Colter Gamblers: Gambling On A Heart Part 15

After shaking the snow off his coat, he shucked out of it and hung it on a peg by the door. "What did she have to say?"

Lisa flitted over and straightened the collar of his police uniform. He had to bend to receive her kiss on the lips. "She just wondered how we were. Asked if we were coming home for Thanksgiving. Apparently, she's planning some s.h.i.+ndig. The whole family will be there. I think it would be good to go to Texas this year. I don't see enough of your family. She also said your dad is thinking about retiring and wants to discuss your taking over the ranch with you. I really think you should consider it. I'd love to move there. My parents will have a fit, but"

He moved past her and tossed his keys on the kitchen counter, but instead of sitting down to eat the supper his wife had prepared, he headed into the small bedroom they'd converted into an office. For his bottle of whiskey.

"Zack?" She followed him. "Supper's ready. Where're you going?"

He pulled the bottle from a bottom drawer of the desk and poured a tumbler three fingers full. "I'll never live in Texas. Logan can have the ranch. I don't want it."

"Why not?" Lisa demanded and moved into the dark room.

The only lighting came from the streetlight through the window and the rectangle of the open door. She switched on the desk lamp. The harsh light made him squint, and he turned away.

"You hate living here," she said to his back. "I worry about you. The nightmares are getting worse. I think it's your being a cop. It's too much like being an MP and reminds you of the war. I can get a nursing job anywhere, and Mandy would be better off in that little town than here."

He downed the whiskey and poured another, then stared out at the snow falling in the small front yard. He didn't need more liquor and was already halfway drunk from stopping at the beer joint on the way home, but he had to have it. These days the whiskey was all that got him through the day and night.

"Zack?"

"Leave me the h.e.l.l alone, Lisa." He turned on her. "I'm not moving to Texas. So, forget it. I don't care what happens to the ranch. After what happened with her"

He realized what he'd said a second too late. Lisa flinched as if he'd slapped her. At last, she put her hands on her hips. "Fine. Are you going to eat tonight or are you going to drink all night?"

Zack slammed down the gla.s.s so hard on the desk, whiskey sloshed all over the sides. He was as irritated with himself as he was with her. Tracy never kept poking and prodding like Lisa did. Tracy had known when to leave him alone and when he needed to talk. Tracy. She was coming to mind more and more these days, especially after he'd heard from his brother she'd been divorced from Jake for almost two years. "Dammit! Can't a man come home from a c.r.a.ppy day at work and have some peace and quiet?"

"No!" she'd yelled back. "Zack, I can't go on like this. I know something's changed in you."

"Yes, something changed. I watched my friend get killed as he saved my life. I should be the one dead!"

"It's been six months and you're still blaming yourself for something you couldn't have prevented." She'd moved around the desk to stand before him. Her voice softened. "Maybe you shouldn't have taken the job with the police force."

"You're the one who talked me into it!"

"I know, but maybe it was too soon...Maybe moving back to Texas"

"What the h.e.l.l do you want? I told you I will never go back there. I can't. Not while she's"

Lisa stepped back and stared up at him. "What kind of hold does she have over you? I forgave you for calling out her name when you woke up in Germany..." Her eyes widened and her voice shook. "You're still in love with her, aren't you? Have you ever loved me at all? I believed when you didn't say the words first that was just who you are. You'd only say them back to appease me. But you've never said them first because you never really felt them."

The stricken expression and the tears she was trying to hold back twisted his gut. But he didn't deny the accusation, because he knew she was right. He'd never stopped loving Tracy Quinn.

She stepped away and straightened her shoulders. "I love you, Zack, but I can't compete with a memory anymore. I've been doing it for too long. Mandy is afraid of you. That's why she stays with Mom so much. You come home and sulk in here, drinking whiskey until you pa.s.s out. I'm leaving until you decide what you wantme and your daughter...or her."

Lisa packed a suitcase, got into her car and headed for her parents' ranch sixty miles north of Cheyenne.

All Zack remembered thinking, as he'd watched her taillights disappear in the gloom outside the office window, was how relieved he was their marriage was finally over.

Banging at the door jolted him out of the agonizing memory. He put the frame back and went out to the entry. Expecting one of his ranch hands, he was surprised to find Lance when he opened the door.

His cousin gave him a solemn look. "We've got trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"I think it's better if I show you."

"Okay, but I can't leave Mandy alone." Zack headed into the big, open kitchen.

"Aunt Jackie's on her way, along with Uncle Luke." Lance followed Zack.

That got Zack's attention. His parents lived about a mile down the road in a house one of his other ancestors had built. They never came to his place in the morning. He didn't press Lance on the matter. He didn't want to know what other disaster had befallen the ranch. "You want some coffee?"

"Sure." Lance helped himself and looked Zack over from head to toe. He lowered his mug after sipping from it. "Have a rough night?"

Zack sharpened his gaze on him. "What makes you think that?"

Lance raised a brow. "Well, for one thing, you didn't shave, Sheriff. Second, you're wound too tight to look this bad from a night of wild s.e.x."

"I think you need to mind your own d.a.m.ned business." Zack crossed the kitchen to return to the living room where he'd left his mug. His family didn't know much about his marriage to Lisa, and he wanted to keep it that way. Lance's footsteps echoed across the stone floor and through the archway onto the wood floor of the living room.

"She was a beautiful woman."

Zack hadn't even realized he was staring at the picture of his dead wife until Lance's comment pulled him back. He glanced over his shoulder to find Lance standing behind him. "Yes, she was."

A comforting hand landed on his shoulder. "You miss her."

Zack wanted to shake off his cousin and tell him he didn't need his comfort or his sympathy.

"Zack, if you have a chance at happiness again, take it. Tracy's a good woman."

Tracy. She was the reason everything had happened.

"Lance." He shook off his cousin. "Let it alone."

"No, I can't." Lance set his mug on the coffee table and stepped in front of Zack. "You loved that girl. She ripped you up one side and down the other when she cheated on you, but you bounced back eventually. You found another woman who loved you, and who you would've given up everything for. But she's gone. You've grieved for two years. It's time to move on."

Zack's back teeth clenched tight enough his jaw hurt. He gritted out, "Whatever happens between Tracy Parker and me is my d.a.m.ned business, understand? I'm not in the market for another wife. So, drop it."

He walked away from Lance, heading for his office.

"I can't."

Zack turned at the archway and glared at his cousin.

Lance tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his designer suit pants. He'd obviously been on his way to his Dallas office. The lawyer never rested. "Because for almost a year, you've been doing everything you can to avoid the fact you're lonely. You have no life outside of Mandy, the ranch, and playing lawman. You're a workaholic, but the stress is starting to show. Mandy's with your mom more than she's with you. You're over your head with the mess Leon Ferguson made, and now we have a rash of cattle rustling. I'm not going to mention the half-a.s.sed attempt you're making at running this ranch. You aren't happy. We all see it. And we have all seen the flames. You want Tracy. Go after her before it's too late."

Zack turned to walk away. He'd heard enough.

"Twelve years ago, I almost threw away a chance at having a wonderful life. I was playing one sister against the other. I knew they both were in love with me, and I was living it up. It took Audrey getting pregnant to make me see what I almost lost."

"Do you have a point to all this?" Zack asked without turning. He wasn't about to mention how his cousin broke Rachel McPherson's heart by choosing her older sister over her.

Or Lance's own half-a.s.sed running of the CW. If Audrey didn't manage his share, he'd have gone belly-up years ago.

"We all make mistakes. Don't let something Tracy did fourteen years ago cloud your decisions now."

Zack didn't respond. He couldn't tell Lance he had every intention of getting involved with Tracy, but not as a possible a wife. She had something he wanted, although he could never give her more than what he was taking.

When the front door opened, Zack's parents rushed into the front entry.

"I hope to h.e.l.l you finally got those fillies out there on the north pasture branded," Zack's dad said and ripped his hat off his head.

"No, Tate and I are planning on doing it when I get the time." A feeling of dread settled deep in Zack's stomach at the red creeping up his father's weathered neck.

"Luke, remember your blood pressure." His mother rested a hand on his arm.

He shook off the hand and scowled at her, then he slapped his old straw cowboy hat on his thigh. "G.o.ddammit, boy! As if that fence being down wasn't enough to get your a.s.s in gear. No need for branding those fillies now, 'cause they're gone."

Crouching so he could get a closer look, Zack stared at the tire tracks and wondered how no one had seen or heard anything. As best he could determine, the thieves had used two full-sized livestock trucks to steal the mares. The fences that he and Logan had spent all day last Sat.u.r.day replacing were cut, as was the one on Estrada's side. The mares had been herded through the fences and a break in the fencerow where he and Logan had cut down a lightning-damaged mesquite. The horses had then cut through the pasture of the Estrada ranch. At the road, they were loaded into the trucks.

Dawn Madison headed toward him, and he stood. She'd spent the past hour interviewing the Estradas' only ranch hand.

"Did Billy see anything?" he asked.

Zack expected what the answer was before she even spoke. "No. He claims he was over at Jesse Reilly's, playing poker all night. And the Estradas were in Albuquerque looking at condos. They just got back, and Luis was fussing up a storm about his cut fences and the mess the front yard was in from the thieves driving the trucks over it to load the horses."

Zack glanced away from the deputy. Thunderbolt, the big paint stallion, watched from a distance. His ears pointed up, and every once in a while he'd toss his head. Three other horses watched them as well, although they didn't seem as brave as Thunderbolt. They were well-trained quarter horse geldings, but Zack knew they would have been worth almost as much as any one of his young mares.

He narrowed his eyes on his neighbor's four horses. "Notice anything strange?"

"Yeah, the thieves didn't take Estrada's horses." Dawn bobbed the brim of her tan Stetson at the paint. "That old horse there is worth a small fortune. My brother Talon said he was a rodeo bronc."

"Possibly the thieves didn't know. h.e.l.l, I didn't know that until recently."

Dawn smiled and shrugged. "You only had to ask Luis."

"Well, that doesn't help me figure out who stole my horses." He looked over the pasture his horses had been driven through. Estrada's hundred-acre ranch had originally belonged to the CW, but had been chiseled off as a wedding gift to one of Zack's female ancestors. Mrs. Estrada was distantly related to Zack in some convoluted fas.h.i.+on.

He studied the hoof prints in the loose dirt of the yard, but he wasn't a skilled enough tracker to determine much of anything.

"We'll have to call the Rangers," Dawn said after a few moments. "Let them get someone in here. I'll also get a team together to comb this place for evidence."

"Yeah." Zack took off his hat to beat against his thigh, instantly reminding himself of his father, and set it back on his head. "I'm the d.a.m.ned sheriff! Things like this aren't supposed to happen to me."

Dawn laughed. "I'd beg to differ. When Daddy was the sheriff he had cattle rustled all the time. He also had his hunting dog and an old Buick stolen."

He looked at her and grinned. "Your brother Talon and his other brother Darryl Blackwell rustled the cattle. They sold them and used the money for a wild time up in Dallas. The dog ran away. And Jake Parker and I borrowed the Buick. Your dad got it back..." He added with a wince at the memory. "In almost the same condition as we'd borrowed it."

"Suppose this isn't related to the cattle rustling. Maybe someone just wanted to pull a prank on you. Besides, as you pointed out, Estrada still has his horses."

"Deputy Madison, if you really believe that crock of bulls.h.i.+t, I think you should turn in your badge right now."

A slow grin curled her lips. "Of course I don't, but someone wanted to get back at you for something." She held up her hand in a good imitation of a traffic cop, to forestall his retort. "Look. I haven't forgotten the other rustlings. But you have to admit something about this sinks of rotten eggs." She pointed to the horses in Estrada's pasture. "If they weren't just targeting you, Estrada would be four horses short today."

"Maybe they didn't have any room on their trucks. Twenty horses are a lot for two trucks," he countered. "Or they wanted my thoroughbreds instead."

She shrugged, and before he could gather enough steam to explode, added, "You weren't playing Texas Hold 'Em again, were you?"

He glared at his deputyand friend. Dawn always teased him when they were aloneand when he started to lose perspective, which meant he was starting to act like a jacka.s.s.

They had known each other since they were both in diapers. In some ways, she was the sister he'd never had. Her grandmother had worked as a housekeeper for his grandparents until they'd both died. Her grandfather, Chief Madison, had been his grandfather's unofficial adopted brother and his head foreman for forty years, until he retired. When Zack's great-grandfather had died, he'd deeded off five thousand acres to him. Dawn's father, the former sheriff, had raised fine Angus cattle on the gra.s.sland, and when a heart attack forced him to quit ranching, he divided the place up among his three children.

Besides their families being close, they had spent years riding the same rodeos together. She'd been a champion barrel racer back then. Her older half-brother, Talon Blackwell, and younger brother, Hunter Madison, still rode the circuit. However, Dawn had lost interest in the rodeo. She'd studied criminal justice at college, and after graduation, gone to the police academy in Austin. She'd wanted to be a cop like her dad, who'd been the first Native American to ever be elected sheriff of Forest County. Dawn made it no secret she'd like to not only be the next Indian to get the job if Zack chose to leave it, but also be the first woman to be elected as well. However, she wouldn't run against Zack; he was positive of that.

He'd be the first to admit, she was more qualified for the job than he was, and he valued her opinions. She'd worked as a vice cop on the Dallas PD for a while until a drug bust went sour and she'd been shot. Now, she was Zack's lieutenant.

"I haven't played poker in years," he said, going along with the taunt. "But I was called out to break up a fight your granddad started at a high stakes game at O'Donnell's Bar and Grill a few weeks ago. He swore retribution."

"If you think Chief had anything to do with this, you should turn in your badge, Sheriff," she said smugly. Everyone in the community called the old Comanche Chief, including his grandchildren.

The paint curiously watched them from only a few yards away.

Zack laughed and put his hands on his sides above his service belt. "I don't understand it. Rustlers usually steal either cattle or horses, but seldom do they mix what they take."

"I've noticed something else." Dawn looked in the direction of the Estradas' home and barn off in the distance. "Whoever did this must have been watching the Estradas. Otherwise, how would they have known they'd be gone, and Billy, too? As serious as these guys are, I can't imagine them risking being heard. Driving those horses through that pasture would've made some noise."

He considered what she'd said for a moment. "I've also seen a pattern. They're taking livestock that has only recently been purchased or haven't been branded." d.a.m.n, he'd had plenty of time in the past month to freeze-brand his horses. He'd simply procrastinated too long, and now, he was branded a fool.

"That's probably the real reason they didn't take Estrada's horses. Or the fortune my cousin and I have grazing over by the cliffs off Gambler's Folly." He and Lance had three hundred head of Santa Gertrudis breeding stock in a pasture near the county road bordering the entire front of the ranch. The rustlers could have easily pulled up near the fence, cut it and herded them in. However, those cattle were registered, branded and had been owned by them for over a year.

"Good point. But the cattle taken off Oak Springs weren't newly purchased."

"No, but those steers have changed hands. They went from belonging to Leon Ferguson to being jointly owned by Dylan and Charli Quinn under their new brandb.u.t.terfly Springs Cattle Company. It might be to our benefit to stake out some of the locals who have bought livestock within the past six months. Put Kennedy in charge of getting a team together. If they follow their pattern, they won't strike again until later in the week. And let Herb know what we've discovered."

She acknowledged the order and looked over his neighbor's pasture. "Have you contacted the Quinns about their cattle yet?"

"No. Tracy and her parents asked me not to, and since they haven't had any other cattle stolen, I decided to let it ride until they return."

Dawn frowned and wouldn't look at him.

"What is it?"

She took a deep breath and met his gaze. "If you get involved with Tracy again, you're crazy. She ripped you apart."

"Well, it's a good thing that's my d.a.m.ned business, then, isn't it?" What the h.e.l.l was wrong with everyone b.u.t.ting into his life? Halfway to his horse, he turned. "Call in the Rangers, Deputy Madison. I want my horses back." Zack pushed his hat back and swung up into the saddle, gave the big Appaloosa stallion some rein, and took off at a run.