Lyle stood as she approached the sofa. “I don’t know your name.”
“Rhoda.” She plopped down on the sofa, leaned the shotgun against her right knee and settled the albums in her lap. “Rhoda Strong. Now, sit back down.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lyle couldn’t wait. Whatever the lady was about to reveal, he didn’t want to miss a word. The possibility that she was a brick or two shy of a load poked into the lump of perplexing conclusions taking shape in his head.
“Okay.” She huffed as if the whole effort of reaching this point had proved taxing then rested her attention on him. “Don’t bother asking me any questions because I have no answers. All I can tell you is that I’ve known Janet her whole life. She came here from Austin every summer as a kid to spend time at her aunt’s house. Janet never married or had any children of her own. She never got into any trouble I know about, but—” she stared down at the albums “—a week ago she said she needed me to keep these three picture books safe for her. She didn’t offer any explanations and I didn’t ask any questions. I promised her I would and that was that.” Her expression turned troubled and distant. “Until yesterday. She come over here and asked if I’d be home all day. Said she might be coming over to get the albums if the company she was expecting arrived. I told her I reckoned I’d be here. Before she left she got this funny look on her face and made me promise one more thing.”
Lyle searched the elderly woman’s eyes, saw the understanding there that the items she now held had cost her friend her life.
“She made me swear that if anything happened to her I wouldn’t go to the police with these pictures or even to her niece. I was to stay right here and be on the lookout for someone. When that someone arrived I was to give these books to that person and that person only.”
Before Lyle could assimilate a reasonable response, Rhoda thrust the stack of photo albums at him. He accepted the load that carried far more weight than could be measured in mere pounds and ounces.
“There. I’ve done what she asked.”
Lyle shook his head. “Ms. Strong, I’m confused. There is no way your friend could have known my name.”
The older woman shrugged. “Don’t suppose she did. She just said someone from the Colby Agency would be coming.” She stared straight into his eyes with a certainty that twisted through his chest. “And here you are.”
Not ashamed to admit he was rattled, Lyle opened the first of the three albums. Page one displayed a birth certificate for Elizabeth Barker. Parents: Raymond and Clare Barker. His heart pounding, he turned to the next page. A new birth certificate, this one for an Olivia Westfield. There were newspaper clippings and photos, obviously taken without the subject’s knowledge, from around kindergarten age to the present. The woman, Olivia, according to her birth certificate was twenty-seven—the oldest of the three missing Barker girls. The second album was the same, Lisa Barker aka Laney Seagers, age twenty-six.
“These are …” Incredible, shocking. No word that came to mind adequately conveyed what he wanted to say. He had to call Simon and Victoria. They had held out some hope of finding Rafe Barker’s daughters alive, but this was … mind-blowing.
“I know who they are, Mr. McCaleb,” Rhoda said to him, dragging his attention from the carefully detailed history of the Barker children—women. “My friend is dead because she kept this secret all these years. You do whatever you have to do to make sure she didn’t die for nothing, and I’ll do the same.”
“You have my word, ma’am.” Adrenaline searing through his blood vessels, Lyle shuffled to the final album. Selma Barker aka Sadie Gilmore.
His heart stopped. No. Not possible.
“Yes,” Rhoda countered.
Lyle hadn’t realized he’d uttered the word aloud until the woman still sitting next to him spoke.
“That one lives right here in Copperas Cove.” She tapped the photo of the young woman touted in the newspaper clipping as an animal rights activist. “Do you know her?”
Lyle stared at the face he hadn’t seen in seven years, except in his dreams, his gut twisting into knot after knot. “Yes, ma’am. I know her.” If he lived a hundred lifetimes, he couldn’t forget this woman.
Chapter Three
May 21, Second Chance Ranch, 6:30 a.m.
“Get off my ranch.” Sadie Gilmore held her ground, feet spread wide apart, the business end of her shotgun leveled on that no-good Billy Sizemore’s black heart. Maybe he thought just because he played straw boss for her equally no-good daddy that he could tell her what to do. Not in this lifetime.
Sizemore laughed. Threw his head back so far if he hadn’t been holding his designer cowboy hat it would have hit the dirt for sure, and he hooted. This wasn’t the first time Sadie had been blazing mad at her daddy’s henchmen, especially this knucklehead. Well, she’d had enough. She poked him in the chest with the muzzle of her twenty-gauge best friend. The echo of his laughter died an instant death. A razor-sharp gaze sliced clean through her. She gritted her teeth to conquer a flinch. “Three seconds,” she warned, “or I swear I’ll risk prison just to see the look on your sorry face when this ball of lead blasts a great big hole in your chest.”
“You stole that horse,” he accused. “Don’t even try denying it.”
Sadie was the one who laughed this time. “Prove it.”
The standoff lasted another couple of seconds before he surrendered a step. “You’ll regret this,” he warned, then turned his back to her. It took every speck of self-control she possessed not to shoot him before he reached his dually. But then that would make her the same kind of cheating sneak Gus Gilmore was.
Sadie lowered the barrel of the shotgun she’d inherited from her Grandma Gilmore and let go the breath that had been trapped in her lungs for the past half a minute or so. Sizemore spun away, the tires of his truck sending gravel and dirt spewing through the air and the horse trailer hitched to it bouncing precariously.
“Lying bastard.” Billy Sizemore might be a champion when it came to bronc riding, but as a human he scarcely hung on the first link of the food chain, in her opinion. Cow flies had more compassion. Could damn sure be trusted more.
Sadie swiped the perspiration from her brow with the sleeve of her cotton blouse and worked at slowing her heart rate. Usually she didn’t let guys like Size-more get to her, but this time was different. This time the stakes were extra high. No way was she allowing her father to get his way. She’d bought old Dare Devil fair and square. The gelding was done with his rodeo career. Too old to perform for the bronc riders and too riddled with arthritis for chuck wagon races or anything else. Just because Gus claimed the former competition star had been shipped off to the auction by mistake was no concern of hers. Sadie knew exactly what happened to those horses in far too many cases, and she couldn’t bear it. Gus didn’t need to know that she still had a friend or two on his side of the five-foot barbed wire fence that divided their properties.
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you, old man,” she proclaimed with a hard look to the west before visually tracking Sizemore’s big old truck and trailer roaring down the last leg of her half-mile-long drive.
When the dust had settled and the dually was long gone, Sadie walked back to
