Forsaken

She didn’t mind. Let them say what they would. Most days, the tidbits she picked up weren’t all that exciting. This morning, though, she’d hit the mother lode when she’d overheard Fuzz Carpenter.

Fuzz was sitting at the front table at the Branding Iron Café with the rest of the ranchers who gathered there every morning when she heard him mention the woman sheep rancher and her young tender.

Historically sheep ranchers, in what had originally been cattle country, weren’t all that popular. While cattle and sheep ranchers now got along, it was still rare for a woman to be running a sheep ranch. Not to mention the fact that Maddie Conner didn’t take any guff off anyone—especially male ranchers who thought she needed their advice.

“Covered with blood,” Fuzz was saying. “Didn’t take more than a look in that boy’s eyes. Somethin’ bad happened back in those mountains. Mark my words.”

Nettie’s first thought was to call Sheriff Frank Curry and find out what was going on. But then she heard Fuzz say that he’d talked to some new deputy because the sheriff was out of town.

“Bentley Jamison,” Fuzz mocked with the worst impression of a New York accent Nettie had ever heard. “What the hell kind of name is that?” The ranchers all laughed. “Wait until he meets Maddie Conner.” That brought on more laughter. “I wouldn’t even want to take her on.”

Nettie was thinking about the sheriff being out of town. No doubt Frank was visiting his daughter, she thought with a chill.

* * *

SHERIFF FRANK CURRY nervously turned the brim of his Stetson in his fingers as he waited. He was a big man, a throwback from another era with his thick handlebar mustache and longish hair. He could have been a sheriff from a hundred years ago.

The nurse had told him to sit down in one of the chairs in the glassed-in solarium, but he could no more sit than he could fly. He stood at the window, looking out at the rolling land and counting his regrets. They’d been few—before a seventeen-year-old young woman named Tiffany Chandler had shown up at his door. Actually the first time they’d met, he’d caught her in his house going through his bureau drawers as brazen as any thief he’d run across.

Now, at the sound of footfalls behind him, he braced himself and turned to see his daughter and a nurse come into the room.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said.

Tiffany looked paler than he remembered, thinner, too. She’d cut her long blond hair, hacking it short and choppy with a pair of scissors she’d somehow gotten her hands on.

“How the hell does a mental patient get hold of scissors?” he’d demanded when he’d received the call from the hospital.

“Your daughter is a very...determined young woman,” the nurse had told him. The woman meant sneaky, cunning, shrewd, manipulative—deadly. Determined was a kindness to him that sounded more like pity.

Frank knew what extremes Tiffany would go to once she set her mind to something. She’d almost killed him, after killing something he’d loved.

Looking at her now, he could see there was still a lot of hate and anger in her. He knew that defiant, hurt look too well and liked to believe it masked fear rather than soulless hatred.

Tiffany glared at him with huge blue eyes that dominated her waiflike features. She had refused to let anyone repair the damage she’d done to her hairdo. He’d always noticed a fragility about her, but now it was heightened.

He felt desperate to take her in his arms and protect her—just as he had last February when he’d learned who she was. Until then, he hadn’t known he had a daughter. Still didn’t, actually.

After she’d tried to kill him, the county attorney had sent her for a mental evaluation to see if she could stand trial. The state had also insisted on running a paternity test to see if the teenager actually was Frank’s birth daughter.

The report had come in a large brown envelope, but Frank had never opened it. He felt Tiffany was his responsibility no matter what blood ran through her veins because she was the creation of his vindictive ex-wife.

When he thought of his ex-wife, Pam, he often thought of killing her. That thought only lasted an instant because he wasn’t a killer—and because he had created Pam, just as she had created Tiffany. Pam had kept the pregnancy from him, raising the girl alone and programming her to ultimately take revenge against the man they both now hated.

“How are you doing?” he asked Tiffany, gripping the brim of his hat when he wanted more than anything to hold this poor child. But the nurse had warned him not to try.

“How do you think I’m doing in this crazy bin?” Tiffany spat.

Better than prison, he wanted to tell her. But he couldn’t be sure that prison wasn’t still in her future. It would be up to the state eventually. Right now, he was fighting to keep her from going before a judge on attempted-murder charges against an officer of the law. He feared she would be tried as an adult, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her in prison.

“Is there anything you need, anything I can get for you?” he asked.

“You’ve done quite enough. If that’s all...” She started to turn away.

“Tiffany, the doctor said you haven’t been cooperating.”

She raised one very pale blond brow at him as she let her blue eyes return to him.

“If you get well—”

“Is that what you’re telling them?” She crossed her skinny arms over her skinny chest. “That I’m unwell? Crazy? A lunatic just like my mother?” The nurse put a hand on her shoulder, but Tiffany shook it off. “I’m just fine. And so was my mother before she met you.”

He hated that she wouldn’t take responsibility for what she’d done any more than her mother had the one time he’d talked to her after he’d found out about Tiffany.

“You tried to kill me,” he said to the girl now.

Her eyes glittered an instant before she gave him a slow smile. “I’m just sorry I failed.”

“It’s talk like that that will end you up in prison. Don’t you understand I’m trying to help you?”

“By pressing charges against me?”

“That was the state because I am a county sheriff.” And Tiffany was dangerous, no matter how much he might want to argue otherwise. He sighed, his heart breaking with frustration. He wanted to help her. Why couldn’t she see that?

“Tiffany, I love you. You’re my daughter. I want time to make up for the past since I didn’t even know you existed. Give us that time by working with the doctor so you can get out of here.”

Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “You turned my mother against me.”

His fury at his ex-wife boiled to the surface. She’d sent her only child to seek revenge in the most deadly, destructive way for both him and Tiffany. And now she’d washed her hands of the girl. What mother could do such a thing?

Pam was the one who needed to be in a mental institution, he thought, tamping down his murderous rage. “You know I have no control over your mother. She wants to hurt us both. By making you think I’m responsible, it’s just another way for her to drive us apart.”

Tiffany shook her head, tears now streaming down her face. “She said you would blame her.”

Frank balled his fists at his sides. He didn’t know where Pam was, afraid sometimes of what he would do if he found her. He unclenched his fists, not wanting to give his daughter any more ammunition against him.

“This is your fault,” Tiffany cried. “If you had loved my mother and not that horrible Nettie Benton...”

Frank felt his heart clinch at his former lover’s name on his daughter’s lips. There was only one other person Tiffany and her mother hated more than him.

“None of this has anything to do with Lynette,” he said, using the name he’d always called Nettie. “She was married to Bob when your mother and I were together, and there was nothing going on between us.”

“Mother said you never got over the bitch.”

He would have loved arguing that, but he couldn’t. His daughter would have seen the truth. “I married your mother because I loved her.” That much at least was true. Pam’s jealousy had destroyed the marriage, but Tiffany wouldn’t believe that. He hated even thinking about those dark days, never knowing what mood Pam would be in when he returned home.

“Mother said you never tried to get her back.”

They’d had this discussion too many times, and nothing he could say weakened the venom Pam had injected into their daughter’s veins.