After everything had gotten so ugly, he’d decided he’d been mistaken about what life in Cypress Landing would be. So he’d gone to work in Dallas at the ritzy clinic and found that unreliable and untrustworthy people weren’t confined to one geographical location. He’d been happy here, at least for a while. He could do this. Besides, half his boxes were unpacked and he’d made one friend already, if you could call the little blond trespasser his friend. He needed more time away from Dallas, to get that nasty taste out of his mouth. No, he’d stay here and deal with Brijette Dupre. How hard could it be?
ANYONE WHO PASSED HER in the aisle of the small pharmacy would have thought she was in the throes of debating what type of lotion best suited her. She hadn’t really looked at the bottles lined meticulously on the shelf, even though she did intend to buy one. Instead she kept seeing the image of Cade unwavering in her mind. His blond hair still hung long across his forehead, shoved slightly to one side to show off his green eyes. On the outside Cade hadn’t changed much at all; she wondered if he was still the same on the inside.
Anger and shock, that’s what she’d seen on Cade’s face. Doc Arthur hadn’t told him she’d be in the clinic even though he’d told her a few weeks ago his nephew was coming. Had he been afraid Cade would be a no-show if he knew she’d be around? Did the old man know everything that had happened years ago? She hoped not. He didn’t act as if he knew a thing, but he could know the whole story and be faking it for her benefit. He might have even realized the truth. That idea made the cold sweat pop up on the nape of her neck again. Doc was like family to her. He wouldn’t betray her, even though Cade was his real family, would he?
“Brijette.” The voice of the pharmacist at the back counter brought her mind into the present.
Thankful to be able to stop herself from that line of thinking, she grabbed the nearest bottle of lotion and hurried to the rear of the store where Elliot Arneaux, the pharmacist and owner, bagged several bottles of pills for the elderly Mrs. White. The lady waved at Brijette when she left, and Elliot motioned for her to come behind the counter.
“What’s wrong, Elliot?” She leaned her hip against the cabinet.
“I won’t keep you long, but I wanted to show you this.” He held a piece of paper in front of her.
It was a prescription written from one of the clinic’s pads with her signature at the bottom. On closer inspection, however, she saw that it wasn’t her signature but a fair likeness. A sick feeling started to grow in the pit of her stomach.
“Elliot, this is for OxyContin. You know I don’t write scripts for narcotics like that. DocWheeler writes those.”
The pharmacist frowned. “I thought so, but I figured with Doc Arthur sick, you might have done it without thinking. I didn’t know the guy who brought it in. I told him I’d have to check with the clinic before I could fill it. He wandered around the store, like he was waiting for me to call, and the next thing I knew he was gone.”
Brijette passed him the prescription, trying to keep her fingers from shaking. “You’ll have to report this.”
“I’m going to. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Thanks. This could get me in trouble if it’s happening in other towns. You guys do monitor these narcotic scripts, right?”
“Yeah, we report excessive narcotic prescriptions from individual doctors. But we’re small, and I know most of the people who come in here. In some other town this would’ve been filled without a question.”
The sick feeling in her stomach began to spread. She didn’t need another problem to add to her list. A prescription with her name on it that she didn’t write definitely fell in the territory of trouble, especially when it was for a narcotic with a very nice street value. Brijette decided she’d have to talk with Matthew Wright as soon as possible. If this had been happening in other pharmacies, the sheriff of Cypress Landing would know, and if he didn’t, he’d check with the city police. Noticing the time on her watch, she hurried to the front to make her purchases. It was late and she still had to pick up Dylan.
GRAVEL CRUNCHED under her tires as Brijette began the quarter mile trip off the highway to her house. The small white clapboard was like a hundred others in the area. Most had been part of a larger plantation at one time or another. She and Dylan had lived in different phases of remodeling for the past three years, while they turned the once ragged place into a comfortable home for the two of them. The blue Tahoe bumped hard in a rut in the drive and Brijette made a mental note to borrow the neighbor’s tractor and box blade to grade the road this week.
“Isn’t that Mr. Robert’s truck?”
Brijette glanced toward Dylan, who she’d just picked up from Norma’s, then she spotted the dual-wheeled truck parked in front of her house. That was convenient. She wouldn’t have to go to Robert Hathorn’s house to ask permission to borrow his tractor, she could ask him now—although the reason he was here would likely cause her to go to his house anyway, or at least to his barn.
Shoving the SUV into Park, she lowered the window. Dylan hadn’t even bothered to undo her seat belt. “That crazy horse of yours get loose again?”
The older man stuck his upper body through the window of his truck and banged his hand on the door. “I don’t know how he did it. Jumped the fence this time, I guess. Think you could help me find him?”
“Sure, I can help you. How long has he been gone?”
“Maybe two hours. I put him in the field and went to town. When I came home, he was gone.”
Brijette waved to him before raising her window to follow the man to his house, not far from Norma’s.
Beside her, Dylan sat straighter. “He should get rid of that horse. He runs away all the time.”
She could see the light in her daughter’s eyes. Despite her complaining, Dylan was obviously excited to have a change in what must have been a boring day for her. The girl reminded Brijette of herself when she was younger. When her grandmother used to take her into the woods to trail an animal, or frequently a person, her senses would be firing, trying to decipher every nuance of her surroundings.
Brijette had learned more about the woods and the land when she was young than many people would ever know. Some people said she had a special gift, or “the sight,” because she could follow a trail so easily and so well. Brijette considered her ability more akin to having very good intuition—at least, that’s what she liked to label the feeling she got when she was on a hard track. She’d moved away from here to go to college where she’d discovered organized search-and-rescue groups and she’d begun adding professional training to her home-taught knowledge. Now she was a member of Cypress Landing’s volunteer search and rescue team, which often meant local people came calling for her help when they needed to find lost pets—and high-dollar horses, of course. But the lessons she’d learned from her grandmother were important ones that she wanted her own daughter to appreciate, lessons that couldn’t be bought with money.
When they came to a stop at Robert Hathorn’s house, Dylan leaped from the truck and bounced on her toes.
“Ready?”
She nearly laughed at the girl, who took off toward the wooden fence. “Don’t step in front of the gate, Dylan. There’ll be enough tracks there already. We don’t need to add more.”
Dylan paused to glance at her. Brijette didn’t have to be close enough to see her to know that she was rolling her eyes. “I know that, Mom.”
All three of them stopped at the edge of the gate. Robert waited behind them while she and Dylan squatted to get a closer look at the ground.