Killing Casanova (3 page)

Miriam’s new calling with horses made staff adjustments and clientele a never-ending surge of confusion for Cody as well, and the parties actually brought him normalcy. A new staff member would have thrown Cody’s day way off, and Jake smiled ruefully watching his baby sister walk patiently beside the young boy. The clear evening and the twinkling lights marked an unfettered path for the two companions as they made their way toward the driveway.

Jake turned the Mitsubishi around without going up the drive to the cluster of women and ranch hands crowding the wide front porch. Heidi and Cody were in their sights, and Jake had chores to finish before he could shower and go into town to Mcgoo’s one last time before the spring cattle drive tomorrow.

In a ranch community at the northern tip of the Mojave desert, Jake was lucky to have the old steakhouse-turned-bar-and-nightclub to fill his evenings. Lindley was just enough of a town to keep the locals bored and the old timers kicking. When Jake had left after high school, it was the last bump in the road he ever wanted to see again, but four years later his father’s final words had come back to haunt him: “Sometimes the last place in the world is where you’ll find yourself. Especially if you didn’t know you were lost.”

Jake flicked a glance in the rearview mirror as he checked one last time on Cody and Heidi before turning westward toward Caswell Farms.
I’m not lost,
he mentally argued,
just waylaid between lives.
The life he had planned when Melinda, his high school sweetheart, was still here. And the life he called his own.

Prickling fingers of starlight broke the black of night as he found the constellation Cassiopeia in the early summer sky. It was no more a constant than she had been, but somehow he still searched for both of them. Tonight, he wouldn’t worry about any of that. It would be a week before he’d see anyone except the hostlers and cowhands. He would make tonight worthwhile.

• • •

“Jake?” a gravelly, mildly frantic woman’s voice crackled over his cell phone. Jake pulled his hat from his head and mopped his sweating brow with the back of one arm. The sounds of lowing cattle and clamoring hooves drowned out the woman’s voice, and Jake moved away from the trucks to hear better.

“Jake, it’s Miriam Sorensen. Your mom said I might be able to get hold of you at the pasture. Can you hear me?”

Jake glanced around the rocky peaks surrounding the spring grazing land and wondered at his cell phone reception. He and the other hands had been unloading the last of the cattle for grazing. The dry, hot summers would starve and parch the herds on the desert floor. The few heifers that had calved on the ranch were being brought to the lush, green valley at the base of the mountain range. His father wanted a herd of forty or so brought down for the summer slaughter as well, and they had to transport those back to the ranch.

“I can barely hear you, Miriam,” Jake said with one finger in his other ear. “Is everything okay? Is Heidi okay?”

Jake glanced around quickly as Carter, Troy, and Derek finished securing the gates on the trucks behind him. His father had hired the hands to bring in the spring stragglers, but he had insisted Jake go along to supervise. Jake turned his back on the young men as they began pulling beers from the back of the ice chest they had lost no time retrieving from the creek. He suspected the drinking was why Robert had sent him along. Troy was one of The Rocking J’s men and Carter took orders from no one, not even Robert, but Jake knew the land and the work well enough to keep the guys working even if loyalty was not among their priorities.

The high meadows were plush and green, the aspens and firs filtering sunlight and the bright rays warming their days without freezing their nights. This was the only place Jake felt steady. The world was always tilting beneath his ever-changing life, and here, firmly standing on the bedrock of the mountain, the sky settled into a vast expanse of endless peace. The drinking and shouting of the hands and Miriam’s voice on the phone sent the earth tumbling again, and Jake braced his back against the trunk of a broken tree to listen to her.

“Heidi’s fine, Jake,” she explained quickly, “everything is fine, except that …” Miriam’s voice broke suddenly and he heard the edge of panic creep from her broken heart. Every time the ranch overwhelmed her, cruel pain darkened her brown eyes, and he heard her longing for Jason without her saying his name.

“It’s fine, Miriam,” Jake soothed in a quiet husky voice. “Whatever it is, it’ll be fine.”

Miriam took a breath, firm tones returning to the call. “Actually, I’m hoping you can help me with that. There is a group of blind kids coming in for a trail ride and campout this weekend. I was only expecting a half dozen or so, but I found out today that there are nearly twenty teen-agers coming.” The edge was crawling back into her voice now, and Jake blew a heavy breath into the phone. “The staff and I can handle the kids, but you’ve got my best hand with you, and I need Troy to meet me in the canyons tomorrow evening to help with the horses.”

Miriam’s voice cut off abruptly as she waited, not realizing she hadn’t actually asked Jake for anything. Jake looked back over his shoulder at the quickly forming heap of empty bottles and grimaced slightly.

“I’ll tell you what.” Jake said with a dark scowl at the boisterous cowboys. “We’re finished with the cattle, so tomorrow I’ll send Derek and Carter down with the trucks, and both Troy and I will come help with the horses. You don’t need to worry. We will be there by afternoon or early evening. Okay?”

Miriam’s relieved laughter drifted through static into Jake’s ears as she sighed and thanked him before giving him details and then hanging up. Jake closed the cover of his phone and slid it back into his pocket. Picking up the scattered remnants of the fractured tree around him, Jake joined the others with the firewood, hoping the beer would take the sting off the fresh distribution of work.

Derek and Carter would not be happy about returning to the ranch to unload without the other two, but Jake didn’t trust Carter with Miriam’s group. Teen-agers meant teen-age girls, and, drunk or sober, the rough twenty-two year old had a special affinity for teen-age girls.
No.
thought Jake with a slight shake of his head,
I can risk Carter’s wrath over being loaded down with the cattle. I can’t send him with Troy.

Jake didn’t like Carter. He was the kind of guy who got more confident and stupid when he was drinking. He was also the kind of guy who got more mean and angry when he wasn’t. Jake kindled the fire as the men lounged on their saddles laid around the fire, all of them glassy-eyed and cheerful from the beer. Jake lay back against the soft leather of his saddle and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He would tell them tomorrow; they wouldn’t even remember if he explained it tonight.

“Jake?” Cassie wondered as she sat perched on a wide, flat boulder above the rushing water of the silver creek wash. When she had asked Miriam for the names of the hostlers who were caring for the horses, Miriam told her they were Jake and Troy.

She’d only worked for The Rocking J for a few weeks, and the names of most of her new coworkers were still hazy in her memory. Troy, she could picture. He was the only one she trusted to care for Jackpot, her sorrel mare. Troy Barnes was gently, straightforward, and firm with the animals as well as their clients. She didn’t think she had met Jake yet, and it made her a little nervous.

After rubbing the mare down and picketing her to graze, Cassie told one of the other counselors to let Troy or Jake know that she was going to the river with the blind group. The quiet pool further up the bank was the group’s destination, but here, where the water tumbled like socks in a dryer, Cassie relaxed as she listened to the voice of the rapids laughing along with the evening wind. The smell of horses, camp fire, and damp greenery hung around her face like a misty veil in the crisp air.

She did not expect Lindley to smell or sound that different from Albuquerque. The creosote and cactus, pinion and sage were mingled with the echoes of windy canyons and rolling dunes; in her last home, the ranch wasn’t near any mountains. The program she had worked for in New Mexico was on a Natchez Indian reservation. The heat, the horses, and the desert sand held no smell of rich earth, rushing water, or towering trees. Her brief stint with The Rocking J had brought a new world to her mind, and a soothing balm to her soul. Her heart belonged in Albuquerque, but her soul needed this new location to heal.

Leaving there had felt like tearing a part of her away, like an old scab that was ready to allow for new skin. Her other jobs had been good ones, but her last one had been her opportunity to live independently, find her limits, fall in love, and fall apart, too.

Lindley was fresh, new, and needing to be explored. There wasn’t much she could picture in her mind yet; she needed to feel out the canyons, farmlands, and most importantly the people. Her lack of confidence in that area frightened her, and put other people ill at ease sometimes, but Albuquerque had taught her the world was a nastier place than she’d expected. She had been too trusting, too naive; she would not make that mistake again.

Cassie shook her head to keep herself from picturing the reasons she’d lost her naiveté. Here in the roar of the waterfall she did not want to be haunted by them again. She focused on the smells and sounds floating all around her.

The distant laughter of the teen-agers splashing in the water up the creek stiffened her back slightly until she remembered Jana had taken the group to the railed portion of the bank to teach them to use their ears and senses to locate direction and sound.

The exercises on horseback this afternoon had left her exhausted, and the calming brush of the breeze mixed with the soothing sound of water would heal more than just her nervousness. A scuffle of footsteps and a deep male voice collided loudly at the top of the river bank behind her. Cassie spun toward the bank in surprise. She had been so lost in her reflections of the day, the two voices on the dirt road beyond her soaking spot had intruded without warning.

“It’s all right, honey,” a deep voice drawled. “Just hold tight to me and I’ll get you to the riverside.”

A nervous twitter of fear-filled laughter was drowned in the scuffling of gravel, and a young woman’s voice sharpening in Cassie’s ears. “I think I should wait for Cassie or Jana. I never should have tried to come on my own.”

Kirstie Scott, the seventeen-year-old rodeo princess from Reno, was lost and frightened on the bank of the river above Cassie’s perch. Last summer, Kirstie had been thrown from her mount, and the frightened animal had kicked her in the head. The traumatic head injury had detached both of her retinas. Surgery had been unsuccessful, and the formerly confident young woman was now trying to learn independence and freedom in a world that held only flashes of light and utter darkness for her.

“Kirstie!” Cassie shouted scrambling off her rock and groping for the slick rocky wall of the gorge behind her. The deep stone hedge and the rush of water over the broken falls tossed the sound back into Cassie’s parched mouth as panic now found her as well.

“Trust me, sweetie,” the dark, sloppy voice slurred again, and Cassie caught the scent of beer mixed in with the smell of cow and leather.

That’s not Troy
, Cassie thought, knowing she didn’t recognize the male voice. She did, however, identify the smell and the sound of his inebriation, and her heart screamed its protest painfully into her muscles straining for the top of the gorge. Cassie climbed more desperately toward the lip of the steep rock wall focusing on locating hand and footholds.

“Please,” Kirstie’s voice begged the swell of unfallen tears heavy in the sound. “Where are we?”

“Don’t worry, baby,” came the awful crooning, “You’re with me. I’ll show you everything you need to see.” Cassie scowled and wanted to scream out for help when the drunken charms were extinguished by another deep voice. Cassie heard the brash tone from the other side of the gravel road at the top of the bank.

“Carter,” a sharp growl interrupted the footsteps above her head, and Cassie paused to listen. “Unless this young lady is looking for the cattle truck, you are in the wrong place with the wrong intentions.” A small gasp of relief floated on the breeze, and Cassie sank to the rocky face of the steep incline.

“Get lost, Casanova,” the drunken voice hissed sharply. “I don’t work for you.” Cassie’s ears perked again.

“Casanova?” she whispered into the breeze. Was that why she had thought the rescuing words of the other man had seemed some how familiar? Jake Caswell was intervening on behalf of this frightened girl? New panic sparked in Cassie’s heart as she wondered if Kirstie had gone from the frying pan into the fire. Jake’s voice drifted stiff and stern this time, and Cassie released her grip on the rock now clenched in her fist.

“You don’t work for me, Carter,” he affirmed, his voice drawing nearer to the river. “And I’ll make sure you never work in this county again, if you don’t let go of that girl.”

“I was just helping the girl find her guides.” Carter spat defensively, and Cassie heard Kirstie’s soft crying suddenly muffled against someone’s shoulder.

“She doesn’t want your idea of help, and neither do any of the girls in camp tonight, or any other night. You take those cattle back to the ranch, and I will forget to mention this to my father. If that’s not motivation enough for you to leave, then worry about how lucky you are going to get at Mcgoo’s tomorrow night if you force me to break your nose this far from a hospital.”

“Anytime, Jake. Anywhere.” Carter spit menacingly.

Jana’s voice was drifting up the road toward Cassie’s perch on the edge of the gulch, and she continued to pick her way to the top of the gulley climbing from the edge just as she heard the sounds of crowded footsteps and voices.

“Jana!” Cassie huffed, clamoring onto the dusty road and stumbling toward the group now gathered around Kirstie. Confused at the unseen scene before her, Cassie heard the panicked girl, the angry men disappearing around a distant grove of Aspen trees, and her own footsteps emerging from the edge of the wash.