Montana Creeds: Logan (29 page)

You’d never lack for anything, even if the whole marriage thing went bust, and neither would they.

She left a note for Logan, after washing up the breakfast dishes and hurrying the boys into getting dressed to go out.

The people at Happy Dale Day-care Center agreed to look after them, and Briana drove straight to the trailer, noting immediately that the van was gone, parked Dylan’s truck and walked up to knock smartly on the tinny door.

Heather opened it slowly, bundled into a lavender chenille bathrobe that, like the trailer, had seen better
days. She hadn’t washed off her makeup from the night before, so there were black patches under her eyes, and old lipstick clung to the cracks in her lips.

“Vance isn’t here,” she said, sounding groggy.

“I didn’t stop by to see Vance,” Briana answered. “May I come in?”

Heather gave a great, noisy sigh. “Why not?” she asked, stepping back.

The inside of the trailer was remarkably clean. There were cheap knickknacks, hopefully arranged, on every surface. A grubby crocheted afghan covered the back of the couch.

“I haven’t made coffee yet,” Heather said.

“I don’t need any,” Briana replied.

Heather gestured toward a black recliner patched here and there with duct tape—probably Vance’s TV chair.

Briana sat down, keeping to the front edge and folding her hands to keep them still. “The kids told me you got some bad news about your mother last night,” she began.

Heather flopped onto the couch. Her slippers had high plastic heels, and grungy purple feathers fluttered atop her insteps. In Heather-world, this probably represented glamour. “Yeah,” she said. “I got pretty upset. I’m not used to having kids around.”

I’m not used to having kids around.

Briana kept her temper. “I take my children’s safety and well-being
very
seriously, Heather,” she said. “Why did you decide to go to the casino?”

Heather’s face crumpled. “I thought you might be there,” she replied.

That made more sense than Briana cared to admit, and it had a ring of truth to it. “To take them off your hands?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Heather insisted, sniffling once and raising her chin a notch. The other woman had had to fight a lot of battles in her life, Briana realized, and many of them had been tough. “I like Alec and Josh, I really do. And Vance wants so much to have a chance to make things up to them.” Tears welled in her puffy eyes, making the mascara situation that much worse. “After that fuss at the casino last night, he’ll probably get fired. Then he’ll want to move on, and I can forget convincing him that we ought to have a kid of our own—”

“Do you really think you’re ready for that?” Briana asked gently. “A baby, I mean?” The thought of a helpless infant at the mercy of this mercurial womanchild gave her chills.

Heather didn’t seem to hear her. She was hugging herself and staring through the trailer wall at something far, far away. “I’ll be lucky if he even takes me with him when he goes,” she muttered.

Briana tilted her head, trying to catch Heather’s eye. “All of that is your business,” she said. “Alec and Josh are mine. Vance isn’t going to be happy about this, but I can’t help that. Until things settle down a little, Heather, I can’t leave my children with you again.”

“You can’t keep Vance from seeing his own kids!”

“No, I probably can’t. But I
can
get a lawyer and restrict visitation.”

“You don’t understand,” Heather almost wailed. “Vance is already furious with me. When he hears this—”

Briana stood. “I guess you should have thought of that,” she said evenly, “before you left Alec and Josh at
the casino to fend for themselves while you played blackjack.”

“I told you, I thought you’d be there!” Heather was on her feet, following Briana to the door.

“You could have called,” Briana pointed out, “and you didn’t.”

“But—”

Briana opened the door, went out. “What time does Vance get off work?” she asked.

“He’s not
at
work,” Heather burst out. “He’s down at the sheriff’s office, trying to get both of us out of dutch with the casino.”

“Thanks,” Briana said.

“Wait!” Heather called, from the slapdash porch.

Briana simply got back in the truck, turned the ignition key and drove away.

Sure enough, Vance’s van was parked in the side lot at Sheriff Book’s office. She ran straight into him at the front door as he was leaving.

Seeing her, he came to a stop, swept off his hat, ran a hand through his hair.

“Did they drop the charges?” Briana asked.

He nodded, looked away, looked back again. “We need to talk,” he said finally.

“You’re telling me,” Briana said.

They went, in separate cars, to the Birdhouse Café, on Main Street. Even though Briana hadn’t eaten any of the breakfast she’d made for the boys, the thought of food, or even coffee, was more than she could take. So she sipped water while Vance ordered the ham-and-eggs special.

“Is Heather mentally ill, Vance?” she asked quietly, when the waitress had gone and a private space had
opened around their table. “Is she a compulsive gambler? A drunk?”

“No. She’s just not all that smart,” Vance said, using too much salt on his eggs. When he felt defensive, he had to be doing something.

“She hit Alec with a car,” Briana reminded him. “And then she left our children on their own at the casino.”

“You do it all the time,” Vance challenged, glaring at her. “Did you think they wouldn’t tell me that, Briana?”

“I kept an eye on them,” Briana said. Now who was defensive? “So did the other employees. It isn’t the same thing and you know it.”

“Isn’t it?” Vance clenched his fists on either side of his plate and leaned forward, his gaze boring into her face. “Are you saying somebody couldn’t have taken them right out of there when you and ‘the other employees’ weren’t looking?”

Briana bit her lower lip. “I couldn’t afford day care,” she said. “Small matter of child support.”

Vance reddened. “I was doing the best I could.”

“So was I.”

“Where are they right now?”

“In day care.” She smiled. “And do they ever hate it. They wanted to stay at Logan’s place, but we’ve imposed on him enough as it is.”

A muscle bunched in Vance’s jaw. He picked up his fork and jabbed at a piece of ham as though it had suddenly come to life and he meant to kill it. “What you do with Logan Creed, or anybody else, is your own business,” he said.

“You’ve got that right,” Briana answered. “Logan has nothing to do with this. Heather has
everything
to do with it. She’s clearly unstable, Vance, and until she settles down, I don’t want Alec and Josh left alone with her.”

“You think I’d let her take them anyplace, without me, after what happened last night?”

“I don’t know, Vance. Would you?”

“No.”

“And I should believe that, and put our children at risk, because—?”

All the starch went out of Vance in a whoosh of breath. His broad shoulders sagged, and he hung his head for a long moment. “Because,” he rasped, after several seconds, “I’m
trying,
damn it.” He met her eyes, and she saw sincerity there, even a certain force of character she’d never guessed was in him. “I don’t know much about being a father. Heather and I probably got married too soon after we met. But when I won that money, Briana… When I won that money, when something went right for me for the first time since I can remember, it felt—it felt like a sign from God or something. It was a chance to start over.”

Briana reached across the table, touched his hand. “The boys love you,” she said gently. “Don’t be too quick to give up.”

“My boss is going to hear about that fuss at the casino,” Vance reflected, his voice sad and gruff, his eyes averted again. “He goes to church three times a week. He might just decide I’m a poor moral influence and show me the road.”

“If he goes to church three times a week,” Briana speculated lightly, “maybe he’s the forgiving type.”

“Have you been to a church lately?” Vance snapped.

Briana let the question pass unanswered. When she was young, on the road with Wild Man, they’d dropped in for a lot of different church services, in different places. The people had invariably welcomed them, encouraged them to stay. In some cases, they’d even offered housing, a job, food.

And Briana had always been relieved when her dad shook his head and said they’d be moving on as planned.

“Not to overstep or anything,” she said, about to overstep, “but there’s one more thing. I know Heather wants to have a baby. That’s neither here nor there. According to the boys, though, you said you had enough trouble taking care of the children you already have.”

Vance looked completely deflated now, and Briana did not feel good about it, even though she’d had plenty of fantasies, over the last two years, of bursting his bubble.

“I didn’t think they heard that.”

“It wasn’t exactly reassuring to them, Vance.”

A cord of muscle stood out in his neck. “Are you through?”

Briana got to her feet. Stood beside the table, looking down at a man she’d married for a lot worse reasons than what Logan was proposing. “Almost,” she said. “I don’t want this to turn nasty, Vance, but if you don’t personally look after Alec and Josh when they’re with you, I’ll get a lawyer.”

“Word down at the shop,” Vance said crisply, “is that you’re already sleeping with one.”

Briana shook her head. Small towns. Keeping a secret was impossible.

Refusing to dignify the comment with an answer, especially since it was true, she simply walked away. She’d said what she needed to say, and it remained to be seen whether or not she’d gotten her point across.

A
FTER THAT RIDE,
Logan had a lot to think about, and a lot of time to do it in.

Dylan loaded up his gear, got in his truck and drove off, headed for Cheyenne, where he’d be riding bulls for a rodeo movie. The pay was good, he’d said, but he’d been thinking of settling down, working something out with Sharlene, his former girlfriend, so he could spend more time with his little girl.

He carried a picture of Bonnie in his wallet. She had curly hair and Dylan’s eyes, complete with that look of devilment that was better proof of paternity than a DNA test.

They hadn’t settled everything, he and Dylan, not by a long shot, but it had been good, riding the range together, like old times. Talking a little.

There was a lot Dylan hadn’t told him, of course.

And a lot he hadn’t told Dylan.

But they’d made a start.

If only that could happen with Tyler.

After rereading Briana’s note for about the fourth time—she’d taken the boys to day care and gone to have a chat with Vance and Heather—he thought suddenly of the pictures scattered on her floor at the other house.

Standing in the kitchen, he called Sheriff Book on the wall phone, asked if he’d be compromising evidence if he went over there.

Floyd replied that the state police had taken all the pictures that they needed, and he’d held Brett all night, but had to let him go that morning, since he couldn’t charge him without some kind of proof.

Logan said he understood.

Then he got in the truck, drove over to Briana’s and gathered up the pictures and the ruined album. Took them back to his place and piled them, as neatly as he could, next to his computer.

After that, he made a sandwich, ate it, took the dogs out, brought them in again.

Sat down at his desk and booted up the photo-doctoring program.

He’d used it a lot, while he was building his company, to make brochures and design a Web site, and navigating it was second nature. He began mending pictures as best he could, scanning them in, smoothing out tears and wrinkles.

Perhaps because Briana was an only child, Wild Man had taken a lot of pictures of his daughter. Working with those images was like watching her grow up—she’d been cute as a very little girl, then an awkward tomboy, always on a horse. As a teenager, she’d been drop-dead gorgeous, and garnered herself a couple of rodeo queen titles.

There were scores of snapshots of Alec and Josh, as babies, as toddlers, as small boys. Their clothes were shabby in those pictures, and the backgrounds showed a succession of trailers and old houses, but they’d looked happy. Secure.

Kids were resilient. Alec and Josh were proof of that—and so were he and Dylan and Tyler.

Logan began to hope that, by scanning in the Creed pictures he’d found in the attic, and giving disks to Tyler and Dylan, he might open the way back to being brothers. Real brothers.

He worked until his eyes felt as though they’d cross, then took a break to check on the progress with the barn. It was going well.

Briana drove in, when he was just thinking it might be time to rustle up supper, with the boys in the backseat.

He was ridiculously glad to see her, and it had nothing to do with the cosmic sex they’d had the night before, or the prospect of more.

“Hey,” he said.

Alec and Josh clamored out of the truck. “We had to go to
day care,”
Josh complained.

“Like
babies,”
Alec added.

Then they hurried off to greet the dogs. So much for the Day-Care Trauma.

Logan ran his hands down the thighs of his jeans, suddenly awkward now that he and Briana were alone.

“Did you mean what you said this morning?” she asked, very quietly. Her expression was solemn, and she seemed to be holding her breath. “About getting married?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think I did.”

“When can we get the license?”

L
OGAN SADDLED
the pinto gelding, still unnamed, for Briana. Put a bridle on Traveler, the gray. Alec and Josh, happy because they’d had corn dogs for supper, watched from their perches on the corral fence.

“Out of practice?” Logan asked, as Briana hesitated beside the pinto.

She raised her chin a notch. “I haven’t forgotten how to ride a horse,” she said. Then, to prove it, she stuck a foot in the stirrup and hauled herself up into the saddle. The late-in-the-day sunshine rimmed her like the aura of some stray saint. “I don’t like leaving the boys here alone, that’s all.”

“We’ll stay close by,” Logan assured her. He knew she was worried about running into that bear again—it was enough of a possibility that he’d cleaned and loaded one of Jake’s old hunting rifles and attached the tooled leather scabbard to her saddle, since he didn’t have one.

“We’re okay, Mom,” Alec called.

Logan mounted the gray, Indian-style, gripping the mane in one hand and making a swinging leap.

“Pretty fancy horsemanship,” Briana said. She’d been skittery as water droplets on a hot griddle, since agreeing to his proposal when she got home from town,
and the pinto picked up on that, fidgeting a little beneath her.

“Jim Huntinghorse taught me that move,” he answered, riding in close to grip the pinto’s bridle strap for a moment, so it would settle down. “When we were seven.”

She smiled, but looked pointedly at his hand, where he was holding on to the bridle. “I’m not a greenhorn, Logan. Let go.”

He let go. Smiled. “Ready?”

She nodded.

He leaned to open the corral gate, waited as she rode through ahead of him. Josh came around the fence to close it behind them.

“Stay close to the house,” Briana called over one shoulder.

Logan gave her a look. “They’re
okay,”
he told her.

She smiled. “Race you,” she said. “Across the field, through the orchard to the graveyard and back again.”

“You’re on,” Logan said, and bent low over the gray’s neck, urging the animal into a run with light taps of his boot heels. He shot ahead of Briana, but she was soon streaking along beside him, poetry on horseback, as fiercely beautiful as he could bear for her to be.

Logan was so busy watching Briana, in fact, that he was almost thrown over Traveler’s head when the horse came to a fallen log and paused for a split second before making a clean jump.

Through the orchard they raced—the horses would have caught the scent of a bear if there had been one around—but neither animal hesitated. They seemed to revel in speed and freedom, the pinto and the gray.

As they cleared the orchard, though, and the graveyard was in sight, a shot sounded, somewhere up ahead.

Logan immediately reined in his own horse and grabbed for Briana’s reins, too. Deftly, he bent sideways to wrench the rifle free of its scabbard.

“Probably just a poacher,” he said. “Go back to the house, Briana.”

“Let’s
both
go back to the house,” Briana replied.

Another shot boomed through the still afternoon, a muffled, reverberating
ka-boom,
soon followed by a second blast, then a third.

Logan rode forward, the rifle resting crosswise in front of him.

That was when he saw Brett Turlow, through the trees edging the cemetery, standing astride Jake’s grave and pointing a shotgun at the ground.

The damn fool was trying to shoot a corpse.

Logan imagined the top of the coffin splintering, Jake’s dust-and-bones body buckling under a spray of buckshot. He knew the lead wouldn’t penetrate six feet of hard Montana dirt, but that didn’t stop the gruesome pictures from forming in his mind.

“Call the sheriff,” he said evenly, handing his cell phone to Briana because he knew she’d left her own at home, charging on the kitchen counter. “And get the hell out of here before he sees you.”

It was too late for that, though.

Brett looked up, hesitated and then stormed toward them, still holding the shotgun.

“Go,”
Logan rasped. “I’ll be okay. Just
go,
and get hold of Sheriff Book as soon as you’re out of range.”

Her eyes gleamed with tears. “Logan—”

Brett was closer now. He cocked the shotgun.

“Put it down, Brett,” Logan said, feeling relieved when Briana finally turned the pinto and rode back through the orchard. “Put it down.”

Brett ignored him. As he drew nearer, Logan could see that his face was ravaged—by drink, by rage and despair, and God knew what else. “I never killed your old man!” he wailed. “But I wish to Christ I
had,
because at least I wouldn’t have spent all these years payin’ for somethin’
I didn’t do!”

“You’re drunk, Brett,” Logan said easily, though his finger was hooked around the trigger of his rifle and he’d taken the safety off. “Lay down the shotgun, and we’ll talk.”

Brett stopped, took wavering aim. He was pretty unsteady, so any shot he fired would probably clear both Logan and the gray, but
probably
wasn’t good enough. And Logan couldn’t take even a moment to look back to see if Briana had ridden beyond the range of that shotgun. He sensed her, back there in the orchard, felt her presence, a strange, harried energy, in the skin of his back and the pit of his stomach.

His hand tensed on the rifle. He didn’t want to shoot Brett Turlow, or anybody else. But he’d do it if he had to—and he suspected Turlow was trying to provoke him into killing him. Guilt-free suicide—he’d seen the phenomenon in Iraq, on the American side as well as the enemy’s.

It was a game he didn’t intend to play.

Brett pulled the trigger, and Logan swung his rifle wide just in time to keep from putting the poor bastard out of his misery by sheer reflex. Turlow’s gun had
jammed, or he’d forgotten to reload after firing the last round into Jake’s grave.

Logan was off the horse in an instant, tossing his rifle aside in the process, and grappled with Turlow to get the shotgun away from him.

The struggle was brief, but Turlow was stronger than he looked, and he put up a fight.

Finally, Logan managed to rip the shotgun out of Turlow’s grasp and fling it away, into the grass. He sat astraddle of the other man’s belly, knees pressing hard into the underside of his upper arms.

Turlow gave a keening shriek, a trapped-animal sound that chilled Logan, deep down.

“Easy,” he said gruffly. “I’m not going to hurt you, Brett.”

Briana rode up then—Logan had been right in guessing she hadn’t gone back to the ranch house, and he was both annoyed and proud. “The sheriff’s on his way with a couple of deputies,” she said calmly, swinging down from the saddle and then collecting the fallen rifle and shotgun, carrying them out of reach and leaning them against the trunk of a tree.

“Did you break into my house, Brett?” she asked quietly, when she came back.

Turlow struggled, spat at her feet, and Logan pressed his knees in a little harder.

“Answer the lady,” he growled.

“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” Turlow protested. “I just wanted to hold that little nightgown in my hands. I put it on the bed so I could imagine you lying there, wearing it, and wanting me.”

Bile scalded the back of Logan’s throat, left a bitter
taste on his tongue. “Sheriff Book said your car never left Skivvie’s parking lot that night.”

Turlow gave a soblike laugh. “I used our next-door neighbor’s Blazer,” he said. “Always leaves her keys in the ignition. She never even missed it.”

Logan willed himself not to lose control. “The spray paint was a nice touch,” he said.

“I don’t know nothin’ about no spray paint!” Turlow gasped out. “Let up on my arms a little, will you? You’re gonna break ‘em.”

Logan and Briana exchanged glances.

Logan let up, but only slightly.

“You didn’t come to my place a second time?” she asked Turlow.

He shook his head. Tears glistened in the craggy lines at the sides of his eyes. “Floyd picked me up and harassed me about it, ‘cause that’s what he does best, but I was helping Freida put up campaign posters that night, and my sister will vouch that it’s true!”

“What the hell were you doing, plunking away at Jake’s grave with a shotgun?” Logan demanded, still breathing hard from the struggle. He was out of shape—too much soft living in Vegas. Chopping wood and digging post holes would fix that. “You ever heard the word
ricochet?
You’re damn lucky none of that buckshot struck a rock and doubled back on you.”

“The bastard’s been haunting me since the day he died!” Brett cried, and the hoarse conviction in his voice was painful to hear. “I can’t stand it anymore!” He flung his head back and screamed,
“Do you hear me, Jake? I can’t stand it anymore!”

Logan shifted, got to his feet, looking pityingly down at Brett Turlow.

Briana moved to stand beside him, touch his arm. “I’m going back to the house to watch for the sheriff and make sure the boys are all right—they must have heard the shots, and they’re probably scared to death.”

Logan nodded. “Go,” he said, his gaze still fixed on Turlow. The poor, crazy son of a bitch needed medical attention, not a stretch in the county jail.

After Briana had gone, Turlow struggled up onto one elbow. His billed cap lay beside him on the ground. “You believe in ghosts, Creed?” he asked, in an eerie, disjointed tone.

“Not the kind you’re seeing,” Logan answered. “And don’t make any sudden moves. I’m still more inclined to choke the life out of you than leave you be.”

Far off in the distance, a siren droned, an almost weary sound in the humid summer air, thickening into twilight.

Logan crouched a few feet from where Turlow sat, interlaced his fingers. He’d seen Jim Huntinghorse sit like that for hours. Logan’s thighs cramped, and he had to stand up again.

A crafty expression crossed Turlow’s face. “I know things,” he said.

“Hard to believe,” Logan replied, wishing the sheriff would hurry up. If Brett Turlow hadn’t spray-painted Briana’s bedroom bloodred, and Logan’s deepest instincts said he hadn’t, that meant the real
vandal was still out there someplace. He didn’t like having Briana and the boys out of his sight, knowing that.

And it would be dark soon.

“I know, for instance,” Turlow went on, “that the
high-and-mighty Sheriff Book sweated up some sheets with my sister.”

“Not exactly news,” Logan said. The
Courier
certainly hadn’t run the scandal; it wasn’t that kind of newspaper. He’d heard the gossip around the time of Jake’s funeral—hadn’t given a rat’s ass then, didn’t give one now.

With every passing moment, the anxious tension inside him mounted.

Briana.

She’d taken his cell phone, so he couldn’t call the house, make sure she and Alec and Josh were safe.

The siren sliced the stillness; Turlow covered both ears with his hands and rocked back and forth.

A few moments later, Sheriff Book came through the orchard on foot, at a lumbering trot, one hand on his holster to keep it from bouncing against his leg.

“I’ll be goddammed, Brett,” he sputtered, slowing to a walk and jerking his cuffs off his utility belt, “you’re a regular one-man James gang, aren’t you?” He turned to Logan. “You better get on back to the house. Briana’s got Deputy Jenkins by the shirtfront—says somebody snatched her kids—”

Logan swore and raced for his horse, grazing a dozen yards away, and sprang onto its back.

While Floyd arrested Turlow, he and the gray cut through the brush as though they’d been catapulted.

Reaching the corral, Logan jumped off the gelding and landed running. He vaulted over the fence and hurried toward Briana, who was struggling with Deputy Jenkins—Stillwater Springs’ version of Barney Fife—next to the squad car.

Logan pulled the deputy away, flung him back so
hard that he thumped against the second squad car. Red and blue lights still flashed dizzyingly along the bar bolted to the cruiser’s roof.

Freed, Briana immediately headed for Dylan’s truck.

Logan caught up to her in a few strides, grabbed hold of her arm.

She kicked and fought; holding her was like trying to stuff a feral cat into a gunnysack.

“Stop,”
Logan ordered. He hadn’t shouted the word, he’d whispered it, but his throat felt as raw as if he’d yelled at the top of his lungs.

Miraculously, Briana went still. She dragged in great gulps of air, and she was trembling. “The kids—” she finally managed “—gone…”

“I was just trying to keep her from hurting herself,” Deputy Jenkins interjected, from somewhere nearby, sounding put-upon. “Nobody ought to drive when they’re that upset, and soon as Sheriff Book gets back—”

“We’ll find the kids,” Logan told Briana, gripping both her shoulders and looking directly into her face.
“We’ll find them.”

Desperate hope flickered in her green eyes, and she swallowed again, nodded.

“Now don’t you go off half-cocked, Logan,” Jenkins reasoned hastily. “Soon as Sheriff Book gets back here—”

“We can’t wait,” Logan told him. The keys to his truck were in his front pocket; he got them out with a jingle. “Do me a favor, Deputy, and put this pinto back in the corral.”

Jenkins flushed, from the base of his scrawny neck to the roots of his hair. “We’ve got to follow procedure!”
he protested, even as he got the pinto by the reins and led it toward the corral. “You can’t go taking the law into your own hands—”

Briana scrambled into the truck on the passenger side.

Logan got behind the wheel. The dogs were nowhere in sight—for the time being, anyway, they were on their own.

“Talk to me, Briana,” Logan said, making the rear tires scream and fling up dirt on all sides as he backed into a hard turn.

Her hair was coming loose from that tight braid; she pushed her bangs back with a swift motion of one hand. “I went inside the house,” she said, like someone hypnotized, or talking in their sleep. “Wh-when I didn’t see Alec and Josh in the yard. The—the dogs were there, but—”

“Did you get your cell phone off the counter?” Logan marveled at how calm he sounded; everything inside him was in a churning panic. If Alec and Josh had been his own sons, blood of his blood and flesh of his flesh, he couldn’t have been more frightened than he was.