Sheriff's Runaway Witness

“You are the witness who is going to break this case for me. The witness who’s going to get me my old job back. Now—do you understand what I want from you?”

She nodded. Her body had gone cold and still. He must have felt it, because he let go of her arms, exhaled and muttered, “Good…” He bent down to pick up his hat from the mossy creek bank where she’d tossed it.

She cleared her throat. “You want me to testify,” she said carefully, feeling nothing at all, except cold. “You want me to say I saw who killed those two feds.”

“I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this for nothing, but I didn’t see anything. Do you get it?” She sucked in another breath. “So, you can go home now.”

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Dear Reader,

Recently, events in my life have brought me back to the valley in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California where I grew up. So, it is perhaps fitting that as I begin a new chapter in my life, I begin a new series, as well, and that I have chosen the mountains and deserts of my youth and childhood—rich in beauty, history and romance—as its setting.

The new series, which we are calling The Scandals of Sierra Malone, will follow the efforts of reclusive, eccentric billionaire Sam Malone, now well into his tenth decade. Hoping to connect with his only surviving heirs, four granddaughters he’s never met, Sam has invited the four to come to his remote California hacienda to claim their inheritance. For each of the four, the summons is a life-changing event, one that will bring them unexpected adventure, even danger—and, of course, romance.

This, the first book in the series, is Rachel’s story. I hope you will find it both heartwarming and compelling, and that it will serve to bring you back to June Canyon Ranch again and again, to join us as the saga continues.

To new beginnings…

Kathleen Creighton

Kathleen Creighton

Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

KATHLEEN CREIGHTON

has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything—art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines all her loves in romance novels.

For Gail and Patience,

(Who is the personification of her name,)

For forebearance, kindness and understanding

Above and beyond all reasonable expectation.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Prologue

From the memoirs of Sierra Sam Malone:

I never thought I would live so long. For the fact that I have done so I must give credit to the Man Upstairs, I suppose, but also to three beautiful women, all of whom loved me a sight more than I deserved. Lord knows I never did right by any of them, but maybe there is still time before I die to make up for some of the wrong I did. I sure do mean to try.

Telling the story—the whole truth…well, I reckon that’s as good a place to start as any.

Part One—Elizabeth

That day outside of Barstow when the railroad bulls beat me senseless and threw me off the train and left me to die in the desert wasn’t the first time Death came for me and went away empty-handed. Not the first time, but I thought for sure it was the last, and my last day on earth before I’d even reached the ripe age of eighteen. It would have been, too, if not for a bit of crazy dumb luck…and a sweet bit of a girl named Elizabeth.

I don’t recall much of that day, and even if I did I wouldn’t bore anybody to death telling about it. I do recollect that it was April, and the desert was blazing hot in the daytime and freezing cold when the sun went down. I know I walked when I could and crawled when I couldn’t walk anymore, and tried to take shelter in the heat of the day underneath any kind of bush big enough to offer a morsel of shade. I know I got more prickles than comfort from that effort, and that I was plain fool lucky I didn’t try to share some rattlesnake’s midday napping place.

For some reason—instinct, I reckon, or Divine Guidance, or maybe it was just because, being a mountain boy born and bred from the green hills of West Virginia, and I had no wish to die in the desert—I didn’t try to follow the tracks back to Barstow but instead kept stumbling my dogged way toward the mountains I could see off in the distance. Could just as well have been a mirage, but it wasn’t. It was mountains, real ones, and something in me told me there might be water there, somewhere.

Well…if there was water in those barren hills it eluded me, and I knew the sands in my hourglass were fast running out. I won’t die like a dog on my belly in the dirt, I told myself, and with my last ounce of strength, rose to my feet to shake my fist at the heavens and that terrible killing sun. And as if to punish me for my defiance, at that moment the earth fell out from under my feet, and down, down I fell, rolling and tumbling in a torrent of rock and sand…down, down until I fetched up finally in the bottom of a gully, skinned up and bloodier than the railroad bulls had left me.

Once I’d shaken the cobwebs out of my head and the sand out of my whiskers, I saw something in the side of that gully that nature hadn’t put there: a hole, it was. A hole big as a man is tall. A hole dug by men. And in that part of the country, there was only one thing it could be, and that was a mine.

Now, as I said, I’m from the hills of West Virginia, and I know a thing or two about mines. One thing I knew was that a lot of the time there’s water to be found in those mines, water that can take life as well as give it.

Well, I didn’t hesitate. I scrambled up the side of that gully like a madman, clawing my way with bleeding hands. When I got inside the cave and the blessed shade enveloped me, I could smell it. I’d heard tell of animals—horses and cattle and such—being able to smell it, though I’d never thought it had much of a smell, myself. But in that moment I knew it did.

Water.

Yes, sir, I could smell water somewhere in that mine tunnel, and I stumbled my way toward it like a crippled moth fluttering its feeble way to the flame. Deeper and deeper into that tunnel I went, until it was too dark to see my hand in front of my face. I felt my way along the walls, and when my feet got wet I fell to my knees, then flat on my face in that blessed pool. An underground spring, it was, and it had flooded that mine, as water has a way of doing, often to the woe of the miners unlucky enough to get trapped by it. But that day it saved one poor soul, and that was yours truly, Sam Malone.

I drank my fill and then must have passed out for a spell, and when I opened my eyes next I thought I’d died after all. There was light where there shouldn’t have been, a soft, golden glow, and I recall thinking, Lord, I don’t know how or why but I made it to Heaven! Because where that light hit the water and the walls of that mine tunnel, it gave back a sparkle, a shine I’d only heard about in the stories men told around the fires in the hobo camps alongside the railroad tracks. I understood, then, the madness that drove men to leave everything they knew and the kinfolk that loved them, throw it all away to follow the lure of the gold.

Could it be? In awe, almost in a trance, I dipped my hand into the pool of water and held it up to my face and stared at the flecks that stuck to my skin. Yep, no doubt about it—it was gold.

Before my brain could get to understanding what had happened to me, before I could think what kind of miracle I’d stumbled across, the light moved and sent my shadow dancing long and crooked across the tunnel wall. And a voice spoke to me from the blackness behind the light.

“You’re trespassing.”

That is how I found my first treasure. Her name was Elizabeth.

She had the face of an angel, but any notions I might have had about being in Heaven went flying straight out of my head when I saw, by the light of the lantern in her hand, the shotgun she carried cradled in one arm and leveled straight and true at my heart.

Chapter 1

Mojave Desert, California

Present day

Jethro Jefferson Fox the Third—or J.J., as he was more commonly known—was in a surly mood. This, despite the fact that the weather was predicted to be sunny and the temperature to top out at around a balmy seventy-five degrees. And, after the past week’s rain, there were still lingering patches of green on the hillsides and even some flowers hanging on, which he happened to know was about as good as it got in the Mojave Desert of Southern California.

However, having grown up in the verdant hills of North Carolina, J.J. was pining for—no, grieving for—green. All the sweet soft shades of green, of roadsides and cow pastures emerging from the dead brown of winter, of new-leafed hardwood trees and deep dark piney woods and underneath in the developing shade, the snowy white of dogwood blooms and lavender-pink of redbuds.

Helluva place for the son of southern Appalachian moonshiners to wind up, he thought, where the green happened in the middle of winter and if you blinked you missed it, and the nearest thing to shade came from spiky clumps of Joshua trees.

The image glaring back at him from the half-silvered mirror over the wash basin in his cramped trailer-sized bathroom gave him no joy, either: hair sun-bleached and crawling well past his collar; facial hair grown beyond the fashionable stubble look and rapidly approaching Grizzly Adams; blue eyes developing a permanent squint in spite of the aviator shades he nearly always wore. The hair and beard had probably originally been some sort of rebellion against his exile to this hellhole, but as it turned out, nobody in the department seemed to give a damn what he looked like, and with the springtime about to turn into summer it was too damn hot anyhow. Time for the shrubbery to go.

He picked up a razor and was contemplating where best to begin mowing, when his radio squawked at him from the bedside table where it spent most nights—those he wasn’t out and about on San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department business. He picked it up, thumbed it on and muttered a go-ahead to Katie Mendoza, on morning duty at the station desk.

First, he heard a nervous chuckle. Then: “I wasn’t sure I should call you with this, Sheriff.”

“Well, you did,” J.J. said, returning the baleful stare of the dog sprawled across the foot of his unmade bed, head now raised and ears pricked, awaiting developments. “Might as well tell me.”

“I thought it was a joke, first call I got. Then 911 dispatch got one. So I figured I better—”

“Spit it out.” J.J. was thinking, Not much chance it’s a dead body, not with a lead-in like that. He didn’t feel too much guilt at the fact that such a thought would cross his mind, either. He could only hope…

“You’re not gonna believe it,” Katie said with another nervous laugh.

“Try me,” said J.J., trying not to grind his teeth.

“Well, okay.” Some throat clearing came across the airwaves, followed by a semi-professional-sounding monotone. “Sheriff, we’ve received several reports of a person walking through the desert, out in the middle of nowhere, an undetermined distance from the highway, off Death Valley Road. No sign of a vehicle anywhere in the vicinity.”

“Uh-huh.” J.J. waited, figuring there had to be more.

After another episode of throat-clearing, it came. “J.J., swear to God, I am not making this up. This person—it—she—appears to be a nun.”

Beverly Hills, California

Approximately twelve hours earlier

“He’s going to kill me.”

Even as she said it Rachel thought, People say that all the time. My mom, dad, boyfriend, husband…so-and-so is going to kill me. It’s just a saying. It doesn’t mean anything.

Rachel meant it. Now she waited to see if she would be believed. She closed her bedroom door and leaned against it, breath held, waiting. Hoping.

“I’m sure he plans to,” Sister Mary Isabelle stated matter-of-factly, drawing back to examine the bruises on Rachel’s cheek and jaw. Her brown eyes narrowed but she didn’t comment. She crossed the room and seated herself on the bed, carefully arranging the folds of her habit around her. “You know too much. And—” she nodded in the direction of Rachel’s bulging belly “—once your baby’s born, Carlos won’t need you any longer.”

Rachel let out her breath in a gust and realized she was dangerously close to tears. To be believed was an almost overwhelming relief. She gazed at her oldest and dearest friend in affectionate awe and took refuge in laughter. “Izzy, sometimes I can’t believe you’re a nun. You’re way more worldly than I am.”

Sister Mary Isabelle gave an un-nunlike snort. “I’m sure I am—although technically, you know, I’m a ‘sister,’ not a nun. Why wouldn’t I be? Here in the Delacortes’ family enclave you’re more cloistered than I have ever been. Plus, I’m a doctor, dear heart. My clinic is located in a part of the city that sees more of the bad stuff of life than you ever will—gang violence, drugs, domestic abuse, teen pregnancy. A habit doesn’t shelter me from all that, you know.”

“Yes, and speaking of that,” Rachel said, as the fact registered belatedly, “why are you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear one before.”

Sister Mary Isabelle smiled, making her cheeks look like round pink apples within the confines of the wimple. “I have my reasons, which will become clear shortly.” She took Rachel’s hands in both of hers and squeezed them. “I’ve been worried about you, you know. I thought you were making a huge mistake when you left in the middle of your first year of internship to marry—”

“And you’ve told me so,” Rachel said dryly. “More than once.”

Sister Mary Isabelle was silent for a moment. Then she touched Rachel’s bruised cheek—a feather’s touch, but still Rachel jerked away from it as if from a slap. “Did Carlos do this?”

“Of course he did—and I know what you’re thinking,” Rachel said angrily. “Nicky would never have hit me. Never. He wasn’t like that. He was nothing like Carlos.”

“Chelly…Nicholas was Carlos’s son. He grew up with a father who hits women. You know the odds are—”

“Nicky was nothing like his father.” Rachel repeated it as she had so many times in her mind. Willing herself to believe it. She had believed it. Until…

“You were in love,” Sister Mary Isabelle said sadly, “and you wanted to believe he would have been able to break away from his father’s organization. From his influence. Maybe he could have—only God knows. The fact that he was killed before he had the chance to try is tragic. But,” she added sternly, “the fact that two federal law enforcement officers were also killed in that shootout is even more tragic.” She paused to give Rachel a penetrating stare. “You know that, don’t you?”

Rachel nodded silently. She’d been living with that knowledge, that guilt, for months.

“The fact that you happened to be pregnant when Nicholas died bought you some time,” Sister Mary Isabelle went on, her voice grave. “But you must know Carlos Delacorte will never trust your loyalty. And—” her eyes twinkled with humor “—he’s never really liked you, anyway, has he?”

Rachel managed a wry smile in response. “What’s not to like? A nice girl from a Catholic school, on her way to becoming a doctor—”

“—with a moral compass, a conscience…”

Rachel sighed. “Well, yes, there is that. Carlos does hate me. And I think he actually blames me for Nicky’s death.”

Sister Mary Isabelle gave another snort. “He can’t live with his own share of fault in getting his son killed, so he needs someone else to dump it on.”

Unable to sit still, Rachel began to pace, steps jerky and uneven, one hand on her tight belly. “I’m sure he sees this baby as his second chance. It’s Nicky’s child. His own flesh and blood. Carlos can’t wait to get his hands on it.” She suddenly had to hold on to the edge of the tall dresser as fear weakened her knees. “Izzy,” she whispered, “I think he plans to take my baby away from me the moment he’s born. That’s probably when he’ll do it, you know—kill me. While I’m out of it—helpless. He’ll figure out a way to make it seem like complications of delivery, or something. Not that he’d do it himself, of course—he’d probably let Georg or Stan have the privilege of smothering me with a pillow. They’d enjoy—”

She was enveloped in the crisp folds of Sister Mary Isabelle’s habit. It smelled of soap and starch, and an arm was firm and strong around her middle.

Through the rushing sound in her ears she heard Sister Mary Isabelle’s voice, calm and firm—her physician’s voice. “Hush. That’s not going to happen. And right now you are going to stop this drama. The last thing you or your baby needs is for you to panic.”

Knowing she was right didn’t help much. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Rachel whispered as she allowed herself to be settled on the edge of the bed. “They watch me every second, Izzy. I feel so…trapped. It’s gotten much worse since I got the letter….”

Sister Mary Isabelle straightened, instantly alert. “What letter?”

Rachel wiped her eyes. “It came two days ago. By special courier—I had to sign for it personally, with my I.D. Carlos wasn’t here, otherwise I doubt I would ever have gotten it. Even then, Carlos’s watchdogs wanted to take it away from me, but I opened it and read it with the courier standing right there. There wasn’t much they could do about it, short of killing both of us on the spot.” She paused to gulp back a laugh she was aware could easily spiral into hysteria. “I’m sure they would have enjoyed that, too, but it would have been a little hard to cover up.”

“The letter?” Sister Mary Isabelle prompted.

Rachel caught a quick, shallow breath; these days deeper ones were becoming harder to manage. “Yes. It was from—you’re not going to believe this, Izzy—my grandfather.”

“Your—oh, you mean the eccentric billionaire? The one who—”

“—abandoned my grandmother and didn’t even come to the memorial service when my dad—his own son—was killed? And never once tried to get in touch with me after Grandmother found me in that Manila orphanage and went through all kinds of hell to bring me to America? Yeah, that grandfather. Sam Malone. He wrote to me, can you believe it?”

“What on earth did he want?” Sister Mary Isabelle’s eyes were shining now with interest. “I didn’t know he was still alive. He must be…how old?”

“Very old. I’m not sure exactly, but in his nineties, I think. Maybe even a hundred. I don’t know what he wants, to tell you the truth. Something about an inheritance—which I certainly don’t want. Seriously. I don’t want a thing from that man.” Rachel curved her hand over her lower abdomen and the envelope affixed there with surgical tape gave a faint crackle. She felt the baby roil as if in response. Her brief flare of anger had already faded, leaving her once more feeling frightened and vulnerable.

So, she’d managed to protect the letter, big deal. Now what? She’d never felt so helpless.

She took another shallow breath. “I don’t want anything from Sam Malone—not for me. But maybe it’s—you know…the fact that it came just now, when I’ve been wondering how in the world I can get away from here…I’ve been thinking, maybe it’s not a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence. Sometimes God works in mysterious ways,” Sister Mary Isabelle said serenely. Then, with her customary practicality: “What did you do with the letter? Did Carlos take it?”

Rachel shook her head and smiled a fierce, defiant smile. “It’s here,” she whispered, rubbing her belly. “The letter. I taped it to my stomach.” Sister Mary Isabelle gave a whoop of laughter, and Rachel gulped down a giggle. “Yes, and when Carlos demanded that I turn it over to him, I told him I’d hidden it where he’d never find it.” She sniffed. “Not even Carlos would dare to violate me there.”

“Clever girl. Good for you.” Sister Mary Isabelle immediately grew somber again. Her always expressive eyes darkened with sorrow as she lifted one hand and cupped Rachel’s bruised cheek. “But he did lay a hand on you. Was that when he hit you?”

Rachel nodded, remembering pain and outrage. And fury. “When I told him I’d hidden the letter where he’d never find it. It was out of sheer frustration, I think.” Her lips tightened bitterly. “He’s been so careful up till now.”

Sister Mary Isabelle suddenly leaned closer to whisper in her ear. “Are there surveillance cameras in this room?”

The question didn’t surprise Rachel; it was one she’d asked herself often enough. She shook her head and whispered back, “I don’t think so. I’ve looked.”

“What about bugs?”

She gave a humorless laugh. “I don’t know why Carlos would bother with bugs when I don’t have access to phone, internet or, with the exception of yourself, visitors. But when I want to be sure of at least some privacy…” She took two steps toward the door and reached for the light switch. “There,” she whispered as the room was plunged into darkness. She punched a button on the clock radio on her bedside table and a Bruce Springsteen song filled the silence. “Now, what did you want to tell me?”

“Good for you.” Sister Mary Isabelle’s chuckle came from the shadows. “I’ve come to spring you. It’s time you got yourself and that baby of yours out of this Hell you’re in—and being Roman Catholic, I do not use that term lightly.”

At the first words, Rachel had smothered an involuntary cry with her fingertips. Now her gaze jerked to the windows, where, as the room behind her darkened, the panorama of the lights of Los Angeles had come into view. The world out there…how many times had she gazed at that incredible vista, stretching from the mountains to the sea, and felt like an animal in a cage. Trapped.

“How?” she whispered. “Can you work miracles?”

“I’m a sister, not a saint.” Izzy sounded amused.

In the near darkness, the deeper shadow that was Sister Mary Isabelle moved and rustled mysteriously. Rachel waited in suspense, breath held. Then warm hands clutched her cold ones, and something—a bundle of fabric that smelled of soap and starch—was thrust into her arms.

“What—”

“Shush—I told you I’d explain the habit. It’s for you, of course. I’m wearing my regular clothes underneath. Here,” she added, when Rachel stood motionless, stunned, “I’ll help you put it on.”

Sister Mary Isabelle explained in a whisper as her hands turned and tugged Rachel this way and that. “Leave your own clothes on, of course. So you can ditch the habit as soon as you’re safely away from the compound. Good thing I’m…shall we say, generously built, hmm? You’d be way too tiny and this would be a tent on you under normal circumstances, but with that nine-month baby bump, plus the clothes you’re wearing—there, how does that feel?”

“Izzy, I—”

“Oops—hold still—these wimples are a bit tricky… Okay. I think that’s got it. Now listen carefully. You’re going to have to keep your head down, okay? I doubt anybody is going to look past the habit, anyway, but just to be on the safe side. Take my car—it’s out there in the driveway beside the fountain—the white Toyota. The keys are in it. Oh, and I—ahem—took the liberty of borrowing the plates from Father Francis’s secretary’s car. She took the train down to San Diego for a conference and won’t be needing them for a few days. I really hope she doesn’t mind contributing to the cause….” Having finished adjusting the disguise to her liking, she took Rachel firmly by the arms and gave her a small shake. “Now. Listen carefully, dear. You’ll need to stop as soon as you’re safely away and put the right plates back on—they’re in the trunk—so you don’t get stopped for having the wrong ones, okay?”