Chapter 5

5

Meyra went with him to the hospital. Darcey couldn't leave the inn, and none of her cousins or sisters were back yet. Joel, her eldest stepbrother, the sheriff of Masterson County, was going to meet them there to get her statement.

Meyra wanted to go back with Brandt, but Dixie told her to wait in the waiting room, that legally, Meyra wasn't really allowed to be back there with him unless he woke up and said she could be.

He hadn't woken up yet.

Meyra called her cousin Charlotte in Finley Creek, Texas. Where Brandt's family was. Charlotte was good friends with Brandt's twin sister. Her cousin would call his sister and let her know in case someone needed to make any legal medical decisions over the phone or something. And they just deserved to know.

Joel showed up, looking tall and strong and in charge like her oldest stepbrother always did. Some of the tension running through her lessened a little. Joel was good at being the sheriff. He'd find the men responsible for this.

Her stepbrother Nate was the doctor on duty, too. He'd take care of Brandt, and Joel would find the men who had done this. Everything would be okay. She just kept telling herself that, over and over. Until Joel came right up to her.

"Can you tell me anything yet?" Joel asked after making sure she was okay.

"Not yet. Confidentiality laws and stuff." All Dixie had told her was that he was stable. And that they were taking good care of him now.

"What exactly happened?"

"I was taking out the kitchen trash before I went to bed. I heard something. I didn't want one of the guests to be hurt out there, so I decided to check it out. I figured Darcey was probably busy, and I was the only other one of us home tonight. I went out the back door toward the pond. And I found him."

"What exactly did he say happened?"

"Just that he got beat up at his barn. There were two or three men—and one had a ball bat, I think he said. His truck wouldn't run. And he somehow walked that entire way to us. He needed help, and I found him."

"His new property is a good quarter of a mile away through the woods, even with those walking trails, then there is Highview Road and the townhouses back there. He could have gotten help there," Joel said.

"He wanted the inn. Probably looking for Marin." Brandt and her older sister were very close friends. Marin said he'd become her blood brother or something the day they had nearly died together. Meyra barely suppressed a shiver at the memories.

"He's lucky you found him. He was by the back garden entrance?"

"Yes, near the pond." The garden was almost four acres of landscaping. Then it met a very steep slope down. There was a small canyon back there, where the land once owned by Morris Preston met the land owned by Meyra's family and the inn and a small sliver of the boundary owned by Fletcher Tyler and a tiny bit that was state land.

Well, Morris Preston's land was Brandt's now. There were three small hiking paths and an old bridge, too. It went over what they called their canyon, where a small creek ran between the properties. They kept it repaired—some guests liked to explore a little. He must have crawled over that bridge to get to the inn tonight. She shivered and just couldn't stop.

She just wanted him to be okay.

"Very lucky. Stay close in case I have any more questions."

"I'm going to stay until he wakes up, and they say he is going to be okay. I don't really want him to be alone." She had already changed out of her wet, muddy clothes. Dixie had loaned her some things from her own locker. She was staying right where she was at; Meyra wasn't leaving him there alone. She just wasn't.

Joel nodded. "Let me know if you need a ride home, too."

Meyra would deal with getting home when she had to. If nothing else, she would just call home. Someone would come get her. But she wasn't going anywhere. It didn't feel right to leave Brandt here alone.

She'd known something was wrong tonight. She just had. She couldn't explain it, but she just had. And she wasn't leaving until she saw him for herself.