In The Rancher's Arms

Her thoughts slowed and fixed on him, creating an odd calm within her. No doubt it was only a temporary reprieve from the memories that demanded space in her mind, but she’d take it even if she didn’t understand it. She didn’t really know him well. He was just the older brother of a classmate. And yet he’d known exactly what she’d needed in the convenience store that morning. She’d only made eye contact briefly, but it had been enough to realize he’d gotten even better-looking in the years that had passed. If she was the same woman she was even two months ago, she might try to get to know him better. But she wasn’t that person anymore.

She didn’t know who she was.

Chapter Two

Arden jerked so violently as she woke from the nightmare that she almost fell off the edge of the bed. Instinct had her flailing, but she managed to catch herself on the corner of the nightstand. She stayed like that, her hand gripping the rounded edge of the wood, as she tried to slow her breathing and bring herself into the here and now. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat, but even that dragged her back to that cage in Uganda. There she’d wondered if she’d die of thirst before her kidnappers could manage to even find a buyer for her and the other captives in the surrounding cages.

With a shaky hand, she grabbed the glass of water on the nightstand as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. She gulped the entire contents of the glass as she tried to prevent her mind from replaying the dream. Why couldn’t nightmares of that place disappear almost immediately the way lots of dreams did when she woke? Why did her current freedom feel as if it might be the dream?

Arden lifted the back of her hand to her forehead to find it warm. No doubt she’d been tossing and turning, her heart racing. As she had earlier, she tried focusing on things other than the dream. But this time it didn’t work. Maybe it was because night cloaked the world around her, which had been the worst time of her captivity. Sure, it had provided some relief from the brutal sun, but it had also turned up the volume on creatures she couldn’t see or identify. As she’d strained to see the source of those screeches and howls, she’d imagined all manner of terrible beasts just waiting for the opportunity to make her their next meal. The truly horrible part was by the time she’d been rescued, she hadn’t known which she dreaded more—death by mystery beast or disappearing so far into the world of slavery that she’d never be free again.

Unbidden, the sound of Treena Gunderson’s crying was so clear that Arden gasped and spun around. But of course, Treena wasn’t there. The aid worker who’d been in the cage next to Arden’s should be home with her family in Minnesota by now. She wondered if Treena was awake, too, haunted by nightmares that she feared might never go away.

Arden set the glass on the nightstand and stood. She walked on shaky legs toward the window but stopped short of it. Even though her rational mind knew there were no human traffickers on the other side of the glass pane, no beasts with razor-sharp claws prowling for a meal, her heart rate sped up again.

She thought of how when she was growing up and couldn’t sleep, she’d slip outside and sit on the porch or go for a walk, allowing the night air to waft against her skin as she took in the expanse of the wide Texas sky and what must be at least a billion stars blanketing the blackness. Now the idea of even getting too close to the window made her heart race and body tremble.

The need to scream, to release the anger that still festered inside, rose up within her. But she couldn’t let it free and scare her parents to death that she was being murdered in her room. They’d been through enough. She had to protect them. Somehow she’d find a way to get past what had happened to her—alone.

Her legs threatened to give way, so she turned and headed to bed. She sat with her back against the headboard, her arms wrapped around her knees, and stared at the window. Pale moonlight from something less than a full moon filtered in through the curtains. She listened but all she could hear was a faint hum from the electricity running throughout the house. After weeks in that remote corner of Uganda, everything sounded a thousand times louder than she remembered.

She shook her head, trying to dissipate the self-pity. Yes, she’d been through an ordeal no one should ever have to endure, but she’d been one of the lucky ones. The horror of watching her kidnappers load several cages onto the back of a truck, the occupants crying and begging to be let go, was something she’d never forget. She’d added her screams to theirs, hoping that maybe one more voice could make some difference. All it had gotten her was a vicious jab with the butt of an automatic weapon and the very real threat that the men might decide to keep her for entertainment instead of selling her.

The mere thought had twisted her insides so much that, combined with the knowledge of what awaited the people being driven away, she’d turned and thrown up what little was in her stomach. Even now, she could taste the bile in her throat.

She bit her lip and blinked several times, not wanting to cry again. It only made her feel worse.

The chirping of the first birds of the morning drew her attention toward the window again. She listened to their familiar song, letting it soothe her the tiniest bit. It wasn’t until the darkness outside began to give way to dawn that she felt her body begin to relax. Even so, she knew she wouldn’t be sleeping anymore. Despite not having had a decent night’s sleep in weeks, her rescue hadn’t brought the type of true rest she so desperately needed.

Not wanting to think about her captivity anymore, she went to the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water and smoothed her out-of-control hair. With the aim of occupying her mind and trying to make things as normal as possible for her parents, she headed for the kitchen to make breakfast.

She eased the door to her bedroom open the same way she had all those years ago when she’d escaped her insomnia for the beauty of a Texas night. She halted the door right before the squeak that always came back no matter how many times they lubricated the hinges.

As she walked quietly into the living room, Lemondrop gave her a tentative look from where he was stretched out along the back of the couch. Evidently, he still remembered the reaction to her bad dream the day before. She breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t bolt when she approached him.

“Sorry about scaring you, buddy,” she said as she ran her fingers through his soft yellow fur.

Lemondrop must have forgiven her because his distinctive purr started up and he rubbed his head against her palm. The pure rightness of the moment caused her to choke up and smile a little at the same time.

“Want some breakfast?” she whispered.

Lemondrop looked up at her as if he understood every single word she said. When he hopped to the floor and strode toward the kitchen, she shook her head before following in his wake. Sometimes that cat seemed half human.

As Arden moved about the kitchen, pulling out the supplies she needed to make pancakes, she found herself pausing to touch familiar items—the stoneware canisters that had been her grandmother’s, the framed paint handprint she’d made for her mom on some long-ago Mother’s Day, the top of the table around which her family had enjoyed countless meals. It was as if her mind was demanding she make contact with as many things as possible to be sure they were real and not simply part of the daydreams she’d used to get through her captivity. To prove she was actually here and not still in that sweltering cage.

Arden shook her head, trying to rid herself of the memories. She tried not to think about how long they might plague her, but she’d written about too many survivors of horrible experiences—bombings, genocide, natural disasters of epic proportions—to believe she’d be back to normal anytime soon. If ever.

“You’re up early.”

The sound of her father’s voice did more to ground her in the present, in her childhood home than anything else. She glanced over her shoulder after flipping her pancake.

“Still adjusting to the time difference.”

The way he looked at her said he knew there were other reasons for her already being at the stove, but he didn’t push her to admit that. Her dad had always been one willing to listen but only when the person was ready to talk. If not for his heart attack, maybe she would confide in him. But that wasn’t going to happen. She’d keep everything bottled up indefinitely rather than cause him any more pain or worry.

Her dad crossed to where she was standing and squeezed her shoulder in an affectionate, supportive gesture.

“Those look good,” he said, pointing at the pancakes.

“And Mom told me about your special diet, so you’ll be having oatmeal with blueberries and scrambled egg whites.”

He made a sound of frustration. “Two against one, not fair.”

She lifted onto her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I make really good oatmeal and eggs.”

In truth, it was much more like what she’d normally eat, but weeks of gnawing hunger had her wanting every comfort food she could get her hands on. But even with her mouth watering at the impending consumption of pancakes, she had to remind herself to be careful. When she’d finally gotten a meal after her rescue, she’d made herself sick by eating too much.

Her dad uttered another grunt but dropped a kiss on her forehead. “What can I do?”

Arden nodded at the table. “Sit and catch me up on what’s new around here.” Some good old, dependable Blue Falls gossip should keep her mind off unwanted memories for a little bit at least.

“You mean besides me going stir-crazy around here and your mom hovering?”

“You scared her. She’s allowed to hover a little.”

He started to say something but stopped himself. A couple of ticks of the wall clock passed before she realized what he’d thought, that she was most likely in for some hovering by her mom, as well. Part of her wanted to curl up in her mother’s arms, but she didn’t know how she could spend a lot of time with her mom while the details of her captivity remained unspoken between them. Arden would be torn between answering all her mom’s questions and needing to protect her from the truth.

“I’ll go for your walk with you after we eat to give her a break.” She managed a smile. “And you.”

Plus despite his weakened state, Arden thought she might feel less anxious about leaving the house if her dad was beside her. Not to mention she could use the exercise to build up her own strength.

“That sounds like a good idea, dear,” her mom said as she entered the kitchen. “Fresh air will be good for you both.”

Arden wasn’t sure if her mom believed that or if it was just something people said when they were at a loss for anything else.

Her mom crossed the kitchen to where Arden was flipping pancakes onto plates. “I’ll finish up here, honey. You go sit with your father. You should have gotten me up if you were hungry.”

Arden refused to budge. “No, I’ve got it.” What she didn’t say was that after weeks of being cramped in a cage only about half as tall as she was, it felt good to stand to her full height, to be able to move freely. Even being buckled in her seat on the flights bringing her out of Uganda and eventually to the States had made her fidget and have to force herself to stay calm.

She noticed a look passing between her parents, one that revealed the deep concern they’d been trying to hide from her.

“I’m okay, really,” she said.

They probably didn’t believe her, but maybe if she said it enough they’d begin to. Even if she didn’t. In actuality, she felt about as far from okay as she could imagine. It was as if she’d been shaken so violently that all the pieces that made her who she was had been broken apart and resettled in the wrong configuration, making her someone entirely different.

Breakfast passed much as dinner had the night before, conversation flowing about things like who’d gotten married, who’d had kids, how there was a new pie flavor at the Primrose Café—caramel apple—that people were raving about. During one of the uncomfortable lapses in conversation, Arden’s mom placed her fork on her plate along with her half-eaten pancakes.

“That was delicious, but I don’t think I can eat another bite.”

Arden suspected it had less to do with her mom’s hunger being satiated and was more about her need to know what had happened to her daughter so that she could try to fix it, to make Arden better. But this wasn’t a bee sting or a scraped elbow that felt better with a little TLC from Mom. Some damage was so deep and so twisted that you just had to face it alone because no one who hadn’t been through it could possibly understand.

Her mom stood and started clearing the table. “Why don’t you two go outside and enjoy the spring air? I’ll clean up.”

“You feel up to a meander to the pond?” her dad asked.

Arden looked across the table, thought maybe her dad had a little more color in his cheeks today. Maybe seeing her alive and well, at least on the outside, had given him the same kind of bone-deep relief that she’d experienced when she’d seen him on the porch yesterday.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

They took their time since there was no need to hurry. Plus, she didn’t want him to overtax himself. And despite several days of regular food, water and a bed to sleep in, she still felt shaky and weak. If it wasn’t for the nightmares, she wished she could sleep for about a month.

Arden wrapped her arm around her dad’s as they walked.

“This is nice,” her dad said.

“It is.” Even so, she hated the awkwardness between them. She’d always been close with her dad, but now it felt as if even that had been ripped away from her. Protecting him from the truth was more important than being able to unburden herself.

They didn’t say anything else until they reached the bench next to the duck pond. A few mallards floated along the surface of the pond while others sat with their feet tucked beneath them and their beaks stuffed into their feathers. They were so used to Arden and her dad that they didn’t pay them any mind.

“This is still one of my favorite places,” she said as they sank onto the bench.

“Me, too. And it’s better when I have my favorite daughter with me.”

She smiled. “It’s easy to be the favorite when I’m the only.”

Her dad took her hand in his and simply held it as they watched the ducks dip below the water then resurface and shake their feathers.

“I know you think you’re protecting me,” he said, “but you don’t have to. I’m tougher than you think.”

She’d always thought him exactly that, tough but in a kindhearted way. But that was before he’d had a heart attack.

“Talking about what happened won’t change anything.”

“I think you’re wrong about that.”

Her history of being able to talk through her problems with him tempted her to trust him, but there was just too much at stake.

“But I won’t push you,” he said. “Just know that I’m here when you’re ready. Nothing you say will make me have another heart attack.”

She wasn’t willing to take that risk. Plus, some part of her hoped, perhaps in vain, that if she refused to talk about her captivity, the memories would fade and the nightmares would go away.

Arden squeezed her dad’s hand. “I’m fine, just glad to be home.”

Home with no job and no idea what she would do next. Because there was no way she was going back to international reporting and the possibility that she might be placed in danger again. That next time her father’s heart might not recover.

The sound of an approaching vehicle drew her attention to the road. J. J. Carter, who’d been the mail carrier on her parents’ route for as long as she could remember, stopped to deposit mail in their box. He threw up a wave as he motored on to the Carmichaels’ box a half mile down the road.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said as she stood.

As she walked down the driveway, she found herself scanning the surrounding landscape. She knew it was irrational, but she couldn’t prevent the concern that someone might appear as if out of nowhere to grab her. After all, it had happened before.

“Damn it,” she said under her breath, so that the words wouldn’t carry to her father’s ears. Then she refocused on the mailbox, telling herself that she had nothing to worry about. No human traffickers were hiding behind her mother’s rosebushes or in the ditch next to the road. She was in Blue Falls, where she was much more likely to be bored to death. Not that there was anything wrong with her hometown. She’d just always craved more than it could offer. She’d burned with the need to travel the world, to see places her neighbors had never even heard of, to root out injustices hidden in dark corners and expose them to the light through her writing. Well, no more.

So what if nothing of great import happened in this slice of Texas? Maybe a tad boring was exactly what she needed. She had to find a way to rejoin the real world, the one here in safe, comforting Blue Falls.

When she reached the mailbox, she pulled out a stack of mail and flipped through it as she walked slowly toward her dad. Today’s offerings included a sales flyer for Hill Country Foods, the grocery store where her mom worked as a manager when she wasn’t on leave to take care of Arden’s dad during his recovery, a couple of pieces of junk mail and half a dozen medical bills related to her father’s hospitalization. Guilt stabbed her again. If she could go back in time, she’d make such different decisions. She would have heeded the warnings she’d received about the traffickers and how they excelled at snatching people, would have found another way to get the story about them out. If she’d known what would follow, she admitted to herself that she wouldn’t have chased the story at all. A first for her, but no story was worth losing her dad.

“Anything interesting?” her dad asked, making her realize how close she’d come to where he still sat.

“Nope. The ubiquitous junk mail. You ready to head back to the house?”

“No, I think I’ll stay out here for a while. I think I’m about to crack the code.”

It took her a moment before she realized what he was saying, and it brought a smile to her face. When she’d been a little girl, he’d convinced her that he was learning the duck language and that soon he’d be able to tell her what they were saying.

“You do that and it’s you who’ll be on the news.”

As she walked to the house alone, she glanced over her shoulder a couple of times to reassure herself her dad was okay by himself. She paused when she reached the porch and stared at the bills in her hand. Even though they weren’t addressed to her, their contents were her fault and thus her responsibility. Before she could talk herself out of it, she opened the first envelope and unfolded the papers inside. And promptly gasped. If the amount staring up at her was only part of the total owed, how could anyone ever pay their medical bills?

The front door opened to reveal her mother. The look on Arden’s face must have telegraphed her thoughts because her mom glanced at what Arden held in her hands. Her mom started toward her, holding out her hands.

“Give me those, dear. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Arden stepped to the side, not allowing her mother to claim the bills. “Are they all like this?”

“Honey, please. We’ll manage.”

“How?” Her mom’s job at the store didn’t pay a ton, and who knew when, or even if, her dad would be able to go back to work driving a delivery truck for a food distributor out of Austin.

“We just will. We always do. You need to concentrate on positive things.” Her mom wore one of those smiles meant to put others at ease, but Arden wasn’t fooled. She saw the stress and worry her mom was trying so hard to hide from her. How long had she been pulling up those types of smiles for Arden’s dad? For concerned friends and neighbors? She shouldn’t have to shoulder the weight of all that concern. What if it became too much for her heart to bear?

Arden wanted to scream, punch something, and crawl up into a ball and cry all at the same time, even though she knew none of it would do anything to make things better. When she’d made the decision to follow the lead that had ended up being a trap set for her, she’d known she could be in danger. It was part of the job. Bad guys didn’t typically operate in the open and sit down for friendly interviews with journalists.

What she’d not considered were the far-reaching ramifications of that decision if she was caught. Not only her own well-being, but also that of her parents. When she’d been snatched from her hired car on that desolate road, the consequences of her capture had flowed out like a tsunami, reaching all the way to Texas. It had led to weeks of fear, exposure and malnourishment for her, but she’d recover from those things. But her dad’s heart attack and the wrecking of her parents’ finances—those would haunt her.

The bills she held in her hand were her fault, and she had to find a way to pay them. But how was she supposed to do that when someone simply dropping a coffeepot sent her into freak-out mode? For as long as she could remember, she’d known what she wanted to do with her life. She’d never considered how she’d react if doing what she’d always felt called to do was no longer a possibility. But if she intended to make things right for her parents, she’d better figure it out.

Chapter Three

Neil cursed when he spotted the dead cow in the ravine. Just what they needed, a hit to the ranch’s bottom line when they were still recovering from the shock of how much the property taxes had risen over the previous year. He just hoped whatever had caused the cow’s demise wasn’t communicable. Keeping a ranch solvent was always a touch-and-go affair, but disease in a herd could spell disaster.

He guided his horse down the hillside, keeping an eye out for holes and an ear open for the distinctive warning rattle of a rattlesnake. As he drew close, he breathed a sigh of relief. The loss would still hurt the ranch’s financials, but the burn mark on the cow’s back told him that at least it wasn’t disease. The storm a couple of nights before had been brief, but it only took a single lightning strike to spell the end for a cow out in the open. He counted himself lucky every time they made it through a storm with no deaths from lightning, flooding or hail.

As he reined his horse to head up the hill, for some reason Arden Wilkes entered his thoughts. When he considered what she must have gone through the past couple of months, him finding a dead cow faded almost to disappearance in comparison.

He couldn’t imagine having a job that would even put him in such a situation. What drove a person to travel to every far-flung corner of the world in order to write about it? She’d been raised in Blue Falls, after all, and had the most normal, seemingly caring parents a person could ask for. Why run away from that? If anyone was to ask him, he’d swear up and down that Blue Falls, Texas, was heaven on earth. Even though ranching had its hardships, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. He thanked his lucky stars every day that this was where he’d ended up when he was adopted all those years ago.

As he rode to the main part of the ranch, he wondered if Arden was doing any better today after spending a night in the house where she grew up. He imagined she had probably feared she’d never see it again. If her reaction in the store the day before was any indication, she’d been through the kind of trauma that it might take a while to get over. He didn’t envy her these early days of recovery when she was adjusting to the fact that she wasn’t in danger anymore. It wasn’t always the easiest transition.

He shook his head and refocused on the task at hand as the barn came into view. Before he moved on to anything else, he needed to bury the dead cow. As he reached the barn entrance and dismounted, however, he met up with his brother, Ben, who was just slipping out of his truck. Something about the look on Ben’s face stopped Neil in his tracks. Was it going to be one of those days that made you wish you could go back to bed and start over again the next day?