Читать книгу Cowboy Swagger - Joanna Wayne - Страница 9

The body was not Collette’s. Relief merged with dread as Dylan studied the scene.

The victim was fully clothed in jeans and a UT T-shirt. Blood oozed from a cut on the back of the head. A golf-ball-size knot had swelled around it. The blood that spilled across the floor came from a stab wound to the woman’s right shoulder, but the bleeding that must have spurted at first had all but stopped.

A bloodied knife lay a few feet from the body. A small skillet stood on its edge against a table leg.

Dylan knelt to check for a pulse. It was rapid, but weak. Her skin lacked the clamminess and paleness that indicated shock, but other than the uneven and shallow rise and fall of her back, she wasn’t moving or responding.

Afraid to chance compounding her injuries or starting the bleeding all over again, he left her on her stomach as he took out his phone and called 911. Thankfully, telling the 911 operator to send an ambulance and law enforcement to the old Callister place near the Mustang Run Baptist Church was all the address he needed to give.

“You’re okay,” Dylan whispered as he covered her with a checkered cloth he’d yanked from the table. “I’ve called for an ambulance.”

She wasn’t worried. She was out cold.

Possibilities raced through his mind. Had that been her attacker Dylan had seen running from the scene? Or could the killer still be in the house? He might even be holding Collette hostage.

Dylan struggled to stay calm so that he could weigh the options. He should have paid more attention when Collette had talked of the lowlife who was harassing her. He should have asked questions. Should have …

Hindsight. Always 20/20 and totally worthless.

Muscles tense and hard as stone, he stepped to the counter and took a clean knife from the block.

Leaving the kitchen, he explored the rest of the house, room by room. There were two bedrooms, two baths and a small, uncluttered office. One of the bedrooms had clothes spilling from an open piece of luggage. The other was neat except that the yellow shirt Collette had been wearing today was draped over a wooden rocker.

There was no more blood and no sign of Collette. He went back to the kitchen and checked on the victim. She was still breathing, but still out.

He heard the hum of a motor and the crunch of tires as a vehicle pulled onto the driveway, the same way the attacker must have heard him when he drove up.

Dylan rushed to the front door and spotted Collette exiting her Jeep. Alone and safe. Suddenly his body felt as if he’d been released from a killing chokehold.

He opened the door and waited for her.

“Dylan. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I took you up on your invitation to stop by anytime.”

“Eleanor must have let you in. I was afraid she’d gone home when she didn’t answer the phone. I guess she told you I was working a wedding tonight.”

“I haven’t talked to Eleanor.”

“Then who let you in?”

There was no good way to tell her this. “There’s a problem, Collette.”

A siren sounded in the distance.

“What kind of problem?”

“An attack.”

“On whom?” Her eyes widened. “Where’s Eleanor?”

“In the kitchen. She’s hurt. I’ve called an ambulance. They should be—”

Collette bolted toward the kitchen. He followed her, feeling helpless when she went ghostly white and fell to her knees beside her friend.

“Eleanor. Eleanor, say something. Who did this to you? Talk to me. Please talk to me.”

“I’ve called 911.” As the wail of the sirens grew louder, Dylan knelt beside her and explained what he knew and how he’d come to find the body.

She shuddered and leaned against him. He put his arm across her shoulders, feeling awkward. He’d never handled emotion well.

She pulled away as the ambulance stopped in front of the house and a rush of footsteps sounded on her front porch. “It was him, Dylan.”

“Who?”

Her eyes were moist, but her tone was harsh and accusing. “The man who keeps calling me. He must have come here looking for me, but he found Eleanor instead.”

“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions.” He stood and tugged her to her feet as the room filled with paramedics. By the time they had Eleanor inside the ambulance, more sirens sounded and two squad cars arrived on the scene.

Four armed men in khaki uniforms got out. Two of the deputies had guns pulled, both aimed at Dylan. For the first time, it hit him that he’d put himself into a very compromising position.

The oldest uniformed man glared at him before stepping between him and Collette. “What happened here?”

“My friend Eleanor was spending the night with me. Someone broke in and attacked her while I was photographing Isabelle Smith’s wedding. She was hit at least once on the head and stabbed with one of my kitchen knives. The ambulance just left. They’re taking her to the hospital.”

“Did she name her attacker?”

“She was unconscious. She’ll be afraid when she comes to. I need to go to the hospital so that I can be with her.”

“You’ll need to answer a few questions first.”

Dylan stepped forward. “I’m the one who found the body. I can probably tell you more about the situation than Collette can.”

The man turned toward him. “Who the hell are you?”

“Dylan Ledger.”

The lawman rested his hand on the butt of his holstered gun. “And I’m Sheriff Glenn McGuire, so you better have a damn good explanation for what you’re doing in my daughter’s house.”

COLLETTE CRINGED at her father’s reaction to Dylan. Could he for once just listen to the facts before going off half-cocked?

“Dylan is here because I invited him here.”

“I hope you have a hell of a good reason for doing something that stupid.”

“Did you ever think that he might have saved Eleanor’s life by arriving when he did? He may have saved mine, as well.”

“Right now I’m thinking how the Ledgers are back in town one day and we already have a brutal attack. What’s Eleanor’s last name?”

“Baker. Eleanor Baker. You’ve met her before, Dad. She visited our house frequently when we were in college.”

The sheriff rubbed his chin. “Eleanor? Isn’t that the reporter who writes about ghosts?”

“Yes.”

“I warned you about hanging out with the likes of her and Melinda Kingston. Kooks attract other kooks. One day you’re gonna start listening to me.”

Dylan walked over to stand next to Collette and slipped a hand to the small of her back. “You might want to cut Collette some slack, Sheriff. It’s rough enough that her friend was attacked.”

“I don’t need advice from the offspring of a murdering son of a bitch.” He turned back to Collette. “Do you know of anyone who had it in for her?”

Collette took a deep breath. “I don’t think she was the intended victim. I think the man was here because of me.”

His brows arched. “Why would anyone want to hurt you?”

“I’m not sure that’s what he intended, but some man has been calling and harassing me over the past few months. He claims to be in love with me, but I don’t even know him.”

The sheriff glared at Collette. “You’ve been stalked by a psycho for months and you never bothered to mention it to me?”

“He never threatened to hurt me.”

She couldn’t tell if it was anger or frustration that pulled her father’s face into deep lines and caused the veins in his face and neck to pop out.

“I should have told you,” she said, “but you’ve told me before that there’s not much you can do if there’s no threat of violence.”

“Did you at least change your phone number when he started calling?”

“I couldn’t very well do that. My cell is the only number clients have to reach me. It’s on my business cards and my Web site.”

“Did he always call you on your cell phone?” the sheriff asked.

“Always.”

“Let me see the phone.”

“It won’t help,” Collette said, handing the phone to her father. “The caller ID always said Unavailable or Out of Area.”

The sheriff checked out the phone before handing it back to her.

“There are only two vehicles parked outside,” the sheriff said.

“Eleanor’s car must be in the garage. Mine would be, too, except that I stopped out front when I saw Dylan’s truck.”

“Check the garage, Brent,” he told one of the deputies. “Be nice if the perp stole the victim’s car, so we’d have a known vehicle to chase.” Sheriff McGuire turned to Dylan. “Where was Eleanor when you arrived?”

“Facedown on the kitchen floor.”

The sheriff led the way with the deputies a step behind. Dylan and Collette followed.

“Don’t let my father intimidate you,” she whispered to him.

“Don’t give it a thought. As long as he goes after the lunatic attacker, the rest is insignificant.”

She liked Dylan more by the second.

Her father stepped over the stream of blood. “Tell me exactly what you found.”

Dylan described the scene as best he could.

The sheriff stooped to get a better look at the knife and the skillet as he listened. When he’d heard enough, he stood and rocked back on the heels of his boots.

Brent joined them in the kitchen. “There’s a blue Ford Mustang in the garage.”

“That’s Eleanor’s,” Collette said.

The sheriff nodded. “Brent, wake up the CSI team and tell them I want a full workup on the scene. Chuck, put the state patrol on alert. Tell them we’ve got a dangerous nut on the loose and may need some help tracking him down. He can’t have gotten too far away from this location yet.”

“I’m on it,” the middle-aged deputy said.

“Good. I’ll get with them shortly with whatever pertinent details we can come up with. The rest of you stand guard here and make sure none of the evidence is tampered with until we get prints and any other evidence they can find.”

The men jumped to do his bidding.

“We’ll talk on the porch,” her father said to Collette. “I need more information on your stalker before you leave for the hospital. And, Ledger, don’t even think of cutting out before I get through with you.”

DYLAN STOOD AT THE EDGE of the porch staring at the scene that had completely changed since he’d arrived at Collette’s less than half an hour ago. The quiet had evolved into a chaotic grind of activity, talk and barked orders.

The “ifs” and “buts” of the situation roared though his mind with the same frenetic energy. If he’d left the bar a few minutes earlier, he might have arrived in time to save Eleanor from being attacked. If he’d chased down the figure running from the house, he might have caught the bastard. If Collette had arrived a few minutes earlier, she might have been the one assaulted.

Collette collapsed onto the porch swing and wrapped her arms around her chest although the night was warm. He turned toward her, struck by how incredibly vulnerable she looked.

She hadn’t fallen apart even in the first shock of seeing her friend’s condition, but she looked as if she was on the verge of it now.

She needed a pair of strong arms wrapped around her, but probably not his. Her father had made it plain that Dylan was the outsider here, persona not grata just by virtue of who he was.

“I should have never let Eleanor spend the night. If she’d driven back to Austin after we left your ranch, she wouldn’t have been hurt.”

Dylan thought it best not to point out the possible fallacy of that statement. Collette was certain that the man who’d made the disturbing phone calls to her was behind the violence. That wasn’t necessarily so. Eleanor might have enemies of her own.

He leaned against the support post near the edge of the steps. “How well did you know Eleanor?”

“We’ve been best friends since college. The two of us and Melinda Kingston met our first year at UT. We hit it off from the get-go. The three of us shared an offcampus apartment from our sophomore year right through graduation.”

“Where does Melinda live now?”

“In Austin, in the same apartment complex as Eleanor. Along with their regular jobs, Melinda and Eleanor are the editors and owners of Beyond the Grave. I was helping them out when I met Eleanor at your ranch today.”

“Is Eleanor married? Divorced? In a relationship?”

“Not married and no steady relationship. She’s a workaholic and a much-sought-after freelance investigative reporter. She’ll do whatever it takes to get her story.”

And that kind of fervor likely earned her all kinds of enemies, he thought. “Any particular reason why she stayed overnight instead of driving back to Austin?”

“She was interviewing a man just outside Mustang Run early tomorrow morning. She thought it would be easier to just stay here instead of driving back to Austin. She hadn’t counted on running into a lunatic.”

Not in what seemed to be a quiet, rural Texas town. It had probably seemed even quieter and more peaceful almost eighteen years ago when Dylan’s mother had been murdered in similar fashion mere miles away. That time the perpetrator had used a gun.

Damn!

He’d been doing a good job of keeping his own dark memories out of this, but now that he’d acknowledged them, they slunk into his consciousness like a pack of howling coyotes. But this wasn’t about the past or him.

“I know you’re going to the hospital to see Eleanor, but I don’t think you should come back here by yourself after that.”

“I live here.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to spend the night here tonight.”

She put her foot flat on the porch to stop the gentle swaying of the swing. “Are you suggesting I stay at your ranch?”

He’d definitely not been suggesting that. “Haunted houses make for a lousy night’s sleep,” he said, keeping it light.

She shrugged. “I’ll be fine, and once my father gets tired of interrogating you, you should go home and get some sleep.”

He should. He probably wouldn’t. “Your father obviously doesn’t approve of our being friends.”

“He seldom approves of anything I do. I like it that way.”

And yet she still lived on his turf, in the same small town she’d grown up in.

She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her full skirt. “I should call Melinda. She’ll want to know about the assault. And then she can get in touch with Eleanor’s mother in Houston.”

He nodded and waited.

By the time she broke the connection, he could see new frustrations setting in. “Was there a problem?”

“Melinda was spaced-out on her migraine drugs. She insisted she call Eleanor’s mother and she offered to call a cab and go to the hospital, but I told her to stay home. She’s a zombie when those headaches set in.”

He walked over and dropped to the swing next to Collette. She rested her head on his shoulder and his need to pull her into his arms jumped into overdrive.

This was not the time to have these feelings. And Collette was definitely not the woman to be having them for. It was also not the time to be a jerk, so he slipped a comforting arm around her.

The front door swung open, and the sheriff stepped onto the porch. He stood like a stone statue, scowling as if he’d caught them in some immoral act. His censure of Dylan couldn’t have been clearer.

Screw him, Dylan thought. Yet he stood and moved away from the swing.

The sheriff continued to stare him down. “I have plenty of questions for you, Dylan Ledger, but first I want to hear from my daughter.”

The sheriff walked to the edge of the porch and spit a wad of tobacco into the dirt before turning to Collette. “What do you know about this stalker and why haven’t you come to me about this before now?”