Unexpected Daughter

The sick feeling in her stomach began to spread. She didn’t need another problem to add to her list. A prescription with her name on it that she didn’t write definitely fell in the territory of trouble, especially when it was for a narcotic with a very nice street value. Brijette decided she’d have to talk with Matthew Wright as soon as possible. If this had been happening in other pharmacies, the sheriff of Cypress Landing would know, and if he didn’t, he’d check with the city police. Noticing the time on her watch, she hurried to the front to make her purchases. It was late and she still had to pick up Dylan.

GRAVEL CRUNCHED under her tires as Brijette began the quarter mile trip off the highway to her house. The small white clapboard was like a hundred others in the area. Most had been part of a larger plantation at one time or another. She and Dylan had lived in different phases of remodeling for the past three years, while they turned the once ragged place into a comfortable home for the two of them. The blue Tahoe bumped hard in a rut in the drive and Brijette made a mental note to borrow the neighbor’s tractor and box blade to grade the road this week.

“Isn’t that Mr. Robert’s truck?”

Brijette glanced toward Dylan, who she’d just picked up from Norma’s, then she spotted the dual-wheeled truck parked in front of her house. That was convenient. She wouldn’t have to go to Robert Hathorn’s house to ask permission to borrow his tractor, she could ask him now—although the reason he was here would likely cause her to go to his house anyway, or at least to his barn.

Shoving the SUV into Park, she lowered the window. Dylan hadn’t even bothered to undo her seat belt. “That crazy horse of yours get loose again?”

The older man stuck his upper body through the window of his truck and banged his hand on the door. “I don’t know how he did it. Jumped the fence this time, I guess. Think you could help me find him?”

“Sure, I can help you. How long has he been gone?”

“Maybe two hours. I put him in the field and went to town. When I came home, he was gone.”

Brijette waved to him before raising her window to follow the man to his house, not far from Norma’s.

Beside her, Dylan sat straighter. “He should get rid of that horse. He runs away all the time.”

She could see the light in her daughter’s eyes. Despite her complaining, Dylan was obviously excited to have a change in what must have been a boring day for her. The girl reminded Brijette of herself when she was younger. When her grandmother used to take her into the woods to trail an animal, or frequently a person, her senses would be firing, trying to decipher every nuance of her surroundings.

Brijette had learned more about the woods and the land when she was young than many people would ever know. Some people said she had a special gift, or “the sight,” because she could follow a trail so easily and so well. Brijette considered her ability more akin to having very good intuition—at least, that’s what she liked to label the feeling she got when she was on a hard track. She’d moved away from here to go to college where she’d discovered organized search-and-rescue groups and she’d begun adding professional training to her home-taught knowledge. Now she was a member of Cypress Landing’s volunteer search and rescue team, which often meant local people came calling for her help when they needed to find lost pets—and high-dollar horses, of course. But the lessons she’d learned from her grandmother were important ones that she wanted her own daughter to appreciate, lessons that couldn’t be bought with money.

When they came to a stop at Robert Hathorn’s house, Dylan leaped from the truck and bounced on her toes.

“Ready?”

She nearly laughed at the girl, who took off toward the wooden fence. “Don’t step in front of the gate, Dylan. There’ll be enough tracks there already. We don’t need to add more.”

Dylan paused to glance at her. Brijette didn’t have to be close enough to see her to know that she was rolling her eyes. “I know that, Mom.”

All three of them stopped at the edge of the gate. Robert waited behind them while she and Dylan squatted to get a closer look at the ground. Over time the grass had been worn away, leaving only dirt, which was helpful for her.

She tapped Dylan’s shoulder. “Let’s take a walk around.”

Dylan straightened and they started a slow march along the perimeter of the fence that surrounded the pasture. Brijette knelt several times to study the grass or a weed that was bent at an unnatural angle. When they’d made it all the way around, they checked inside the pasture area and finally returned to where Robert waited patiently. Dylan stuck her hands into her pockets. Brijette knew her daughter was glad she didn’t have to tell Robert the bad news.

“That stallion is worth a lot of money, isn’t he?”

Robert frowned at her, pushing back his red hat to scratch his forehead. “Of course he is. He’s one of the top quarter horses around here. I get several thousand dollars stud fee and I could easily sell him for four or five times that. Why?”

“The horse didn’t jump the fence, and he certainly didn’t open this gate and close it by himself. He was stolen. See this—” Brijette motioned for him to come closer, then pointed “—these aren’t your boot tracks. Someone came here, went in the pasture and got the horse. They circled him around and shut the gate, which was really stupid, because if they’d left it open you’d have been more likely to think he’d gotten away on his own.” She took a breath, caught a glimpse of Robert’s wide eyes and stopped. He must have been more attached to that horse than she’d thought.

She put a hand on his arm. “Why don’t you go call the sheriff? Dylan and I will follow the trail to see where it goes. They probably put him in a trailer, farther away from here. I’ll take my cell phone and call you when I find where.”

Robert started toward his truck. He stumbled once and Brijette wondered if she should check on him. But he righted himself.

Turning toward the field, she saw Dylan nearly at the woods. “Come on, Mom. They went this way. That’s Mr. Robert’s favorite horse and he paid a whole bunch of money for him.”

Whoever had taken the horse had also taken the path of least resistance in their escape. The trail led straight to a worn path that followed the creek along Robert’s property. In a few minutes they passed Norma’s yard. Dylan raced ahead of her, and she was satisfied to let the girl lead the hunt herself. However, Dylan picked up the pace considerably and, before she realized it, her daughter was out of sight. Brijette increased her speed. She wasn’t afraid Dylan would get hurt in these woods, but she didn’t want her to stumble onto a horse thief.

Farther ahead, she heard Dylan’s voice shouting. The words brought her to a dead stop. Pure fear sent her into an instant run, ignoring the thin tree limbs that slapped her face and body. Her daughter was saying the name “Cade” and another voice answered—a deeper one.

Brijette broke through the last of the bushes onto the thick carpeted grass of Cade’s yard. Or at least she guessed it was Cade’s. Robert Hathorn had been trying to sell the house, a piece of the family property his great-great-grandfather had built. It had been on the market for months since he’d had it remodeled. She’d never imagined Cade would be living here, but he could certainly afford such an extravagance. Lord knows he had the money.

On the patio, Cade Wheeler stood next to a smoking grill watching Dylan gesture wildly. Even from here Brijette could hear the rumbling of his laughter at her daughter’s antics. Dylan could be quite dramatic in a hilarious kind of way when she embarked on sharing a story, especially one that involved tracking. Brijette hurried toward them. She had to be careful now, for Dylan’s sake as well as her own.

She was almost on top of them when she heard Dylan say, “It’s my mom.” Cade turned toward her, and for the second time today the color drained from his face. She wondered how many of these shocks his heart could take.

Dylan was pulling at her, dragging her closer to him.

“Mom, this is Mr. Cade. I met him when I was fishing. He’s going to work with you. Have you met him yet?”

“What are you doing here?” The words came out with far more force and heat than Cade had intended, effectively stopping Dylan’s chatter. From the corner of his eye he could see that she had gotten very still. The little trespasser, his fishing partner, was Brijette Dupre’s daughter?

“I guess you did meet her at the clinic.” Dylan ground her toe against the patio concrete and Cade cringed slightly. It wasn’t the kid’s fault her mom was…well, what she was. A word that would adequately describe Brijette defied him.

“That’s right, Dylan, I work with Dr. Wheeler at the clinic. Now come on, we’ve got to finish tracking Mr. Robert’s horse.”

The girl tossed her mother a look that Cade wouldn’t have thought kids learned until they reached at least seventeen and believed they knew everything.

“Get real, Mom. You don’t think I dumped the trail like that, do you?” The girl snapped her fingers when she said the word “that” and Cade had to fight to keep from smiling. She pointed to the yard behind his garage. “The trail ended right there. A truck and trailer were parked where you couldn’t see them. Maybe Mr. Cade stole the horse.” She winked at him.

This time he couldn’t stop the smile. “Dylan, I told you it’s Cade, no ‘mister,’ all right? And no, I haven’t stolen a horse or even seen one.”

Brijette moved to the grassy area Dylan had pointed to. The young girl hurried over to her and motioned for Cade to follow. He obeyed without a second thought.

“See, Cade.” Dylan pointed to the grass, which he could now see had been flattened.

“Mr. Wheeler or Dr. Wheeler, Dylan,” Brijette interrupted, and Cade reminded himself to be angry, though with Brijette’s daughter around it was difficult. Oh, well, that was all it took. The fact that she was Brijette’s daughter immediately made him fume again.

“He told me to call him Cade.”

Brijette glared at him. “You haven’t seen anyone around today?”

He shook his head. “No, but I was at the clinic at eight this morning and didn’t get home until six.”

“Your house okay? Nothing missing, nobody broke in?”

“Everything’s exactly as I left it.”

“Probably thought the house was still empty.” This she mumbled more to herself than to him. She retrieved a small cell phone from the chest pocket of her scrubs and dialed a number while walking away from them. Cade hurried to the patio, remembering that he hadn’t even put his steak on the grill yet.

“I’ll tell my mom we’re eating supper with you as soon as she gets off the phone.”

Damn, he’d completely forgotten he’d given the invitation.

“Mom, Cade invited us to eat with him, okay?”