Coming Home To Texas. Allie Pleiter

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      “No, I don’t.”

      Ellie looked at him. “You need to get plugged in to this community. This seems like a pretty good way to do that. Tell you what—I’ll say yes if you do, too.”

      His face went dark. “Then you’ll be saying no. Which you shouldn’t. But I won’t be saying yes.”

      “Why? Seems like a perfectly good plan to me.”

      Nash scowled. “I have my reasons.”

      “Well, your recruitment skills leave a lot to be desired, Deputy Larson,” she countered. “You can’t very well tell me I ought to be saying yes when you intend to say no.”

      “Fine!” Nash threw up his hands and walked toward the barn. “Do whatever you want. I was just trying to help.”

      Doesn’t sound like that to me, Ellie thought as she watched him skulk toward the barn. What on earth was that all about?

Chapter Four

      Nash climbed out of the rugged little ATV Gunner had driven out to one of the ranch’s far fences. “Big place you’ve got here.”

      “Not so much,” Gunner said. “There are a lot bigger. We used to be bigger, too, but my dad hit on hard times back before he passed and had to sell off some of the land.”

      Nash remembered Don saying something about Gunner taking over the ranch after losing his father a few years before, and changing operations from cattle to bison. And no one had yet mentioned a mother. Had Ellie lost both parents?

      Nash and Gunner began walking the fence, looking for any sign of someone being there. “Your dad raised cattle, right?”

      “That’s right. The bison herd was my idea.” Gunner opened a gate and the two of them walked along the grass just outside the fence. “We needed something different, some way to turn the ranch back into a working operation.”

      “Anyone not like that idea?” Different wasn’t always a welcome notion, especially in a place like this.

      Gunner squatted to inspect a tamped-down clump of tall grass. “Most were curious, doubtful maybe, but nothing I’d call mean-spirited. Except for my neighbor Larkey.” The rancher nodded toward the northwest side of the property, where fences marked the start of another ranch. “But that was more about real estate than livestock. He was in favor of a housing project nearby, and I got in the way by refusing to cooperate when they wanted some of my land. He did threaten one of my animals, though. We were having an argument at the time.”

      Nash filed that away under “useful details” in the back of his mind. “Anyone hear about it?”

      Gunner gave a sour laugh. “Oh, lots of people heard about it.”

      “Well, it’s been my experience that kids copy publicized crimes. For your sake, I hope it’s only dumb kids showing off here and not someone out to harm you or your animals.”

      “Hey, look.” Gunner rose with a sizable metal cylinder in his hand. “Rifle shell. Pretty big one at that.”

      Gunner had already touched it, but hopefully that wouldn’t mess with ballistics. Nash reached into his pocket for an evidence bag and carefully picked it out of Gunner’s palm using the bag as a glove before sealing it up. “That ought to help narrow things down.” He looked up at the rancher. “I’m glad we’re not picking a round out of a dead animal.”

      “We lose one or two a year to injury or illness before we harvest off the heard, but outside of Larkey’s threats, no one’s ever tried to kill one of mine. I hope no one’s thinking about it now.”

      Nash tried to view the grassy ridge as a crime scene. It was a far cry from a Los Angeles street corner. That was certain. “How would a group of kids get out here?”

      Gunner looked around. “Same as us, I suppose. ATVs, dirt bikes, maybe on horseback. This part’s too far from the road to come on foot, I expect.” Gunner gave him an analytical look. “You ride?”

      “We did have mounted police in LA.” Nash kept kicking clumps of grass aside in search of more clues. “But no, I’m a car guy.”

      “Like big truck or like shiny sports car?”

      This was truck country, clearly. The way Gunner said shiny sounded as though it stood in for “fussy city car.” Nash turned over a crushed can with his toe. “Am I gonna have to git me a truck to fit in around here?”

      Gunner gave a small laugh. “Well, now, that depends. You want to fit in or stand out? My brother, Luke, never owned a truck in his life. My dad owned nothing but whatever was the biggest, fanciest truck on the market. My wife, Brooke, owned one of them bitty hatchback things when we first met, and we just bought ourselves a genuine suburban minivan seeing as we’ll have two little ones soon. Fancy car might make you popular with the high school boys, now that I think of it, but then again so would a good truck.”

      Nash’s sports car had been an asset in LA, earning him “street cred” with teens. It seemed only to earn him stares here—and not often stares of admiration. Another reason to decline Pastor Theo. “Ellie drives a hatchback, too. Anybody give her grief over it?”

      Gunner laughed outright. “Well, Ellie’s a city girl now. Still, it goes fast enough to earn a speeding ticket, huh?” He scratched his chin and narrowed one eye at Nash. “What made a city guy like you come all the way out here anyhow?”

      “We’re forty minutes from Austin, one of the fastest-developing tech centers in the country. I hardly think that qualifies as ‘all the way out here.’”

      Gunner spread his hands. “Look around, buddy. Martins Gap is a whole other world from Austin.” The rancher fiddled with a bracket on a nearby fencepost. “One that’s disappearing too fast, if you ask me.”

      Nash found himself again considering the easiest way to relate the chain of events that led him to Martins Gap. “I worked juvenile and street crimes in LA. Kids in gangs, vandalism, the occasional drug bust, that sort of thing. Every once in a while I’d turn a kid from a wrong choice, and each victory kept me going. I’d feel like I’d made a difference, like God was giving me a chance to put some good back in a place where most people could only see bad.”

      Gunner leaned against the fencepost. “That doesn’t sound like a reason to leave.”

      “It isn’t. But then one of those kids—one of the ones I thought I’d helped the most, actually—he turned on me. Went back to everything I thought he’d left behind. By the time I found him, he was in even deeper than he’d been before.”

      “But you found him?”

      Nash swallowed. He still hadn’t found an easy way to talk about that night. “More like he found me first. Hunted me down, actually. I ended up with two bullet holes that seemed to puncture all my faith in the good I used to be able to see. I knew it was time to leave.”

      “It’s not perfect here, but I’d like to think we’ve got more good than an LA street.” Gunner looked out over the land, and Nash could watch the determination straighten the man’s СКАЧАТЬ