Roz Fox - More to Texas than Cowboys

Deciding there was something sinister about the cries, Noah—too keyed up to go back to sleep anyhow—set out to make a thorough search of the area. He traced Greer’s boot tracks from the trees back along the path across her property. Since moving out here, Noah had witnessed Gallagher ranch hands occasionally crossing what was now Greer’s land. Tomorrow, he’d drop in and chat with Ryan Gallagher. Clint’s oldest son was a square-shooter who’d been managing the Four Aces for a while. Clint, known far and wide as a wheeler-dealer, reportedly suffered from macular degeneration, a problem the senator preferred to hide. Failing health or not, maybe the old reprobate wasn’t willing to lose the land. Did he still want it?

Still, this business tonight, with the disembodied scream, smacked of something childish. Too amateurish for a man of Gallagher’s stature, he thought.

Although, if Greer was right and someone was trying to frighten her into leaving Homestead before she fulfilled her contract, who stood to gain the most from her departure? That was a million-dollar question Noah couldn’t answer.

He backtracked to the river again and came across a spot between two flat rocks, where a deep indentation in the sand might have been made by a small boat tying up. There were enough granite slabs between the riverbank and the small copse of trees that a person or two could’ve jumped from rock to rock without leaving footprints.

Noah did that, taking a route designed to keep him out of sight of Greer’s place. Some people were aware he’d bought one of the ranchettes, but he didn’t think it was widely known. So what if his crashing in from the southeast had prematurely upset the perpetrator’s plans to draw out and frighten Greer? He refused to think it might be anything worse.

A tree-by-tree search netted him something lodged in the fork of the largest cypress. This gave Noah immense satisfaction, but left him thinking that his second visit tomorrow morning, after Ryan Gallagher, would be to take his find to Sheriff Wade Montgomery. Dump this in Wade’s lap and see what he made of it.

GREER FELT NOAH’S eyes monitoring every step of her retreat as she hotfooted it home along the lumpy cattle track. Had she not been so furious, his laser-blue eyes would’ve had a paralyzing effect. He’d tried to act so darned innocent. Greer didn’t for one minute believe he was.

She took the pitchfork inside and stood it next to her bed, in case sometime between now and daylight she needed it again.

After locking the kitchen door, she checked to see that the front door missing its locking mechanism had remained shut—that the chair she’d shoved under the knob hadn’t been disturbed. Finding everything as she’d left it, she looked in on Shelby and was profoundly relieved to see that she was still fast asleep.

Greer couldn’t have gone back to bed if her life depended on it. Her nerves felt too ragged.

Remembering that she’d unpacked the box with her herbal teas, she put a kettle of water on the stove and sorted through an assortment of teas one of her favorite guests had given her last Christmas. Julie Masters and her contingent of Western writers happened to be the group Greer hoped would initiate her facility. The women had confessed that they loved exploring new places. Especially spots representative of the Old West. And bless the Sandersons, they’d urged Greer to get in touch with the women as soon as she’d set her opening date. Marisa and Cal both thought Homestead, Texas, would appeal to the writers as the site of their next retreat.

Choosing chamomile tea from the redwood box, Greer passed the kitchen window on her way to nab the kettle before it could whistle and risk waking Shelby. She saw a light in the distance, bobbing along the bank of the river, and stopped short. At first she thought maybe she was looking at the person responsible for waking her up in the middle of the night. Then the person holding the light turned and flashed it up into the trees, where it cast an umbrella over him. Noah.

The pot whistled and Greer absently grabbed it and turned off the burner. She poured water into her cup and dunked her tea strainer up and down as she watched the man who obviously hadn’t gone home when she had.

What was he doing? Was he setting up more dirty tricks?

When her tea was dark enough, she put the strainer in the sink and snapped off the light, plunging the kitchen into darkness. As she sipped her steaming drink, it became apparent that Noah was conducting a grid search of the area that ran from the riverbank and into the trees.

Did that mean he’d told the truth? That he wasn’t the person behind that scare tactic? If not Noah, then who? And why? Greer shivered. The lack of an answer to that question made her feel a lot more uneasy than if she’d been able to pin it on Noah.

Her appetite for tea or anything else was lost as a sick feeling invaded the pit of her stomach. Feet glued to the kitchen floor, Greer stood chewing on her lip until the bobbing light moved from the cypress grove and made a beeline toward Noah’s house. If he’d found anything important, wouldn’t he have come to share the information with her? That was what she would’ve done in his place. She was back to not trusting the younger Father Kelley. Either Father Kelley.

Tomorrow, after visiting the hardware store to fill out paperwork to purchase a firearm, Greer supposed she ought to stop in at the sheriff’s office. And say what? Would anyone take her word over that of the charming priest?

SLEEP EVADED GREER for the rest of the night. She slipped out of bed a number of times to check on Shelby. And to rattle the doors and windows and to listen in the kitchen for any caterwauling, as Noah Kelley had described the cries. She was haunted by the fact that the first sound had seemed so human. The subsequent ones Greer wasn’t so sure about.

When her bedside clock said five-thirty, she gave up attempting to sleep. Instead, she dressed and decided to put her restless energy to work doing something constructive, like unpacking their household.

She felt vulnerable and exposed standing in a brightly lit living room with gray layers of early dawn breaking, so much so that coverings for all the windows now headed her list of items to buy in town. She hoped the material her mother planned to use for kitchen curtains was opaque enough to leave her feeling secure.

Darn, she hated this loss of control. Hated the way the person or persons responsible for those night noises had undermined her confidence. She ran down a list of people who knew she was in town, but who might prefer she leave again. She still couldn’t help thinking it was just too convenient that she’d encountered Father Kelley at the river, and there’d been no sign of anyone else. No footprints except hers…and his.

Greer had the living room unpacked and set up much the same as their cabin at Whippoorwill had been by the time Shelby wandered out of her bedroom, still clutching a stuffed animal.

“Good morning, honeybun. How’s the arm today? Let me check your fingers. Kristin said we should keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get puffy.”

“I can wiggle them and it doesn’t hurt.” Shelby skipped over to show her mother. As she crossed the room, her eyes widened and she grinned. “Did elves come in the night and make this room look just like our old house?”

Greer laughed. “Elf Mom deserves all the credit. While you snored away, sleepyhead, I’ve been busy. But Elf Mom needs a break. How about if I go fix pancakes and bacon for breakfast?”

“Can we have slices of the peach pie Miranda brought yesterday, instead? Grandma put it in the pantry, and we forgot about it last night.”