Natural Born Lawman

Though she’d had every right, she hadn’t touched a dime in their joint account for fear Will would accuse her of theft. With her name on the account the wild charge wouldn’t stick, of course, but she hadn’t wanted to give the police any excuses at all to chase after her. It was terrifying enough that Will was likely to go ballistic.

That, she reminded herself staunchly, was exactly the reason she had left. She’d had no choice. Will’s temper was out of control. He never talked anymore. He shouted, he threw things. A vase had whizzed past her head, just a few nights ago, only inches from making contact. The violence in his eyes had terrified her. He hadn’t hit her or their son yet, but she’d heard enough about abuse to know that it was coming. She wasn’t going to stick around and wait for it, not when each scene was already escalating to a more dangerous level.

Nor was she going to waste time trying to convince Will to seek counseling. His pride and his very visible career would never allow him to admit he needed help. For once in her life, she was doing the smart thing. She was going to cut her losses before tragedy struck.

She hadn’t been so smart when she’d impetuously moved to Oklahoma City and almost immediately begun an affair with Will Longhorn. Barely nineteen, she’d been so anxious to get away from home and her overly protective parents, to be on her own. The irony was that she’d spent hardly a minute truly on her own before becoming entangled with Will.

He had been her first boss, a twenty-six-year-old attorney in the town’s top law firm with a dazzling career ahead of him. Everyone had said so. He was a Native American with the whole world spread out before him. There’d even been talk of a run for political office, first in Oklahoma, then for Congress. Will Longhorn had charisma. He was smart. He had unblemished integrity, as well, a rarity in politics.

And before too terribly long, he had a beautiful, blond-haired, all-American wife at his side and a baby on the way. The image had been set, the campaign posters all but printed.

At first Patsy had been thrilled to be a part of it all. She’d been caught up in every girl’s dream. She had been so proud of her handsome husband, so in love with him.

But all too soon, behind the public displays of affection, behind the jovial smiles for the camera, there had been the private dissension. Even as he showcased his trophy wife and beautiful baby boy, privately Will seemed to resent both Patsy and their son. And because she had given up her job to be a stay-at-home wife and mom, she was totally dependent on Will for everything. It was what he’d wanted, but he’d thrown that back in her face a time or two, as well.

In general the abuse was subtle and mostly verbal, but it was signal enough to her that it was time to go. She might have married in haste, but she had no intention of paying for it for the rest of her life. And no one was going to harm her son. No one.

Protecting Billy became her first priority. Already in his young life, he had heard too much fighting, witnessed too many vicious arguments. If she and Will couldn’t live together peacefully, if not lovingly, then it was time to go.

She had fled first to her parents, but Will had followed and the scene he’d caused had terrified all of them. He’d bashed the headlights on her car, dented the hood with a blow of his fists. He’d threatened her, accused her of trying to ruin his career, their future. He’d threatened her parents, blamed them for harboring his wife when she belonged at home with him. Her parents were just old-fashioned enough to agree that a wife’s place was at her husband’s side, no matter the circumstances. She had seen the unspoken agreement in their eyes, but still she had balked at leaving.

And then Will had sealed her fate. He had calmly vowed to take Billy away from her if she didn’t agree to come home with him.

“You won’t even get weekend visitations by the time I’m through. I can do it,” he’d said with cool cruelty in his eyes. “You know I can.”

She hadn’t doubted it for an instant. She had gone with him simply to keep her baby and to get Will away from her frightened family.

Satisfied that he’d gotten his way, Will had promptly gone back on the campaign trail in the mayoral race that was to be the stepping-stone to his entire political future. And the low-key pattern of denigration had begun again—the sarcastic barbs, the ruthless demands, the never-ending criticism. She had taken it for six more humiliating months while she secretly made her plans. And all the while she watched Will, waiting for an explosion of temper that always came.

This time when she’d left, she had known that wherever she went, she was on her own. A local shelter had provided a safe harbor for a day or two. Then she had turned the car toward Texas, hoping that simply crossing the line into another state might offer her some protection. Too many cops, too many judges, too many politicians in Oklahoma owed favors to Will or to the partners in his law firm. Even though she’d worked there, if it came to a choice between her and Will, she had no doubt which of them would receive the partners’ backing.

The memory of that violent explosion in front of her parents’ home in full view of the neighbors had kept her on the run for a week now, trying to decide where it would be safe to settle down and begin an anonymous life. While in Oklahoma, she hadn’t dared to stay even in a cheap motel for more than a good night’s sleep.

As of today, her options were running out. Her pitiful savings were pretty much wiped out and she didn’t dare phone her parents for help. For all she knew Will would have bugged their phone. It wasn’t beyond him to use the law to his own advantage, especially when her second disappearance at the height of his first campaign for office was no doubt causing him a great deal of public embarrassment.

This time she was truly on her own, for the first time in her life, and the decisions she made were critical not only to her own future, but to the baby’s. This was the ultimate test any woman could face. How she handled it would prove what she was made of. So far, she feared, she was falling pitifully short, but she was determined to pull it together. She might be almost out of money and be running low on ideas, but the one thing Patsy Gresham Longhorn had was gumption.

Billy whimpered, reminding her that she was going to have to come to a decision in a hurry. He needed food and, quite possibly, medical attention, though she was pretty sure the fever was little more than a summer cold.

With the two-year-old still cuddled in her arms, she tried awkwardly to unfold the road map she’d picked up at an earlier highway rest stop. Dallas was close, but was a big city the best choice? Wouldn’t the police there be on the lookout for her, if Will had spread the word that she was missing?

A small town with more casual, less experienced law enforcement seemed a safer bet. If her logic was faulty, so be it. She felt more at ease with the thought of trying to make a home for herself and Billy someplace quiet and peaceful, someplace where they’d never heard of Will Longhorn. Her gut instincts had gotten her this far. She might as well trust them a little longer.

Staring at the choices on the map, all of them unfamiliar, she finally zeroed in on a tiny speck in the southwestern part of the state: Los Piños. It was only a couple of hundred miles away. The name suggested forests of pine trees, which appealed to her. She craved the serenity such a setting suggested. It reminded her of the town where she’d grown up, the town she’d been in too much of a hurry to leave. Funny, what a difference a few agonizing years could make. She would have given almost anything to be able to go back there now. Since she couldn’t, it would have to be Los Piños.

The decision made, she got back on the highway, then took the next exit and stopped at a minimart to buy milk and some cereal for the baby and a readymade sandwich and soft drink for her. After filling the car with gas, she had ten dollars left, that and whatever change might be buried in the bottom of her purse and in Billy’s diaper bag.

Despite the dire circumstances, Patsy felt almost upbeat as she drove into Los Piños a few hours later. She gazed around at the small downtown area with its quaint shops and family-owned restaurants. Though the buildings were old, everything was freshly painted and brightly lit. There was no mistaking that this was a town that took pride in itself. For a second she allowed herself to envision being a part of it, to imagine belonging. For a moment anyway, despair vanished. A feeling of contentment, mixed with a rare smidgen of hope, stole over her.

“We’re here, Billy,” she whispered to the now-sleeping boy. “We’re home.” Whatever it took, she would find a way to make that true.

She reached into the back seat and touched his cheek to seal the vow, then drew back in shock. He was burning up with fever. Hope gave way to panic and desperation.

“It’ll be okay, baby,” she promised. Whatever she had to do, it would be okay.

* * *

“Dadgumit, Justin, if you’d been the law around here when we were kids, I’d have spent my entire teens in jail,” Harlan Patrick Adams grumbled, standing on a corner in downtown Los Piños just before dinnertime.

Justin grinned at his cousin. “Probably should have,” he said.

“You were no better than me,” Harlan Patrick reminded him. “If I belonged in a cell, you surely belonged right there next to me. What happened to you? When did you turn into a saint?”

“Hardly that,” Justin said. “It’s just that there’s right and wrong. Somebody’s got to see to it that folks remember the difference.”

“Yeah, but that kid you just threatened with jail time threw a gum wrapper on the street. He didn’t rob the savings and loan.”

“Stop the little crime and you’ll have less trouble with the big stuff,” Justin retorted. “That’s what that mayor up in New York says and it’s worked.”

“It makes my blood run cold hearing you talk like that,” Harlan Patrick taunted. “Guess that means you won’t be playing poker with the rest of us out at White Pines later tonight, seeing as how gambling’s illegal. Or were you thinking of coming along and arresting Grandpa Harlan when he rakes in his first pot?”

Justin scowled at him. “Very amusing. I’ll be there and I intend to take every dime you lay on the table, cowboy.”

Harlan Patrick didn’t appear unduly worried. “Just as long as you leave that gun locked up at home,” he said. “It makes me very nervous to know that you’re carrying a weapon. You never could shoot worth a damn.”

Justin grinned and fingered his holster. “I’m better now. Want to see?”

Harlan Patrick shuddered. “I think I’ll pass, thanks.” He gave Justin a mock salute. “Later, cousin.”

“Yeah, later.”

After all their years of troublemaking, Justin got a kick out of watching Harlan Patrick squirm at the sight of his uniform. No one in the family, least of all his own father, quite understood what had motivated him to become a sheriff’s deputy. Jordan Adams had saved a spot in his oil company for Justin and he was mad as hell that his son had turned it down. Justin figured his brother-in-law would settle into the position just fine and sooner or later everyone would get over his defection.

Ironically, it was the family’s very own values that had taken root in Justin’s heart and made him long to keep the whole community of Los Piños as safe and secure as his family was on their various ranches. In the cutthroat oil business, his father had a straightarrow reputation for honesty and never cutting corners. Grandpa Harlan’s instinctive decency and tough-love brand of justice were as ingrained in Justin as breathing. Even as a kid, when he and Harlan Patrick had played cops and robbers, he’d always, always wanted to be the good guy. To him, becoming a cop was less a surprise than a destiny.

He stood on the sidewalk in the middle of town after his cousin had gone and surveyed his domain. Not a bit of trouble in sight. Not even a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, he observed, smiling at the memory of that kid’s expression as he’d snatched up the offending piece of paper and thrown it into the litter basket on the corner. His actions had been accompanied by a stern lecture meant to put the fear of God into the boy.

Yep, Justin thought, all was right in his world. Maybe he could actually get fifteen minutes to himself to grab a burger at Dolan’s before it closed for the night. He radioed Becky at the station.

“I’ll be at Dolan’s, if you need me. Want me to bring you anything back?”

“A hamburger, double fries and a milk shake,” the very pregnant receptionist said with heartfelt longing.

Coached on her dietary restraints by her worried husband, Justin asked, “How about a tuna on rye and a diet soda?”

Becky sighed. “It’ll do.”

“Ten-four.”