Chapter 2
Chapter Two
C onnor headed to his office and unlocked the door. He’d stopped by the upstairs window and noted Lacy’s little red car was already gone. Since she rarely left the ranch, the missing vehicle was obvious. So was the pain in his chest.
She hadn’t sent him a text yet that morning, meaning she was either already in trouble or wasn’t to her destination yet. Where could she be going that would take her all night? He pushed open the office door and headed to his desk. Ordinarily, he wanted it open to welcome anyone in. Now, he wanted to close it, blocking out everyone and all the questions sure to arise. Questions he had no answers for. Questions people would ask him because he knew Lacy best.
Ferd leaned against his doorjamb and tilted her head to the side. “I know you usually ignore me, but never quite that bad. I was sitting right in the living room and even said ‘hello’.” Her brows rose in question.
Ferd looked far too much like him for him to ever deny that she was his half-sister. Even some of her mannerisms were like his, which had been a strange experience. His father’s genes must have been strong because, to his eyes, she didn’t look at all like Gloria.
“Sorry. I was distracted.”
“By Lacy leaving?” she asked as she came into his office and sat on the chair closest to his desk, the one Lacy would usually sit in every morning.
“What makes you think that?”
Ferd snorted. “Connor, you’re as easy to read as a children’s book. You care about her. A lot. You look at her differently than you do everyone else.” Ferd shrugged a shoulder. “She told me she was coming back, hopefully soon, so you shouldn’t worry.”
He scrubbed his face and released a sigh, the rough hair on the lower half scraping against his palms. He hadn’t had the energy to shave that morning after a sleepless night waiting for Lacy to send him word she was alright. “You’re perceptive.”
“That’s what Lacy told me. That’s why she thought I would do well in her job. I’m not sure why she wants to give it up though.”
He wasn’t sure either. Lacy loved helping the victims who came to Wayside, and she’d never once indicated that she wanted to leave until the night before. “I didn’t realize she did.”
“Maybe she thinks I want to take over or something. Just so you know, I don’t. I love what you do here, and I would never jeopardize it. I want to help, and I’ll do whatever you and Lacy want me to, but I’m not here because I was left half of it. I’m here because my mom is here, and I want to learn more about my father . . . and my brother.”
She’d had so much more time to process all of this than he’d had. Dad had told him just after Thanksgiving that he’d had a one-time fling with a woman who worked at the ranch twenty years before. That one night had brought Ferd. He’d also learned more about his mother than he was ready to process.
Maybe there was a good reason she’d never returned. Maybe she thought he would hate her or that he would side with Dad. He’d tried to reach out to Mom on multiple occasions, but she’d never responded. She’d never even told him so much as, ‘leave me alone’. That would’ve made life easier. At least then he could stop thinking about what he could’ve done differently. After her death, it was too late to get answers.
“I want to get to know you, too. I’m just still so . . .” the words wouldn’t come.
“Yeah, it’s not easy to process. I thought my dad was dead. I never knew he was a few hours south of me this whole time.” Her glance dashed to the side, and she ducked her head, hiding her emotions.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure that was hard.” He knew it was hard. Having a mom he knew about who had lived just an hour away who wouldn’t talk to him was tough. Knowing now that Ferd could’ve had help this whole time, but being denied because of lies had to sting.
Ferd looked around at his office and he was suddenly struck by how much he had, just in that one room. “I don’t think you have any idea what I went through, but thanks.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Lacy had to leave so abruptly that I have no idea what to do. I know where she hides the key to her office cabin, but no clue what I should be doing in there other than looking at the files to get an idea of her job.”
He braced his hands against the desk and wondered if part of Lacy’s need to hurry was to force him into talking to Ferd. If he had his way, he’d do this slowly, on his own time. Without Lacy here as a buffer, he had to face the sister who’d arrived a month before and he still didn’t know.
“Let me go over there with you and give you a run down. She does a lot. There will be things I don’t think of until they go undone. I know that, and I’m not going to blame you for that. She is the literal glue that holds this place together.”
Ferd stood and turned from him. “Great. That’s not terrifying or anything. I’m trying to fill the shoes of someone who the boss loves, who does everything, and holds the place together. What could possibly go wrong?”
He laughed because she’d just encapsulated his own feelings in one long sentence. “I think you’ll do just fine. Plus, it’s the week before Christmas. Lacy has already done all the gift shopping for the guests. They will be arriving this week. She always marks them as gifts, then puts a note to them inside so she remembers who is supposed to get each one.”
“That’s smart. I would order them and then sit there looking at them when they arrived thinking . . . who was that for again?” Ferd laughed.
“That would be me, too.” He held the front door open for her and then braced against the wind as they headed for Lacy’s office.
“Why did she want to be out here? There has to be office space in there for her.” Ferd motioned behind her toward the main house.
“There isn’t,” he quickly answered. Though he recalled her hinting at one point about wanting to be in the lodge. “She prefers to be closer to the guests. She could even move to one of the bigger cabins now that all my men have moved over to the Homestead for housing.”
“Except Brendon.” Lacy ducked her head against the wind.
“Yes, because he’d already made his living quarters wheelchair accessible and moving would be hard. He decided to stay. I didn’t force anyone to move.” Connor dug the key ring for the cabins from his jacket pocket and unlocked the office.
The moment he opened the door, Lacy’s scent met his nose, and his chest ached all over again. He prayed she’d make it to her destination safely and that she’d remember to text him.
Ferd moved behind the desk and touched the phone lightly. “No messages. That’s a good start.”
He nodded, unable to find his voice for a second. His phone sounded like three gunshots, and he dove for it, knowing that was the sound he’d programmed for Lacy. Ferd’s eyes widened, and she stared at him as he answered the call.
“Connor.”
Her voice sounded tired, but she was clearly alive and well. “Morning. I just arrived and found a hotel that let me check in early. I’m going to catch a few Zs before I meet with Melinda.” She yawned.
“I don’t really understand the urgency. You could’ve slept in your own bed last night, gotten up early and had a clear head to drive.” He closed his eyes, remembering he didn’t have the right to be protective of her right now. She didn’t want that from him.
“Connor, I’m safe. I’m here. Let me sleep for a few hours and I’ll let you know what I find. With a little grace from God, I’ll be back on the road in a day or two.”
“Ferd is here. Is there anything you want her to do while you’re gone?” He glanced up at his sister.
“Just put up the Christmas trees, wrap the gifts that should be coming, and check my emails. I have a book of logins in my right, locked drawer. It’s purple. I lock that drawer and log out of everything when I leave every day. I also set my preferences to forget everything, so I have to manually login every single day.”
Ferd gave the thumbs up, and he realized she could hear every word, despite the fact that he wasn’t on speaker phone.
“Thanks. Get some sleep.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Be safe.” It was the closest thing to ‘I love you’ Lacy would allow.
“I will. Talk to you soon.” She hung up the call.
“Emails will be the hardest part, but, like you said, it’s the week before Christmas.” Ferd looked around the office as if she might be worried there was something she was missing.
“Lacy usually welcomes guests, shows them to their cabins, makes sure their luggage is waiting for them, and finds anything for guests they need, like clothes, winter coats, whatever. But there won’t be any new guests until one of the current people graduate.”
She smiled. “I like that. You don’t call it ‘becoming well’ but graduation. That makes it sound more achievable.” She raised the side of her mouth.
“Exactly.” His mood immediately improved after hearing from Lacy. She was safely in a hotel room somewhere, getting some sleep. She’d check in with her friend and then she’d come home. Hopefully by Christmas.
His mind fired off an idea and he went with it. “Hey, I was just thinking . . .” Christmas meant a good time for Ferd to meet her other brothers, if they were up for it. He’d almost forgotten. “I can try to get my three brothers to come for Christmas to meet you. Dad would probably want to see them too. Between introducing you and Dad getting shot, I would think that would be enough to bring them to Wayside.”
Her brows furrowed. “They haven’t come before?”
He almost hated that Lacy had been right. Forcing him to talk to her was exactly what he’d needed to do in the situation. There was literally nothing wrong with Ferd. She wasn’t the typical young person he saw when he went into town, stuck in their phone and oblivious to the world. She had a head on her shoulders and made good observations.
“We had a falling out after Mom left. I don’t think they knew about your mom, but they felt the breakup was Dad’s fault and didn’t talk to him after that. Since I was still relatively young and I didn’t want to switch schools, I stayed. Plus, Wayside was all I’d ever known. I never dreamed Mom would give up on me and then die before I had a chance to find out why.”
Ferd closed her eyes and frowned, then turned away. “That’s really sad. I’m thankful I got the chance to say what I needed to in order to get my heart straight. You won’t get that chance.”
“Yeah.” He wanted to end the conversation now, right here. “Anyway, I’ll call my oldest brother today and see if he’ll come. You never know.”
She gave him a weak smile. “Nope, you never know.”
Lacy pressed the bottom of her phone to turn off the alarm and it didn’t stop. That’s when she realized it was the ringtone. She pressed to answer. “Hello?”
“I don’t know who you are, but you’d better leave my wife alone,” a male voice threatened.
“Excuse me?” Lacy’s sleep blurred brain didn’t recognize the voice.
“I checked Melinda’s phone, like I always do. She’d deleted this number, but I found it anyway. Who are you?”
He’d searched her phone? A heaviness pulled on her. Lord, help me know what to say to diffuse this situation. “I’m so sorry. I’m just an old friend. I’m sure you can tell from the number that I’m nowhere near you. There’s nothing to worry about from me. She just called to say hello and see how I was doing. She knew I’d worry about her since I hadn’t heard from her in so long. I’m glad she did because I was about to go to the police and file a missing person’s report.” Lacy bit her lip, hoping that hadn’t been too far. Maybe he would be thankful Melinda had thought to call if he thought that was the case.
“She’s fine. We’re living our best life over here. No need to call back. She is happy with me.”
Bravado surged and she was too tired to be having this conversation. “You have a strange way of showing it. My husband doesn’t search my phone and call numbers he doesn’t recognize. That seems kind of unhealthy to me.”
“Oh, and you’re a shrink now? You going to tell me how to live my life and how to treat my wife?” he screamed an expletive at her and the line went dead.
Lacy jumped out of bed and yanked on her jeans from the night before. She’d been so tired when she’d arrived that she hadn’t unpacked, instead sleeping in her tee. She whipped her hair up into a messy bun without combing it and grabbed her keys and the card to her room and raced out the front door.
She pulled up her phone and found the address Melinda had sent to her. It was still about ten minutes away. Melinda’s husband might be smart enough to look up what had been deleted on her phone, but there was nothing he could do about information that had already been sent.
She raced through the small New Mexico town into a little neighborhood where all the houses had peeling paint and dogs roamed the streets. Two kids played hoops on a bent metal bar tacked above a garage door. The hoop had a permanent crook in one side, and she wondered if the ball would actually go through it at all.
A few blocks in, she found the address and parked her car two driveways away, then got out, leaving her car unlocked. She didn’t want to have to fight to open the vehicle if she had to make a hasty get away. Her small pistol rested on her hip, hidden under her loose flannel, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it.
A muffled scream came from inside the house. A man sitting across the street on his porch with a cigar dangling from his mouth didn’t seem to notice at all. Were they used to hearing Melinda scream like that? Her chest heaved as she rushed up the weedy front walk and knocked on the front door.
A man in an auto service shirt with the name Tod embroidered on the front opened the door. “What do you want?”
She blinked, rapidly trying to think of something only Melinda would know, not her husband. “I’m with the Christian Mission Foundation and I was sent to find the local mission housing, with the church. They gave me the wrong address and I’m lost. Do you know where it is?” She tried to smile, but knew it faltered.
“Do I look like I know where a mission house is?” He glared at her.
Melinda gently pushed him to the side. “I can show you.” Her left eye was badly bruised, and she kept her head down.
“You ain’t going anywhere until we finish talking.” He pushed her back.
“I’m done talking for now.” She evaded him and stepped outside. Her feet were bare despite the 40-degree temperature, and she tugged a threadbare sweater closed tightly around her thin frame.
“Is it nearby or could you ride with and show me? I’d bring you right back. I would even be willing to buy breakfast for both of you, if you would be so kind.” She tried to sound genuine, but Tod’s glare left her shaken.
Teddy was bigger than that guy thought he was, and she’d never been scared of him. Not even when he’d come back from his time in the service with darkness in his heart and internal thoughts he refused to share.
“If she goes, I go too.” He stepped outside.
“Sorry, my husband won’t let me have men I don’t know in my car. She’ll show me where it is, we’ll get some food, and I’ll have her right back. Thank you.” She started rushing for her car and heard Melinda right on her heels.
“Go, go, go, he’s following,” Melinda muttered.
“You, stop right there!” Tod yelled.
The man across the street finally took notice and stood up, watching them closely. Melinda followed Lacy right to her red car and dove into the passenger side, then locked the door. Lacy did the same, shoved the key into the ignition and the moment the car responded, she raced away almost hitting Melinda’s husband as he threw himself toward the hood of her car.
“He’s going to call the police and say that you kidnapped me. He always lies.” Melinda covered her face in her hands. “You were my last hope of escape. Over the last few months, he’s been beating me up, then he’ll cut himself. He calls the police to report that I tried to kill him, and he tells them he used self-defense to keep me away. He claims that I refuse to leave the house even though he’s asked me to. The police never make me leave. I wish they would. I wish I could.”
Lacy shook her head and glanced in her rearview mirror, glad there wasn’t anyone following. “Why would he do that?”
She took a deep breath, but her voice remained quiet. “To give himself an alibi. He plans to kill me and make it look like self-defense. I have to get out of here and go into hiding. If I stay, I’m dead. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I need to get out or I’m done for.”
Lacy swallowed the bile in her throat. “Would it help if we called the police first? Could we talk to someone who specializes in this sort of thing? Someone has to believe you.”
Melinda heaved an exasperated sigh. “You don’t understand. Until about a week ago, I was convinced that he loved me. I really thought that after every incident, when he said he loved me and he’d never do it again, he was telling the truth. He’d get better. He’d do better. I wanted to believe him. I see happy people all the time. Why couldn’t that be us?”
Because the man Melinda had chosen had lied to her. He wasn’t the man he’d purported to be before she agreed to marry him. “You aren’t alone. I’ll help you get out of this. The first thing you need to do is to believe with everything in you that his actions against you are more truthful than the words he says. One hundred percent of the time. Can you do that?” Lacy finally breathed a sigh as she turned out of the neighborhood and back onto a busier street.
Melinda nodded as Lacy turned the heat on as high as it would go. She’d like to take Melinda back to her hotel room and then casually take Melinda back to Wayside with her husband none the wiser, but that would only make the problem worse. The police had no idea he’d been playing them. They’d file a missing person’s report and Lacy could find herself in trouble.
“First things first, you need something to wear and some food. Then, we’ll go talk to the Police. I want them to document what he did to you and why. I’ll tell them he had no injuries when I came to the door. In fact, he was able-bodied enough to try to jump on my car.”
Hopefully, that would give them enough pause to question the other reports. They needed to start a paper trail to confirm Melinda was in danger. Her life depended on it.