Page 2 of Dark Side of the River

“No.Buttercup.” She said it as if he just wasn’t getting it. He wasn’t. Her eyelids fluttered again, then closed, her head falling to the side.

“Oakley?Oakley?” He pulled out his phone to call 911. As he did, he leaned over farther to see that even the back of her denim jacket was soaked with blood. Startled, he saw a perfectly round hole in the denim. He stared in shock. It made no sense, no sense at all. Oakley hadn’t gotten hurt falling off her horse.

She’d been shot.

CHAPTER TWO

EVENASCOOPERmade the 911 call, he found himself looking toward the woods in the direction Oakley had exited at such speed. “Oakley Stafford’s been shot. I need an ambulance on the county road, about six miles into the McKenna Ranch. Please hurry. My name’s Cooper McKenna. Just...hurry.”

As he disconnected, the hair quilled on the back of his neck as he peered into the thick cottonwoods now deep in shadow. How the hell had she gotten shot? Why? He remembered her flying out of the trees like she was airborne and onto the road as if...as if she was being chased. What had she been running from? Who? He felt his skin crawl at the thought that her would-be killer could still be in the dense stand of cottonwoods. Watching them? Waiting?

Rising, he hurried around to his open driver’s-side door and pulled a T-shirt from his duffel, grabbed a roll of duct tape from under his pickup seat and returned to Oakley. He balled up his T-shirt, pressed it to the front where he could see a lump under the skin where the slug hadn’t exited. He duct-taped the T-shirt in place.

The late-June afternoon was hot. Taking off his own denim jacket, he slipped it under her head. Then he took off the T-shirt he was wearing and pressed it against her left side in the back where the bullet had entered. As he did, he listened for any sound. He could hear crickets chirping somewhere deep in the grove. But it was another sound that made his skin crawl.

Cooper realized he’d heard it earlier, the buzz of a small-airplane engine. The plane was growing closer. He stayed where he was, leaning against the front bumper of the pickup and keeping pressure on Oakley’s wound.

The plane grew closer and closer, the sound louder and louder, until he felt the dark shadow of the Piper Cub pass over. The plane flew so low over the road that it barely missed the treetops. He tried to see the call numbers on the side, but only got a glimpse as the plane suddenly veered to the right and disappeared over the trees.

When he looked up the road, he saw that the plane must have spooked Oakley’s horse. It was no longer standing a dozen yards away. It had either run into the trees or on up the road. He knew he shouldn’t be so worried about the horse. But he kept thinking of Oakley’s urgent expression and the one word she’d uttered before she’d passed out.Buttercup.He was convinced she’d been worried about her horse.

As the buzz of the plane engine died off, he heard another sound. This one brought comfort. Sirens. He checked Oakley’s pulse, half-afraid they would arrive too late. With relief, he felt it. As the sound of the sirens grew louder, he found himself feeling jumpy. He pulled out his phone and quickly took photos of the scene with his free hand, including the tracks coming out of the trees and Oakley lying in front of his pickup.

He wasn’t sure what exactly had made him nervous. Maybe it was the memory of being in a position a lot like this before. Only that time, the cops believed that the woman had been murdered and he was the only suspect.

Here he was again with a woman’s blood on him, no one else in sight and his guns in the pickup he was leaning against. He had an inherent distrust of the law since he knew how they could jump to conclusions.

As the ambulance roared up in a cloud of dust, he pocketed his phone. A sheriff’s patrol SUV pulled up behind it, but Cooper paid the cruiser little attention. He was anxious for the EMTs who jumped out to get to Oakley quickly.

“She’s been shot,” he told them as the two techs pushing a gurney hurried to her. “She also took a tumble when she fell off her horse. I didn’t move her but secured the injury to prevent blood loss best I could.”

“Shot?” Cooper turned to find a young deputy sheriff had joined them. “You shoot her?”

“No,” he said irritably. He moved to help the EMTs load Oakley into the back of the ambulance and felt a hand clamp down on his bare shoulder.

“You aren’t going anywhere.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” he said, turning back to the deputy as he tried not to lose his temper. The deputy’s name tag on the new-looking uniform read Ty Dodson. “You want to hear what happened, or do you want to just make it up as you go?”

The deputy’s jaw tightened as he pulled out his notebook and pen.

“You have a gun in that pickup of yours?”

Cooper swore. “Yes, I have legal weapons, but I didn’t shoot her. I was coming down the road and she came riding out of the trees as if someone was chasing her. If you look over there, you’ll see her horse’s tracks.”

“She was on horseback?” He glanced around. “So where’s her horse?”

“A plane came over and spooked it worse than it was already. I think it might have gone on up the road. I’m not sure.” He’d seen that same skeptical look on an officer of the law’s face a few too many times and groaned inwardly.

“As I was saying, she came flying out of that grove of cottonwoods onto the road and fell off her horse. I hit my brakes... I thought at first that she’d been riding too fast and had just been unseated from her horse. But when I got the truck stopped and jumped out, I saw that she was bleeding and that it was Oakley Stafford and that she’d been shot.”

“You recognized her? That how you know her name?”

“I know her.” Cooper didn’t mention that he recognized the brand on her horse first before he’d knelt down beside her and, leaning over her, had finally gotten a look at her face.

“You say she came riding out of those trees.” The deputy glanced in that direction. “Isn’t that McKenna Ranch property?”

“You know it is,” he said, trying not to roll his eyes.

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