“What?”
“How long you had a thing for Sheriff Dawson, hey?”
My fingers rubbed my mouth. Was it obvious my lips were still a little puffy from last night’s encounter with Dawson? No. Rollie was perceptive, which made him good at his job. But I was good at mine, too, so I didn’t answer.
“Mercy. You know I ain’t gonna let this go.”
“Who says he doesn’t have a thing for me?”
Rollie squinted at me through the smoke curling by his eye. “Same difference.”
Big difference, but I doubted he’d see one.
He said, “I should’ve known.”
“Known what?”
“That you’d go for a fella like him.”
“What makes you think you know anything about the type of guy I go for now?”
He followed up with a mean laugh laced with coughing spurts. “Because Dawson is just like your dad.”
That observation jarred me to the core. My mouth opened to argue, but he beat me to the punch.
“Don’t deny it. Dawson is big guy. Stubborn. Good-looking. Kinda mean. A little on the shady side. Another cowboy in a uniform.”
“My dad wasn’t shady.”
He grunted. “I won’t argue that point, outta respect for the dead.”
I bit my tongue.
“Besides, I thought you had some trust issues with the sheriff.”
“I do.” Denial or explanation of the change would sound like an excuse, or worse, a confession. I didn’t need to give Rollie Rondeaux any personal ammo on me because he’d use it.
“I understand the attraction to someone who ain’t good for you. Been with a woman like that a time or two myself. Worth a tumble but I’d never turn my back on her.”
My teeth left another chomp mark on my tongue. His situation with Verline wasn’t my business. However, I had a perverse need to keep my personal business with Dawson out of the public domain. “Do I have to ask you not to blab this, Rollie?”
“Nope. I don’t diss on my employees.”
“Got more than just me working for you?”
“Officially? Nope.” He grinned. “Unofficially? More than you can shake a stick at, Mercy girl.”
I smiled. Couldn’t help it. I’d always liked Rollie.
He dumped me off at the top of the driveway. “Keep in touch. You hear anything, you need anything, call me.”
“For another face-to-face meeting to keep Big Brother from overhearing us?”
“Yep. Or mebbe, keep me in the loop because I’m worried about you.”
• • •
Back at the ranch, Theo convinced Hope he could take care of her, so she’d left with him. Sophie shushed me during her soaps. Yay. At loose ends again. Damn. I needed a job.
You could run for sheriff.
Right. That didn’t help my immediate boredom.
Then I remembered I’d told Jake I’d check out the large flat-bottomed grazing section he’d tentatively earmarked for buffalo. Tooling around in my dad’s truck would clear my head. Nothing more relaxing than spending a summer afternoon on the high prairie. The dips and valleys of the terrain showcased subtle changes, changes the uninitiated wouldn’t notice.
Much as I tried to pretend otherwise, I wasn’t the uninitiated. For the first twelve years of my life I’d soaked up Dad’s words and wisdom like a sponge. So I recognized the yucca seedpods changing colors from creamy white to brittle tan. The spines were faded from green to gray due to dust and drought. The clumps of yellow tumblemustard popped up sporadically, sweet and lovely as the thorny bushes of wild pink roses.
I spied an entrance to the west pasture. I unhooked the barbed-wire loop between the posts; yeah, we employed some high-level security measures on the Gunderson Ranch. Why Kit felt the need to sneak around boggled my mind. With seventy-five thousand acres, some of it bordering public land, there was no way we could police it all.
I dragged the rustic gate open. The tires tharumped across the corroded cattleguard. I hopped back out to close it. Far as I knew we weren’t keeping cattle in this section, but I’d been schooled early on in the importance of keeping all gates shut. Old habits die hard.
I inched my way in. Fire was a constant worry. Dad’s concern during drought years reached the point he wouldn’t allow any vehicle that wasn’t diesel in any of the pastures after the middle of July because of increased fire danger from the catalytic converters. And when the ranch hands or Jake traveled from one section to the next, they followed a distinct path. No reason to cut up every square inch of earth just because we could.
Contrary to what the tree huggers thought, most ranchers were heavily invested in conservation efforts. Hard not to be when one depended on the land to live.
I putted along, listening to the meadowlarks and hoping to hear the distinctive trill of an oriole. Looking for any sign of the much-reviled prairie dogs. Despite PETA’s claim, prairie dogs were not fuzzy, cute little animals being persecuted by trigger-happy landowners in the Wild West.
Prairie dog towns-a series of interconnected tunnels culminating in hundreds of holes-would pop up and ruin miles of grazing land. The oversized rats were good for nothing except lunch for larger predators. Or for target practice.
The truck chugged up a small rise. Once I reached the top of the plateau, I noticed the stock dam below. Bone dry. Traces of gypsum lined the reddish-black banks. I remembered the dam being a prime spot for duck hunting.
How long had it sat completely empty?
I drove, lost in the solitude. Recognizing buttes and ravines I’d forgotten existed. Watching antelope streak across until their white tails were a memory. I’d spent so many years hating the financial uncertainty of ranch life, the never-ending work, the sacrifices this chunk of earth demanded from my family, that I’d lost the pure joy of having a concrete place to call home. In this day and age of globalization, having a home wasn’t a given.
Half the soldiers I knew had nothing but an APO box to call their own. They were too young to have established themselves outside their parents’ domain. Married soldiers lived in base housing. Singles lived in barracks or apartments close to the base. Few actually owned houses. Even fewer owned property. Like most soldiers engaged in war, it’s hard to plan for a future when you’re not sure whether you’ve got one. When you don’t know if you’ll ever see that proverbial white picket fence.
So I had the one thing wars were fought over: a bit of earth to call my own. And I’d be damned if anyone was going to chase me from it.
SEVENTEEN
My cell phone chirred, waking me from my unexpected siesta in the truck. “Hello?”
“Mercy? It’s Geneva.”
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Look, do you think you could come over?”
The reception out here sucked. Or Geneva sounded frantic. “No problem.” I squinted at the tiny numbers on the receiver. Whoa. I’d been dozing for an hour. “What time?”
“Umm. Now? I need to talk to you about Molly. And what happened with Sue Anne. Molly is really freaked out. The priest has even been by, and he can’t get through to her. No one can.”
Had Geneva expected Molly to buy into the church’s automatic Sue-Anne-is-in-a-better-place line of bull? How could she expect me to reassure her daughter when I hadn’t been able to find solace regarding Levi’s murder? Or with the fact Sue Anne had been killed on my doorstep?
“Yeah. I’ll swing by.”
“See you in a bit.” And she hung up.
I made the turnoff to Geneva’s place and cruised down the driveway. No kids came running out to greet me, which I hate to admit was a disappointment. No kids in the sandbox, on the bikes, or on the trampoline. This time of day had always been the “golden hour” for ranch kids. Chores done, supper on the way. Perfect if you wanted to sneak five minutes to yourself. These days that probably meant fighting over PS2 or a GameCube.