CHAPTER 2
The fifteen-minute trip to Pinecrest felt much more like hours. The small caravan of vehicles quickly found its way up the winding ridge to a place that may never feel the same. A man, Dunny had said. A body. That must’ve meant lifeless at first glance, hence the excitement when a pulse was detected.
Pinecrest had its fair share of accidents – it was a fully functioning ranch with livestock and equipment – plenty to get a person injured from time to time. This felt different. What was a man, a stranger no less, doing on her property? How did
he get there?
A rancher on a horse met them at the end of the main drive that ended at the main house. He led them through the property. Passing the various barns and out buildings, the Dude Ranch Dinner Gazebo, beyond the gardens and her small vineyard to the open pasture, they traveled the bumpy terrain that never seemed to end.
Pinecrest was the largest operating ranch for miles. They primarily ranched cattle, but had their hands in other crops and livestock that served the surrounding area markets with everything from spring fruits and veggies to pumpkins and apples in the fall. With 200 plus acres that sat at the ridge above the town that McKenzie Ridge was named for, Morgan’s property also provided a lucrative tourist attraction as a fully operating Dude Ranch, about six months out of the year, and a fun dinner destination where guests could experience a real cowboy dinner over the coals and cowboy traditions. A truly one-of-a-kind experience, Pinecrest was every kind of wonder, it was home, and now it was marked with something potentially devastating.
The small convoy approached the furthest part of the property, deep within the pasture, just before the flurry of tree’s and trails that lined its outer edge. There sat two ranch hands, their horses tied to a nearby fence post, while they hovered over an unresponsive body that lay between them.
“What happened? Who is he?” Morgan asked, studying the man’s face, while Carigan and Dawson went to work with Evie’s help.
Dunny replied, “Not sure who he is, doesn’t appear to have any I.D. on him.” He paused and looked around with a puzzled look on his face. “How the hell did he get clear out here?”
With a few hands too many, Blake and Colton began to roam the area, looking for clues, and other potential victims since the scene didn’t give a clear idea of what happened. That was something they kept to themselves as anxieties were already running high.
“He’s stable – head trauma, possible rib fracture and that left knee looks suspicious considering how it’s laying. We need to get him to the ER and figure out how hard he hit his head, he isn’t wanting to wake up. I’m headed in now, meet you there,” Doc Charles announced.
“Let’s get him on the board and ready for transport, then, O’Reilly,” Dawson said to Carigan. He turned to Everly with his final instruction, “Fifteen-minute ETA, Ev. Call it in?”
The team moved quickly, to secure their patient and stabilize any potential injuries for travel. “Shaw, you can follow us,” Dawson announced, calling Everly by her last name as they often did in their professional roles.
He finished rattling instructions to Carigan O’Reilly as they loaded the man in the back of the ambulance, headed for McKenzie General Hospital, but not before the handsome stranger opened his eyes, looked at Morgan with a bright icy blue stare locked on hers, and reached for her with one hand. As quickly as he came to, he was gone again. A sharp gasp escaped Morgan as a response to the overwhelming emotion that washed over her. Climbing into the ambulance herself, Morgan held his lifeless, albeit warm, hand the rest of their short trip while trying to reconcile the feeling his stare blanketed her with. “Who are you?” she whispered.
As day became night, Morgan found herself on the road, headed back to the hospital, while the day’s events played back in her mind. She was given a quick update by Everly, who had been charged with the stranger’s care. Severe concussion, a few cracked ribs, and a sprained knee – nothing too serious – not even a coma, but a deep sleep that was simply a symptom of a concussion of this magnitude.
Sleep eluded her, after such a long afternoon full of excitement of every kind. After her handsome stranger was in the safe and capable hands of Doc Charles, he had been admitted in serious condition and stable, so she had returned to Pinecrest to assist in the investigation. She was a cop, she had been involved in many investigations over the past several years, some very close and personal. This one, however, ate at her.
The term close to home
, as literal as it was, didn’t begin to describe its relevance and the severity of it. Blake had called in a small team – all the manpower that their small-town police force could spare – to scour the grounds surrounding the accident scene. Their group of friends banded together, as they always did, to assist them. They had come up empty, not a single clue as to who the stranger was or where he had come from.
“This is it, Morgie,” Blake had said, calling her by her nickname.
“Horse tracks? There’s a whole mess of them. Look at the pattern,” she replied, while pointing out several scattered track patterns in a small area.
“More than one rider?” Colton asked. “Are we looking at foul play here? Where’s the other rider?”
Morgan paused as she approached the area that revealed the majority of the impressions and knelt down, touching the soft ground. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, eyes closed as she took in a deep breath. “One horse, one rider.”
She stood and looked to the tree line, scanning it as if the answers rested amongst the brush lined forest beyond.
“She’s doing it again – that Indian voodoo shit,” Jessie interrupted, earning her an eye roll that ended in a side-eye scowl.
“First, we don’t do voodoo, and I prefer Native American. It’s just intuition. If you look to the earth for the answers, sometimes she’ll lead you to them.” Morgan turned her back to the group and looked back to the tracks and beyond.
“Oookay. Should we buy her
a drink first or something?” Jessie joked, referring to the earth as her.
“He came from that direction,” Morgan said, pointing beyond the scene, opposite the populated side of the property. “He was riding, the horse was spooked, that’s why there are so many tracks in this general area. It was frightened. The rider was likely trying to regain control and was tossed,” she finished and turned back to her friends.
“Wow, she told you all of that? The earth is quite a storyteller,” Jessie mused.
“That she is, you should hear what she
says about you…I’d watch your step. That wasn’t Indian ways, she didn’t tell me about the rider. It was just good old fashion police work!” Morgan snarked.
“And I thought we weren’t allowed to say Indian,
” Jessie snorted, appreciating her friend’s clean jab.
“No, just you. Only you aren’t allowed to say Indian
,” Morgan retorted with a wink, earning her a prompt middle finger salute in reply.
“I agree with you, Jameson, it adds up – I think we can rule this as an accident unless the vic has something else to share that would change that,” Blake concluded, scanning the area as if piecing together the account himself to confirm the theory. Colton followed Blake’s gaze while standing with one hand on his hip and scratching his chin with the other. “Looks like we have a missing horse, then.”