Chapter Eleven – The Prophecy #2
I laughed and shrugged. “Maybe, but every time I talk to them, they’ve added something new to their to-do list. You’ll be lucky to have an hour of quiet in two months.”
He chuckled, his love for my siblings evident in his face.
Dad had taken a step back from his leadership role at Marquess Enterprises, but he was still the face of the company and still had a hand in developing each project. The resort in Australia had been a colossal undertaking that he and Sadie needed to celebrate finishing.
When Dad reached out and tugged on my braid in much the way Parker used to, my heart nearly seized. His brows furrowed as he asked, “Are you sure you want this? We can still sell the ranch if you’ve found new dreams to follow.”
After my birthday dinner last night, Dad had handed me the official paperwork transferring the estate and the Harrington trust into my name.
From here on out, the ranch’s success or failure was on me, and I had no intention of letting it fail.
What was the saying? Failure isn’t an option . And it wasn’t.
“I did what you asked, Dad. I went to college and explored all the possible careers and futures I could have, but the simple truth is, this is where I truly belong. I need the ranch as much as it needs me. Taking care of the land and our legacy isn’t a burden.
It’s a gift, and there’s nothing I want more. ”
I wasn’t sure he understood my view, seeing as he’d given up his portion of the ranch for a wad of cash after my mom had betrayed him.
She’d eloped with Spencer days before she was supposed to marry Dad, and it had sent him running away, even knowing she was pregnant with me.
My father had taken the money and started his bar business in Las Vegas, leaving me here with Mom and Spencer.
He hadn’t returned once to Rivers until after his brother had been killed.
“Spencer would be gloating if he heard you say that,” Dad said, his voice turning gravelly with emotions.
Dad drew me to him, hugging me tight, and my arms surrounded him with an ease that still surprised us both when, a decade ago, I’d thought he was the enemy for leaving me and the ranch behind. A wave of affection hit me so intensely it nearly closed my throat.
“I love you, Dad.”
His arms tightened even more, and his voice was still gruff as he said, “I promised you’d never face anything bad on your own again.”
“And you’ve kept that promise, Dad. You were there in San Diego, and I’m not alone here. We have so many people working the ranch that I can barely blink without seeing someone.”
“You call, and I’ll be back in a flash.”
I stepped away and laughed. “Well, it’ll take a minimum of a day to get to California from Australia, and you’d have to go back through time to do it.”
He nudged my chin. “Superhero, traveling through time to get to his family.” He turned serious. “I’d do it, Ducky. Anything you need. I mean it. And if that loser JJ, or that scum Ace, even breathes around you, I want to know.”
The drugs and cash in our apartment had come back with JJ’s prints, and while Detective Harris couldn’t prove it, he highly suspected JJ was offloading the drugs through Ace and his network. If it was true, Ace had gotten out of prison in January only to immediately return to his old ways.
“They can’t find Celia,” I said.
Even though she’d come at me hard while Ace was awaiting trial, showing up on campus, at my apartment, and even the stables where I’d boarded Daisy during competition season, I still had no desire to see her seriously harmed.
After Ace had been sentenced, she’d disappeared and hadn’t returned once he’d been released.
I hoped it meant she’d come to her senses and left the bastard and not that something worse had happened to her.
Dad tugged my braid again. “You’re not responsible for what happened to Celia any more than I was responsible for Theresa Puzo’s death. They made their own choices by getting in bed with the devil.”
Dad and I had both tried to do the right thing and gotten burned by it. We were more alike than I’d ever wanted to admit as a teenager.
“Don’t let your wrongly placed guilt have you answering the phone if JJ calls,” Dad ordered.
“I’ve blocked his number. He’d have to leave a message with the hotel staff to get to me, and I can simply ignore that.
He won’t call though. He’s got his hands full with the case against him and dealing with all the loans he took out and whoever he was stealing drugs for, Ace or otherwise. I’m not worried.”
Dad didn’t look as sure as I felt.
For one brief second, my certainty wavered. I hadn’t listened to my instincts in San Diego. I’d buried all the alarm bells while eking out the last few years of my college freedom.
Never again.
I’d make sure I listened when my gut screamed at me, and I’d do whatever it took to keep me, the ranch, and my family safe. And along the way, I hoped to find my way back to the Fallon I’d once been.
? ? ?
Not even a week later, those instincts were clamoring at me, and I was wondering if I’d ever escape what had happened in San Diego.
As Kurt and I stared down at another pretty cow that had been mutilated, I tortured myself over the knowledge that I’d brought this to the ranch.
It was absolutely clear it wasn’t a cougar this time—not with the words You will pay carved into her hide.
Bile rolled through me, and for one humiliating moment, I thought I might actually be sick.
I was a farm girl. I’d seen my fair share of blood and guts and gore.
Hell, I’d helped deliver babies multiple times, sticking my hands inside and helping the calves work themselves down the canal.
I hadn’t gotten sick with the smell of birthing in a barn, so there was no way a dead cow in the middle of a bluebell- and yarrow-covered field would make me lose my breakfast, even if the violence of it tried to bring back nightmares I usually kept at bay these days. .
“Cameras?” I asked, turning away from the cow and inhaling the smell of pine the wind brought down off the mountaintop.
Kurt turned with me, pointing a long finger. “Closest is about two football fields to the east. I’ll have Lance pull footage for the last twenty-four hours and see who might have been heading in this direction.”
The wounds on the cow were fresh, the blood hadn’t dried, and the scavengers hadn’t found her yet. We might get lucky with a camera .
“I’ll call Sheriff Wylee,” I told him. “See if he’ll send someone to take a report.”
“You think this is JJ?” Kurt asked. His unibrow was low over warm brown eyes.
It had grown impossibly bushier over the last decade.
Once, those brows had been pure black, and now they were shot with white, just like his hair.
The bits of skin on his face that weren’t covered by a mustache and beard were so wrinkled it looked like a shrink-wrap experiment gone awry.
My teeth ground together at his question, hating how everyone knew what had happened in San Diego.
Just like I’d hated the knowing looks I’d gotten from people on the ranch and in town growing up.
Everyone in Rivers had known about the love triangle I’d been born into.
I was the product of multiple betrayals, and it had been whispered about, even when I was a teenager, becoming especially loud after Spencer’s murder and Dad’s return.
But what was worse than any humiliating stares was knowing this poor cow had lost its life because of me.
Someone had hated me enough to come onto my land and torture a nearly defenseless creature.
My gut told me there was only a couple of people who had a reason to hate me this much, and I wouldn’t ignore it.
“I’ll call Detective Harris, tell him what happened, and ask if he can find JJ and Ace,” I said. “Neither of them has permission to leave San Diego, so if they’re caught here, they’d be sent back to jail.”
As much as I couldn’t imagine JJ taking a knife to anything, let alone being able to bring down a full-grown cow, he had Ace on his side.
And I’d seen Ace that violent. The image of him choking Celia would forever be burned in my brain.
And JJ’s face had been almost as ugly at the police station. A shiver ran up my spine.
“You going to call your dad too?”
My chest tightened. “No reason to call him, Kurt.” The man grunted in disapproval, and I added a glare to my words.
“You telling me we can’t handle this on our own?
That you and the entire security team I’m paying a fortune for need my dad’s help?
We need my daddy to fly all the way home from Australia to somehow fix this? ”
I’d pushed the right button, gotten his pride involved, and Kurt snarled, “We know how to take care of our own.”
I gave him a curt nod. “Damn straight we do.”
Except, I wasn’t sure I did.
I made the mistake of looking at the cow again, and my stomach rolled once more. “I’ll head back to the castle to wait for Wylee’s folks. You want me to send someone to watch over her until they show?”
“No. I’d rather talk personally to whomever the sheriff sends.”
I took another quick glance at the cow before striding across the field toward our horses. They were nervous, sensing the death in the air just as I did.
I pulled my phone from the back pocket of my worn jeans and hit Detective Harris’s number. He’d called several times in the first couple of weeks I’d been home, keeping me abreast of the case against JJ, but I hadn’t heard from him since before my birthday.
He picked up on the first ring with a snapped, “Harris.”
“Hey, it’s Fallon.”
“Fallon.” His voice turned softer. Kinder. And I almost hated that as much as I hated the sympathy I saw daily from my staff. “How are you?”
“I’d be better if I hadn’t had two cows mutilated in as many weeks.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sending you a picture.” I shot off the one I’d taken of the cow today and heard his phone ping on the other end of the line.
“Damn,” he muttered. “You said this is the second one? Did the first say the same thing?”
“We thought a cougar got the first and the buzzards afterward. There wasn’t much left of it. Where’s JJ?” I asked, hoping beyond belief he could tell me JJ was sitting in Ace’s apartment.
I only knew JJ was bunking with Ace because Rae had said he’d tried to stay at our apartment until she’d kicked him to the curb. His name wasn’t on the lease, and I was paying my share of the rent until she could get someone to sublet from me when the school year started.
“I’ll find out and get back to you.” He hung up before I could respond.
I swallowed back the guilt and self-reproach I’d gotten good at and dialed the sheriff’s department. The front desk put me directly through to Wylee, and he swore like the rest of us when I told him what had happened. He promised to send a deputy out right away.
I rested my forehead on Daisy’s muzzle in an attempt to soothe the discordant emotions humming through me.
What would our guests think if and when they found out about a second mutilated cow?
This one with a very personal, very angry message?
The last thing I needed was for them to get the willies and take off during our busiest season.
I needed to call a management meeting, talk it over with the department heads, and see what we could do and say to reassure everyone without lying.
What should I do now, Spence?
I couldn’t stand knowing I’d led this to the ranch. How long would I pay penance for my mistakes? Would I get the same sentence as JJ was likely to get? Years?
Was there any chance this had nothing to do with me? That it was related to the estate itself or Dad and the business with the Puzos that had gone down years ago? It didn’t seem likely. After all, everyone who hated us back then was either dead or locked away in a jail cell.
Still, I remembered Dad’s displeasure at seeing Lorenzo in San Diego.
I wouldn’t call Dad, but I would call Jim Steele.
Ultimately, it was his men in charge of the security here.
But I’d wait until I heard back from Harris and for Wylee to do his thing so I’d have the full details to give Jim.
If this was Ace or JJ, and they were caught anywhere near here, it would put a stop to anything worse happening.
I swallowed over the lump in my throat, scratched Daisy’s cheek one more time, and swung myself into the saddle. I didn’t have to prompt her into a canter.
She wanted to leave the field and the death behind as much as I did, but my stomach rolled unexpectedly at the motion.
I’d been riding horses for as long as I could remember, doing tricks on Daisy’s back that some people thought were magic.
I could fling myself off, spin around, and land back on without thinking, and I’d never once gotten sick while doing any of it.
Just nerves , I told myself. Nerves with a side dose of fury.
I’d keep the fury with me. It would help if I had to face evil again. I’d done it before. I’d do it again. And in the meantime, I’d do everything I could to keep the people and animals I was responsible for safe.