Treacherous Trails. Dana Mentink

       TWO

      Ella tried to focus on Owen as he drove to her house. Strong face, wide cheekbones, the face of a model beneath the hat, not the cowboy he was or the marine he had been. She knew he was holding back a million questions, but she had no answers for any of them. Who had taken her? She remembered what Luke told her about Bruce Reed. He’s dangerous. Her gut told her the same thing but she had not seen her attacker’s face, heard his voice. Reed had no reason to harm her. Where was her van? How had her farrier’s rasp gotten bloody? And the question that kept stabbing at her insides...where was Luke Baker?

      Instead of succumbing to hysteria, she focused on the details as she tried to piece together the story for Owen. His presence was comforting, the worn knees of his jeans, his free hand brushing her wrist, eyes like stonewashed denim that flicked over her face, crew cut hair grown out now into a crown of blond that scattered across his forehead. Owen Thorn, the man she’d known since she was seven, a fixture in her life until the day he’d deployed. Just three years older than her, but he’d assumed the role of big brother over the years until he gave himself to the marines. And now here they were again, Owen standing in for her brother Ray.

      She gripped his offered fingers.

      His mouth tightened. “Ella, I don’t think... I mean, I’m just asking because the police will. Were you...have you been drinking?”

      Blinking hard, she raised her chin. “No,” she said in a voice louder than she meant, snatching her hand away from his touch. “He poured it over me, whoever it was. If I can figure out where it happened, there will be proof. The burlap sack, the bottle he was holding. My thermos. I think it might have been Bruce Reed. He was the last one I saw before I left Candy’s ranch.”

      “It’s not the time to work all that out. Let’s get you home.”

      “As long as you know I wasn’t drinking,” she insisted.

      Owen had no doubt heard from her brother Ray, his best friend, of her wild rebellion during their first deployment. But that was the past. Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, she chanted silently, but her cheeks went hot with shame that Owen would even suspect such a thing.

      “We’ll check on Betsy. I can ask my mom to come and stay with her while we go talk to the cops,” he said.

      Anger still simmered in her belly at the doubt she imagined she’d heard in his voice. What right did he have to judge her? Especially when she hadn’t done anything wrong...this time. But where had the blood come from? Her mind was foggy from the time she’d left Reed at Candy Silverton’s stables to the moment she’d crawled out of the ravine. There had to be proof that she was telling the truth.

      “I have to find my van.”

      “After I get you settled, I’ll go look for it.”

      “No.” Whatever it was, whatever she’d done, she would take care of it herself. Betsy counted on her. There would be no more painful moments with Owen Thorn, a man who didn’t believe her. “I’ll find it myself.”

      “Not in that condition, you won’t,” he commanded, as if she was a new recruit.

      “Owen...” She started to retort, but pain made her break off, clapping her hands to her temples.

      He let out a long, slow breath and she could feel his gaze wandering her face. “Oh, Ella Jo,” he breathed in a voice so gentle it broke her heart.

      “Don’t call me that,” she said. Tears pricked her closed eyes. “That was a lifetime ago and I’m not seven years old anymore.”

      When he parked, she flung open the door and ran for the house, calling out for her sister.

      * * *

      Owen stood on the shadowed front porch, suddenly unsure what to do. A memory washed over him of the three of them, Ella, her brother Ray and himself, swinging on a rope across the creek behind their house, competing to see who could hang the longest before plunging into the icy water. Owen won enough times to infuriate Ray, which in turn sent Ella into gales of girlish giggles before she took her turn and beat them both. They passed the early years of their lives together, morphing from little kids to high schoolers, to semi-adults, the memories clear and sharp.

      But now the laughter and innocence seemed to be light-years away. An ominous feeling weighed him down like body armor and he found himself entering, passing through the minuscule kitchen and into the family room where he discovered Ella with Betsy. The knot of tension in his gut loosened a fraction.

      As a very young child, Betsy had suffered a brain injury due to some sort of hemorrhage, he knew, though neither Ella nor Ray liked to talk about it. Ella knelt on the braided rug next to her sister’s wheelchair, both their faces wet from crying. Betsy was only four years Ella’s senior, but she appeared much older.

      “I am so sorry I didn’t come home last night,” Ella whispered, stroking her sister’s hand. “You must have been so scared. I was...in an accident.”

      Betsy clung to Ella’s fingers, green eyes a paler shade than her sister’s, hair a light auburn instead of Ella’s flaming red. Owen did not know how much Betsy understood, but she could see relief in the woman’s face, which indicated she’d been plenty worried.

      “I’ll make you some breakfast right now,” she said to her sister. “I know you’re hungry.”

      “I called from the truck,” he said quietly. “The police are on their way.”

      “Have they found Luke yet?”

      “No.”

      She turned those vivid green eyes on him. A shadow darkened their brilliance, fear, and he felt stung by a helpless desire to make it go away. He wished he could take back his earlier question. Ella would not have gone out drinking and left her sister, and even if she had, he was not the one to mete out judgment. Hypocrite, his mind jabbed. Less than a year since you couldn’t stop downing painkillers, or have you forgotten? He went to Betsy.

      “Hi, Betsy. I haven’t seen you since Christmas Eve.” The sisters had attended the annual holiday party hosted by his parents on the Gold Bar Ranch. They all had much to celebrate, since his eldest brother Barrett and his new wife, Shelby, had survived a murder attempt just days before. But all had ended well, and the newly married couple was installed in the ranch pending the completion of the home Barrett was building for her with the family’s help.

      Ella brought in a plate of scrambled eggs and toast cut into small squares and settled a special utensil in her sister’s grip that allowed her better control. The wheelchair was a manual one, with Copper County Hospital stenciled on the back.

      Ella flipped her hair away from her face. “The hospital was discarding them. They said I could take it.”

      He hated that he’d made her have to explain herself. She wasn’t a marine under his command, he reminded himself. She didn’t owe him anything, including explanations.

      Guilt licked at his heart that he’d fallen so far out of Ella’s life. But he’d heard rumors of the trouble she’d gotten into before he’d returned stateside. Rumors he’d never bothered to ask her about. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to know, preferring the distant memories of lazy summer days spent at the creek.

      “I forgot the orange juice,” Ella said, scurrying back to the kitchen.

      While Betsy ate, he wandered to the window that allowed a partial view of the carport and the sprawling backyard, shadowed by massive pine trees that needed trimming.

      He peered closer out the frosted window, his stomach tightening.

      “Ella?” he called.

      She joined him after she gave her sister the juice and stopped in the bedroom to pull on clean clothes