Gambling on a Dream Read online

  Cover Copy

  With Everything At Stake….

  It’s been years since Sheriff Dawn Madison said goodbye to Texas Ranger Wyatt McPherson. She’s closed the door on the heartache of her past. But when the sleepy town of Colton, Texas, is rocked by a series of shocking murders, Dawn has no choice but to trust the man who broke her heart if she wants to protect the ones she loves…

  All Bets Are Off

  Four years have passed. But Wyatt hasn’t forgotten the bold, Native American beauty who stole his heart . . . and broke it. Losing her and the life they had hoped to share left him an empty shell of himself. But if he wants to stop the deranged killer terrorizing the innocent kids of Colton, he’ll have to let Dawn back into his life. It’s a risk he’s willing to take, even if heartache is all he takes home…

  Books by Sara Walter Ellwood

  Colton Gamblers Series

  Gambling On A Secret, Book One

  Gambling On A Heart, Book Two

  Gambling On A Dream, Book Three

  Heartstrings

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Gambling On A Dream

  Colton Gamblers Series

  Sara Walter Ellwood

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Copyright

  Lyrical Press books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2015 by Sara Walter Ellwood

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund- raising, and educational or institutional use.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager:

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  First Electronic Edition: June 2015

  eISBN-13: 978-1-61650-735-0

  eISBN-10: : 1-61650-735-7

  First Print Edition: June 2015

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61650-736-7

  ISBN-10: 1-61650-736-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For all of my co-workers, who have encouraged and believed in me through the years of my journey to becoming a published author. You all truly are like family.

  Author’s Foreword

  The Colton Gamblers

  In 1865, three disillusioned first cousins return from the battlefields of the defeated South to find their home in East Texas a shambles. Determined to make a new start, they head west. In the cowboy town of Dallas, Texas, they decide to pool the few silver dollars they have between them and enter into a poker game. With their gamble, they win over 100,000 acres of good grassland in Central Texas. Over the next century and a half, their descendents build a fortune in cattle and oil, but as time goes by, greed erodes their family bond.

  These are the stories of the eighth generation gambling on love and bringing back the bond of family…

  Chapter 1

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  Interim Sheriff Dawn Madison closed her eyes and swallowed as she rested her hand over her lower abdomen. How would she tell him his son was dead?

  She stood from where she crouched by the body of the seventeen-year-old boy, lying on the litter-strewn gravel next to the Dumpster reeking of day-old beer bottles and spilled whiskey. The rusty chain link fence trapped the body like the dirty newspapers stuck against it. She wasn’t sure if the dark stain under the boy was from his blood or years of grease and liquor spilling out of the trash.

  “Where’s Chris?” Julie Larson’s footfalls on the wood stairs from her second floor apartment to the back porch of the Longhorn Saloon she co-owned with her brother hammered through Dawn. “What’s goin’ on, Sam?”

  “Don’t know.” Sam stopped to wait for his younger sister, but he never took his gaze from Dawn and her deputies. “I just got here and saw all the commotion. I can’t find Chris nowhere. He ain’t answering his damned phone. I started wonderin’ where he is and came looking for him. He’s supposed to be cleaning the bathrooms, but he ain’t there. Doesn’t look like he did a damned thing since closin’.”

  A group of curious bystanders was gathering on the side of the weathered clapboard bar near the customer parking lot. Dawn walked over to her lieutenant as he finished zipping up the body bag. She pushed down the fear and pain of telling a father he’d lost his child and pointed toward the growing crowd. “Tilly, get those peepers out of here. I don’t need the grapevine going crazy over this.”

  With a grunt, he stood and adjusted his tan Stetson. “On it. What you gonna tell Sam and Julie?”

  Wishing she could tell them anything but what happened, she glanced at the brother and sister coming closer over the weedy gravel parking lot. She fisted her hand over her lower belly, her baby hadn’t been born yet when a drug dealer took him from her, and she still woke up at night from the grief. The thought of what she’d have felt if he’d been seventeen when she’d lost him made her sick. “The truth. Well, enough of it, anyway.”

  “Wouldn’t want your job, Sheriff.” Tillman “Tilly” Kennedy jacked up his gun belt and headed to do her bidding with the bystanders.

  She glanced at Deputies Chet Hendricks and Doug Grant. They searched for evidence in the dry weeds, struggling for life in the greasy gravel surrounding Christopher Larson’s black shrouded body.

  Why did she do this to herself? Why was being sheriff of this town so important? She’d been appointed interim sheriff after Zack Cartwright hung up his shiny tin star for a branding iron last month. She was in charge, but not uncontested for the election next month in November that would decide whether the county wanted her or Chet Hendricks as sheriff. Anger twisted with grief as she looked upon the black heap of a teenager’s brutally murdered body. Whether she won the election or not, she had to find the killer.

  She turned away and intercepted the Larsons before they could get any closer. At least the man couldn’t see what had happened to his son. The coroner was on the scene, and Lucinda Hudson, a local photographer who worked part-time for the county, had already taken pictures. Sam stared over her shoulder, not a difficult task since he towered over her five-foot, six-inch frame.

  When he swung his gaze down to meet hers, she couldn’t miss the fear within the brown depths. “What’s goin’ on, Dawn? Tell me straight.”

  Julie clung to her brother’s big arm and bit her bottom lip. In her trembling free hand, she held a smoldering cigarette. Her hair, which was red this week, was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked as if she’d just gotten out of bed in her oversized T-shirt and nothing else.

  Sam was dressed in his usual white T-shirt and jeans. The early morning sun glistened off his bald head.

  The knife of anger and grief twisted in her heart. Most people had put the Larsons--Sam and his sisters, Ella and Julie--down all of their lives. Over the years, they’d crawled out of the gutter by co-owning the Longhorn Saloon and now Ella’s Diner. The family had already gone through hell back in July when Ella had been murdered by her daughter�
��s biological father--none other than the richest man in the county, oil tycoon, Leon Ferguson.

  The last thing she wanted was to add to their misery only three months later, but this was her job now. The job she’d always wanted. “Sam. Julie. Let’s go inside.”

  Glancing at the body bag, he lowered his brow. “Okay.”

  Once they were inside the tiny back office, she took a deep breath. Sam’s ex-wife should be here for this too, but she lived down in Crawford with husband number three, or was it four?

  “I think y’all should have a seat for this,” she said as gently as she could.

  The fear in his eyes brightened, and sweat beaded on his head as he sagged into the old leather chair behind a spotless desk. “That body out there. It’s Chris, ain’t it?”

  Julie stood behind him and rested a hand on his trembling shoulder. Her hazel eyes filled with tears, and she took a ragged puff on the burned down death stick.

  Unable to hold herself up any longer, Dawn leaned on the desk with a hip and pulled off her tan uniform Stetson.

  Sam’s dark eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Dawn swallowed and averted her gaze to the hat gripped in her hands as she nodded.

  Julie let out a wail and hugged her brother from behind burying her face into his beefy neck. Dawn reached out and took the cigarette from her trembling hand, before she dropped the thing, and put it out in an ashtray on the desk.

  Sam shook violently as tears rolled down his ruddy cheeks and emotions twisted his mouth into an ugly sneer.

  He clenched his sister’s fingers, and with the back of his other hand, wiped his eyes with a wicked swipe across his face. His chest heaved. “Goddamn!”

  Dawn stood and fisted her hands by her side. Memories accosted her. Although her baby boy hadn’t been born yet when she’d lost him, the pain was immense. She sniffed back the burn in her sinuses. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  She cleared her throat. Dammit, she didn’t want to tell him the truth. “He was beat, then stabbed.”

  Sam shook and grabbed onto the desk as he buried his face in the wood. Julie slid to the floor, covered her face, and sobbed, while Dawn rushed forward and rested her hand on his quaking back.

  “Oh, God.” Shaking his head, he sobbed. “I should’ve seen this coming. Especially with everything Ella went through with Annie before the Quinns took her in.”

  Kneeling before him, Dawn gave him all the comfort she could offer. She didn’t want to ask him this now, but she had to know. “Sam, was Chris into drugs?”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. The sigh escaping him came from his soul. “Yeah. That’s why Peggy’s latest husband kicked him out,” he said, referring to his ex-wife. “But Chris… Chris was a good kid.” He turned his tortured gaze to her. “Find the bastard who did this, Dawn. Or you can kiss your dream of being sheriff goodbye. I think we both know who is selling drugs to these kids. That brother of yours has always been a trouble maker.”

  She wouldn’t believe her older brother was the dealer.

  He couldn’t be.

  * * * *

  The next morning, Dawn entered the surgical room off the morgue of Forest County General Hospital. At the stench of formaldehyde, embalming fluid, and disinfectant, the pot of coffee she’d drank that morning soured, and her belly rolled.

  Stopping at the foot end of the metal table, she stared down at the autopsied body of Chris Larson. His face had been beaten to nearly unrecognizable, and he had a total of seven stab wounds.

  Dr. Andy Warren, the county coroner, wiped his hands on a towel as he stood next to her. “The stab to the chest is what probably killed him. It punctured the heart and left lung.”

  “When do you expect to get the toxicology results back?”

  He shrugged and tossed the towel onto a bloody, instrument-cluttered tray. “Should have it back in three weeks. But from the damage to his liver and heart, I’d say he’s a crack cocaine user.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” The last thing Colton needed was a crack dealer. Whatever happened to the days when the strongest drugs around were moonshine and marijuana?

  Those days were lost when the Dallas dealers moved into the country to widen their net, and the Mexican drug cartels pumped more coke over the border. The answer whispered to her from the days she was a vice cop on the Dallas PD.

  “Have you contacted the Texas Rangers?”

  She swallowed hard. The last thing she wanted was the Rangers involved. Not because she couldn’t use their help, but because of who would likely be sent to assist in the investigation.

  “Yeah, I called them and the FBI too.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to get back to the office. I’m meeting with the Ranger in an hour.”

  Back at the station, she entered the sheriff’s office. The door still had Zack Cartwright’s name painted in gold on the frosted glass of the window. She couldn’t believe the damned fool had gone and resigned.

  He’d been like a brother to her for as long as she could remember. When he first started sniffing around Tracy Quinn Parker again, she thought he was nuts. But maybe Dawn had missed her target on that one. She'd never seen Zack happier than he was now that they're back together and engaged to be married at Thanksgiving.

  He’d been an amazing sheriff, but his heart had never been in the job.

  Zack Cartwright would forever be a cowboy.

  After setting a pot of coffee to brew in the old stained Mr. Coffee, sitting on a short metal file cabinet in the corner, she sat in the fake leather chair behind the utilitarian desk. She ran both hands over her slicked back hair and pulled out the band to shake out the bun at the back of her head. Taking a deep breath, she braided and re-wound the thick, long mess back into a knot and secured it with the black band. Playing with her hair wasn’t going to make any of this go away.

  Before she had a chance to mentally prepare herself for the encounter coming with Texas Ranger Wyatt McPherson in less than ten minutes, Charles “Chet” Hendricks roared through the open door like a winter storm. The deputy had been interviewing everyone living on Blackwell and Main Streets near the Longhorn.

  She doubted anyone had seen anything since the time of death was estimated to be sometime around four AM, but she might get lucky because it had been a Monday morning. Someone might have been heading out to work that early. “Find out anything?”

  She couldn’t miss the smugness of his smile. Chet had never been counted among her friends. He and Talon had been classmates, and Chet had bullied her older brother for years over being the youngest bastard son of the notorious Jock Blackwell, until he’d had enough and pounded the hell out of Chet. The deputy hadn’t made it a secret he didn’t want her as interim sheriff, and threw his hat into the election and campaigned against her.

  But his dislike went deeper than Talon’s illegitimacy or her ability to be sheriff.

  Chet disliked anyone who didn’t check the Caucasian box on the census form.

  Despite this, the town loved its veterans, and Chet qualified. He’d gone to the Army National Guard after high school and had done a stint in Afghanistan before getting out of the military.

  While her father had been sheriff for over a decade, his tenure as the county’s first Native American sheriff had not been free of scandal. His election had been bought and paid for by his adopted family--the Cartwrights. And he’d been accused of looking the other way in more incidences than one, especially those involving the Blackwells, Cartwrights, Fergusons, and McPhersons.

  An excited gleam came into his eyes. “I got a witness that puts Talon Blackwell in the vicinity of the Longhorn at the same time as the murder.”

  She leaned back in her chair and gripped the armrests. What the hell was Talon doing on Main Street at that time in the morning? He’d moved back to town two months ago and into the old hunting cabin on the third of the family ranch belonging to him. His big plan was to raise cattle on his part of the M bar
C, their family’s ranch, now that he got his share of money from the sale of the Blackwell Ranch.

  At four AM, if a rancher was up, he was feeding stock, not cruising through a sleeping town, fifteen miles away.

  “I’ll question Talon as soon as possible. He may have seen something.”

  Chet’s lips twisted into a sardonic grin. “Yeah, you do that, Sheriff.”

  Determined not to let the pissant intimidate her, she stood and leaned over the desk. “I should remind you, Deputy Hendricks, I was appointed sheriff by the town council, and you haven’t won the election. You are very close to insubordination.”

  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  Both she and Hendricks turned toward the door. Texas Ranger Wyatt McPherson stood in the opening. He pulled his hat off his head of thick chestnut brown hair. His full lips twitched up in one corner, and amusement caused small crinkles at the corners of his bluebonnet-blue eyes, as if he spent too many years squinting into the sun.

  Dawn sucked in a breath and hated that her heart seemed to speed up. Damn, she hated when people snuck up on her. She refused to think about the fact that her heart hadn’t started beating fast until after she’d conducted a full assessment and determined the interruption was harmless.

  Well, as harmless as a rattlesnake.

  Wyatt ambled into the room with the loose walk of a man who’d grown up riding horses.

  “Lieutenant McPherson, welcome.” She pasted a smile on and prayed it looked genuine. The last thing she wanted was either man to know how much Wyatt’s presence affected her. She’d made that mistake last month when he showed up on duty to help catch a gang of cattle rustlers.