Seeking the Sheriff (Masterson County Book 1) Read online

  Seeking the Sheriff

  Calle J. Brookes

  Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C.

  Contents

  Also by Calle J. Brookes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Excerpt

  Other Titles by Calle J. Brookes

  Paranormal

  DARDANOS Paranormal Romance

  Live or Die

  The Blood King

  The Seer’s Strength

  The Warrior’s Woman

  The Healer’s Heart

  Once Wolf Bitten

  Awakening the Demon’s Queen

  The Wolf’s Redemption

  The Wolf God & His Mate

  God of Nightmares

  DARDANOS: THE LAQUAZZEANA

  A Warrior’s Quest

  Out of the Darkness

  Warrior Blind

  The Witch

  Balance of the Worlds

  The Healer’s Soul

  DARDANOS: THE ADRASTOS

  The Outcast

  The Forlorn

  The Beloved

  The Betrayed

  Romantic Suspense

  PAVAD: FBI ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

  Beginning (Prequel 1)

  Waiting (Prequel 2)

  Watching

  Wanting

  Second Chances

  Hunting

  Running

  Redeeming

  Revealing

  Stalking

  Ghosting

  Burning

  Gathering

  Falling

  Hiding

  Suspense/Thriller

  PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0001

  “Knocked Out”

  PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0002

  “Knocked Down”

  PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0003

  “Knocked Around”

  FINLEY CREEK SERIES

  TRILOGY ONE

  Her Best Friend’s Keeper

  Shelter from the Storm

  The Price of Silence

  MASTERSON COUNTY SERIES

  Seeking the Sheriff

  COMING SOON

  If the Dark Wins (Finley Creek Trilogy 2)

  Wounds That Won’t Heal (Finley Creek Trilogy 2)

  As the Night Ends (Finley Creek Trilogy 2)

  Seeking (PAVAD: FBI Romantic Suspense 15)

  Discovering the Doctor (Masterson 2)

  Calle J. Brookes is first and foremost a fiction writer. She enjoys crafting paranormal romance and romantic suspense. She reads almost every genre except horror. She spends most of her time juggling family life and writing while reminding herself that she can’t spend all of her time in the worlds found within books. Calle J. loves to be contacted by her readers via email and at www.CalleJBrookes.com.

  Calle has several free reads available at CalleJBrookesReads.com

  For my grandfather, the best man I have ever known.

  You will be missed.

  Oct. 2015

  For my grandmother, who gave me the courage to try. Without you and your love of romance, I never would have made it this far.

  Feb. 2016

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  Updates and exclusive scenes here!

  Seeking the Sheriff

  Calle J. Brookes

  Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C.

  Springs Valley, Indiana

  Est. 2011

  The Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C. name and imprint are the sole properties of independent publishers Calle J. Brookes and B.G. Lashbrooks. They cannot be reproduced or used in any manner; nor can any of their publications or designs be used without expressed written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, or locations, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Copyright © 2017 Calle J. Brookes

  Cover by Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C.

  All rights reserved.

  Seeking the Sheriff

  A Masterson County Novella

  Book 1

  Chapter 1

  Sheriff Joel Masterson wanted to kick the kid’s ass seven ways to Sunday, but he controlled himself. Barely.

  The boy was too old for this stupid shit.

  Joel was, that was for sure. He grabbed Phoenix Tyler by the back of his collar and dragged him to his feet. “Come on, I haven’t got all night.”

  Tyler protested, curses ringing out through the night. Main Street was fully deserted, except for him, Tyler, and the man twice the kid’s size that he’d started the fight with.

  The two wannabe wrestlers smelled like the whiskey distillery on the outskirts of town, and Joel’s eyes burned from the strength of it. But his hands were steady on the kid.

  Best to get Tyler out of there before Rutherford got the idea to give the kid the beating Tyler most likely deserved.

  Rutherford wasn’t known for Friday night barroom brawls.

  Neither was Tyler, for that matter. Now, underage drinking...well, Deputy Lowell had picked him up for that a time or two already, hadn’t he?

  Nothing Joel hadn’t seen a hundred times in his two years as the sheriff of Masterson County.

  Time to return this boy to where he belonged, so Joel and the deputies could get out around the county. They needed to make certain the floods that were impending hadn’t washed out the access roads. Five thousand people resided in the county, and if too many roads were flooded out, the entire county would be impacted.

  He didn’t have time for some punk wannabe with a chip on his shoulder right now. The floods headed their way were supposed to be record breaking. And he didn’t know if the dams were going to be strong enough to keep the waters at bay.

  It was going to get bad in Masterson County, Wyoming— real bad.

  And it was his job to keep the people in his county safe. It wasn’t a responsibility he took lightly.

  He cuffed the Tyler kid and shoved him in the back of his SUV, thankful for the metal grill that separated Tyler from his seat. It took a call to his dispatcher to find out where the boy lived—while he’d had a few brushes with the law, Joel hadn’t dealt with him personally before—and then he headed his SUV toward the far south-western corner of his county. As he covered the familiar territory
, he wondered about the kid in his backseat. There were a bunch of Tylers out past his family homestead, but he’d never met all of them.

  The boy was one of those Tylers, then. They’d been contentious sonsofbitches since before the county was formed. He’d had more than a few run-ins with the boy’s uncles and cousins.

  Looks like Phoenix Tyler was following the family footsteps right down a bad path.

  Joel sighed, wishing the world he lived in could be a hell of a lot different. Part of the problem with the Tylers he knew was a simple lack of economic opportunity. They were ranchers, pure and simple, and in Tyler Township, where they lived, the lands were barren and inhospitable. Nothing worth a damn would grow there, and nothing could live there.

  Except for ornery Tylers, that was. Despite the odds, the Tylers kept on.

  He’d been to this corner of the county numerous times, but not to the particular address he was headed toward now.

  The kid continued to mouth off in the back of the SUV. Joel just kept driving. It wasn’t the first time a dumb kid took a ride home in his SUV. At least this one wasn’t puking everywhere.

  It was a forty minute drive from Masterson to the Tyler Ranch. The kid ended up snoring in the back before they were half way there.

  Maybe he’d sleep off most of it and be able to deal with his parents, then?

  Parents were sometimes the hardest part of his job. Especially parents of screw-ups like the boy drooling in his backseat.

  He reached the Tyler Ranch and turned down the pitted and rutted lane. They needed about four loads of gravel to even make it halfway passable, didn’t they?

  The house was sprawling, but in such disrepair on the outside that he wondered why it hadn’t been condemned yet. Although it did look like someone had planted flowers along the walkway recently.

  That saddened him more than anything. The flowers spoke of hope, and a desire to at least try. The house screamed of neglect and despair.

  He looked around one more time. He wasn’t so certain he wanted to leave the boy here.

  The yard was trimmed neatly, and free of clutter, at least. That told him a lot. Someone, at least, was trying.

  Joel tensed when the light flicked on in the front of the house. They’d heard him pull up.

  He parked next to the small porch and killed the engine. He had a feeling he was going to be there for a while. It just always seemed to happen that way at Tyler homesteads. Whether Joel wanted it to or not.

  The door opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a white tank and faded jeans stepped outside. His hair was thinning and gray, and his eyes showed years of hard living but his body was tough and lean. He looked like a hundred other weathered ranchers Joel had seen through the years. “What’s wrong?”

  His voice was roughened and harsh, but unthreatening. Joel cataloged the man quickly. A man just trying to get by in a world that wasn’t always easy to navigate. Like so many others in Masterson County. “You Phil Tyler?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have your boy in the backseat. Got into a brawl at Dan’s Tavern in Masterson. I was going to book him in, but to be honest, I have to deal with the approaching storms. I don’t have time for underage drinking, and my deputies are all spread over the county.”

  “He facing charges?”

  Joel thought for a moment. “I’m not sure yet. Have him at my office Tuesday at ten, and we can discuss it.”

  He pulled the teenager from the backseat, and the kid came awake, swinging and swearing.

  His father stepped off the porch and grabbed the boy by the shoulder. “Phoenix, shut your mouth before it gets you into deeper trouble.”

  The boy cursed his father up one side and down the other. The older man never lifted a hand to hit him, at least. If anything, the father looked more embarrassed than angry.

  The kid’s tirade went on for a good fifteen minutes before the front door opened again and six more bodies came tumbling out.

  Joel studied them quickly. Young. Three were female, small, slim, startlingly pretty in the bright porch light, and—if he wasn’t mistaken—two were identical. The rest were boys, younger than the one still cursing. Hell, the youngest had to be under eight or nine, didn’t he?

  The rest of the Tylers?

  Joel turned back to the boy when the kid started swinging. The father, no more than five-nine or five-ten, was a few inches shorter than his son. And a whole lot soberer.

  Joel didn’t have time to suffer fools gladly. Or wait for a father to gain control of his son. He grabbed the back of the kid’s shirt and lifted him off his feet. While Phoenix Tyler was close to six feet tall, Joel dwarfed him. At six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, he was twice what the boy weighed.

  He used that to his advantage now. He turned Phoenix toward him. “Get your shit together, now. Or I will run you into town, and you can hang out in the drunk tank for the next seventy-two hours. How would you like that?”

  “You can’t do that, I have school tomorrow,” the boy sneered.

  “You could just be truant, then. We’ll see how well that goes over with the school.” Masterson public schools had a zero-tolerance truancy policy that was strictly enforced. Every parent knew that. Jail wouldn’t be an excuse.

  The boy continued to kick and fight. Joel continued to hold him. He could do this all night if he had to.

  Chapter 2

  Phoebe Tyler saw the lights and knew something was going on. Something that shouldn’t be. She didn’t even bother trying to listen, as she’d lost the ability to distinguish most sounds when she’d been six years old. She wasn’t fully hearing-impaired and could speak, but there was a lot she missed. Especially without the hearing aid currently sitting on her bedside table. She’d tried to sleep with it in before, but it just didn’t happen.

  A fact a lot of her siblings took advantage of. Especially the younger ones. They’d better not be up wandering the house. Not this late.

  She was the oldest of eight, and she didn’t take that role lightly. Her father busted his butt trying to turn a profit on the small ranch that had been in their family for generations. But it wasn’t easy. Especially since her mother had passed two years earlier in a car wreck that had two of her siblings injured. Leaving a mountain of debt bigger than the mountain that she could see from her window. The loss of their mother left the day-to-day care of the ranch house, and her youngest siblings, up to her.

  Well, up to her and her sisters, Pip, Perci, and Pandora. The girls had their own responsibilities, though. Pip was doing her best to build a horse ranch out of their small stable of cutting horses. A few more years, and she’d be able to sell off some of the horses she’d bred and trained herself. Perci helped Phoebe with her Angora goat herd when needed—and worked extra twelve-hour shifts as a nurse at the county hospital whenever she could. Perci made a point of taking every bit of overtime she could get. Pan spent most of her time helping their father and Phoebe. When she could, Pan did virtual assistant work and cleaned houses for some of their cousins and uncles. Phoebe’s responsibilities around the house made it impossible for her to have a full-time job. She supplemented what her sisters brought in with her goats. She sold the mohair yarn she created herself. Money was tight, but they were holding on.

  In her spare time, Phoebe tended her little drove. After she had finished with that, she would sit at her loom, and weave blankets from the yarn she kept back for that purpose. When those sold, she’d bring in a few hundred dollars each.

  Every penny their branch of the Tylers could bring in helped their family of nine, survive.

  If something was wrong with one of the children, it was Phoebe’s job to take care of them. She didn’t bother with a robe or slippers. She grabbed the hearing aid sitting on her night table and slipped it in. With the device, she had close to sixty percent of hearing in her left ear.

  Phoebe hurried down the stairs.

  Joel caught the door opening again as he held the idiot teenager aloft and lectured
. Another woman stepped out. He looked at her long enough to figure out if she was the mother, or not. She looked like all the rest of the females but was smaller, slighter. A little older. Maybe, but not much. She wore small, thin pajamas that did little to hide the fact that she was all woman. Hell, Joel would far rather be looking at her than dealing with this kid.

  She took one look at what was happening and jumped right into the fray. By smacking at him and lecturing him.

  Joel couldn’t defend himself and the boy from the small tornado attacking him—not without seriously hurting her—so he dropped the boy heedlessly to the ground and grabbed the woman by her arms. He tried to turn her to face him more fully, but she was mighty resistant.

  “Stop. Lady, I said stop, unless you want to be arrested for assaulting an officer.”

  She had one little finger pointing in his face, but she wasn’t looking at him. No, now her brothers got the rest of her tirade. She had the younger ones hurrying back inside with a few sharp words, under the direction of one of the sisters. The twin females remained on the porch. Watching silently, warily.

  Joel wrapped his arms around her and bear-hugged her when she waved her hands around again. He didn’t have time for this. No matter that he was half enjoying having such a sweet-smelling female in his arms again. If she just wasn’t trying to kick him with her bare little feet…

  Joel lifted her straight off the ground and held her there, aloft. “Stop. Now.”

  “Don’t hurt her, sheriff! She can’t hear you,” the father said, hurrying closer. He reached out like he was going to try and take her out of Joel’s arms. Joel wasn’t about to put her down just yet. Not until she stopped kicking. “My girl is deaf. I don’t think the hearing aid is on. Battery doesn’t always work right.”