“I didn’t do anything to the road,” she assured him stiffly.
“Good.”
Then Tyler heard her take a deep breath. “About the road—”
His stomach muscles rolled again.
“I think your brother did,” she added softly. “Fixed the road, that is.”
That made him brake to a stop, right there in the middle of the road. A couple of sparrows flew up from the tall grass beside the road and a cloud of dust floated up from his wheels.
“My brother? Which one?” he asked, joy racing through him as he turned to her. He’d been meaning to call both of his brothers on the telephone. He hadn’t spoken to them for years. They hadn’t been close as boys, but he figured that was because they were each trying to survive their father’s wrath in their own way. “Was it Jake? He left a few phone messages on a number I had given him, but I was overseas and didn’t get them until a week ago. Of course, it could have been Wade, too, I suppose. He wouldn’t have my number, but he’d call if he could. Wade’s my oldest brother, but Jake’s right behind him.”
He stopped before he made a blabbering fool of himself.
“I’m sure they’ll both be happy to hear from you.” She turned to look at him then. Her blue eyes were kind and somewhat earnest. “In fact, they’re at the ranch now.”
“Here?” Now that was good news, Tyler thought.
She nodded and hesitated again. “Along with your mother.”
Tyler was glad he’d already stopped the pickup. He would have run into the ditch otherwise.
“They let my mother come? Here?” he said, relief flooding him. Then he realized. “Oh, of course—because of the memorial service.”
He’d heard of prisoners being given a compassionate leave to attend such events. His mother had to be near the end of her sentence anyway. The judge had gone light on her after news of all of his father’s abuse had come out in the trial. Tyler decided it wasn’t so bad to have this whole mix-up if it gave his mother a few days of freedom.
“I hope the memorial service doesn’t give her a problem with the authorities. Now that I’m not dead or anything. Surely they’ll know it wasn’t intentional.”
He turned to Angelina for confirmation. Her eyes were so somber he wondered if his mother was in more trouble than he knew. Then Angelina reached over and put her hand on his arm. He didn’t flinch even though it was his bad arm and he wondered if he wasn’t feeling the burn all over again.
“They released your mother last Christmas,” Angelina said quietly. “She’s free for good. And she has other news, but I’ll let her tell you that.”
Tyler blinked suddenly. He reached over with his good arm to pat Angelina’s hand. He started the pickup again. And then he remembered.
“They really think I’m dead? My whole family?”
Angelina looked miserable, but she nodded.
“I’m so very sorry,” she stammered. “When Mrs. Stevenson—you remember her? My father’s secretary. Well when she finally told me about the death notice, I had to come here and tell someone you’d died. I didn’t know who I’d find, whether you had any family left here or not. But it didn’t seem right for you to die and no one even know about it.”
She spread her arms at that. “You grew up in this part of the country. It’s your home.
“Oh.” She stopped and brought her arms back to her sides. “I put an obituary in the Billings paper, too.”
He swallowed at that. But what was done was done. And he was going to see his family.
Giving him a memorial service wasn’t the worst thing a person had ever done to him. And she meant well. One thing he’d say for Angelina is that she had a heart of gold.
She still sat across from him with her head down so he reached over with his right hand and ruffled her hair like he used to. “It’s all right, Angel.”
“You remember?” She looked up at him in surprise.
“Of course, I remember.” Was there something he was missing? “It wasn’t much of a code name. Not like they have with the Secret Service. But it worked when we needed it to—”
Tyler thought she would be pleased that he had remembered something like that. But she looked aghast so he added, “I never told your father we had a secret code name or anything. It wasn’t like ‘dear’ or ‘sweetheart’ or anything anyway. It was strictly business. Just between us.”
“You never thought of me as your angel?” she asked, her face pinched.
“Well, no,” he stammered. “I knew I was your bodyguard and nothing more. I’d never presume to—that is, I’d never take advantage of our relationship. Not that we had a relationship. It was a business arrangement more than anything even though it did get me through that last year of high school.”
Tyler kept digging himself a deeper hole until finally he wondered if he hadn’t dug too far. “Not that I didn’t consider you a friend.” That didn’t seem enough, either, so he added, “A very kind friend.”
Angelina was just staring at him.
“I get it,” she finally said. “You would have taken a bullet for me, but only because it was your job.”
Tyler flinched. “I wouldn’t say only, but I was getting paid to protect you.”
She nodded and sighed. “I know. It’s just when you threw that knife at the van tire that day—well, it was magnificent, and I couldn’t even see all of it. You were like a superhero. All my friends said so. The ones who were standing there and watching it all. My friend, Kelly, still talks about it.”
She looked at him fully now and there was a softness in her eyes that made him want to protect her all the more. She didn’t need to know he would have taken a bullet for her even if no one had paid him a dime.
“If I’d been paying more attention, they never would have snatched you off the street like that,” he said instead. “I would have had time to call in the backup guards and it would have been handled without all the excitement.”
They were both silent for a moment, remembering those days.
“It was still very brave.” She sighed. “How’d you learn to throw a knife like that anyway?”
“Rattlesnakes,” he answered, thankful to move the conversation along. “You have to be quick and deadly if all you have is a knife and you’re facing a rattler. Growing up here, I always kept a small knife in my boot.”
“You still have the knife?” she asked.
He nodded and puffed his chest up just to amuse her. “Still have the boots, too. You see any rattlesnakes around, you let me know.”
Finally, he got a smile out of her.
Neither of them said anything as he drove the rest of the way to the dirt road that turned off the main gravel road and led up to his family’s old ranch.
He stopped just after the turn. Someone had been busy. The field to the right had been plowed and planted this year. Tall stalks of wheat went back deep in the acreage. He wondered how they were controlling the grasshoppers. On the left side of the driveway, the ground was freshly turned. He’d guess someone was going to plant something else there. And in the distance, behind the barn, he saw a herd of cattle, some of them with calves. The place had never looked so good.
His brothers weren’t just home, they were working the land. And then he saw a house.