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MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2014 ...
Midsummer four years ago, Troy Rattigan’s older brother, Pic Lockhart, walked out of the cattle sale in Fort Worth and started for home. He barely backed out of his parking spot when he realized his truck had no brakes. A serviceman discovered a cut brake line. Pic reported the incident to the Fort Worth police, but he never knew who vandalized his truck and risked his life.
The following December, Troy’s sister’s large state-of-the-art barn, and everything around it, burned to the ground. The loss tallied to over a million dollars. Worse than that, four of her highbred horses burned alive. Among them was Proud Mary, a national champion.
An insurance investigator and the Texas Rangers declared the fire arson. The Texas Rangers made an arrest, but soon released the suspect. Both Troy and his sister’s names now resided on a persons-of-interest list and Kate’s multi-million-dollar insurance claim remained unsettled.
Five months after the barn fire, a Hummer T-boned Troy’s oldest brother Drake’s crew cab truck at a Fort Worth intersection and sped away. The truck was a total loss and Drake’s five-months-pregnant wife spent the night in a hospital. To date, the Fort Worth PD hadn’t found the Hummer or its driver.
Texas Ranger Blake Rafferty recommended the Lockhart family hire private security. Drake wasted no time in hiring Redstone Partners, a highly recommended Dallas security company. Within days, a team of eight moved onto the Double-Barrel Ranch to protect the Lockharts and their property.
Since then, Sal DiAmato who looked like he might wrestle grizzlies for a hobby, had been at Troy’s side like a shadow. Still and quiet as a stalking cat, Sal was tougher than a boiled owl. He knew any number of ways to kill a man quietly.
The rest of the Lockhart family members had their own shadows.
Other than unexplained cattle deaths and cattle rustling, no other incident occurred and everyone began to relax. Drake considered not renewing the contract with Redstone Partners.
Before he made that decision, the annual July 4th picnic the Lockharts held for the ranch hands and their families took place. Right under the noses of those security experts, someone in a heavy vehicle plowed down the wrought iron fence that surrounded it, permanently scarring the hundred-fifty-year-old original Lockhart homestead.
The vandal or vandals threw buckets of white enamel paint over the exterior walls of the old cut-limestone structure. They broke into the house and slashed and trashed the furniture, even tried at arson. They shot a spring calf and dropped it into the cistern, making the clean rainwater undrinkable. Sanitizing it took months at great cost.
Drake beefed up security. Troy’s bodyguard Sal—and “bodyguard” was the only word that described him—was assigned a partner. Dixon Turley could shoot the eye out of a coiled rattler with a pistol, a feat Troy had witnessed. The two men followed Troy wherever he went and one of them was awake and nearby at all times.
Troy traveled much of the year conducting clinics on horse care. He hated having his activities watched and even curtailed. He argued with his big brother.
“It’s in case something happens,” Drake told him.
Troy had no idea what the “something” might be, but whatever it was he had seen enough of Sal and Dixon to know they would be all over it. Each openly carried one handgun and probably enough hidden weaponry to take out a small country. Even if they weren’t armed, they most likely could handle a threat bare-handed. Watching any of Redstone’s guys practice hand-to-hand combat in the Double-Barrel’s workout room was more entertaining than an action movie.
This year, the morning after Halloween, just seven weeks back, one of the ranch hands rode up on three dead ranch horses in one of the pastures—two mares and a colt shot, execution style. Nobody knew why, let alone who. A perverted Halloween prank? Random passersby on the highway deciding to shoot some horses for the hell of it? Ranger Blake Rafferty believed something more sinister than a prank was at play.
The family was still reeling from the horse shooting when four days later, Pic’s wife Mandy attended a meeting in Fort Worth alone. In a dark parking lot, her SUV was vandalized and made undriveable, leaving her stranded late at night in a dangerous part of town.
Until the attack on Mandy’s SUV, Troy himself hadn’t felt a need for even one bodyguard, much less two. Now, he was anxious and often caught himself looking over his shoulder.
So as the holiday season of peace and joy approached, to say that bowstring-tight tension existed at the Double-Barrel Ranch was an understatement. It thrived within every family member, creating a fertile field for quarrels and drama in a family that already knew its share of dysfunction.
