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Sirens wailed eerily through the night. There was a confusion of voices and figures, the bright glare of spotlights and headlamps, and flash cameras taking pictures of Stricklin’s lifeless body. Repp joined Cat’s vigil at her uncle’s side. There was an ugly bruise on his jaw where the revolver had dealt him a glancing blow.
The strong black coffee had a reviving effect on him, and Ty wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling the scrape of his beard. It was better than thirty-six hours since he’d last shaven and changed clothes—or slept. The weariness had begun pulling at his bones.
“I don’t know which Dyson had a harder time swallowing” —Silverton was seated across from him at one of the few occupied tables in Sally’s that morning—“discovering Stricklin’s treachery or accepting the temporary injunction which bars him from doing any strip-mining on that land, pending a court ruling on the ownership.”
“I’m sure both were big blows to him,” Ty agreed and lifted the coffee cup to take another sip from it. After spending the last hour giving his account of the night’s events to one of the deputies, he didn’t feel like talking about Stricklin anymore.
Sally Brogan stopped at the table. “Refill?” The coffeepot was in her hand.
“Not for me,” Ty said with a negative turn of his head.
“I was glad to hear that Culley came through his surgery all right,” Sally offered while she topped off the attorney’s cup.
“The doctors are confident he’ll be up and around in no time. The bullet grazed some lung tissue, but luckily it missed the vital organs. Outside of losing a lot of blood, he wasn’t critically wounded.” He drained the last of his coffee and set the cup on the table. Drawing in a breath, he glanced at the lawyer. “If we’ve covered everything you wanted to go over, I think I’ll be going.”
“The rest can wait,” Silverton assured him. “You’ll be wanting to head home.”
“Not right away. I’ve got a stop to make first,” Ty admitted, pushing the chair away from the table to stand up.
“If you’re looking for Tara,” Sally inserted, “she’s been living in one of the company houses, the one with the black shutters on the corner.”
“Thanks.” He dropped some change on the table for his coffee and left.
It was a square and simple one-story building, the endless dust already dulling the new coat of white paint on its boards. There was a weariness to his slow strides as he left the pickup parked on the side of the street and went up the walk to the front door. Ty paused, feeling the ravel of old excitement—the remembered anticipation he’d always known just before seeing her again. His knuckles rapped lightly on the door.
It opened at once, as if she had been on the other side, waiting for him. She stepped back to admit him, the sunlight making a picture of her dark beauty. She had always possessed the power to stir him—and she had it still.
“Hello, Tara.” His whiskered face toughened his looks, darkening the slash of his mustache.
“Ty.” The familiar cadence of her voice reached out to him. She turned with a deliberate grace, her glance leaving him although ail her attention remained with him. “I heard about the injunction.”
“There won’t be any coal mined—not on Calder land, not by our generation. I told you that,” he said.
“Yes.” Her chin dipped slightly. A silence came, pressured by the many things to be said. “I believed my father was right. I believed he would win.” She looked at him. “That was my mistake, wasn’t it? It will always be there between us. It’s all I’ve thought about for the last three hours, since I heard about the injunction.”
“I know, Tara,” he said.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” She came nearer, searching his face with a straining seriousness. “You always believed I was disloyal, choosing to stand by my father instead of you.”
“Yes.”
Her beauty made it easy for him to stare at her. An eagerness came into her dark eyes, and her lips turned soft. “Ty.” She spoke his name in the old way. “Do you remember when we were in college? You were so in love with me then. Life was going to be so wonderful for us. You still feel that way, don’t you?”
A feeling of vague surprise glided through him as he glanced away. She had once been his whole life. She had been in his mind wherever he went, the song he heard in the night wind or the desire in his body. He remembered the hot hunger she had once evoked in him, the tumult of wanting, and the way she responded to his heavy urges. But when he tried to bring back those feelings and sensations, it was Jessy’s strong image, backlighted by the fireplace, he kept seeing.
Tara stared at him, seeing the emptiness of his regard. “How could you forget?” She breathed out the protest in a pained voice.
“I don’t know,” he admitted gently. “All I ever asked was for you to stand by my side. But you were always two steps ahead of me, trying to lead me where you wanted to go.”
“I was trying to help.”
“I know that, too.” Ty nodded slowly. “Everything changes, Tara. And you can’t bring the old times back, no matter how much you might like to.”
“But I loved you.” She protested the finality of his words.
“Once I loved you. I’m not blaming you for what you are. There’s a man out there somewhere who’ll suit you better than I will.”
She shut her eyes for an inst
