid her head on Aunt Jenna’s shoulder and felt her shake. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Just because I do,” she added.

  “Your mother has a home for you now. You’ll be closer to your grandmother there, and you won’t have to move again.”

  Ava tensed. “Live in Barren for the rest of my life?”

  Aunt Jenna looked into Ava’s eyes and seemed to pull herself together. She planted a soft kiss on Ava’s forehead, pulled back and smiled. “That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?”

  The smile seemed fake. “You didn’t like it there. You left.”

  “So did your mom. Now she’s home—and she needs you there with her.”

  “I don’t even know my grandmother,” she said.

  “You have a point.” This time her aunt’s smile looked real. “I can’t change that, but I’ve told your mother we need to talk again. I’ll see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  GREY HAD WAITED until tonight to call his father. As the legal owner of the ranch, Everett Wilson had a right to know about the loan Grey had been denied, about the rustlers too, and Grey gave him a full report, mentally holding his breath the whole time. When he’d finished, his dad asked to hear more about the missing cattle.

  “No suspects?”

  Grey settled deeper into the leather chair at the desk in the ranch office. Their father/son relationship had often been difficult. His parents’ divorce when he was eleven had made that worse. He and his older sister, Olivia, had grown up hearing angry words in person or by phone. Their mother had demanded allegiance, which Grey had balked at, preferring to spend as much time with his dad as possible, but Olivia remained closer to their mom. She still barely spoke to their dad. But Grey had been given the ranch to manage. To prove himself.

  “No suspects,” he said at last, staring at his boots, which were propped on the broad desktop and still bore the dirt of the day’s work. So did his shirt and jeans. He could use a shower and clean clothes, then some much-needed sleep. “I went over every inch of ground with Finn Donovan.”

  “Tire tracks?”

  “Yeah, but Finn tells me they’re standard issue for that truck’s model—if I even got that right. He made some casts. He’ll try to get a better read from the lab but it doesn’t look promising.”

  “Tell him to try harder.”

  “I’ve got a man on watch here. Finn’s going to send out a cruiser on regular patrol, see if they can spot any suspicious activity—or even that truck on the road again somewhere looking for more easy pickings.”

  His dad scoffed. Grey could almost see him running a hand through his thick but graying hair, the glint in the eyes Grey had inherited from him. “I’m not sure Finn Donovan is up to the job. I didn’t vote for him. As far as I’m concerned, the man hasn’t settled in at this point. No wonder a couple of broken-down cowpokes—if that’s who they are—are out stealing an honest man’s cattle.”

  “We don’t know who they are yet.” Grey lowered his legs from the desk.

  “I’ve put my trust in you. I don’t have another son to leave that ranch to. You need to get a handle on this, Grey.”

  This was his biggest fear: not merely disappointing his father when he’d handed over Wilson Cattle to Grey, but running the ranch, and their legacy, into the ground even before he became the official owner.

  He leaned on his elbows on the desk. The scarred but still-solid piece was an heirloom. Every stick of furniture in the house, every bale of hay in the barn, every horse and cow and bull that roamed these acres, were his to preserve, to hand on one day to the children he didn’t have yet. To defend.

  “I was doing fine—for three years—until the other night.”

  No, he thought, until he started losing money, Barney denied him the loan, and then Shadow had told him about the baby. Hearing about her par
ents’ reaction, her visit to Doc’s office, her decision to give up their child for adoption...he didn’t know what had changed her mind, though he was grateful she had, but Grey was still angry that he’d missed out on nine years of his daughter’s life. In some ways, it seemed worse that she’d been so close, within reach, all this time instead of with some anonymous family. Yet he’d been denied any chance to know her. He and Shadow would talk about that soon.

  In the background his father cleared his throat. “I’d hate to see you fail, Grey.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “Beyond the ranch’s survival, this town needs to know that we Wilsons are decent, God-fearing people...not murderers. You know that’s still some people’s opinion.”

  For some time after his father hung up, Grey sat and listened to the tick of the old grandfather clock in the corner. He pulled out his handkerchief and swiped at the dust on his boots. Jared Moran. He’d carried the past around for years like a heavy yoke with two water buckets dangling from his shoulders, forever weighing him down.

  He needed to prove to his father, the town of Barren and himself that he was worthy of Wilson Cattle. And, for Grey, that he wasn’t responsible for Jared’s death. If he wasn’t.

  He wondered what Finn Donovan had found in the file.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, when Grey marched into the sheriff’s office, the old case was far from his mind. The present had taken center stage.

  Barren was the Stewart County seat, and Finn’s headquarters occupied a small one-story building next to the town’s community complex, where the mayor, the senior center and the school board also had their offices. Grey shut the door from the parking area behind him, inhaling the aroma of fresh coffee in the air.

  As he’d told his father, he’d already met Finn to inspect the initial crime scene, and they’d gone over that list of ear-tag numbers with his foreman. The sheriff had promised to send deputies to scour the auction places within county borders. Unless Grey’s cattle had already been trailered to Montana or Idaho, the Dakotas or Wyoming, he might get lucky.

  Not so.

  “I lost a dozen more cattle last night,” he announced to the dispatcher, the desk sergeant and anyone else who happened to be around this early in the day. After he’d talked with his father, he’d felt tempted to take the watch on the hill instead of sending one of his ranch hands. He should have trusted his instincts. “Finn here?”

  “The sheriff is on the phone. I’ll page him.”

  Grey cooled his heels until the receptionist told him he could go in, then pushed through the swinging half door that separated the waiting area and front desk from the offices behind. There was an empty holding cell back there, too, and he wished the right someone were in that cell this morning.

  “Finn, something else has to be done—”

  He broke off. The sheriff was on the phone again. It nestled in the crook of his neck, and Finn held up a finger. At the unspoken command, Grey could hear his pulse pumping in his ears. He kept both hands braced on the desktop until, with a sigh, Finn hung up. “Now see what you’ve done. That was the mayor.”

  “Sorry to interrupt, but this is important.”

  Finn half smiled. “More important than the security detail at the county fair this summer?”

  Grey didn’t smile back. “For the first time in my life I won’t be going to any fair. We’ve always sent cattle to be judged, but the way things are going I won’t have any cows left.”

  Finn waved him toward a chair. “Sit down. Please.”

  “I may not have a ranch by then,” Grey went on, knowing he must sound like a raving lunatic. “Somebody cleaned out six of my best cows last night, five calves, and—would you believe?—a prize-winning bull that cost thousands.”

  Finn pulled a pad out from under a stack of file folders and a paper cup of coffee that sat on top of his messy desk then rifled through a drawer for a pen. “Let’s write up your statement.”

  “Again,” Grey said. “What are you doing to find these guys?”

  “Everything that can be done, but there’s not much to go on.”

  “A bunch of extra patrols won’t cut it. Obviously.”

  Finn sighed. “Those tire tracks didn’t exactly light up the state forensics lab, either. There must be hundreds of trucks like that with those same tires.”

  “I was about to call you anyway—ask about expanding the search for that truck even farther—when I got up this morning to a brief note from my new man telling me all those cattle were gone.”

  “Cody Jones.”

  “Yep.”

  Finn’s pen poised over the pad. “Twelve head of cattle, you say. The thieves must have cut the fence again.”

  “That’s what Cody said. But he claims he never saw the truck or those men—if they were even the same ones.” Grey ran a hand through his already rumpled hair. Before his first cup of coffee, he’d seen Cody’s note tacked to the kitchen door, then dressed in haste and left the house with his temper flying. “When I talked to him at the barn he insisted that he saw nothing.”

  “Fell asleep on the job, did he?”

  “That’s how it looks to me.” On his way into town Grey had thought again of letting Cody go but he was already short-handed, and he had a soft spot for the kid. Keeping watch was a lonely business; it could be hard for anyone to stay awake. “He says he’d spent the early part of the night before his watch having a few beers in town.”

  “What kind of man did you hire? You should consider assigning another hand to the job. I’m sorry about all this, Grey.” Finn twirled the pen between his fingers. “I’ll contact the other departments in the area, and I’ve already talked to the sheriff over in Farrier. Let’s see what turns up.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now.”

  Grey studied him for a long moment, but in his view that wasn’t all. And he remembered the original purpose of his trip to town before he’d learned about his missing cattle. He took a breath. “Did you get a chance to look at the case file on Jared Moran?”

  Finn shook his head. “Grey, I did—but I found nothing to justify reopening the case.”

  Grey’s jaw set. “Then I guess it’s up to me.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” Finn said. “I’m law enforcement here. If I could see any benefit to using the scarce resources I have to dig up the past, I would. But I can’t. You shouldn’t either. From what I read, you’re in the clear—you and everyone else involved—without further evidence to go on. Stick to watching out for your cattle, okay?”

  Grey tried to tamp down his disappointment. Then he realized that Finn hadn’t once looked him straight in the eye since he’d barged into his office. Was there something Finn wouldn’t tell him? He waited until the sheriff finally glanced up. “Sorry about the old case. And I’d like to do better about these thieves. I will. But there’s something else, outside my job, Grey, that I’d like to ask you about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Someone, actually,” Finn said. “Shadow.”

  Grey propped his hat on one knee, then switched it to the other. This wasn’t the first time Finn had tried to probe their relationship. Or, rather, nonrelationship.

  He came to attention in the hard-backed chair. “Shadow and I have a long history. I imagine you’ve picked up on that from people here in town. So, yeah, we used to have a thing. Then we broke up. She left Barren for reasons of her own and didn’t come home for ten years.”

  Finn’s gaze shifted. “She’s a fine person, Grey. Smart, pretty... I’d like to ask her to have dinner with me.”

  Grey plucked his hat from his knee, plunked it on his head and stood. “I can’t speak for Shadow. I wouldn’t if I could. She makes her own decisions.” One of them had been to leave years ago, another was to
never tell him about their child. He still wasn’t sure how to reconcile that. “I don’t need to know about anything between you and her,” he said and headed for the door. “Good luck.”

  * * *

  AFTER LEAVING FINN’S OFFICE, Grey decided to finish the rest of his errands another time. He’d spend this afternoon working at Wilson Cattle before his night watch. He opened the driver’s-side door of his truck and looked at the sleek sedan parked behind him and the rusted-out Chevy Nova with the peeling roof in front. Grey’s silver pickup was wedged in like a cow being funneled, nose to tail with the others in the herd, down a chute into a feedlot. There couldn’t be two inches of space in which to jockey his way out of his parking spot. He’d just resettled his hat on his head when someone bumped his shoulder and he turned.

  Grey had recognized that rusty Chevy. Derek Moran stood there, puffed up like a bantam rooster on the sidewalk in front of the Barren Cattlemen’s Bank.

  Derek grinned. “Looks like you’re caught between a rock and a hard place, Wilson. Wonder what the owner of that Mercedes will say when he comes out of one of these stores loaded with shopping bags and finds his shiny front bumper all dented in.”

  “There’s no one parked in front of you, Moran. Move your car.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  Grey tried to hold on to his temper. Tall, though not as tall as Grey, and strong, Derek had never been Grey’s favorite person, even when Grey and Shadow were dating. But he was still Shadow’s youngest brother, and Grey always tried to remember that. Grey slanted him a look. Derek wore a straw cowboy hat, a striped denim shirt and jeans.

  “You out job hunting this morning?”

  Derek’s grin stayed in place. “Nothing seems to suit my talents.”

  Grey stared at the pavement. The kid sounded just like his old man. Shadow’s dad had worked for Grey’s father off and on for a number of years, always quitting on some trumped-up excuse or because of an imagined offense, then coming back again when he got close to losing his house and postage-stamp-sized farm. The sad routine had made Grey’s dad furious.