A Cahill Ranch Novel

CHAPTER THREE

“YOUR FATHER GETS crazier every year,” Deputy Harper Cole said from where he lounged against the wall at the entrance to the cell block.

“Nothing wrong with his right hook, though, huh, Harp.” Flint had inherited the deputy when he’d taken the sheriff job with the understanding that the mayor’s son would be kept on.

The deputy straightened, anger marring his handsome features. “He should have to do time for slugging an officer of the law.”

“If you’d cuffed the prisoner last night, you wouldn’t have that black eye,” Flint said. Earlier he’d noticed the deputy admiring his wound in the side mirror. Harp was good-looking and spent way too much time taking selfies. Flint would bet he’d put one up on Facebook last night.

“He nailed me before I could get the cuffs on him. If it had been any of the other deputies, you would have charged him with assault,” Harp whined.

“The other deputies wouldn’t have taunted him.”

“What?” he asked as if incredulous. “Is that what he told you?”

“He didn’t have to. I know you.”

“Well, it’s my word against his and he’s a liar.”

Flint looked over at the deputy. “Be careful, Harp. You’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth as it is because of complaints against you. I would tread lightly. Even your father, the mayor, won’t be able to save you next time.” He rose to his feet. “Let’s take a ride.”

As Flint drove out of town, his deputy said, “Heard the old Chandler ranch just sold to some corporation called L.T. Enterprises. Like we don’t know who’s buying up the whole damned valley. Wayne Duma.”

Flint said nothing, knowing that Harp was needling him. Wayne Duma was married to Flint’s ex-wife, Celeste, and his deputy knew it was a sore point with him.

“That’s a nice ranch. Maybe Duma plans to move up there and sell that big old house he has in town,” Harp said, shooting him a look no doubt to see if he was getting to him.

Ignoring him, Flint turned onto the road into the south forty acres of his family’s ranch.

Harp let out an oath. “Don’t tell me you’re going out to the missile silo.”

“Ely saw something out there last night,” the sheriff said.

Harp shook his head. “He’s a crazy old coot. No offense,” he added.

“Crazy or not, whatever he saw last night scared him, and I can tell you right now, there is little out there that scares my old man.”

“Except for flying saucers and little green men,” the deputy said under his breath.

Flint didn’t take the bait. Ely Cahill was one of a group of people around the world who swore they had been abducted by aliens. It had happened, according to Ely, back in 1967—the same time an unidentified flying object had been seen by the air force stationed in the area. The disk-shaped object had hovered in the air over more than a half dozen of the missile sites—disabling them. It caused a panic with the military.

According to the military’s records, at one missile sight, an officer on duty reported that lights streaked directly above them, stopped, changed directions at high speed and returned overhead again. He described it as glowing red and saucer-shaped, hovering silently.

That information had been classified for years – even though numerous civilians had also seen the flying object. Of course, no one but the US Air Force had known about this until years later when the information was declassified. By then everyone was convinced that Ely Cahill was a nut-job.

All that aside, they still lived knowing what they had out in their pasture—a bomb capable of destroying everything for miles should something go wrong. The night of the UFO sighting, things had definitely gone wrong.

Not that anyone believed it had been a spaceship filled with aliens—except for their father.

Flint drove out of Gilt Edge toward the missile silo, where his father had claimed he’d seen something last night. Most people drove past the silos without even knowing they were there. The only indication that one of them was there was an eight-foot-high chain-link fence around a small area of land in the middle of the pasture. At the center of it was a concrete pad, a few wires and antennae sticking up, but nothing that gave away the fact that a nuclear missile was resting below ground waiting for someone to push a button.

“Wait here. I’m going to take a look around,” Flint said and got out. He knew better than to get too close. Alarms would go off at the command center and within minutes a military vehicle would come flying up with armed officers inside.

Instead, he walked away from the missile silo, his gaze on the ground ahead of him. The air was crisp this morning. Only a few puffy clouds floated on the breeze. Snow still capped the mountaintops that surrounded the valley. Flint breathed in the rich spring scents and studied the Western landscape.

The grasses had started to green up in the pastures and alongside the highway. Summer was coming, a busy time because of the tourists who traveled through the state. Not that the locals weren’t a handful all year long, especially his father.

He thought of Ely with affection and aggravation. No man was more stubborn or independent. He hoped Lillie was right and that the old man wasn’t losing his mind. He couldn’t imagine him locked up in some nursing home, let alone any of them trying to corral him if he moved in with them.

He hadn’t gone far when he picked up the huge footprints. Flint stopped to glance back at his patrol SUV. Harp was watching him. Anything he did would get back to the mayor and his friends. He took another step, then another as he dropped over a rise, careful not to disturb the tracks he’d found.

Once out of sight, he pulled out his cell phone and took several photographs of the oversize footprints—and the man-size boot prints where there’d clearly been a scuffle.

Before he could pocket his cell phone, it rang. A glance at caller ID showed the call was from his office. “Cahill,” he said into the phone, turning back toward his patrol SUV and the waiting Harp. In the distance, he could see dust as a military vehicle roared toward them.

“Sheriff, I have Anvil Holloway on the line. He says his wife is missing.”

* * *

BACK AT THE Stagecoach Saloon, Darby made enough breakfast for the three of them, but Lillie had lost her appetite. She kept thinking of Trask in the days before he’d left nine years ago. Something had been bothering him for several weeks. A darkness had taken hold of him. Her usually cheerful, laid-back lover was moody and irritable. She’d often found him scowling and he’d definitely been distracted.

“Is it your job?” she had asked.

“What?”

“This mood you’re in.”

“Sorry, I’ve just had things on my mind.”

“Things you want to talk about?”

He’d pulled her to him, kissed her and said, “It’s nothing to do with you. I’ll handle it, okay? Just give me a little time.”

She’d had no idea what that meant. He’d even been at odds with his best friend, Johnny Burrows. She’d seen the two of them having a heated argument one day when she’d went by the Lazy G Bar Q Ranch, where Trask worked. When Trask had seen her, he’d quickly stepped away and pretended it was nothing.

“I’m not a fool. What’s going on between you and Johnny?”

“Just a difference of opinion. It’s nothing.”

She suspected that all of it had been leading up to the fight with his boss, Gordon Quinn, and him getting fired. But did she really believe that Trask had come back that night and killed Gordon?

Now she half listened distractedly as her father and Darby talked about the weather, the price of gold and the decline of elk in Yellowstone Park and the rest of Montana because of the reintroduction of wolves. She’d been pushing her food around on her plate until her brother finally took her plate along with his own and her father’s, and headed for the kitchen. She followed him, wanting to talk to him alone.

“Flint thinks we need to do something about Dad,” she told him, making sure their father was out of earshot.

“What do you think?” Darby asked as he began stacking the rinsed dishes in the commercial dishwasher, then looked at her.

“I don’t know. One minute he seems so like his old self, and then he starts talking about aliens and abductions. He swears they came after him again last night. Apparently, that’s why he got so drunk and so...‘disorderly,’ as Flint put it.” She smiled, feeling almost ashamed as she did. “He punched Harp in the eye.” She winced. “His eye was swollen shut when I saw him at the jail this morning.”

Darby chuckled. “You can bet that Harp asked for it. As for Dad, it doesn’t sound like anything new to me. But you shouldn’t always be the one to take care of him. Call Cyrus or Hawk next time. They aren’t that busy on the ranch that they can’t get Dad out of jail once in a while. And you know you can always call me.”

“I know, but I didn’t mind going,” she said with a shrug. Her brother’s smile was thanks enough. “I’d better get him home. He’s determined to stay there alone. At least until he can’t take it anymore and heads for the hills.”

“You want me to come with you? Billie Dee should be here soon.” Billie Dee was their cook, a large, older Texas woman with a belly laugh and twinkle in her eye. “She can hold down the fort until we get back.”

“No, I could use the drive. Wouldn’t mind a little time to myself on the way back.”

Darby caught her hand before she could turn away. “Everything all right, sis?” That was the problem with being twins. They sensed when something was wrong with their former womb-mate.

She gave him her best everything-is-all-right smile. He didn’t look as if it fooled him, but then their cook came in the back door singing at the top of her lungs, and Lillie hurried to see what trouble her father had gotten into in the bar.

* * *

FLINT DROPPED HARP off at the sheriff’s department. But as the deputy got out of the patrol SUV, the sheriff told him, “If you happen by the mayor’s office today and your father calls me later to ask me how you got a black eye, I’m going to tell him the truth.”

“It’s my word against your crazy old man’s,” Harp said, scowling.

“Which do you think your father is going to believe? That not-quite-seventy-year-old Ely Cahill, drunk on his ass, got you, a trained deputy, before you could cuff him? Or that you were giving him a hard time, enjoying making fun of him, and he dropped you with one punch? Either way, I got the whole story from some of the patrons who were watching from the bar window. If you don’t believe it, they took videos with their phones.”

Harp clamped his mouth shut. “Is that all?”

“For now,” Flint said and drove north out of town on a dirt road toward Anvil Holloway’s farm. It was a good twenty miles of rolling hills. Turning onto an even narrower dirt road, he saw the farm ahead.

In the field next to the house, decades of old cars, pickups and farm equipment rusted in the morning sun. A few clouds scudded across a robin’s-egg-blue sky. The mountains around the wide valley were still snowcapped and the air had a crispness to it that warned summer was still months off.

Flint parked, shut off his engine and started to climb out when Anvil rushed from the house to stop on the dilapidated porch. The house needed paint and didn’t look much better than the porch.

“Have you heard from her?” Flint asked as he walked toward the house and the man anxiously waiting for him.

Anvil shook his head as if unable to draw the words. He looked older than fifty-seven. His brown hair needed cutting. It framed a once handsome face now weathered from years of working outdoors. He still looked strong from his days playing football at the University of Montana in Missoula, his only claim to fame. His large body was clad in faded overalls over a clean white T-shirt. He’d obviously dressed up for Flint’s visit, since he’d recently shaved. He still had a dollop of shaving cream congealing on one ear.

“Why don’t we go inside and sit down. You can tell me what happened,” Flint said.

Anvil nodded nervously, practically wringing his hands before he wiped both down the sides of his overalls. “It’s just not like her to take off and not call and let me know she’s all right.”

Flint followed the farmer into the kitchen of the ranch house. The room was neat and clean, dishes done, floor recently mopped, he noticed with concern. In this part of the country, men worked in the fields, barns and pastures. Women worked in the house. That Anvil had mopped the floor sent up a red flag that Flint hadn’t been expecting.

If Jenna had been gone since yesterday evening, she hadn’t been the one to mop the floor. It seemed a strange thing for Anvil to do unless he had something he needed to clean up.

They took a seat at the 1950s metal-and-Formica blue table. Anvil had inherited the farm along with the house and furnishings from his father after he graduated from college. His parents had moved down to Arkansas to be near his sister and her family.

Flint noticed that, like the floor, the table too had been wiped down recently.

“So tell me what happened,” he said as he took out his notebook and pen.

“We had an argument,” Anvil admitted as he wiped a hand over his face. His voice broke as he said, “She left.”

Flint saw with growing concern that the knuckles of Anvil’s right hand were scraped and bruised. “She leave in her own car?” Anvil nodded. “She take anything with her?”

“A suitcase and her purse.”

“She packed after the argument?” Flint asked.

Anvil shook his head. “She’d already packed. Said she needed some time to think.”

“Think about what?”

Anvil looked at the floor.

“She leave because you hit her?”

The farmer’s head bobbed up, shock and guilt on his face. “It wasn’t like that.”

“It wasn’t the first time you’d hit her?”

“I’d never laid a hand on her before. I swear to God.” The words came out in a strangled cry. Tears had filled the man’s eyes. Remorse making him appear even older. “It was the first time I raised a hand to her. I swear on my grandmother’s grave. I...I slapped her.”

Flint reached across the table to lift Anvil’s ham-sized right hand. “Looks like you did more than slap her.”

* * *

ELY CAHILL PERKED up a lot after his Johnson breakfast. Lillie had studied him as he’d eaten every bite on his plate. He was still a strong man in so many ways. Stubborn as a stump that refused to be pulled from the ground. Weathered by life and the outdoors. Tough as the proverbial nail. She envied him that he knew what he wanted and didn’t wait around for life to give it to him.

The drive up the canyon to his cabin was a beautiful one. Spring in Montana couldn’t be any more delightful. The sky was a clear blinding blue dotted with puffy white clouds over a sea of new bright green grasses and dark pines. She took it in as she drove, thinking how nine years ago she would have given all of this up for Trask.

Ely Cahill lived within sight of an old ghost town. Only a few shells of buildings still stood in the middle of the tall spring grass. His cabin fit right in.

He’d built it years ago out of hewn logs with his sons helping him. It was small and apparently all he needed.

The logs had weathered from the sun and snow and thunderstorms that passed over. Vegetation had grown up around it in his absence. From a distance, a person would think it was abandoned.

Ely spent little time here and even less in the ranch house down the road, where he’d lived with their mother and helped raise the six of them. I’m done ranching, he’d announced after their mother had died. You all can have the ranch. I want that hill overlooking this valley. That’s where I plan to die.

That had been almost twenty years ago. Lillie’s older brothers Cyrus and Hawk had taken over the ranch. She and her twin, Darby, had wanted nothing to do with it. Tuck, the oldest of her brothers, had struck out on his own at eighteen, not to be heard from again.

Tuck was the smart one to get out of here, Darby had said recently after mentioning that he should probably sell his share of the Stagecoach Saloon and take off to find his fortune.

Lillie hoped he was just talking. She couldn’t run the bar and café alone and she didn’t want to sell out or take on another partner. It wasn’t just a business. It was her home. She loved the old stagecoach stop, could feel its history in the stone walls and marred wooden floorboards, and she was determined to preserve it. Making money was the least of the reasons she had bought the building. The bar and café had been a way of hanging on to it—and put a roof over her head.

“Thank you, Lillie Girl,” her father said as she pulled up in front of his cabin. “No need to see me in. The pack rats probably carried off most everythin’ and left a mess ta boot.”

She shuddered to think what the inside of the cabin looked like as she watched him lift his pack and the bag of groceries she’d insisted on. “How long will you be staying out of the mountains?”

He looked up toward the Judiths, still snowcapped. “As long as I can stand it.” Lewis and Clark had discovered the mountains on their expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Clark named them after his soon-to-be wife, Judith.

“You’ll let me know before you leave.” What if Flint was right about their father? What might happen to him up there alone, let alone in the mountains?

Ely met her gaze. “Don’t worry about me,” he said as if reading her mind. “Your brother doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

She didn’t need to ask which brother. Flint was the second oldest and the one who went into law enforcement after generations of Cahills who had teetered on the edge of the law. He was also the one who seemed to think it was his job to run the family with Tuck gone. She hated how reasonable he always was when just once she’d love to see him lose his cool like the rest of them. The only stupid thing her brother had ever done was marry Celeste York.

“You sure Flint wasn’t adopted?” she joked. “Or maybe you found him on your doorstep, where someone dumped him when he was a baby?”

“He’s well-meaning,” Ely said, surprising her.

“He arrested you.”

“He did that.” Her father laughed good-heartedly. “But I wasn’t myself last night. I understand why he had to.”

Lillie shook her head. “Always by the letter of the law.”

“Yep, that’s our Flint. He’d arrest his own grandmother if she was alive.” Ely laughed at the family joke. “But that’s only if the fool woman broke the law. It’s his job. Don’t forget that, Lillie.” He turned those gray eyes on her. “He takes bein’ sheriff seriously, no matter the cost to hisself.”

Her father was trying to warn her, as if he needed to remind her, what would happen if Flint found out Trask was back in town. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, touched by her father’s attempt to protect her. It filled her with fear of what the future held.

Trask was back, and when Flint found out, he’d have every resource available out looking for him. This time, Trask wouldn’t get away.

Hopefully, the cowboy had come to his senses and left town again. She preferred that over seeing him behind bars. But the thought that she wouldn’t see him again for another nine years or possibly ever was like a clenched fist around her heart.

“Take care, Lillie Girl,” her father said as he slung his pack over his shoulder and started to close the pickup door.

She nodded, her thoughts on Trask, a dangerous place for even her thoughts to be.

CHAPTER FOUR

TRASK BEAUMONT WAS no fool. Not anymore at least. He knew how dangerous coming back there was—let alone going near Lillie. If one of her brothers had seen him—

As it was, her father had. Ely Cahill wouldn’t tell, though. Trask had always liked the old man and thought Ely liked him, as well. It was Lillie’s brothers he had to worry about—especially Flint, the sheriff.

He knew he was taking one devil of a chance by being back in the state, not to mention what he planned to do now that he was.

As he drove the back roads he knew so well—even after nine long years of being away—he felt happy just to be home again. He’d missed all of this, but nothing like he’d missed Lillie. She was more beautiful than she’d been nine years ago, as if that was possible. She’d grown into the amazing woman he’d always known she would become. He couldn’t have been more proud of her for what she’d accomplished with the old stagecoach stop.

Leaving Lillie had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Now he feared he’d come back too late. If he’d lost Lillie, then all his plans would have been for nothing.

He reached the turnoff that would take him up in the mountains and drove through thick pines as the narrow dirt road snaked upward. The day was incredible from the blue of Montana’s big sky to the white puffy clouds riding on the breeze to the jewel green of the pines against the snowcapped mountaintops. He’d forgotten how breathtaking it could be.

Or how much he would miss it. But he’d had no choice but to leave all those years ago. He was facing a murder rap for a crime he hadn’t committed. The law was looking for him, and Lillie... Just the thought of her made his heart ache. He should have stayed and tried to find out the truth. But he’d been young. And scared.