Free Circle Eight: Vaughn by Emma Lang

licked at the boards and the acrid smell of smoke wound its way across the night air. Rage tasted good on her tongue and she looked forward to the moment she would exact her vengeance against Gibson.
     
     
    Martha Dolan was tired, so very tired. She had lived many years on the earth and looked forward to the day she could rest in the arms of heaven. Today, however, was not that day. She was spitting mad and wished she hadn’t given Vaughn the damn pistol. Whoever it was that threatened the Grahams needed to be shot and she would be happy to do the deed herself.
    Some low down rotten skunks had beat up Ellie and Vaughn, then dragged them out the door. She had managed to shuffle to the door when the commotion happened in the great room. Then shortly after, she heard Ellie scream, telling her to run. That didn’t bode well for the two of them or for Martha. Yet she heard the warning and heeded it.
    She managed to pull on a shawl and open a window. Her room had a bench right outside the window in the garden. Mother to the lovely children Martha now considered her own family, Meredith Graham had loved to sit there in the shade of the tree she was buried under. Martha was damn glad of that bench as she hauled herself out of the window and into the night.
    Her bones protested, quite loudly, at the effort to extract her carcass from the window ledge. The bench was a little slice of paradise to sit on. Her heart beat so hard, her teeth rattled. Her breath came in gusts and she trembled from the effort of escaping the house. While she didn’t know what happened to Ellie, it wasn’t good. She caught a whiff of smoke and her dread grew.
    Martha was old as the dirt beneath her slippered feet but she stood and started across the yard. No matter what, she would survive to tell the rest of the family what happened. She wouldn’t let Elizabeth down.
     

Chapter Five
     
    Nicholas Graham saddled the horse with a bit more force than necessary. The bay sidled away from him and reached around to try to take a bite. He sidestepped the equine teeth and patted his great neck.
    “Sorry, boy, I know I’m being ornery.”
    The horse shook his head as though he understood the words. He was a smart mount, and had been Nick’s since he’d been eight years old. Now, seventeen years later, Rusty acted like an old man, reminded him of Granny Dolan sometimes.
    “I’m going with you.” Benjy appeared in the stall door, his jaw set. The youngest Graham had grown so lanky, he barely fit into the clothes Hannah had lengthened for him last month. His too-long hair hung in his eyes, the light brown locks wavy because of their length.
    Since his return to the Graham family four years ago, he spent half of his time at Olivia’s house and the other half at the Circle Eight. No one had yet found out what happened to Benjy during the five years he’d been missing—Nick couldn’t find the balls to ask. As a result, the fourteen-year-old kept himself apart, perhaps due to his own behavior and to everyone else’s tiptoeing around the young man. Nick was no exception.
    “No, you’re not. Matt told me to go, not you.” It had been a week off their ranch duties. Lorenzo and Javier had volunteered to manage the herd and Elizabeth was taking care of Granny Dolan. Everyone else visited with Olivia and Brody and their brood and celebrated little Stuart’s fourth birthday. The boy was the spitting image of his ex-Ranger father and just as stubborn.
    However, their idyllic week came to an end after only three days. Matt had “an itch between his shoulder blades” and that meant something was wrong at the ranch. Since Nick was the only male aside from Benjy not saddled with a wife and young ’uns, Matt elected him to ride the fifty miles back home and check on everything.
    “I have a right to check on Ellie.” Benjy folded his skinny arms and sported a mulish expression. Of all the siblings, he only spoke regularly to Elizabeth and Catherine. If he were