Montana Creeds: Tyler (33 page)

While Mom was in the slammer.

How many kids had to cope with something like that?

“I thought you were probably in a foster home,” Tyler said.

“That would have been better. Mom is the greatest disappointment of my Gramma's life—not counting me, of course. She had two other kids before I came along and, not being married at the time, or particularly
flush, gave them both up for adoption.” Davie paused, shrugged in a way that made Tyler's heart crawl right up into the back of his throat and pound there. “For whatever reason—my best guess would be that I was a financial ace in the hole, if there was any chance I was yours—she kept me. Came and picked me up as soon as she got out of jail—and was I ever glad to see her.”

“I'm going to have to call her, Davie. Your grandmother, I mean.”

“Good luck dumping me on
her,
” Davie said, with heartbreaking bravado. “Like I said, I'm not Gramma's favorite person.”

Somewhere out in the gloom, Kit Carson began to bark.

Thinking of coyotes, or the bears that sometimes roamed the ranch in search of a meal, Tyler gave a shrill whistle to call the dog back.

After that, things happened so fast that he never got a chance to tell Davie he hadn't intended to foist him off on anybody.

Lights swung through the trees, coming up the driveway, and the roar of a big engine driven too fast in too low a gear made the air vibrate.

Tyler got to his feet. “What the hell?”

“Kit!” Davie yelled, in an instant panic. “Kit!”

Kit was only a shadow, darting along the edge of the tree line between the cabin and the lake, and he'd evidently dropped out of obedience school, because he stayed clear.

The roar got louder, and the ground began to shake.

“Get out of here!” Tyler yelled, fairly pushing Davie off the porch. “Run!”

“Run where?” Davie shouted back.

The headlights were high off the ground, and coming straight at them now, jostling and jumping like the eyeballs of some gigantic monster sprung up out of the earth and bent on destruction.

Tyler grabbed Davie by the back of the neck and flung him to one side, dived after him. They both hit the ground face-first, scrambled back to their feet.

There was a crash, loud enough to rattle the stars overhead, and Tyler looked back to see the big rig pushing his new truck in front of it like a cow-catcher on a freight train. The semi's engine was screaming now, rising toward a shrill crescendo.

“Shit!” Tyler hollered furiously.
“I just bought that truck!”

Now Davie was the one taking the lead. He had Tyler by the arm and was trying to drag him out of the crazy, swaying beams of those headlights.

“If he sees us,” Davie shouted, pulling for all he was worth, “we're dead meat!”

They'd only covered about a dozen yards when the demon semi from hell rammed Tyler's truck into the side of the cabin, and then straight through the wall.

And not just the front wall, but the back one, too.

Dust billowed, fit to choke everything that breathed.

The semi motor gave one last excruciating whine of agonized protest and then died, with a series of metallic clunks. The hand-hewn timbers of the cabin roof groaned
and finally gave way with an uncanny grace, smashing down on top of the big truck. On top of Tyler's pickup.

“Christ,” he murmured, not sure if he was praying or cursing.

“It was just like in that Stephen King movie,” Davie piped up. “The one with the crazy car that went around crushing people against walls—”

“Davie,” Tyler said quietly, plucking his cell phone from his pocket.
“Shut up.”

Logan got there first, tearing up the driveway in his truck. He'd heard the crash all the way over at his place, he yelled up to Tyler, who was already on the roof, tossing down boards.

Big brother had hit the ground running—hadn't even shut off his pickup or closed the door behind him. But the scene brought him to a standstill. He shook it off, climbed up to join Tyler. “Holy
shit,
” he said, looking around.

It said something about Logan, and the kind of brother he was, Tyler figured, that he got right in and started flinging away shingles, without even asking what they were digging for.

Davie, meanwhile, was trying to round up a very freaked-out Kit Carson, shouting his name, whistling.

Finally, the boy called out exuberantly, “Kit's all right! I caught him!”

Tyler kept pawing at the debris of the cabin roof, hurling chunks of wood aside. He was pretty sure who he'd find behind the wheel of that buried semi, once he and Logan finally got down to it, but not so sure what condition Roy Fifer would be in by then.

In the distance, sirens tore slashes in the otherwise silent country night.

Jim and his crew were on their way, in response to Tyler's 911 call, and since Logan had called Dylan soon before he left his place, brother number two was probably right behind them. If not ahead by a lap or two.

“Do you want to tell me what happened here?” Logan asked, a little breathless from the exertion of trying to move a house with his bare hands.

“I think that's kind of obvious, don't you?” Tyler countered, and he started to laugh. It started as a low, rumbling chuckle and gathered force until it was a roar. Sweat running down his face, covered in dirt, his house a wreck and his new truck a goner after one day in his possession, he didn't know what else to do but laugh.

The sirens grew louder.

Briana pulled in, driving her BMW and wearing jeans under her nightgown, Alec and Josh in tow.

“I think I heard something,” Logan said, after noting his wife's arrival and giving a slight shake of his head. “From down there—”

Tyler stopped laughing to listen.

Sure enough, there was a voice rising from the depths of all that wreckage, like a faint curl of smoke, unintelligible but definitely human in origin.

They dug a little farther, and the words came clear.

“Somebody—help me—”

Logan and Tyler dug harder.

“What's going on here?” Briana called up, from the yard.

Logan chuckled and even in the darkness, Tyler saw
the look of tender amusement move in his brother's eyes. “Briana,” he called back, “get that flashlight out of my truck and throw it up here. Then
go home!
And take Davie and the dog with you.”

“But I want to know—” Briana's protest was cut off by the arrival of all three of Stillwater Springs' squad cars and an ambulance. The din was deafening.

Dylan was there, too—he took the flashlight from Briana's hands and scrambled up onto the pile. Handed the light to Logan and started moving timber.

“What
happened?
” Briana insisted, when some of the noise had subsided.

Jim and two of his deputies were on the roof now, while the EMTs prepared for whatever the night might bring. Within a few minutes, the roof of the semi was in sight—the beam of the flashlight bounced off it.

“Davie will tell you all about it,” Logan shouted down to his wife, in belated reply,
“on the way home!”

Briana finally gave up and left, taking the three boys and Kit Carson with her.

“She'll be waiting up with hot coffee and a lot of questions when we get to the other house,” Logan said, pausing to drag an arm across his forehead and wipe some of the sweat away.

“I'd rather have whiskey,” Dylan put in.

“There won't be any shortage of questions,” Jim huffed. “I've got about a thousand of them.”

They'd created an opening, but the timbers weren't stable and now that they'd done enough digging to get down to the truck, Jim ordered everybody off the roof.

The deputies left, but Logan, Dylan and Tyler stayed put, along with Jim.

Tyler started for the hole. This was his house and his truck, after all. He'd be the one to climb down there and see if the crazy man was alive.

Dylan stopped him by taking hold of his left arm. “I'm the bull-rider in this crew,” he said. The rodeo reference wasn't lost on the other three men—bull-riders tended to be leaner, shorter and more agile than their counterparts in the other events, though of course there were always exceptions. Dylan was by no means a small man, but Logan, Tyler and Jim were all taller, heavier and broader through the shoulders.

And that hole was going to be a tight fit.

“Be careful,” Logan said, with a sigh.

Dylan nodded, glanced Tyler's way.

Reluctantly, Tyler nodded back.

Nimble, like he'd always been, Dylan made his way down some ten feet, easing himself from beam to beam, going still when the timbers groaned and shimmied.

“Everybody down,” Jim ordered, for the second time, when the quake subsided.

“Not a chance,” Logan said flatly.

“That's our
brother
down there,” Tyler added.

“Did it ever occur to either of you knot-heads,” Jim bit out, crescents of sweat staining the underarms of his once-spiffy uniform shirt, dust dulling his badge, “that you might be putting Dylan in
more
danger, standing up here arguing with me?” He paused, swallowed hard. “I
am
the sheriff of this county, you know. I expect my orders to be obeyed.”

“Expect away,” Logan said.

“Give it your best shot,” Tyler put in.

“It's Roy Fifer,” Dylan called up from the hole.

“Now
there's
news,” Jim said sarcastically.

“The cab seems pretty sturdy,” Dylan told them. They heard him talking to Roy in a low, easy tone, though the words weren't clear. Then he started back up through the network of shaky beams. “I think he's all right,” he said, popping his head into view like a gopher out of a tunnel. “Shaken up, that's all.”

Although a big part of him wanted to shinny down that shaft and get Roy Fifer by the throat, Tyler was relieved. Determining Roy's condition had been paramount, but lifting him out of there was going to be a challenge.

“You said the cab of that truck was sturdy,” Jim said, watching Dylan. “You think it will hold until we can get Dan Phillips over here with some heavy equipment to move these beams out of the way?”

“It'll hold,” Dylan said, his filthy face breaking into a grin. “Now, what do you say we all get our asses down off this roof before we get ourselves killed?”

 

I
T TOOK
D
AN
the better part of an hour to get out to the ranch, pick up the bulldozer he'd left at Dylan's building site, and drive it over the fields, through the woods and up Tyler's driveway.

Dawn was breaking before they got close enough to the driver's-side door to see Roy staring pitifully out at them through a web of broken window glass.

“I think he might have sobered up,” Jim quipped. “First stop, the emergency room. Second stop, my jail.”

Dylan let out a long, low whistle of exclamation when what was left of the blue Chevy pickup came into view.

“It had eight cylinders,” Tyler lamented. “Leather seats and a sound system like you wouldn't believe.”

Logan slapped him on the back. “Easy come, easy go,” he said, in big-brother speak.

“Gee,” Tyler said.
“Thanks.”

“You want to come along to the clinic and sit in while I question Roy?” Jim asked Tyler, already starting the careful climb down to the ground.

“Fill me in tomorrow,” Tyler answered. “Right now, I need some of my sister-in-law's coffee.”

The main ranch house was all lit up when they pulled in, fifteen minutes later, Tyler riding with Logan, Dylan following in his truck.