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An Accidental Family
Darlene Graham
What's hidden in the Winding Stair Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma?Rainey Chapman has three young, troubled boys in her care. When they witness a crime, Rainey's difficult job becomes deadly serious. Until the criminals are caught, she must hide the boys at a secret location known only to Seth Whitman–a small-town cop with a secret of his own.Rainey's never met a man like Seth, but she has met a cop like him–her father, gunned down over ten years ago. She's vowed that she will never fall for a man who puts himself in danger every day. Even if he's become a father figure for the needy boys…and even if he's everything she's ever wanted in a man.
The moon shone as full and lucent as a spotlight
The dogs had trotted along and threaded underfoot and the boys were as bad as Granny’s billy goats, leaping around on the jagged rocks in the dark. Seth had to grab at a couple of shirt collars and haul them back from the ledge. Finally they all settled down under the vast night sky for some stargazing.
“Boys, look,” Rainey said. “That’s Arcturus.” She pointed. “And that’s Andromeda. Orion. And those— Granny calls those the seven sisters.”
While she was speaking a shooting star cut through the dark sky low on the horizon.
“Wow! Did you see that?” Dillon poked Seth’s shoulder excitedly. Maddy signed his wonder near Rainey’s face in the dark.
Even Aaron looked enthralled. While Rainey was watching Aaron, Seth was watching her. At one point they exchanged a glance of protective accord over the boys’ heads, and Rainey wondered what it would be like, how it would feel, to raise children with the kind of man who would take them up on a mountain to look at the stars.
Dear Reader,
Seth Whitman and Rainey Chapman form a family with three needy young boys under most unusual circumstances in a most unusual setting.
The Winding Stair Mountains in southeastern Oklahoma have an enduring mystery and beauty that civilization cannot touch. Just hearing the names of the landmarks in that area stirred my imagination: Black Fork Mountain, Talimena Drive, The Runestones.
I had to see this remote corner of my state up close. So with my best friend from high school riding shotgun, I took off on a road trip. As we checked out the towns, the historic sites, the flora and fauna, the dark rivers and hidden waterfalls, we discovered that the real treasures in southeastern Oklahoma are the people. The preachers and the cowboys and the artists who live there today are as fascinating as the outlaws and the Native American chiefs and the Vikings who passed through in the old days.
All this color and beauty and lore became like a kaleidoscope that I twisted and twisted until I came up with Granny’s mountain home and the town of Tenikah…the perfect place for Seth and Rainey to fall in love and find a family.
I’d love to hear from you! Contact me at P.O. Box 720224, Norman, OK 73070 or visit my Web site, www.darlenegraham.com. While you’re there, be sure to take a peek at my upcoming Texas trilogy.
My best,
Darlene Graham
An Accidental Family
Darlene Graham
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my lifelong friend, Susan Camp.
Thank you for exploring the Winding Stair Mountains
with me. Our adventures seem never to end!
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE
THE FACE OF HIS BROTHER rose up to haunt Seth Whitman as he crouched alone in the dark. For some reason he always envisioned Lane the way he looked in the old black-and-white photo that hung on the wall of the field house, a cocky seventeen-year-old football hero, immortalized along with every other All-State player to graduate from Tenikah High. There was no black-and-white portrait of Seth’s face up on that wall, and he was glad of it. Since the day Coach Hollings had ripped his picture down, Seth had been the outsider and always would be.
The snap of a twig somewhere in the dark rock formations that surrounded him snuffed the memories. Alert to any sound that might be the movement of humans, he listened but heard nothing except the throaty roar of the river below, and from behind, the tinkle of seeping water inside the caves.
He eased back down into the dark niche to resume his vigil.
His sweat-soaked uniform chafed like leather beneath his Kevlar bulletproof vest as the fingers clutching the stock of his shotgun tightened into a choke hold. An old hatred burned suddenly alive again in the pit of his gut.
He sensed the presence of his brother’s murderers as palpably as he sensed the dying traces of summer in the air. Waiting for them was excruciating.
He swiped at a trickle of sweat slithering down his throat. The temperature had spiked above a hundred today, rare in the densely forested mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, even in August. When it got this hot, the trees seemed to wilt and the sandstone cliffs and winding blacktop roads refused to release their heat even after the sun slid behind the ridgelines. He’d bet his pickup that the temperature hadn’t dropped ten degrees since sundown.
Another twig snapped.
He pinpointed the sound to one of the smaller caves up the ledge, and made his way to the entrance with the deadly focus of a mountain cat. He shielded himself behind a rock, leveled his shotgun at his shoulder and yelled, “Freeze!” as he snapped on the halogen light mounted on the gun.
Snared in the cone of light were three boys. Middle school age, maybe ten or twelve. One looked slightly older. They were huddled just inside the mouth of the cave, the one in front wielding a knife in his bloodied hand. The way the big one pressed the other two back with one arm, glaring at Seth, reminded him of the time he and Lane had trapped three baby raccoons when they were kids growing up in these Kiamichi hills. The coons had toddled into the trap in one hungry clump, and when Seth bent down to peer into the cage, the male had herded the two little females behind his back and hissed. Seth and Lane had collapsed laughing.
But this wasn’t funny. The Slaughter brothers were up in these caves somewhere, and now he’d stumbled on a bunch of freaked-out kids.
“Police,” Seth said calmly. “Drop the knife.”
“Police, my ass,” the bigger boy snarled. “You want this knife, buddy? You come and get it.” Seth realized the boy couldn’t see beyond the glare of light.
He switched on his shoulder mike. “Jake, come in.”
When the radio crackled back with Jake’s voice— “Any sign of the Slaughters?”—the boy looked astonished.
“Drop it,” Seth repeated. The kid tossed the knife at his feet.
Seth hit the mike switch again. “No, but I found three kids in a cave. One’s hurt. Come on around.”
The boys looked roughed up—dirty, sweaty, scratched. The big one had bled all over the knife. The smaller two were bound, hands behind their backs, with duct tape.
Seth sheathed the shotgun at his back as he approached them. “Are you kids from the camp?” Big Cedar Camp was for troubled youth, but these guys looked too shell-shocked to be a threat.
“You’re a cop?” The tall one’s voice was deep one second, high-pitched the next. He was a good-looking kid, with even, darkly Hispanic features and well-developed muscles. Right now he was as agitated as the devil. “Then listen! Some creeps tied us up! You got to catch them.”
“First things first,” Seth said as he used the knife to cut the tape off the other two. One was thin as a reed, with messy brown hair and frightened brown eyes. The other was a little chunk—curly red hair, deep-set blue eyes that had a spooked look about them. Neither one said a word, but as soon as their hands were loose they started flashing sign language.
“Yeah.” The bigger kid nodded as he read his friends’ signing. “They’re twins or brothers or somethin’. Look-alikes. Big red beards.” He made a pulling motion at his chin.
There were more hand signals from the other two. “Yeah. Real weirdos,” the Hispanic kid agreed.
Seth knew, without even hearing the description, that the kids were talking about the Slaughters. “What are you guys doing up here?”
The Hispanic kid shot his comrades a guilty look. “We didn’t mean no trouble. We just sneaked out to explore the caves, and next thing we knew, those guys caught us and tied us up. They’re way back in one of those caves up there.” He pointed up the cliff. “Aiming to dig up those bones,” he blurted, before his eyes shifted, and he clammed up.
Seth narrowed his gaze at the kid. He suspected some kind of lie here. How would the boy know what the Slaughters were aiming to do? Seth would get to the truth sooner or later. He usually did. The last seven years had been one long pursuit of the truth. Many times he had searched this endless warren of caves, looking for bones himself. And many times he had come up empty-handed, ending up staring out over the valley, torturing his mind, seeing Lane’s young face on that wall.
If Seth could find those bones, he’d have the evidence he needed to nail the Slaughters for Lane’s death. The famous missing motive. The defense attorney in the Slaughters’ manslaughter trial had argued that the twins had no motive to intentionally kill a cop. And Seth was never allowed to tell the story of his last conversation with his brother to the jury. “Inadmissible hearsay,” the judge had ruled. That’s when Seth had started to give up on the law. Or rather, that’s when he’d begun to use the law like a weapon to punish the Slaughters.
Although the kid’s statement did not surprise him, it sickened him. So Lane was right. And now Lonnie and Nelson Slaughter had returned to this high, rock-embedded cavity in Purney’s Mountain to finish what they’d started. The place was shaped like a giant grotto, with jagged, towering walls of layered sandstone black with age, etched by seeping water and pocked by caves that had hidden the brothers’ dirty secret well—until now.
“They hit Maddy on the head,” the boy said urgently. “He’s hurt bad.”
Sure enough, the skinny kid had a pretty sizable goose egg developing under his tousled brown hair. Seth checked the big one’s cut hands, too. Then he hit the button on his shoulder radio for dispatch.
“Amy, come in. I’ve intercepted some runaways from Big Cedar Camp. One’s got a bad bump on the head and another needs stitches. Send paramedics with transport, bottom of Purney’s Mountain.”
Jake arrived, wheezing and out of breath from the climb. Unfortunately, Seth’s partner didn’t keep himself in shape the way Seth did. There were a lot of guys like Jake in Tenikah, former defensive players on the football team. Encouraged to bulk up as teens, they found their muscle turned to fat they couldn’t shed as they aged.
“Now here’s a fine situation,” Jake drawled as he eyed the three frightened youngsters.
They got the kids’ names. Dillon. Maddy. Aaron. Found out the reason the big kid was doing all the talking. Maddy was deaf and mute. Aaron was just plain mute. “He don’t talk to nobody. Not never,” was how Dillon explained it. So that’s what all the hand signals were about.
They could describe the Slaughters, but they couldn’t tell Seth which cave they were in. “It’s dark back in those caves,” Dillon said, “and they was dragging us around like feed sacks.”
The kids had escaped because Dillon was sporting a contraband knife. “But I couldn’t fight ’em both,” he explained. “So we waited, and when those guys went back to finish digging up the…uh, we put our backs together and Maddy wiggled my knife out of my boot and cut my hands free.” That explained the lacerations. “I cut our feet loose and we ran. We hid in here when we heard a noise. We thought you was some more bad guys.”
“Good thinking,” Seth said. But now they had to get the kids out of here. “Jake, you take them down. I called for an ambulance.”
“You’re not going after Lonnie and Nelson by yourself,” Jake challenged. Seth knew this was coming.
“You have a better plan?” He pulled his shotgun out of the sling. “If somebody gets shot trying to escape, so be it.”
“You know how that’ll look? You bringing the dead bodies of the two guys who killed your brother down off this mountain? Seth, it could cost you your badge—”
“Then they can have my badge.”
“What about Rainey?” the Dillon kid interrupted.
“Rainey?” The two cops turned on him.
“Our counselor from camp. Rainey Chapman. She might be out looking for us right now. She’s done it before. What if those guys find her, too?”
“That settles it. I’m going up.” Seth turned the volume down on the mike. “I’ll stay in touch by radio.”
Jake gave him a grudging nod. Then he and the boys went one way—down—and Seth went the other—up.
Rainey Chapman. As Seth crept along the ledge, he tried to imagine what kind of woman would go tearing through these woods alone in search of three runaway boys. Whoever she was, he would have to get to the Slaughter brothers before they got to her.
He turned to peer upward over one shoulder, toward the edge of the high cliff that surrounded him in a dark horseshoe. A late August moon rose high above the ridge, and against its white spotlight, Seth couldn’t make out any movement under the black cowl of trees. But if the Slaughters were in one of these caves, they could only get out by coming down this ledge, or by using ropes to scale back up the cliff. If the woman came looking for the boys in the caves, she’d have to skirt this ledge, as well. He positioned himself strategically for either occurrence and waited again.
It seemed as if he’d spent half his life waiting, trying to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that refused to fit. He’d waited for Lonnie and Nelson Slaughter to get out of prison. Waited for them to come back here and make a move. Waited for the day—or the night—when they’d lead him to the last piece. This day. This night.
He ran a sweaty palm over his thigh again. His quad muscles were knotting up like bundles of barbed wire. He’d pulled them good scrambling up over the boulders at the base of the cliff in the dark. But years of ignoring rodeo injuries had disciplined his body well. If only he could ignore the memories churning through his mind.
His decision to avenge his brother’s death had seemed so cold, so clean at the time. But now that it had come down to this—hiding in these rocks, ready to kill or be killed—the weight of it all closed in. He glanced at the badge that gleamed dully in the moonlight like a shiny lie.
Despite certain well-honed skills, Seth didn’t feel like a lawman. He knew that in truth he was nothing more than a predator, seeking one thing and one thing only—now going on seven years past. Sometimes he could actually feel his fingers closing around the Slaughter brothers’ beefy necks.
A stealthy sound from above made his spine tense.
Slowly, he eased up, clutching the shotgun, and stepped out of his cave, listening.
The skin on the back of his neck prickled as he heard labored breathing, then a harsh curse, then excited shouting. “Lonnie! The kids got away!”
A second guttural voice hissed a foul curse. A ray of light flared over the edge of the cliff and Seth flattened himself against the rock. “We’ll have to catch ’em later. We gotta get the stuff up first.”
Rustling. Grunting. The strained voice calling, “More rope!”
Seth saw a rappelling rope bouncing out over the side of the cliff not twenty feet to his left. By damn, the fools were right above him.
