Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
P ANIC DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO SET IN. Hanna’s anchor line held, jerking her body to a stop, then snapping her into the face of the cliff. The hard stop yanked her left shoulder, but it wasn’t unbearable. The dog squealed and bit Hanna’s thumb, though the heavy glove she wore protected her. She realized she was holding him too tight.
“You okay?” Asa hollered down.
“Good. Get me back on the ledge. I think I’ll let you pull the dog up first.”
Juggling the dog, she pulled some extra rope from her pack and fashioned a harness for Pancho. He’d calmed down quite a bit, and she had no trouble hooking him up. He didn’t squirm while Asa pulled him up.
Once free of the dog, Hanna climbed back up to where Asa waited.
“Whoa.” Hanna rested on her back until her breathing returned to normal. Drenched in sweat, she yearned for a nice, cool shower.
“Still with us, Chief?” Asa asked.
“Yeah, yeah. I am completely wilted.”
“We’re out here in the heat of the day. Let’s head into Big Red for some AC.”
“Good idea.”
Together, they gathered up their gear and started the walk back to the truck. In the distance, the smoke from the Crest Fire still billowed.
“Is it my imagination, or is there more smoke over there?” Hanna gestured toward the Crest Fire.
“Could be,” Asa answered. “But it’s still blowing away from us. We’ll be fine unless the wind shifts.”
“I pray that the wind doesn’t shift,” Hanna said. As they finished the hike in silence, her thoughts fell unavoidably back on Joe.
Though sweaty and gritty, Hanna wanted to follow up on Braden. Dry Oaks had an urgent care but no trauma center. Since his injuries were not life-threatening, Braden was transported to the Dry Oaks facility, not to Sonora. Hanna arrived at the medical center at the same time Everett Buckley pulled up in his large SUV.
When he climbed out, Hanna couldn’t help but notice that the eighty-year-old multimillionaire was surprisingly spry. Scott’s death had also forced him out of retirement. He did have Chase and his nephews to help with the Buckley empire, but from what Hanna had heard and read, Everett was the big boss.
Before the crash, Hanna would have said that Everett didn’t look a day over sixty-five. Not so today. His craggy, worry-lined face revealed his age. No surprise considering his life of tragedy.
Seeing Everett always brought her mother to mind.
“Such a good man, Everett Buckley, the last of a good generation, and he raised Scott right,” Paula used to say, always lamenting that Everett was too old for her and Scott was too much of a martyr to be a good boyfriend. She never had anything good to say about Chase, or Devon for that matter, who was two years older than Hanna.
Scott never had children. All of Hanna’s life she heard from her mother about how Scott had sacrificed his own personal life to take care of Chase and Devon. Devon’s mother, Ellen, and Chase never married.
Born the day Chase was injured, Hanna knew little about him. He’d never been much of a father to Devon before being maimed, and being maimed didn’t help matters. For a time after the murders, he stayed in San Francisco while his burns healed, and he went through physical therapy for his injuries.
Ellen was a drug addict, and she was never very stable. Around the time Marcus Marshall published his book about the Beecher’s Mine murders, Ellen had disappeared. Scott and Everett had raised Devon. Everett groomed him to take over a part of his vast business holdings.
But it was not to be. Devon had been racing his motorcycle on a rainy night. He missed a curve, hit a tree, and died instantly. Braden’s mother, Kelly, was another flighty woman. Paula used to go on and on about the Buckley inclination to hook up with flighty women. Three years ago, Kelly left Braden with Everett and moved to Hollywood, wanting to be a movie star. Hanna didn’t think that was going too well. Gossip in town said that Kelly did Zoom calls with Braden from time to time, but that was it.
Hattie, Everett’s wife and the mother of the boys, had died. Rumor had it that Dry Oaks’s mayor, Evelyn Milton, had the hots for him.
Now, his face screwed up with concern, and maybe fear, as he approached Hanna at a brisk jog.
“I got here as fast as I could,” he explained, breathless. Tall and thin, with a full head of white hair, Everett reminded Hanna of old-time movie actor Andy Griffith. He just didn’t talk with a southern drawl. “I was out at the fire line. How is Braden?”
“From what I saw, his arm is broken, and he’s scraped up a bit, but other than that, I think he’s fine.”
Relief eased his worry wrinkles some. “Do you know what happened?”
“Pancho chased a squirrel and Braden chased him. My guess is that he and Pancho got too close to the ledge and fell.”
Hands on his hips, Everett sighed. “I’m too old for this.”
“Boys will be boys. Aren’t broken arms to be expected?”
He frowned. “I expected Cassidy to be a better babysitter.”
“Don’t be too hard on her. She called for help right away. By the way, Asa has Pancho in the car. What do you want me to do with him?”
“Hang on to him for a bit. I’ll have Grover swing by and pick him up. I think we dodged a bullet as far as the Crest Fire goes. The wind shifted, eased a bit. They’re getting a handle on it. The next forty-eight hours will be crucial.”
“I thought the smell of smoke had eased.”
“We’ve got the manpower now to work the blaze. I’m optimistic.”
“Good news about the fire. Let’s get you to your boy.”