A Texas Rescue Christmas

Patricia was gone.

Becky’s cell phone rang, shrill.

“May I use your powder room?” Becky asked, smiling sweetly, although her pink lip gloss had faded away hours ago.

She locked herself in the bathroom, and she cried.

* * *

“Why, it’s James Waterson the third, as I live and breathe! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? I swear, you are even taller than your brother. What are you now? Six-three? Six-four?”

Trey steeled himself against the onslaught. He hadn’t had a chance to scrutinize the woman’s face, yet she was hugging him and patting him on the cheek, treating him like he was a growing boy when he’d just passed his thirty-first birthday. Clearly, she knew him, but he did not know her. If she’d just hold still and let him look at her face for a moment—but she chatted away, turned and dragged him from the door.

He hadn’t had a chance to look about as he’d come in. He preferred to pause and get his bearings when he entered a new building, but this stranger gave him no chance. Trey looked around, consciously choosing to focus on what his eyes could see and deliberately ignoring the sounds hitting his ear. He was tired from the strain of travel, and he could only take in so much.

The woman pulled him into the high-raftered great room, and Trey, still concentrating on visual information, immediately focused on the fireplace. It was decorated for a wedding with a swag of fluffy white material and silver Texas stars, but he knew what it would look like without all that. He knew that fireplace.

Massive, its limestone edifice rose from floor to ceiling in a severe rectangle that would have been boring if the limestone variations hadn’t been unique from stone to stone. Trey had lain before roaring fires, staring up at the limestone, idly noting which were white and beige and yellow, which were solid, which were veined. From infancy, he’d done so, he supposed. He last remembered doing it with a girl while in high school, drinking his mother’s hot chocolate before sneaking his sweetheart out to the barn for some unchaperoned time.

Yes, he knew that fireplace.

Suddenly, the whole room fell into place. Hell, the whole house made sense. Trey knew where he was. It was effortless. The kitchen was through there. The mudroom beyond that. His bedroom was down the hall. The dogs needed to be fed outside that door, every morning, before school.

There was nothing confusing about it.

God, he knew where he was. Not just how to navigate from here to there. Not just enough to keep from looking like a fool. He really and truly knew where in the world he was.

“Can you believe they ran off like that? I mean, you can’t blame them with the storm coming and everything, but...” The woman squeezed his arm conspiratorially. “Okay, I blame them a little. I think most women would want the wedding. You could always take a trip some other time. I mean, it’s the bride’s big show with the white gown, being the center of attention, the flowers, the cake, you know? But Patricia, she’s some kind of sailboat nut. I don’t even know what you call those people. Instead of horse crazy, are they boat crazy? Anyhow, you would have thought your brother had never wanted anything more in his entire life than to get on a sailboat and go visitin’ islands.”

With a woman? Someone he loved enough to pledge his life to? Trey didn’t find that so hard to understand. It sounded as if Luke had made the choice between wearing a tux for one day or spending a month on tropical seas with the woman he wanted the most. His little brother had never been stupid.

Then again, once upon a time, Trey hadn’t been stupid, either. Now, he didn’t recognize the person he was talking to. He tried to place the woman’s face as she chattered on.

“Luke’s always been a cattle rancher, not a sailor. I guess people do crazy things when they’re in love. I hope it lasts. Lord knows, none of my marriages have. I don’t blame you for not coming to any of them.”

Trey had been invited to her weddings? That sick, sweaty feeling started between his shoulder blades.

The sound of the mudroom door slamming centered him once more. It was a sound Trey hadn’t heard in ten years, yet it sounded utterly familiar, instantly recognizable without any effort.

The man’s voice that followed was new to him. “No luck, sugar,” it boomed.

“Oh, dear. Trey, come meet your new uncle.”

Uncle. That meant this woman was his aunt. Trey looked at her, and suddenly it was so incredibly obvious. She was his mother’s sister, his aunt June. How could he have forgotten that he had an aunt June?

He felt stupid.

The kitchen, however, he remembered. He hadn’t stepped fully into the room, hadn’t put both boots on the black-and-white-checkered floor, when he felt that utterly certain feeling once more. His brain worked for once. He didn’t just recognize the kitchen, he knew every inch. This drawer held the silverware, that cupboard held the big pots, and the cold cereal was on the bottom shelf of the pantry. He knew all that without trying, and it made him realize how little he usually knew about other rooms. He’d been adrift in every room he’d been in for the past ten years.

His new uncle shook hands, then shook his head at Aunt June. “No sign of her, sugar.”

Another woman, younger than Aunt June, came in from outside. He could see her through the doorway to the mudroom, stamping her boots and smacking icy droplets off her jacket sleeves. “It’s turning into sleet out there, bad.”

He didn’t know her.

She knew him. “Ohmigod, Trey! I haven’t seen you in ages.” She dumped her coat on the mudroom floor and came rushing at him, arms open. They closed about him in a hug, unfamiliar in every way.

Don’t panic. Think. Aunt June has daughters. Think of their names.

Aunt June patted his arm and started laughing. “I don’t think he recognizes you, Emily. It’s been ten years, at least. You were in pigtails and braces last time he saw you.”

He had a cousin named Emily, of course.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just to prove that he knew something, he opened the correct cabinet to pull out coffee mugs. His brother hadn’t moved their mother’s traditional coffee machine. It sat on the same counter it had always sat on. Trey knew the filters would be in the cupboard above it.

“Can I make y’all some coffee?” he said, his voice sounding gruff to his own ears. He owned a third of the house, and he had company. He ought to make some attempt to be a host.

“That’s a good idea,” Emily said. “I need to warm up before I keep looking.”

And...he was lost again. The emotions of these three people were hard for him to keep track of. Everyone was happy one moment, worried the next.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, determined to make sense of the world. He started counting scoops of coffee into the filter basket. One, two, three, four—

“This girl named Becky disappeared.”

Six, seven—crap. He’d lost count. Trey decided the amount of coffee looked about right, shoved it into place and hit the power button.

“You gonna put some water in there, sugar?” Aunt June asked, laughing.

Damn it.

But everyone was happy again for a moment, chuckling about old age and forgetfulness.

Then, they weren’t happy. As Trey filled the carafe with water, his aunt started explaining who was missing. A young lady had arrived for the wedding, Patricia’s sister, or so she’d said. They hadn’t known Patricia had a sister.

“Just as sweet as can be,” his aunt said.

“Pretty as a picture,” his uncle said.

“She seemed nervous to me,” Emily said. “Then she stood in a corner, and I saw her listening to something on her cell phone. She just put on her coat and mittens and hat, and walked out the door. I thought she was going to her car to get something, but she never came back.”

Aunt June looked out the picture window above the kitchen sink, angling her head so she could cast worried looks at the sky. “It’s been hours.”

The coffeepot was brewing perfectly, making soothing noises. The scent of fresh coffee filled the kitchen. Trey knew where he was. He knew who everyone was around him. He ought to be content, but apparently, the part of him who’d been born a cowboy wasn’t dead. Someone on the ranch was unaccounted for, and that meant trouble.

“No one has seen her for hours?” he asked, and he looked at the sky with a rancher’s eye. The storm, as bad as it was, looked like it was just getting started. “You’re sure she didn’t leave for a hotel in town? Maybe hitch a ride with some other guest?”

“This is hers.” Emily held up a lady’s purse. Even Trey knew a woman wouldn’t leave without her purse. Emily handed him a Massachusetts driver’s license. “Here’s what she looks like.”

Her signature was neat and legible. Rebecca Cargill. A pretty woman. Brown hair, with thick, straight bangs. As Trey took a moment to let the image settle into his brain, something about the expression on her face resonated with him. There was strain beneath that smile, a brave smile for the camera. I know how you feel, darlin’. I was afraid I wouldn’t pass the damned exam, either.

She could have been stressed over any number of things, of course. It was fanciful of him to imagine he knew what the look on her face meant.

“I’m sure she’s found shelter by now,” Aunt Jane said.

Trey looked up from the driver’s license in his hand. “If she hasn’t, she’ll die tonight. It’s too cold to survive without shelter.”

Aunt Jane made a horrified little sound, and Trey cursed himself. He hadn’t always been so blunt. Hell, people had called him charming in high school and college. Now he had to work not to blurt out every thought that passed through his thick head.

His new uncle put a protective arm around his wife. “She’s probably fallen asleep in the hayloft in the barn, and she just hasn’t heard us calling for her. She’ll be fine.”

Emily darted a look at her mother, then pressed a cell phone into Trey’s hand. “Here’s her phone. It’s not password protected. I didn’t want to be nosy, but I thought there’d be more photos of her.”

Trey started sliding his thumb over the screen, skimming through the photos stored on the phone. They weren’t very personal. Seascapes of some rocky shoreline that looked nothing like the Texas coast. Distant children wading in the surf, silhouetted against a sunrise. A couple walking away from the camera, holding hands.

Finally, he saw a more typical snapshot of a woman holding a mutt. Trey was able to mentally compare this woman with the one in the driver’s license. Not Rebecca Cargill.

He slid his thumb across the screen once more. The next shot was also of the mutt, but this time, it was held by the woman on the driver’s license. Same pretty face. Same brown bangs. Same strain beneath the smile.

“She looks so young,” his aunt said, looking over his shoulder. “I can’t believe her license says she’s twenty-four, can you?”

Emily was looking over his other shoulder. “I thought we could use that photo if we needed to call the sheriff.”

That snapped Trey into action. He handed Emily the phone as he addressed his aunt and uncle. “You haven’t called the sheriff? Dark’s coming. There isn’t much time to get a search party out here.”

“Your foreman, Gus, he’s got the ranch hands doing the searching. They’ve been stomping all over the grounds. She couldn’t have gone that far on foot.”

His foreman? Trey didn’t have a foreman. Luke did. Trey hadn’t set foot on the ranch in a decade. With his parents traveling ten months out of the year as retirees, Luke was the Waterson who ran the James Hill Ranch. Luke had decided to promote their longtime ranch hand, Gus, to foreman. Trey had only agreed over the phone. He supposed it was just by virtue of being a Waterson that Aunt June addressed him as if he were still part of the James Hill.

Trey turned to Emily. “The sheriff’s got helicopters. We don’t. Call them.”

She ran to the house phone, the one that still hung on the kitchen wall as it had for the past twenty years or more.

His aunt patted his arm. “Honey, even the big Austin airport has been closed for hours now. They aren’t puttin’ anything up in the sky while ice is coming down out of it.”

“That may be true, but we’ll let the sheriff’s office make that decision. I’m not a pilot. I’m just—”

He stopped himself, then turned on his heel and headed back to the front door, past his father’s arm chair, past his mother’s lamp, the one he and his brother had broken and glued back together. He picked up his sheepskin coat where he’d left it and shrugged it on.

Aunt Jane followed him. “You’re just what?”

He chose a Stetson from the few hanging on pegs by the door. Whether his father’s or his brother’s, it didn’t matter. The men in the family were all built the same. It would fit.

“I’m the only Waterson around here right now, and I’ll be damned if a young woman is going to die on this ranch on my brother’s wedding day.”

He crammed the hat on his head, and headed out the door.

Chapter Three

I am not going to die today.

Becky forced herself to stop sliding down the tree trunk.

Stand up, Becky. Straight. At least pretend you’ve got some confidence, for God’s sake.

The landscape of central Texas all looked the same. As far as she could see, stretches of scraggly brown grasses were broken up by scraggly waist-high bushes. The only color she saw was her own pastel-pink ski parka, chosen by her mother for appearance, not survival.

Who am I going to impress with this fake Cargill confidence, Mama? But she stayed on her feet.

She spotted an occasional cactus, which proved that Hollywood didn’t lie when it put a cactus in a cowboy movie. But there was no shelter. As she’d driven the ATV four-wheeler away from the barn, ice had crunched under her wheels. Although the exposed skin of her face had been stung by the wind almost immediately, she’d kept driving, feeling like the control she had over the loud engine was the last bit of control she had in the world.

She’d turned up her collar and buried her chin in her jacket, and kept going. Somewhere. Away from the house that her mother would find. Far from the house and the barn and the sheds, she’d crossed acres of ground that shined in the afternoon sun, for they were completely covered in a thick but beautifully reflective sheet of ice. By the time the next bank of storm clouds had rolled in, hiding the sun and killing the enchantment of her ice world, she’d been low on gas.

She’d turned around—a U-turn that was easy in the right kind of ranch vehicle—and started heading back, but she hadn’t made it far before the engine had run out of fuel.

That had been hours ago. Literally, hours ago. Forced to seek shelter as the wind picked up and fresh sleet started to fall, she’d left the bright blue ATV out in plain sight—as if she’d had a choice—and she’d headed for a line of trees. Gnarled oaks had seemed not too far away, and clusters of shockingly green cedar trees were interspersed among them. They weren’t much, but they were more shelter than the ATV provided.

They weren’t close, either. She’d begun sweating as she crunched her way across the uneven land, so she’d unzipped her coat to let any moisture evaporate. One thing she’d learned while skiing in Aspen was that getting wet when it was freezing outside led to intolerable cold. Even the most devil-may-care snowboarders would have to get off the mountain and change into dry clothes when they worked up a sweat.

The Aspen ski school had included some lessons on building emergency shelters. Too bad Becky didn’t have ski poles and skis with her, because they’d been used to build every kind. Too bad there was no snow. In Aspen, the snow had been so deep, they’d dug a trench that they could sit in to escape from the wind.

Actually, the instructors had dug the trench. The rich kids and Becky had just sat in it. Some survival training. Maybe she would have learned more if her mother hadn’t tracked her credit card so closely.

I’m going to die because some teenagers convinced me to buy them vodka. I missed the rest of the survival lessons because of vodka. And Mother.

She wouldn’t cry. The tears would freeze on her cheeks.

She huddled against the trunk of the largest oak. It provided a little protection from the wind, at least, but the bare branches blocked nothing from above. Ice was falling from the sky, and it was falling on her.

She was so cold. She could just slide down this tree, take a little nap...and never wake up.

Stand up. Straight. For God’s sake, Becky, your shoes can’t hurt that badly. You will stay in this receiving line and shake hands with the club president before I give you permission to leave.

Becky stomped her boots to stay awake. With each thump of the ground, she heard the thud and she felt the jarring impact, but she realized, in an almost emotionless acknowledgment of fact, that she could no longer feel her feet.

I could possibly die today.

It would be so unfair if she died. Damsels in distress were supposed to be rewarded for trying to avoid a fate worse than death.

Well, she’d avoided going to the Bahamas with Hector Ferrique, all right, but she couldn’t say if that fate really would have been worse than this one. For starters, although it sounded repulsive, she didn’t know how difficult it was to have sex with a man one didn’t like. She didn’t know how difficult it was to have sex at all.

I’m going to die a frozen, twenty-four-year-old virgin. Out here, no one will find my body for months. Maybe years.

Terror made her colder. She would not give in to terror.

She needed to find some way to cover her head, because the snow or rain or sleet or whatever it was had started soaking through her ski hat. Its high-tech material was water-resistant, but apparently not water-proof. It could only repel the sleet for so many hours.

Becky looked around for smaller, broken branches on the ground and gathered them up, clomping her way from one to the other on her numb feet like a frozen Frankenstein. Her arms were growing numb, too, so she stuffed the twigs and thin branches haphazardly into a fork in the tree’s lowest branch.

The bare sticks weren’t going to block many drops of icy rain. Becky looked at the green cypress trees. She remembered them from her elementary school days. They were tall and narrow, green from ground to the top, and when she was a little girl, she’d been very aware that adults complained about them incessantly. She stumbled her way toward one now, thinking its evergreen branches would be useful stacked on top of her bare sticks.

The cypress tree disagreed. Becky got as good a grip as she could manage, but the flat, fan-like greenery slipped through her gloves like it was coated with wax or oil. Frustration made her eyes sting with more tears she couldn’t shed. The exertion of tugging and pulling was making her too warm in her coat, yet her feet weren’t warming up at all with the activity.

She tried a new approach, stomping on the lowest branches with her clumsy Frankenstein feet. She lost her balance several times and grabbed at the slick greenery to stay upright, but she succeeded in breaking a few branches off at the trunk.

In triumph, she carried them back to her twig roof and layered them on top. Then she hunkered underneath her little roof, hugged the oak tree’s trunk to keep the wind from whirling around her, and she waited.

For what?

There was nothing to wait for. Help was not coming. No one knew her at that ranch house. Her mother had left her a message about how she’d tracked her to the Austin airport, but it would take her time to get here and more time to figure out that Becky had gone to the groom’s ranch, not the Cargill mansion. It was getting dark already. Mother would not find her tonight.

I left the ATV out where anyone could see it overhead.

There was nothing flying overhead, however. No planes. No helicopters. Nothing would come searching for her by air, not while this storm raged. It could be another day or more before anyone at this ranch realized an ATV was even missing. When the storm was over, when they could search for her, it would be too late.

Sweet little Becky Cargill, the good and obedient child, had defied everyone’s expectations and run away.

Now sweet little Becky was going to die.

* * *

Trey could find Rebecca Cargill. Of that, he had no doubt. The only question was, would he find her before she succumbed to the cold?

Hang in there, miss. I’ll be there soon.

All he needed to do was guess where there was.

Had she left the house on foot, Gus and the ranch hands would have found her by now. Trey checked the barn as a formality, but he knew she hadn’t taken a horse. The cowboys would have noticed one was missing, and the horse itself would have had the sense to buck her off and run back to the warmth of the barn.

That left the ATVs. Trey walked out the other side of the barn, turned up his collar against the biting cold and crossed the yard in long, rapid strides to the outbuilding where they’d always kept two ATVs. Sure enough, one was missing.

She’d left the spare two-gallon gas can on the floor. The sight of that gas can sitting on the concrete slab, forgotten, chilled Trey in a way the weather could not. If the gasoline was here, then she’d run out of gas there. The only way she’d make it back to the ranch was if he went and got her.

He’d known that, too, standing in the black-and-white kitchen.

He shut the shed door against the howl of the storm and started tying supplies onto the back of the second ATV. It only took him minutes, thanks to the miracle of having his memories of the ranch. He’d gone camping with his brother, when his brother had wanted to learn how to build a campfire. Gone fishing with his father, when his biggest problem had been deciding if he liked baseball or football better. Gone riding the fence line after his last football game as a high school senior, checking all seventy-five thousand acres of the main section of the ranch with the foreman. He knew how to survive outdoors on the James Hill Ranch.

Trey rolled the ATV out of the shed, shut the door as Miss Rebecca Cargill had, sat on the ATV as she had and started the engine. Tracks led in every direction from the shed, and with the ground hard with ice, none of them look fresher than any other. Instead, he looked to the horizon and tried to view the ranch through her eyes, so he could guess which way she’d decided to go.

The strained girl in the driver’s license photo had needed to get away. She’d shown up to a wedding where no one knew she existed, and a phone call had sent her right back out the door. He couldn’t imagine what from, but she’d run. He didn’t know why, but she’d wanted to be alone. Badly. Immediately.

Straight. She wouldn’t have headed to any of the scenic spots like a visitor would, nor had she gone to check the water level in the creek like a ranch hand. She’d only needed to get away from some kind of situation that had no other solution, so she’d left her phone and her purse and her life, pointed the ATV away from the house and gone.

She’d driven as fast as she could, eating up the gas. She’d wanted space. Freedom. So as Trey drove, he chose the most obvious routes and the most level ground, keeping the last signs of civilization at his back. At every decision point, he chose the easiest path, the one that would allow him to get as far away as quickly as he could. And when his gas tank was on empty, he saw the bright blue ATV parked in the middle of one of the most remote pastures on his land.

He’d found Rebecca Cargill, because he’d known that she’d been running from a fate she couldn’t control. He understood that emotion.