Lifeline Echoes (13 page)

"It's okay, Bull. I accept your apology."
Why did her voice have to shake? She held the door wider, praying
he would just leave.

His eyes lingered on her chest. A thin film
of perspiration formed along his upper lip, his mouth fell open and
his breathing grew shallow.

Apprehension gave birth to alarm, slithering
along the route Bull's eyes traversed and clawing at her gut with
fierce talons. Bull was a big man. She was completely alone. If he
tried anything, she wouldn't be able to stop him.

Adrenaline rushed. Then she'd just have to
make sure he didn’t try anything, get him to refocus his
attention.

"Bull, it's getting late. Brenda's probably
waiting up for you." Her suddenly constricted throat barely allowed
the words out.

He nodded, pulling his gaze away with
obvious regret. "Maybe I'll come in to the bar one night, have a
drink with you."

"We'll talk soon." She knew her promise
sounded false but if Bull noticed he said nothing.

Finally, she managed to walk Bull backwards
over the threshold.

After he was out, she closed and bolted the
door, slowly releasing her breath. The shakes slammed her, and she
pressed her back against the door as if to keep it from opening.
Almost in slow motion, her legs gave way, and she melted into a
pool on the cold, hard tile. Tears squeezed from behind closed
eyes; huge shudders wracked her body.

What the heck had that been about? She could
go weeks, even months, seeing nothing of Bull. He generally took
his play to the hookers up in Jackson and did his drinking there as
well. But with Ryan's return, she'd seen two incidents with the
troubled man in three days and Sandy couldn't help but think the
explanation for that rested with Ryan.

She scrubbed the tears from her cheeks but
didn’t get up.

The water of her forgotten bath sloshed over
the edges of the bathtub, swamping the floor, saturating the pretty
lilac colored rug and soaking into her favorite pink fuzzy
slippers.

****

Sean had developed a particularly skillful
disappearing act since Ryan had begun to ask more pointed
questions. But Ryan could be skillful, too, and this time, he was
determined to keep Sean from dodging him by riding out early.
Spending the night in the tack room waiting to ambush his brother
wasn't particularly appealing, especially when Sandy had made it
very apparent he would be welcome in her bed. But Ryan knew it was
time to corner Sean for answers.

Sandy. Aw, man, their relationship was
intense. Being with the woman was like sitting on a crate of
fireworks. It was impossible to know when it would detonate, but
explosions were inevitable. And he always had loved playing with
matches. He'd wanted to spend the night with her. And at some
point, he'd started feeling things he'd never expected to feel
again. When had that happened?

He knew the answer to that question. It had
begun when he'd nearly collided with an otherworldly vision on a
mountain road. Never in his life had head, heart, and physical
interest all happened at the same time for him. And now they were
doing just that, life was pretty amazing.

Forcing what he'd rather be doing from his
mind, Ryan took a rough inventory of supplies, noting the worn
leather, the scraps of unusable equipment set aside for salvage.
Much of their equipment had long ago seen better days. Working with
his hands had always relaxed Ryan, so he spent his time at the
little workbench repairing tack while he waited for his brother and
the answers to his questions.

"You're up early," Sean said when he walked
into the tack room a few hours later. If he was surprised to see
Ryan there, it didn't show in the pleasant smile on his face.

"Never slept."

"Guess you're used to going without
sleep."

Ryan shrugged. "Sometimes. When it's
necessary."

"Guess you're saying I made it
necessary."

Ryan didn't look up. In silence, he
concentrated on sewing the leather of a harness into a loop around
the buckle, securing it with neat stitches.

Sean shuffled his feet back and forth.

"Come on, Ry! I hate it when Dad pulls that
no-talk bull. Do you have to be just like him?"

Ryan frowned, irritated by the comparison.
With deliberate care, he hung the repaired harness on a hook behind
the bench with several others he'd finished.

Just as deliberately, he reached into his
pocket and pulled out the scrap of material he'd cut from his shirt
the day before, unwrapped the slug he had retrieved from the dead
cow and set it on the workbench.

Then he turned to regard his brother in
silence, pointedly waiting for the answers to the questions he'd
been asking for days.

Sean regarded the spent bullet like it was
poison. "You got that from the dead cow?"

Ryan cocked his head to the side and raised
an eyebrow. "Is there someplace else I might have found it?"

Sean stooped to pick up a stray buckle that
had fallen to the floor. With exaggerated care, he placed it on the
bench. "We had some trouble up in the high pasture this past
spring."

"Some
trouble
?" Two words that offered
nothing in the way of explanation. "Come on, Sean! You gotta do
better than that. Why did you ask me to come home?"

Sean averted his eyes.

Ryan rocked back on his heels and blew out
an irritated breath. "I don't get it. You called me home, hinted
that you need help." He shrugged. "And for some reason, you don't
want to have a simple conversation about what's going on around
here. So I guess the real question is, why should I stay?"

"Dad had a heart attack. About three years
ago."

Ryan's head came up sharply, as though Sean
had just popped him in the jaw.

"It was mild, pretty much over before he
even got to the hospital. But he had to have tests, meds. And there
were bills. A lot of bills" He paused, seemed to struggle for
words. "We had . . . a rough patch."

"You never said a word." Ryan's voice was
tight, his temper just barely checked. "Did you think I wouldn't
care?"

"He didn't want you to know. I kept hoping
you'd see the quarterly reports and. . ." He spread his hands
helplessly. "Notice something."

With a little prick of conscience, Ryan
visualized his desk drawer with the neat bundle of unopened white
envelopes that arrived from the accountant every three months. He
scrubbed a hand over his face as the frustration of years spent
avoiding reminders of the life he'd once left behind caught up with
him. If he was truthful, he had to admit to himself he'd come back
exhausted from living a life he shouldn't have been living. And
he'd nearly been too late getting home.

"Dad thought—hoped you'd come back after Mac
. . . died." Sean picked up a scrap of harness and began rolling
the leather between his fingers. "When you didn't, he didn't want
to drag you back here on his account."

"I couldn't come back. Not then." Ryan
closed his eyes against pain he'd spent years hiding from. "But I
could've helped in other ways. I would have sent money. Geez, Sean,
I've got more of that than I ever use. I was Mac's beneficiary on
his life insurance and he died on the job, so the payout was
tripled."

One side of Sean's mouth twisted upward into
a wry smile. "Wouldn't Bull and old Brody just love you investing
Mac's insurance payout in McGee land?"

"Who cares about what they'd think?" Ryan
leveled his gaze at Sean. "It's what Mac would have wanted."

"Is it?" Sean tossed the scrap of leather
onto the bench. "Dad said he had good reasons for running off."

Ryan winced. "I didn't think Dad ever
understood any of it. I figured he'd have tried to stop us so I
never gave him the opportunity, never told him much."

Violence born from sixteen years of hurt and
loneliness guided Sean's punch into the wooden beam, so close Ryan
felt the whoosh of air passing. Sean's green eyes registered
satisfaction when Ryan flinched away from the blow next to his
head.

"You don't give Dad enough
credit," Sean grated. "He may not have known until later why you
left, but he had your back the whole time. He trusted you. Covered
for you. When he knew you'd gone to Texas, he told the FBI you were
always yammering about going to Alaska, so they should start
looking there." Sean's eyes became enraged slits. "Pretending to
hate you was the best way to take the heat off Dad.
And
you. Only, he never
expected you would hate him back for real."

Ryan staggered under the weight of Sean's
words, gripping the workbench behind him. "I don't—didn't hate Dad.
I didn’t know what he did."

"You didn't want to know." Sean's hands
balled into fists. "I was watching it kill our old man to write you
off so he could protect you from being picked up for kidnapping,
and you never even asked how he was the few times you bothered to
call."

Sean stalked to the other side of the tack
room, keeping his back to his brother while he worked his mad
off.

Ryan stood away from the
bench, his hands curled into fists, hating himself for feeling
defensive. "Sean, I was hurting, too! I was just eighteen. I was
arrogant, thinking I could save the world and there wouldn't be any
consequences. By the time I realized there were, it hurt too much
to talk
about
home, let alone call and hear your voices."

"And I was thirteen!" Sean whirled. "Old
enough to know you left, but not old enough for anyone to trust me
with your reasons for leaving."

Old enough to feel
abandoned
.

Ryan forced himself to unfurl his fists. He
took several deep breaths to get himself under control. "You're
right. I'm sorry."

Sean turned around. The anger in his voice
was replaced by sadness. "They made life bad for a while. The
MacKays. They spread lies about you, about Mac, even about Mom. And
people were listening. But Dad wouldn't talk about it, wouldn't
talk about you. Finally, people stopped listening to the stuff
Alice was spreading in town."

"If anyone deserved to die in that family,
it wasn't Mac." Anger he never quite banked began to swirl
again.

"Dad said his old man beat him up."

"Someone sure did." Ryan picked up the
lethal black knife he'd been using to cut leather and began to
twirl it like a mini-baton through the fingers of his left hand. "I
found him sleeping in the little barn. He'd been there probably
three, four days. He was sneaking into the house when we were out
so he could steal food to feed himself." Ryan's voice hardened.
"Three or four days, and no one was looking for him."

"Was he in bad shape when you found him?"
Sean paced to the door, stopping to stare out into the stable
yard.

"Both eyes were blackened, one was swollen
shut. His nose was broken, teeth were loose." Ryan waited for the
picture to fill Sean's head the way it was filling his own. "And
someone had put out a cigarette on his tongue at some point."

Sean whipped around and Ryan caught a
glimpse of shock in his brother's eyes. "Why?"

"Because he had red hair and he
stuttered."

"Couldn't you, I don't know, call someone?
Report it?"

"I wanted to," Ryan admitted. "But the
sheriff back then was Russell MacKay." He slammed the knife point
first into the scrap leather Sean had been playing with.

Sean whistled low and long. "Mac's
uncle."

"I was just going to take Mac into Jackson,
see he got help then come home," Ryan said. "But he was afraid
they'd send him back. He begged me to stay with him, to take him
away from Wyoming, from his family."

A muscle worked in Sean's jaw but he said
nothing.

"I never stopped missing this place," Ryan
said quietly. "But I couldn't come home until Mac made sure I was
cleared of kidnapping. And Mac was always—different. Kind of
fragile. He couldn't come back here and I couldn't leave him in the
city."

"Why did you stay away after Mac died?"

"I had to learn to walk again, Sean." Ryan
closed his eyes and allowed the painful memories to resurface.

"You never told us it was that bad," accused
Sean, his face showing horror.

"I was in rehab for months. Then . . . I
wanted to come home, but I didn't know how to ask. And . . . I was
trying to find someone."

Sean frowned. "Who were you looking
for?"

"I'll tell you about her sometime," Ryan
promised. "She was with us when Mac died. I've been looking for her
since I got out of the hospital, but . . . no luck."

"Long time to be looking for someone." Sean
observed. "So what now? Are you here to stay or are you here with
one foot still in the city?"

Ryan blew out a breath. "I want to come
home, Sean. To stay if you'll have me. I've missed this place, Dad
. . . even you." He angled a look at Sean. "Maybe especially
you."

Sean turned a tormented face in Ryan’s
direction. "I've missed you too, big brother."

Ryan stared at his brother. "Dad said I was
'yammering' about Alaska?"

Sean chuckled. "In the thickest hayseed
accent you ever heard."

Ryan's mouth curved into his first happy
smile since the conversation had begun, at the thought of their
father, with his Master's Degree in Agricultural Science from
Wyoming State, playing country cowboy.

For him. The thought was humbling.

"So, how much does you wanting to stay have
to do with the local barkeep?" Sean's grin was back in place.

Ryan was definitely feeling brotherly again.
With an answering smirk, he crossed the distance between them,
hiked Sean onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry and walked out
into the stable yard. With no remorse whatsoever, he tipped his
younger brother into the stock watering trough.