Redwing's Lady
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Stella Bagwell
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Harlequin
HarlequinChapter One
Deputy Daniel Redwing skidded to a stop in front of the rambling log ranch house and jumped from the pickup truck. Red dust continued to boil up from the tires, settling on his black Stetson and the khaki shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. It was late spring in northern New Mexico and already the high desert was thirsting for rain.
Maggie Ketchum was fumbling wildly with the latch of her yard gate. As he strode quickly in her direction, he noticed how the hot afternoon breeze was blowing bright red strands of her hair into her face.
He was halfway there when she finally managed to fling open the gate and rush toward him. She looked terror stricken as she exclaimed, “Deputy Redwing! What are you doing here?”
Daniel stopped short. Maybe the call had been a hoax, he thought hopefully. This was one time he wished like hell it had been. “Didn’t you telephone the sheriff’s office for help?”
Swiping a hand at her tangled hair, she nodded vigorously. “Yes! But I thought Jess was coming. I specifically asked for him!”
Daniel flared his nostrils slightly, but that was the only outward emotion he displayed at her comment. Jess Hastings was Maggie’s brother-in-law and a damn good undersheriff for San Juan County. But Daniel wasn’t inept. Or maybe she hadn’t meant to imply that at all. He tried to be fair. The woman was obviously stressed to the point of breaking. Having her brother-in-law with her at a time like this would be more of a comfort than the chief deputy of the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department.
“Sorry,” he told her. “I figured you knew Jess was out of town. He and Sheriff Perez are down in Santa Fe at an emergency management meeting.” He stepped closer. “The dispatcher said your call had something to do with Aaron missing. Have you found him yet?”
Aaron was Maggie’s nine-year-old son and the only child she’d had with Hugh Ketchum before he’d been killed in a ranching accident with a bull. This woman had already been through one tragedy in her young life. Daniel couldn’t imagine her going through two.
“No!” she wailed, then lowering her head, she pressed a hand over her eyes and muttered, “Oh God, Daniel, I don’t know what to do! I’ve looked everywhere—the ranch hands are scouring the mesa, but they haven’t found him!”
A sob stuck in her throat, but she choked it back and lifted her head to look at him with pleading blue eyes. At that moment Daniel wanted to step forward and pull her into his arms. But then, that was something he’d wanted to do with the Ketchum widow for months now—ever since he’d come to the T Bar K to investigate Noah Rider’s murder.
For several years now, he’d known of Maggie Ketchum. Every now and then he would spot Hugh’s pretty widow in town, going about the business of shopping and running errands. She was a member of the rich Ketchum family, a family that had settled in San Juan County more than sixty years ago and established the T Bar K Ranch, a range of property that took up a big hunk of northern New Mexico. Three sons and one daughter had been born to Tucker and Amelia Ketchum: Hugh, Seth, Ross and Victoria. Only the last three members of the family were living, and they co-owned the ranch, along with Maggie, who had inherited Hugh’s share after his untimely death.
Daniel had never expected to meet Maggie face-to-face. She was hardly the type of woman who moved in a county deputy’s social circle. But almost a year ago, the remains of Noah Rider, a one-time foreman of the T Bar K, had been discovered on the Ketchum property. As a result, Daniel had been handed the job of interviewing some of the family members who lived on the ranch. Maggie had been one of them. And he hadn’t been able to forget her since.
“Calm down, Maggie. We’ll find him. But first I need to ask you a few things. Let’s go to the porch—out of the sun,” he suggested.
She nodded jerkily, and he took her by the upper arm and led her through the wooden gate and across a small yard kept green by sprinklers. One end of the elevated porch was shaded by a ponderosa pine. Daniel guided her to the cooler shadows where rattan furniture was grouped in a cozy circle.
After helping her into one of the chairs, he took a seat to her right and eased his Stetson off his head.
Watching his slow, purposeful movements caused Maggie to erupt with impatience. “We’re wasting time sitting here like this!” she argued. “We need to be out looking! And I still would have been searching if I hadn’t taken the time to come here to the house to call the sheriff’s department!”
Seeing she was on the verge of becoming hysterical, Daniel reached for her hand and gripped it tightly. “Look, Maggie, it doesn’t do any good to run about searching here and there without any sort of direction or reason.”
She stared at him with wild blue eyes. “That’s easy for you to say! You don’t have a child! You don’t know what it’s like to think he might—”
“Stop it, Maggie!” he interrupted roughly. “If you want to find Aaron you’ve got to get a grip on yourself and help me. Do you understand?”
His sternness seemed to get through to her, and her shoulders sagged as she nodded dutifully. “Yes. I’m sorry, Deputy Redwing. It’s just that I’m so worried and—”
He squeezed her hand. “You called me Daniel a minute ago,” he said gently. “Why don’t you keep it that way? And there would be something wrong with you if you weren’t worried. So now that we understand each other, tell me when Aaron went missing.”
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then released it. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he said, then started over again. “When was the last time you saw your son?”
“About eleven-thirty. He finished his lunch and then asked me if he could go down to the ranch yard to visit with Skinny. I gave him permission and told him to be back home by one.”
Skinny was the oldest ranch hand on the T Bar K. Somewhere in his seventies, the man had worked for the Ketchum family for as long as he and everyone else on the ranch could remember. The old cowboy was good at telling tall tales, and all the kids loved him. Daniel figured it wasn’t unusual for Aaron to go for a daily visit with Skinny.
Glancing at his wristwatch, he noticed it was nearly three. “Does Skinny know when Aaron left the ranch yard?”
She shook her head. “He says that Aaron never showed up. So I can only assume that for some reason or other he never went there.”
The T Bar K Ranch was an enormous property of more than a hundred thousand acres with the ranch house and working headquarters nestled among the foothills of the San Juan Mountains. The nearest neighbors lived miles away, and since none of them had children, Daniel doubted very much that Aaron had headed to any one of the bordering properties, but there was always a remote chance.
“Do you think someone might have picked him up…and…and kidnapped him?” Maggie stammered out the fearful thought that had been going around in her head all afternoon.
No doubt about it, the Ketchums were a rich family, Daniel thought. They’d be able to pay a huge ransom to get one of their own back into the family fold. But Daniel didn’t believe any such evil thing had happened, and he quickly shook his head to allay Maggie’s fears.
“No. The only strangers who come here on the ranch are cattle or horse buyers—not perverts out to kidnap a little boy.”
She gripped his hand and leaned toward him as though she needed to be closer to make him understand her fears. Daniel could have told her he was already feeling her pain. It radiated from her eyes and emanated from the rigid lines of her body.
“But how can you be so sure? Noah Rider was murdered on this place, and nobody knew it for a long time! And even then—”
“Maggie!” he gently scolded. “Forget about all that. It’s in the past. Noah was killed by an old acquaintance—Rube Dawson. He was a blackmailer who didn’t want to lose his illicit income. Rube’s serving his time in prison, and that crime has nothing to do with Aaron. Now tell me, were you and your son getting along all right at lunchtime? Was he angry at you about anything in the past few days?”
Going still, she looked him directly in the eye. “You think he’s run away.”
Daniel nodded, and as soon as he did, he could see tears flood her blue eyes. The sight cut him right through the heart.
“Maybe.”
She looked away from him and swallowed hard. “Aaron didn’t seem to be upset at lunch,” she said in a strained voice. “He seemed fine. But he was angry with me yesterday. I wouldn’t allow him to go on a weekend camping trip with a group of boys.”
“Why?”
She frowned. “What does that have to do with anything? It won’t tell us where Aaron is.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he said smoothly. “Right now I need every bit of information to go on. And I mean everything,” he repeated firmly.
Once again she breathed deeply and tried to brace herself against the swell of terror washing over her. “All right. I didn’t allow Aaron to go because the trip was going to be with a group of teenagers. And since Aaron is only nine, I didn’t really want him to be exposed to the language and behavior that would be going on behind the chaperones’ backs.”
“He’s got to hear it sometime.”
Maggie grimaced. “Yes. But I’d rather it be later. So I told him he couldn’t go and to forget about it. Of course he came back with the usual things that kids say when they’re angry. That I was mean to him. That I didn’t want him to have any fun. That I wouldn’t let him do anything because I—”
She suddenly stopped, and her eyes fell to their coupled hands. Daniel wondered if she was noticing the stark difference between their skins. His, dark copper-brown; hers, milk-white. Daniel was a Ute Indian, from the Weeminuche band, something he didn’t much think about—until he was with this woman.
“Because you what?” he prodded.
Her head shook slightly back and forth. “Because I was too scared—that I was afraid he would be killed in an accident—like his father.”
Whether that was true or not didn’t matter at the moment, Daniel decided. Aaron obviously believed his mother was overprotective, and he figured the boy had lashed out at her by disappearing.
“We’ll find him, Maggie.” Rising from the chair, he helped her to her feet. “Did you see him when he left the house to go down to the ranch yard?”
“No. I heard the back door slam. I didn’t bother to look. I was busy in the kitchen.”
Daniel frowned. “You say the back door? If he were going to walk down the road to the ranch yard, the front door would have made more sense. Would you take me around to the back of the house so I can have a look around there?”
“Certainly,” she said, and motioned for him to follow her.
Daniel remained a few steps behind her as they walked off the porch and around one end of the log house. Although he was absorbing the surroundings as they walked, he also couldn’t help but notice the slight sway of Maggie Ketchum’s hips. She was wearing a pair of faded Levi’s that molded to her bottom like the seat of a worn saddle. A pale pink T-shirt outlined breasts that were rounded and full and jiggled ever so slightly as she walked. She was a voluptuous woman. The kind that men wanted in their arms and their bed.
He couldn’t deny that he’d wanted her from the very first time he’d met her. But he’d carefully kept his attraction to himself. Daniel didn’t get involved with women. Not in a serious way. After watching his mother go through the misery and degradation of being deserted by his father, Daniel didn’t want any part of marriage or the responsibility that went with it.
But even if he hadn’t been soured by Robert Redwing’s behavior, even if he decided he had what it took to be a husband and father, he was smart enough to know that Maggie Ketchum was way out of his reach. She rubbed shoulders with the well-to-do. She could have most any man she wanted. There was no way she would ever want a Ute Indian, who’d grown up hard on the reservation and now lived modestly on a deputy’s income.
“There’s nothing back here, really,” Maggie said, swinging her arm toward a wooden deck furnished with a group of redwood lawn furniture.
Pulling his thoughts back to the moment, Daniel glanced briefly at the back door of the house and the deck that was obviously used for family gatherings. He was more interested in the small gate that opened into a thick stand of ponderosa pine.
“Where does that trail go?” Daniel asked her.
Maggie glanced toward the quiet path that was cushioned by a thick layer of yellow pine needles.
“Oh, it goes for about a hundred yards, then dips down to a meadow where we pasture a few horses. A mare that I ride on occasion, her colt, then Aaron’s gelding, Rusty, and then another gelding.”
“Does Aaron ever go down to the meadow?”
“Sure. He goes there a lot. To visit the horses. And it’s also his job in the evening to feed them their grain. This trail ends at a small barn. That’s where we keep our saddles and tack. Aaron plays around there at times. But I went as far as the barn and called for him. He wasn’t there.”
Her voice trembled as she answered his questions. As Daniel watched her swallow and struggle to compose herself, it was like having a knife stuck in his chest, and the blade just kept twisting and turning. The reaction to her pain was enough in itself to scare the hell out of him.
He didn’t really know Maggie Ketchum all that well. He’d talked to her three, four, maybe five times on the telephone during the Rider investigation. Also, during those long weeks, he’d had two rather lengthy interviews with her. But even those visits had not given him much insight into the beautiful woman behind the sad blue eyes. Yet from the very first time he’d seen her, he’d felt an overwhelming attraction that had only grown over the past few months.
“What about the horses?” he asked. “Did you see all of them?”
“No. At the back of the meadow there’s another grove of trees. When it’s hot, the horses are usually back there for shade. But I didn’t look, I took it for granted that they were there.”
Daniel glanced down at her feet to see she was wearing a pair of sandals. “Maybe you’d better go change your shoes to something sturdier. I think we need to walk down to the meadow and take a look.”
“All right. But what…what are you thinking? Do you think he’s left on one of the horses?”
“If I were still a little boy and I wanted to run away, that’s how I’d do it.” Taking her by the shoulder, he turned her toward the house. “Get ready. I’m going to go use the radio to call in more help. I’ll meet you back here in a couple of minutes.”
Nodding, she ran toward the house. Daniel hurried back to his vehicle to radio the sheriff’s department back in Aztec.
A few minutes later he found Maggie waiting for him by the gate. She was wearing a pair of cowboy boots and had a crumpled straw hat on her head. He was glad to see she was composed enough to think of shielding herself from the elements.
“Three more officers are coming. They’re going to comb the outer perimeters of the ranch, just in case he decided to go to a neighbor’s place,” Daniel told her.
Unlatching the wooden gate, he ushered her through. As they walked single file down the winding trail with Maggie in the lead, she said, “I just can’t believe Aaron could be so spiteful. He’s never given me any sort of problem. Not about obeying me…not with school…not anything.”
“Maybe this time he was more hurt than you realized,” Daniel suggested.
She didn’t reply. But Daniel could see her hand swiping the region of her eyes. The sight touched him, and as they hurried down the trail, he prayed the boy would show up soon.
When they reached the barn, they could see the horses grazing some two hundred yards away in a far corner of the meadow. It took Maggie only a moment to scan the herd and announce that Aaron’s horse, Rusty, was not among them.
“Let’s see if his saddle is missing, too,” Daniel suggested.
Maggie raced into the barn and jerked opened a wooden door to a small room where several saddles hung from ropes attached to the rafters. Bridles, bits, spurs, reins and other riding paraphernalia hung in neat rows along the walls. A stack of folded blankets and saddle pads filled one end of a crudely made counter running along the back wall of the small room.
“His saddle is gone,” Maggie grimly announced. She went over to the stack of blankets and ran her hands along the folds. “So are his favorite blankets. Dear God, he’s taken off on horseback! By himself!”
The idea that he’d gone off alone without her permission stunned Maggie, and all she could do was stare in disbelief at Deputy Redwing.
“Well, better that than going down to the county road and trying to hitch a ride with a stranger,” Daniel told her.
He walked out of the barn and looked down at the hard-packed earth. There were very few discernable tracks, but as he moved out away from the structure, the soil became looser and he eventually spotted small boot tracks accompanied by a set of four matching horseshoes.
Careful to stay out of his way, Maggie followed a few steps behind him and tried to keep her tears at bay. She was more than frightened now, she was angry that her son could have done something so defiant and hurtful.
“It looks like he mounted up here and rode off toward the north,” Daniel declared after a few moments. “Is there anything in that direction he might be going to? Like a cabin?”
Maggie shook her head. “No. There’re only more mountains in that direction. Ross Ketchum, my brother-in-law, runs a few cattle up there in the dead of summer when the grass is on, but other than that there’s nothing.”
Daniel glanced up at the sun. “Aaron probably left when he told you he was going to see Skinny. That means he’s been gone for hours. On a horse, he could have gotten far.”
Maggie closed her eyes for a brief, painful second. “I know,” she said hoarsely. “What are we going to do?”
“I think the best thing we can do is to saddle up a couple of your horses and try to follow his tracks. Are you up to it?”
The question prompted her to look at him. She’d only met Daniel Redwing a few months ago and she still wasn’t sure whether she liked the man or not. He had a spare way of talking that often left her trying to read his mind, and when he looked at her with those dark-brown eyes of his, she felt very unsettled, almost feverish. But he was a good lawman. She’d heard Jess, her brother-in-law, praise him many times and right now her son’s well-being depended on the man.
“Of course!” she answered. “But do you think we can catch up to him before dark?”
“Hopefully. If not, we’ll get dogs and lights. We’ll find him one way or the other, Maggie. Trust me.”
Yes, she had to trust him. Right now he was the best hope she had of finding her runaway son.
Daniel quickly whistled up the horses, and in a matter of minutes they had saddled two mounts and were headed north into the mountains. Maggie was careful to ride a few steps behind the deputy as he leaned over in the saddle and scoured the ground for any signs of Rusty’s tracks.
Most of the time the imprints were faint, and a few times they disappeared altogether, but somehow Daniel seemed to anticipate the route her son had taken and would manage to pick up the signs again.
As they climbed higher into the rough mountains, Maggie grew even more frightened for her son’s safety. Especially with the sun dipping lower and lower in the western sky.
They continued to push the horses up the steep grade, and Maggie voiced her fears to Daniel. “There’re bears up here, Daniel. If Aaron runs onto a cub and the mother is around, he’ll—” She couldn’t finish. The image was too gruesome to speak aloud.
“Bears are usually frightened by horses. I wouldn’t worry about them too much.”
She knew his words were meant to comfort, but they did little to relieve her fears. Deputy Redwing didn’t have a wife or children. He didn’t know what it was like to lose a spouse. Aaron was all she had. Now that Hugh was gone, he was the only thing she lived for. If something happened to him, she didn’t think she would want to go on, or even could go on.
Up ahead of her, Daniel suddenly pulled his horse to a stop and held up his hand in a gesture for her to stop.
Maggie pulled on the mare’s reins. “What’s wrong? Have the tracks disappeared?”
“No. Something happened here. I need to get down and take a look.”
Fear rose like bile in Maggie’s throat, but she tried her best to swallow it down. “What do you mean something happened?”
Daniel climbed out of the saddle and Maggie quickly did the same. Keeping a tight hold on the mare’s reins, she stood, waiting for him to explain. Instead he ignored her question as he stepped away from her and the horses and began to examine a nearby spot on the ground.
As she watched him squat on one knee and brush at the fallen leaves, she gritted her teeth and tried to be patient. But after a few more moments of silence, she said, “I hate to sound critical, but this isn’t the Wild West anymore. Indian scouts and trackers have been replaced with technology.”
Rising to his feet, he gave her a brief glance before he walked to another spot and carefully studied the ground. “Is that so?”
Her throat was unbearably dry, and she swallowed uselessly as she swiped a hand against her sweaty brow. “You know that it’s so.”
He came back to stand a few steps from her. Maggie breathed deeply through her nostrils as she studied his striking bronze features: the high cheekbones, the hawkish nose, the wide forehead and the strong squared jaws. He had to be somewhere near thirty, but when she looked into his eyes she saw a much older man, a man with all sorts of thoughts and secrets and dreams.
“Maggie, this land—these mountains have not changed in a hundred, even two hundred years. The horse your son is riding is still the same as the ones that outlaws and cowboys rode when New Mexico was still just a territory. Tell me, please, how technology is going to help out here, right now?”
Pink color tinged her cheeks. “Well, there are all sorts of things…like a helicopter.”
Daniel shook his head. “I’ve already thought of a chopper. The forest is too thick, they’d never get a look through the canopy of trees.”
“He might come out in the open,” she suggested hopefully.
“He might. But I doubt it. Your son is on foot now. His horse has bolted.”
She stared at him, not wanting to believe him, but very afraid he was right.
“Look, Daniel, I know that some Native Americans believe in visions. My sister-in-law, Bella, has a godmother who often ‘sees’ things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re capable of it.”
The curve of his hard lips pressed into a thin line, and Maggie knew that she had offended him, but she couldn’t help it. Now was not the time to use Indian folklore. Her son’s life was at stake!
“I am a Ute. I’m personally not gifted enough to see things beyond my sight. But I can track most anything. There are signs on the ground here that tell me many things. They can’t be ignored.”
His firm, clipped words struck her like stones, and tears pooled in her eyes. She was ashamed that she had offended this man, and she was also very, very frightened. The combination was more than enough to make her break into sobs.
Drawing in a deep, shaky breath, she wiped her eyes with the back of her arm and fought off the urge to simply collapse. “I…I’m sorry, Daniel. Please…tell me. Tell me what you believe is going on with my son.”
His brown hand wrapped around her upper arm, and without a word he led her over to the two areas he’d inspected a few moments earlier. “See, your son was standing here. There’re the imprints of his boot heels. His horse was here beside him. You can see the tracks of the gelding’s shoes where he stood. But then, here the ground is scraped where the hooves dug deep. The horse was spooked or agitated and took off at a gallop up the mountain.”
Yes. Now that he’d shown her, she could see the story, too. “You’re right,” she replied as her mind whirled with possibilities, none of which was pleasant. “But couldn’t Aaron have mounted up before the horse ran away? How do you know he’s on foot?”
“Because the boot heels follow the horses tracks. See there?”
He pointed to a dim trail winding through the trees. The horse’s hoof prints were visible to her, but not her son’s. Yet she didn’t argue with the deputy. She’d already learned her lesson about that.
“No. But I’ll take your word for it.” She turned her gaze on his face and suddenly she was acutely aware of his fingers pressed around her arm. He was standing only inches away and she could feel heat radiating from his body and the callused skin of his hand against her flesh. His dark face gleamed with sweat, which had also soaked a V shape on the chest of his khaki shirt. His arms and shoulders and thighs were all heavily muscled, and she instinctively knew that he was a strong man. Both physically and mentally. The fact helped to reassure her confidence in his ability as a lawman.
Concern darkened Daniel’s brown eyes as they flicked over her face, and then slowly he reached a hand up to her cheek and pushed back a loose strand of red hair.
“You look very tired, Maggie. Why don’t you stay here and let me ride on?”
She somehow managed to find the strength to straighten her shoulders. “No. You might need me.”
He didn’t say anything, but his fingers continued to rest against her cheek. His eyes probed deeply into hers.
Maggie couldn’t speak. She felt herself being drawn to him. And though she tried to stop the forward motion of her body, she stepped into his arms, anyway.
He seemed to understand that she needed human contact and that she was longing for a pair of strong arms to hold her. He drew her deeper into the circle of his arms and, with one hand against the back of her hair, pressed her head against his shoulder.
“Oh, Daniel,” she said with a broken sob, “I’m so scared.”
“Don’t. Don’t cry, Maggie,” he murmured. “Everything is going to be fine. Aaron is a strong boy, and he’s comfortable with the outdoors.”
The fabric beneath her cheek smelled of sun and wind and a faint musky scent that was utterly masculine and uniquely his. She drew it into her nostrils as her hands clung to his strong back.
“But…he’s…he’s still going up the mountain!” she exclaimed brokenly.
His hand slid up and down her back in a slow, soothing movement. “He has to be getting tired. He’ll stop soon. And then we’ll catch up with him.”
She didn’t make any sort of reply. She couldn’t. Her throat was too choked with a jumble of emotions that weren’t all to do with her missing son. Dear God, she prayed frantically, what was happening to her? Her son was somewhere in these mountains, alone and probably lost. How could she let her mind slip, even for a few seconds, to this man?
Guilt rushed through her like a shocking downpour of cold rain. “We, uh, we’d better be going,” she stammered as she quickly lifted her head and backed away from him.
To her dismay, he caught her by the hand and prevented her from moving completely away from him.
“Not until I know that you’re all right,” he said.
A frantic wail bubbled up in her throat to nearly choke her, and she stared at him as though he’d just lost his senses. “All right? All right! Are you crazy? How could I be? My son is missing! These mountains go for miles and miles! There’s nothing up here but wilderness—maybe a few mountain goats, elk and, God forbid, bear! Tell me, Daniel, am I supposed to be okay with that?”
He caught her by the shoulder, and though he didn’t shake her, his fingers pressed firmly enough into her flesh to catch her attention.
“You’re staying here. I’m going on alone,” he said flatly.
Her mouth popped open to form a shocked circle. “Why?”
His face was grim, unmoving. “You’re becoming hysterical. You’ll be no good to me or Aaron like this.”
Releasing his hold on her, he gathered up the gelding’s reins and stuck his boot in the stirrup, but Maggie managed to grab him by the arm before he could swing himself up in the saddle.
“What are you, inhuman?” she demanded.
Lowering his boot back to the ground, he looked down at her, his features rigid except for one lone muscle ticking in his jaw. “I’m a lawman,” he said in a clipped tone. “It’s my job to keep a cool head.”
“What about a cool heart?” she taunted.
For the past hours while he’d been in this woman’s presence, he’d been fighting with himself to be a gentleman. Maggie was a lady. And he’d been telling himself it would only complicate things if he allowed himself to touch her the way he’d often dreamed about touching her. But her taunt had changed all that. He was no longer a gentleman. He was just a man.
Maggie continued to stand her ground, to wait for his answer, but it didn’t come in the way of words. Suddenly his hands were on her shoulders, her breasts were crushed against his chest and her lips were captured beneath his.
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