AK-Cowboy. Joanna Wayne

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СКАЧАТЬ troubling images from his mind. Forget the past. In minutes, the present would become an arsenal of weapons all firing in his direction with no visible means of escape.

      Tyler was home, yet even the hard, rocky ground of the war zone had never felt so alien.

      JULIE CLOSED AND LATCHED the squeaky gate and then hopped back into the front seat beside Tyler. An unexpected rush of uneasiness churned in her stomach as they bumped along the hard dirt road. Either the ranch itself put off eerie vibes, or Julie was not nearly as undaunted by the prospect of coming face-to-face with Troy Ledger as she’d tried to convince herself.

      “They say the Ledger ranch house is haunted,” she said.

      Tyler continued to stare straight ahead without bothering to respond. She started to say more, but his demeanor had changed. His fingers wound tightly around the steering wheel and his neck and facial muscles were taut.

      “If you don’t like the idea of visiting a convicted killer, you can just drop me off here and you can turn around and leave,” she said.

      “Too late for that.”

      His tone was brusque, but he seemed so lost in his own world that she wasn’t even sure the words were meant for her. Her feelings of anxiety swelled. Now not only was she on an isolated ranch with a convicted killer but with a stranger who demonstrated drastic mood changes.

      He could have post-traumatic stress disorder. She’d heard that was common with military personnel just home from the battlefront.

      Julie understood trauma. She’d lived through her share of it. A few short weeks ago, she’d fully expected to be sleeping with the fishes in Lake Pontchartrain. Surviving that had given her the courage to take on her current task.

      She spotted the roofline of the Ledger house first, jutting over the tops of the low trees that surrounded it. The full house didn’t come into view until they rounded the last curve and pulled up the gravel drive.

      The house where Helene Ledger had been murdered in cold blood in the middle of the day. Killed by three shots fired at close range when any one of them could have ended her life. The mother of five young boys, loved by everyone in the community, all but worshipped by her parents.

      The hairs on the back of Julie’s neck stood on end as they stopped in front of the house. The claims that Helene’s ghost still haunted the place drew vivid images in her mind. She could all but see the woman in white standing at the window, waving for help, just as the locals described her.

      Julie took a deep breath and opened her door. She was not a believer in ghosts. Even if they existed, she imagined dead people had better things to do than hang around tormenting people they’d probably never liked anyway or grieving those they’d loved and been loved by.

      If people had seen anything at all here while Troy was in prison, it was likely shadows from the mulberry tree that grew next to the house or from the nearby cluster of squatty mesquites.

      Before she could thank Tyler for the ride, he had opened his own door and was already sliding from beneath the wheel.

      “You don’t have to stay,” she assured him.

      “Actually, I do.”

      “Suit yourself.” She walked in front of him, climbed the steps quickly and was about to ring the doorbell when heavy boots clomped through the wet grass to her left.

      Troy Ledger rounded the side of the house and stopped a few feet from the freshly painted wooden steps. She knew it was him from photographs she’d seen, one taken as recently as a few months ago.

      It had appeared along with pictures of this house in some paranormal magazine called Beyond the Grave. Julie had found the article while doing her research on Troy Ledger.

      And here he was, a few feet from her. Tall. Thinning brown hair with touches of gray. Gaunt, with a jagged scar that ran down the right side of his face.

      She started to speak, but Troy was staring at the cowboy who stood a few feet behind her.

      “Tyler.” Troy’s gruff voice cracked on the name.

      “Yeah. It’s me.”

      The tension between the two men left no doubt that they were not strangers.

      And once again, she had talked far too much.

       Chapter Three

      A choking lump in his chest all but cut off Troy’s ability to breathe. Tyler was standing a few feet in front of him. Tyler, his daredevil son who had tried Helene’s patience with his tough and mischievous ways. Tyler who had followed Troy around like a shadow from the day he took his first steps.

      Not one or two awkward steps in the beginning, the way their other sons had learned to walk. No, Tyler had stood and waddled all the way across the kitchen to grab Troy’s leg before he stepped out the back door. Troy had swung him into his arms and taken him with him to the barn.

      At two, when Tyler should have been content riding his jump horse, he’d begged to ride the biggest horse they had. At four, he’d kept up with his older brothers and mimicked all their antics while swinging from the rope at the swimming hole. At six, he’d broken his arm while trying to rescue a kitten from the top of an oak tree. At eight…

      He stopped himself before he dropped into the abyss.

      “Good to see you, son.”

      “I guess I should have called.”

      “No reason to, except that I might not have been struck speechless.”

      “So my showing up like this is not an inconvenience?”

      “It’s…” Troy searched for the right words and settled on the truth. “I’ve been waiting for this day.” He climbed the steps and joined Tyler and his lady friend on the porch, awkward and embarrassed by the onslaught of emotions that were tearing around inside him like crazed cats.

      He’d love to hug his son, but the man staring back at him with the piercing brown eyes seemed all but untouchable.

      Tyler rocked back on his heels and looked around. “Ranch looked good when I was driving in.”

      “Dylan gets a lot of credit for that. He’s running the ranch with me. Fact is, he did it all for the first few weeks after my heart attack. Sean helped, too, until he moved out.”

      “I heard Sean bought his own spread,” Tyler said.

      “Yeah.” Troy wondered if Dylan and Sean knew Tyler was planning this visit. If so, they’d kept it quiet.

      “Sean started a horse farm over in Bandera.”

      “How is that working out for him?”

      “Good. He’s got lots of plans, but he’s getting so many calls to work with and train other folks’ horses, he hardly has time to work with his own. Did you hear he got married?”

      Tyler nodded. “Both him and Dylan.”

      “Right. СКАЧАТЬ