A Cowboy's Home (6 page)

There was nothing.

No one was there…

Except the pantry door was ajar, and he
opened it further. Leeks and potatoes scattered the floor. “What
the actual fuck?”

Did an animal get in there?

Then he felt the breeze on his back. The
window was open, not enough to be obvious at first, but enough to
let the cool night in.

“I don’t remember…”
leaving that
open
.

Sam pulled it shut, cursing his stupidity and
accepting he’d likely been lost in his own head last night. He set
about disinfecting the surfaces, because hell, if an animal had
gotten in then he was not cooking where it had been.

Finally, he checked the pantry area. Apart
from the loose vegetables, nothing major was missing. The bottles,
cans and cartons were a little out of order, but that could well
have been down to him, when he’d gone looking for olive oil. He
threw away everything on the floor, checked the doors and windows,
and climbed the stairs, heading to bed. He took his cell, the
charger, and his fuck-off knife with him.

And he hoped
to
hell
he could get Ryan Reynolds back in his brain so he’d at
least spend the next couple of hours sleeping in hot company.

Sam woke feeling like he had a question that
needed answering. Something about his nocturnal activities made him
uneasy. The window had been open….

Once dressed and downstairs, he checked in
the pantry, squatting where the bowl had smashed, and looking
closely at the area. Red on the corner of the unit by the floor—a
dried deposit of something dark rusty red. Maybe paint… or
blood?

That last one sat right with him.

“Can I get a coffee to go?” Ethan asked from
behind him.

Sam whirled and fell back against the
counter. Ethan reached out and grabbed him before he fell.

“Sorry,” Sam apologized and hustled Ethan
over to the coffee machine. “Usual?”

“Please.” If Ethan spotted anything odd about
Sam, he didn’t mention it.

Sam should just tell the cop what he’d found,
his suspicions that an animal intrusion could potentially be
something more, but he said nothing. Nothing awful had been taken:
some food, bottled water, that broken bowl. It wasn’t like Branches
was a place in town. Whoever broke in would have had to make a real
effort to get there just for a handful of fresh fruit and
vegetables.

Was it the kids, maybe? Josh? There was no
way he was getting Josh in trouble until he asked him.

“How are you doing?” Ethan asked with that
expression everyone used with Sam, the one that said they weren’t
entirely comfortable asking because Sam had just gotten back from a
funeral.

“I’m fine.” And there was the standard
reply.

Ethan looked at him steadily, his patented
understanding-cop expression firmly in place. “Has to be hard
losing a grandparent.”

Sam wanted to snap back that he’d given up on
his entire family, let alone his grandmother, a long time ago. But
he didn’t, because Ethan had lost his brother, and that had to be
way harder than what had happened to Sam. “Yeah,” he said instead
and changed the subject. “Are you going back to Missoula
today?”

“Yeah, but only for meetings, just for the
day.” Ethan shrugged, like he was saying a hundred things all at
once—that he would miss Adam, and that he really didn’t want to
go.

“How’s Adam?”

“He’s doing well. Remembered a few more
things, nothing too soul-destroying.”

“Good.” Was that the right answer? Sam
couldn’t believe Adam had to relive parts of his past like they
were new. There were parts of Sam’s life he’d love to forget and
never revisit.

Sam hadn’t seen a couple quite as tight as
Ethan and Adam. They were solid and close, and Ethan was there for
Adam every single minute.
Likewise, Adam
would stare at Ethan, and there was so much love in his
eyes.
Sam had to admit he was a tiny bit jealous.

Add in the disgustingly kissy Nate and Jay,
and Sam was the only gay man in a hundred-mile radius without his
own guy.

“Maybe you can help me before you go?” He
handed Ethan the coffee in the travel cup.

“Sure, what’s up?”

“You know the ranch well, right?”

Ethan nodded. “Spent most of my childhood
around the acres,” he said with a smile.

“Where can I take my dirt bike? I mean, I use
it the other side of the river, but I don’t go much past the ranch.
As I’m investing in this place, I want to explore, away from the
horses and the trekking, just go to a really remote part of the
ranch. Where no one else would go.”

Ethan frowned in thought and then brightened.
“That’s easy. Go up past the staff houses; keep on going after
Ember Bluff—you’re talking maybe only half a mile because it gets
dense with forest up that side of the mountain.” Ethan tapped a
finger on his cup. “I don’t think Adam takes the horses up there;
it’s too wild. Maybe you get some hikers, but they’re mostly drawn
to the river and the other side up to Silver Pond and the trails
beyond there. You’d be okay taking your bike there. You can check
in on the cabins for us, the old logger places, and report back.
Otherwise one of us needs to get up there. It can be your first job
as co-owner, for which, by the way, congratulations.”

Sam dipped his head. “Thank you, and I’ll log
what I find.” Sam parceled up two of Ashley’s choc-chip muffins and
passed them over. “Drive safe.”

Ethan grinned and left the restaurant,
holding open the door for Ashley herself, who hugged him, and for a
moment they chatted about muffins and Adam. Poor Ethan, all he got
asked was questions about Adam.

Ashley walked over to Sam. “You okay,
sweetie?” she asked, all concern and motherly insight.

Sam swallowed his instinctive reply. “You
think you could cover for me this morning?” he asked before he even
realized what he was doing.

Ashley cradled his face, looking so
concerned. She probably thought he was upset about his grandmother.
He almost blurted out that actually she was entirely wrong and he
was fine.

“Of course, Sam. Do you need anything? Do you
want to talk?”

“No, I’m fine. I just need some time. Gonna
take my bike out.”

She nodded, probably thinking that was a good
thing, and everyone dealt with grief in their own way. She wouldn’t
question why he needed some space, but he felt like a bastard for
using her kindness. Impulsively he pressed a kiss to her
forehead.

“You macking on my girl, Samwise?” Gabe said
as he pushed into the restaurant for his early-morning caffeine
fix.

“You shouldn’t let her out,” Sam said with a
teasing smirk. “And stop with the hobbit jokes.”

Gabe shoved his arm, but not too hard.
“Asshole. And you are hobbit-sized.”

“I got this,” Ashley said, adding her own
shove to her fiancé’s arm. “You go.”

Gabe instantly got serious. “You okay,
Sam?”

Sam’s guilt level rose dangerously high. He
couldn’t quite look Gabe in the face. “I’m okay. Just need the
morning.”

Gabe nodded and Sam stepped back before the
middle Todd brother could pull him into a hug. Because that would
kill him.

He went through the back to his bike, picking
up the two smallish bags he’d packed. He had food, water, and half
the contents of the medical box added to stuff he kept up in his
apartment.

Something wasn’t right, and he felt compelled
to find out what the fuck it was. Because someone was taking stuff
from the restaurant and leaving bloody marks, and call him stupid,
but going unarmed up against someone in the woods seemed like the
perfect thing to do today.

Clearly he was being an idiot, but he was
doing this thing.

Sam just wasn’t sure why.

Justin reached the safety of the old shack
and fell in through the door, cursing as he hit the floor. His
vision
blurred, the pain stabbed
into his thigh, and his knee was on fire from where he’d slammed it
into the metal cabinet in the kitchen.

Fucking stupid, because the bowl had smashed
and he’d had to run. Stumble, anyway. Two hours, maybe more, to
make it this far, falling and staggering back to safety.

For the longest time, he’d stood outside the
open kitchen window in the dark, waiting to see what shit was going
to rain down on him. But all the man inside did was find a weapon
in a knife from the block, look around the place, take inventory,
clean up, and then leave. But not before locking the window Justin
had been using for ingress. Justin had taken great care to let
himself in and wedge it a little so it looked shut but was actually
unlatched.

And now he was fucked. He wouldn’t be getting
in that way again, and hell if he knew where else he could safely
find food. He lay back on the floor, staring up and seeing the
blackness of the sky through the large hole in the ceiling.

Thank God the snow had gone and they were
into the Montana summer; that, he could handle. Trying to hide in
this shithole with snow and rain was just asking to fall sick.

Okay, so he’d come here to die, but some
stubbornness had him thinking he could at least make the effort to
live.

Who else was going to kill Jamie Crane? Who
else was going to right the wrongs done to Adam and him? The need
to be alive just for that one last thing had forced its way through
the pain, and he’d decided he was going to survive.

He’d dug out the bullet and screamed the pain
to the emptiness around him, tied a T-shirt around the area, and
tightened his belt over it to hold the makeshift dressing in
place—and that had just been day one.

His head throbbed, the pain in his thigh was
intense, and he couldn’t stop feeling sick. The betrayal, the
bullet… he didn’t know which hurt worse. Revenge was what drove him
here, but he could die up in this cabin and no one would know and
probably never care.

He had to move. His stomach told him he
needed to eat, and his dry mouth insisted he find water somewhere
in this godawful run-down heap of a shack.

At least three warrants were out for his
arrest. Not for Justin Allens, but for his cover names. Still, they
were there. He doubted there was any kind of “be on the lookout”
out for the man who killed Saunders and Webb. How could you place a
BOLO for a man who didn’t exist anymore? A sheriff was sniffing
around the ranch yesterday—one of the Carter brothers, Ryan—asking
Adam questions, no doubt, and trying to get him to remember
things.

Or maybe they were cutting to the chase now,
and Adam had told them Justin had spoken to him.

And how fucking stupid had Justin been to do
that? To see the man he thought dead, the boy he’d loved as a kid,
standing there alone with Justin’s horse, Easy, was like a punch to
the gut.

Adam was alive.

And all of Justin’s life had been a lie.

A vicious, hate-filled, fucker of a lie.

He’d killed for Saunders, taken his revenge
on so many, gone so deep that
for
years
he’d forgotten his own name. And now? Now he was home,
and he couldn’t go down there, couldn’t take his pain to their
doors.

Couldn’t even think.

Justin’s head pounded. He rolled onto his
side with care and then crawled to the small packing box where he
kept his entire world. No wallet, no ID, no link to the past, no
suggestion of a future. He owned a satellite phone that he didn’t
dare use—and anyway, the only number in there was for Rob—his gun,
a notebook without a single word, a pen, and three remaining
bullets. Oh, and there—the small box of strong migraine medication
he’d found in Adam’s house.

Justin had only taken what he needed, trying
not to look at the things that lay around Adam and Ethan’s place.
Only what they wouldn’t notice, just some pain pills.

He didn’t want to face evidence of his
brother, or Adam, or both of them together. He couldn’t. Not
yet.

He had no access to antibiotics, but if he
was desperate, he could probably get something from the
stables.

How much do I want to live?

He dry swallowed two pills and ended his
crawl in the corner of the shack, well away from the hole and the
unpredictable chance of light rain. He’d worn the same clothes for
the last two days, layered in filth and turned brown with dried
blood. He hadn’t showered or slept
properly
since he’d killed Webb and Saunders; only
adrenaline had gotten him down to the ranch and back again.

Justin curled up as best he could, pulling
his jacket up and willing himself to stop shivering.
If he’d willed himself to become a man he wasn’t meant
to be for so many years, he could surely stop himself
shivering.

Justin woke from shaking too hard, cold, but
his skin hot, and popped more pain pills. He stretched out from the
position he’d been lying in and attempted to stand.

But that wasn’t happening. His thigh was on
fire, his head pounded, and this could well be day three.

He was fucked. He’d managed two trips down to
the restaurant, and one of those he’d taken the opportunity to get
into the Strachan house, a round trip of two miles at least. He
wasn’t going to be able to do it again, that much was obvious.

What am I going to do? What part of this is
okay?

Stay alive. You have work to do.

He closed his eyes again and slipped into
sleep. He had to stay awake, but when he slept, there wasn’t any
pain.

The sound of the wind passed his head as he
throttled back on his motorbike and sped down the Pacific Coast
Highway, his favorite ride, the scent of the sea on the breeze.

He could feel the vibration, hear the engine,
and knew that this was a dream so real he could almost touch
it…