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 and wash up. He jutted his chin toward the carport.
Her face went pale. “That’s...that’s my van.”
The muscles in his stomach clenched even more, the same way they had just before the quiet streets in Afghanistan exploded with enemy fire.
She stared at the van and he could read the tension. She was slight, petite, barely came up to his collarbone. For some reason, in that moment, she looked even smaller. He laid his hand slowly on her shoulder, delicate under his wide palm.
“Ella,” he said quietly. “Tell me everything that happened last night.”
* * *
Ella swallowed as she stared out the window at the carport. The trees swayed and trembled in the winter wind. A set of birds exploded from the foliage, startled.
“After you left the stables, did you stop anywhere on the way home?”
She rounded on him. “Owen, I know I messed up in the past but I promise you I did not drink anything except the tea in my thermos. It must have been drugged.”
“I wasn’t implying anything.”
“Just go home, Owen. Thanks for the ride, but I’ll figure out what to do on my own.”
He shifted, taking the weight off his wounded leg, calloused hands on hips. “You need help.”
It was suddenly too much. “I needed help four years ago when you deployed right after my brother did. Or maybe when my dad died—maybe that would have been a good time for some help, but you weren’t there, and neither was Ray.” Her voice wobbled.
He winced as if she’d hurt him. Good. He deserved it for thinking she would go out drinking and leave her sister alone and helpless. Even though you did exactly that when Ray and Owen deployed.
“Go home, Owen.”
Part of her wanted him to march right on out to his truck and gun it out of the driveway, but another part, a tiny part that she’d hidden away since she was seven years old, wished desperately that he would stay.
“Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
Owen strolled through the house and out the front door, hesitating just past the threshold. She thought with a moment of warmth that he’d changed his mind. Instead she saw a police car pull up at the end of her driveway. Her mouth went dry.
Officer John Larraby nodded to Ella as he got out of his cruiser and walked up the drive. “Got time for a few questions, I hope,” Larraby said. She nodded and Owen moved in closer.
Ella told him everything in a hurried rush of words while Larraby dutifully jotted notes.
“Miss Cahill, Candy Silverton is looking for her nephew, Luke Baker. Were you with him last night?”
Ella blinked. “I spoke to him at the stables in the afternoon when I was shoeing the horses.”
“I was told you had a heated argument with Mr. Baker.”
“No, I did not,” she snapped. “Someone is lying about me and I want to know who.”
Larraby cocked his head ever so slightly and dread cascaded along her spine. “What did you talk to him about?”
Should she say it? Repeat what he’d said in confidence? Tell the truth, her gut told her. “He had some...reservations about Bruce Reed, about his intentions toward Candy Silverton. I think you should ask him more about it.”
“As I’ve said, we can’t find
