The Night Is Watching

Sloan frowned. “Sometimes Jimmy works for the stables.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Heidi answered breathlessly.



“Lily Stables.”



“Heidi, it’s Sloan—”



“Oh, yeah, your name’s on caller ID. What’s up?”



“Did Jimmy come into work today?”



“No, the little dweeb was a no-show, and he didn’t answer his phone all day, either. That’s why I can hardly breathe. I’m hauling hay all by myself for the hayride. Is something wrong—something else? Wow. I went by on my third trail ride today, and an area near the old mine shaft was cordoned off. A guy in a county uniform told me just to take the trail group on by. What else has happened? Oh, God!”



Heidi was going to get hysterical and he couldn’t afford to listen right then. “Thanks, Heidi,” he said, and hung up.



Watching him, Jane stepped gingerly into the garden to look inside the house. She pressed her nose to the picture window.



“Sloan,” she said.



“What?” he asked, joining her.



“I see a handbag and a shawl on the little table in the foyer. There are keys lying next to it.”



Sloan figured someone had to be out by the stables and barns. It was a massive ranch. But the house was also set apart from the work buildings.



He tried the front door; it was locked. It was a solid wood door—slamming his shoulder against it for the next ten years probably wouldn’t break it in. He hesitated a bare half second, then drew his gun and shot the lock. If Jane was surprised, she didn’t say so. They entered the house.



“I’ll take the upstairs,” she said.



Sloan walked through the dining room, the kitchen, Caleb Hough’s office and cigar room, the pantry. Nothing seemed to be out of order. Maybe his instincts had been wrong. Explaining why he’d shot through a lock to get onto private property—when he’d gone there to tell a woman that her husband had been murdered—wasn’t going to be easy.



“Hey, Sloan!” Jane called. “Up here.”



He ran up the stairs. She was in Jimmy Hough’s bedroom. It looked as if there’d been a scuffle. Pillows were on the ground and the sheets were halfway ripped off the bed.



“But where is Jimmy now?” Sloan asked rhetorically. He felt ill; Caleb Hough had been a blowhard, but no one deserved to die the way he had. Jimmy was a good kid with the potential of becoming a fine man.



Jane set an arm on his shoulder. “This doesn’t mean he’s lying dead somewhere. Maybe he’s been kidnapped.”



“But the father is dead, so why would someone hold Jimmy?” Sloan asked. He turned on his heel.



“Where now?” Jane asked.



“The garage.”



He ran down the stairs and back to the kitchen. A door opened out to the garage. It was locked, but it was a thin wooden door and, that one, he did slam his shoulder against. The door gave.



“Carbon monoxide,” Jane said.



He swore. There were three cars in the garage. While he could smell the gas, it had faded, and he couldn’t see anyone. He strode quickly to the Mercedes Benz at the far end of the garage while Jane started with the Acura SUV closest to the house. They reached the ’57 Chevy in the center together. He yanked open the passenger side while Jane opened the driver’s door.



There they were, Jimmy and his mother—both looking as if they were dead. Covered in sheets like children playing at being ghosts.



They ripped the sheets off the pair.



Zoe Hough was in the driver’s seat and her son was in the passenger seat.



Sloan felt for Jimmy’s pulse. He found a flicker of life in the vein at the boy’s neck. Glancing at Jane, he was relieved when she nodded.



“Weak—but she has a pulse.”



Sloan pulled out his phone and called in an emergency.



“I’ll open the doors, get air,” Jane said. She rushed to the garage doors and, even as they slid up, Sloan saw cop cars coming down the drive. One was from his office and two were from county.



No one could have answered an emergency call that fast, but he was glad they were there.



Declan McCarthy, his managing night deputy, was the first to reach him. “Sloan—wow, you’re here. What the hell happened now? I heard about Caleb Hough, and that, so far, we hadn’t found his wife and son,” Declan told him.



“We need an ambulance. It’s on the way,” Sloan said. “How did you get here so quickly?”



“The house alarm went off. The security company called county, and county called me,” Declan explained.



“Let’s get them out of the garage,” Sloan said.



The two officers from county didn’t pull their guns, recognizing the situation before they reached the door. Jane had Zoe Hough halfway out of the car; the county men assisted her. Declan helped Sloan maneuver Jimmy out from the other side. They got them into the driveway. There was no real grass on the lawn anywhere, but Declan got a blanket from the back of his patrol car and Jimmy and Zoe were placed on it. “Mrs. Hough is breathing,” he said. “Jimmy, he’s got a pulse, faint...but I’m not feeling his breath.”



Sloan fell to his knees by Jimmy’s side, and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, breathing into his lungs. Declan went into emergency mode with him, counting, pressing on the boy’s chest.



Jimmy choked, then he started breathing on his own. Sloan felt the tension ease from his body. The kid was going to live. He didn’t know how long he and his mother had inhaled poisonous gas; he didn’t know how Jimmy would be when he woke up, what brain damage he might have sustained. But he would live.



The ambulance arrived, and the emergency medical technicians took over.



One of the officers from county introduced himself as Sergeant Johnson. “I was here earlier today,” he said. “Never occurred to me to break in. Thank God you decided to do it, Sheriff. I’ll let Newsome know.” He shook his head. “It’s a real miracle those two are still breathing.”



“I’m not the reason for the miracle,” Sloan said. “One of those two got the car turned off. They saved themselves, really.”



“Yeah, but if they’d spent the night in there, they might not have come back from it,” Johnson told him. “You want to cover this scene, Sheriff?”



“Officer McCarthy will stay here, representing the town,” Sloan said. “I know this kid. I’d like to ride with him.”



“I’ll hang in with the mother,” Jane said.



As the emergency med techs began work, Sloan noted that three men were coming from the stables. They were obviously ranch employees—they wore boots, jeans and cotton shirts that showed signs of sand and mud. The Hough ranch was one of the few places in the area that had a stream and a steady water supply; Hough had paid a great deal of money for the water rights so his place would be a viable location to raise beefalo in the middle of a desert.



A burly fellow came forward, his ranch hat in his hand. There was deep concern wrinkled into his face. “I am Inego Garcia, one of the managers,” he introduced himself. “What has happened here?”



“These two were apparently attacked,” Sloan said. “Sometime earlier today. Did you see anyone here, anyone who could have done this?”



Sloan was sure the man was sincere when he shook his head. “We’ve been working, moving the herd. We’ve had a dry spell and needed to get the animals to the second pasture. Mr. Hough—he doesn’t like us around the house. He says the house is his home and the ranch is where we work. Mrs. Hough, now, she’s a nice lady. She doesn’t mind dirt and mud. She sometimes brings us cupcakes or cookies. She is a fine lady. Is she—”



“She’s alive right now,” Sloan told him.



“And Jimmy—the boy?” Inego asked, tears glistening in his eyes.



“Alive, too,” Jane said, gently touching his arm.



“Have you been able to reach Mr. Hough? I have tried to get him several times during the day. I can keep trying if you like.”



Sloan took a breath before answering him. “Mr. Hough is dead, Inego. I’m sorry to tell you this. We’ve been trying to get hold of the family all day to tell them, and now, of course, we know why we couldn’t. Inego, we’ll need your help. We need to know who might have had an argument with Mr. Hough. We have to find out who did this—who killed him and tried to kill his family.”



Inego Garcia worried the ball cap he’d removed and held between his hands. He glanced at his fellow workers. “Well, Sheriff, he had a major argument with you. Said you were going to ruin his son’s life—and turn the boy against him.”



Sloan felt the county men look his way.



Yes, he had really disliked Caleb Hough. And now, he’d been the one to find him in the mine shaft—and he and Jane had found the family in the garage. He imagined he wasn’t looking so good.



“Anyone else?” Sloan asked.



Again, the workers glanced at one another.



Inego coughed. “Well...everyone,” he said.



“Everyone?”



Another of the men stepped up. “I’m Lee Cho,” he told Sloan. “I was in the barn the other day when he came in swearing about the man who owned Desert Diamonds. Grant Winston. He said that Winston was—” He paused, clearing his throat as he fixed his gaze on Jane.



“Please, repeat what he said. I’m a federal agent, Mr. Cho. I’ve heard some pretty nasty language in my time,” Jane said.



“Mr. Hough was saying that Mr. Winston was a grade-A, motherfucking stupid asshole who had no appreciation for the fact that without his ranch, Lily was a godforsaken dust pool,” Lee Cho said, staring at the ground as he spoke.



The third man cleared his throat, as well. “He hated the theater, too. The Gilded Lily. He was ranting and raving about Henri Coque being a womanizing—” he paused, but continued quickly “—a womanizing small-peckered fuck-face,” he said. “I don’t know what his fight was with Mr. Coque. He never said. Mr. Hough didn’t mind ranting in front of us, but he didn’t consider us his friends. We kept our mouths shut.”