In The Rancher's Arms

Her mom stood and started clearing the table. “Why don’t you two go outside and enjoy the spring air? I’ll clean up.”

“You feel up to a meander to the pond?” her dad asked.

Arden looked across the table, thought maybe her dad had a little more color in his cheeks today. Maybe seeing her alive and well, at least on the outside, had given him the same kind of bone-deep relief that she’d experienced when she’d seen him on the porch yesterday.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

They took their time since there was no need to hurry. Plus, she didn’t want him to overtax himself. And despite several days of regular food, water and a bed to sleep in, she still felt shaky and weak. If it wasn’t for the nightmares, she wished she could sleep for about a month.

Arden wrapped her arm around her dad’s as they walked.

“This is nice,” her dad said.

“It is.” Even so, she hated the awkwardness between them. She’d always been close with her dad, but now it felt as if even that had been ripped away from her. Protecting him from the truth was more important than being able to unburden herself.

They didn’t say anything else until they reached the bench next to the duck pond. A few mallards floated along the surface of the pond while others sat with their feet tucked beneath them and their beaks stuffed into their feathers. They were so used to Arden and her dad that they didn’t pay them any mind.

“This is still one of my favorite places,” she said as they sank onto the bench.

“Me, too. And it’s better when I have my favorite daughter with me.”

She smiled. “It’s easy to be the favorite when I’m the only.”

Her dad took her hand in his and simply held it as they watched the ducks dip below the water then resurface and shake their feathers.

“I know you think you’re protecting me,” he said, “but you don’t have to. I’m tougher than you think.”

She’d always thought him exactly that, tough but in a kindhearted way. But that was before he’d had a heart attack.

“Talking about what happened won’t change anything.”

“I think you’re wrong about that.”

Her history of being able to talk through her problems with him tempted her to trust him, but there was just too much at stake.

“But I won’t push you,” he said. “Just know that I’m here when you’re ready. Nothing you say will make me have another heart attack.”

She wasn’t willing to take that risk. Plus, some part of her hoped, perhaps in vain, that if she refused to talk about her captivity, the memories would fade and the nightmares would go away.

Arden squeezed her dad’s hand. “I’m fine, just glad to be home.”

Home with no job and no idea what she would do next. Because there was no way she was going back to international reporting and the possibility that she might be placed in danger again. That next time her father’s heart might not recover.

The sound of an approaching vehicle drew her attention to the road. J. J. Carter, who’d been the mail carrier on her parents’ route for as long as she could remember, stopped to deposit mail in their box. He threw up a wave as he motored on to the Carmichaels’ box a half mile down the road.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said as she stood.

As she walked down the driveway, she found herself scanning the surrounding landscape. She knew it was irrational, but she couldn’t prevent the concern that someone might appear as if out of nowhere to grab her. After all, it had happened before.

“Damn it,” she said under her breath, so that the words wouldn’t carry to her father’s ears. Then she refocused on the mailbox, telling herself that she had nothing to worry about. No human traffickers were hiding behind her mother’s rosebushes or in the ditch next to the road. She was in Blue Falls, where she was much more likely to be bored to death. Not that there was anything wrong with her hometown. She’d just always craved more than it could offer. She’d burned with the need to travel the world, to see places her neighbors had never even heard of, to root out injustices hidden in dark corners and expose them to the light through her writing. Well, no more.

So what if nothing of great import happened in this slice of Texas? Maybe a tad boring was exactly what she needed. She had to find a way to rejoin the real world, the one here in safe, comforting Blue Falls.

When she reached the mailbox, she pulled out a stack of mail and flipped through it as she walked slowly toward her dad. Today’s offerings included a sales flyer for Hill Country Foods, the grocery store where her mom worked as a manager when she wasn’t on leave to take care of Arden’s dad during his recovery, a couple of pieces of junk mail and half a dozen medical bills related to her father’s hospitalization. Guilt stabbed her again. If she could go back in time, she’d make such different decisions. She would have heeded the warnings she’d received about the traffickers and how they excelled at snatching people, would have found another way to get the story about them out. If she’d known what would follow, she admitted to herself that she wouldn’t have chased the story at all. A first for her, but no story was worth losing her dad.

“Anything interesting?” her dad asked, making her realize how close she’d come to where he still sat.

“Nope. The ubiquitous junk mail. You ready to head back to the house?”

“No, I think I’ll stay out here for a while. I think I’m about to crack the code.”

It took her a moment before she realized what he was saying, and it brought a smile to her face. When she’d been a little girl, he’d convinced her that he was learning the duck language and that soon he’d be able to tell her what they were saying.

“You do that and it’s you who’ll be on the news.”

As she walked to the house alone, she glanced over her shoulder a couple of times to reassure herself her dad was okay by himself. She paused when she reached the porch and stared at the bills in her hand. Even though they weren’t addressed to her, their contents were her fault and thus her responsibility. Before she could talk herself out of it, she opened the first envelope and unfolded the papers inside. And promptly gasped. If the amount staring up at her was only part of the total owed, how could anyone ever pay their medical bills?

The front door opened to reveal her mother. The look on Arden’s face must have telegraphed her thoughts because her mom glanced at what Arden held in her hands. Her mom started toward her, holding out her hands.

“Give me those, dear. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Arden stepped to the side, not allowing her mother to claim the bills. “Are they all like this?”

“Honey, please. We’ll manage.”

“How?” Her mom’s job at the store didn’t pay a ton, and who knew when, or even if, her dad would be able to go back to work driving a delivery truck for a food distributor out of Austin.

“We just will. We always do. You need to concentrate on positive things.” Her mom wore one of those smiles meant to put others at ease, but Arden wasn’t fooled. She saw the stress and worry her mom was trying so hard to hide from her. How long had she been pulling up those types of smiles for Arden’s dad? For concerned friends and neighbors? She shouldn’t have to shoulder the weight of all that concern. What if it became too much for her heart to bear?

Arden wanted to scream, punch something, and crawl up into a ball and cry all at the same time, even though she knew none of it would do anything to make things better. When she’d made the decision to follow the lead that had ended up being a trap set for her, she’d known she could be in danger. It was part of the job. Bad guys didn’t typically operate in the open and sit down for friendly interviews with journalists.

What she’d not considered were the far-reaching ramifications of that decision if she was caught. Not only her own well-being, but also that of her parents. When she’d been snatched from her hired car on that desolate road, the consequences of her capture had flowed out like a tsunami, reaching all the way to Texas. It had led to weeks of fear, exposure and malnourishment for her, but she’d recover from those things. But her dad’s heart attack and the wrecking of her parents’ finances—those would haunt her.

The bills she held in her hand were her fault, and she had to find a way to pay them. But how was she supposed to do that when someone simply dropping a coffeepot sent her into freak-out mode? For as long as she could remember, she’d known what she wanted to do with her life. She’d never considered how she’d react if doing what she’d always felt called to do was no longer a possibility. But if she intended to make things right for her parents, she’d better figure it out.

Chapter Three (#ulink_e85d75d6-643f-5a2a-a993-bb4bb387ebe2)

Neil cursed when he spotted the dead cow in the ravine. Just what they needed, a hit to the ranch’s bottom line when they were still recovering from the shock of how much the property taxes had risen over the previous year. He just hoped whatever had caused the cow’s demise wasn’t communicable. Keeping a ranch solvent was always a touch-and-go affair, but disease in a herd could spell disaster.

He guided his horse down the hillside, keeping an eye out for holes and an ear open for the distinctive warning rattle of a rattlesnake. As he drew close, he breathed a sigh of relief. The loss would still hurt the ranch’s financials, but the burn mark on the cow’s back told him that at least it wasn’t disease. The storm a couple of nights before had been brief, but it only took a single lightning strike to spell the end for a cow out in the open. He counted himself lucky every time they made it through a storm with no deaths from lightning, flooding or hail.

As he reined his horse to head up the hill, for some reason Arden Wilkes entered his thoughts. When he considered what she must have gone through the past couple of months, him finding a dead cow faded almost to disappearance in comparison.

He couldn’t imagine having a job that would even put him in such a situation. What drove a person to travel to every far-flung corner of the world in order to write about it? She’d been raised in Blue Falls, after all, and had the most normal, seemingly caring parents a person could ask for. Why run away from that? If anyone was to ask him, he’d swear up and down that Blue Falls, Texas, was heaven on earth. Even though ranching had its hardships, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. He thanked his lucky stars every day that this was where he’d ended up when he was adopted all those years ago.

As he rode to the main part of the ranch, he wondered if Arden was doing any better today after spending a night in the house where she grew up. He imagined she had probably feared she’d never see it again. If her reaction in the store the day before was any indication, she’d been through the kind of trauma that it might take a while to get over. He didn’t envy her these early days of recovery when she was adjusting to the fact that she wasn’t in danger anymore. It wasn’t always the easiest transition.

He shook his head and refocused on the task at hand as the barn came into view. Before he moved on to anything else, he needed to bury the dead cow. As he reached the barn entrance and dismounted, however, he met up with his brother, Ben, who was just slipping out of his truck. Something about the look on Ben’s face stopped Neil in his tracks. Was it going to be one of those days that made you wish you could go back to bed and start over again the next day?