Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

The man lunged at her again and she tripped back, running for Ben’s truck across the yard. Desperate for a weapon, she had the driver door open when the man slammed into her back. He knocked her head against the side of the truck. She elbowed him, catching him in the soft part of his belly. Her movements were imprecise and unskilled, but got the job done.

She pulled herself away from the attacker by sheer will and flung her upper body onto the floor of the cab. Ben’s rifle was easy to find under the seat. The ammo sat behind it in a box. She grabbed some, but didn’t have time to load. So she pivoted, swinging the rifle around like a club.

That’s when she saw the flames, licking up toward the sky in a swirl of black smoke.

The porch was on fire.

She gasped. Amy was in the house. Ben, Sloane, Tina too. Maybe Kellan. Oh, God. They hadn’t reacted to her screams. Did that mean the assailant had gotten to them already?

In that moment of blind terror, the assailant grabbed the rifle from her hands and knocked her across the skull.

She crumpled. Her mouth pooled with blood and her head pounded so bad she couldn’t move her eyes. The smoke alarms were sounding in the house now, loud and out of rhythm with each other. The attacker grabbed her by the boots and dragged her facedown across the gravel driveway, past her burning house.

He shoved her into the trunk of the black sedan, and she was too weak to defend herself beyond flailing her arms. In the blackness of the closed trunk, once the engine rumbled to life and the car took off, her fear and pain subsided enough for her to think.

Whoever the man who’d kidnapped her was, he had to be connected to Meyer Jr. and the meth lab. It all went back to her father, and the terrible choices he’d made. Fear and rage battled inside her. Rage at her father for dragging them into hell. But also at herself. Her epiphany about her actions being consequence-free was a load of crap. What happened tonight was her fault alone.

The message the universe had been trying to get through to her was finally sinking in, though it was too late to matter. All that week, her farm and family had been under siege by druggies and violent criminals, two of whom were still on the loose. But instead of staying home to watch over her family, she’d been off screwing the sheriff—again. Her mom had already paid the price for her selfishness, and now she, along with the rest of her family, were going to die.

* * *

Vaughn’s cell phone rang. He tore his gaze from the case file he’d been poring over to look at his watch. Three-forty-five. With no cigarettes to take his mind off Rachel or his parents’ grim situation, he’d thrown in the towel and gone to the office.

The overnight dispatch calls were patched through Irene’s home line for another three hours, and Deputy Reyes, the on-duty officer, was on patrol. Grateful for the silence, Vaughn had dug into research on El Diente, pulling every unsolved injury and fatality case in the county involving victims who were missing teeth.

The display on his phone said the call was from Kellan’s cell. If he’d found out Vaughn had slept with Rachel and was phoning to tell him off for it, then he could go to hell. It was none of his business. He pressed accept and propped a boot on his desk. “Hey, what’re you doing up this early?”

“We can’t find Rachel.” Kellan’s words rushed out in a blur of speech. His voice was strained with fear.

Taken aback, Vaughn dropped his foot and snapped his chair up. He wasn’t thrilled to admit he and Rachel had been together, but he couldn’t let Kellan go on worrying. “She left my house about a half hour ago. She should be home any minute.”

“Her truck’s here, but she’s not. With the fire, we didn’t notice right away—”

Vaughn stood. “Slow down. What fire?”

Kellan drew a breath. “I stayed the night with Amy. A few minutes ago, the smoke detectors went off. We came downstairs and the porch was covered in flames.”

Vaughn sprinted down the hallway, digging for his keys. His phone chimed with another incoming call. He held the phone out and read the display. Irene. He ignored it and put the phone back to his ear.

“Everybody’s out of the house,” Kellan said. “Ben and I got the hose going from the emergency tank.” Holding the phone with his shoulder, Vaughn locked the front door and jammed himself behind the wheel of his squad car. “They’re still trying to put the fire out, and the fire department’s on its way, but we can’t find Rachel anywhere.”

He flipped his lights and sirens on. “On my way. I’m assuming you’ve called her cell phone?”

“Her foreman said she smashed it yesterday morning after they found the meth lab.”

Vaughn cursed. She’d driven home from his house alone in the middle of the night without a cell phone. Why in God’s name had he let her take such a risk? “Are all the horses accounted for, or could she have gone for a ride?”

“They’re all here. Amy and Sloane went through the stable and moved the horses to safety, along with the other livestock.” He let out a stressed-out exhale. “I have to get off this thing, get back to helping with the fire.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

The second Kellan disconnected, Vaughn called Irene and instructed her to send all four deputies and Stratis to Rachel’s place. With the accelerator to the floor, he made it to the dirt turnoff to Sorentino Farm in ten minutes flat, with Stratis, Binderman, and Reyes right behind him. The whole drive, he kept busy talking himself down from looming hysteria, bargaining with God that he’d change his ways, he’d be a better man, if only He’d let Vaughn find her unharmed. But he couldn’t escape the possibility that she might’ve died in the fire. She might’ve suffered, alone in the dark, not knowing he loved her.

When his parents were arrested, he thought he had nothing left to lose. He thought he’d never experience a worse moment in his lifetime. What a crock of shit. Failing as a son and sheriff, losing his dignity, was nothing compared to the idea of losing Rachel forever.

He threw his car into park behind the fire trucks and ambulance in the driveway and sprinted toward Kellan and the volunteer firefighter he was talking to. “Tell me she wasn’t in that fire,” he shouted as he ran. “Tell me you didn’t find her in there.”

Kellan caught him by both shoulders. “She wasn’t in the fire.”

“You didn’t find any . . .” The word remainslodged in his throat. He sagged into Kellan’s grip.

“No, man. No. Nothing like that.” He gave Vaughn’s shoulders a squeeze, then turned him toward Rachel’s truck. “Look there. We think she might’ve been taken by whoever set the fire.”

On the ground next to her open truck door, the contents ofVaughn’s cigarette pack were scattered over the gravel, the box crushed. The T-shirt and underwear he’d sent home with her lay in a crumpled wad nearby. He moved, like floating, to her truck.

The efforts to douse the fire had compromised the scene, soaking the ground and trampling over potential evidence, but the gravel was overturned and cut to the dirt below with gashes. Clearly there’d been a struggle.

Stratis brushed by him to examine the evidence. “Cigarettes? Could those be the perp’s?”

Vaughn scrubbed a hand through his hair. Finding Rachel trumped everything, his career, his standing in his employees’ eyes—everything. He met Stratis’s eyes. “No. Those are mine. I gave them to her so I wouldn’t be tempted to smoke. The clothes are mine too. She left my place about three-fifteen this morning. She couldn’t have been here more than a few minutes before trouble started.”

Stratis nodded, his expression unreadable save for the tightening of his eyes. “Maybe trouble was already here and she drove right into the middle of it.”

“That’s what I’m starting to think,” Kellan said.

Vaughn braced his hands on his knees. He should never have let her drive alone in the middle of the night. He should’ve followed her home. He should’ve asked her to stay through morning.

“El Diente or Baltierra? Or both?” Stratis asked.

“There’s another truck with an open door over here,” Binderman called. “Unspent ammo on the ground.”

Vaughn and Stratis strode over.

“That’s my truck.” It was Rachel’s foreman, Ben. “Looks like my ammo too.”

“You keep a rifle in there?”

“Yes, sir. A .22. Under the driver’s seat.”

Binderman ducked his head to look. “It’s missing. Did Rachel know about it?”

“Yes, sir. She did.”

Vaughn pulled his focus back to take in the scene all at once. Jenna and Amy, trembling in each other’s arms, holding Tommy together. His deputies puzzling over a trail of upturned dirt. The fire engines, the smoldering porch. Just like that, everything in his life fell into focus. He’d always accused Rachel of clouding his judgment, making him second-guess himself, but never in his life had he been more crystal clear about what he needed to do—professionally, personally—than he was at that moment.

“You’re in charge here, Stratis,” he said. “If you find any other evidence, call me. Binderman, meet me at the jail in a half hour.”

He took off in a jog to his car.

“Where are you going?” Stratis called after him.

Vaughn called over his shoulder, “Wallace Meyer’s ranch. It’s time to settle the score once and for all.”

Wallace Meyer lived at the end of a long, single lane road that shot off north from Highway 40, five miles and a canyon away from Devil’s Furnace. Vaughn had no trouble gaining entrance to Meyer’s property. The ungated driveway was a point of pride for Meyer, who regularly reminded his adoring public that he refused to erect any barriers that would separate him from the people he served. As if money and power weren’t barriers enough.

Vaughn hadn’t set foot on Wallace Meyer’s property since the age of sixteen. His father had farriered for Meyer for another few years after that, but Vaughn refused. No way would he work for a man who beat his wife and horses, and raped the maids. He’d learned that gem by accident, while washing his tools in a spigot near the side of the house. Through the open window, he’d heard two women whispering to each other about why the latest maid had left town in the middle of the night.

The Meyer estate gave off an air of plastic perfection, like a woman who’d indulged in too many facelifts. The buildings were too clean, too new. The lush, manicured lawn as wastefully indulgent and out of place in Quay County as the six-door garage that stretched across the circular driveway.

Vaughn left his car running and sprinted up the steps. He banged on the door with his fist and rang the doorbell simultaneously, shouting, “You son of a bitch, open this damn door.”

He kept it up until a light turned on behind the beveled glass. Meyer’s revolver preceded his bald head out of the opening door.

Vaughn’s body reacted instinctively to the sight of the gun pointing at him, his shooting hand popping the strap of his sidearm holster before he even knew he was doing it. He caught himself before he’d inched the gun clear of the holster and slid it back down, though he kept his hand on the grip and watched Meyer’s trigger finger for the slightest twitch.

Meyer screwed his cheeks up like he was collecting a wad of saliva to spit at Vaughn. “You’ve got some nerve, frightening my wife in the middle of the night like this. What the hell is wrong with you, Cooper?”

“Junior’s associates kidnapped Rachel Sorentino tonight. You’re going to make Junior tell us where they took her.”

Meyer lowered his gun and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. “Do you honestly expect me to help you find the woman who tried to kill my only child?”

“Give it a rest with your bullshit melodrama, Meyer. A woman’s life is in danger.” Please, let her still be alive.

“She should’ve thought of that before she aimed her gun at my son.”

“Junior brought that on himself. You know it as well as I do, damn it. Like we both know you’re not going to stand by while a woman’s life is at stake, if for no other reason than it’ll crush your public image if word gets out.”

Meyer propped a shoulder on the door frame and folded his arms over his chest. “It’s fun watching you squirm, Cooper. Like a worm on a hook, helpless. I could get used to this.”

Vaughn ground his teeth together. Every second ticking away dimmed Rachel’s odds at being rescued alive. Time to play the only ace up his sleeve. “If you don’t come with me and tell Junior to cooperate, I’m going to make his life a living hell, beginning with a move to the general population. And I’ll make sure that every single criminal you put away knows your son’s inside. How long do you think he’ll last before someone makes him their bitch or kills him?”