Chapter Sixteen
Jordan’s brothers, quite possibly tired of his preoccupation with matters he would not discuss with them, aka Lil, suggested a night out.
More than that, they suggested leaving common sense behind and including Burke in on the fun.
That was when Jordan knew that they were aware of how badly he needed a distraction.
So that was how he found himself in Grey’s Saloon, listening to Burke’s increasingly exaggerated stories as his mind kept drifting. His brothers shot him the occasional look, and he usually nodded back as if he was following the drift of the conversation, which, for the most part, he was not.
The second round arrived when his phone vibrated in his pocket. When he answered, Lil said his name in a way that made his gut tighten.
“We have a problem—”
She was cut off as the phone clattered, then went dead.
Jordan was out of his seat and on his way to the door of the saloon, stabbing the recent calls button on his phone when Hayes and Trev caught up to him. He should have stayed on the ranch.
“Want me to go with you?” Burke called after them.
“No,” they said in accidental unison.
“Where are we going?” Hayes asked.
“Willow Creek.” As soon as he got into the passenger seat of Hayes’s truck, heart hammering, Lil answered.
“Sorry about that, Betty bumped me and I dropped the phone onto the stairs. It took me a minute to find it in the dark.”
“You’re in the dark?”
“Meg heard the goats in the barn. Betty’s in the house so she was going to check to see if the bobcat was back, when she saw someone out there.”
“At the barn? You’re sure it was a person?”
“I saw him too. I called the sheriff and they’re sending someone, but almost everyone is at the far end of the county dealing with a hay truck wreck.”
“Are you armed?”
“Pretty much.”
“Don’t shoot us when we get there.”
He wanted to keep her on the line, but Lil said, “I’ll call back if there’s any developments.” Then the line went dead.
Jordan chewed his lip as he debated, then glanced at Trev in the back seat. “Where would you park if you were going to sneak into the Willow Creek on foot?”
“Either in that aspen grove we’re about to pass through or on the far side of the conservancy, up Kennedy Road,” Hayes said. “The road on Turner Ridge is washed out.”
Jordan knew about the Turner Ridge road washout, having been on the ridge not that long ago. And the hiker Lil spotted the day the fence was cut had been on conservancy ground. Libby Weston’s property.
“I hate to do this,” Jordan said as he picked up his phone.
Burke, apparently at the ready, answered eagerly. “Do you need me?”
“If you’re up for it”—an unnecessary caveat—“could you drive up Kennedy Road to the turnaround and see if there are any rigs parked there.”
“Sure—”
“There’s more.” Jordan could hear the sounds of the bar noise receding as Burke made his way outside.
“Okay?”
“I’m serious about this. If there is a rig there, do not get out of your truck. Do not intervene. If you can get a tag number, do it, but this is a sheriff’s matter. If you get involved, it could screw up the case later.”
Total fabrication, but Jordan would not endanger his friend. “Is there someone there you can take with you?”
“Nobody in condition to help,” Burke said. His truck came to life.
“You understand what I’m telling you.”
“Yes. Stay in the truck. Get the tag number. Let the sheriff do his thing. You’ll tell me all about it later, right?”
“Right. Stay in touch,” Jordan said. “Call if you see a rig. Then drive away.”
“I will,” Burke promised before ending the call.
The trip to the Willow Creek road, normally a twenty-minute drive from Marietta, took about a hundred years. Hayes slowed as they approached the thick aspen grove and pointed out that there were no fresh tire tracks on the damp road before pulling to the side and turning off the headlights.
“Walk or drive?”
“Walk,” Jordan said.
The moon was up and it wouldn’t take them long to cover the half mile from the grove to the ranch.
If someone were there, he wanted a fighting chance of surprising them.
They avoided the road and the gravel and walked along the grassy edges, Hayes and Trev on one side and Jordan on the other, straining to see if there was any movement around the ranch buildings.
It seemed quiet, but the cows in the field, darkish masses in the moonlight, were not grazing.
Their heads were up as they grouped together, facing the ranch buildings.
Something was up. Cattle only acted like that when a predator was nearby. So, bobcat? Or human?
They were perhaps a quarter mile from the dark ranch, when the first flickers of light appeared from behind the barn. Jordan glanced at Trev and Hayes and, without a word, the three of them started running, their boots thudding on the sod.
Jordan’s lungs were close to exploding by the time he reached the barn. The lights were off in the house, but Lil and Meg were making their way down the walk. He hoped they weren’t armed, but just in case, he called out.
Lil was at his side a few seconds later. “We just saw the flames. I think it’s the old hay pile.”
If he were going to torch a barn, that would be a great way to do it. Old hay could spontaneously combust, thereby putting the cause of the blaze into question, as in, it wasn’t necessary to look for an arsonist.
“I’ll get the goats,” Meg said, bolting toward the barn, but Jordan beat her to it while his brothers raced around the side of the barn.
He yanked the door open. No smoke inside.
Meg ducked in behind him. She opened the door to the pen and grabbed two collars, dragging the bleating goats out of the pen and then to the man door.
Jordan spied the kitten who usually attacked his boots huddled on a shelf.
He grabbed the cat by the neck just in case he was a fighter and tucked him into his jacket.
A paw came up and smacked his face. Jordan buttoned the top button as he headed toward the rear door.
“It’s the manure pile,” Trev called when he emerged.
Smoke rolled over him as the wind gusted, and it was obvious that the back wall of the barn was ready to combust.
“There’s a hydrant there,” Lil said, pointing Hayes toward the hydrant near the weanling pen before she raced to the next closest stand pipe and started dragging a hose toward the fire. Meg joined her, shaking out the kinks as the cranky hose unrolled.
With spray hitting the fire from two directions and Trev wetting down the barnwood close to the flames, the smoke thickened and flames died.
Jordan wasn’t sure where Lil was. He scanned the area, then narrowed his eyes as he watched the cattle.
They seemed unfazed by the fire but were instead slowly following something across the field. A predator. Perhaps an arsonist.
“You got this?” he asked Hayes.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to see what the cows find so interesting,” he said.
“Be careful,” Hayes told him as he continued to spray water.
Jordan took the kitten out of his jacket and popped him into a feeder as he passed. The little guy immediately jumped out and climbed the nearest fence post.
“Where are you going?”
Lil’s voice startled him. She’d caught up with him, but if she thought she was going with him, she had another think coming.
“The cows are following something.”
That something, which had been traveling in a small gulley, suddenly appeared as land flattened about fifty yards away.
“There he is,” Lil said.
The dark shape moved quickly, too quickly to be Libby Weston unless she was in remarkable shape for her age. And Jess Connery was larger than the figure heading for Weston conservancy land.
“Stay here. Call the sheriff again,” Jordan said.
The guy had a head start, but he wasn’t that far ahead. He ducked up the fence.
“Don’t—”
But Jordan was already racing across the pasture, sending the cow scattering. The guy must have been hiding in the pasture, watching his handiwork, never suspecting that the Matthews brothers were about to show up.
What would he have done if Lil and Meg came out to battle the flames?
The thought made him run faster. His quarry seemed to sense that he’d been seen.
Jordan could make out the man looking over his shoulder before increasing his speed as he started up the low hill that rose before the boundary fence.
The guy’s pace slowed, and Jordan began gaining on him, but by the time he reached the top, the man had taken off again.
Drawing on reserves he didn’t know he had, Jordan raced down the hill, closing the distance between him and the guy, so intent on catching him that he didn’t give thought to what he was going to do with him.
The guy reached the fence, threw himself flat and scrambled under it.
Jordan had to catch him before his got to the trees. He gave a mighty burst of speed as the guy got back to his feet, then caught his toe in a badger hole and went flying, landing in a heap, spitting dirt.
He scrambled to his feet and continued to the fence, half running, half limping. When he reached it, he stopped with one hand on a post, listening for the crashing of brush.
Nothing.
Either the guy was hiding, or he knew the trail. Jordan hated to turn around and head back empty-handed. All he could do now was to hope that the man had parked at the top of Kennedy Road and that Burke got the tag number.
After listening for another few minutes, he gave up and headed back to the ranch, pissed off and defeated. He was part way up the hill when someone crested it, backlit by the half-moon.
Lil.
He stopped walking and waited as she ran down the hill and then hit him hard and wrapped herself around him.
“Don’t do stupid things like that,” she muttered against his shirt.
He put an arm around her; glad she was safe. Glad they’d gotten there in time to put out the fire, even if they hadn’t caught the guy.
“Same goes for you,” he said, drawing in the scent of her smoky hair.
She lifted her chin and there was nothing he could do but kiss her before gesturing toward the top of the hill. When they reached the top, two sets of headlights bumped their way across the field. Trev pulled up on a quad, Meg right behind him on another.
“What the fuck, Jordan?”
“It’s my ranch and I’ve had it with this shit.” He kept his arm around Lil as he spoke, and her grip tightened on his waist.
Hayes was still tending the smoldering hay when they got back to the ranch.
“I would have caught him if it hadn’t been for the badger hole,” Jordan muttered after telling the story of the chase.
“And then what?” Hayes asked.
“I had enough of an adrenaline high that I probably would have knocked the snot out of him.”
Hayes gave a little snort. “And you were always the sanest one of the bunch.”
“Guess a little Wade rubbed off on me.” He tried Burke’s number again, got no answer, then stared across the pasture in the general direction the arsonist had disappeared. “Fuck.”
“Agreed,” Lil muttered.
He glanced down at her smoke-streaked face and hooked his fingers in the waist of her jeans.
He needed the contact. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to his friend, but they’d agreed to wait for law enforcement.
Lights flashing through the aspen indicated that the cavalry was on its way.
“Finally,” Lil said on a breath.
She started forward. Jordan’s fingers slipped from her waistband as he followed. They both stopped when his phone rang.
Burke.
“I see I missed a bunch of calls. The service is spotty up here.”
“Did you find anything?”
There was something in Burke’s voice that was off.
“Yeah. About that …” Jordan could picture Burke closing his eyes the way he did before a big admission.
His heart rate began to ramp up. “You didn’t kill the guy or anything.”
“His truck, Jordan. I killed his truck. I think I need the sheriff.”
*
Dane, the deputy, told the Matthews brothers not to follow him to Kennedy Road, but he also mentioned that because it wasn’t an official call, he had no legal reason to stop him.
Therefore, Hayes stayed behind to watch the remnants of the fire with Meg while Trev, Lil, and Jordan got into her truck, and she started down the driveway.
Lil glanced at Jordan’s profile as they followed the deputy’s SUV past the truck the Matthews brothers had parked in the aspens then onto the county road.
In the back seat, Trev maintained a stony silence.
Everyone was working through theories and probably wondering what they were going to find at the turn around at the top of Kennedy Road.
And despite the turmoil, or maybe because of it, she let herself just be. She was with Jordan and she felt safe.
“I guess if Burke killed the guy’s truck, at least we’ll have the license number,” Jordan muttered.
No one answered.
The trip up the rarely maintained Kennedy Road was slow, but finally they reached the top and the SUV stopped. Dane got out and walked back to their rig.
“I see you followed me.”
“We were just going this way, deputy.”
Dane nodded. “Stay in your vehicle until I give you the sign to get out.”
“Yes, sir,” the three of them murmured in unison.
Lil followed the deputy’s rig another mile up the road and around a corner where two sets of headlights cut through the brush in odd angles, one set nearly blinding them as they rounded the corner.
And in those headlights stood the lone figure of Burke Thurley, hands in the air at shoulder height to prove he was a danger to no one.
Lil had a feeling the whoever was trapped in the truck smashed between a monstrous Ponderosa pine and the rear end of an old Dodge Power Wagon, would beg to disagree.
The deputy got out and approached Burke, who jerked his head toward the trapped truck. After a few words, the deputy made his way to the trucks, where he peered in through the window of the Ford.
A moment later he was on his way back. Lil rolled down the window and the deputy let out a mighty sigh. He’d clearly dealt with Burke before.
“We’re going to have to get a tow truck up here. The guy inside the Ford seems to be okay, but desperate to get out.”
“I don’t blame him,” Jordan said, leaning forward to see past Lil as he spoke to Dane. “I’m pretty damned certain he’s the guy who tried to burn down our barn. Is it Joe Whitney?”
Dane shook his head. “Never seen him before. As soon as we move the Power Wagon, I’ll get his identification.”
“Not Joe Whitney?” Jordan pushed open his door.
“Jordan …” Dane said.
“Just a quick look.”
Lil pushed open her door, forcing Dane to step back, then followed Jordan. They were a good ten feet from the smashed truck when Jordan stopped abruptly. Lil almost tripped as she tried to stop with him.
She took hold of Jordan’s arm. “You know him?”
“That is Jess Connery.”