McKettricks of Texas: Tate

Onscreen, the rodeo faded away, almost instantly replaced by a commercial for aftershave.

That broke Tate’s paralysis; he turned, picked up his discarded jacket off the floor, ferreted through its several pockets for his briefly silent cell phone. It rang in his hand, and he flipped it open.

“Tate McKettrick,” he said automatically.

“Holy Christ,” his brother Garrett shot back, “I thought you’d never answer! Listen, Austin just tangled with a bull, and it looks to me like he’s hurt bad—”

“I know,” Tate ground out, trying in vain to recall what city Austin had been competing in that week. “I was watching.”

“Meet me at the airstrip,” Garrett ordered. “I have to make some calls. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Garrett, the weather—”

“Screw the weather,” Garrett snapped. Nothing scared him—except commitment to one woman. “If you’re too chicken-shit to go up in a piss-ant rainstorm like this one, just say so right now and save me a trip to the Spur, okay? I’m going to find out where they’re taking our kid brother and get there any way I have to, because, goddamn it, this might be goodbye. Do you get that, cowboy?”

“I get it,” Tate said, after unlocking his jawbones. “I’ll be waiting when you hit the tarmac, Top Gun.”

Garrett, calling on a landline, had the advantage of hanging up with a crash. Tate retrieved his wallet from the dresser top and his battered leather bomber jacket from the walk-in closet, shrugging into it as he headed for the double doors separating the suite from the broad corridor beyond.

With generations of McKettricks adding wings to the house as the family fortune doubled and redoubled, the place was ridiculously large, over eighteen thousand square feet.

Tate descended one of the three main staircases trisecting the house, the heels of his dress boots making no sound on the hand-loomed runner, probably fashioned for some sultan before the first McKettrick ever set foot in the New World.

Hitting the marble-floored entryway, he cast a glance at the antique grandfather’s clock—he hadn’t worn a watch since his job with McKettrickCo had evaporated in the wake of the IPO of the century—and shook his head when he saw the time.

Four-thirty.

Audrey and Ava’s dance recital had started half an hour ago.

Striding along a glassed-in gallery edging the Olympic-size pool, with its retractable roof and floating bar, he opened his cell phone again and speed-dialed Cheryl.

She didn’t say “Hello.” She said, “Where the hell are you, Tate? Audrey and Ava’s big number is next, and they keep peeking around the curtain, hoping to see you in the audience and—”

“Austin’s been hurt,” Tate broke in, aching as he imagined his daughters in their sequins and tutus, watching for his arrival. “I can’t make it tonight.”

“But it’s your week and I have plans…”

“Cheryl,” Tate bit out, “did you hear what I said? Austin’s hurt.”

He could just see her, curling her lip, arching one perfectly plucked raven eyebrow.

“So help me God, Tate, if this is an excuse—”

“It’s no excuse. Tell the kids there’s been an emergency, and I’ll call them as soon as I can. Don’t mention Austin, though. I don’t want them worrying.”

“Austin is hurt?” For a lawyer, Cheryl could be pretty slow on the uptake at times. “What happened?”

Tate reached the kitchen, with its miles of glistening granite counters and multiple glass-fronted refrigerators. Cheryl’s question speared him in a vital place, and not just because he wasn’t sure he’d ever see Austin alive again.

Suppose it was too late to straighten things out?

What if, when he and Garrett flew back from wherever their crazy brother was, Austin was riding in the cargo hold, in a box?

Tate’s eyes burned like acid as he jerked open the door leading to the ten-car garage.

“He drew a bad bull,” he finally said, forcing the words out, as spiky-sharp as a rusty coil of barbed wire.

Cheryl drew in a breath. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “He isn’t going to—to die?”

“I don’t know,” Tate said.

Austin’s beat-up red truck, one of several vehicles with his name on the title, was parked in its usual place, next to the black Porsche Garrett drove when he was home. The sight gave Tate a pang as he jerked open the door of his mud-splattered extended-cab Silverado and climbed behind the wheel, then pushed the button to roll up the garage door behind him.

“Call when you know anything,” Cheryl urged. “Anything at all.”

Tate ground the keys in the ignition, and backed out into the rain with such speed that he nearly collided with one of the ranch work-trucks parked broadside behind him.

The elderly cowpuncher at the wheel got out of the way, pronto.

Tate didn’t stop to explain.

“I’ll call,” he told Cheryl, cranking the steering wheel. He begrudged her that promise, but he couldn’t reach his daughters except through his ex-wife.

Cheryl was crying. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t forget.”

Tate shut the phone without saying goodbye.

At the airstrip, he waited forty-five agonizing minutes in his truck, watching torrents of rain wash down the windshield, remembering his kid brother at every stage of his life—the new baby he and Garrett had soon wanted to put up for adoption, the mutton-buster, the high school and college heartthrob.

The man Cheryl swore had seduced her one night in Vegas, when she was legally still Tate’s wife.

When the jet, a former member of the McKettrickCo fleet, landed, he waited for it to come to a stop before shoving open the truck’s door and making a run for the airplane.

Garrett stood in the open doorway, having lowered the steps with a hydraulic whir.

“He’s in Houston,” he said. “They’re going to operate as soon as he’s stable.”

Tate pushed past him, dripping rainwater. “What’s his condition?”

Garrett raised the steps again, shouldered the door shut and set the latch. “Critical,” he said. “According to the surgeon I spoke to, his chances aren’t too good.”

Tate moved toward the cockpit, using the time his back was turned to Garrett to rub his burning eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Let’s go.”

Minutes later, they were in the air, the plane bucking stormy air currents as it fought for every foot of altitude. Lightning flashed, seeming to pass within inches of the wings, the nose, the tail.

Eventually, though, the skies cleared.

When they landed at a private field outside of Houston, an SUV Garrett had rented before leaving the capital waited on the hot, dry asphalt. The key was in the ignition; Garrett took the wheel, and they raced into the city.