At Close Range (17 page)

M
ack couldn't see what drew the men's attention but would have recognized Corrie's voice from a deep coma. “No,” he growled.
Stay down.

But he understood what she was doing. She'd seen the men break into the barn. She might even know what happened to the third jerk.

He heard a second voice call out, one he thought was Rita's.

Juan Carlos had pulled Analissa down and she was noisily crying in his arms. The pups were barking feverishly.

The missing third man screamed from behind the barn.

To his horror, Mack realized Jason, his man with the water hose, was missing.

The two men in the doorway of the barn had their backs to him. He picked up a two-by-four he'd set
against the wall of the stall earlier. He silently slipped from behind the barrier and ran, pulling back the two-by-four as he moved, directly toward the big man's broad back.

He didn't know if the men heard him or had the drunken fool's luck of seeing the swing coming, but they both turned.

The two-by-four connected with Joe Turnbull's shoulder instead of his back and the man bellowed in rage and pain.

The smaller man ran for the barn's interior and he caught the back swing of a two-by-four wielded by a man who had been a fair tennis coach a couple of years before.

“Get him!” Mack heard Juan Carlos yell.

Not taking his eyes from the staggering Turnbull, hoping the ringing in his ears was really the sound of sirens in the distance, Mack could see that Turnbull's pain was secondary to his fury.

The big man turned and with a roar charged Mack.

 

From her position on the front veranda, Corrie saw Mack's well-placed hit on Joe Turnbull, then on the man without a shirt, and felt a fierce jolt of satisfaction course through her. She felt like jumping up and down, cheering Mack on.

She didn't know what had made the man behind the barn scream but when she looked in that direction, she wanted to scream herself. She saw a pillar of smoke rising from the back of the barn.

“Not a cloud,” she whispered.

Then she saw the third man, the one who had
screamed. She saw him backing away from the barn. And she saw the gun in his hand.

Without conscious thought, she raised the baseball bat in her hands, much as Mack had done the two-by-four, and started forward. She gained momentum as she descended the steps. Suddenly, in the crystal clarity of action, she understood Mack, understood herself. She could no more have stood there and have done nothing than she could have buried her head in the sand.

She wasn't a coward; she never had been. She just hadn't known how to turn emotion into positive action. There was nothing more positive or proactive than to fight for people she loved.

Like a woman possessed, she launched from the veranda, determined to get to the man with the gun before he used it on Mack or one of the children.

 

The two-by-four in his hands was about as effective as a toothpick when the angry Joe Turnbull lumbered forward. He raised a huge fist and rammed it at Mack's face. Though he ducked, the fist still connected, driving him backward into what was left of the barn door. Through a haze of dust and pain, he saw Turnbull pivot around unsteadily, ready for a second attack.

Mack pushed to his feet and stood with the two-by-four in both hands, barring the man from the barn's interior. The mountain lunged at him.

Like a matador, at the last possible second, Mack sidestepped Joe Turnbull's attack and the big man's rage propelled him into the barn, into his friend and took them both over the first hurdle. They screamed as they landed on the ball bearings and tacks.

The children cheered; Pedro loudest of all.

Mack risked a glance at the bunkhouse. Rita stood on the steps, wearing one of his blankets as a shawl, all dressed up like a child on Halloween. She crossed herself and gave a little wave.

Corrie seemed to be flying across the drive, so swiftly she ran toward him. “I love you, Mack,” she yelled as she veered to the left and disappeared around the corner of the barn. The baseball bat in her hands looked like an extension of her arm.

He felt as if she'd hit him with it. She loved him?

And told him so in the middle of a battle with three drunken thugs?

He laughed aloud. Somehow it was fitting. Right. Great, even. He felt infused with power, with strength, with a heady, giddy joy. He turned back to the men struggling to get up from the ball bearings and tacks. The children, instead of maintaining their posts, clambered up on top of the bales of hay and threw sand at the men.

Mack laughed anew as a mostly blinded Turnbull tried lunging at little Pedro and slipped on a ball bearing and landed heavily on the tacks a second time. Mack added to his general discomfort with a not-so-friendly whack of the two-by-four on his thick skull. The man groaned and slumped down, not fully unconscious, but nowhere close to being able to attack small children.

The pups barked happily, racing back and forth on the bales of hay.

And Mack heard a gunshot. It sounded like a .38, the same caliber he'd lied to the men about having. He ducked instinctively and whirled around. No one
stood behind him and the men on the floor weren't armed.

“Fire!” Tony screamed from the back door of the barn. “Fire!”

A sickly pale Jason, sporting a gash on his forehead, limped into the barn and started spraying the back wall with the garden hose.

“Mack?” Tony called. “Jason's hurt.”

“Is it bad, Jason?”

“I'm okay. But I think the man shot Corrie.”

“What!”

“Corrie's shot.”

Mack felt the blood draining from his face. Every instinct in him demanded that he run to her.

“The fire's all around her. She hit the man who hurt me. She hit him with a baseball bat!”

Mack couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. All he could envision was Corrie's blood pouring out into the dirt, her glorious body surrounded by fire. A little girl on a too-warm floor.

“Oh, God,” he moaned.

“What do you want us to do?” Tony yelled.

A devil's choice, but the decision could only go one way. He couldn't leave the children. He had to secure them first.

With no more compunction than he'd have felt for swiping at a tail-raised scorpion, Mack swung his two-by-four and smacked Joe Turnbull friend's hand as he was reaching for Analissa. Mack grabbed the little girl and swung her out of the barn. “Run to the bunkhouse,” he yelled. He yanked Jenny from her perch and all but flung her out the door. “You, too, Jen. Run like the wind.”

“Juan Carlos!” he barked. “Get out. Now!”

“But—”

“Now! And take Pedro with you.”

The boy grabbed hold of Pedro's arm and propelled him off the bales of hay and out the barn door.

“Tony, you get the dogs. Hurry!”

Tony grabbed at the leashes and managed to round up the four dogs and stay out of reach of the two men in molasses and fence tacks. Mack gave the men a harsh reminder of who was boss as the boy dragged the dogs from the barn.

“The barn's on fire,” Turnbull whined. “You can't keep us here.”

“You pathetic excuse for a human,” Mack growled. “You're the one who set the blaze. You were willing to kill little kids—”
and
Corrie? “—and for what? Power, control? Because you found some courage at the bottom of a keg? Let you up? I don't think so, you bastards. I hope you cook in your own juice.”

“Mack?”

“Jason! Forget the water. Just drop the hose, okay?” Mack yelled. “You go out the back way. I don't care how far the fire's traveled.” He looked up and could see flames licking along the roof. And he could see the boy was limping. “Can you walk?”

“I'm okay. He just knocked me down.”

The boy ran as best he could, dragging his leg.

Mack quickly reviewed the children in his mind. Analissa and Jenny. Juan Carlos, Pedro, Tony and Jason. All were accounted for.

He gave Turnbull and his pal an extra two-by-four love tap. “And that's for Corrie's flowers.”

He ran out of the barn and hesitated only long
enough to count heads on the bunkhouse steps before racing around the corner of the barn in search of the woman with the golden voice, liquid eyes and trembling hands made for holding his heart.

Strangely, despite the fire, Corrie looked as if she were sleeping in a ring of brightly colored streamers. As she had slept with him, one arm was flung above her head, one leg crooked and to the side.

Beyond her, away from the worst of the fire, one of the three thugs lay in a heap, a baseball bat some two feet beyond him and a gun within inches of his fingertips.

Mack turned, as though in slow motion, to see rescue racing down the ranch road, sirens blaring, lights flashing. They whipped around the still-locked gates, following the path Turnbull had carved.

He ignored them and, still trapped in that sense of the universe having slowed down to a crawl, made his way through the flames to Corrie. He lifted her and walked back through the flames. He felt the heat but it meant no more to him than a breath on his skin.

He never gave her assailant a thought as he carried Corrie out to the circle of grass in the center of the drive and laid her in the lush green. She didn't move. Didn't moan.

“Corrie,” he said.

His hand was shaking so badly, he couldn't feel her pulse. He couldn't see the rise and fall of her breasts through his swiftly gathering tears. “No, Corrie. You can't go now.”

“I love you,”
she'd called, running for a bad guy armed only with a baseball bat.

Around him men were yelling, dogs were barking,
deputies were shouting. The barn fire took on a roaring life of its own. For all it affected him, the chaos might have been taking place on another planet.

Mack knelt beside Corrie. Blood seeped from a wound just beneath her left collarbone. He yanked off his shirt and wadded it into a pad to staunch the flow. She didn't move.

He sank to the grass, sitting hard, unable to think, unable to feel.

“Is she alive?” the sheriff asked him.

Mack didn't answer. He pulled her limp body into his arms and cradled her against him, terrified to discover the answer to the sheriff's question. If he didn't know, he could still pretend, couldn't he? He could still picture a future, a life. But he couldn't do that if he knew that she was dead. He would never be able to see a future again. Because without Corrie, there was no meaning in a future. None at all.

He rocked her in his arms, unaware tears were running down his scarred cheeks, heedless of the mayhem around them, conscious only of his love for this rare and wonderful woman.

“Ah, Corrie. Wake up, Corrie. Don't leave me. Ah, please.”

He felt little hands on his back, on his shoulders, and knew the children had gathered around them. “Kids, you shouldn't be out here.”

“But the police have rounded up all the bad guys,” Juan Carlos said, then asked, “Is Corrie dead?”

“She can't be dead,” Analissa said hotly. “She's Corrie. She's going to be my new mama!”

“Is she okay, Mack?” Tony asked, his voice breaking.

He felt little sticky hands on his face, swiping at his tears, pushing him to look at Corrie. “Analissa, please,” he said.

“Look. Her eyes are opening, Mack. She's not gonna be a ghost, are you, Corrie?”

“Corrie?” Mack asked, his voice raw.

“You love me, don't you?” she asked weakly.

Analissa forced his head into a nod. “He does, see?”

Mack gave a hitching chuckle.

“You love me, don't you?” Corrie demanded. “Tell me.”

“I love you, Corrie.”

“That's good, because I love you, too.”

“You told me.”

“I was afraid you hadn't heard me. You were busy at the time.”

“I would never be too busy to hear you.”

“I had to stop him, he had a gun,” she said. Her eyes fluttered shut and fear clutched at his chest.

“Stay with me, now,” he said.

“Is this a proposal?” she asked.

He felt a moment's stunned surprise. Then grinned at her. “Yes. Yes, it is. Will you marry me, Corrie Stratton?”

Her coffee liqueur eyes opened. A haze of tears filmed them, making them bright. “Yes, Mack Dorsey, I will marry you, because I love you with all my heart and never want to spend another day without you.”

“Is that true?” he asked.

“You know it is,” she sighed.

“Good, because you know what they say? ‘When Corrie Stratton says it's true, it's a fact.'”

F
inally back at Rancho Milagro after a week in the hospital, Corrie still ached a little if she moved too fast, but the doctors in Carlsbad had assured her that she'd be right as rain in no time and that she'd been strangely lucky. If she hadn't rushed so close to the man with the gun, the bullet might have nicked her heart or pierced her throat. A couple of inches either way. As it was, it passed straight through her on a slightly upward angle, missing every major artery and organ.

“Are you sure you're up for all of them?” Jeannie asked.

“I'm positive,” Corrie said firmly. “Where's Mack?”

“Giving them ‘be calm' instructions. Think they'll listen?”

Corrie grinned. “He's the one who's been teaching them to think for themselves.”

Jeannie's face paled and Corrie knew she was thinking of the narrow brush they'd all had only a week before.

“They did fine,” Corrie said. “We all did.”

“Yes, you did,” Jeannie agreed, and brushed her hand across her eyes. “Why didn't you ever tell me about your parents?”

“It seems stupid now, but some part of me really did believe it was my fault.”

“Like Mack,” Jeannie said.

“Yes. Like Mack. That reminds me, would you get me that stack of papers on my desk? I have something for him. I'd almost forgotten it.”

Jeannie was back in seconds and handed her the sheaf of papers, blatant curiosity on her freckled face. “What's all this?”

“They're interviews with the children Mack saved at Enchanted Hills. And their parents. And the parents of the ones who didn't survive.”

“Oh, Corrie.”

“Every single one of them thank Mack from the bottom of their hearts. Even the ones whose children perished.” When she caught Jeannie's look of warm speculation, she didn't try to hide her blush. “I had lots of time in the hospital.”

Rita interrupted them from the door. “Can we come in now,
señora?
They are going to have fits if they don't see Corrie pretty quick.”

“Sure,” Corrie said. “Let them come in.”

Rita gave a signal and everyone from the ranch filed in. The children came first with Analissa in the lead, followed by Jenny, Pedro, Juan Carlos, Jason, Tony, José and Dulce. The ranch hands came next, Pablo,
Clovis and Jorge, all with their hats in their hands, looking so much like Dorothy's trio of friends from Oz that Corrie had to smile. Rita and Lucinda walked in together and were closely followed by Chance and Mack. Leeza came in last, a surprise visitor.

No one spoke.

“What did you tell them, Mack? That I would break if they said anything?”

Analissa gave a little shriek and leaped onto the sofa. “You're not a ghost!”

Corrie chuckled and gave the little girl a kiss.

“She will be if you keep bouncing like that,” Juan Carlos said. He stepped forward and handed her a bouquet of wilted daffodils. “We saved these in the garden.”

“They're lovely,” Corrie said. “Thank you.”

“You helped save our lives,” Tony said. “And you got shot doing it.”

“I saw the man shoot you,” Jason said. “I went out there when he screamed and he hit me with his gun.”

“Does anyone know why the man screamed?” Corrie asked.

Everyone exchanged glances.

“I'll settle for a guess,” she said, smiling.

“He told the police he saw La Dolorosa behind the barn.”

“But he screamed when I was still on the porch,” Corrie objected.

“And so was I at the bunkhouse,” Rita said. “Lucinda was with me.”

Jason said, “But he says he saw La Dolorosa when he was lighting the fire. And she walked toward him.
He screamed. Then I sprayed him with the hose and he hit me. Then you hit him with the baseball bat and he shot you.”

“Dios mio,”
Rita said. “La Dolorosa saved us. It's a miracle.”

“And Mack saved Corrie. And now you have to marry him,” Analissa said from her comfortable niche against Corrie's good shoulder.

Jeannie handed Mack the sheaf of papers Corrie had put together.

“What's this?” he asked.

“It's for you,” Corrie said. “And a new start for me. I realized what I really hated about journalism was the distance. I want to write from the heart, from the inside of a story. I want the emotion.”

“About time,” Leeza said. “And are you going to write about Rancho Milagro?”

“I'm probably too close to this one.”

“I would imagine Joe Turnbull would enjoy reading it in prison.”

“He can read?” Pablo asked.

“He'll never be bothering Lucinda again. He's up on eight counts of reckless endangerment, five vandalism charges, three attempted murder counts and a host of little charges, like reckless driving, driving while under the influence and others.”

“And his pals?” Clovis asked.

“They're going to be sitting behind bars for a long time, too.”

“Couldn't happen to a nicer couple of guys,” Jorge said.

“And we're staying here, right?” Pedro asked.

“Yep,” Mack answered. “Rita needs a hand with the messes you guys make all the time.”

“Who's that?” Leeza asked from the newly repaired front window.

“Who?” Juan Carlos asked, dashing to the window to peer out.

“That woman walking away down the road.”

“La Dolorosa,” Juan Carlos whispered. Then, with excitement, “It's La Dolorosa!”

The Rancho Milagro crowd, including Corrie, gathered around the front windows. They fell silent, staring out at the lonely figure in black walking down the road, walking away from the ranch.

Rita said quietly, “The bad luck goes now.” She crossed herself.
“Pobrecita.”

“Maybe she brought us good luck,” Corrie said. “She may have saved our lives.”

“And Rancho Milagro,” Jeannie said.

Mack wrapped his arm around Corrie and kissed her temple and whispered, “And you. She brought me you.”

“I like this place,” Analissa said. “We have lots of ghosts.”

“You saw her, everybody? I told you. I told you she was real,” Juan Carlos said.