Calder Pride (35 page)

A
dusting of stars threw their silver sparkle across the dark sky as night settled over the rugged and broken country of the Circle Six. The smell of wildness came from those tangled hills, carried on the wind’s cool breath.

Comfortably cradled on Logan’s lap, Cat felt only the heat radiating from his body as they shared one of the rocking chairs on the front porch. Quint was in his room, sound asleep, giving them some rare time to themselves.

“Dad’s flying to Miles City at the end of the week to attend a livestock association meeting.” Cat idly ran her fingers through Logan’s hair, disturbing its smoothness. “I thought I might ride along, and do some shopping, maybe pick up a couple of chairs for the living room and get rid of that old platform rocker.”

He drew his head back, raising one eyebrow. “What’s wrong with the rocker?”

Cat looked him straight in the eye. “It’s ugly.”

“It’s a little nicked and worn.”

“A little?” she scoffed.

“All right, more than a little. Just the same, you’d better hold off replacing it for a while. After buying the mower, we can’t really afford to get anything else right now.” He rubbed a hand over the curve of her hip.

“That’s not a problem.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’ll buy it myself. I do have some money of my own.”

“Good. You can save it to pay for our kids to go to college.”

This time it was Cat who drew back to look at him, more amused than annoyed by his attitude. “For your information, Logan, I happen to have more than enough money in my trust fund to do just that. There is absolutely no reason not to use the income from it to buy some of the things we need.”

“And there is absolutely no reason you can’t wait a couple months until we can afford it.” His tone of voice was just a little too firm for her liking.

“Let me see if I have this straight.” Falsely calm, she sat upright. “It’s all right for me to buy something as long as it’s with your money.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.” Eluding the hands that tried to hold her, Cat swung off his lap and moved away.

“There is nothing wrong with that rocker, Cat. It’s solid and well-built.” He stood up.

She wheeled to face him. “It’s ugly.”

“Then throw a damned blanket over it.”

“Now, wouldn’t that look lovely.”

Reining in his anger, Logan strove for patience. “Cat, I don’t want to get into a fight over this.”

“That’s too bad, because it’s exactly what we’re going to do.” She folded her arms high and tight across her breasts.

“Damn it, I didn’t marry you for your money.”

“Well, you’ve got it. In case it hasn’t sunk in yet, when you married Cat Calder, you didn’t get just me—you got my family, my friends, and my money. You can’t take what you want and throw the rest away.”

“I’m not throwing it away.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You want me, but you don’t want anything to do with my money. Therefore, you don’t want me to have anything to do with it, either. Don’t you know how archaic that sounds?”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” he said tightly.

Cat widened her eyes. “Oh? What would you call it? A little too much pride, maybe?”

“Look who’s talking about pride,” Logan countered as the sharp jangle of the telephone cut across his words. “I’ll get that,” he muttered, spinning on his heel and striding into the house.

In less than three minutes, he was back, his hat pushed squarely on his head and car keys in his hand. “There’s a grass fire ten miles south of Blue Moon. The wind’s whipping it straight toward town. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

The news pushed aside their unresolved argument. “A fire. Logan, I—” She took a step toward him.

He turned, catching her by the arms. “Buy the damned chair. Buy fifty chairs if that’s what you want.”

“You’re too late. I’ve already decided to look at samples of upholstery fabric, maybe try my hand at refinishing the wooden arms on the platform chair. There really isn’t anything wrong with the way it’s constructed.”

“It’s just ugly.” His smile was quick and warm.

“Very ugly. But I am buying the fabric to recover it—maybe even a coffee table,” Cat warned.

“I can live with that,” he told her. “But I’m not sure I could live without you.” He kissed her once, lightly, thought about kissing her again, but it was difficult enough stopping with one. He ran down the steps to the patrol car.

Cat watched until the headlights stabbed into the darkness of the ranch lane. Looking to the southeast, she noticed a black smudge staining the starred sky, possibly smoke from the fire. But the ranch was too far away for any glow from the flames to be seen. It seemed an odd time of year to have a prairie fire. The spring rains had been scarce, but Cat hadn’t realized conditions had gotten that dry.

With a slightly confused sigh, she went back inside the house and turned a critical eye on the platform rocker, trying to visualize it covered in different colors and patterns. For a few moments, she toyed wickedly with the idea of lacquering the wooden arm a vivid scarlet and upholstering the rest of it in royal purple, with hot orange accents. Logan might not like it so well then.

Ideas about redoing it floated through her mind even after she picked up a Michener epic she had started a couple weeks ago. It was almost midnight before Cat put the book down and accepted that Logan wouldn’t be home any time soon. She reached up to turn out the lamp. The instant her fingers touched the knob, the lights went out—both the one in the hallway and the overhead light in the living room.

“Great,” Cat muttered to herself.

The fuse box, she knew, was in the utility room. The location of the spare fuses was another matter entirely. Moving cautiously across the pitch black room, Cat groped her way toward the kitchen. She flipped the wall switch for the kitchen light, only to find it wouldn’t come on, either.

Then it hit her. The tall outside yard light was out
as well. That’s why it was so black. Had the fire caused a power failure? Changing directions, Cat felt her way to the front door and looked out, half expecting to see the red glow of flames in the distance.

There was nothing, not even the smell of smoke in the air. Frowning, she scanned the yard, faintly suffused by pale starlight. Something moved along the lane. Cat stared into the pooled shadows, half-convinced she had imagined it.

She froze as a dark figure moved out of the blackness onto open ground where the dim light of the stars could outline him. A second figure joined him, both running toward the house with a hunched-over stealth. She couldn’t see their faces, then she realized why—something dark covered them.

Logan’s advice came back to her, the advice he had given her the night he had shown her various ways to break an attacker’s hold. “When you get loose, you run. Don’t try to fight. Don’t grab something and try to hit him with it. You run—and you run like hell.”

Cat lingered only long enough to close and lock the door, then raced to Quint’s room and snatched him out of bed. He protested sleepily, then sagged against her. As she reached the living room, a flashlight beam played over the front of the house. Taking a chance, Cat tightened her hold on Quint and ran across the intervening space to the kitchen, almost knocking over a chair before reaching the door to the utility room. She paused long enough to check the phone. As she expected, the line was dead.

After the jostling from the run, Quint was awake. “Mom, where—”

“Sssh.” She pressed a hand to his mouth and whispered, “There’s two men outside, trying to break into the house. We’re going to sneak out before they can catch us. Okay?”

“Where’s Dad?” he whispered back.

“He had to leave.” Cat glanced out the back door. Seeing nothing, she slipped out as quietly as she could, and eased the door shut.

The instant her foot left the last step, she broke into a run and didn’t slow down until she reached the stand of firs twenty feet from the house. Needles brushed her face as she pushed her way between the outreaching branches of two trees.

She had no idea whether they had been seen. She couldn’t hear anything but the frantic pounding of her own heart. Already her arms ached from holding Quint, but she knew she didn’t dare put him down. Without shoes, he’d never be able to run over the rough ground. There was no choice; she had to carry him.

Run, she thought again. But where? And how? Both vehicles—hers and Logan’s—were parked in front of the house. If she tried to reach them, there was too much risk of being seen.

A snort and a shuffling of hooves came from the corral. Cat briefly considered saddling their horses, but that meant going into the barn, trying to find the tack in the dark. It would take too much time. Then she remembered Molly. Dear, sweet, reliable Molly. A halter and a lead rope were all she needed with that gentle, biddable mare. And both were just inside the rear barn door within easy reach.

Kneeling, she whispered to Quint, “Climb on my back.”

While he did, Cat measured the distance to the barn area and chose a route that gave them the most concealment. When Quint’s skinny arms and legs were securely clamped around her, she set out at a jogging trot.

Her fingers closed around the halter and lead rope with the first groping try. She threw a glance
toward the house as a spear of light flashed over the back of it, then winked off. Fighting panic, she took a quick steadying breath and moved quietly among the horses.

The bay mare, as always, was easy to catch. Holding the lead rope looped around Molly’s neck, Cat led the horse out of the corral and halted deep in the barn’s soot-black shadows. There, she transferred Quint to Molly’s back, then buckled on the halter.

“Where are we going, Mom?” Quint whispered.

“To Uncle Culley’s.” She vaulted up behind him, centered herself on the mare’s back, then one-reined the horse into the darkness beyond the barn, confident she could find her way to Shamrock, thanks to the rides she and Quint had taken, exploring their new surroundings.

“Where the hell are they?” Rollie crawled into the van’s passenger side, the black ski mask muffling his voice. He yanked it off.

“How should I know?” Lath snapped in frustration, his own mask already lying between them on the seat. He gunned the motor and the van shot out from the concealing motte of trees onto the ranch lane.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Rollie declared, still feeling the pump of adrenaline. “They weren’t at the fire with Echohawk. We would have seen them. And the pickup and Suburban were both parked in front of the house. They had to be there.”

“They weren’t, damn it. We went through that whole house, closet by closet.” Nearing the intersection with the highway, Lath flipped on the headlights.

“I know.” Rollie wadded the knit mask into a ball
and started to jam it into the pocket of his dark navy windbreaker, then stopped and felt inside the pocket. His heart froze, then started pounding wildly. He made a frantic search of his other pockets and swore bitterly. “Turn around, Lath. We gotta go back.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” He let up on the accelerator, slowing the van.

“The ransom note, it’s gone. It must have slipped out of my pocket back there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Would I be telling you to go back if I wasn’t?” Rollie used anger to cloak the sick feeling in his stomach.

Lath started to swing onto the shoulder of the highway, then changed his mind and stepped on the gas. “Forget it.”

“Forget it? Are you crazy?”

“It might take too long to find, and we need to get this van back before your coal-mining buddy finds out we borrowed it. Besides,” Lath grinned, “I kinda like the idea of Echohawk finding it.”

Rollie stared at him. “You are crazy.”

“Think about it. You know he’s gonna go straight to Calder with it. And you know Calder will start sweatin’, knowin’ that somebody was trying to kidnap his grandson. Think how much sweeter it’s gonna be when we do steal the kid.”

“But the note.”

“What about it? The FBI can run it through their crime lab from now until forever and never trace it to us. Hell, the paper and glue are the kind every kid uses in school, and you know damned well I was wearing gloves when I lifted them from your friend’s house. I had on gloves every time I handled ’em. The same with the newspapers.”

Rollie gave that heavy thought. “Echohawk is still gonna look at us.”

“You forget—we’ve been fighting that grass fire,” Lath reminded him with a wickedly smug look. “And even if he sics the FBI on us, they can comb our place from one end to the other and not come up with anything. That’s why I made sure we burned everything we used and dumped the ashes in the river.”

“That’s right.” Rollie breathed a little easier remembering that.

“Why, we’ll be so clean, they won’t even look at us when we snatch the kid for real,” he said, then laughed. “Don’t you know Calder’s gonna go wild waitin’ for a ransom call that we ain’t never gonna make. That’s what’s gonna fool ’em. They’re gonna think this is all about money.”

“In a way, it’s kind of a shame not to take it,” Rollie mused. “You know Calder’ll come up with it.”

Lath gave him a sideways look of scorn. “You’re crazy if you think Calder never saw that movie
Big Jake
. That money would get us caught for sure. And I don’t figure on anybody ever knowin’ that we had anything to do with the kid disappearin’.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Hell, I know I’m right.”

The plan seemed foolproof, even to Rollie. Only one thing still bothered him. Other than some vague talk about keeping the kid stashed in the root cellar until the heat died down, then maybe hauling him down to Mexico or Central America and dumping him in some remote village, Lath hadn’t said what they were going to do with him. Rollie knew the smart thing would probably be to kill the kid. The thought made him squeamish. Stealing the kid was one thing, but killing him was another.

But getting rid of the body could be an even bigger problem. He convinced himself that Lath knew that. As long as they kept the kid blindfolded, he
could never identify them, which meant they could dump him off anywhere, anytime. He was sure Lath knew that, too.