Royal Protector

When the world began to spin, she thought she might be sick. Her eyelids fluttered closed and, try as she might, she could not reopen them.

The ensuing darkness that closed over her brought with it a strange mix of stark fear and blessed relief. The worst was over, she told herself. She felt herself sinking slowly, slowly down into a place where there was no light and no sensation, except for the achingly familiar sound of a child crying out from the depths of her darkest memories.

ATTENTION ALL UNITS in the vicinity of mile marker 391 and Destiny Canyon Ranch Road. Reports of a shooting. One unconfirmed fatality. Other injuries reported, but also unconfirmed. Shooter’s identity unknown. Officers advised to approach the area with extreme caution.

Even before the dispatcher finished her call, Sheriff Lucas Garrett cranked the steering wheel hard to the left and sent the white SUV with the Bluff County sheriff’s seal emblazoned on the doors into a skidding U-turn.

With his free hand he reached for the handheld radio on the seat beside him. “Sylvia, this is Sheriff Garrett. I’m less than five minutes from the scene. Fill me in.”

Despite the early summer air rushing through the open window, it chilled him to think of his family’s high-country ranch as a crime scene.

“It happened in the hills, Sheriff. Five miles out on Summit Trail.”

Immediately, an image of the narrow, winding trail that led to the summit of Mount Destiny formed in Lucas’s mind. He’d ridden that trail on horseback and hiked it on foot countless times, but it had never seemed ominous in any way until now.

“Who made the call?” he asked. “Was it Cal?” Or had it been his older sister, Maureen—or Mo, as everyone had always called her.

“No, sir. It was Virgil.”

Virgil Blackburn had been the foreman at Destiny Canyon Ranch for as long as Lucas could remember. “Did Virgil say what had happened? Do you have any idea who was…hurt?”

“No, sir,” Sylvia came back quickly. “He just said a man had been shot. Killed. And that a woman had been injured. He said he was calling from an extension in the barn. He hung up while I was dispatching emergency medical.”

“Try calling the house,” Lucas ordered.

“I already did, Sheriff. Right after Virgil hung up. But no one answered. I’ll try again and get back to you.”

Lucas thanked his dispatcher and with a mounting feeling of dread, he tossed the radio onto the seat beside him and tried to concentrate on his driving.

As the speedometer inched past ninety, his eyes remained riveted on the road. His thoughts, however, were firmly fixed on his family, on Pop and Cal and Mo. The loved ones who still resided on the ranch where he’d grown into manhood, where some of his sweetest memories lived on, as well.

Despite the lawman’s logic that told him not to jump to conclusions, Lucas couldn’t shake the words fatality and injuries from his mind.

Why hadn’t Cal made the call? Where was Mo? And why hadn’t anyone picked up the phone when Sylvia called back? Those questions and a dozen more, equally disconcerting, nagged him as he raced down the highway toward the unknown.

When he was within a mile of the ranch turnoff, he grabbed his radio again. “Unit 4, come in.”

Deputy Eli Ferguson responded immediately.

“What’s your location, Eli?” Lucas asked.

“Westbound at 376.”

“Any sign of an ambulance?”

“They’re right behind me, Lucas.” His usually calm west Texas twang sounded tight and tense. “I’ll stay with them and escort them all the way in.”

Eli signed off and two more deputies checked in. Lucas could hear the edge in his men’s voices. He knew they were all thinking the same thing: The call to Destiny Canyon Ranch could mean one of his own family members had been shot. A call that involved a loved one was every cop’s worst nightmare.

And Sheriff Lucas Garrett was no exception.

IN A CLOUD OF DUST, Lucas roared up in front of the sprawling ranch house where various members of the Garrett clan had lived for going on fifty years.

Cal was waiting at the edge of the yard, and Lucas couldn’t remember ever being more pleased to see anyone than he was to see the man who had always been more like a brother than a nephew. Like all the Garrett men, Cal was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered. He crossed the gravel driveway in four long strides and met Lucas as he was getting out of the SUV.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Cal said.

“Where’s Mo? Is she all right?”

“She’s inside.”

“What about Pop? Where is he? Are you sure Mo’s okay?” Lucas fired off his questions in rapid succession as he charged across the drive, with Cal close beside him.

“They’re fine. Everyone’s fine,” Cal said. At the gate that opened into the yard, he put a hand to Lucas’s shoulder. “Slow down and listen to me, will you? Everyone’s fine. The family wasn’t involved.”

Lucas stood staring at his nephew, almost afraid to allow himself the relief that flooded him. “Thank God.” He felt the gentle pressure as Cal squeezed his shoulder in agreement. “So, what did happen? Sylvia said a man had been shot.”

“He was one of Mo’s guests.” Cal pulled his battered straw Stetson from his head, ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed. “And he’s dead. Poor bastard never knew what hit him. The woman was riding with him. She was attacked and hogtied. Somebody tried to drug her, but she seems to be all right, now.”

Both men turned to see Eli Ferguson and the ambulance pulling into the drive. Cal motioned the paramedics through the gate and across the yard toward the front door.

“Tell us what you know, Cal,” Lucas said when Eli had joined them on the porch.

“They were about five miles out on Summit Trail, on their way back after spending the night camped out on the mountain.”

“Any sign of the shooter?”

Cal shook his head. “No. He was long gone by the time I got up there. I left a couple of my ranch hands to stay with the body until you could get here.” Cal went on to address Lucas’s concerns before he could voice them. “Don’t worry. They’re both armed and I told them to watch their backs and not to disturb any tracks that might still be there.”

“I’ll need horses for half a dozen men,” Lucas said. It wouldn’t be easy tracking the killer through the miles of National Forest that bordered the ranch, but it would be nearly impossible on foot.

Cal nodded. “No problem.”

Lucas started back toward his vehicle and both men followed. As he walked, he gave Deputy Ferguson his orders. “Stay here and get a preliminary statement from the woman. I’ll want to question her myself, later. But right now I need to get up on the mountain. Call the officer at the Mount Destiny ranger station and apprise him of the situation. Tell him to keep his eyes open and his back covered.”

Once Lucas got to the crime scene, he’d set a perimeter and establish a command post. Afterward, he’d send his deputies—six, not counting the man he planned to assign to guard duty at the ranch house—into the mountains to try to track the killer. If they were lucky, they’d pick up a trail before nightfall.

“Helluva deal,” Cal said as he followed Lucas back to his vehicle. “A man comes here for a vacation and gets shot out of the saddle in broad damn daylight.” He sighed and shook his head. “Who’d have thought something like this could happen here?”

“What can you tell me about the dead man, Cal?”

“Name’s Miller. Hugh Miller. He checked in on Tuesday after booking a cabin for a month.”

“What about his wife? Have you talked to her?”

“No. And she’s not his wife. Her name’s Lexie Dale. She checked in on Tuesday, as well, but she’s staying in her own separate cabin.”

“Miller’s significant other?”