Lifeline Echoes (14 page)

"Hey!" Sean sputtered, blew water out of his
mouth. He stood, shaking the water from his hair, a huge grin of
his own plastered across his face. "Paybacks, bro!" he called out.
"You know what they say about 'em." Then he let out a whoop before
bending to retrieve his hat, floating in the trough next to
him.

Without looking back, Ryan strode up to the
house, a wide grin on his face, a carefree feeling in his
heart.

****

A plush, dark towel slung around his hips,
Ryan was using another to dry his hair while he contemplated the
insanity of having stayed up all night. His bed now looked mighty
appealing.

He slid open the dresser drawer and grabbed
a pair of dark briefs, pausing when he saw the folder. With one
trembling finger he traced the upper edge. The bold black lines of
the capital A on the tab sliced through his conscience like hot
wires. Ryan squeezed his eyes shut against the onslaught of
feelings he preferred to keep buried. He opened them abruptly. Man!
What had he done by getting involved with Sandy? It felt a little
like . . . cheating.

He picked up the folder, swallowing past the
lump of emotions lodged in his throat. Opening it, he saw pages and
pages of his own handwriting. Notations of leads which hadn't
panned out, her name, given to him by one of her sympathetic
coworkers: Allie Whitman. Beneath all that, more pages of
handwritten notes, the details he remembered of all their
conversations, written when he'd been unable to walk, just so he'd
have something to hold onto. He shuffled through them once again,
those well-worn sheets of yellow paper.

He'd fallen in love with her, asked her to
marry him. Yet he had nothing tangible of her. When he'd needed
her, she hadn't been there. She'd completely disappeared, almost
like she never existed. The guys had teased him about hallucinating
for months until he'd gotten more careful about looking for
her.

And now . . . Sandy made him want to throw
it all away. Seven years of searching for someone who must not want
to be found. Who was he cheating on if she'd left him first?

"Sandy," he whispered. He was cheating Sandy
if he moved forward with her before letting go of the past he still
struggled with.

"You and your brother square things up?"
Justin's gravelly voice came from the doorway.

Ryan jumped "Stop my heart first next time,
will ya?"

Reason told him he hadn't been doing
anything wrong, Ry stuffed the papers back in the folder, then
shoved the whole mess back into the dresser and slid the drawer
closed.

Throughout Ryan's life, his father's
commanding presence had filled every room he entered. Some things
never changed, even after a heart attack, so Ryan was glad when
Justin made himself comfortable in the chair by the window.

"I want to talk with you. I know your
brother warned you to keep me out of it." He snickered. "Thinks
I'll live longer if I don't get upset."

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Can this wait until
I'm wearing pants?"

"We can talk while you get dressed.”

Ryan stared.

His father shot a pointed look at the towel.
"What? You got something under there you didn't have when I was
changing your diapers?"

Muttering under his breath about a few more
inches and a lack of personal space, Ryan pulled on his briefs,
then hauled on a pair of well-worn blue jeans with holes in the
knees.

Justin ran a critical eye over his son’s
choice of attire. “You know, you can get a decent pair of jeans at
AJ’s General Store for under twenty bucks.”

“
These are my favorite
jeans, Dad.” Ryan shoved his wallet into the only pocket without a
gaping hole. "I'm just breaking them in."

Justin shook his head. "Looks more like
you're breaking out of 'em, but suit yourself." He drew a deep
breath, let it out slowly. “I figure your brother caught you up on
some things."

Ryan fastened the button on his shirt cuff
without looking up. "What he told me, Dad, was you had a heart
attack and wouldn't let him call me."

"Wasn't any point. It was over almost as
soon as it started. I wasn't in the mood for any deathbed
nonsense."

Now Ryan looked up. "I could've helped. I
still can. We can get this place back on its feet."

"I wasn't aware it was completely off its
feet, son."

"I can help get it back to where it was
before—"

"You know Sean's gotten into boarding some
horses?"

The smooth change of subject was so typical
of his father, Ryan didn't lose the beat. "It's always been horses
for him. He's got a solid plan. We have the space, and the extra
income it generates will help." He pulled his wristwatch into
place.

"I agree," said Justin, bringing Ryan back
to the present. "But let's not say anything to your brother just
yet. You know, your pretty young lady's the one who got him
thinking about boarding. She bought that colt at auction last
summer. Turns out he's so crazy no stable would keep him."

"No stable should keep him." Ryan shuddered
at the memory of snapping teeth. "Including this one. Sandy
shouldn't even have him."

"You plan on telling her that, I want to be
there to see it." Justin chuckled. "Thing is, the colt'll do
anything for that girl. Sean's been helping her train him, but
she's got horses in her blood, herself, and that colt loves her."
Justin's expression softened. "She reminds me some of your
mother."

Just great. Ryan could already see the
matchmaking gleam in his dad's eyes. "I don't know. I've only just
met her."

Justin's pointed glance told Ryan he still
understood a great deal about what made his son tick. "You won't
find a better match. She won't take your crap."

"My—" Ryan let out a slow long breath,
relaxed the hands he discovered he'd balled into fists. No, not
getting drawn in to a conversation he couldn’t win.

Justin went silent and closed his eyes.
Good. Ryan considered leaving the room but experience told him they
hadn't gotten to the heart of the conversation yet. So he waited it
out. As usual.

"I don't suppose your brother got 'round to
telling you the real problem here." Justin's voice bordered between
heightened concern and outright worry.

Ryan shook his head. "Baby steps with him,
Dad. I hurt him—hurt you both—when I left."

"You did what you had to do, son." Justin
said. "Right now we got some problems a mite harder to deal with
than simple cash flow. I know you went to the range yesterday with
your girl. You're too smart not to have noticed the absence of
cattle."

Finally. The answers he'd been looking for.
"I noticed. What happened?"

"Sean planned to open up more range further
west," said Justin. "He was going to expand by about five hundred
head to start. He was talking about going modern, bringing in a
helicopter like a couple of the outfits out of Laramie. We've had a
couple good years. He made some good investments. Bank was all set
to loan him the rest of the stake he needed."

An hour later, Ryan's world was rocked and
not in a good way.

More than a hundred head of cattle
slaughtered by high-powered rifle shot. Before that, a series of
little things which might have been accidents or a run of bad luck,
but when pieced together, they looked less like random events and
more like well-thought-out malicious acts.

"When did all this happen?"

"April. Right after we moved the herd up
there. Sean had a couple of hands up there watching the rest of the
herd but a few more cows got picked off and he brought the whole
lot down off the mountain."

Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose then
drew a hand down his face, stopping at his jaw, while he considered
the impact of his father's words. "Geez, Dad, I should have never
taken Sandy up there."

"You're right. It should have been the three
of us riding up there, with you knowing what you were riding
into."

"And whose fault was that?"

"Mine." Justin sighed. "It's mine, son. I
wouldn't let your brother call you when things started
happening."

Ryan's eyes flashed to his father, for the
first time clearly seeing his drawn face, the shadows in his eyes,
the lines that had deepened, new lines that had developed over the
years. His anger evaporated.

"I'm sorry."

"You've got nothing to be sorry for," Justin
told him.

"No, Dad, I do." Ryan blew a long breath
outward, realizing the choices he'd needed to make sixteen years
ago would never sit easy with him. "I left for good reasons and I'd
do it again. But I left a man and a young boy to run a family
business I was part of. I stayed away too long, and I came back,
started giving orders and taking over without earning it. What?" he
asked when Justin began chuckling.

The chuckle became a full out laugh. "I
remember your mother saying something along those lines once in
regard to me. When I got back here after college and started
telling my daddy what was what."

****

Chapter Eight

Ryan was finally beginning to get his
answers. But with every one answer came two more questions. It was
like being on a perpetual and very irritating quest.

He turned onto the deserted highway,
shifting quickly through the gears. As he enjoyed the raw power of
his car, Ryan began to play around with the idea which had begun
while talking to his father. An idea that expanded on Sean's idea
to increase the herd but also involved giving Sean his own niche
with the horses he loved.

He considered his father's last cryptic
disclosure. "Sean's not afraid of failing, Ryan. He knows business
and he's got a head for it. He's afraid of not measuring up to what
you might be expecting from him."

So would Sean see the benefit of Ryan's
proposal or would he only see his older brother trying to take
over?

Ryan stabbed the hands-free button on his
cell and dialed L.A.

"Hey, Ry! Have you gone cowboy on us yet?"
asked the deep voice on the other end.

Ryan felt the grin splitting his face at the
sound of his best friend's voice. "Missing me yet, Joe?"

"Only at the Friday night poker game. I used
to win more when you were playing."

"Yeah, I don't miss that." Ryan took a deep
breath. "I'm not coming back."

Joe chuckled. "Yeah, I figured. I want out
myself. Got any openings in Cowville for a hotshot helicopter
pilot?"

"Maybe," said Ryan. "Have you ever
considered herding cattle by helicopter?"

Ryan was nearing town by the time he
finished outlining his proposition to a very interested Joseph
Griffin, life flight helicopter pilot.

"So, what about prospects for female
companionship?" Joe asked.

Sandy's face floated into Ryan's mind. He
affected his thickest accent. "I can probably rustle you up an
invite to the Sunday church social to meet our one-eyed,
bucktoothed schoolmarm."

"My dream girl. I'll start packing
tomorrow."

"Pool drying up out there, buddy?" teased
Ryan.

"Not exactly. I went on a blind date with an
actress last week. And she's not averse to going out again. Of
course, it's kind of like dating a box of rocks without a lid, but
she's not hard on the eyes."

Ryan snickered. "I'm sure
you can figure out what to do with her
rocks
."

"I'm sure I will." Joe sighed heavily.
"Ryan, I don't—Cara got her start in community theater."

The back of Ryan's neck heated up.
"And?"

"And she remembers a girl she used to work
with when she first started out. Said she had a beauty of a singing
voice, was a good actress but not serious about it. And she left
L.A. very suddenly some years ago in the middle of a production.
Cara thinks she went back east to her family.

Braking to a stop in front of the sheriff's
office, Ryan forced himself to keep breathing. "Okay, I see you
still like to bury the lead."

"I'm sorry," Joe apologized quickly. "I
wasn't sure if you were still looking. I've seen what the dead ends
do to you, man."

Memories of drunken nights and morning-after
hangovers with Joe doing the male equivalent of hair-holding played
in Ryan's mind like an old movie reel. "Not my finest moments."

"So I didn't know what to do with the
information," Joe said. "Do you want me to dig further? Are we
still looking for this girl?"

"I. . ." Ryan hesitated. Was he still
looking? He was tired of all the dead ends but as clues went this
was the most solid they had come up with in a long time. He thought
about Sandy. She was here in the flesh and now, and he was
definitely falling hard for her. The sun flashed off a passing
lumber truck, inciting an answering sparkle from the crystal angel
hanging on his mirror, reminding him there were things left
unsaid.

"Ry?"

Ryan inhaled, blew out forcefully. "Yeah,
sure, go ahead," he said in a rush. It couldn't hurt to ask, could
it?

After severing the phone connection, Ryan
began to rethink his decision.

The angel swayed gently on her cord in front
of him, mocking his indecision. He watched her until she was still
again. A dream forged in loneliness and desperation. A dream which
had been about hope and survival and beating the odds.

His eyes drifted to the passenger seat. His
mind saw Sandy sitting there just the day before. Vibrant, alive,
happy. She hadn't even been on his radar before that mountain road.
And now . . . even though she wasn't physically seated next to him
at this moment, she was real. She was a tangible presence in his
life, not the dream the angel dangling from his mirror
represented.

Ryan reached up and yanked the angel until
the cord snapped. He held her in the palm of his hand for a moment,
ran his thumb over her face in a gentle caress.