Texas Thunder (10 page)

Her hand closed around the frames and she noted the yellowed sheet of paper sitting beneath the glasses. It, too, was covered with the same soot. She smeared the greasy covering off and unfolded the paper to see a partial list of ingredients for the infamous Texas Thunder.

The family moonshine had been responsible for every bad thing that had happened in Rebel since its founding. It had also been responsible for every good thing.

The Sawyers had used it as a springboard to their current success. Meanwhile, the Tuckers had let it drag them down so far that Callie had no clue if she could actually climb back up.

Instead, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, it was time to hop into her granddad's truck, hit the road, and never look back.

The notion dangled in front of her like the most decadent seven layer chocolate cake, but Callie wasn't about to reach out. She'd sacrificed ten years of her life to get to this point. To give up now would make all that time a total waste.

It would mean that she'd made all the wrong choices and sacrificed for nothing.

She slid the glasses and the paper into her pocket and eased her way around the rubble.

If only James had managed to pinpoint the final ingredients before he'd blown himself up.

But he hadn't come through with that any more than he'd come through on anything else in his life.

Half-assed. That's the way he'd always done things. The recipe was no exception. He'd blown himself up, leaving Callie to finish up like he always did.

Ten thousand dollars.

Mark's voice echoed in her head and she entertained the crazy thought that maybe she ought to try her hand at finding the remaining ingredients.

That, or rob a bank. Both would pose a hefty jail sentence …

The thought stalled in her brain as she spotted the edge of a tennis shoe sticking up from the debris. Leaning down, she tugged at the toe of the shoe and pulled it free. Rubbing the edge, she revealed a worn leather shoe with a red, white, and blue sole.

She hadn't even realized her gramps had owned a pair of sneakers. He'd lived in boots for as long as she could remember, and then, just two years ago he'd traded the old duct-taped Justins for the camouflage Crocs Jenna had bought him for Christmas. He hadn't taken the comfy sandals off once since. He'd even worn them throughout the winter with socks.

He'd been wearing them, as a matter of fact, when he'd met his maker the other night.

And the shoe?

She leaned down and fingered the edge of the rubber. Old. Shabby. Maybe a leftover from her dad's youth? Lord knew James had had a crap-load of stuff stored out here. Things he'd saved and picked up over the years because he'd never been one to throw anything away if there was even the slimmest possibility that he might need it again.

But a sneaker? It just didn't fit that he would have a pair of sneakers for himself. He wasn't the sneaker type. Not like Little Jimmy with his shiny black pair, probably pulled from the new-shoe bin at the local YMCA.

Unless the sneaker had belonged to someone else?

A bootlegger? A customer? An intruder?

She wasn't sure why the thoughts popped into her head except that it had been a long day filled with tons of people telling her they weren't the least bit surprised about what had happened.

That, and the fact that she'd felt the same unease crawling up her spine the night of the explosion. As she'd stood on the sidelines, waiting for the fire department, she'd had the crazy feeling that something wasn't right.

You play with fire, you eventually get burned.

That's what everyone thought. The thing was, James had been playing with the proverbial fire since he was knee-high. He knew how to make moonshine. Even more, he knew how
not
to blow himself up. Otherwise he never would have made it to the ripe old age of eighty-six. A fire, even a freak accident as the authorities had called it, just hadn't seemed right.

James was a lot of things, but careless had never been one of them. Not when it came to cooking.

She hadn't been able to get him to wear his glasses to drive or to watch TV, or even to heat up his favorite Eggo waffles, but he'd worn them out by the still.

Because he was careful when it came to his shine. Too careful to go out in a blaze of glory because of a dumb mistake like a loose fitting.

“It happens,” Sheriff DeMassi had told Callie when he'd given her the findings of his initial investigation just yesterday. “There was a loose gasket on the copper tubing. When the shine heated, the alcohol fumes spilled out and ignited. We've seen it time and time again around these parts. It's a common story.”

For a rookie maybe. But James had had eighty years of experience under his belt. He'd had spills and shoot-outs with the law, and he'd even lost a still to a flood back during the summer storms of 2000, but never a fire.

He'd been too good for that.

That's what her gut told her.

Then again, her gut had also told her to trust him when she'd handed over the money to pay the taxes.

She'd been wrong to put her faith in him and her mistake had cost her, just as he'd obviously been wrong with this last cook and his mistake had cost him. He'd been old, after all. Maybe the years had made him slow and careless.

She thought of Brett and his pappy. The whole town knew the PBR champ was back to salvage the ranch after his sick grandfather had let it go to hell in a handbasket. Pappy Sawyer had made mistake after mistake thanks to his Alzheimer's, and now Brett was paying the price for it.

Callie knew the feeling and damned if it wasn't ironic. They'd been so different back then, on opposite sides of the battlefield, yet here they were walking the same path.

Not that it mattered.

He was still a Sawyer and she was still a Tucker and, as the saying went, never the twain shall meet.

She glanced one last time at the sneaker before pushing it to the furthest corner of her mind. Because as well as she knew her grandfather, she really hadn't known him at all.

Maybe he
had
worn sneakers. Hell, maybe he'd worn them when he'd walked into the nearest Piggly Wiggly instead of the tax office, and handed over her hard-earned money to buy more sweet feed, sugar, and yeast for his damnable research.

No, she hadn't really known him at all, but then that was the story of her life, wasn't it?

She'd been so sure of Brett way back when and he'd disappointed her most of all.

Never again.

No matter how good he looked in a pair of Wranglers.

 

CHAPTER 12

It was after four in the morning when Brett climbed off the cutting horse and walked the animal into the large barn that stood behind the main house.

Once he'd left Callie at the Bachmans', he'd headed back to the ranch, unloaded the feed from the truck, and taken a horse out to the back forty. He'd spent the hours since combing every inch only to come up empty-handed.

No lost steers moseying around the rocky canyons that edged the far side of the ranch. No telltale remains indicating a scavenger attack or any sort of freak accident. There'd been no tracks. No blood. No bones. Nothing.

As if the cows had vanished into thin air.

Or into somebody's cattle trailer.

The thought struck again and this time he didn't drop-kick it to the curb. He knew his pappy wasn't in the best shape—for now—and the ranch had certainly suffered, but what if there was someone adding to the demise of Bootleg Bayou? What if there really was someone stealing from them?

Pappy may have simply made a mistake when he'd documented the number of cows received last year. Maybe the Alzheimer's had reared its ugly head even then and he'd scribbled in the wrong numbers.

But that wouldn't explain the extra vaccinations used, or the surplus of feed consumed, or the fact that they had ten actual tags unaccounted for.

Those cows had been clipped with their corresponding number at the same time they'd been vaccinated and branded with the ranch's signature double B. They'd then been documented on the master list, and now they were gone.

Vanished into thin air.

The notion echoed in his head as he unsaddled the animal, brushed her down, and walked into the ranch house.

Every light blazed inside and he soon found out why.

“Somebody's burning the midnight oil.” The comment came from the young brunette who sat on the leather sofa, a bowl of popcorn in her hands. The TV screen blazed a rerun of MTV's hit show
Catfish,
the sound on low.

“Karen?” Brett stared at his younger sister. She was twenty years old and the spitting image of his mother at that age with her long dark hair, and tall, thin build. Only her Sawyer blue eyes gave any clue that she was Brett's only sibling. “What are you doing here?”

Her smile faded for a heartbeat before she shrugged. “It's Spring Break this coming week and I figured you could use some help around here.”

“I've got everything under control.” A clatter of pots and pans punctuated the sentence, luring Brett to the kitchen, Karen on his heels.

They found Pappy on his hands and knees, rummaging through a cupboard as if his life depended on it. The old man wore a pair of striped pajama bottoms and a red button-down starched shirt, the buttons mismatched as if he'd been trying to get dressed and given up the task halfway through. Worry tightened the old man's face and narrowed his jaw.

Brett frowned. “What's wrong, Pappy?”

“I need my cup.” He waved an arthritic hand. “It was here the last time I saw it. Right here.”

“I'll get you a cup—”

“I need
my
cup,” Pappy insisted. “It's mine. I need it.”

“But—” Brett started, his words dying when he felt the touch on his arm. He turned to see his sister. “Let him be,” she mouthed.

“He wants a cup. I can get him a cup.”

“That won't help. He needs
his
cup. The cup that Grandmother gave him for their twentieth anniversary,” Karen told him. “He's been looking for it ever since I came home last night. He said he needs his coffee and he can't drink it out of any other cup because he promised her he would always use it.”

“It's blue with a Texas flag.” Pappy paused before moving a Crock-Pot and shoving it off to the side with the stack of dishes he'd already rummaged through. “She bought it last month at the state fair when I wasn't looking and surprised me last week. I gave her a new toaster and she gave me my cup. It's my favorite.”

Brett's mind riffled back through his memories and he remembered his grandfather sitting in front of the Christmas tree, a mug of coffee in his hands. A mug that had been shattered when Berle had thrown it at Brett's mother back when Brett had been seven years old.

“You remember, don't you, son?” Pappy lifted cloudy blue eyes. “You were right there. You saw her give it to me.”

Brett shook his head. “I don't remember.”

“Sure, you do.” The old man waved a hand. “You were right there with us, son. It was just the three of us,” he told Karen. “Me, Martha, and Berle, here.”

“This is Brett,” Karen told him gently. “Your grandson. Berle isn't with us anymore.”

“Brett?” Confusion twisted his face and jabbed at Brett's gut. “I ain't got no grandson named Brett. Why, Berle, here, just got married a month ago. Ain't that right, son?”

“Why don't you let me get you some coffee in a different mug?” Karen jumped in before Brett could respond. “Just until we can find yours. Berle, here, can look for it while I take you back to your room. Isn't that right, Berle?” She gave Brett a pointed look.

He fought down a rush of denial and gave a tight nod.

“Good then. Let's get you to your feet.” She leaned down and took the old man's hand while Brett helped him to his feet.

“You'll make some fine-looking sons one day,” Pappy told him as he stalled, the glimmer of a smile on his old face. “Mighty fine-looking. You just need to remember to control your temper. Mona, here, is a good woman.” He pointed to Karen. “She won't stick around if you keep yelling at her all the time. Now I know it's not my business, but these walls are thin.”

“I'll be nice,” Brett vowed, fighting down the urge to deny Pappy's words. The old man was lost in another time and place and there was no convincing him otherwise.

In Pappy's mind, Brett
was
Berle.

But tomorrow would be a good day. A lucid day and Pappy would realize his mistake.

Brett wasn't Berle. Not now. Not ever.

The truth followed Brett as he headed to his room and sank down on the edge of the large king-sized bed he'd slept in while growing up.

“He's been like this ever since last semester.” Karen's voice drew his attention and he glanced up to see her standing in the doorway. “I was home at Easter and found him digging in the garden out back in the middle of the night. He kept insisting that someone had stolen his tomatoes and trashed his garden.”

“He hasn't kept a garden in years.”

“I know that and you know that, but he doesn't. Not when he's like this. I talked to Dolly tonight at dinner. She said it's happening more often. She barely gets a full night's sleep these days.”

“He's just stressed because things with the ranch aren't adding up. Once I straighten everything out, he'll feel better.”

Karen looked as if she wanted to say something, but then she shrugged. “I hope so.”

“You don't need to hope. I'll get it all worked out and he'll start feeling better.”

She nodded. “It's good to see you home.”

Brett grinned. “You, too.” The grin faded. “Although I'd rather you head to the beach for your break like every other college student this side of the Rio Grande instead of stressing about all of this.”