Dodge the Bullet (28 page)

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The ground was a soupy mixture of churned
earth and standing water. The sucking sound Sarah’s boots made as
she walked in the dawn light reminded her of the rhythmic licking
of an animal grooming itself. The clear sky clear had turned a
brilliant orange as the sun made its daily pilgrimage to its perch
above the mountains. The fresh air filled her lungs and the chill
of morning worked as well as a shower to lift the fog from her
tired brain.

She shifted the thermos of coffee between
her hands as her eyes searched the landscape for Dodge’s truck.
He’d said he’d be between the cabin and the side entrance to the
property. As she made her way through rain clogged pastures, she
questioned her decision to walk instead of taking her truck. She
was just about to turn back when she came around a stand of old
cottonwood trees and spotted the tail end of his bumper near the
fence line that divided her property from the road beyond. It was a
few feet more before she spotted him, crouched down by the gate,
examining something on the ground with the intensity of a crime
scene investigator. When he heard her footsteps, he rose.

“I brought you some coffee.” Sarah felt a
surge of relief at seeing him, although they’d talked on and off
through the night. Dodge pulled her to him, clutched her tight
against his still damp jacket, held her in an embrace that showed
her the relief wasn’t one-sided. When he let her down, for he’d
pulled her off her feet, she saw how exhausted he looked. There
were dark circles under both of his eyes and anger beneath his
stare. “What’re you looking at down there?” She motioned with the
thermos to the spot he’d been eyeing.

“Tire tracks and footprints.” His voice
sounded scratchy from no sleep. “They’re fresh, but filled with
water. Best I can figure is some time after midnight but before I
got out here around one-thirty.” He walked to the gate, bent down
to explain his findings. “They’re too small to be from a truck, or
at least a big one. The footprints are large, most likely a man’s.
Somebody got out in the rain, walked to the gate and decided not to
proceed, at least not through this entrance. You can see where he
backed up and turned around there. Probably scrapped the whole
thing with the rain what it was.” He stood, his knees cracked as he
did, and took off his hat. He ran his hand through his hair before
putting his hat back on. “Damn it, I wish I knew what he was
planning.”

“Has Miguel checked the front entrance for
tracks and footprints?”

“No, I sent him in for some shut eye. One of
us needs to be able to function today.” He looked up at the sky as
two geese honked overhead. “I was just going to check the perimeter
on my way to the front.”

“You need some shut eye, too.” Sarah walked
with him to the truck. “Mind if I come with you? The boys are
finally asleep and I’m keyed up on coffee.”

“How are they doing?” Dodge started the
engine and began a slow trek along the fence line. The truck
bounced slowly along the grooved pasture.

Sarah thought of her sons and their long,
strange night together. “Kevin seemed almost excited by the danger.
I swear he never took his eyes off the window.” She braced herself
between the seat and the door as the truck pitched in a deep rut.
“Lyle was really quiet all night. It’s not like him to hole up like
he did. I’m not sure what he thinks or how he’s handling this. I’m
going to let him sleep and then try to talk to him.”

“And you?” Dodge asked.

“I’m worried, and like you I wish I knew
what to look for, what to expect.” She pulled the visor down as the
truck turned directly into the path of the sun. “I think I’m going
to call Todd’s parents and send the boys there for a visit.” Dodge
looked at her but said nothing. “Kevin’s not going to like it,
maybe not even Lyle, but I don’t want them in danger. If anything
happened to them…”

“I think that’s the best thing for everyone.
Whoever was out here last night’s not through. I want them safe.”
He glanced out the side window and then back at her face. “I think
you ought to go too.”

“What?” Sarah sat up in her seat. “No. I
need to be here.”

“No, you don’t. It’ll be a hell of a lot
easier for me to concentrate on protecting this place without
worrying about you. I want you safe, too.”

“That’s ridiculous. Benji’s doing this to
make me sell. If I’m not here, who’s to say he wouldn’t just wait
until I got back?”

“Because he’s out of time. He can do damage
to the property whether you’re here or not. I’d prefer you not be
here.”

“I don’t give a damn what you’d prefer. I’m
staying.”

“Damn it, Sarah. I can’t guarantee your
safety if you stay.”

“Guarantee my safety?” She turned in the
seat to face him and he stopped the truck. “My safety’s not your
responsibility. We’ve already established that we’re not in a
relationship.”

“Do you honestly think I’d leave you to deal
with this on your own?” He gripped the wheel tight between his
fists before sighing and letting his hands fall to his lap.
“Besides, he’s seriously fucking with my livelihood.”

“Exactly, and as the landowner, you should
be pissed I’m not able to guarantee the safety of your cattle and
equipment.”

“I am pissed, but not at you. We know he’s
planning something but we don’t know what. We know it’ll be soon,
but we don’t know when. And there are two of us, me and Miguel, to
protect 1200 acres. We can’t go to the police with hearsay and
innuendo and I’m not sure who we can trust to help. So yeah, I’m
pissed. And I want you as far away from this as I can get you.”

“I’m as upset about this as you are, but I’m
not leaving. I’m getting the boys out of here, today if possible,
and then we’re facing this together. You can’t talk me out of
it.”

“Sarah, you could get hurt if you stay, or
worse. Your kids have already lost a father. They can’t lose you,
too.”

“Okay,” Sarah admitted. “You’re scaring me,
which I suppose is what you’re trying to do. But you’re not
thinking this through.” She took a breath, paused until he looked
at her. “Benji won’t hurt me. The boys…maybe, and that’s why they
have to leave. But me, no way.”

“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

“I am. Benji’s not stupid.” She laughed when
Dodge raised his brows. “He’s an imbecile, yes, but he’s not going
to kill me because, think about it. If something happens to me,
what happens to the ranch? It goes to the boys, who are minors. The
estate would be handled by their legal guardian. And even if Jenny
wanted to sell this place, she wouldn’t be able to do it for
months, maybe longer assuming there’s no problem with probate. He’d
never risk that kind of delay.”

“That’s still not a good enough reason to
leave you dangling in front of him like a carrot.”

“Dodge.” She reached over to brush her
fingers on his arm. “You don’t get it. The one dangling like a
carrot is you. There’s nothing stopping him from hurting you. He
hates you. Kimberly’s already confirmed you’re a thorn in his
side.” She let her fingers fall and braced for another bounce when
he started the truck along the fence line. “I’ll do whatever I can
to keep you safe, and if that means sticking to you like glue, I
will.”

They sat in silence as he angled the truck
toward the front pasture. “As soon as I check around the front
entrance, I’m taking you home. You’ve got some calls to make and
some explaining to do to Kevin and Lyle.”

A faint smile formed on her lips. It was a
small victory. He’d conceded he needed her and it felt good. But
when she glanced at his profile, his jaw twitched with the gnashing
of his teeth.

Dodge caught her looking. “I hope like hell
you’re still smiling when this is all over.”

Everywhere Sarah glanced on the return trip from Denver, cows and
horses grazed and aspen and spruce trees danced in the wind. Around
every turn the view seemed more beautiful than the last. Thank God
she and Todd had found the valley and river property before they’d
ever made this drive. How could they have chosen just one place
amongst such beauty? Slowly, with each mile toward home, she felt
the tension of putting her kids on a plane by themselves seep out
of her like a slow leak from a tire.

The drive up had been a different story.
Kevin sat silently fuming. He felt displaced by Dodge, despite her
telling him it was at her insistence they leave. Lyle seemed
confused and still so quiet and unsure. She needed to talk to him,
ease him out from behind this weird wall he’d put up, but there
hadn’t been time.

Sarah had spent a fortune on the last minute
tickets to Charlotte where Todd’s parents would meet them at the
airport. Normally the kids would be thrilled with a visit back east
to the expansive lake front home of the Woodwards. Their
grandparents would let them lounge on the two story dock eating
junk food when they took a break from the countless hours they’d
spend on the water.

But this trip wasn’t a vacation, but a
forced exile. Neither boy was happy to go. Sarah could only hope
they’d be able to relax and forget about the battle going on back
at the ranch. The voice from the driver’s seat startled her out of
her thoughts.

“Why don’t you lean that seat back and close
your eyes for a little while?” Mary Beth McAlister spoke over the
low hum of the radio. Sarah could only see a resemblance in the
eyes, the slightly downward tilt of her eyes were the same as her
brother. Mary Beth was seven years older than Dodge, a little wide
in the middle, and much fairer skinned than her perpetually tanned
brother.

Mary Beth had volunteered to leave her
teenaged kids for the afternoon and shut down her at-home
bookkeeping business for the day to escort Sarah and the boys on
their drive to Denver. It had been Dodge’s idea, of course, for
someone to accompany them after what little sleep Sarah had had the
night before. As Sarah’s eyes drooped with fatigue, she knew Dodge
had been right. The only problem was that Mary Beth wasn’t someone
she and the boys felt comfortable talking in front of. The whole
ride to the airport, the tension between Sarah and her sons all but
crackled in the air. Every few miles Mary Beth would make comments
about the scenery or throw out some tidbit of history, but her
presence just kept the hostility between them bottled up, sure to
explode at another more private time.

“Um,” Sarah cleared her throat. “I can’t
sleep in the car. Never could.”

“Isn’t it funny how that works for some
people and doesn’t for others?” She tapped her fingers on the wheel
to the beat of a soft rock tune. “I can sleep like a baby. So can
A.J. Sometimes, when he was a baby, Mama would strap him in tight
to Daddy’s truck and ride him around the property until he fell
asleep. Only way he’d be still was when he was asleep.”

A.J. It was odd to hear someone call Dodge
anything other than his last name. But wasn’t it odder still that
she was sleeping with a man she referred to only by his last name?
He wasn’t her teammate, for Christ’s sake, he was her lover. “What
does A.J. stand for?”

Mary Beth smiled and let her eyes skim Sarah
again like she’d done when Dodge had introduced them outside the
feed store where her husband Shelton worked. “Andrew Jackson.”
Sarah heard pride in her voice. Whatever his sister had thought
about Dodge when Wendy Hawkins made her big announcement, she sure
thought the world of him now. “You two are sweet on each
other.”

It was more a statement than question. Sarah
didn’t know if she needed to answer, so she decided to ask a
question of her own. “Anybody ever call him Andy?”

“My mother called him Andy, or more like,
‘my little Andy.’ No matter what he did, or didn’t do, mama would
go through the house saying, ‘Who made my little Andy cry?’ or
they’d play peek-a-boo and she’d call out, ‘Now where’s my little
Andy?’ Mary Beth shook her head at the memory. “She loved having a
boy. She was so happy to have him. I wonder if he remembers how
much she loved him.”

“It’s a mother-son thing.” Sarah said.
“There’s nothing quite like it. Of course, I don’t have girls, so I
guess I’m not the best judge.”

“No, you’re right. I’ve got both and the
boys, well, they’re only ours for a short time. Once a woman gets a
hold of them they’re gone. Girls,” she shrugged. “They’re with you
forever.”

The thought of her boys only being with her
for a short time caused Sarah’s eyes to close and little pictures
of them throughout the years to swirl around her head like photos
in the wind. When she opened her eyes again, they were pulling into
the parking lot of Shelton’s feed store.

“We’re here,” Mary Beth announced quietly as
Sarah sat up in her seat and rubbed her hands over her face.

“I guess I dozed off there for awhile.” She
yawned. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You needed the sleep.” Mary Beth
pulled the truck to a stop and looked over at Sarah. “You awake
enough to drive Dodge’s truck back to the ranch?”

“Don’t you need a ride home?”

“I can catch a ride with Shelton. It’s
quitting time.”

Sarah started back to the ranch just as the
sun began its journey behind the Mountains. She hoped Dodge had
taken the time to get some sleep. While she’d slept, her dreams
were of the boys, images of them at all ages, obscure thoughts of
them as adults. But now, in the quiet of the dying day, her
thoughts wandered to the man waiting at home.

She’d spent the whole day with his sister
and was left with more questions than answers. Her image of him
kept changing, shifting like sand in a bottle. The young son
beloved by his mother, raised by a quiet father and a house full of
sisters. They’d all let him down, but were there for him now. She
wondered what he was like as a boy and growing up as a teenager.
She wondered what his ex-wife was like, and why thinking of him
married to someone made her feel curiously nettled.