Tamantha Burrell is not a child you scoop up and wrap your arms around. Unless, perhaps, you are her father.
I felt more like saluting her after a deputy opened the front door, admitting us to the Burrell ranch house and Tamantha’s presence.
Especially you did not scoop up Tamantha Burrell and wrap her in one’s arms when she is dagger-eyeing the world.
Most of the daggers were for Sergeant Wayne Shelton of the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department. Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed his discomfort. Right now? No.
“I came out here because I know your daddy and it’s important he comes with us and talks to us about what he knows,” Shelton was saying to her.
Yeah, like that would cut it.
“Why?” I asked, stepping beside Tamantha.
I also wanted to ask who and what and when, since I already knew where.
She gave me a quick look of acknowledgement, perhaps even approval, then fiercely repeated, “Yeah, why?”
Neither Tom nor Shelton blessed me with approval, though their frowns certainly acknowledged my arrival.
“You know I’m chairman of the grazing association, Tamantha. Something’s happened there—”
“That guy got shot. Doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Shelton glowered. Automatic reflex. He’d been around far too long to have expected the news not to be all over the county. And he knew Tamantha well enough to be unsurprised she knew and didn’t sugarcoat what she knew.
“—and I need to go help in any way I can,” Tom finished.
Tamantha did not falter before Shelton’s glower. If anything, her glower back one-upped his. “This is like before. You were wrong. All wrong. Elizabeth had to figure it out and make you admit it.” She faced me, the daggers not quite sheathed. “You do it again. This time faster.”
Without the muscles or bones of his face moving, Tom’s gravity lightened, revealed by a glimmer in his eyes.
Fine for him to laugh. I’d been handed an edict and a deadline from the ruler of the universe.
“Tamantha.” Her father waited until she turned to him. “This isn’t like before. I can’t guarantee it won’t ever be, because sometimes things go … wrong. But right now, it’s important I go with Sergeant Shelton and the others and tell them anything I know that might help figure this out. That’s my duty as a citizen. You know about that. And it’s my responsibility as chairman of the grazing association.”
“Just because that man got himself shot there—”
“Tamantha.”
It was the redoubtable standoff at the Circle B. Not the first between father and daughter Burrell.
She blinked first, though a small blink. “I’ll wait here for you.”
“You will not.”
This standoff wouldn’t end up in a shootout, but it might end up enduring as long as, say, Mount Rushmore. Which was what their profiles reminded me of.
I was wrong.
It ended relatively quickly, though they still resembled Mount Rushmore.
Tamantha didn’t actually relent. More like she graciously acknowledged he held higher cards for this particular hand, what with being several feet taller and her father and all.
Tom did not rub it in. He said, “If it’s all right with Elizabeth, she’ll take you to her house. If this runs long—” He clearly expected it to. “—you can sleep over there tonight, and when I’ve finished with the deputies and—”
A nice touch of verbally establishing roles. Not when the deputies were done with him, instead, when he was done with them.
“—helped all I can, I will come there.” His gaze flickered to me. “If that’s all right with Elizabeth.”
Tamantha’s hand slid into mine. So unexpected a touch, I almost jumped. Her thumb rubbed against my skin.
Redoubtable was still a child.
“It is.” I squeezed.
“We’ll all be there,” Diana added.
He declined his head, acknowledging both of us. “Now, get your things, Tamantha. I’ll see you on your way before I go with Sergeant Shelton.”
And if Shelton thought he’d reverse the order of those events, he didn’t know Tom Burrell.
Mount Rushmore man was not about to have his daughter see him escorted away by the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department.