Renegade Father (18 page)

She hadn't found a foreman yet, although she had a couple possible candidates coming in later in the week for interviews. Until she found one, the ranch would be short a man during one of the busiest times of the year and she would have to handle everything on her own, from managing the stock to managing the ranch hands.

She had come a long way in the last nineteen months but she had to admit, she was petrified. She gave herself pep talk after pep talk but she still worried that she wouldn't be able to make decisions on her own, that she wouldn't have the authority with the men necessary to run a smooth operation, that she would drive the ranch back into the ground where Charlie had left it.

A sudden movement in the doorway distracted her from her angsting and she looked up to find Leah standing there, wearing the droopy flannel pajamas she loved so much.

“What are you doing still up? It's almost eleven.”

“I couldn't sleep. I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water and saw the light on in here.”

She probably couldn't sleep because she just as upset as Annie was about Joe's departure in the morning.

At least his coolness hadn't extended to Leah, to her
great relief. She was so pleased to see the two of them begin to forge a new relationship these last two weeks.

As the weather warmed and March's lion weather gave way to a soft, spring lamb, Leah began to spend more time with her father, riding with him after school or just hanging out at with him while he went about his regular chores.

She soaked up his attention like a desert flower after a hard rain and Annie was overjoyed to witness the gradual return of the sweet daughter she used to be. More often than not, C.J. joined them. He seemed to have completely forgiven Joe for leaving.

Annie was uncomfortably aware that both of her children had accepted the reality of Joe's departure with far more grace than their mother. Every time she thought about not seeing him regularly, her chest ached and her stomach trembled.

“Are you okay?” Annie asked Leah now.

Her daughter shrugged. “A little sad about my…about Joe leaving. But it's not like he's dying or anything. Or like I'll never see him again. He said he'll write me and we can talk on the phone all the time and he still wants me and C.J. to go to Wyoming to visit this summer.”

She paused. “You know, it's pretty cool the way he includes the brat in everything, so he doesn't feel weird about the way things are now.”

Annie smiled at this evidence of Leah's new maturity. A month ago she would have been livid at C.J. butting in to what she probably considered her own time with the father she'd just discovered.

Love washed over her for this beautiful, headstrong child she and Joe had created together and she smiled. “You're a very good big sister to worry about his feel
ings,” she said quietly, then on impulse she rose from her desk and pulled her daughter into a hug.

Leah stood stiff and unyielding in her embrace for just a heartbeat, then her arms came around Annie and she returned the hug. Her heart swelled. Maybe they both might make it through this whole teenage thing relatively unscathed after all. She rested her cheek against Leah's shining dark hair. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you, too,” Leah responded and Annie felt tears burn behind her eyelids. For a while there, she had been afraid she would never hear those words again. It amazed her that this part of her life could be going so well when the rest of it still seemed like such a mess.

Leah pulled away and cleared her throat, fidgeting with the hem on her pajama top. “I guess you know I was pretty mad at you for not telling me Joe was my dad.”

“I think I figured that out,” Annie said wryly.

Leah gave an abashed grin, then looked down at the floor. “I said some pretty rotten things to you in the last few months. I…I've been meaning to tell you before, I'm sorry. I didn't mean them.”

She hugged her daughter again. “I know, sweetheart. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth. I know you can't understand this, but I really thought I was doing what was best for everyone involved. I can see now that I was wrong. I'm glad we have no more secrets between us.”

“Me, too.”

“And now you need to get to bed,” Annie said firmly. “Come on. I'll tuck you in.”

Although Leah protested she was much too grown
up for something as babyish as being tucked in, Annie could tell she was secretly pleased to be fussed over.

After she left her daughter's room, she walked through the quiet house, double-checking the locks on the doors and the windows. Although Charlie seemed to have taken her warning to heart and hadn't been seen since their altercation in her bedroom, she didn't want to take any chances.

As she checked the last door, the one going off the back porch from the mudroom, she looked through the small window and saw the lights of the foreman's cottage glimmering through the spruce windbreak.

Joe was still awake, probably packing.

The thought stabbed at her sharper than any blade. It was here, the day she had dreaded for almost two months. Tomorrow he would be gone, taking his strength and his decency and his rare, sweet smile with him.

And she would be alone again.

She rubbed at her chest, at the ache there she knew she couldn't ease. For just a moment she was tempted to go to him, to force him not to shut her out like this.

But what good would that accomplish? It couldn't change the fact that he despised her for what she had let Charlie do to her or that he blamed himself for the choices she made.

The click of claws on linoleum alerted her that Dolly was awake and had left her favorite spot by the family room woodstove. The dog brushed past her to the door and began to whine in agitation. When Annie opened the door to let her out, Dolly rushed out, barking.

She squinted into the darkness trying to determine
what had upset the dog so much. At first glance she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary but it only took her a moment to figure out what was wrong.

One of the ranch buildings was on fire.

F
ear clutched at her heart as she saw flames shooting out the roof of the horse barn.

The old, weathered wood of the barn would go up like dry tinder, taking a dozen valuable and well-loved horses along with it.

The Double C would never survive such a blow, and neither would she.

Fueled by panic and adrenaline, she rushed back into the kitchen and fumbled to dial county dispatch, sickly aware that it would take at least twenty minutes for the volunteer fire department to reach the ranch from town.

She couldn't wait that long, she realized as she hung up the phone after reporting the blaze. The animals trapped inside would be dead before the firefighters could reach them.

Her heart pounding, she threw on her boots and raced toward the barn. She stopped only long enough to pound frantically on the door of the double-wide trailer.
When none of the ranch hands answered immediately, she remembered that it was Friday night and the men had been paid that afternoon. They'd probably all gone into town to spend their paychecks at Lulu's.

Joe was still there, at least for one more day. But she would waste valuable time retracing her steps the quarter mile to the foreman's cabin, time she didn't have. Already she could hear the frightened screams of horses above the low crackle of flames consuming wood.

She would just have to handle this on her own while she prayed that Joe would smell the acrid smoke and come to help.

Her breath was coming in sharp, hard gasps by the time she reached the horse barn less than a minute later. She tried to stay calm and assess the scene.

From what she could see, most of the flames were at the front of the barn. She might have a chance of saving some of the animals—and staying alive in the process—if she entered through the door in the back, leading to the corral.

She didn't want to do this.

As she raced along the side of the barn, sweat from more than just the heat of the flames dripped down her back and her stomach roiled with nerves. The fear made her nauseous and she clamped her teeth together against it, angry at herself. She was such a coward. Even now, when animals' lives depended on her, she couldn't get past her own self-doubts.

She was so busy chastising herself that she didn't notice the object in the path until her feet stumbled over it with a hollow clang and the ground rushed up to meet her so hard it knocked the wind out of her.

Gasping, her ribs aching, she lay there for just an instant trying to catch her breath, then saw what had
tripped her—a rusted metal two-gallon fuel can. The sharp scent of gasoline still clung to it.

The implications of that gasoline can sent a chill coursing through her. Arson. Someone had deliberately torched her horse barn, had condemned a dozen horses to a gruesome death.

She didn't have to be a crack detective to figure out who might have done such a thing. Charlie Redhawk was the only person who had the motive and the viciousness.

Damn him. Would she never be free of him?

The sheriff had searched the whole county and hadn't been able to find a trace of him. Charlie still had a few friends in the area and several of them claimed he'd taken off to California. They must have been lying for him.

She had been so confident he was gone for good this time, now that he finally realized he had no power over her anymore. There had been no more sinister events on the ranch: no more poisoned animals, no more deliberately cut fences, no more strange photographs.

He must have been biding his time while he plotted this latest, horrible revenge.

Fury exploded in her with more power than any blaze. She would not let him do this, would not let him turn her into a cowering mess again. And she sure as hell was not about to let him destroy her ranch.

With new determination, she climbed over the fence into the corral and ran toward the double doors of the horse barn. They were open, she saw, which seemed odd to her because she knew Joe always checked them at night. It seemed unusual until she saw the crumpled form just inside the first door, head pointed inside the building, out of her view.

Her heart skipped a beat and for a moment she was afraid it might be Joe, that he was hurt somehow.

It wasn't Joe, she saw when she stepped closer. That was Luke Mitchell's black slicker, the one he wore so proudly. She knelt down and shook him. “Luke? Luke, can you hear me?”

He moaned but didn't say anything and she saw his face was black with soot. She realized with shock that he must have gone inside to rescue the horses and been overcome by smoke.

She never would have thought he had it in him to risk his life like this, especially not after that day at the lake.

It didn't matter. He had proved her wrong and now she had to get him out into fresh air. Grabbing his legs, she pitted all her strength against his deadweight and finally managed to drag him through the doorway and out into the muddy corral.

Away from the smoke, he began to gasp and cough. She didn't know the first thing about treating someone with smoke inhalation. Acting only on instinct, she loosened his shirt and untied his bandanna.

The smell of gasoline was strong on his clothing. He must have found the gasoline can Charlie left behind, too, she thought.

A few seconds later he opened his eyes and saw her. He blinked in confusion for a moment and then his eyes widened in panic. “I'm sorry, Miz Annie. Real sorry,” he mumbled.

“Shh. Take it easy. Don't try to talk. Just concentrate on breathing.”

“Shoulda gone in sooner. I waited too long.”

“You shouldn't have gone in at all.”

He coughed again, great hacking paroxysms, and she
was torn between staying with him and helping the horses she could now hear screaming above the crackle of the flames.

She didn't know what to do for him but since help was coming soon she decided to do what she could for the horses. “Just lie down and rest. The fire department's on its way and they'll have some oxygen that will set you right before you know it.”

“It's all my fault. Your dog. That cow in the lake. All my fault. Didn't mean to hurt anyone.”

She stared at him in confusion. What on earth was he talking about? The smoke must have made him delirious. Before she could puzzle it out, she heard a loud cracking inside the burning structure and the horses' screams became even more frantic.

Drawing on the last reserves of courage, she grabbed Luke's bandanna and rushed to the water trough to douse it. “Get on the other side of the fence,” she ordered. “I'm going to try to drive the horses out into the corral and I don't want you to get trampled.”

His eyes widened even more. “No! You can't go inside there. You can't!”

“I've got to. Those are my horses and I can't sit out here and listen to them die.”

Ignoring the rest of his protests, she tied the wet bandanna over her nose and mouth and rushed into the building. The heat seared her lungs, even through the wet bandanna, and she knew she had to work fast.

Most of the flames were still on the front and west walls of the barn and the interior hadn't gone up yet. Still, the smoke was thick and the flames made the place surreal, disorienting.

For a moment she panicked when she couldn't tell where she was, then calm reasserted itself. She knew
every inch of the place, could probably muck out all the stalls blindfolded. She could do this.

Forcing herself to stay coolheaded despite the heat, she worked as quickly as she could to unlatch all the stalls.

It probably only took her a few minutes, three tops, but she felt as if she'd been inside the burning structure for hours. She was shaking with exertion and adrenaline as she opened the last stall and shooed the horse toward the corral doors.

Her lungs ached and she felt lightheaded as she followed the horse. Just before she reached the door and safety, she heard another high-pitched scream from inside the barn.

She must have missed one in all the confusion.

Leah's horse, Stardust, she realized in horror. The little paint's stall was the first one from the front of the barn, where the fire was burning more intensely.

Leah loved that horse. Her daughter would be devastated if the little mare burned to death. She had been through so much in the last few months and now she was losing the father she had just found.

She couldn't lose Stardust, too.

Although her lungs now felt as if they were on fire as well, Annie fought her way back through the barn, maneuvering around burning debris to the last stall.

The terrified horse was too frightened to brave the flames even after Annie unlatched her stall and went inside to drive her out. She reared up, hooves flailing, until Annie grabbed her bridle and tugged her back to earth.

“Come on, sweetheart. You can do it,” she tried to yell, although her voice came out more like a croak.

The journey back through the barn was a nightmare.
The structure was burning in earnest now and she couldn't see, couldn't tell where they were. Finally she found her bearings and pitted all her strength against the horse to lead her toward the door.

Her vision dimming from the lack of oxygen, she knew she wouldn't be able to go much further but she kept up a steady prayer. She had to get out. She had people who loved her, people she loved. Leah, C.J., Joe. Their faces swam behind her vision and she pushed on for them.

They almost made it.

Fifteen feet from safety, a hay bale suddenly erupted right next to them with a loud crackle. Stardust reared again, only this time Annie couldn't move out of the way of her flailing hooves fast enough.

She knew an instant of crushing pain and then the world went black.

 

Joe sat on the edge of his bed, surveying the boxes containing the fragments of his life.

Not much to show for thirty-four years on the earth. Just a stereo, some clothes and a few pieces of ratty old furniture.

The really sad thing was that even if he had a house full of top-of-the-line electronics equipment and designer furniture, it wouldn't mean a thing to him any more than the pitiful display in front of him did. Not when he felt as if his heart was being shredded into tiny pieces.

He didn't want to leave.

He couldn't shake the powerful feeling that he was making the biggest mistake in a life that had been filled with some real doozies.

Annie was the only woman he had ever loved—the
only woman he
would
ever love. He had loved her nearly all his life, even when he told himself he hated her for marrying his brother. She and her kids had become the only real family he had ever known, and he would miss them fiercely.

But every time he thought about what she had been through—the bruises she had tried to hide with sunglasses or makeup and, worse, the bruises he knew would never show—he ached with the knowledge that every blow she took had been because of him.

He couldn't forget it. It haunted his sleep and obsessed every minute of his days. He had worked as Colt's foreman at the Broken Spur through the last several years of her marriage and he knew it was an unhappy one. Most of the time the two of them barely exchanged two words to each other.

Hell, Charlie acted like he wasn't married, with all his carousing. Now Joe understood. A lot of things made a terrible sense. No matter how many times he used to try to convince her to leave, she would always smile sadly and say it wasn't that easy, that there were things he didn't understand.

He didn't then—he
couldn't
understand then. But now he did, with grim clarity.

She had married Charlie in a crazy, misguided effort to protect him and she had stayed for the same reason. For him.

The idea filled him with a strange mixture of awe and guilt and anger. He thought no one else had been hurt by the decisions he made the night of his father's death. He thought it was the right thing to do at the time. The decent thing. The only thing. But now he could see how hideously mistaken he had been. Annie had paid the price for his choices.

Every time he thought about driving away in the morning he would remember how sweetly she responded to him and he would be overwhelmed by all the things he would miss about her—her soft laugh, her compassion, her gentle strength.

Everything.

He rose from the bed abruptly. He'd wasted enough time brooding. The decision had been made and now he had to live with it. He was leaving and it was far too late to change his mind.

And if he was going to take off first thing in the morning, he needed to start loading up his pickup now.

With one last resigned sigh, he stacked a couple of boxes one on top of the other and shouldered open the outside door.

As soon as he walked outside, he knew something was drastically wrong. The smell of smoke was too thick to be coming from his chimney and over the tops of the trees, he could see a strange orange glow.

One of the ranch buildings must be on fire!

He'd been so self-absorbed packing up the paltry pieces of his life that he had been completely oblivious to what was going on outside his own turmoil.

The boxes tumbled to the wooden slats of the porch as he took off running. He reached the horse barn moments later and found a dozen animals careening around the corral in panic and Luke Mitchell sitting propped against the split rail fence, his head in his hands.

“Are all the horses safe?” Joe yelled above the crackle of fire.

Luke looked up, the whites of his eyes looking stark against his soot-blackened face.

“Are the horses safe?” Joe repeated, when the young
ranch hand didn't immediately answer him, just continued gaping at him, his eyes looking shell-shocked.

The kid climbed to his feet slowly and raked his hands through his hair. “She didn't come back out,” he said as if he was talking to himself. “This wasn't supposed to happen. She didn't come out.”

Dread hit him so hard his knees went weak. “What the hell are you talking about? Who didn't come back out?”