Pierce Read online

  “And yet, you followed him down the road coming in the café?”

  She nodded. “I did,” she said in surprise. “How did you know that?”

  “Because I watched you,” he said. “Even from where I was having coffee, I could see. But I don’t know if you were following him to see what he was up to or if you needed him to see you before you went to Jed’s place.”

  “A bit of both,” she said. “I was hoping he’d go give Jed a talking to. When I realized, as usual, he wasn’t, I went instead.”

  “Interesting that he’s okay with abusing women and children. Is he an abuser himself?”

  “His wife is dead,” she said slowly. “So I don’t know. He has no children. I’m not sure he has any girlfriends either. If he does, they’re short-term, even possibly by the hour.” She laughed. “Listen to me. I’m starting to sound like a real bitch.”

  “No. You’re trying to understand the character of the man who’s supposed to be a leader. The one you’re supposed to follow into battle,” he snapped.

  She shook her head. “That I would never do. Call me disloyal if you want, but he’s just as likely to lead me into a battle and step out of the way so I take the first bullet.”

  Pierce stared at her for a long moment. “It’s definitely time to do something about him before you do end up with a bullet. Jed looked like he was mighty happy to put one in you today.”

  “I’m not sure he wouldn’t have done it too,” she said shortly. She turned in her seat, closed the door, started up the engine and said through the open window, “Try to stay out of trouble.” And she drove off.

  Chapter 4

  Hedi shouldn’t have told him as much as she had. She didn’t know what kind of a man he was, and, with information like that, … he could get her in a lot of trouble.

  She didn’t want to work for a man she didn’t trust. She didn’t want to work for a man she couldn’t follow into battle, to use Pierce’s term. She could understand his military background. It came out in his words every once in a while.

  Her heart ached for Salem. That dog had had a shitty deal once Pete had to go into the rehab center on a permanent basis. She should have done more for Salem, but it wasn’t like she had any place of her own to keep her. And, if Salem was as difficult as the sheriff said, Hedi didn’t have the training or the know-how to handle her. But maybe Pierce did, and maybe the best answer yet was to have Salem somehow get back into his possession. He hadn’t said his orders were official, so she didn’t know if he could just take the dog. But, considering the way the dog was being handed around, maybe that was the best answer after all. In this case, she thought, possession was nine-tenths of the law. Maybe that’s how Pierce should handle it too.

  She finally pulled into the station, parked and walked inside. It was late already; the sheriff was long gone, and so was Roy. That only left Stephen.

  He looked up and frowned at her. “Where the hell you been? I had to do all this paperwork shit myself today.”

  She just raised an eyebrow. “Oh, poor baby.” She left it at that.

  Stephen did the least amount of work possible, avoided paperwork whenever he could, but he hated going out on rides and dealing with difficult situations even more. Why he was the deputy, she didn’t get. He should have been a librarian or something equally placid.

  “Hey, it’s not easy sitting here, picking up the reins when everybody else doesn’t do anything,” he said. “You better be doing your own paperwork for whatever the hell you were up to today.”

  “I will.” She walked to her desk and sat down, logging onto her computer. “I was at Jed’s again.”

  At least he didn’t seem to think along the sheriff’s line that Jed was harmless. “You know that’s just a plain bad situation, don’t you?”

  “Even more than you know,” she said, suddenly weary. She turned to look at him. “If I end up with a bullet between my eyes, you start looking at Jed first, will you?”

  Stephen raised his head over the monitors. “That bad?”

  “He poked me with his loaded rifle and told me to get the hell off his property,” she said, paraphrasing. To be honest she’d been so damn scared she didn’t remember his words exactly.

  “He pushed you?”

  She nodded.

  “And you’re still standing? He didn’t shoot you or anything?”

  She could hear from the tone of disbelief in his voice that he was confused as to why she was still here, not splattered all over the front of Jed’s yard.

  “Yes,” she said, “I am. His rifle was loaded. He was drunk. And he was screaming at the kids. They’re the ones who called me.”

  “Well, yeah. But you gave them your direct number,” Stephen said. “That’s what dispatch is for, remember?”

  “Yeah? And by the time dispatch gets me on the end of the phone, you know those kids will be dead one day.”

  Stephen winced. “Unfortunately that’s all too possible,” he muttered. Stephen had a wife and two kids himself.

  As she thought about it, she realized he’d have been a better accountant than anything. He really liked numbers. “Anything happen here this afternoon?”

  “Nothing as exciting as your afternoon apparently. The sheriff came back in a pissy mood from his apple pie trip. Don’t know what that was all about.”

  “He met somebody in the restaurant looking for Salem, somebody not taking no for an answer.”

  “What do you mean?” Stephen frowned.

  “Somebody was sent here by the War Dogs division to look for Salem.”

  Stephen pushed his chair back. “Oh, God.” He looked around frantically. “Are we in shit then?”

  “Oh, I imagine we’re all in shit,” she snapped. “Just think about how much that poor dog has been through. Just think about the damn sheriff and how he treated her.”

  Stephen winced. “He hated that dog.”

  “And he did what he could to turn her into a mean vicious bitch,” Hedi said.

  “Well, you couldn’t stop him,” Stephen said. “Did you expect me to do anything?”

  And that was the problem with Stephen. He always took the easy way out.

  “Jed apparently had the dog up until a month ago or so, and he was trying to teach it to track down deer out of season. Said he needed the meat so he could live. Then the dog took off one day, and no one has seen it since.”

  “You mean, to sell the meat so he could buy more booze,” Stephen said caustically. “He should be dead from the amount of alcohol running through his veins.”

  She remembered the yellow tinge to Jed’s eyes. “I’m not sure he’s far off.”

  “Hopefully soon,” he said, “before Jed beats one of those kids to death, shoots you or that wife of his. That woman is a bloody saint.”

  “I don’t know about a saint,” Hedi added, “but she’s beaten, downtrodden, terrified of leaving him because he has threatened to come after her and kill them all.”

  “And he would,” Stephen said in a matter-of-fact tone and promptly returned to his monitors and whatever work he was doing.

  She stared at him. “And so, like the sheriff, you won’t do anything about it?”

  His gaze turned hard. “You want to be the cavalry, then have at it. Me? I like my safe desk job.”

  “You don’t have a desk job,” she enunciated carefully. “You’re a deputy. You’re supposed to be out riding with me.”

  “I go sometimes,” he said, “but you don’t like doing the paperwork any more than anybody else. Everybody is happy to dump it on me.”

  “You’re more than happy to get out of dealing with confrontations.” On that note she spun around and logged back into her computer.

  She wrote up a report, once again on Jed—this time adding in him pushing her with a loaded rifle. She decided to keep Pierce’s name out of the report. She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed more prudent to do so. She almost wished he’d go back during the night and haul Jed out into the middle of
the woods and pound him into the ground to make him see sense. But Jed would just come back to the house and grab a bottle and upend it all at once, fueling his anger and taking it out on his family.

  She did marvel at his liver’s resilience. But it had to stop at some point. She’d much rather it was sooner than later.

  When she finished her report, she saw Stephen had left without saying goodbye. Only her desk light was on in the main office; the rest were all turned off. “Good riddance,” she groaned.

  She logged off, grabbed her purse and keys, and headed to the front door. As she locked up and turned to her car, a voice spoke from the darkness. “Are you going home now?”

  She turned to see Pierce leaning against his truck. “Jesus, don’t do that,” she said. “You scared me.”

  “You’ve been working in there alone for the last twenty minutes. What’s wrong with the men in this town?”

  “If you’re about to make a sexist comment yourself,” she snapped, “I suggest you don’t. Besides, Stephen would be useless as a defender or backup. The most dangerous things in his world are paper cuts.”

  “Is he the admin?”

  “No. He holds the same position I do,” she said wearily. “He just chooses not to do anything but paperwork.” She could hear Pierce swearing steadily and softly under his breath. She gave him a ghost of a smile. “I do that exact same thing many times in a week.” She stared off into the distance. “Not sure how much longer I can handle this job. I admit one of the reasons I stay is because I think this town needs somebody who cares. For a little while there, I thought I could change things. But I can’t. Not this way at least.”

  “No, but the town does need you,” he said, surprising her. “I’d hate to see you killed on duty by one of those assholes like Jed, but somebody needs to care, and sometimes the only ones who can care are us.”

  She smiled as she walked to her car. “Where are you staying?”

  “Haven’t thought about it,” he said absentmindedly. He studied the woods behind the sheriff’s department. “Where’s the compound the dog was held in?”

  “It’s over here.” She detoured to the pen where the dog had been kept. “I used to come out here to talk to her. She accepted my voice and would let me touch her a little bit, but the minute any of the men came toward her, she would get aggressive.”

  “Great,” he said. “That’ll make my job harder.”

  “Yes, it will,” she said. “I’m sorry about that. If you’re right that Salem was a well-trained dog and came back looking for retirement and a nice dog bed by a fire, she landed in the wrong place.”

  “I presume the brother is responsible for that?”

  “I’d say so,” she said steadily. “Pretty sure he lied about the dog bite, and, even if she did bite someone, I’d believe she had good reason. Still, that report had the effect of allowing the sheriff to collect the dog, and then she was stolen supposedly as she disappeared from the compound,” she said for emphasis. “When I think about it, I think somebody just cut that wire to make it look like she was stolen. And, of course, now all the townsfolk are terrified of her because she’s supposedly dangerous.”

  “Who did she bite again?”

  “Jed’s brother,” she said. “Chester was visiting at the time. He’s gone back East now.”

  “Well, isn’t that convenient?”

  He snorted at that. “Doesn’t really matter though, does it, because the sheriff wouldn’t give a shit, neither would Ross, and I’m sure nobody told Pete anything.”

  “I’m sure nobody did. I don’t think Ross even goes to visit him. It’s Pete’s house too.”

  “Seriously? Does Ross look after it, pay rent, anything?”

  She shook her head. “Ross doesn’t work any more than Jed does. I know they blame everything on the mill that closed down around here, but honestly I think they’re just too lazy to find another job.” She studied the back compound. “I was delighted when I heard the dog had escaped, until I saw the wires were cut. And then I figured it was some bigger asshole than Ross. He’s just lazy. Jed is a mean drunk, and the Billy boys, Billy and Bobby Billy, are downright mean. When that group is together, it’s bad news.”

  “Maybe I’ll pay a visit to Pete, see what he wants to do about his house. It might be time to sell it,” Pierce said. “I don’t know what he can get, but it would help him with his medical expenses and care. Maybe even could get him into a better place.”

  She stared at him. “You know you’ll open a hornet’s nest, right?”

  He gave her a shadow of a smile. “I hope it’s a really big colony when I do.” He turned to his truck and hopped in. “Are you okay to go home? Is Jed likely to come after you?”

  “He hasn’t yet.” She got in her car, turned on her engine and headed toward the road.

  He watched as she took a left. He waited for a long moment; then he followed her back to the main road. One of the things at the top of his list, besides finding the dog, was solving Pete’s problem because that was part of this whole bigger issue.

  He remembered what Pete’s house had looked like and the land around it. It was a nice place. A small smile formed on his mouth. He picked up his phone and called Badger. “What are the real-estate prices on the outskirts of Fort Collins?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Let me ask my little crystal ball here,” Badger said. “Why?”

  “Because Salem has been badly mistreated, taken and dumped from one man to another, incurring more abuse every time. She’s currently ‘missing,’” he snapped. “Pete’s brother has taken over the house but didn’t look after the dog, isn’t looking after the property, and I’m about to go talk to Pete and see if he needs a hand to maybe get his life back on track.”

  “You think he wants to sell?” Badger asked as the confusion cleared in his voice. “Or maybe you’re looking to buy?”

  “What I’m looking for is to make sure Pete is taken care of,” Pierce said. “And that asshole brother of his who wouldn’t look after Salem needs to be booted off the property.”

  “Someone will have to,” Badger said, “otherwise that brother will just move back home again.”

  “Let me talk to Pete. I can’t imagine the property around here is worth much, but Pete needs what he can get.” He hung up on that note.

  He headed into Fort Collins and grabbed the first hotel he could find. There he unloaded his bags and laptop and started doing more research. All his shit was in his truck, but he didn’t have much. Which was why it seemed odd to all of a sudden consider maybe he should have more.

  When he found the telephone number for the rehab place where Pete was, Pierce put in a phone call. Pete wasn’t available, but Pierce left a message and said it was about Salem. When his phone rang a half hour later, he smiled to see the number. “Pete, is that you?”

  “I got a message,” the man said hesitantly. “Who am I talking to?”

  “My name is Pierce Carlton of Titanium Corp. I’m here on behalf of the War Dogs Program. We’re doing a welfare check on Salem.”

  There was a hard gasp, and he could hear tears in Pete’s voice. “I’d like a welfare check on her myself,” Pete said. “My brother told me that she bit somebody, and the sheriff was going to shoot her.”

  “Apparently she bit Jed’s brother. And Ross was not taking care of her in the first place. According to Hedi, he abused her. I know Jed did too. I think Hedi believes the sheriff cut the wire so somebody else could come and get her.”

  “No,” Pete cried out. “Please tell me that’s not true. My brother swore he’d look after her.”

  “What was your brother like before?” Pierce’s voice was stern. “Did you really think a leopard would change his spots?”

  “I’d hoped so.” Pete was almost crying. “I was hoping to come home, but I don’t have any money. Ross looks after all of that, and he said I couldn’t get the necessary modifications on the property because there just wasn’t any money.”

  �
�How is he looking after your money?” Anger Pierce hadn’t felt in a long time surged through him.

  “He pays the bills, handles my money,” he said. “It comes in to a specific bank account, and he pays for this place here.”

  “How long have you been at the center, buddy?”

  “Too fucking long,” Pete said. “I was doing well in my recovery until I heard I have to stay here.”

  “That’s not necessarily true. I’ll do some investigating into your situation.”

  “You’d help me?” Pete’s voice brightened.

  “Is your brother paying rent?”

  “No, of course not. He’s looking after the property for me.”

  “Exactly what does that mean?”

  “Mowing the lawn, taking care of the animals, … just the usual. There’s not much population there, so it’s not like I can rent it anyway,” he said.

  “Do you trust him?”

  Pete’s voice was hesitant. “Not really but I didn’t have much choice.”

  “Do you know how much your pension is?”

  Pete named a figure that had Pierce’s eyebrows rising. “Your brother said you couldn’t get modifications on the house for that kind of money? And that you needed to stay where you are?”

  “Yeah. If I can’t have the modifications, there’s no way to go home. But it’s not just the house,” Pete said hurriedly. “I have to do some work on the truck too. It’s so expensive.”

  “Yeah. So expensive,” Pierce said. “I can do a lot of this kind of work. How about I go to your place and see what it would cost to modify it so you can get a wheelchair in, ensure a bathroom and a bedroom are on the main floor.”

  There was silence, and then Pete said, “If you could do that, that would be great. But I don’t even know you.”

  “Nope, you don’t,” he said. “Don’t suppose you know an Ethan though, do you?”