Lifeline Echoes (31 page)

Brenda flinched at the bite in Sandy's
words. But she didn't back down. She chewed her lip. For the first
time, she met Sandy's gaze. "Thing is, I need Bull to come home. My
boy needs him home."

"Ricky told DC he saw the whole assault, saw
his father provoke the fight." Sandy shook her head. "Why aren't
you afraid for how Bull's going to react? For what he might do to
your son?"

Tears filled Brenda's eyes. "I thought you'd
feel that way. But it's not like you think. It's not like anybody
thinks." She turned and started to walk back to her car, shoulders
slumped, head down.

"Wait!" cried Sandy. She reached out to stop
Brenda, touching her on the arm.

The sleeve of the denim jacket pulled up a
little to expose angry reddened skin, but Brenda yanked it back
into place before Sandy got a good look.

Sandy shivered against a chill rippling
through her gut. "Oh, you're hurt. What happened?"

Brenda tugged on the sleeve of the jacket.
"It—it's nothing. I spilled some hot water yesterday."

Sandy hesitated. It was a
reasonable explanation. But why was Brenda so nervous about it, and
determined to hide her arm? "If it's not like anybody thinks,
Brenda, then how is it? Does Bull
hurt
you?"

"Bull keeps us safe," whispered Brenda. "I
have to go."

With a sigh, Sandy relented. "Okay, I'll
give Ryan your message, but I'm not promising anything."

She watched as the dejected woman walked
heavily back to Bull's tan pickup, and found her outrage had been
replaced by sympathy for Brenda. It was no secret Bull largely
ignored his wife. Could he be abusing her? Why would she want to
stay with him?

****

Showered, dressed in her more typical attire
of jeans and tank top, Sandy stood at her usual place behind the
bar. It felt almost as though the past couple of days hadn't
happened.

Except they had. And now she was left with
an inexplicable feeling that Fickle Fate had never stopped toying
with her.

"Do you think that spot might be clean
enough? You've been wiping it for ten minutes." Mel sat a plate of
chicken fingers and sweet potato fries in front of Sandy. "Eat
something."

Sandy looked at the rag in her hand and set
it aside. She picked up a fry and toyed with it until Mel pushed
her hand toward her mouth.

"Sean told me more about the bad blood
between the MacKays and the McGees. Sounds like one of those cliché
family feuds."

Mel rolled her eyes. "Not so cliché,
really." She began stacking cocktail napkins. "Not many people know
the details. Mostly they keep it close between them."

"Because it was a long time ago?" Sandy shot
Mel a pointed look. "Or because Ricky is Mac's son?"

Melanie's hands stopped moving. "Did someone
tell you that?"

Sandy popped a chicken finger into her mouth
and chewed thoughtfully. "After the fight, Ricky told DC Bull
wasn't his father. At first I thought he was just mad and disowning
Bull. But other things I've heard are beginning to add up." She
pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator under the counter
and cracked the top. "And Ricky doesn't really look like either one
of his parents."

"No one's ever said for sure," Mel admitted.
"But everyone kind of accepts that's how it is. He looks just like
Mac."

That explained Ryan's reaction when he'd
first seen the boy at the baseball field.

Sandy frowned, recalling Brenda's statement
about things not being the way most people thought.

"Has Sean ever told you what brought Ryan
home?"

Mel pushed a hand through her hair. "Sean
said he wrote a letter asking him to come back for a couple of
weeks. He didn't say why, but I think it might have something to do
with the thing at the high pasture."

Sandy picked up another fry. "They aren't
using the high pasture."

"Well, no, not now they aren't." Mel began
sorting through the stack of menus at the end of the bar, clipping
in an insert outlining the Wednesday specials. "About a hundred
head of cattle were picked off with a hunting rifle this past
spring." She frowned. "Sean doesn't want it to be common knowledge.
He's been trying to play it down because he's afraid he'll lose his
boarders."

Sandy caught her breath. "The calf we found.
Ryan said the mother was injured but he never did say how, just
that he had to finish her off. Afterwards, he was . . . well,
different."

The trouble had started before Ryan came
home. A chill ran the length of Sandy's spine. Had he been lured
home with trouble at the ranch? Had Bull planned to hurt Ryan all
along?

The door opened and Ricky MacKay walked in.
He spotted Sandy and walked toward her with an air of determination
in his steps.

"Ms. Sandy." His soft voice was guarded and
polite. "Do you have any work for me?"

Oh, crap, this could get thorny.

"It just keeps hitting the fan, doesn't it?"
Mel murmured for Sandy's ears only.

"Ricky, I'm not really sure your
parents—"

"Please, Ms. Sandy. I need work real bad.
I'll do anything."

He was just a boy, a teenager. She doubted
he had anything to do with slaughtering cattle. He'd helped
extinguish the fire. He had told the truth about the fight. It had
also taken a lot of courage to ask her for work. But thoughts of
her encounter with his mother made her wary.

"Why are you asking me?"

He looked down, shuffled his feet. "I like
you, Ms. Sandy. You're always nice to me."

"So this doesn't have anything to do with
your father?"

Ricky stiffened. His head snapped up. "I
don't have a father." He swallowed convulsively, then whispered.
"I'm a—I'm illegitimate."

Sandy rocked back, feeling like she'd just
been sucker-punched. Illegitimate. The word echoed through her
head. He was probably Mac's son. She hadn't been able to help Mac.
Maybe she could do some small thing for his son.

"I can't formally hire you on." She held up
a hand when his face fell. "But I do need the floors mopped. Can
you get it done before five o'clock?"

Ricky nodded eagerly.

"Come on, I'll show you where we keep the
mops and buckets. You can hang your jacket in the back."

What was it with this family and jackets in
eighty-degree weather?

Sandy met Ricky on his way into the main
area with the buckets and mops. He turned quickly to the side,
angling himself awkwardly away from her, cursing under his
breath.

But he hadn't moved fast enough to hide the
fresh blisters on his arm.

"Ricky, what happened?"

Sandy took the buckets from his hands and
set them down. She held out her hand. Hesitantly, he extended his
arm. She ran her fingers around the painful-looking sores, and her
rage stirred again.

The teenager said nothing, just stood still,
looking at the wall.

"Did you get burned fighting the fire at the
ranch?" she asked with gentleness she wasn't feeling.

It was impossible to miss the look of
intense relief on Ricky's heavily freckled face. "Yeah, some sparks
got me is all."

"We have some burn salve in the first-aid
kit. You go on into the kitchen and ask Ms. Charlie to help you
with this before you start on the floors."

When he went toward the kitchen, Sandy took
the buckets into the main area. Everything she'd learned in the
past week about the MacKay family boiled through her brain, none of
it lining up with the image they presented about town. Maybe it was
time to go to the source. At least one of them. Then she pulled out
her cell phone and punched in Sean's number.

"I know you just left, but I really need
your help. I just hired Ricky for a casual job and I need to run an
errand. I'm not comfortable leaving Mel and Charlie here on their
own."

"I'll leave right now."

****

She could have happily spent her whole life
without seeing the inside of the Orson's Folly jail. It was like
walking onto the set of an Old West movie. Obviously this quaint
western Wyoming town hadn't quite made it all the way into the
twenty-first century.

A state trooper sat in a gray metal chair at
a gray metal desk in a corner of the dimly lit room. The local
newspaper lay open in front of him. He stood when Sandy entered the
room, and politely offered her the chair, but she declined.

"Come to see me off before they transfer me
up to Jackson?" asked Bull. He sat on the edge of a narrow cot
behind the heavy gray bars in the only cell. "I got nothing to say
to you, Sandy. On the advice of my lawyer." But he stood and limped
toward the bars.

She stared at him in silence, this man who
would have killed Ryan. A row of surgical strips closed a cut on
his chin. His nose, obviously broken, was swollen and red, sitting
between two black eyes. His dark brown hair looked like he'd been
running his fingers through it.

"I'm not here about Ryan," she said. "You
know, you and I always had an understanding. When you aren't drunk,
you're actually not unlikeable."

Bull sighed and looked away. The stiffness
in his shoulders eased until he was slouching. For a moment, Sandy
thought she saw a flicker of regret in the big man's eyes.

"I know I've done some things that weren't
right. I shouldn't have come by your place Sunday when I was
drunk."

"No, you shouldn't have come by at all. You
have a wife and a son you love at home."

Bull's head snapped up. A distinct flicker
of pain entered his eyes but he said nothing.

"Bull, I've heard the rumors. I know what
people think about Ricky and you. But I know you love him. He may
or may not really be your nephew, but he's your son in every way it
counts."

Bull moved stiffly back to his bunk,
lowering himself to sit on it with a grunt. Sandy didn't even
bother to stem her satisfaction at his obvious pain.

"Brenda came to see me at Valentine's this
afternoon."

Bull tensed, then drew several deliberate
breaths.

"She told me she and Ricky need you at
home."

Bull shrugged. "You're gonna tell me I
should have thought of that before I beat it out with your
man."

Sandy shook her head. "I don't have to. You
just did. Bull, she said things aren't like most people think, and
she said you protect her and Ricky somehow."

Bull shrugged and shook his head. "She don't
know what she's talking about. Fact is, living with me's been bad
for her. She and the boy should go home to her folks."

She hadn't been expecting such a reaction.
She decided to change tactics.

"Ricky came into my place looking for work.
I hired him for the day to clean my floors. Do you have any problem
with that?"

Bull drew a deep breath, let it out. "No,"
he said. "No, that's not a problem for me. You always did fair by
him."

So, he did care about the boy.

"He has burns on his left arm. Fresh ones.
He wants me to think he got them fighting the fire."

Bull tensed again, but he said nothing,
didn't even look up.

"Thing is, when I saw Brenda today, she had
burns on her arms, too, not as fresh. And she wasn't fighting a
fire at Ryan's place. Bull, Ricky's also got old burn scars. The
kind a person might get from the end of a cigarette."

A muscle worked in his jaw. His mouth was
set in a straight line, and for a moment Sandy was certain he was
just going to close down and shut her out.

"How fresh?" His voice was tortured. For the
first time since she had entered the jail, he raised his face and
met her eyes directly.

Sandy held his attention as she spoke. She
kept her voice level. "Hours old. I didn't see Brenda's arm well
because she's hiding it. She said she spilled some hot water. But
Ricky's looked really fresh. Six of them."

"Do you know where my mother was when Brenda
was talking to you?"

"Alice?" Frowning, Sandy shook her head.
"Brenda didn't say. Why?"

Bull's hands balled into fists at his side,
and his fingers worked agitatedly, flexing and releasing. "I need
to talk to DC."

"Bull, what is it? Does Brenda hurt Ricky?"
She paused, watching for his reaction. "Or does your father hurt
them both?"

Bull jerked upright. "I need to talk to DC,"
he said, then he clamped his mouth shut, obviously finished
speaking.

"I'll ask Gloria to call him for you." Sandy
tapped her hand on one of the bars, then waited for the state
trooper to let her out of the confinement area.

"Sandy," Bull called out just before she
went through the door. His next words seemed to be ripped from his
mouth. "Brenda's right. It's not like everyone thinks. And Ricky .
. . he's not my nephew." He watched her face closely. "He's not my
son, either. But I do love him like he was my own."

He turned away after his enigmatic
statement. Sandy knew she wouldn't get any more out of him.

****

Chapter Sixteen

Considering she now felt even more confused
than before speaking with Bull, Sandy wasn't sure she hadn't just
wasted her time by rushing to the jail. On her return to the bar,
she found Ricky nearly finished with the floors.

"Ricky's a hard worker," said Mel. "Seems
like a good kid."

Sandy motioned for the teenager to join
them. "Would you be interested in working dinners doing light food
prep? Ms. Charlie could use help in the kitchen three days a week,
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, maybe three hours a day. We're
closed on Sundays. But you can pick up extra shifts cleaning on
Wednesdays if you want."

Mel's eyebrows shot up.

Ricky's eyes widened in surprise. A hopeful
grin splashed across his face. "Are you giving me a job?"