The Ranchers Son

The Rancher’s Son, Montana 2

Copyright ©2016 RJ Scott

First Edition

Cover design by Meredith Russell

Edited by Sue Adams

Published by Love Lane Books Limited

ISBN 978-1-78564-044-5

This literary work may not be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic
reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. This
book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your
computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer-to-peer program, for
free or for a fee. Such action is illegal and in violation of Copyright Law.

All characters and events in this book are
fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly
coincidental.

All trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.

To my beta Elin, my editor Sue, and to my
army of proofers, Dawn Mayhew, Susan Kadlec, Catherine Lievens, Tyra Berger, Christina
Manole, Rick Mulholland, Hanne Lie, & BJ Williams. You all rock.

Ethan received the
call a few minutes before ten, right in the middle of drinking possibly the
worst cold coffee he had ever tasted.

“Officer Allens,”
he said.

“Officer Allens, this
is dispatch at UCPD, Chicago. We have a red flag on an uploaded file with your
name on it.”

Ethan pushed his
muffin to one side and pulled his notepad closer. Phoning a red flag through
wasn’t unusual, but he couldn’t recall having any cases active. In fact, the
only case he had was a cold case going back twelve years, and he’d given up waiting
for news on that one a long time ago. “Go ahead.”

“Case file
D8/YY457, John Doe, out of Trauma Care, UC Medical. Brunet, brown eyes, tattoos,
six feet, no ID.”

Ethan’s chest
tightened as he dutifully wrote the details down. He never turned away intel, following
up every line of inquiry until he knew for sure that the missing person who’d
turned up wasn’t his brother Justin or Justin’s friend, Adam.

“Do you have a
photo?”

“Attached to the
case file, Officer.”

“Do you have an
idea why the case red-flagged me?”

“The connected
words ‘Crooked Tree’ and ‘Ethan’ that are on file.”

Hope gripped him.
Who out there would use those keywords in the same sentence? The noise of the
bullpen—a friendly argument over chocolate chip versus blueberry—receded, becoming
nothing more than a buzz of distraction that he pushed aside.

“I’m logging on
now. Do you have a password for me?”

“In your secure
inbox.”

“Thank you so
much. Hold the line.”

He logged on to
the system, getting the password wrong twice before the adrenaline coursing
through him stopped making his hands shake so damn much.

A fresh coffee was
placed on the side of his desk. “Instant shit,” someone said as they left it.
He ignored them as he finally got the password right, entered the case code,
and switched to his secure mail, copy-pasting the details the dispatch officer
had given him.

Slowly, oh-so
fucking slowly, the file opened. The thing wasn’t very big: one page of loose
details and a photo. Whoever had put this guy in the hospital had done a good
job on his face. Swollen, bloody, and with his eyes closed, the John Doe didn’t
look like anyone Ethan could recognize.

Frustration bit
hard. He wanted Crooked Tree and Ethan to equal his brother or Adam. But all he
had was a severely beaten man whom he could not ID.

He reconnected the
call. “Sorry, I can’t ID, but I’ll be with you in….” He looked at his watch,
calculating driving time between Missoula, Montana and Chicago—twenty-three
hours if he didn’t stop. Flying would be quicker, even with the wait-arounds.
“I’ll check flights and advise.”

“I’ll make a note in
the file.”

“Have the usual
feelers been put out to track next of kin?”

“No one has
reported a man with his description as missing.”

“Can you keep me
informed, please?”

“Of course. The
case officer is Detective Manning. I’ll email you the
details
.”

“Thank you.”

The call ended and
Ethan printed out the
information
before logging out of the system. With
notes and photo in hand, he crossed to the chief’s office, knocked on the door,
and pushed in as soon as he heard “Enter.”

Chief Marvin Flynn
was a big man, twenty years a cop and shrewd with it.

“Allens?”

“Sir, I have a
lead I’d like to follow up, and I’ll need to request personal time.”

Flynn looked up
from the paperwork he was writing on. “Personal time.”

“Sir, this could
be a lead on my brother.” Flynn knew all about Justin and Adam, the full sad
sorry story told to him at the first department barbecue Allens attended when
he joined the precinct. Beer and melancholy had mixed into a mess of words and
emotions that thankfully neither Flynn nor Ethan had discussed since.

“How much of a
lead?” Flynn asked.

“Enough to get me
to check it out.” Ethan didn’t want to share the full details just yet, but he
couldn’t get past the fact that whoever this man was, he’d mentioned the name
Ethan
and
Crooked Tree.

“How long do you
need?” Flynn asked.

“I don’t know, at
least three or four days.”

“Where are you at
with your cases?”

“Closed on the Westside
gang shooting, Jen will clear up the loose ends and open cases in the Soo Yin
files.” To be fair, the Soo Yin case was one that had plagued the department
for years. It was unlikely that Ethan’s absence for a few days would cause the
biggest disruption.

“Tell you what,
Allens… take the week, and keep me informed.”

“Sir.” Ethan left
the office, made his way through the bullpen, and grabbed his jacket from the
back of his chair. He had just one person to tell, and that person was conspicuous
by her absence at the next desk.

“Anyone seen Jen?”

He got a chorus of
no’s and one guy saying he saw her go to the bathroom.

Ethan left the
larger room and went straight to the restrooms, knocking once and then pushing
the door open. “Coming in!”

Luckily, the only
person in there was his partner, Jennifer Young, staring at him with her patent
pissed-off expression. Her blond hair was in a loose ponytail that she was attempting
to pull into her trademark messy heap held up only by a few pins and a measure
of luck.

“What the fuck,
Allens?” she growled.

“I’m out of here.
Got a lead on a cold case, back in a week,” he announced.

“What cold case?”

“My brother.”

Her expression
turned from snarly and pissed to compassionate in an instant; Ethan had told
his partner everything the day they began working together. “Really? How strong
a lead?”

“Enough to get me
to Chicago.”

“You need me to go
with you?”

He considered the
request seriously. Jen was the kind of partner who was a dream for any cop: irritating,
funny, supportive, and unquestionably loyal.

“I’ll take this
myself. I got some personal time approved.”

The pissed-off
expression was back. “I’d so better not get partnered with McNeil,” she
muttered. Then, to prove her sarcasm was nothing but an act, she hugged him
hard. “Good luck.”

Ethan was getting
ready to leave but she called his name. He turned expectantly, his head telling
him he should be in the car now.

“Text me,” was all
she said.

He nodded and made
up for the few seconds delay by taking the stairs three at a time.

Only when he was
in his car and on the way to Missoula International Airport did he think that
maybe he should have called someone at Crooked Tree. His dad or Cole Strachan,
the only member of that family left.

Later.

He got tickets for
the first available flight, United’s 13:10 flight to Chicago, then sat back and
waited. Driving would be a day without stopping, but flying would get him there
in five hours. He had just an hour to kill until departure.

He called his dad
and Sophie answered. The couple was as good as married and lived not thirty
miles from here on Crooked Tree Ranch, a large
dude
ranch in the Erskine Valley. The ranch,
twenty-nine thousand acres
of beautiful land along the Blackfoot River, was starting to turn a
corner, with new initiatives in place. Ethan had a stake in the place, he’d
inherit his share one day.
His and Justin’s share.

He hadn’t been back to Crooked Tree for any
length of time in four years
, apart
from
a fleeting visit a while back
for his dad’s birthday, where the shit really
hit the fan. Ethan and Marcus had argued about Ethan’s insistence that Justin
was still alive, argued about why Marcus couldn’t believe that they would find
his son.

They hadn’t spoken
much since. Ethan couldn’t face the dead part inside his dad’s heart, and as
for
Marcus
? Well, he couldn’t face the fact that Ethan still had hope that one day
they would find Justin and Adam.

Shit, stop
focusing on the bad stuff.

“Ethan, how lovely
to hear from you.”

He’d always liked
Sophie, she very nearly gave hope back to
his dad
, but it was indicative of what his dad was
like that the two of them had never married, or indeed gone public with their
relationship.

“Hi Sophie, is Dad
there?”

The data on his
flight changed to “Boarding,” and he gathered his jacket. All he’d be doing was
standing in line at a new point, but at least it was doing something.

“Sorry, Ethan,
he’s out at the Nine with Nate. Something about fencing.”

“Can you give him
a message for me?”

“Sure.”

Ethan hesitated.
What would the message be? That he had a possible, potential, probably nothing
lead
on a
twelve
-year-old case
involving his brother? His dad would simply sigh; it
was what he did, stubborn fucker. Maybe, if his father had answered the phone,
then Ethan would have talked to him, given it to him straight and told him that
he wasn’t giving up. Instead, he just felt like no message would be the right
one.

“Just that I’ll be
in Chicago for the next week if he needs me.”

“Okay,” Sophie
said. She was right to sound uncertain. Hell, he’d been all over the damn
country and never once called to say where he was. Calls informing
his dad
of leads
ended when his dad told Ethan he was delusional.

“Never mind. I’ll
call later,” he lied.

He reached the boarding
gate and hovered by the snack machine, making pleasantries with Sophie and
talking a bit about Crooked Tree and how Luke had gotten a place at art school,
how the recent marketing campaign had pulled in more bookings. Ethan attempted
to listen to it all but, with the excitement in the pit of his belly making it
hard to focus, he made a polite exit from the call, with a promise to visit.

He boarded and
settled in for the flight, closing his eyes. The plane wouldn’t be landing
until after six at night, and he was damn well going straight to the hospital.
He’d see this man whether they let him or not.

So he closed his
eyes.

And dreamed.

The dream was
always the same. The sun was hot and high on a beautiful Montana summer’s day,
and there was his brother, smiling, happy, his blond hair a messy tangle of wet
curls, and he was with Easy. Justin had loved his horse, and he spent every
waking hour out on horseback with his best friends Adam and Gabe. The three
boys would trek the sixty miles of trails that crisscrossed the ranch.
Sometimes he would go as well. He and Nate.

Good memories.

Adam was in his
dreams, the young fifteen year old that he’d last known. The one who smiled at
him shyly whenever they saw each other. It had taken everything Ethan had to
tell Adam how he felt, and
a soft kiss
was all they had. Justin had seen them, and
in Ethan’s dreams, he could remember Justin’s smile of approval.

Justin was always
there for everyone and, even in his sleep, Ethan clung to that image: of Justin
with his horse, a smile on his lips and his eyes focused on something way in
the distance.

Ethan didn’t want
the image to change. Just as every night, this dream came to him, and that
single beautiful image had to leave him.

The sun vanished.
The air filled with the cold bite of a March day and the concern over where the
boys were. Turning to more….

To fear, and
worry, and anger.

And finally to
despair.

They had gone.
Vanished as if they never existed.

Ethan woke with a grief
that wouldn’t leave him alone, lying heavy in his heart.

Ethan hired a car
at O’Hare and drove to UC Medical. The drive gave him enough time to get his
thoughts in line. Just because the John Doe mentioned Crooked Tree, or Ethan’s
name, didn’t mean it was Justin. Or Adam. America was a big place, with lots of
Ethans and lots of places with the name Crooked Tree in them.

Still, as he drew
closer and the great hospital rose above
Chicago’s historic
Hyde Park neighborhood, there was tentative hope in Ethan’s heart. He parked,
and for a few minutes he stood outside the glass doors, staring up at the
building.

A security guard walked by him and casually
threw out “You lost?” He was probably wondering why some guy was standing
staring at the place.