Cowboy Justice (2 page)

His eyes flashed to his glove compartment, but instead of reaching for the cigarettes he craved, he wrung the steering wheel and shoved the gas pedal to the floor. Behind him, Stratis’s patrol car and the ambulance worked to stay close, kicking up enough dust to block the sky from sight in his rearview mirror.

Rachel hadn’t ended the call, so Vaughn set his phone on speaker and tossed it on the passenger seat, but he heard nothing except faint rumbles that could’ve been anything from a car starting to a low-flying airplane. Then, for the last twenty minutes it took to make the drive deep into the heart of the desert, miles from any vestiges of civilization, the phone was completely silent.

The first thing he saw when he made a left turn around a foothill that opened into Parillas Valley was the body of a man laying facedown in the dirt. He muttered a curse and scanned the desolate countryside for Rachel. He didn’t see her, but identified a second man sitting against the mesa, using the wall of dirt as a backrest.

“Where are you, Rachel?” He ducked his head, squinting into the glare of the sun on his windshield.

At last he spotted her under the shade tree, approximately ten yards from the body in the dirt. She was upright, which most likely meant she was alive, but he couldn’t tell if she was injured. All he knew was, she didn’t rise or move in any obvious way, despite his convoy’s dusty, noisy approach. That alone would’ve been enough to scare him shitless if he hadn’t been at that breaking point already.

He picked up his radio and requested a second ambulance, then called Deputy Reyes to meet them at the scene.

What he needed to do was lapse into cop mode, to get into that zone of calm detachment that allowed him to do his job right and keep himself, his deputy, and the paramedics safe. He needed to unplug the wire that connected his brain to his heart. But this was Rachel he was dealing with, and he’d already proven over and over that with her, such a disconnect was impossible.

Still, the cop inside him never completely turned off. The minute he hit the brakes, he drew his firearm. He stood behind his open car door, assessing, as the odor of gunpowder smacked him in the face. Whatever happened here hadn’t been fast or clean. Whatever happened had been warfare.

He scanned the surroundings for danger—the glint of metal from a concealed firearm, a lurking perpetrator, any reason he or his crew shouldn’t rush forward to aid the victims. Today, though, the only firearm at the scene that he could see besides his and his deputy’s belonged to Rachel.

She stared straight ahead without acknowledging him, her arms wrapped around her knees, her right hand curled around a revolver. Her hair was a disheveled mess, her face a smear of browns. Tears snaked a path down her cheeks through the grime. Blood soaked her left shirt sleeve and chest.

It was her blood that got Vaughn’s legs working.

“Damn it, your arm! Were you shot?” He dropped to his knees at her side. When he eased the gun from her fingers, she turned her bloodshot, dirt-rimmed eyes on him. He flipped the revolver’s cylinder open and found six empty casings. A rush of acid pooled in his mouth.
Dear God, what has she done?

“They hurt Lincoln.” Her voice was weak, hoarse as though from screaming.

Looking at the dull hopelessness on her face, he was overcome by the impulse to snatch her up in his arms and run away to some hidden place where he could lose his cool like he wanted to, without anyone witnessing the spectacle.

Biting his lip, he looked over his shoulder. The man in the dirt lay unmoving as the paramedics worked on him, his shirt crusted with drying blood. Stratis stood over the man leaning against the mesa, who looked to be in his early twenties. He whimpered, and Vaughn couldn’t fault him for it—his right thigh was a bloody mess.

Vaughn wrapped Rachel’s revolver in the handkerchief he kept in his pocket for such a use and set it on the ground. “These men, they shot Lincoln?”

His fingers flew to her injured arm. She started to answer, but when he pushed her sleeve up, it stuck to the drying blood and she hissed through her teeth. Despite her obvious pain, she held still and allowed him to evaluate the damage. A bullet had grazed her arm near her shoulder, cutting an angry path through her skin and muscle. Dirt and pebbles compromised the area. She needed the wound cleaned and her shock symptoms and dehydration addressed immediately.

Another look over his shoulder told him the paramedics were too busy to see to her relatively minor injuries. They had the man on the ground rolled over and fitted with an oxygen mask, and were in the process of transferring him to a stretcher. The second ambulance probably wouldn’t arrive for another half hour. Time Rachel couldn’t afford, if there was any alternative.

Vaughn could have her to the hospital in Tucumcari in forty-five minutes if they left right now. But he was the sheriff, the boss; this was his game. He should direct Stratis to take her. Any other case, he would’ve had no uncertainty over his need to stay on the scene. But there was a huge part of him that still burned with the need to be Rachel’s protector, and he knew it would kill him to stuff her in another man’s car and watch them drive away.

Then again, if Rachel shot those men, there would be an investigation. Legally, ethically, he’d need to recuse himself should it come to that. In that case, he should probably appoint Stratis to run lead on the case right off the bat.

Fuck.

Take a breath, Vaughn.

What was happening now, his hesitation, that was the crux of his problem—Rachel short-circuited his intuition. Every time he got inside her orbit, he started second-guessing himself. More than anything, he hated that about their relationship. Or lack of relationship, as it was.

He peeled a sticky strand of hair from her wound. “Where’s Lincoln now?”

She shuddered. “In the canyon. Dead.”

His heart constricted. She loved that horse. “They killed him?”

Her tongue moved over the roof of her open mouth. “I’m thirsty.”

Damn, she needed medical attention in a bad way. “I know. I’m going to get you water in a sec. Did those two men kill Lincoln?”

“Four men.”

Vaughn reeled.
Four?

Rachel continued. “But it wasn’t them who killed Lincoln. It was me.”

Vaughn got his face near hers, set his eyes right in front of her, and took her shoulders in his hands, careful to steer clear of her injury. “Rachel, listen to me. We only found two men. Where are the other two?”

Her gaze drifted past him. “They left. In the truck.”

He followed her line of sight to the top of the mesa. When he saw what she was looking at, he rose to his feet, his jaw so tight his teeth ached.

Fourteen years in law enforcement had trained him not to rush forward, but to listen and watch, to pause and take in a crime scene all at once. Like a photograph that captured body positions and facial expressions, evidence scattered around the scene, the nuances a civilian’s eye would miss. Today, though, he’d missed the writing on the boulder. Another testament to how Rachel messed with his self-control.

In block letters was a message that left him stone-cold. bitch we warned you—now you die.

So much for his job as sheriff. The need to protect Rachel blazed inside him, hot and dangerous, leaving no room for logic. “I’m getting you out of here.” He squatted and draped her right arm across his shoulders. “Hold tight.”

Her fingers squeezed him, but her grip was negligible at best. Not a good sign. He straightened his legs gradually, giving her body time to adjust to the movement. As soon as they were both standing, he shifted his hold and lifted her into his arms. She buried her face in his neck as he walked, and it should’ve felt perfect, being so close to her, but he was too disturbed by the message on the boulder to think past his wild, illogical need to flee with her. Whoever shot her and hurt her horse, they were going to pay. Every last one of them.

When they reached his car, he set her on her feet, opened the door, and helped her in. He unscrewed the lid from a fresh bottle of water and handed it to her. It slipped through her fingers. Gnashing his teeth, he held the bottle to her lips and dribbled water onto her tongue. He stroked her hair away from her face as she drank, then set the bottle in her lap and jogged toward the mesa to touch base with Stratis.

“Talk to me,” he prompted his undersheriff of three years.

Stratis pushed the brim of his hat up with his finger. “We got a problem.”

“Got that right. What’s the status of the injured men?”

“Nonfatal gunshot wounds, both of them. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Vaughn scanned the ground. “Did you locate their firearms?”

“No, not yet, but—”

“Rachel said there were four men, and two of them took off in a truck. Probably took the firearms with them. I radioed Reyes. He should be here soon, along with another ambulance for the second man. Have you gotten names out of them yet?”

Stratis leveled his gaze at Vaughn. “That’s the problem I’m talking about. Man with the leg wound is Jimmy de Luca.”

Name didn’t ring a bell. “And the other?”

Stratis swallowed. “He’s still unconscious, but I recognized him. Pulled his wallet to confirm. Looks like Rachel shot Wallace Meyer Jr.”

All Vaughn could do was blink. The tingling in his throat kicked up, making him jones for a cigarette. He looked past Stratis to the stretcher being loaded into the ambulance and swabbed his forehead with his hand. The tingling grew unbearable. Wallace Fucking Meyer.

“Don’t talk to anybody, understand?”

Stratis’s jaw rippled. “Understood.”

“Not until we get the details,” Vaughn amended. “If he’s stable, stall the ambulance. We don’t want Junior expiring on us—Jesus, I can only imagine the shit storm we’d be in if he died—but if we can wait until Reyes gets here, he can keep an eye on the scene and this de Luca guy while you ride in the ambulance. If Wallace Jr. comes to, press him for everything he’s worth, because once he gets to the hospital, we’ll lose access to him.”

“Got it.”

“Tell Reyes to look in the canyon. He’ll find Rachel’s dead horse. Her camera won’t be far away either. I’ll call Kirby, Molina, and Binderman. Their day off just got cancelled.”

He swung by the tree, grabbed the revolver, and locked it in the evidence bin in his trunk. He snagged his first-aid kit and got into the car. Rachel didn’t turn to regard him. She was staring at the message on the boulder. Her wound gaped at him, a stew of blood, flesh, and dirt. He ripped open a pack of pre-medicated gauze and pressed it to her arm, securing it with a length of medical tape. She didn’t seem to notice.

He turned the engine over and cranked the wheel, anxious to remove the graffiti from her line of sight. Once they were on the road toward the highway, he set his hand on her knee. “Do you know who those men were?”

She rubbed the elbow of her injured arm. “No.”

Good. Because when she found out, she’d understand how screwed they both were.

“I’m sorry,” she added in a whisper.

He squeezed her knee, hoping she didn’t sense his agitation. “Don’t say that. We’re going to get you patched up, and then we’ll talk. For now, rest. I’ve got to make some calls.”

She closed her eyes. “Amy,” she breathed.

“Yeah, I’m calling your sisters. They’ll meet us at the hospital.”

First things first, though. Time to alert his deputies that the Quay County Sheriff’s Department just went into crisis mode. He dialed Torin Kirby’s number, but his mind was on Wallace Meyer Jr.

The younger Meyer’s delinquency was a sore topic in his department, muttered about for years. But under the protective watch of his father, the boy was exempt from the arm of the law—or, at least, that was what the good ole boy club believed. Still, what was the son of a bitch thinking, trespassing in the middle of the day to scrawl threatening messages on the property of a family already steeped in controversy? Did he ever consider he might get caught?

Then again, Wallace Meyer Jr. had the luxury not to think of consequences at all. It was a fact of life Vaughn became aware of as a teenager—thanks in large part to the Meyer family—that the people with the power called the shots. Wallace Meyer Sr., Tucumcari’s police chief for the past twenty-eight years, had more power and political influence than any other law-enforcement authority in eastern New Mexico.

He glanced at Rachel. She’d opened her eyes and was staring out the window, unaware that no matter how justifiable her reasons for shooting the police chief’s son, if Vaughn didn’t do some fast thinking, her life as she knew it was over for good.

Chapter Two

Intense, the way Vaughn looked at her. Like she might conjure a gun and shoot someone if he let his guard down. He’d stayed by Rachel’s side while nurses fussed over her and a doctor cleaned her wound, walked in step with the hospital bed as they rolled her to radiology for X-rays, and claimed the only chair in the room when they’d settled her into a private suite for her overnight observation stay.

The nurses called it a suite, but the room felt more like a prison cell to Rachel, with Vaughn as her jailer. He was too close, his stare too penetrating. Thank goodness for the drugs the nurses had given her, because otherwise she might have crumbled under his scrutiny.

He was dressed in his uniform, but had unbuttoned the collar and loosened his black tie. She was partial to the tie. Not too long ago, he’d done unspeakable things to her with that tie. Or maybe, he burned the ones he’d used on her and purchased replacements. She wouldn’t fault him for destroying the evidence of their time together. Every single day she prayed to forget him too.

The room’s fluorescent lights glinted off the sheriff badge on his chest. The reflection shimmered on her skin as she lifted her hand to touch his tie. The material was coarse, utilitarian, against the pad of her thumb. A zing of lust rippled through her belly.

Vaughn shot to his feet with a sharp inhale and prowled to the closed door to look out the narrow window. She fisted her hands in the blanket. Why had she done such a stupid thing as touch him?

When he returned to her bedside, he was careful to drag his chair out of reach, she noticed with an equal measure of gratitude and irritation. “Your sisters are waiting outside, and they’re worried.” His voice was strained, and he clutched the arms of the chair with a white-knuckled grip. “I know you want to see them, to show them you’re okay, so please try, Rachel. Try to concentrate on my last few questions so I can let your sisters in the room.”

She couldn’t remember any questions. “Ask me again.”

“After you called me from the canyon, what did you do next?”

“I reloaded my gun and climbed around the west side of the mesa.”

“What were the four men doing at that point?”

It had been over a year since she’d looked at Vaughn long enough to really see him. Their mistakes in the interim had taken place in the dark of night, and were over too soon for her to notice anything but the way he made her feel. His thick, dark hair was a smidge longer than she remembered, combed and held in place with a touch of gel. A new scar, an inch-long jagged line that still glowed pink, ran along his jaw near his right ear, and time had etched new laugh lines into the corners of his blue eyes.

Yet so much about him hadn’t changed. His face still disarmed her, with its high cheekbones, straight, squared nose and full lips that were the window to his emotions. Whatever he felt at any given time, she could always see it in his lips. His shoulders were as stiff as ever. That she remembered with perfect clarity. The way his shoulders began each morning relaxed, then crept ever closer to his ears as the day wore on.

“Rachel, please. What were the four men doing while you climbed the mesa?”

She rubbed her eyes and turned away from him. “Smoking dope, reloading their rifles, joking around.”

“They didn’t know you were coming to confront them?”

She huffed. “I wasn’t coming to confront them. I was coming to shoot them.”

“Jesus, Rachel, you can’t tell me stuff like that.” He flexed his hand and glanced at the closed door. His lips grew twitchy, and she knew he was deliberating some important choice. “Let’s stop talking about what happened today.”

She didn’t understand his worry, but felt too weak to question him about it. “Okay.”

“Has anything like this ever occurred on your ranch before? The graffiti or the people trespassing?”

She shrugged, then grunted when it sent a stab of pain through her injured arm. “A dozen or so times in the past four months. I kept photographic records on my camera and computer. I’ll hand the pictures over to you.”

He stared at her for a heartbeat, then vaulted from his seat and yanked the privacy curtain around her bed. “A dozen times? And this is the first I’m hearing about it?”

“It was no big deal.”

In a flash, he was leaning over her, his fists punching the pillow on either side of her head, his expression livid. She flinched. Not that she was one to cower, but it was unbearable, having him close enough for her to catch the scent of his aftershave and feel his breath on her face. She wanted to look at his eyes—his eyes alone broke her heart—but she held herself in check, and instead stared down her body, to the place where his tie brushed her chest.

“I have my reasons,” she whispered.

“Is it because of you and me?” His voice was even lower than hers, a note on the wind. With his hand on her jaw, he held her face until she met his eyes. “Is that it? You didn’t want me anywhere near you? Is that why you risked your life, because you were too proud to ask me for help?”

If only. But pride had nothing to do with it.

She held his gaze, wondering if he could see the truth in her eyes.

The hand that held her jaw relaxed. “You’re so damn proud.” He slid his fingers behind her ear into her hair. “But you’re going to have to trust me from here on out. What happened in Parillas Valley has put you in a situation. A real bad one. I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of this mess, but I’ve got to follow the letter of the law.”

She stared at him, confused and—for the first time since Vaughn’s patrol car barreled into Parillas Valley with its sirens blaring—afraid. “What?”

His eyes bore into hers, serious and sad. “Your and my every move is going to be scrutinized like nothing you’ve known before.” His hand cupped her head; his thumb curled over her ear. “I need to know. Have you ever told anyone about us?”

The question stung worse than a slap. If she’d had the strength, she would have shoved him away, shoved him out the door and out of her life for good. She screwed her mouth into a sneer as bitter acid crawled up her throat. How could she want someone so badly who took every opportunity to remind her that their relationship was nothing more than a filthy secret?

Rachel had never confessed her affair with Vaughn to anyone, including Jenna and Amy, because she was a coward, through and through. To this day, her sisters had no idea Rachel was to blame for their mom’s purposeful overdose on vodka and pills the year before. No idea that four weeks into her grief over losing their dad, she’d left their bipolar mom—who’d tipped over the mental deep end when her husband died—alone at night in the house so she could run off and get laid by the sheriff investigating Dad’s death. Jenna and Amy, along with the rest of the town, had assumed she’d been home that night, and neither she nor Vaughn had corrected their thinking.

Not only was she too cowardly to face their wrath, but confessing the truth would’ve landed Vaughn in trouble with his job. He should never have been sleeping with a person connected to a possible murder investigation. She supposed he had his own reasons for going ahead with the affair, as she had hers, and the car crash that killed her dad was eventually deemed a freak accident, but it didn’t change the facts. They had each done something horribly wrong, and Rachel’s mom had paid the price.

“Rachel, I need to know who you told.”

The fear in his voice dragged her to the present. Whatever he made her feel, the agony and the bliss, none of it mattered at the moment. She shook her head. “No one. You know that. But . . . I don’t understand. Why am I in so much trouble? I was defending myself today.”

She could see the outline of his tongue pushing around the inside of his lips. He stared past her, to the wall behind her bed, and took a deep, slow breath. Then he lowered his forehead to hers. The hand that had been holding her head dipped lower to clutch her upper back beneath the open hospital gown. The feel of his hand spanning her shoulder blades was the most marvelous and painful sensation she’d experienced since the last time he held her.

Of its own volition, her good arm hooked around his neck, clinging to him like he was the anchor she’d always needed him to be but he never had been.

His breath was ragged, his eyes closed. “Rachel, you shot a man in the back with an unregistered .38. You had every right to defend yourself on your property, but this man’s name is Wallace Meyer Jr. He’s the Tucumcari police chief’s only child.”

She swallowed, speechless. The revolver had been her father’s, locked in a safe with a handful of hunting rifles, and she’d never given using the gun a second thought.

Wallace Meyer had been cop numero uno in Quay County since Rachel was young. She remembered seeing him on the local news, giving official statements on various crimes and drug busts. Tucumcari, the county seat, was thirty miles east of Catcher Creek, but the two towns were inextricably linked. Actually, every small town in Quay County depended on Tucumcari like a lifeline. Within its city limits were the county’s only community college, library, and jail. Of the county’s twelve thousand residents, over half lived there.

Vaughn and his deputies were responsible for policing the entire county, save for Tucumcari, which was the only town for a hundred miles that boasted a city-level police force. Meyer had spoken out against Vaughn during his campaign for sheriff three years ago. Apparently, Meyer and the old guard weren’t Vaughn’s biggest fans, though Rachel couldn’t remember why. Vaughn had eked out enough votes to win, but there was no denying Meyer’s sweeping influence.

And she’d shot his only child. Holy shit.

Vaughn’s other arm wrapped around her waist. His hold on her intensified, lifting her torso from the bed. His badge dug into the vulnerable flesh of her breast, but all she could do was breathe and blink.

Let this be a dream
. Then Lincoln would be alive and Vaughn wouldn’t be holding her. She wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed on observation for wound infection, with her sisters worrying in the hallway. Acid, vicious and unrelenting, ate at her stomach, but she’d take the localized pain of an ulcer any day. She’d take the ranch problems. She’d bargain with the universe any way she could if she could wake up and realize the past five hours had been a nightmare.

His fingers stroked her back. “Whatever happens, whatever Meyer threatens to do to you, you stay calm. Don’t talk to anyone, got it? Especially not the Tucumcari police. Any of them come sniffing around, you call me right away. This is my case, my jurisdiction. Don’t let them bully you.”

She wouldn’t. As soon as she stopped freaking out, she’d locate her backbone. She was going to protect herself and her family, no matter who tried to push them around. “I need to see Amy and Jenna.”

He brushed his closed lips across her forehead, then eased her to the bed. “Kellan’s out there too.”

Kellan Reed was Amy’s fiancé. Rachel hadn’t been real crazy about him when he and Amy embarked on their whirlwind romance last December, but now she was on board with his place in her family. Best part about Kellan was he took a lot of pressure off Rachel on the ranch. Over the past several months they’d eased into a comfortable partnership, dividing chores and making plans as they prepared to merge their adjoining properties after his and Amy’s July wedding.

As good a guy as Kellan was, though, he did have one flaw that got Rachel’s dander up. He was Vaughn’s best friend.

“Do they know what happened?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“Were my sisters crying, last you looked?”

He smiled, his eyes crinkling with tenderness. “You bet.”

“Good grief.” She matched his grin. It was a relief to suspend her fear and smile at a joke like her world hadn’t collapsed in on her. “This is the perfect opportunity for them to take their drama to a whole new level of annoying.”

Quirking his eyebrow, he swiped a box of tissues from the counter in the corner and set it on her stomach. “There. At least they won’t get snot and tears on your covers.”

She almost laughed, he knew her so well. Then his question returned to haunt her—
Have you ever told anyone about us?
—along with the pain it evoked. Her gaze slid away.

Clearing his throat, he shook out his arms, as if he were shaking the memory of her body off his limbs. He did that most every time and she hated it. He buttoned his collar, tightened his tie, and adjusted the utility belt strapped to his trim waist. With a flick of his fingers, his radio came to life in a flurry of static and garbled words. Last on was his black Stetson. He smoothed his fingers around the brim until he got the angle just so.

He placed a hand on the privacy curtain. “Ready for them?”

At her nod of assent, he pushed the curtain to the wall and opened the door.

Rachel’s sisters burst into the room as dramatically as she’d expected, but quieter. There were no shrieking hysterics, but plenty of wringing hands and hugs and tears. God, how those two women could weep. Rachel was eternally grateful that the drama gene her younger sisters inherited from their mother had skipped over her.

Hovering over Rachel’s bed, Amy drew a deep breath and hiccupped. “We’ve been so worried. Vaughn was in here interviewing you for hours and the nurses wouldn’t tell us anything except that you were shot and in stable condition.”

“That’s all they said? Geez. They might’ve mentioned I was only grazed by a stray bullet, not shot point-blank. I feel fine. You can stop worrying.”

Jenna perched on the edge of the bed and took Rachel’s hand in hers. “You’re not fine. You’re in a hospital.” She let out a particularly melodramatic sniffle.

“Calm down, Jenna. Amy, you too. I’m not on my deathbed. I would’ve been cleared to go home tonight if the doctor wasn’t so worried about infection.”

Vaughn cleared his throat to catch their attention. “I need to get to work on the investigation, but I wanted to fill you all in on a few points first.” He was all business now, hands clasped behind his back, his expression polite and distant.

Amy and Jenna wiped their eyes and made use of the tissue box on her stomach.