Shifting Calder Wind

Book 7: Calder Saga

by Janet Dailey

Genres: Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

Someone was trying to kill him. That’s the only clear thought that comes to Chase Calder when he regains consciousness after a vicious head wound strips him of all memory. Chase has no idea who he is, why he came to Fort Worth, or who tried to put a bullet through his head. And according to the local papers, Chase Calder has been declared dead—the victim of a fiery car crash. None of it rings true to Chase, but his gut feeling tells him to stay dead until he can find the answers he needs. The only place to find those answers is back in Montana, and the only person he can turn to is his daughter-in-law, Jessy...

Release date: May 26, 2011

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Ablackness roared around him. He struggled to surface from it, somehow knowing that if he didn’t, he would die. Sounds reached him as if coming from a great distance—a shout, the scrape of shoes on pavement, the metallic slam of a car door and the sharp clap of a gunshot.

Someone was trying to kill him.

He had to get out of there. The instant he tried to move the blackness swept over him with dizzying force. He heard the revving rumble of a car engine starting up. Unable to rise, he rolled away from the sound as spinning tires burned rubber and another shot rang out.

Lights flashed in a bright glare. There was danger in them, he knew. He had to reach the shadows. Fighting the weakness that swam through his limbs, he crawled away from the light.

He felt dirt beneath his hand and dug his fingers into it. His strength sapped, he lay there a moment, trying to orient himself, and to determine the location of the man trying to kill him. But the searing pain in his head made it hard to think logically. He reached up and felt the warm wetness on his face. That’s when he knew he had been shot. Briefly his fingers touched the deep crease the bullet had ripped along the side of his head. Pain instantly washed over him in black waves.

Aware that he could lose consciousness at any second, either from the head wound or the blood loss, he summoned the last vestiges of his strength and threw himself deeper into the darkness. With blood blurring his vision, he made out the shadowy outlines of a post and railing. It looked to be a corral of some sort. He pushed himself toward it, wanting any kind of barrier, no matter how flimsy, between himself and his pursuer.

There was a whisper of movement just to his left. Alarm shot through him, but he couldn’t seem to make his muscles react. He was too damned weak. He knew it even as he listed sideways and saw the low-crouching man in a cowboy hat with a pistol in his hand.

Instead of shooting, the cowboy grabbed for him with his free arm. “Come on. Let’s get outa here, old man,” the cowboy whispered with urgency. “He’s up on the catwalk working himself into a better position.”

He latched onto the cowboy’s arm and staggered drunkenly to his feet, his mind still trying to wrap itself around that phrase “old man.” Leaning heavily on his rescuer, he stumbled forward, battling the woodenness of his legs.

After an eternity of seconds, the cowboy pushed him into the cab of a pickup and closed the door. He sagged against the seat and closed his eyes, unable to summon another ounce of strength. Dimly he was aware of the cowboy slipping behind the wheel and the engine starting up. It was followed by the vibrations of movement.

Through slitted eyes, he glanced in the side mirror but saw nothing to indicate they were being followed. They were out of danger now. Unbidden came the warning that it was only temporary; whoever had tried to kill him would try again.

Who had it been? And why? He searched for the answers and failed to come up with any.

Thinking required too much effort. Choosing to conserve the remnants of his strength, he glanced out the window at the unfamiliar buildings that flanked the street.

“Where are we?” His voice had a throaty rasp to it.

“According to the signs, there should be a hospital somewhere ahead of us,” the cowboy replied. “I’ll drop you off close to the emergency entrance.”

“No.” It was a purely instinctual reply.

“Mister, that head wound needs tending. You’ve lost a bunch of blood—”

“No.” He started to shake his head in emphasis, but at the first movement, the world started spinning.

The pickup’s speed slowed perceptibly. “Don’t tell me you’re wanted by the law?” The cowboy turned a sharp, speculating glance on him.

Was he? For the second time, he came up against a wall of blankness. It was another answer he didn’t know, so he avoided the question.

“He’s bound to know I was hit, so he’ll expect me to get medical attention. The nearest hospital will be the first place he would check.”

“You’re probably right about that,” the cowboy agreed. “So where do you want to go?”

Where? Where? Where? The question hammered at him. But it was impossible to answer because he didn’t know what the hell town they were in. That discovery brought a wave of panic, one that intensified when he realized he didn’t know his own name.

He clamped down tightly on the panic and said, “I don’t know yet. Let me think.”

He closed his eyes and strained to dredge up some scrap of a memory. But he was empty of any. Who was he? What was he? Where was he? Every question bounced around in the void. His head pounded anew. He felt himself slipping deeper into the blackness and lacked the strength to fight against it.

He simultaneously became conscious of a bright light pressing against his eyes and the chirping of a bird. Groggily he opened his eyes and saw filtered sunlight coming through the curtained window. It was daylight, and his last conscious memory had been of riding in a truck through night-darkened streets.

Instantly alert, he shot a searching glance around the room. The curtains at the window and the rose-patterned paper on the walls confirmed what his nose had already told him: he wasn’t in a hospital. He was in a bedroom, one that was strange to him.

His glance stopped on the cowboy slumped in an old wicker rocking chair in the corner, his hat tipped over the top of his face, his chest rising and falling in an even rhythm. Surmising the man was his rescuer from the night before, he studied the cleanly chiseled line of the man’s jaw and the nut brown color of his hair, details he hadn’t noticed during the previous night’s darkness and confusion. The man’s yoked-front shirt looked new, but the jeans and the boots both showed signs of wear.

He threw back the bedcovers and started to rise. Pain slammed him back onto the pillow and ripped a groan from him. In a reflexive action, he lifted a hand to his head and felt the gauze strips that swaddled it.

In a flash the cowboy rolled to his feet and crossed to the bed. “Just lay back and be still. You won’t be going anywhere for a while, old man.”

He bristled in response. “That’s the second time you’ve called me an old man.”

After a pulse beat of silence, the cowboy replied in droll apology, “I didn’t mean any offense by it, but you aren’t exactly a young fella.”

Unable to recall who he was, let alone how old he was, he grunted a nonanswer. “Where am I, anyway? Your place?”

“It belongs to some kinfolk on my mother’s side,” the cowboy answered.

He studied the cowboy’s blue eyes and easy smile. There was a trace of boyish good looks behind the stubble of a night’s beard growth and the sun-hardened features. A visual search found no sign of the pistol the cowboy had been carrying last night.

“Who are you?” His eyes narrowed on the cowboy.

There was a fractional pause, a coolness suddenly shuttering the cowboy’s blue eyes. “I think a better question is who are you?”

“Maybe it is,” he stalled, hoping a name might come to him, but none did. “But I’d like to know the name of the man who quite likely saved my life last night so I can thank him properly.”

“You dodged that question about as deftly as a politician.” Blue eyes glinted in quiet speculation. “But I don’t think that’s what you are. You strike me as a man used to asking the questions rather than answering them.”

“Now you’re the one dodging the question.”

“My friends call me Laredo. What do your friends call you?”

His head pounded with the strain of trying to recall. Automatically he touched the bandages again.

Observing the action and the continued silence, the cowboy called Laredo guessed, “You can’t remember, can you?”

“I—don’t you know who I am?”

“Nope. But I’ll tell you what I do know—the material in that suit you were wearing wasn’t cheap, and those were custom-made boots on your feet. It took money to buy them, which leads me to think you aren’t a poor man. There’s no Texas drawl in your voice, which tells me you aren’t from around here, at least not originally.”

“We’re in Texas?” he repeated for confirmation. “Where?”

“Southwest of Fort Worth.”

“Fort Worth.” It sounded familiar to him, but he didn’t know why. “Is that where we were last night?” he asked, recalling the city streets they had driven through.

“Yeah. In Old Downtown, next to the stockyards.”

“There’s an old cemetery not far from there,” he said with a strange feeling of certainty.

“You couldn’t prove it by me,” Laredo said with an idle shrug of his broad shoulders.

He fired a quick glance at the cowboy. “You aren’t from around here?”

“No. I’m just passing through. Now that it looks like you’re going to live, I’ll be leaving soon.”

“Not yet.” He reached out to stop him with a suddenness that sent the room spinning again. Subsiding weakly against the pillow, he swallowed back the rising nausea.

“I told you to lie still,” Laredo reminded him. “That bullet gouged a deep path. It wouldn’t surprise me if it grazed your skull.”

He fought through the swirling pain, insisting, “Before you go, I have to know about last night. The man who shot me—did you see him?”

“I guess if you don’t know who you are, you don’t know who he is either, do you?” Laredo guessed. “I’m afraid I can’t help you much. All I saw was the figure of a man with a scoped rifle. I couldn’t tell you if he was old or young, tall or short, just that he didn’t look fat.”

“Tell me what you saw.” He closed his eyes, hoping something would trigger a memory.

After a slight pause, Laredo began, “I’m not sure what it was that first caught my eye. Maybe it was the car door being open and all the interior light flooding from it while the rest of the parking lot was so dark. You were standing next to it facing another man. His back was to me so I didn’t get a look at him. It took me a second to realize you were being robbed. He did a good job of it, too. You don’t have a lick of identification on you—no wallet, no watch, no ring. Nothing. He even took your spare change. Right now you don’t have a cent to your name.”

“But this robber wasn’t the man who shot me.” He recalled Laredo mentioning a man with a scoped rifle. He couldn’t imagine a common thief carrying one.

“No, he wasn’t. The shot came from behind you. The second I heard it, I knew it didn’t come from any handgun. You dropped like a rock. Your robber jumped in the car and hightailed it out of there.”

“I half remember hearing a vehicle peel out. Somebody yelled. Was that you?”

“Yup. I wanted your sniper to know somebody else was in the area. About the same time I saw you moving so I knew you weren’t dead. He snapped off a shot in my direction. I saw the muzzle flash and fired back.”

“Do you usually carry a gun?”

Amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Like I said, we’re in Texas, and the definition of gun control here is a steady aim.”

He managed a brief smile at Laredo’s small joke. “What time was this?”

“Late. Somewhere between eleven and midnight.”

He wondered what he was doing there at that hour. “Aren’t there some bars in the area?”

“A bunch of them.”

From somewhere outside came the familiar lowing of cattle. “Are we in the country?”

Laredo nodded. “The Ludlow ranch. It’s a small spread, not much more than a hundred acres. It hardly deserves to be called a ranch.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I didn’t have many choices. I probably should have taken you to a hospital like I first planned. But with you being unconscious, I couldn’t just drop you off at the door. Taking you inside meant fielding a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer. So I brought you here.” He allowed a small smile to show. “I figured if you died, I could always bury you in the back forty with no one the wiser.”

“Except the Ludlows.”

“I wasn’t worried about Hattie talking.”

“Who is Hattie?” The hot pounding in his head increased, making it difficult to string more than two thoughts together.

“Since Ed died, she owns the place.” After a slight pause, Laredo observed, “Your head’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

“Some.” He was reluctant to admit to more than that.

“No need in overdoing it. Why don’t you get some rest? We can talk more later if you want. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can rustle you up something to eat.”

“Did you say you were leaving soon?”

“I did. But I won’t be going just yet.” Moving away from the bed, Laredo crossed to the window and lowered the shade, darkening the room.

He closed his eyes against the pain, but it wasn’t so easy to shut out the blankness of his memory. Who the hell was he? Why couldn’t he remember?

He slept but fitfully, waking often to hear the occasional stirrings of activity in other parts of the house. The instant he heard the snick of the bedroom door latch, he opened his eyes, coming fully alert.

He focused on the woman who filled the doorway, a tray balanced in her hand. She was tall, easily close to six feet, with strong, handsome features that showed the leathering of long hours spent in the sun. She wore boots and jeans and a plaid blouse tucked in at the waist, revealing the firmly packed figure of a mature and active woman.

“You’re awake. That’s good.” Her voice had a no-nonsense ring to it, kind but firm. “I brought you some soup. I thought it would be best to keep you to a liquid diet at first.”

“You must be Hattie,” he guessed as she approached the bed.

“That’s right. I assume you still don’t know who you are so I won’t ask your name.” She set the food tray on the nightstand next to the bed. “Do you think you can manage to sit up or do you want some help?”

“I can manage.” Breathing in the broth’s rich beefy aroma, he felt the first rumblings of hunger. With slow care, he levered himself into a sitting position. Once he was sitting upright, Hattie slipped a pair of pillows behind him for a backrest. “Thanks. The soup smells good.”

“It’s homemade.” She set the tray on his lap. “Is there anything else you need?”

“My clothes.”

“Sorry, Duke, but I’m afraid they are pretty well ruined. I have your shirt soaking, trying to get the blood out of it. Maybe a professional cleaner can get the stains out of your suit, but—”

“Why did you call me that?” He stared at her curiously.

“What?” She gave him a blank look.

“Just now you called me Duke.”

“I did?” She seemed almost embarrassed, then shrugged it off. “I guess it’s because you remind me of him.”

“Who?” he persisted, determined to know who it was he resembled, aware it might mean nothing—or everything.

She looked him square in the eyes. “John Wayne. The Duke. You do know who he is?”

“The movie actor.” He dipped the spoon into the soup.

“That’s right.”

“And you think I look like him.” It started him wondering about the face that would look back at him from a mirror.

“It’s not so much that you look like him, but you remind me of him,” she replied, then explained: “You’re both big-shouldered and broad-chested with craggy features. A take-charge type who isn’t afraid of rough-and-tumble.” She cocked her head to one side. “Does that help?”

“Not really,” he answered, more annoyed than disappointed.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” She studied him thoughtfully. “Amnesia caused by a head trauma is usually temporary. Most of the time, memory comes back in bits and snatches, but in rare instances, it can return full-blown.”

He caught the professional phrases she used. “You sound like you know something about it.”

“Before I switched careers to become a lady rancher, I was a registered nurse.”

“So that’s why Laredo brought me here last night.” It made sense now.

Hattie smiled in a dismissive way. “He knows I have a weakness for taking in wounded animals and strays.”

“Where is Laredo?”

“He went to town to get some clothes for you.”

“I got the impression that he might have had some trouble with the law. Has he?”

Her mouth curved in a smile that didn’t match the cool, measuring look of her eyes. “Laredo said you asked a lot more questions than you answered.” She was taking her time, sizing him up. He had the feeling this was one woman who made few mistakes in judgment. “If”—she stressed the word—“Laredo has ever had any trouble with the law, it happened on the other side of the border. One of those cases of being at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, I suppose. If he wants you to know more than that, he can tell you himself. But I think you have already discovered that he’s the kind of man you want at your side when there’s trouble.”

“We both know I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for him.” He stated it as a fact, without any show of emotion.

“I hope you remember that.” She started to turn away then swung back. “As soon as Laredo gets back with a set of clothes for you, I’ll bring them in. They probably won’t be the quality you are used to wearing. Just jeans, shirts, and some underclothes—”

“They will be fine,” he cut across her words, a little irritated that she seemed to think he believed he was above wearing ordinary work clothes. “I’ll pay you back as soon—” He broke off the sentence, recalling that Laredo had told him he didn’t have a cent to his name. It grated to think he was dependent on someone else.

“Don’t worry about the money right now. Just eat your soup.” Hattie pointed to the bowl in an admonishing gesture. “And don’t try to get up by yourself. With all the blood you’ve lost, you’re likely to be as wobbly as a newborn calf. I’ll come back later to pick up the tray.”

The first few spoons of soup took the edge off his hunger, but he ate every bit of it, determined to regain his strength. Yet the effort tired him. Eyes closed, he relaxed against the supporting pillows.

All the unanswered questions came swirling back. It took some effort, but he managed to ignore them and concentrated instead on the few facts he knew about himself, searching for something that felt familiar and right.

A pickup rattled into the ranch yard. He listened to the creak of its door opening and closing, followed by the sound of footsteps approaching the house. Already they had a familiar sound to them, and he guessed they belonged to Laredo.

Within minutes the cowboy walked into the bedroom, toting a big sack. Laredo’s eyes were quick to notice the empty soup bowl.

“Good to the last drop, I see,” Laredo observed.

“It filled the empty places,” he replied and glanced at the sack. “Hattie said you were going to pick up some clothes for me. Do you have some pants in there?”

“Sure do.” Laredo tossed the sack on the bed and lifted off the food tray. “I’ll get this out of the way first.”

He knew better than to make any sudden movements that might start his head spinning again, and pushed himself off the pillows with care. The paper sack rustled as Laredo dug into it and pulled out a pair of Levi’s. He swung his bare legs out of the bed and reached for the jeans.

“I’ll give you a hand getting into these,” Laredo said. “I don’t want you taking a nosedive onto the floor. In case you don’t know it, Duke, you’re a load to pick up.”

“That’s what Hattie called me,” he remembered.

“Until you can remember your own name, Duke is as good as any.” Laredo worked the pants legs over his feet and kept a steadying hand on him when he stood to pull them the rest of the way up. “And you didn’t take it too kindly when I called you an old man.”

He saw the mischievous glint in the cowboy’s blue eyes and took no offense. “No man likes to be called old. You’ll find that out . . .” He paused and swept an assessing glance over Laredo. It was difficult to pinpoint the cowboy’s age, but he thought he was on the long side of thirty. “And it won’t be too many more years before you do.”

“I’m afraid you’re right about that,” Laredo conceded with a rueful grin.

The movement had started his head pounding in earnest again. Gritting his teeth against it, he looked around. “Is there a bathroom close by?”

“Just down the hall. I’d better walk with you, though. The house is old and the floor is uneven,” Laredo warned.

Unsteady on his legs, he had to rely on Laredo’s support more than he liked as they crossed the bedroom and entered the short, narrow hall. When Laredo pushed open a door on the left, he waved off any further assistance and entered the bathroom alone.

After relieving himself, he shifted to the sink and inspected the face in the tall mirror above it. It was rugged and rawboned with age lines carved deep around the mouth and eyes. Layers of gauze were wrapped around his head like a turban. The dark brown hair below it showed a heavy salting of gray. He studied every detail, but the brown eyes looking back at him belonged to a stranger.

“Old man,” Laredo had called him. The gray hair and age lines seemed to bear that out, but there was plenty of muscle tone in his broad chest and shoulders, indicating he still had ample strength and vitality. He examined the variety of scars on his torso. Most of them were old and faded, with a straightness to them that suggested surgical incisions. But one, along the side of his ribs, had a fresh look to it that suggested it wasn’t much more than a year old.

But he had no memory of how he had gotten any of them.

His own mind bombarded him with questions that had no answers. Who was he? Where did he live? What did he do? Did he have a wife? A family? Was anyone looking for him?

There was a light rap on the door. “Are you all right, Duke?”

He turned away from the mirror and kept a steadying hand on the wall as he moved to the door. “I’m fine.”

Laredo ran a sharp eye over him when he opened the door. “What took you so long?”

“I was trying to get used to that face in the mirror.”

“It must be hell not being able to remember who you are,” Laredo said, more as a statement of fact than an expression of sympathy. “I’ll give you a hand back to bed.”

“I’m going to sit up for a while.”

“Are you sure?” There was skepticism in the side glance Laredo sent him. “You’re still pretty weak.”

“I won’t get any stronger lying in that bed.”

“That’s true enough.”

“If Hattie has any coffee made, I could use a cup.”

“I’ll check.” Once Laredo had him settled in the corner rocking chair, he went to see about the coffee. He returned with two mugs, handed one to the man he called Duke and lifted the other. “I thought I’d join you, if that’s okay.”

“Have a seat.” He motioned toward the bed. Laredo sat sideways on the mattress, his body angled toward the corner.

“So what are your plans?” Laredo raised the mug and took a cautious sip of the steaming coffee.

“Does it matter? You’ll be leaving soon.”

“You are definitely good at dodging questions. Maybe you are a politician,” Laredo said with a grin.

“Why be one when you can buy one?” The words were barely out of his mouth when he knew he was echoing a sentiment he had heard before. He could almost hear the man’s voice.

“That has the ring of experience talking,” Laredo observed. “And judging from that suit you were wearing, you probably have the bucks to buy a half dozen politicians.”

“If that’s the case, then somebody should be wondering where I am. They may already be trying to track me down.”

“You mean someone other than the guy who tried to kill you,” Laredo inserted dryly.

“Yes, he’s the wild card in the deck,” he murmured thoughtfully.

“Something tells me he’s doing a little sweating about now, wondering whether you are dead or alive. It’s bound to be driving him crazy that you haven’t turned up anywhere yet.”

“He could have cut and run.”

“It’s possible, but not likely.”

It was the certainty in Laredo’s voice that prompted him to challenge him. “Why not?”

“Because he isn’t sure yet how scared he should run. He knows you were hit, and so far you haven’t surfaced, which has to make him think you died. If I were him, I would hang around just long enough to find out.”

“It takes a man with cool nerve to do that.” And, he reflected, it said a lot about Laredo that he thought that way.

“I think he already established the coolness of his nerve when he laid in wait for you. It was pure luck on your part that he didn’t succeed.” Laredo idly swirled the coffee in his mug. “It strikes me that you have two options. You can either stick close to the ranch and wait for your memory to come back—”

“That could take days, weeks—even months,” he broke in, his voice sharp with impatience.

“I had a feeling that’s the way you would react.” A small smile edged the corners of Laredo’s mouth. “At the same time, if you show up around the old Stockyards, asking questions and trying to find somebody who might recognize you, you would be tipping your hand—maybe even giving him another chance at you.”

“I know,” he acknowledged grimly, aware he was between that proverbial rock and a hard place.

“There’s another alternative,” Laredo said.

“What’s that?” He studied the cowboy with a watchful eye.

“I could do the asking.”

“I thought you were supposed to be leaving soon. That’s what you said.”

Laredo moved his shoulders in an indifferent shrug. “If I’m a few days late crossing the border, my friends won’t worry about me.”

“I see.” Common sense told him that Laredo’s suggestion was a sound one, yet it grated on him that he would have no active part in it.

“I know you hate the idea of sitting here and waiting, but it’s the most practical solution. By now others will have noticed you are missing and started asking questions. It wouldn’t arouse anybody’s suspicions if I nosed around, too.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed. “But I can’t help wondering why you want to involve yourself in my problem.”

“Curiosity, pure and simple,” Laredo re. . .