Renegade's Pride

She said the first thing that came to mind that might make sense. “Thought I saw a bear. Didn’t want it getting in the trash again.”

“We have worse problems in the bar. Come take care of your father,” he said only half-jokingly.

“He’s your father too,” she pretended to remind him as she followed him. Inside, she found Ely behind the bar with a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand and a big grin on his face.

“I’ll be in the back,” Darby said with a disgusted shake of his head. “Apparently, you promised him a Johnson breakfast.” It had been their mother’s specialty named after her family.

The moment Darby disappeared in the back, her father asked, “Find what you was lookin’ for out there?” He was no longer grinning. Nor it seemed had he indulged in the whiskey. Darby’d had no reason to worry. Their father had only been pretending to start the day with whiskey.

Ely put the bottle down and poured them both a cup of coffee from the automatic coffeemaker that Darby had set last night.

“She thought she saw a bear,” Darby called from the back over the clatter of pots and pans.

“A bear?” her father repeated as he studied her over the rim of his coffee cup. He’d definitely seen Trask, she realized, but he was going to keep her secret, since he was the only one in the family who’d ever liked the man his daughter had fallen for at a tender age.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, touched that her father would understand why she wasn’t going to call the law on the only man she’d ever truly loved.

“Ya got to watch them bears, Lillie Girl,” her father said, looking worried, “’specially the renegade ones. They’ll turn you every way but loose.”

CHAPTER THREE (#u843652d6-2263-5fce-a29a-dbc9b4e7698b)

“YOUR FATHER GETS crazier every year,” Deputy Harper Cole said from where he lounged against the wall at the entrance to the cell block.

“Nothing wrong with his right hook, though, huh, Harp.” Flint had inherited the deputy when he’d taken the sheriff job with the understanding that the mayor’s son would be kept on.

The deputy straightened, anger marring his handsome features. “He should have to do time for slugging an officer of the law.”

“If you’d cuffed the prisoner last night, you wouldn’t have that black eye,” Flint said. Earlier he’d noticed the deputy admiring his wound in the side mirror. Harp was good-looking and spent way too much time taking selfies. Flint would bet he’d put one up on Facebook last night.

“He nailed me before I could get the cuffs on him. If it had been any of the other deputies, you would have charged him with assault,” Harp whined.

“The other deputies wouldn’t have taunted him.”

“What?” he asked as if incredulous. “Is that what he told you?”

“He didn’t have to. I know you.”

“Well, it’s my word against his and he’s a liar.”

Flint looked over at the deputy. “Be careful, Harp. You’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth as it is because of complaints against you. I would tread lightly. Even your father, the mayor, won’t be able to save you next time.” He rose to his feet. “Let’s take a ride.”

As Flint drove out of town, his deputy said, “Heard the old Chandler ranch just sold to some corporation called L.T. Enterprises. Like we don’t know who’s buying up the whole damned valley. Wayne Duma.”

Flint said nothing, knowing that Harp was needling him. Wayne Duma was married to Flint’s ex-wife, Celeste, and his deputy knew it was a sore point with him.

“That’s a nice ranch. Maybe Duma plans to move up there and sell that big old house he has in town,” Harp said, shooting him a look no doubt to see if he was getting to him.

Ignoring him, Flint turned onto the road into the south forty acres of his family’s ranch.

Harp let out an oath. “Don’t tell me you’re going out to the missile silo.”

“Ely saw something out there last night,” the sheriff said.

Harp shook his head. “He’s a crazy old coot. No offense,” he added.

“Crazy or not, whatever he saw last night scared him, and I can tell you right now, there is little out there that scares my old man.”

“Except for flying saucers and little green men,” the deputy said under his breath.

Flint didn’t take the bait. Ely Cahill was one of a group of people around the world who swore they had been abducted by aliens. It had happened, according to Ely, back in 1967—the same time an unidentified flying object had been seen by the air force stationed in the area. The disk-shaped object had hovered in the air over more than a half dozen of the missile sites—disabling them. It caused a panic with the military.

According to the military’s records, at one missile sight, an officer on duty reported that lights streaked directly above them, stopped, changed directions at high speed and returned overhead again. He described it as glowing red and saucer-shaped, hovering silently.

That information had been classified for years – even though numerous civilians had also seen the flying object. Of course, no one but the US Air Force had known about this until years later when the information was declassified. By then everyone was convinced that Ely Cahill was a nut-job.

All that aside, they still lived knowing what they had out in their pasture—a bomb capable of destroying everything for miles should something go wrong. The night of the UFO sighting, things had definitely gone wrong.

Not that anyone believed it had been a spaceship filled with aliens—except for their father.

Flint drove out of Gilt Edge toward the missile silo, where his father had claimed he’d seen something last night. Most people drove past the silos without even knowing they were there. The only indication that one of them was there was an eight-foot-high chain-link fence around a small area of land in the middle of the pasture. At the center of it was a concrete pad, a few wires and antennae sticking up, but nothing that gave away the fact that a nuclear missile was resting below ground waiting for someone to push a button.

“Wait here. I’m going to take a look around,” Flint said and got out. He knew better than to get too close. Alarms would go off at the command center and within minutes a military vehicle would come flying up with armed officers inside.

Instead, he walked away from the missile silo, his gaze on the ground ahead of him. The air was crisp this morning. Only a few puffy clouds floated on the breeze. Snow still capped the mountaintops that surrounded the valley. Flint breathed in the rich spring scents and studied the Western landscape.

The grasses had started to green up in the pastures and alongside the highway. Summer was coming, a busy time because of the tourists who traveled through the state. Not that the locals weren’t a handful all year long, especially his father.

He thought of Ely with affection and aggravation. No man was more stubborn or independent. He hoped Lillie was right and that the old man wasn’t losing his mind. He couldn’t imagine him locked up in some nursing home, let alone any of them trying to corral him if he moved in with them.

He hadn’t gone far when he picked up the huge footprints. Flint stopped to glance back at his patrol SUV. Harp was watching him. Anything he did would get back to the mayor and his friends. He took another step, then another as he dropped over a rise, careful not to disturb the tracks he’d found.

Once out of sight, he pulled out his cell phone and took several photographs of the oversize footprints—and the man-size boot prints where there’d clearly been a scuffle.

Before he could pocket his cell phone, it rang. A glance at caller ID showed the call was from his office. “Cahill,” he said into the phone, turning back toward his patrol SUV and the waiting Harp. In the distance, he could see dust as a military vehicle roared toward them.

“Sheriff, I have Anvil Holloway on the line. He says his wife is missing.”

* * *

BACK AT THE Stagecoach Saloon, Darby made enough breakfast for the three of them, but Lillie had lost her appetite. She kept thinking of Trask in the days before he’d left nine years ago. Something had been bothering him for several weeks. A darkness had taken hold of him. Her usually cheerful, laid-back lover was moody and irritable. She’d often found him scowling and he’d definitely been distracted.

“Is it your job?” she had asked.

“What?”

“This mood you’re in.”

“Sorry, I’ve just had things on my mind.”