The Accidental Sheriff Read online

  “No, Neil.” She reached over the small table for his arm, gripping it tightly. “You’ve just given me every reason to tell my boss exactly where he can shove this assignment.”

  “You’d give up your job for me?”

  “I have my integrity.”

  Her eyes shone with sincerity and her voice rang with conviction.

  So why did Neil feel he still couldn’t trust her?

  Chapter Four

  “Are you crazy!” Rachel looked stunned.

  “I don’t usually agree with Rachel,” Vi said, “but seriously, kiddo, have you thought this through?”

  “It so happens I have.”

  Carolina took her older sisters’ criticism in stride. She’d expected nothing less than shock and outrage from her family when she’d informed them of the run-in with her boss after lunch with Neil. The only one of them who might have understood her reasons was Corrine. She, however, was still cruising the Caribbean with her new husband and wouldn’t be back for several more days.

  “What if you lose your job?” Vi asked.

  She was the oldest of the four sisters and the first to make their mother’s fondest wish come true by giving her a grandchild. A girl. No surprise there, the Tucker-Sweetwater clan was overrun with members of the fairer sex. Even their cousin Jake, the lone male in their generation, had produced four daughters. With Carolina and Rachel still single and Vi having trouble getting pregnant a second time, all hopes were now pinned on Corrine to break the trend.

  “I won’t lose my job.” Carolina tried to convey a confidence she was far from feeling. Ward had made his displeasure at her defiance abundantly clear. She was still smarting from his verbal reprimand. “If he was going to fire me, he’d have done it already.”

  “Maybe not. He could be waiting.” Jake stepped out onto the redwood deck, carrying a plastic pitcher of fruit punch and a bag of potato chips. He’d invited his cousins over for a lazy Saturday afternoon of hanging out in his backyard and enjoying the spectacular mountain views. The girls had insisted on playing in the hot tub. Briana was recruited to supervise them in exchange for getting a day shaved off her punishment. She’d been grounded a month for the parking lot fender bender.

  “Waiting for what?” Carolina sipped her iced tea. She’d contemplated asking for a beer but was afraid it might look as if she was drowning her sorrows.

  “You to quit,” Jake said.

  “Why would I quit?”

  Jake set the fruit punch and chips down on a picnic table beside the hot tub. His three oldest daughters, along with Vi’s rambunctious preschooler, scrambled from the hot tub in a noisy, chaotic frenzy. Leaving a trail of puddles and wet footprints in their wake, they pounced on the snack as if they hadn’t eaten in days. The only one missing was Jake’s youngest. A year old, she was much too little to swim in the hot tub with her sisters and cousin. She and her mother had gone into town for some shopping, leaving Jake in charge of keeping the masses entertained.

  “Here. Put these on before you catch cold.” Vi jumped up from her chaise longue and handed the girls towels, making sure to wrap up her daughter snugly.

  “This isn’t Denver, Vi,” Rachel admonished. “It’s, what, seventy-two?”

  Jake tipped his chair back and studied the thermometer mounted beside the door. “More like seventy-eight.”

  “How quickly they forget.” Rachel laughed. “Fall in Arizona is like summer everywhere else.”

  Carolina’s relief that the subject had veered from her current work dilemma didn’t last. Jake refused to let it go.

  “Your boss might try and force you to quit,” he said, shooting her a quelling look, “by making your job a living hell.”

  “Don’t swear in front of the girls,” Vi hissed.

  “Sorry.”

  “I doubt Ward would pressure me like that. It would be considered harassment, and the station has a no-harassment policy.” Carolina leaned forward and reached for a chip, promising herself she’d have just one. A half dozen magically jumped into her open hand.

  “Not necessarily,” Jake answered. “Depends on how he went about it.”

  “What would be the benefit of me quitting versus firing me?”

  “He wouldn’t have to give you severance pay, for starters. And you probably couldn’t collect unemployment.”

  “Humph. I’m not sure even Ward’s that devious. He’s more of an explode one minute and forget about it the next kind of manager.” More potato chips appeared in Carolina’s hand and made their way to her mouth. “That’s why I think if he hasn’t fired me by now, he won’t. Of course, I can forget about any more special assignments or promotions.” The last chip lodged in her throat as that dismal reality sank in, and she coughed to clear it.

  “I think you should quit,” Vi said hotly. “You have way too much talent for that dinky station.”

  Big sisters. Hate them one minute, love them the next.

  “What would I do for a job? The other stations in town aren’t hiring or I’d have heard.”

  “We’re shorthanded in the office.”

  Jake’s suggestion earned him a disgruntled groan. “Work for you? No, thank you. Helping Mom is enough.” Like most of the family members, Carolina split herself between the ranch and an outside job. In her case, she assisted her mother, Millie, who was in charge of their many and frequently elaborate weddings. “Besides, I like working at the station. Most of the time,” she added. “I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet.”

  “Just in case, I think you should give Howard a call,” Jake said.

  Carolina frowned at the mention of the family’s attorney.

  “What all did this new acting sheriff say that would make you go against your boss?” Vi asked.

  Carolina reminded herself that her sister had moved away from Bear Creek Ranch almost ten years ago, and although she returned regularly to visit, she hadn’t met Neil yet.

  “You wouldn’t ask that question if you saw him.” Rachel’s radiant grin spoke volumes.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” Carolina concurred with a sigh.

  “What?” Jake looked from one to the other, his expression befuddled. “Is this some sort of female code?”

  “Neil Lovitt is hot,” Rachel translated for him.

  “Seriously hot,” Briana chimed in, plopping down on the end of Carolina’s chaise longue. Her younger sisters, evidently reenergized from their snack, had returned to the hot tub, their little cousin in tow. “For, you know, an older guy and everything.”

  “Old?” Jake recoiled. “What does that make me?”

  Briana rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Carolina. “I don’t blame you for refusing to do the story. He’s really nice and doesn’t deserve to have his reputation trashed.”

  “He is nice.” Carolina smiled. “And not just because he cut you some slack with that ticket.” The things Neil had told her about his late wife’s death and raising his daughter alone had deeply affected her. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since their conversation.

  “Is that your only reason?” Jake asked.

  “Absolutely.” Carolina instantly put up her guard. She and Jake weren’t merely related, they were good friends. He knew her as well as, if not better than, her sisters. “He’s a nice guy, as Briana says, with a sad past. What other reason do I need?”

  “You forgot to mention hot.” Rachel, still grinning, rubbed sunscreen onto her bare arms.

  Jake’s gaze narrowed on Carolina. “I know for a fact there are a lot of nice, hot people with sad pasts that you wouldn’t risk your job for.”

  She didn’t answer him—which was a mistake because it became immediately obvious that everybody present over the age of ten suspected there was more to her motives for defending Neil than she’d admitted. Close families definitely had their drawbacks.

  “Be careful,” Jake warned. “No reason to screw up your life for some guy you hardly know.”

  �
�Language, please.” Vi glowered at Jake. Again.

  Carolina pondered Jake’s point while he and her sister debated whether or not Vi’s daughter had already heard the words he’d used at preschool.

  Neil wasn’t “some guy” as far as Carolina was concerned. She definitely experienced a connection with him, of the zing-clear-to-her-toes caliber. The connection could, she feared, be one-sided. He hadn’t exactly bubbled over with joy in the hospital cafeteria when she’d promised him she would defy her boss and not do the story on him. If anything, he’d appeared hesitant to believe her and had required considerable convincing on her part.

  Carolina liked to think of herself as a good-hearted person, but Jake was right. She wouldn’t lay her job on the line for just anyone. It prompted her to wonder exactly how strong her attraction to Neil was and what, if anything, she should do about it.

  “Let me see how Ward acts on Monday,” she said, speaking over Jake and Vi’s silly argument. “He might not mention the story again. Depending on how it goes, I may call Howard.”

  “Good.” Her declaration appeared to satisfy Jake. “I’ll be right back,” he said when the trill of a phone sounded through the partially open door. “Briana, watch the girls, please.”

  Rachel waited until Jake was inside to pin Carolina down. “So, you going to ask him out?”

  “No!”

  “Why not? You want to go out with him.”

  “She may want to go out with him—” Vi sent her sister a superior look reminiscent of when they were teens “—but that doesn’t mean she prefers to do the asking.”

  Briana, who hadn’t returned to the hot tub, vacillated between watching the younger girls and observing the adult goings-on with starstruck fascination.

  “You know me.” Carolina lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “If a man appeals to me, I have no qualms about making the first move.”

  “That’s true,” Vi agreed, “if you don’t like him all that much. If you do, then you suddenly go from laughing in the face of convention to strictly traditional.”

  Carolina winced. “I do not.”

  “Come on, sis. When’s the last time you hesitated about taking the initiative?”

  She could pinpoint the day exactly. It had been on her disastrous double date with Neil. She’d hoped he would pick up on her attraction to him and respond in kind. Luckily, she hadn’t shared the details of that night with her sisters. Or not luckily, she thought, after hearing Vi’s next remark.

  “It was Lonnie, right?”

  Not that Carolina was having fun in the first place, but why did her sister have to bring up the dreaded ex-fiancé?

  “I’m sure there’s been someone else I’ve hesitated to ask out since him.” There had to be. Carolina racked her brain and came up blank. Uh-oh. Her sisters were right. She really did like Neil. Damn!

  “I think one of the girls got water up her nose,” she said, but her plan for distracting the four unwavering stares fixed on her failed. “I can’t concentrate with all this pressure.”

  “See?” Vi sat back in her chair. “Told you.”

  “Aunt Carolina’s crushing,” Briana said in a singsong tone.

  “I’m not crushing on Neil.” Carolina was afraid it might be far worse. Like total and complete infatuation.

  “So, prove us wrong and ask him out.”

  Jake’s timing couldn’t have been better. She’d never felt so glad to see him come through a door.

  “Hey, you’re—” she began to say, but the disturbed look on his face stopped her midsentence. “What’s wrong?”

  “That was Gary on the phone,” Jake said, referring to their manager of guest amenities. He started picking up damp towels and hanging them on the railing to dry. “Come on, girls, we have to go inside. Party’s over.”

  “Aw, Dad,” his daughters chorused.

  “Sorry. Something important came up.”

  Sensing his urgency, Carolina rose and began to help. “What did he say?”

  Gary had been an employee for over thirty years and knew the operation of the ranch better than anyone except the immediate family. For him to phone Jake at home signaled a serious problem.

  “Little José was on the north ridge this morning where it butts up against federal land checking the high trails before the weather turns.” Clearing trails of debris was a task the ranch hands regularly performed every March and October. “He found something. Gary drove out there this afternoon to verify it in case Little José was wrong. He wasn’t.”

  “Jeez, Jake.” Rachel jumped up and also started helping. “You talk like he discovered a dead body.”

  “No, not that.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “It was evidence of illegal mining.”

  “LOOK FOR A NUMBERED marker around the next bend.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Neil downshifted into a lower gear and floored the gas. The Jeep bounced and banged over rocks and rain washes with every foot of rugged mountain terrain they covered. Veering sharply to the right, he narrowly avoided a sprawling ponderosa. As it was, a low-hanging branch scraped across the Jeep’s canvas top. The noise was momentarily deafening.

  “Take it easy, will you?” Neil’s deputy, R.J., flopped around in the front passenger seat. Clutching the grab bar, he jammed the soles of both feet into the floorboard. “I’d like to get there with all my bones intact, if you don’t mind.”

  Neil shifted again as they crested the top of a small hill. The trail they’d taken was minimally maintained, narrow and designed for horses or ATVs, not full-size vehicles. The fact he and R.J. had made it this far was a testament to the Jeep’s sturdiness and, Neil liked to think, his ability as a driver.

  He’d discovered a passion for off-road driving soon after moving to Payson, never having encountered anything like it in New York City or the outskirts of Schenectady, where he’d grown up. The sheriff’s department’s standard issue Jeep didn’t compare to his own tricked-out, four-wheel-drive pickup, but he still pushed the older vehicle for everything it had, relishing the rush of adrenaline surging through him.

  Challenging himself with an almost unnavigable trail had the added benefit of keeping troublesome thoughts at bay—like Carolina and her promise not to do the story on him. He still didn’t know whether he could believe her or not. And her warning that his daughter would learn the part he’d played in her mother’s death was disrupting his sleep, dulling his appetite and affecting his mood. He’d have to be more careful in the future. Just this morning at breakfast Zoey had asked him if anything was wrong. He hated lying to her, but what choice did he have?

  “Are you on a suicide mission or what?” R.J. swore as the GPS device he’d been holding went flying.

  “This is nothing,” Neil answered. And it was.

  “Says you.”

  “Hang on!” He cranked the steering wheel hard to the left.

  Thankfully, the old Jeep didn’t let him down. Its tires hugged the ground, sending dirt and small rocks spraying in every direction. The sense of power revived Neil, and he wished he could control everything in his life with the same ease he did the Jeep.

  “Damn it to hell,” R.J. complained when his cowboy hat collided with the sun visor, shoving the brim down over his eyes. He pushed it back up and blinked. “Slow down, for Pete’s sake. We’re not in a race.”

  Neil let up on the gas only when they reached the top of the next small hill. At the bottom a pair of pickup trucks and three ATVs were parked, reminding him that the reason for their wilderness adventure was business, not pleasure.

  He pulled up alongside the closest truck and cut the engine. Two men—one young, one older, neither of whom he recognized—were removing kerosene lanterns from a crate in the bed of the truck and lighting them. Good thing. The sun was quickly disappearing beneath the distant mountaintops, and any minute now they would be swallowed by darkness and surrounded by cold.

  Across the gully, seven more people had gathered toget
her on a slope that looked no different than the half-dozen others in the immediate area—except for the crude, gaping hole in the side, four feet high by three feet wide. Neil was no authority, but even he realized the hole was not a product of Mother Nature.

  He and R.J. exited the Jeep. Opening the rear compartment, they grabbed their jackets, a pair of flashlights, a toolbox and a roll of yellow crime-scene tape before parting ways. Neil joined the two men lighting lanterns while R.J. battled trees and a dense thicket to reach the group of people standing in front of the hole. Most of them had their backs to Neil. Even so, he recognized Jake Tucker’s unmistakable stance.

  “Evening.” Neil addressed the men beside the truck.

  The older of the two glanced at the badge on Neil’s shirt and extended his hand. “Howdy, Sheriff. I’m Gary Forester, and this is Little José. He’s the fellow who found the shaft.”

  Neil reached inside his jacket and removed a notebook. “Can you tell me more about that?”

  “I was riding the trail, looking for areas that needed clearing.”

  “Where’s your horse now?” Neil scribbled as Little José talked.

  “We trailered him back to the ranch so I didn’t have to ride in the dark.”

  “How did you happen to notice the mine shaft?” Out of the corner of his eye, Neil observed R.J. attempting to remove the people from the slope and the crime scene. He was being met with some resistance, from Jake in particular. “I didn’t notice it,” Little José said. “Not at first. What I found was this.” He lifted one of the lanterns, illuminating the truck’s lowered tailgate where a long, cylindrical piece of iron lay. “It was right there in the middle of the trail.”