Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

“Vau—” She bit her lip and started again. “Sheriff Cooper told me not to talk to anyone about the details of the shootout. I don’t know if he suggested that for our protection or for the good of the investigation. Let’s just say, when I shot those men, they had it coming.”

“Why? What did they do? You’re scaring me,” Amy said.

Geez, Rachel needed to stop flapping her lips. All this talking in obscurities and half-truths was making her head spin. “Nothing to be scared about. I’m sure the sheriff deputies will find the other suspects soon. Everything’s going to be fine.”

A nurse bustled past Jenna and Amy, a pink tray balanced on her hand with three paper cups. Meds, Rachel hoped. She sat up as much as she could. Her sisters scooted out of the way. As if she were a waitress, the nurse held the tray out and described the pills in each cup like they were dessert options at a restaurant. Rachel downed the ulcer med first, followed by the horse-pill—sized antibiotic.

She tried to turn down the pain med—she’d had enough of feeling like an idiot for one afternoon—but Jenna and Amy’s protestations were loud and impassioned. When Amy threatened to hold vigil at her bedside until she took the pill, Rachel caved. She loved her sisters, but she was ready for some peace and quiet.

The nurse left after checking Rachel’s IV.

“What happened to Lincoln?” Jenna asked. “Did he bolt when the men shot you? Should we send the farmhands out looking for him tonight?”

She couldn’t shield her sisters from the painful truth of Lincoln’s fate forever, or herself for that matter. She picked at a corner of the tissue box. “He was hit by a bullet.” Her throat tightened up. No way in hell was she going to cry in front of her sisters, but it hurt so badly, the knowledge that she’d lost her closest friend. “I had to . . .” Her eyes pricked with moisture. She shoved her tongue against her cheek and held her breath, fighting the grief.

“You had to put him down,” Amy finished quietly.

“Yeah.”

Jenna leaned over and gathered Rachel in a gentle hug. “I’m so sorry.”

Rachel patted her back and felt Amy on her other side, her arms around them both.

Rachel hugged them as much as her waning strength allowed. She wasn’t real good at expressing it in words, but her family meant more to her than anything in the world. More than the farm, more than her own happiness.

She’d dedicated her life to sheltering her sisters from one calamity after another, worked her fingers to the bone to keep the ranch running from the time she could get herself onto a horse, and filled the role of their parent when their mom and dad fell short. Even when all she wanted to do was retreat into herself, she stuck it out for them.

There was little she could do to shelter them from the mess she’d caused today.

A sudden pang of suffocation coursed through her. “I need time alone.”

Jenna and Amy pulled away, looking hurt. Shit. She never could seem to say the right thing to them. Sometimes their feelings were as fragile as tissue paper. “I’m sorry,” she amended. “I just—my arm hurts, and I’m tired.”

“Come on, Amy, Jenna. Let her get some rest,” Kellan said.

Jenna and Amy nodded. They flittered around the room, smoothing her blanket, refilling her water glass, and asking her a zillion questions about whether or not she wanted the television on or the blinds closed or extra pillows. Rachel worked hard to be patient, but the feeling of suffocation wouldn’t abate.

Kellan must’ve sensed her growing agitation because he spread his arms wide and herded her sisters toward the door.

“We’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Amy called over her shoulder as Kellan shuffled her into the hallway.

“Can’t wait,” Rachel called with a wave.

As soon as she was alone, she took a breath, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her whole body ached, but she pushed through it, knowing she had only a small window of time before the pain med kicked in and she lost her ability to form a coherent thought.

Dragging her IV, she padded into the bathroom and flipped on the light. The mirror was cruel. She looked like she’d spent the past year living in a forest. Dirt was everywhere, in the creases of her earlobes, coating her scalp, stuck in her teeth, and lodged in wrinkles on her face she didn’t even know she had.

With a groan, she rinsed her mouth out, then grabbed a handful of paper towels for a quick wash that turned into a long wash. She kept scrubbing until she felt halfway human again. Once done, she braced her hands against the sink and stared at her reflection.

Time to face up to the possibility that she’d lost more in the Parillas Valley than her beloved horse. She’d always prided herself on her ability to circumvent gossip, being neither the fodder nor the circulator. She kept to herself, which was exactly how she wanted to live. But Wallace Meyer Jr. had stripped her of her solitary peace. He and his reckless friends. She wasn’t sure she could survive the exposure the shootout would bring.

Lincoln was dead, her peace had been compromised, and for what? For Wallace Jr. and his buddies to send a message that she and her sisters weren’t wanted in town? She’d assumed the vandalism had been Catcher Creek protesters of their dude ranch, but the Meyer family lived in Tucumcari, not Catcher Creek. What did Wallace Jr. care if she opened a dude ranch?

A spinning started in her head. The drug kicking in. Squinting at her reflection, she was struck with the panicky feeling there was something she knew but couldn’t remember, some answer beyond her grasp. She reached into her head for the thought, but it danced out of range.

Succumbing to the pull of the medication, she shuffled from the bathroom, tugged the privacy curtain closed, and sank into bed with a grunt. At the table near her head was the phone. She reached over with her bad arm, sucking in a tight breath, working to ignore the pain. Get used to it, she warned herself. Tomorrow, no more meds. She needed a clear mind if she was going to solve her problems.

She lifted Vaughn’s business card and read his name. With her fingertip, she traced the outline of his badge on the paper until the image blurred in her vision. She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, but it was just her horrible luck that the two worst ones had collided right before her eyes and she’d been helpless to prevent it. She’d shot the son of a powerful person, and now, to salvage her future, she’d have to rely on the man who’d ripped her heart to shreds and kept coming back to poke at the wound.

She dropped the card on her chest and closed her eyes, praying for a dreamless sleep. But the only image she saw was Vaughn. 

With his gourd-shaped figure, bald head, and whiskers, Wallace Meyer reminded Vaughn of the walruses at the San Antonio Sea World he’d seen while on vacation as a kid with his parents and younger sisters. As disarming as Meyer’s appearance was, Vaughn had run charity half marathons with Meyer over the years and knew the secret strength of his lumpy body. He’d waged political battles against the man, and therefore knew the intellect behind the whiskers and bulge of chew in his cheek. He knew the smug superiority hidden behind the genial eyes and ruddy complexion.

Meyer’s shiny scalp was immediately obvious in the hospital waiting room. Next to him sat the tightly permed blond curls of his wife’s head. Vaughn stood in the elevator hallway, his eyes on Meyer, as he reconstructed the armor of ego Rachel had punched a hole through. He smoothed a hand over his tie and swallowed repeatedly until the tingling craving for cigarettes dissipated from his throat.

He’d given up smoking cold turkey the day Rachel broke it off with him a year ago last February, to punish himself for ruining everything. It had seemed like a fit plan at the time, but as it stood now, he only craved a smoke when he had Rachel on the brain—a testament to how his dual addictions had become fused in his psyche. Pathetic, how a four-week affair a year and a half ago had screwed him up so royally.

He shook his arms and fingers out. Get a grip, man.That’s you making yourself miserable, not her. She has no control over your choices. Ha. Right.

The futile self-affirmation brought a sarcastic uptwitch to the corners of his lips. Excellent. Exactly the face he wanted to present to Meyer. When he played the role of the smart-ass punk with no respect for the county’s established guard, Meyer lost his cool. Vaughn loved it when the visage of paternal condescension evaporated from Meyer’s face to reveal the disdain he usually kept in careful check. Didn’t happen often, but enough to make Vaughn hungry for it.

He ducked into the gift shop for a pack of gum, dialing Stratis as he paid the cashier. “Where are you?”

“Outside the post-surgical recovery room, waiting for the all-clear to interview Junior.”

“Any lawyers buzzing around?”

“Not yet.”

Interesting. Vaughn had been so certain Meyer would’ve gone on the defense straight out of the gate that he hadn’t given much consideration to the alternative, that Meyer had reached the decision that his son hadn’t done anything criminal, or at least criminal enough to bring a lawyer into the situation.

“Did you get blood samples?” he asked Stratis. “If Junior’s on drugs again, that could answer a lot of my questions.”

“I sent Binderman to the lab with samples. He put a rush on it, so we should have the tox results by the end of the week.”

The end of the week was four days away. Maddening, how slow the system worked.

That was the rub of enforcing the law in a rural county. Just about every forensic service the job required had to be outsourced to Albuquerque or Santa Fe. Every so often, they utilized the Tucumcari hospital’s lab, but not when a crime had occurred, and definitely not when that crime involved a high-ranking Tucumcari official’s family.

The hospital was little more than a sprawling complex of doctors’ offices, an out-patient surgery wing, and an emergency room. At three stories tall, it was one of the larger buildings in town, but wasn’t ideal for treating medical problems greater than broken bones or kidney stones. Or gunshot wounds, for that matter. Hell, broken bones and gunshot wounds were an integral component of life in the wild west of New Mexico’s high desert.

Outsourcing everything from fingerprinting to tox screens was impossibly slow, which was why Vaughn had come to rely on his ability to get people to talk, perps and witnesses alike. Over the years on the job, he’d become a criminal psychology expert out of sheer desperation to deliver justice to those who deserved it, despite the staggering odds stacked against such an outcome.

He cracked his knuckles, took a slow breath, and lowered the volume on his radio. Then he sauntered across the lobby, whistling. Showtime.

When he dropped into the chair next to Kathryn Meyer, Wallace let his hatred for Vaughn shine through for a split second before his eyes shuttered into cool benevolence.

“Cooper. I was wondering when you’d find your way to me.”

Vaughn flickered a glance at him before extending his hand to Kathryn. “Mrs. Meyer, it’s been a long time. I’m so sorry we’re meeting again under such unfortunate circumstances.”

She shook his hand with a strained, dewy-eyed expression. “Thank you.”

“My deputy informed me Junior’s out of the woods,” Vaughn continued in his most consoling tone. “Sounds like the bullet was successfully removed without complication. You must be relieved.”

“The Lord has blessed us with His mercy once again.”

He patted Mrs. Meyer’s hand. “I’m sure that’s true.”

Wallace stood and hitched his slacks up around his bloated belly. “Kathy, Sheriff Cooper and I are going to step away, talk business.”

Vaughn stood, following Meyer’s lead. “Would you like a cup of coffee from the cart out front, Mrs. Meyer?”

“That would be lovely. Thank you,” she said.

He smiled with his kindest eyes, then followed Meyer through the sliding double doors and around the corner, out of sight from the glass-enclosed lobby. They positioned themselves in the sliver of shade on the side of the building.

It was seven o’clock, a half hour before sundown, but the heat was still oppressive and Vaughn’s long-sleeve uniform and tie weren’t helping matters. When he’d won the sheriff election three years earlier, he’d toyed with the idea of wearing a short-sleeve dress shirt, as he had while a deputy. But with the tie and the pens in his chest pocket, he’d looked like one of those Geek Squad workers who fixed computers, not a high-ranking law-enforcement officer. So instead, he suffered in silence through New Mexico’s months of debilitating heat.