with him on the Elkton Ranch. She’d gone back to her mother’s home in Seattle after that, only to run away two years later. He’d tried to find her, but she hadn’t left any trail.
Gracie stepped back through the open door as Calen ended the call with the sheriff. She held a steel pan filled with steaming water. A white dish towel was draped over her shoulder.
“I took the water from the teakettle,” Gracie said as she set the pan down on the porch and then handed the towel to Tyler. “So it’s boiled.”
“Thanks,” Tyler said as he dipped the towel in the water. “I want to get the wound cleaned up. I don’t know what she used to bandage it. It’s hard to see anything with her jacket on.”
Tyler was removing the jacket as he spoke.
“I can boil more water if you need,” Gracie said.
“I don’t—” Tyler began and then stopped.
He unwrapped the bandage and pulled something out. “This is what she used to try and stop the bleeding.”
The faint light barely showed what it was, and it took them all a moment to see it clearly.
“A black ski mask,” Calen said finally, the bleakness in his voice thick enough to be heard by everyone on the porch.
Renee moaned. Calen wondered if she could hear them speaking.
Gracie made a sound of sympathy and, to his surprise, stepped closer and put a hand on his arm.
“It doesn’t need to mean anything,” she said softly.
Calen looked down at her. “Innocent until proven guilty, is that it?”
She nodded and he wondered if she understood the irony of it all. Gracie had served almost ten years in prison because no one had questioned her confession that she had murdered her abusive husband. People assumed she had reached her limit and snapped. No one realized she’d believed, incorrectly, that one of her sons was guilty. She had done it to spare her children.
And now she was trying to spare his child. And he was the one who should have known Gracie would never harm anyone. Back then, she had too much pride to ask for help, but he should have realized what she was doing. It wasn’t the only time he had let her down in the past, and he’d be surprised if she didn’t remember his failures every time she looked at his weather-beaten face.
He saw a flash of red lights then. The sheriff wouldn’t come in with his siren going, but he used the lights at night when it was an emergency.
For the first time, Calen understood Gracie’s urge to save her sons from the law. He felt the same way about Renee. He might have made his share of mistakes in life, but he didn’t want Renee to suffer for hers. He’d take the punishment himself if he could.
Lord, what is that daughter of mine mixed up in? Calen prayed silently. Why hadn’t Renee sent him word when she’d left her mother’s place? He would have driven anywhere to pick her up and bring her home with him. He had saved money for a down payment on a ranch of his own, but he had stopped looking for property. He wanted to have the cash to pay the investigators if they ever picked up a lead on Renee. Now it seemed that he might need his seventy thousand dollars for a defense attorney instead.
He sensed Gracie standing straight beside him even though his eyes were on Sheriff Carl Wall stepping out of his county car. Now that Calen had come to terms with what was happening, he wished it wasn’t Gracie standing next to him. He never had managed to look good in her eyes and, while he’d made his peace with that, he still wished he could stand tall when he was next to her. A man needed to have some pride around a woman he had once loved, especially when the woman had never really noticed his existence. He only hoped things didn’t get any worse—and that, if they did, Gracie wasn’t standing beside him to see it all.
Chapter Two
Gracie watched the sheriff step up onto the porch. He wasn’t wearing his uniform and looked as if he’d grabbed the closest jeans and sweatshirt he could find to put on his large frame. The man’s face was plain, but his heart was good and Gracie was glad he was here.
“What’s wrong?” the lawman asked, peering into the shadows.
The headlights were still on in Renee’s car and Rusty had gone over there to race around that vehicle for a change.
“We have a woman who’s been hurt,” Gracie said. A nudge would be all it should take for the sheriff to know that the priority was to treat Renee’s wounds. Any questions about that ski mask could wait.
“She’s lost a fair amount of blood,” Tyler added.
“Any reason we can’t move her?” the sheriff asked, as he crouched down beside her.
“No broken bones as far as I can tell,” Tyler noted as he looked Renee over. “She’d ride more comfortably in the ambulance if there’s one on the way out from Miles City.”
“It should be here in a few minutes,” the sheriff said, as he stood back up and looked around. “Any idea what happened?”
Gracie tried to keep her eyes off Calen, but she didn’t succeed. Shadows hid his face and a muscle flexed in his jaw. His brown hair hadn’t been combed, falling forward as he looked down at his daughter. She’d always thought he was one of those charming men who waltzed through life with no troubles. Her husband used to say Calen never turned down a chance to party, and that’s why Buck had claimed he’d stopped hanging out with him after they were married. But Calen wasn’t having a good time tonight. Strangely enough, the worry in his eyes made him more handsome than she remembered.
“We found a black ski mask on her,” Calen finally said, his voice flat as he looked up and faced the sheriff resolutely.
The lawman grunted in surprise. “I got a message that they’d arrested one of the thieves tonight. The other one got away. The fools tried to rob that gas station between Havre and Malta. The owner is ex-military and he had a gun behind the counter. Used it, too.”
“I thought they were looking for two men,” Gracie reminded everyone. “A gunshot wound doesn’t mean a crime has been committed.”
She knew all about the mistakes that could be made in the legal system, and she didn’t want this young woman to suffer through an arrest if she was innocent.
The sheriff shrugged. “Maybe the other one did all the talking. With a ski mask, the second one could have been a woman, if she was slight. Besides, what other reason does she have for being in this area?”
“She’s my daughter,” Calen said. “She was coming to see me.”
Gracie noticed that stopped the sheriff for a moment. “Not little Renee? I remember her riding that horse you had. She wasn’t more than twelve or so.”
The sheriff looked down at the young woman as though trying to see traces of the child she had been. Gracie wished she’d taken a minute to wash the grime off the woman’s face. She looked like a pixie who had fallen out of a tree, all bruises and smudges and torn clothes.
“She was fourteen when she was here last,” Calen continued after a moment, his voice strained. “Sixteen
