Chapter 4 #4
“I don’t know about Hendrick’s, but Elway’s death was a tragic accident.
Elway was getting on in years. Shouldn’t have been out there alone.
” Jenkins sipped his coffee, his expression appropriately somber.
“But that’s ranch life. Dangerous work, especially for folks who don’t take proper precautions. ”
“Elway Blackwood was one of the most careful men I ever knew,” Rowan said quietly. “Taught me to check equipment twice and plan for problems before they happened.”
“People change as they age. Reflexes slow, judgment gets cloudy. Elway might have been careful once, but even the best of us make mistakes eventually.”
“The timing seems coincidental,” Saxon said.
“Coincidences happen.” Jenkins sighed. “Though I suppose it’s natural for outsiders to see patterns where locals see random events.”
Outsiders. The word carried just enough edge to make it clear that Rowan wasn’t considered a local anymore, despite growing up here. That he’d forfeited his right to opinions about Renegade when he’d left for the military.
“Any theories about who might be behind the rustling?” Rowan asked. “Assuming it’s actually happening.”
“If it’s happening—and that’s a big if—it’s probably someone from outside the area. We don’t have those kinds of problems with local folks. This is a tight-knit community. People look out for each other.”
“People like Sierra Blackwood.”
“Sierra’s had a hard time since her grandfather died. Running a ranch alone isn’t easy, especially for a woman with a child to raise. Sometimes stress can make people see threats where none exist.”
“Maybe the community should rally around her,” Saxon suggested. “Help her through a difficult time.”
“Oh, we’ve tried. I’ve made several offers to buy the ranch, give her enough money to start fresh somewhere else. But Sierra’s always been stubborn. Refuses to accept help even when it’s in her best interest.”
Buy the ranch? Maybe. It was beautiful land.
If he were honest, once upon a time, he’d dreamed of running the Blackwood place.
“What would you do with the ranch if you bought it?” Mack asked.
Rowan looked at him, the words Sierra would never sell on his lips. But Alden answered first.
“Development, probably. That land has potential beyond cattle ranching. Tourism, recreation, maybe residential if the market supports it.” Alden took another sip of coffee. “South Eagle needs economic diversification. We can’t survive on ranching and mining forever.”
“Sounds like you’ve given it a lot of thought.”
“It’s my job to think about the town’s future. Sometimes that means making hard decisions about change.”
He stared at him, and just couldn’t…couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Change that would benefit people like you, who have the capital to invest in development projects? Change that would push out people like Sierra, who represent the old way of life, that stand in the way of progress?”
Silence filled the room. Mack frowned at him.
Catherine came over with a plate. “Cookies?”
“Sierra is in over her head. She needs to figure that out,” Alden said tightly.
“No. This is about the fact you still haven’t forgiven her.”
Alden’s eyes narrowed. And then he reached over and put a hand on Mack’s wrist, possessive, as if claiming territory. “A man doesn’t like to be accused of things he didn’t do.”
Rowan just stared at him. Then at Mack, whose mouth made a grim line.
“Seriously.” But he wasn’t about to unload there, in front of Saxon. Because he didn’t need Saxon hearing about…well, about those times when he hadn’t been Hammer Wallace. When he’d been small and weak and scared.
“Funny thing about being presumed dead,” Alden said. “People move on. They forget you existed. You disappear.” He made a gesture with his hand. “Poof.”
Rowan stared at Alden, his throat tightening.
“So, this has been educational,” Saxon said suddenly, standing and extending his hand to Rowan’s stepfather. “Thanks for the coffee and the local perspective.”
Alden somehow morphed, right then, into a politician, smiling, warm. “Anytime. You boys should come by for dinner while you’re in town. I’d love to hear more about your adventures in Alaska.”
“We’ll see how our schedule works out.” Again, Saxon, who now put a hand on Rowan’s shoulders. Almost to hold him back?
Right.
Rowan glanced at Mack. “You okay here?”
“He’s fine,” said Alden, and threw an arm around his shoulder.
Saxon cleared his throat.
“Text if you need anything,” Rowan said and Mack nodded.
The drive back toward South Eagle was quiet at first, Saxon staring out the passenger window.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Nope.”
Saxon grunted. “You’re not the person you used to be. Don’t listen to him.”
Yeah, okay, Saxon got him. Probably better than he knew. Because, well, he’d been dead too.
“He married my mom two years after my dad died. I was ten. Mack was born a few months later. Alden and I…we just…he didn’t like me much.”
Saxon nodded.
“Last time I saw him, he was, uh, bleeding from…well, let’s just say that it was either leave town or go to jail, so…”
“And your mom?”
“She died about a year before that, so…it was just Mack.”
“Which is why we went to get him.”
“Things were getting tense. Mack reached out before the Syria trip. After the dust of the op cleared, I thought I’d stop in and see how he was…saw he’d been in a fight. Mack never told me why. I might have overreacted by grabbing him, but…I don’t know. I’m okay never seeing that place again.”
A beat, then, “And that story about Sierra? Him not forgiving her?”
He glanced at Saxon. “She, uh, told her grandfather that…well, maybe things weren’t great at home. And he was the police commissioner then, so he sent a social worker around. Alden was good at making people believe his version of events. Especially people who wanted to believe the best about him.”
“And he took it out on you.”
“Let’s not talk about—wait. Is that smoke?”
They crested the hill that overlooked the valley where Renegade sat nestled between mountain ranges. Black clouds of smoke billowed into the sky, visible even in the fading daylight.
“It’s coming from the Blackwood ranch.” Rowan floored the accelerator.
No, no—the red barn was consumed by flames that flared through the roof, sending tongues of orange and red flicking into the darkening sky. Smoke billowed in thick black clouds, carrying the acrid smell of burning hay and old timber. The fire had a voice—a crackling roar of destruction.
Not the barn!
Sierra stood near the house, a garden hose in her hands, directing a pathetic stream of water toward the inferno while another man worked frantically with a second hose from the other side.
The barn’s wooden siding glowed like heated copper in the firelight, paint blistering and peeling in long curls that drifted away on superheated air.
Sirens whined in the air.
Rowan skidded into the drive, nearly out of the truck before it fully stopped, running toward the scene.
The barn’s structure was compromised but still standing, flames concentrated in the hayloft but spilling down the interior walls. The house remained untouched, fifty feet of gravel driveway providing a firebreak, but flying sparks sprayed dangerously close to the roof shingles.
“Saxon!” he shouted over the roar of the fire. “Get that hose over here! Wet down the house!”
He ran up to Sierra, who shot him a look even as she turned to the house.
“Are there any more hoses?”
“I don’t—”
“Where’s Huck?” The cowboy ran up to Sierra. “I lost him in the smoke!”
She stared at him, even as Rowan searched the yard.
“Inside the house—” She turned to it.
No. No, he wasn’t. Because he spotted the kid—Huck—headed into the barn.
Rowan’s blood turned to ice.
The barn’s main door stood open, a rectangle of hellish orange light framing the entrance. Smoke poured from the opening, and the heat was already intense enough to feel from twenty feet away.
“Huck!” Sierra started running toward the barn.
Rowan caught her arm, spinning her around. “No! You’ll get yourself killed!”
“He’s my son!”
“I’ll get him. Sax—keep her away!”
He took off running as Sierra screamed behind him.
The heat hit him like a physical wall as he reached the doorway, superheated air searing his lungs with each breath. He pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth, squinting against the smoke that made his eyes stream.
The interior was a hellscape of shadows and leaping flames. Fire had consumed most of the hay stored in the loft above, raining burning debris down into the main aisle. The wooden support beams groaned ominously, stressed by heat and the weight of the collapsing structure above.
“Huck!” His voice was swallowed by the roar of flames.
A sound—crying, maybe, or a frightened animal—came from the middle of the barn. Rowan moved toward it, staying low, where the air was slightly cleaner, dodging falling embers that hissed and sparked when they hit the concrete floor.
He found the boy huddled in an empty horse stall, clutching a small Jack Russell terrier puppy against his chest. The kid’s face was streaked with soot and tears, his school clothes singed and dirty.
“He ran into the barn. I couldn’t leave him,” Huck gasped when he saw Rowan.
“I know, buddy. But we need to go. Right now.”
Rowan scooped up the boy, puppy and all, holding him tight against his chest as another section of hayloft collapsed behind them. The support beam nearest the door cracked with a sound like a gunshot, and the entire structure shuddered.
He ducked his head and ran.
He was back in Alaska, outrunning a wildfire, or maybe Montana, or even Syria, waiting to get ambushed.
Heat pressed down on them from above while flames reached out from both sides, turning the barn aisle into a corridor of hell. Rowan’s lungs burned with each breath, and sweat poured down his face despite the October evening air.
They burst through the doorway just as the main support beam gave way with a thunderous crash. Rowan stumbled and went down on one knee in the gravel, but kept his arms wrapped around Huck and the puppy.
He took the blow on his back, scuffed up, breathing hard, the kid alive against him.
“Huck!” Sierra. She ran over as they stumbled away from the fire, pulled her son from Rowan’s arms and crushed him against her chest, sobbing.
Rowan sat up, heart thundering.
Sierra just held the kid, rocking him. “Don’t you ever, ever do something like that again!”
Huck shuddered in her arms, still holding the puppy.
Brave little kid, for an eight-year-old. Stupid, but brave.
“Bandit was in there.”
She pulled away, put her hands on his face. “Bandit’s not worth your life. Nothing is worth your life.”
Rowan pushed himself to his feet, coughing smoke from his lungs. His shirt was singed in several places, and he could feel the beginning sting of minor burns on his forearms, but he was alive. They were all alive.
And he intended to keep it that way.