Can't Stop Believing (HARMONY) (27 page)

Nevada turned onto the main road, and within a few minutes they saw the lights of Harmony.

When they got to the sheriff’s department, the night shift was still working. Phil Gentry took all the notes but wanted to wait for daylight and the sheriff. “Not much we can do for a few hours. Alex will be in about eight if she doesn’t get a call on the way into work. As long as you’ve got your people inside and safe, there’s not much we can do about a shooter on your land. It would take a few dozen men to even find him, and we’d never be able to round them up this time of night.”

“Once it’s light, I can fly and tell you if he’s on my land.” Cord was already forming a plan.

“That might work. Alex and a few of us can be on the ground. We’ll get the highway patrol to block the roads in and out of your place. If you spot him, you can direct us to him.”

“I can do that.” Cord fought down a yawn.

Phil shook his head. “You folks look beat. Why don’t you go over to the diner and get some breakfast and a pot of coffee? I think they open at five.”

“I could use a few hours’ sleep if I’m going to be flying soon.” Cord’s muscles were sore from the hard work he’d done and he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast yesterday, but most of all he needed to sleep.

“I got a couple of empty cells. You’re welcome to your pick.”

“No, thanks. I’ll sleep standing up before I step foot in a cell. How about that couch in the sheriff’s office?”

Phil waved them into her dark office. “It’s not much better than the bunk in the cell, and with the glass door there’s no privacy. What about you, Mrs. McDowell? What can I get you?”

“I stay with Cord,” she whispered.

“I understand. You’ve both had quite a night, but don’t worry, I’ll be right outside on duty. You’re safe here. You won’t need an alarm clock. When the day shift comes on they make enough noise to wake even the dispatcher.”

Cord tugged off his boots as she closed the door and found a blanket folded in a corner. He stretched out on the couch and she moved in beside him. The milky glass on the door made the pale light in the room almost moonlight.

“There’s not enough room,” she whispered, pushing him over.

He tugged her against him, already half asleep. “Where I sleep—”

“I know,” she answered.

After a few minutes, she whispered, “Did you mean what you said back there?”

“When?”

“Before the shots were fired. Did you mean what you said about loving me?”

He took a deep breath and answered, knowing that there would be no going back, “I did. I think I always have, but Babe, I’ve got to admit, you’re not an easy woman to love.”

She rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arm across his chest. “I know. Haven’t you heard that nothing worth doing is ever easy?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Well, at least it’s not boring.”

R
ONNY
TALKED
M
ARTHA
Q
INTO
TAKING
M
R
. C
ARLEON
TO
the hospital to see the new baby. Mr. Carleon didn’t seem all that interested, but when Ronny said she needed to take a nap, the proper gentleman understood.

“There are some papers I need to go over with you when you feel up to it,” he said.

“I’ll call you when I wake,” Ronny promised as she waved.

She moved into her apartment as they drove away. To her surprise, he seemed to enjoy Martha Q’s company. He lived a very ordered life, and Martha Q had never even organized her thoughts. Maybe opposites do attract.

Ronny looked around her place. Everything had been put back in order as if Marty had never been there. But she saw the little differences and she knew he’d always be with her. This time he hadn’t left her; he’d gone on ahead.

Mr. Carleon had left a folder at the kitchen table where he often did his work. This was the first time he hadn’t put every paper away in his case, and she had no doubt that the folder was for her.

Absently, she looked at it, knowing this was what he planned to talk to her about when she was ready.

On the top of a stack of papers was a plane ticket to Paris for September third. Scribbled in Marty’s bold hand was a note.
You have to see Paris in the fall.

She moved her thumb over the words he’d written before turning the page.

Next was a two-week cruise down the Rhine and another for the Mediterranean. Complete with luggage tags and agendas for each day.

Next, clipped together were all that was needed for traveling down the Nile.

Ronny turned over another ticket, then another, each dated, planned, organized.

Each trip moved into the next until finally, the last was a flight to New York for December twenty-third.
Promise you’ll stay to ring in the New Year
, a note said.

Beneath the last ticket was a key and a final note.
My apartment in Manhattan. Stay as long as you like.

Next, she noticed page after page of details. Tours, dinners, plays, concerts all marked paid in full on the agendas.
There is plenty to do in New York until spring. Walk in Central Park when the gardens start to green and feel my love walking with you.

Ronny smiled. Marty was giving her the world. She would trade it all for one more day with him, but that wasn’t possible, so he’d given her memories.

He’d also given her time to mourn. By the fall he wanted her traveling.

She pulled on her jacket and walked the blocks to the cemetery, loving the cool morning air. The tent was gone and hundreds of flowers now lay across his grave. Ronny didn’t cry; she just sat in the grass beside him and remembered.

“In a perfect world, you’ll be with me,” he’d said, and someday she would be, but now wasn’t her time to die. Now was the time to live so when they did meet again, they could compare notes on all they’d seen.

After a while, she stood and walked home, thinking of all the things she had to do to be ready to travel. She wanted to finish her last two classes online and get her degree. Marty would have liked that. She would have to train someone to take over at the post office. She’d have to shop for clothes.

Her mother was waiting in front of her house when she came back from the cemetery. Ronny walked past her window expecting to see Dallas race off at any moment to prove she still wasn’t speaking to her child.

Only Dallas rolled down the window. “I won’t come in,” she said, as if she’d been invited. “I just came to tell you that you can come home. I hate the thought of everyone seeing you falling apart in public over some man who wouldn’t marry you but came to live with you.”

“He came to die.” Ronny was surprised how calm she felt. Her mother’s words didn’t bother her at all. She could almost see Marty smiling at her from the front window.

“Well, what are you going to do with yourself? Never a wife, not a widow. He didn’t leave you any money, did he?” She answered her own question. “Of course not. If he had money he wouldn’t have moved in with you so you could be a free nurse to him.”

“He didn’t leave me a dime, but I’ve saved a little and I think I may travel for a while.”

Dallas laughed. “You travel? You don’t even know how to drive on the interstate. Except for that time your father insisted we go to Kansas, you’ve never even stayed in a hotel. You’ll get as far as Dallas or Oklahoma City and turn around, crying all the way home.”

“Maybe. I’ll send you a postcard if I don’t turn around.”

“You always were a fool, Ronny. Why would you want to travel alone when you can come home and keep me company?”

Ronny turned away and was halfway up the steps before she looked back. “Good-bye, Mother.”

Dallas gunned the car and drove off without a word.

Smiling, Ronny could almost see Dallas’s reaction when a card from a different country arrived every week. She’d go on the trip Marty planned and, who knows, maybe she would stay in New York long after the new year.

C
ORD
WAS
IN
THE
AIR
BY
TEN
,
CROSSING
BACK
AND
FORTH
over the land. Nevada wanted to go with him, but he knew she’d be safer with the sheriff. They all agreed that the shooter had wanted to kill.

He flew low, looking for a car that didn’t belong, or even tracks in the pastures. The area where he’d been putting up fence last night bordered government land that was too rocky for much of anything. A man would have to know the land, know what he was doing, to track across that land. He’d also have to be a good shot to fire on them at night.

Nevada told him Bryce had been a hunter since he could tag along with his dad, but that wasn’t exactly damning evidence. Many men in Texas could say the same.

Which left Cord with only one answer. The man trying to kill Nevada might be Bryce Galloway, but he didn’t have the proof he needed. Bryce might threaten her now and have knocked her around when they were married, but Cord couldn’t prove anything.

He kept his phone close, hoping Cameron would call in with facts.

Another piece of information kept rolling around in his head. Bryce spent his days building alibis. The kind of folks he was talking to wouldn’t be able to remember if they talked to him on a certain day of the week by the time they were questioned. In a week he’d probably be able to produce someone who swore he was in town all day, every day. So far everything he’d done to try to harm Nevada had been at night, but he might have to act during the day if he wanted to get closer. Which would mean that he’d have to come on the ranch in daylight.

Cord had told the cowhands to search in groups of two. They were all armed with rifles, standard for any man in the saddle. Cord guessed he was the only man on the ranch not armed. Nevada must have taken the Colt from the office drawer because it had been missing since the snakes visited.

The now-familiar feeling of trouble thundering in rattled through his body. He had to protect her. He had to do the right thing. He had to follow the law.

He crossed one more time over the place where he’d been working last night. His truck, with the windshield missing, looked abandoned. Knowing Nevada, she’d probably ordered him a new one. He’d never known anyone to spend money faster than she did.

As he circled back to his farm to refuel, he spotted the sheriff’s cruiser parked near the field he used as his landing strip. Cord rolled to a stop and climbed out.

“Nothing?” she said.

“Nothing,” he answered.

“I was afraid of that.” She walked with him toward his old pickup. “I found your truck out in the south pasture earlier. It was shot up, just like you said. The crime team came over from Amarillo to work the evidence.”

Cord pulled out two bottles of water from the cooler in the bed of his truck and offered her one. “They find anything?”

“Yeah, your truck was shot to hell.”

Cord smiled because she’d used his exact words when he’d told her where to find the truck. “I should have gone into law enforcement.”

“Something else. The bullets used were hollow point. Not as accurate from a distance, but if they’d hit one of you, they would have done some serious damage.”

“Which means?”

“Which means whoever was firing at you wanted you dead, not just hurt.”

Cord leaned against the old pickup. Between digging holes in hard earth all day and half the night and then sleeping on the sheriff’s couch, he felt like a pretzel left out to dry.

Alex took a drink and added, “We’re not dealing with just a mad ex-husband. If you’re right and it is Bryce Galloway, he means to kill you both. Maybe he figures if he can’t have Nevada, no one should.”

“I figured that out up there.” He pointed at the sky. “I think he tried to pay someone else to bother us, but when he got serious, he decided to do the dirty work himself. Nevada said that as far as she knows he’d always gotten everything and everyone he wanted until her.”

Alex followed his logic. “Who stands to benefit from her dying?”

“Me, I guess. The lawyer asked us if we had wills, and we said we’d worry about it later. So if she dies, I inherit.” He hardened. “That makes me a suspect.”

Alex smiled. “You forgot one thing. Whoever was shooting last night was shooting at you both. I’d think that pretty well takes you out of the lineup.”

Alex let her words sink in, then continued, “Nevada and you are both in danger. This isn’t about the ranch, it’s about you two.”

“I’m not worried about me.”

She smiled. “I could have guessed that, but
I
am. I don’t like the idea of someone killing anyone in my town.”

“Even me?” He wasn’t sure he believed her.

“Even you.” She laughed. “You’re starting to grow on me. How about we go find Nevada?”

Cord tossed his empty water bottle in the bed of the pickup. “She’s at the ranch house.”

Alex straightened. “No. I was just there. I even tried her cell. No answer.”

Without a word they both jumped into their vehicles and raced toward the ranch.

Five minutes later Cord hit the kitchen door first. Ora Mae looked up from pulling a pie from the oven and glared at him.

“Where’s Nevada?” He didn’t have time for her to remind him to wipe his feet or tell him what time it was. Any time he walked in early, that always seemed to be her first response.

Ora Mae nodded at the sheriff as Alex stepped beside Cord. She answered formally as if testifying. “She got a call about twenty minutes ago saying one of her horses was acting sick.”

“Who called?”

“I don’t know, but Nevada took off in that old Jeep.” She looked from Cord to the sheriff. “I’m sure she’s safe. Her barn is not that far from the house and you’ve got an armed guard posted over there.”

Alex didn’t answer the housekeeper. She just lifted her phone and hit a number. “I need all deputies on the roads into the Boxed B. No one, and I mean no one, leaves this land unless I say so. Then ask the highway patrol to log all cars on county roads that border the ranch.”

Cord walked beside her as she moved to her cruiser. “We may be overreacting—”

“We’re not,” he snapped.

Cord looked in the direction of the barn where Nevada kept her horses. He couldn’t see it, but what he saw stopped his heart.

A few thin lines of smoke rose, widening in the air and disappearing.

Cord ran toward his truck.