Chapter Sixteen
“Patricia Teague was partially right. Because of me, her marriage never lasted.” Sitting across the kitchen table in her little cottage on the edge of Prairie Rock, Reed’s mother looked as pale and fragile as when she’d been released from the hospital following her stroke.
“It wasn’t your fault.” William placed his hand over hers. “Had I known what happened at the time, things would have been a lot different.”
She squeezed his fingers, her gaze never leaving Reed’s face. “I worked with Jeffrey Kuhn as a clerk in the bank. He was a young loan officer. On the night before his wedding, he said he was having second thoughts and was really scared about it.” Grace Bryson looked away from her son, her gaze staring off into the distance as if she was looking back all those years. “He said he needed someone to talk with to help him over his prewedding jitters.” She laughed a mirthless laugh. “I offered to listen and help if I could, in return he said he’d take me home. My parents were older and lived a couple miles out of town. I didn’t see anything wrong with it, and Jeffrey had never led me to believe he’d do something stupid. He knew I was engaged to your father. We were due to marry in a month, which was why I was so receptive to his request. So we talked for an hour over coffee at the diner.”
His mother’s hands gripped William’s. “When he drove me out to my parents’, he passed the turnoff and kept going out toward Palo Duro Canyon, to an old hunting lodge he and his family used during hunting season.”
“The one the teens used to smoke marijuana in?” Reed asked.
“Yes, that’s the one. Nothing good ever happened in that cabin. When I insisted he take me home, he laughed and dragged me inside and…and…” Tears welled in her eyes.
Reed’s chest hurt, his own throat choking on his mother’s pain. “Mom, you don’t have to go on.”
She looked across at him and through her tears said in a strong, determined voice, “Yes, I do. You need to understand. It wasn’t my choice. I didn’t make love to Jeffrey Kuhn. He raped me.”
“Why didn’t you turn him in to the police?”
“He held a pretty big weapon. One I didn’t see any way around at the time. As the loan officer at the only bank in town, he held the loan on William’s land. He said that if I told the police, he’d make sure the loan foreclosed and William would lose everything.
“The land had been in William’s family for a century. I couldn’t let him lose it. Jeffrey married Patricia Lee Taylor the next day in a big, fancy wedding. Who would believe me, if I told the police I’d been raped by one of the rising stars of Prairie Rock the night before his wedding?
“The rape would have to remain a secret. I lied to my parents, I lied to William and I lied to you to keep from losing the land.” She stared into her husband’s eyes. “My lies caused you both so much pain. William hated me because he thought I cheated on him. He hated you because you were another man’s son, not his, but he never told another soul.”
“Because I was ashamed.” William cupped Grace’s palm to his cheek. “I thought I was your second choice, that you only married me because you had to.”
“Never.” She smiled, her pretty, gray-blue eyes glassy with tears. “I’ve always loved you.”
“I don’t know how. I was angry for so long, I could have lost you. You should have divorced me long ago.” He pressed a kiss into her hand.
“No, I couldn’t. I loved you then, I love you now.”
Everything they said to each other played out like a movie. Reed felt as though he was intruding. And Mona wouldn’t stay put long. “I should go.”
“No, don’t.” The man Reed had thought was his father all those years looked to him now, sorrow etched into the deep, tanned lines around his eyes. “I couldn’t look at you without seeing what I thought was her betrayal. I was wrong. So wrong.” William Bryson, who’d pretended to be his father for all those years, the stoic, hard man who’d never so much as smiled, cried silent tears. He scrubbed his face with the back of his sleeve. “You did nothing to deserve my temper. You were just a kid. A good one at that. I’m sorry.”
A few days ago, Reed wouldn’t have been as forgiving or as easily assuaged. But having met Mona and witnessed how determined she was to retain what was hers and protect the ones she loved, he could well understand what his mother had done and even how his stepfather had behaved. “Why tell the secret now?”
“I couldn’t tell the secret or William would have lost his ranch. After a while, it just didn’t matter. The time went by and I just let it go.”
“Until Grace had her stroke and I sold the ranch.” William clutched Grace’s hand in his. “I thought I’d lost her.”
“I wanted William to know the truth about you and you to know what happened.”
“Why did Patricia blame you for her failed marriage?” Reed asked.
“She knew. I don’t know how, but she knew. Maybe Jeffrey told her. Maybe she saw us at the diner together. But she knew. It must have eaten at her. She had a baby within nine months after their wedding. A boy, Jeff Jr. He’d be about the same age as you. He looked more like her, dark hair, dark eyes, whereas you looked like Jeffrey. A reminder that he’d had me first.” Grace’s lips twisted. “They argued bitterly, dragging it into the public. She’d call Jeffrey names in front of the boy. Finally, she filed for divorce and left with Jeff Jr. I heard she changed their names and disappeared for a while. Then she started showing up here six years ago with Teague Oil & Gas.”
“Whatever happened to her son?” Reed asked.
“I don’t know.” Grace sighed. “I need to rest. All this excitement…”
Reed stood and helped his mother to her feet.
William hooked his hand through her arm. “I’ll take care of her. You go back to your girl. She needs you now.”
When Reed turned to leave, his mother’s voice stopped him.
“Reed?” Grace stood in the curve of her husband’s arm. “I hope you can forgive us.”
Seeing the two of them holding on to each other made his heart ache with the need to find a love as strong. One woman came to mind and she was waiting back at the diner for him. “It would be a waste of time if I didn’t.”
“Do you need a ride back to the diner?” William asked.
“No, I’ll walk. It’s not that far.” The mile would give him time to digest everything they’d told him. As he strode along the street, passing wood-framed houses dating back to the early fifties and some newer brick homes, he mulled over what had happened.
That snake, Jeffrey Kuhn, the man who’d threatened to foreclose on Mona’s property was the same man who’d raped Reed’s mother over thirty years ago. His father. By blood only. The man could never be a good father, he didn’t have it in him. Rage burned inside Reed and he wanted to pummel the man into a bloody heap.
The sound of sirens wailed ahead of him, jerking him out of his rage. What now?
Mona? His footsteps increased until he was running on the pavement, wishing he’d worn tennis shoes rather than cowboy boots. When he turned the corner onto Main Street, an ambulance pulled away from the front of the Prairie Rock Bank. Sheriff’s deputies climbed into their cars as the small crowd dispersed.
Reed skidded to a stop next to Deputy Phillips’s car, his breathing ragged. “Steve, wait.” He doubled over and sucked in a deep breath. “What happened?”
The deputy shook his head and tucked a pen into his shirt pocket. “Jeffrey Kuhn shot himself.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Right after a talk with your boss lady.”
“Mona?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is she? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Left about fifteen minutes ago saying she’d be at the diner. She should be over there with the sheriff. He had a few questions for her.”
“Did he cover the shooting?”
“No, he had a stop on the way back from delivering his mother to the hospital.”
“Mother?”
“The Teague woman. Funny thing. I never knew it was his mother until I heard him and Toby talking about her. I didn’t think much of it until I saw them together today at the diner. They look so much alike. Dangedest thing, those two never acted like mother and son.” Steve glanced up at Reed. “I gotta go file my report. Did you need anything else?”
“Yeah, a ride over to the diner.”
“Hop in.” He cleared a space on the front seat.
Reed climbed in, wishing he was the one doing the driving. When they came in view of the diner, Mona’s truck was gone.
“This is your stop.” Steve shifted into park and waited for Reed to get out.
“Hold on a minute.” He dialed Mona’s cell phone, but she didn’t answer. When he closed his phone, he noticed the message icon blinking. She must have left it while he was running and he hadn’t heard it. He quickly called his voice mail and listened.
“Reed…on…way headed…Palo Duro Can—” What sounded like a siren whined in the background and the message ended.
“Steve, can your report wait? I think Mona might be in trouble.”
“I’m with you. Anything to put off writing those reports.” Steve shifted in Reverse and pulled out of the diner parking lot. “Where to?”
* * *
W HEN THEY REACHED the hunter’s cabin tucked between rock outcroppings in a lonely section of the canyon, Sheriff Parker Lee climbed out, opened the back door and pointed his service weapon at Mona. “Get out.”
She sat still, afraid that if she got out, it would be all over. He’d kill her, and her baby would die as well. “I don’t get it. Why?”
“It’s not for you to understand. Just get out.” He waved the gun impatiently.
“You were the ringleader of the cattle rustling all this time?” She’d figured Parker Lee was a horse’s butt, a selfish, egotistical man with no thought to anyone but himself. But she’d never pegged him for a criminal. He was a sheriff. “You killed Dusty and Gil, didn’t you?”
“Dusty saw too much and Gil knew too much.”
“What about the salesman, Chase Molderhauer? Did you kill him too? Just so you could use his identity at the stockyards?” Sensing her unease, the baby kicked the inside of her belly. The sheriff was pure evil. She had to get away. Sitting in the back seat of his vehicle wasn’t the way to do it. She prayed Reed got her message and was at that very minute speeding toward her.
“He tried to sell me an inferior knife he swore was an antique.” Parker Lee’s lip curled on one side. “It wasn’t antique, but it was just as deadly.”
Mona shivered at the image of the salesman with his throat slit from ear to ear. How she had ever fallen for Parker Lee, she couldn’t fathom, and the more he revealed the more she wanted to throw up. “What about Deputy Jones?”
“Found out about my cattle truck. He had to go.”
Sick, thinking about Tyler Jones’s baby and wife having to live without him, Mona couldn’t stand being in the same vehicle as the murdering sheriff. Escape became a necessity. She climbed out of the backseat, studying her surroundings.
The cabin probably dated back to the forties, the weathered wood hadn’t been painted since…well, it probably had never felt the stroke of a paintbrush. The boards had shrunk so much from the rain, heat and cold that slices of shadowy black gaped between each. Prairie wind whipped at Mona’s hair, slapping it against her face, as if warning her not to go nearer to the ancient structure. The clouds that had been building in the western sky encroached on the canyon, turning daylight to dusk.
Wisps of clouds dangled from the churning gray-green skies. Tornado weather. As if she didn’t have enough troubles with a gun pointed at her.
The corner of a huge galvanized metal cattle trailer peeked out from behind a stand of rocks. Wayne and Les stepped out. Les carried a rifle and Wayne a .38 revolver with a pearl handle. Just like the one her father had given her. The one she’d dropped when she’d been surrounded by the four-wheelers just a short time ago.
“Nice gun, don’t you think?” Wayne asked, twisting the weapon right then left, admiring the polished metal and pearl.
Mona pushed her anger aside. The gun wasn’t as important as her baby’s life. With three against one, her odds couldn’t get much worse. Maybe she could talk to them until help arrived. Would help arrive? Hell, she didn’t really know where she was, how could anyone else find her in the vastness of the canyon?
“Les, keep your rifle trained on her. Wayne, let me see that gun.” Parker Lee held out his hand and waited for Wayne to lay the weapon in it. “Wayne, you know how important it is to follow orders, don’t you?”
Wayne shifted and stared across at Les. “Yes, sir.”
“When you don’t, bad things happen, like to Dusty.”
“That’s right.”
“Dusty was going to rat on us all, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the trouble with too many people in the mix. Less is better.”
“It is?” Wayne’s eyes narrowed.
“Yeah.” Parker aimed the weapon at Les. The man didn’t even have time to react, before a loud crack ripped the air. Simultaneously, a flash of lightning was followed immediately by the rumble of thunder. The acrid scent of gunpowder stung Mona’s nose.
Les Newton staggered backward and fell flat on his back, a circle of bright red blood forming on his forehead.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Wayne hesitated before lunging at Parker Lee. His hesitation cost him. Parker’s next bullet clipped him in the temple.
Wayne Fennel dropped to the ground.
Mona didn’t wait for the next shot. She threw herself behind the SUV, ducking low to avoid gunfire.
“Running won’t do you much good, you know.”
“Neither will standing there waiting for you to shoot me,” she muttered.
“What was that? I couldn’t hear you. Come on out. It’s only a matter of time before your boyfriend gets here. I want to see the look on his face as you die.”
“You’re sick, Parker Lee. You aren’t going to kill me.” She dropped to the ground and peered under the chassis to locate his cowboy boots. He moved to the front of the car. Mona scooted around to the back. “You’re not going to kill me because I’ll kill you first.” Her baby depended on her to stay alive. So what if it’s father was a lunatic. The baby deserved a chance to live a normal, healthy life. “Why are you doing this? Is your mother putting you up to it?”
“My mother doesn’t know anything. Because of what Grace Bryson and my father did the night before my parents’ wedding, my mother suffered for a lifetime. She didn’t deserve that kind of disrespect. I’m only making it right again.”
“Grace and your father didn’t kill anyone, Reed. Killing people isn’t going to make anything right. It’ll only put you in jail and cause your mother even more pain.”
“No. You don’t get it, do you? No one will know it was me. Your boyfriend will look like he was the one behind the cattle rustling and the murders.” He rounded the passenger side of the SUV. Mona moved to the driver’s side. The cabin was only ten feet away. If she could get inside, she could barricade the door and pray Reed got there soon. On the count of three. One…two…
Loose gravel shifted behind her. Mona flung herself toward the cabin, running as fast as her pregnant body could go. A gun exploded behind her, the bullet hitting the ground a yard to her right. She didn’t stop. When she reached the door, she twisted the handle and pushed. It didn’t budge. The ancient door had a brand-new lock on it and, presumably, Parker Lee was the owner of the key.
She spun to her left, looking for another avenue of escape, but before she could take another step, Parker Lee slammed into her, grasping her around the waist.
Not the baby. Don’t hurt the baby. Mona stopped fighting and went completely still. Praying he didn’t notice, but knowing he couldn’t help but guess.
“What the hell?” His arm jerked away from her belly, giving her just enough room to dodge around him.
He caught her by the hair and yanked her to a halt. “You’re not going anywhere.” His words were low and deadly.
Mona’s scalp burned. He yanked again, sending her flying backward against him.
Lee spun her around and ripped her shirt open, his face a mottled red. “You’re pregnant.”
Mona grabbed the ends of her shirt and closed it over her nakedness. “No kidding.”
“How far along?” he demanded.
“None of your business.”
He pointed the gun at her belly. “Answer!”
Too afraid his fingers would slip on the trigger, Mona blurted, “Six months.” The secret she’d tried so hard to keep was out. Her shoulders sagged. What did it matter? Parker Lee had no intention of letting her live. Not now. She knew too much. But she’d be damned if she went down without a fight. Graingers didn’t quit.
Her gaze panned the area around the cabin, looking for something, anything she could use as a weapon. Two yards from where she stood, a gray, weathered board lay on the ground, a rusty nail sticking up out of it. With Parker Lee standing in front of her, holding a gun to her baby, could Mona get to it and beat some sense back into the sheriff’s deranged skull?
* * *
R EED’S FINGER dug into the armrest of the deputy’s cruiser. “Can you go a little faster?”
“Any faster and I’ll lose control.” Despite his denial, Deputy Phillips pressed his foot to the floor, the car leaping forward, eating the miles between them and who knew what.
Mona had to be alive. Reed would accept no other option. She had too much determination and love in her to die so young. And she’d make a damn good mother to her baby. The child deserved a life with Mona as his mother.
The cruiser topped the rise and before them stretched the Palo Duro Canyon. Following the winding dirt road, they plunged downward into the maze of bluffs until a cabin came into sight.
His heart leaped into his throat when Reed realized the two people standing in front of the cabin were Sheriff Parker Lee and Mona. And the sheriff had a gun trained on Mona.
The deputy slammed on his brakes and skidded to a sideways stop, dust clouding the air.
Before the vehicle came to a complete stop, Reed flung the door open and jumped out.
“Oh good, just in time for the finale.” Sheriff Lee grabbed Mona’s arm and jerked it up behind her, pressing the gun to her forehead. “The bastard child of my father comes full circle to watch his life fall apart, just like my mother’s.”
“What is it you want, Lee?”
His eyes narrowed like a cat ready to pounce. “To watch you suffer.”
How could Reed argue with that? The only way to end the suffering was to put a bullet in Sheriff Lee. But Lee had the upper hand. He had Mona.
“Drop your gun, Bryson.”
Her shirt hung open, exposing the bulge of her baby and her breasts encased in a pale pink bra. Unfazed by her nakedness, Mona looked over at Reed. “Shoot him, Reed. He’s going to kill you.”
“I can’t, baby.” His heart broke at the fear in her eyes. The fear for his life.
“He’s going to kill me anyway. Shoot him!” she shouted.
“You know I can’t always be taking orders from a woman.”
“Do it now, Reed.” Tears tumbled down her cheeks. “Do it or you’ll die.”
“Put the gun down, Sheriff.” Deputy Phillips raised his 9mm pistol and aimed it at the sheriff.
Sheriff Lee twisted, placing Mona between him and the deputy. “Shoot and you get the girl.” He shrugged. “Which would play right into my hands. Now, put the weapon down, or she dies sooner.”
Phillips maintained his hold on his gun. “No.”
“Have it your way.” Lee tugged on Mona’s hair so hard tears filled her eyes and her head tipped back. He jammed the gun beneath her jaw.
“No!” Reed lunged forward.
“Drop the gun,” the sheriff warned.
Mona shook her head, her eyes wild. “Don’t do it, Reed.”
Her captor smacked her face with the pistol barrel. “Shut up.”
“I’m dropping the gun.” Reed held his weapon trained on Parker. “Let her go. She didn’t do anything to you.”
“She’s pregnant with my child and she didn’t tell me. You call that nothing?”
“You don’t care about the child.” Reed inched forward.
“I’ll be damned if another man raises him. I won’t let it happen.” Lee’s face contorted, his teeth bared and his eyes shone glassy with unshed tears. “She should have told me.” Lee shook her head so hard her teeth rattled.
“That hurts!” Mona jammed her elbow into Parker Lee’s gut.
He grunted and loosened his hold enough that Mona broke free at the same time his gun went off.
Reed fired, the bullet hitting Parker Lee square in the chest, knocking him backward so hard he hit the cabin.
The sheriff pointed his gun at Reed and pulled the trigger.
Searing pain ripped through Reed’s arm, jerking him away from the sheriff.
Mona bent to the ground and grabbed the weathered two-by-four. When Sheriff Lee tried to aim at Reed again, Mona slammed the two-by-four across his arm.
Lee’s forearm snapped, the gun flying from his grip. The man screamed and fell over, clutching at his arm, blood oozing from the wound to his chest, his face blanching a pale gray. “Bitch. I should have killed you.”
She tossed the board to the side and kicked his gun far out of his reach. “Don’t mess with the people I love.”
“I should have killed you.” Parker Lee’s voice faded along with the color in his face.
“Get on the radio for Emergency Medical Services,” Mona called out to Deputy Phillips. She hurried to Reed, tugging her shirt off her back to press into his wound. “Sit down, or you’ll bleed out before the EMS gets here.”
Reed smiled, dropping to the ground, his head getting dizzy. “Bossy woman.”
“Not like it does me any good. You don’t follow orders.”
“I couldn’t let him kill you,” he said.
She cupped his cheek. “And I couldn’t let him kill you .”
“Guess your cattle rustling has come to an end.”
Her eyes widened, a frown bringing her brows together. “Guess so.”
“Still need a cowboy?”
A smile spread across her face, making her eyes sparkle. “More than ever.” Her gaze captured his, and she held her breath.
“Gonna advertise this time?”
Mona pinched his good arm. “No, the position is already filled.” She leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers. “I hope.”
“Damn right.” Helicopter blades couldn’t drown out the blood drumming in Reed’s ears. Being with Mona was like coming home for good.