Hanging Falls Read online

  What the heck? Surprised, Mattie ducked behind a tree, pulling Robo in behind her. With a burst of adrenaline ratcheting up her heart rate, she searched the forest, but she couldn’t spot the guy. “Timber Creek Sheriff’s Department,” she shouted. “Do you have a weapon?”

  Metal clanged against rock, the sound echoing off the granite wall.

  “I threw it down. I’m unarmed.”

  Threw it down? Mattie looked upslope, scanning the boulders and rocks above her.

  “Here,” he called. “Here in the tree.”

  And then she spotted him—at the base of the wall, halfway up a pine with spindly branches that didn’t offer much cover. She couldn’t believe it. She had no doubt that Robo would’ve led her right to the base of the tree, but the guy was surrendering just at the sight of her dog.

  She didn’t trust the situation. Was the guy trying to draw her in to shoot her? But as quickly as the question surfaced, she decided the answer was no. Why would he do that when he could’ve drawn a bead on her as she approached? “Is that your only weapon?”

  “Nothing else on me. And that knife I threw down isn’t mine anyway,” he called back to her.

  “Show me your hands,” she shouted.

  He adjusted his seat on the tree limb and raised his hands, palms out.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them.” Mattie told Robo to stay and crept forward, moving from tree to tree for cover. She glanced behind to check on her dog and found him peeking out from behind the pine, watching her from where she’d left him. At least he was staying put.

  Satisfied that Robo would obey her verbal commands, she drew her service weapon. She didn’t know if it would be necessary, but until she could get this man on the ground and determine that he was unarmed, she didn’t want to take any chances. He’d watched her earlier and he’d fled when she and Robo climbed up here, not to mention that he’d been carrying a knife, the type of weapon that had been used to carve letters onto their victim.

  She crouched and moved to a point where she could see the guy more clearly. He looked to be in his twenties, with shaggy brown hair reaching almost to his shoulders. He wore a ragged denim jacket and jeans. Dirt smudged his thin cheeks below deep-set dark eyes that looked like burning holes.

  After covering the last few yards to the base of the tree, she kicked the knife away so that it would be behind her. She didn’t take the time to examine it, but on first glance it looked like a large buck knife with a fixed blade. “Come down from the tree slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “Did you tie that dog up?”

  He must be really afraid of dogs to react this way. “You don’t need to worry about him as long as you do what I tell you.”

  Keeping his hands raised to grasp the branches above, the guy inched his way down the tree. He wore a pair of high-top tennis shoes that were muddy and worn and looked like they’d seen better days. Once he reached the ground, he raised his hands above his head and turned to face Mattie, his eyes shifting between her and Robo.

  Mattie wanted Robo beside her, because she needed to holster her gun to pat this guy down. Even though she believed he was too afraid to try anything stupid, she was still alone in the forest and didn’t want to take any chances. “I’m going to call my dog. Keep your hands in the air and don’t make any sudden movements.”

  The guy blanched under the dirt on his face. “Don’t let him bite me.”

  “Stay still, just as you are.” Without glancing away, Mattie called Robo to come to heel. Within a split second, she felt Robo brush against her left leg. “Stay,” she told him.

  “I am!” the guy yelped, evidently thinking she was talking to him. He kept his hands held high.

  Even though apprehending a fugitive like this was one of the most dangerous duties a cop had to perform, Mattie had to suppress the urge to laugh. “Good,” she replied. “Now keep your hands up and spread your legs. Do you have any weapons or needles on you?”

  “I don’t use needles. I don’t carry a gun or anything. I found that knife in the forest … seriously. It’s not mine.”

  Mattie locked his hands in hers at the top of his head and began to pat him down, starting at his armpits. She noted how skinny he was around his rib cage. When she reached his waist, she encountered a bulky object hidden by his shirt and jacket. “What’s this?”

  “My pack.”

  “What’s in it?”

  He hung his head. “Just some food. Some personal stuff.”

  She thought his posture meant there was something in there that he didn’t want her to find. “I’m going to lift your shirt and remove this pack.”

  As she grasped the hem of his shirt, her fingers brushed a strap. She tugged on it to move the pack around toward his back and found the buckle. The fanny pack felt like it definitely contained something. Holding on to the strap, she let it dangle toward the ground until she could set it down gently. She finished frisking the guy and backed off, stooping to pick up the pack.

  The entire time, Robo had stayed where she’d left him. A quick glance told her that he stood with his head up, ears pricked, alert and on guard. Robo weighed in at about one hundred pounds. Big and dark, he often frightened a perpetrator, but he looked beautiful to Mattie. She backed up until she was beside him again.

  When Robo tracked a bad guy during training, he always got to take a bite at the end of the exercise, something he loved. Of course, the officer assigned to lay down the track during a training session wore a protective bite suit, which this guy didn’t, and Mattie was pretty certain that Robo was smart enough to know the difference. Her dog was being remarkably patient under the circumstances. She murmured, “That’s right,” to reinforce his good behavior, and then “Watch” to let him know his work wasn’t done yet.

  “Okay,” she said to the guy in her gruff cop’s voice. “Who are you, and what are you doing up here?”

  FIVE

  After lunch, Cole and Angie dropped Riley off at her house before heading out to his next appointment. Angie scooted over from the middle to sit by the window when Riley stepped out of the truck.

  “I’ll call you later,” Riley called to her as Angie pulled the passenger’s side door shut and waved.

  Cole leaned forward so that Riley could see him and waved too. He waited a few seconds while Angie strapped on her seat belt.

  “Thanks for coming to help,” he said, as he headed for the highway.

  “You didn’t give me a choice.” Angie stared out the window.

  Angie wasn’t normally mean-spirited, and Cole had to believe that she wanted to repair their relationship. This girl had been through a lot in the past year: her parents had divorced, her best friend had been murdered, her little sister kidnapped, and now her dad had fallen in love with a new woman. Angie loved Mattie too, Cole had no doubt about it, and he hoped that affection would help win her over in the end.

  Cole turned onto the highway to head north out of town. He drove past his own place and set a course for the ranch owned by two brothers who raised cattle and horses. It was about five miles away, which gave him time to start a conversation with his daughter.

  “I’m sorry that Parker was rude to you,” Cole said, glancing at Angie sideways. “I told him not to come by again. Let me know if he does.”

  Angie was still gazing out her window. “What did you do, take him outside and punch him in the face?”

  Cole huffed a short laugh. “No, but I wanted to. Luckily, I controlled myself.”

  Angie granted him a thin smile, the first she’d given him in weeks, and it encouraged him more than it probably should have.

  “We can’t control what people in this town gossip about, Angie. All we can do is try to control our reaction to it.”

  “You told me that before.” Angie turned away from him again.

  “Sorry for kicking a dead horse, but it seems like good advice.”

  Angie sniffed—whether in disdain or in agreement, he could
n’t tell. He preferred to believe the latter, although he realized he might be delusional.

  Unsure how to initiate the discussion they needed to have, he decided to test the waters. “Angie, I know you’re upset, but I hope you’re ready to talk about it again. What are you thinking these days?”

  She shrugged, not giving him eye contact. “I’m thinking that men are all alike.”

  Ouch! He hoped she wasn’t putting him in the same category as Parker Tate, but it sounded like she just had. “We might have our subtle differences.”

  “Sure you do.”

  Angie could dole out her share of sarcasm. “Let’s talk about me specifically,” he said.

  She gazed out the window. “Okay, Dad. Let’s talk about you.”

  “If there’s one thing in the world you and Sophie can count on, it’s that I love my kids. You guys are number one in my life, and you always will be.”

  Angie looked at him, her face stony and her jaw clenched. She looked like she had something to say but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “Say what you’re thinking, Angie. I want to know.”

  “You can say that, Dad.”

  He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “What? You don’t believe it?”

  She shook her head and looked away. “I do believe you love us, and you say you put us first. But …”

  “But what?”

  “You’ve always got things going on in your life.”

  It stung to hear the same old story, first told by his ex-wife, coming now from his daughter’s lips. Cole took a moment to think about it instead of allowing himself the knee-jerk reaction of getting defensive. True, he stayed busy with his work and volunteering as part of the county sheriff’s posse. But Angie was busy with school and extracurricular activities and friends—he could go on and on. Things that enriched her life, things he wanted her to participate in.

  “I think we all keep busy, Angel, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. And if I’m not mistaken, we make sure we have meals together as often as we can, and we work together at the clinic. That’s why I asked you to ride along with me this afternoon.” Cole paused, thinking life wasn’t always work alone. “Maybe we need to make more time to play together—I don’t know. But spending time with each other will always be important, no matter who else comes into our lives.”

  “But Dad, why do you have to complicate things by falling in love with Mattie? We can’t handle adding someone else to our family. Why can’t you just stay friends and keep things the way they are?”

  She sounded close to tears, and Cole felt grateful she’d articulated what really mattered to her. He tried to listen to the fears that lay beneath the words. “I wish I could explain the ways of love. I really do. But sometimes I think I don’t understand it any better than I did when I was your age.”

  He paused for a moment to examine her. He still thought of her as his daughter, his little girl, but she was sixteen now and had grown into a lovely young lady. As far as he knew, she had yet to find her first boyfriend. Had her parents’ divorce stunted her interest in developing a relationship with the opposite sex? Was that something else he should add to his guilt list?

  “I’m not sure yet if the feelings I have for Mattie will lead to adding her to our family.” He hoped lightning didn’t strike him right here in the truck, because truthfully, asking Mattie to marry him occupied his mind a lot these days. “If Mattie and I do decide to marry, you and Sophie will be an important part of that decision. I can promise you that neither of us would take it lightly.”

  “It’s hard enough to deal with having one mom. I don’t want to have to deal with two.”

  “We’re repairing the relationship with your mom, Angie. I have faith that we can work things out with Mattie too.”

  Angie shrugged, and as she stared out the window, Cole sensed that while she wasn’t ready to agree, he’d at least opened the door to them talking about it. That was a big step, and maybe he should back off and talk about the work thing.

  “When I was your age, life was simpler. You know your grandparents … Grandma nagged your granddad, and he teased her back. I used to wonder if they even liked each other, but they always stuck together during the hard times. We didn’t have much family playtime. We worked together on the ranch, Granddad yelled at us if we did something wrong, and he didn’t waste time telling us if we did things right. With him, no news was good news.” Cole glanced at Angie and smiled, hoping she was at least observing him from the corner of her eye. “And he certainly didn’t waste time telling us he loved us.”

  Angie glanced at him, some of the edges on her face softened.

  “So when I had kids, both of you girls, I don’t think I really knew how to interact with you. Your mom is a good mom.” When she made a noise as if to disagree, he hurried on, wanting to stay on track and finish what he had to say. “Now, I know you’ve had your differences, but she was good with you when you girls were little. And it was easy for me to just do what I knew how to do: work. I let your mom handle the child-rearing. But you know what? I didn’t know what I was missing. I loved you girls, I loved my family, but I didn’t know how important it was for us all to spend time together. And I didn’t know how much I lost out on during those early years.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll slip into your old habits,” Angie said in a hushed voice.

  Cole paid attention and received the message loud and clear. He knew it was important not to jump in with reassurances that to her were empty promises. “I can see how you’d think that. I probably look like a lost cause to you.”

  Angie glanced at him. “You’re okay.”

  “I’m trying, but sometimes I do better than others. I know you have friends you like to be with too, and I appreciate that you come home to dinner in the evening as often as you do.”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t go over to dinner with my friends?”

  “Absolutely not! You’re welcome to spend time with your friends, because you don’t overdo it. You know what I mean? We all have our own interests, our own commitments, and our own friends. You have more going on in your life than I did when I was a teenager. I’m happy that you’re committed to family and to your little sis. I’m thankful that Mrs. Gibbs makes a nice home for us all to live in together. But I also know that each of us has to venture out into the world too. That’s just the way of life.”

  Angie looked down at the floorboard. “I know you want to go out with Mattie more than you do.”

  “Hey, Mattie and I are both homebodies. She’s the one that suggests we get together at our house instead of going out. She wants to be with you kids as much as I do.” Balancing a new relationship while making sure he didn’t neglect the kids had become a challenge, and Cole was grateful that Mattie seemed to love being with his kids—though lately Angie had spent more time in her room than before, and her absence hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  They reached the entryway to the ranch, where his next appointment awaited. Cole slowed, turned, and bumped over the cattle guard beside the sign that bore the name Double K. The place was owned by brothers Keith and Kevin Perry, two rough-around-the-edges men whom Cole had worked for off and on for several years. Both were in their sixties, and rumor had it that their wives had left them years before they moved here to start ranching. Evidently neither had found someone else to spend his life with, so the two of them lived in a single clapboard ranch house that had grown more and more run-down over the years.

  Angie changed the subject to the business at hand. “What are we going to do here?”

  “Float a stallion’s teeth.”

  Angie remained silent at first while they bumped along the washed-out lane, filled with potholes, that led to the house, barn, and corrals. “What does floating teeth mean?”

  Cole thanked his lucky stars for teenage curiosity. “A horse’s upper jaw is wider than its lower, and they chew with sort of a circular motion. Kind of like grinding their food between two
flat stones. But as they age, they develop sharp edges on the outside of their upper teeth and the inside of their lower ones that have to be knocked off so they don’t bite the inside of their mouths and can still chew their food. We use a tool called floats that grind off the sharp edges.”

  Cole had been at this business long enough to manage on his own, but he’d wanted this time alone with Angie, and he hoped he’d made a little progress. He suppressed a sigh as he parked outside a barn made from rough-cut lumber that sat beside an arrangement of steel-pole corrals.

  The older brother, Keith, came from the barn, his lips pinched around the wad of snuff he always kept tucked inside his lower lip. Cole had never seen him without it. Keith wore denims, a plaid shirt that might not have seen a washing machine in weeks, and low-heeled cowboy boots slouched over at the sides to compensate for his bowed legs. His dark hair was streaked with gray, his moustache and beard even more so.

  Cole exited the truck and headed toward the back to round up his supplies.

  Keith spit a stream of tobacco juice off to the side before speaking. “Hey, Doc. How ya doin’ this summer?”

  “Doing well, Keith. Have you met my daughter Angie?” Cole completed the introductions while Angie stayed on the far side of the truck and said hello.

  Cole kept up with Keith’s running conversation about the rainy weather while he gathered power floats, a tray full of sedation drugs and syringes, and all the paraphernalia he would need. He handed the tray of drugs to Angie, picked up the rest, and followed Keith inside the barn. Since the day was cloudy, the inside of the barn was dimmer than usual. He scanned the ceiling and spotted a light. “Okay if we turn the light on in here, Keith?”

  “Sorry, Doc. That light burned out—oh, let me think … I’d say about a year ago.”

  The stocks, a metal stanchion designed to hold horses still so they could be worked on, were set close to the doorway, so Cole thought he could make do. There was a shelf cluttered with cans of all types of balms, ointments, and pastes that ran along the wall, covered with dirt and oily grime. A black livestock whip hung from a nail, beside which he spotted an electrical outlet on the wall. “All right. Angie, I’ll plug in here, and maybe you could just hang on to the tray until I need it.”