Ranch Ambush
Author
Barb Han
Reads
19.8K
Chapters
23
For a US marshal, going home means protecting a woman from his past Fourteen years after the girl Duke Remington loved disappeared, the US marshal comes home to discover that Audrey Newcastle is in mortal danger. Protecting Audrey, now a sheriff's deputy, rekindles painful memories and unwelcome desire. But as secrets from Audrey's mysterious past surface, Duke must find a way to earn her trust and stop a killer lying in wait to complete a final act of vengeance…
Chapter One
Can you ever go home again?
The question hit a little too close as Duke Remington parked his truck in front of the two-story farmhouse where he’d spent most of his happiest moments during childhood.
The white siding with green shutters, metal roof and wraparound country porch had seen better days, but his grandfather Lorenzo Remington was too proud to accept more help than he deemed necessary or could afford to hire.
Early October in Mesa Point, Texas, the weather was always a crapshoot. This year, the record-setting string of hundred-plus-degree temperatures fueled a drought that threatened to dry up the shifty soil and swallow homes whole.
As far as the farmhouse went, between Duke, his two sisters and three cousins, they could have the place spruced up in a couple of weekends. Grandpa Lor wouldn’t hear of it.
The fact that Duke’s beloved grandfather and grandmother were lying in separate hospital beds in the ICU instead of here at the paint horse ranch they loved hit him hard. His grandparents had defied the odds just by being high school sweethearts who went the distance. Could they do it again by surviving a horrendous car wreck? If ever there was a time for either one of their stubborn streaks to kick in, it was now.
Duke exited his truck as the sun began to climb. He’d driven from his home south of Austin to Mesa General Hospital the minute he’d received word about the crash. He’d been able to arrange leave from work first. He, his siblings and cousins planned to work out a rotation. Blinking through blurry eyes that had been open for over twenty-four hours straight, he caught sight of Nash Shiloh making a beeline toward him from the barn.
Nash, as they called him, had worked the ranch since what felt like the dawn of time but was more like sixty years. Hired at fifteen as a ranch hand before working his way up over the years to foreman, he’d been the only one permitted to hang around. Folks said all he needed to do was put his hands on a horse to hear its thoughts, which was a miracle in Duke’s book. It was a gift he didn’t have with horses or people, unless criminals counted. There, he seemed to excel at reading their minds and anticipating their next steps.
As a US marshal, Duke encountered his fair share of felons in need of capture and could hold his own thanks to his unique gift. At least, gift was the label his skill had been given by his fellow marshals. Was it what he would call it? No. There wasn’t anything special about him. He couldn’t read other people’s thoughts. There was just a thin line between having the kind of mind that caught criminals and being one. A long time ago, Duke had realized he could stand on either side of that line. Doing good had been a choice, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
The older man’s sun-worn skin practically hung on his bones at seventy-plus years old. Despite his age, Nash was still strong as an ox and could lift more hay bales than half the seasonal ranch hands four decades younger than him. But his age was starting to show in the slight limp in his right leg and the way his shoulders rounded on his six-foot frame.
Nash still had a full head of hair, and his mind was sharp as ever. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Duke met the foreman halfway and brought him into a bear hug. “I should have been here so it didn’t happen.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Nash said with compassion. He was too quick to let Duke and the others off easy. Like when they’d painted stripes on one of the horses and then put a sign up in the barn that read Beware of Zebras. “Heck, I would have driven to pick up the new saddles myself, but the old man...” His eyes flashed at Duke. “Your grandpa wanted to take his wife out for a fancy lunch in town.”
The words fancy and in town weren’t something Duke thought he’d hear in his lifetime about Mesa Point. There wasn’t much that would be considered extravagant about the small town. Not since the oil boom in the ’70s and ’80s when high-end stores brought merchandise to the ladies in town since most wouldn’t set foot in a city.
Mesa Point had a small country club that barely survived the oil crash. Its green decor, complete with flowery wallpaper, was straight out of a different era. If the walls could talk, Duke had no doubt they would whisper scandals from back in the club’s heyday. He’d heard of everything from affairs in the bathrooms to envelopes fat with cash being handed to golf caddies to “help” with a score or stand guard in front of a supply closet to make sure no one entered unless invited. Today, Mesa Point Golf and Social Club barely kept its doors open.
“How’s the marshal business?” Nash asked in his characteristic excitement mixed with a favorite-uncle kind of warmth.
“Keeping me busy,” Duke admitted before adding, “It’s the reason I don’t come home very often.”
Nash shot him a look that meant Duke didn’t have to explain. “You’re here when it counts.”
Duke nodded, trying to shake off the feeling that he’d let his grandparents down when they needed him most. What if they’d done that to him when his mother died after giving birth to Duke’s younger sister and his father ran off?
Duke was the only son in a daughter sandwich, a middle child, except that he’d grown up with cousins Dalton and Camden who were like brothers to him. He and his sisters, Crystal and Abilene, were close as could be. His cousin Jules, or otherwise known professionally as Julie, was the middle child on her side of the family. Although, none of them ever thought of sides when thinking about each other. They were the Remington Six as far as anyone was concerned.
“Any change in their condition?” Nash asked, ushering Duke toward the back door of the farmhouse.
“Not yet,” he responded in a voice that was probably too hopeful.
“They’ll pull through,” Nash said with a conviction that Duke didn’t feel. “In the meantime, you should eat breakfast and get settled in.” He paused, looking like he was trying to choose his next words carefully. “Have you decided how long you’ll be staying on?”
“I took personal leave from work,” Duke said, not loving the fact that he’d handed off several case files he’d been working on for weeks now. “I’m here to assess the situation and report back to the others so we can set up a rotation if needed.”
Nash opened the screen door to the back porch, toed off his boots and then headed for the kitchen. “Scrambled eggs and sausage okay with you?”
“No. I’m fine. Don’t go to any—”
“It’s no trouble,” Nash cut in with a hand wave, like he was batting a fly from a horse’s behind.
Duke knew when he’d lost an argument, so he stopped himself from saying that he should be the one cooking breakfast for Nash.
Being inside his grandparents’ home without them here sucked the air out of the room. Tears welled up. Emotion wasn’t usually in his vocabulary. This seemed like a convenient time to remember he’d left his gym bag behind the driver’s seat of his truck. His damn emotions had him thinking about someone else, too. But he didn’t want to think about her after all these years.
“I’ll eat whatever you put on the table as long as you let me clean up after.” Before Nash could protest, Duke put a hand up and continued, “I need to get something out of my truck, so you’re going to have to hold that thought.”
Jogging out to the truck gave Duke a moment of reprieve from the tsunami of emotions threatening to suck him under and spit him out. Being home always reminded him of Audrey Smith, now Newcastle, and the summer she’d spent here. Then school started. She’d disappeared. But not without shattering his tender sixteen-year-old heart. For reasons he didn’t want to examine, he had yet to forget that summer fourteen years ago.
Sure, Duke could blame his long memory on the fact a guy never forgot his first kiss, especially one that sizzled with the kind of promise that had been unmatched since. He’d chalked his past physical reaction up to teen hormones over finding real love when he was barely old enough to drive, let alone shave.
It had taken most of the summer for Audrey to warm up to him. Even then, she refused to speak about her past or what happened for her to end up needing a place to hide. He’d fallen fast and hard. And then she was gone. His grandparents had kept quiet about her whereabouts, asking him to respect her need for privacy even though he could hear the regret in their tones. They’d told him she left a message for him asking him to leave her alone. She’d said they were over and their relationship had been nothing more than a summer fling. With a nonworking cell number and no social media to follow, Duke had no choice but to try to forget Audrey Smith had ever entered his life.
A couple of years back, he’d heard a rumor she was back in Mesa Point as Audrey Newcastle. Married? Divorced?
He couldn’t say one way or the other. He’d made a vow not to ask questions after her rejection.
Plus, Duke rarely ever visited his hometown except to spend an afternoon here and there with his grandparents, mainly doing work he worried they were getting too old to do despite his grandfather being too stubborn to admit it. True days off were rare because Duke loved his work as a US marshal and dedicated himself to searching for the most hardened criminals to lock them away and keep them from hurting other individuals. He sure wasn’t planning to track down an old flame that sputtered out almost before it was lit.
Besides, during his visits to Remington Paint Ranch over the years, which weren’t as often as they should have been, he never once ran into Audrey. Not at the feed store. Not at the post office. And not at the local diner where it seemed everyone passed through on the weekend to catch up on town happenings.
Audrey didn’t want to have any contact with him after she’d disappeared, or she would have reached out at some point. She’d been clear about breaking up and there wasn’t squat he could do about it then or now.
He’d come to understand she must have needed protection before. But now? She’d been back years and his number never changed.
Duke shook off the reverie. The morning sun beat down on him, indicating it would be another hot one. Texas heat had a bottom-of-his-boot-melting type of intensity. The summer had been brutal. Fall wasn’t turning out to be much better. With sweat already beading on his forehead, he grabbed his gym bag and started toward the back door.
His cell buzzed. He fished it out of his pocket.
“What’s up, Crystal?” he asked his older sister after checking the screen. Duke was the second born. Abilene, aka Abi, was the baby at twenty-eight years old. His sisters and cousins were US marshals. Each had their own reasons, but the seed had been planted long ago by their grandfather who’d been on the job to buy and support the ranch until he could work Remington Paint Ranch full time alongside his wife.
“First of all, how are they?” Crystal asked, referring to their grandparents.
“It’s as bad as we feared,” he admitted, raking his fingers through his hair. “They’re both in comas and the road to recovery might be rocky.”
“How soon do you need us there?” she asked.
“We can stick to the plan for now,” he said. “I just updated the group chat so we’re on the same page. Since we have to plan for the long haul, I think we should stick to the rotation we discussed.”
That rotation would have Crystal taking leave next.
“I’ll stop by as much as I can in the meantime,” she stated, sounding as tired as he felt. Being physically tired was one thing. This was emotional draining, which was worse.
“Sounds good,” he said on a sigh. Since he’d sent an update via the chat, this couldn’t be the main reason for her call. “What else is going on?”
“Heard some chatter coming from the western district that I thought you might want to check out while you’re in town,” Crystal said. Her ominous tone added to the dark cloud overhead.
“What is it?” he asked, figuring he could make time for a pit stop after breakfast if work needed him to go somewhere. If this wasn’t an emergency, he could use a shower and an hour or two of shut-eye.
Crystal hesitated, which caused Duke’s blood pressure to rise. “It might be nothing, however...”
“Go on,” he urged.
“You know the Ponytail Snatcher?”
“The guy who has been traveling around Texas targeting female deputies, and then torturing them before cutting off their ponytails, killing them and burying them in a shallow grave?” he asked. “What about him? He’s been quiet for more than a month.”
“An FBI agent tracked the perp down to a motel an hour from Mesa Point,” she continued. “It’s probably nothing more than a weird feeling on my part but I was studying the case, and the deputies have a lot of the same physical features as Audrey. I would feel better if someone checked on her. Since you’re the one in town and our grandparents can’t, I thought—”
“Do you have her address?” he asked, doing his level best not to give away his reaction—an emotional reaction that had no business rearing its head in connection with a work tip, no matter what their history had been. He’d heard Audrey had become a deputy and wondered why she’d chosen Mesa Point to live and work.
Crystal rattled off the location of a small cabin by the lake. He ignored the fact he’d kissed Audrey for the first time near that location before there’d been a development there. It couldn’t have meant much to her, so it shouldn’t make a difference to him, either.
“I got it,” he ground out.
“Are you sure?” Crystal asked with more of that concern in her voice. Before he could answer, she said, “Never mind. That was a long time ago.”
“Ancient history,” he concurred.
“Check back in when you’ve had a chance to stop by?” Crystal asked, but she had to already know he would for work purposes. His sister wanted to check on him to make sure he was fine after seeing Audrey again all these years later.
He would be. No doubt in his mind. Even though a hand reached inside his chest and squeezed his heart at the thought. “Will do.”
“Be careful,” Crystal warned. Was she still talking about the perp?
“You know it,” he confirmed. “And don’t worry about our grandparents. I can cover.”
“I should be able to drop in soon, but I’ll have to leave just as fast,” Crystal said. He could hear the guilt in her voice.
“We’re a team,” he pointed out. “All of us. And we got this. They won’t be alone again.”
Why did the word alone suddenly take on a new meaning to him?
LOUNGE CHAIR UNFOLDED to the perfect position. Check. Umbrella positioned to block the sun’s unforgiving rays. Check. Good book to read on a much-needed day off. Check.
A sound in the tree line caught her attention, sent an icy shiver racing up her spine. Even after all these years, noise did that to her. Becoming a deputy was meant to face the monsters in the closet, as a manner of speaking. She’d taken self-defense classes to chase the nightmares away. So it frustrated Audrey to no end that her body still reacted to noises as if she was still that little girl hiding in her sister’s closet being hunted by their mother.
The noise was just the wind, she determined.
Audrey Newcastle, formerly Audrey Smith, couldn’t imagine relaxing after finding Lorenzo and Lacy Remington inside their banged-up truck in a ditch off Farm Road 12 yesterday afternoon, saddles splayed across the dirt. She couldn’t conceive of what her life would have turned out to be without those lovely people intervening when she was sixteen years old and in more trouble than she knew what to do with. They’d shown her what real love looked like. All the credit for her turning her life around went to those two and not her pure evil mother and stepfather.
Leaving the hospital without knowing if the Remingtons would survive broke her heart, but she’d known better than to stick around and risk running into Duke. His grandparents gave her a heads-up every time before he visited, so she wouldn’t accidentally run into him. They’d told her it was for the best if she stayed away while he was in town. She’d taken the not-so-subtle hint and made certain to keep out of sight every time. Even now. Walking away from Mesa Point and him all those years ago wasn’t a choice she’d made lightly despite the message she’d asked his grandparents to give him. He would be too proud and too stubborn to forgive her for breaking up with him in that manner, but it had been the only way she could follow through with it.
Rather than go down the path of regret, she sat down facing the lake and opened her book. The glare from the water made her squint. The coffee she’d had a little while ago kicked in, causing her leg to twitch. Sitting still might not be her best move.
Getting up, she repositioned the umbrella but couldn’t quite stop the glare from the water. This was her favorite lake, though, so she sat back down and looked across the surface that seemed to wink at her like brilliant stars on a clear night against a velvet canopy.
Audrey sighed as she picked up her book and opened to page one. Texas was known for its wide-open skies and sunsets that were postcard perfect. Today was no exception. Reading relaxed her.
The minute she got comfortable, her cell buzzed. Of course, it did. If not for the open kitchen window, she might not have heard it at all. Why did she always leave it inside?
Standing up, she debated answering for a half second. She’d lost countless days off covering for one of her coworkers while they attended back-to-school nights or last-minute trips to Galveston to get in more family time before school started. At thirty years old, she had no plans to become a mother, or wife for that matter. She involuntarily shivered at the thought. Parenthood wasn’t for everyone. Her stepfather was a prime example of that. Covering for coworkers was as close as she wanted to get.
By the time she got to her cell, the call had rolled to voicemail. The screen read Boss.
Her hunch that this was going to be a work-related call appeared to be dead-on. Rather than immediately call back, she waited to see if Sheriff J.D. Ackerman left a message.
Her work demanded her full attention. Being the only non-married deputy made her an easy target for helping out. But covering another shift for a coworker wasn’t high on her list today. Not while she was still shaken from the devastating crash on Farm Road 12. After seeing the senior Remingtons in the hospital fighting for their lives, she was heartbroken.
Another noise outside caught her attention.
She surveyed the area, scanning the trees, searching for movement.
A deer? Some other wildlife? Wild animals were common in these parts.
Getting used to life in Mesa Point after growing up in Dallas was a big change, but she’d managed all right. And it mostly felt like home living here.
Audrey stared at the screen, tapping her fingers on the kitchen counter. Waiting. The voicemail icon lit up, showing the number 1. Audrey took a deep breath, steeling her resolve. She tapped the icon, then hit the speaker.
“I need to know a head count for the law enforcement versus fire department chili cook-off,” her boss said. “Are you in?”
Audrey released the breath she’d been holding. That was easy enough to answer. As she started to send her response via text, a male figure showed up at her sliding glass door. Knocked.
Panic gripped her as she turned her full attention to the entrance. Had the noise in the trees been someone watching her?
She tamped down her nerves.
Someone out to get her wouldn’t knock on the glass door.
She turned her full attention to the entrance. Her heart free fell the second she recognized the face. Duke Remington stepped inside the cabin.
Of course, he would show up in town for his grandparents.
But what could he possibly want from her after all this time?