Dorothy Garlock (33 page)

Instead, Cole grabbed the wheel and yanked it to his left with all of the might he could muster. The truck leaped toward the
smaller car with such ferocity it resembled a wild animal pouncing on its prey. Plowing into the front end of the car, Cole
heard the unmistakable explosion of tires and the rending of metal, before the truck began to shudder, the wheel jerking so
uncontrollably that he could no longer hold it. As if he were caught in the teeth of a tornado, Cole was swept along by forces
he could not control.

It was over in seconds. Both vehicles hurtled to the left, driving clear of the road and down into the ditch, passing from
the raging sounds of revving engines, exploding glass, and twisted metal into a silence broken only by the calling of thousands
of insects and the intermittent moaning of men.

S
OPHIE LAY BACK
in her bed and stared up at the ceiling. It had only been minutes since she had stolen quietly into the house, tiptoed up
the staircase to her room, slipped into her nightgown, and eased herself into bed. Still, from the moment she had led Cole
back to her secret place in the woods, her heart had sung a joyful song.

Cole Ambrose is the man I am going to marry!

From the afternoon in which she had first met Cole inside Marge’s Diner, she had known that there was something special about
the young teacher. When he defended her against Ellis and the others, she’d known him to be honorable, someone who would protect
her and keep her safe. Now, through their lovemaking, he had become so much more to her… and she had finally become a woman.

Sophie knew that it would only be a matter of time before he would approach her and ask for her hand in marriage.
Cole Ambrose as my husband!
Closing her eyes, she imagined him nervously asking the fated question, a smile crossing her face even though she knew that
she could only give him one answer. It was then that their life would truly begin… a life together.

Though happiness coursed through her, the matter of Graham showing up at the barn dance and causing a drunken scene was worrisome.
When she had left Graham standing in the night shadow of the barn a week earlier, she’d held the fleeting hope that he would
abide by her wishes and stay away. Apparently, he had decided differently. Seeing him being taken to jail in the back of a
police car had been difficult to watch, but she knew that he had no one to blame but himself. If only he had told her the
reasons he had aided Ellis Watts. If only he—

In the distance, the sound of a car’s horn reached her ears.

Sophie lay still, listening to the insistent, repeated bleat as it was carried over the late summer breezes. What at first
had been merely strange quickly became disquieting as the sound grew louder with each passing second. Rising from her bed,
she moved to the window and looked back toward Victory and soon found the source of the noise; there, still more than a mile
distant but closing in a hurry, were two pairs of headlights.

“Cole!” she whispered instinctively.

Horrified, Sophie watched as the two vehicles drove erratically down the dirt road, weaving together and then apart as if
they were doing a bizarre dance. Nearer and nearer they came, the sounds of banging and scraping metal joining the strange
symphony of horn blasts. Finally, little more than a half mile from the farmhouse, there was a terrific collision, one car
swerving in front of the other before they both flew from the road toward her father’s cornfield.

“Oh, no!” she gasped, her hand rising to her throat.

All of the earlier sounds fell eerily silent as Sophie searched the night for some sign of movement. She hoped to see Cole,
but she was too far away and there was too much darkness and gloom.

Stepping away from the window, Sophie knew that she had to do something. In her heart, she knew what was happening; Ellis
Watts and Riley Mason had returned to finish what they’d started. If she were to protect her family and herself, as well as
Cole, she’d need to move quickly.

Grim and determined, she ran from her bedroom.

Riley lay flat on his back in the dew-wet grass, his eyes dancing dizzily as he tried to focus on the stars floating high
in the sky above his head. Slowly, swimming through the black edges of his vision, the world around him started to settle.
He lay near the open door to his car, the vehicle tilted at an unnatural angle after it had pitched down into the shallow
ditch that lined the road. The air smelled ripe with burning oil and other engine fluids, the ruptured radiator spilling scalding
water onto the ground below.

“Goddamn, my head!” he moaned.

Raising himself up onto one elbow, Riley touched his forehead, wincing as he drew back fingers stained with blood. Throbbing
pain laced his joints; his shoulder felt as if it had been struck by a hammer. He didn’t remember much from the crash, but
it was clear that he had been thrown free from the car, landed on his back, and had been briefly knocked unconscious.

“Ellis!” he called. “You there?”

There was no answer.

Struggling to get to his feet, Riley surveyed the carnage around him. Both of the vehicles had plowed off the road, crashing
headlong into the low ditch; Ambrose’s truck was still stuck up against his own ruined car. In the smoke-choked night, it
was hard to tell where one vehicle ended and the other began. He wondered if the cripple were still inside his busted-up truck
but he couldn’t see anything past the heavily laced spiderweb cracks that covered the windshield.

“Ellis! Where are you?”

This time, Riley was answered by a rustling in the dense cornfield that lay on the other side of the ditch. While both headlights
on the pickup had been extinguished, one of the Ford’s still managed to shine, casting a strange glow through the smoke. Wincing
painfully as he pulled a large knife free from the leather scabbard above his boot, Riley readied himself to settle matters
with Cole Ambrose once and for all.

Instead, Ellis Watts burst from between the cornstalks, his pistol held at the ready in front of him. There was a vicious
cut running down the side of his face, a matching smear of crimson bleeding through the fabric of his shirt at the bicep.
Angrier still was the expression on his face.

“Where’s the goddamn cripple?” Riley asked.

“He must’ve managed to wrangle his way out of the truck before either of us could come to,” Ellis explained, his lip curled
in a snarl. “Made his way through them fields right about there,” he added, pointing to a section of cornstalks that had been
bent down or snapped.

“Then let’s go get him!”

“Not us,” Ellis disagreed. “You.”

“Just me? What are you gonna do?”

“What we came here for,” he said with a nod up the road to where the Heller farmhouse sat in stillness. “I can make it up
there a hell of a lot faster than Ambrose can through them fields, so I can set about our work without him bein’ able to do
a damn thing about it. Besides, with you right behind him, he’s gonna have his hands full.”

A wicked grin crossed Riley’s lips at the thought of having Cole Ambrose all to himself; he still owed that son of a bitch
for grabbing his arm in the diner and showing him up in front of Ellis. Even after being dinged up in the crash, he was more
than capable of taking care of a no-account crippled teacher.

I’m going to enjoy this…

“Do what you need to do, then get your ass on up to the house,” Ellis ordered.

“Ain’t gonna take long.”

“Hurry just the same,” Ellis said and then was gone, staying close to the cornstalks as he rushed up toward the Hellers’ farm.
In a matter of seconds, he was swallowed by the night.

Riley moved over to the spot in the cornfield that Ellis had indicated, looking into the rows of crops, but he could see no
sign of Cole Ambrose. Gripping the knife’s handle tightly, he began to relish the opportunity to slide the blade between the
man’s ribs.

“I’m a comin’ for you, cripple,” he sneered.

Sliding into the cornstalks, Riley began his hunt.

Cole moved as quickly as he could manage between the tightly bunched rows of corn, growing ever wetter from the dew that clung
to the husks in the still humid night. The tall stalks rose far higher than a man, far taller than he, blotting out the stars
and moon above. Sounds were swallowed inside the rows, muted save for the wispy brush of the stalk leaves scraping together
and the frantic rasps of his own breathing.

Pain throbbed on the left of Cole’s chest, right in the spot where the steering wheel had slammed into his ribs. Every breath
sent flares of agony racing across his body. Simply getting out of the truck had been an exercise in endurance and patience;
since the truck had crashed against the other vehicle, he’d needed to slide across the front seat and exit by the passenger
door. All the while he made his way down the ditch and up into the cornfield, he’d expected to hear the crack of Ellis’s pistol,
driving a lead slug into his back and ending any hope he had of rescuing Sophie. But nothing had come…

“Move, you damn worthless leg!” he exhorted himself. “Move!”

You’ve got to get to Sophie!

Every step Cole took was agonizingly slow. Trying to move his lame leg was difficult enough when the ground was smooth and
level; in a cornfield, where the churned-up earth was raised in furrows and rocks and corncobs littered the ground, the conditions
were far from ideal. Trying to navigate such obstacles in the dark was doubly difficult. He stumbled once, crashing to the
hard ground on one knee, but he quickly scrambled back to his feet and hurried forward, his legs as unsteady as a man at sea.

Cole had no idea how far behind him the other men might be or even if they were following him at all, although given how dangerous
Ellis Watts was, he dared not assume he was in the clear. His fear was that he would get turned around in the cornfield, moving
away from Sophie’s house instead of toward it, and that he would find himself circling right back into the two men. To that
end, he occasionally stopped, wincing painfully, trying to ensure that he never deviated from his path.

Cole was just about to raise his head to take another look when the noise of a cornstalk snapping from somewhere behind him
instead forced him to freeze motionless in place, his heart thundering in his chest. Squatting down, his crippled leg jutting
awkwardly into the row next to him, he strained his ears for another sound, wondering if his imagination had gotten the better
of him. In seconds, he knew that the threat was real.

“Come on and show yourself, you gimpy son of a bitch,” a voice snarled.

The voice hadn’t belonged to Ellis; Cole had spent more than enough time in the tavern with that bastard to have become familiar
with how he spoke. That meant that it was the other one, the man from the diner, Riley Mason. It sounded as if he were somewhere
in front of him, flailing his arms about, rustling the stalks, trying to scare him out of hiding.

Cole peered intently into the inky darkness, but couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of his face. If he were to be
aware of his hunter’s approach, distinguishing the path Riley took, he would have to depend upon his hearing far more than
his sight.

“Ain’t no one comin’ to help you, cripple,” Riley kept on. “You might as well come and get what’s comin’ to you.”

Suddenly, the sound of Riley’s movement changed direction; earlier he had been crossing directly in front of where Cole crouched;
now he seemed to be moving straight toward him. Peering into the inky darkness, Cole still couldn’t see the man, but now he
felt confident that he knew where he was. If his senses could be trusted in the forest of corn, Riley would soon pass near
where he hid, albeit a couple of rows to his right.

With a certainty every bit as piercing as a lightning bolt, Cole knew he had to do something. If he were to allow Riley to
get past him, the thug would then be between him and Sophie, and that was not a risk he was willing to take. When Riley got
close enough, he would have to spring from his hiding place and put an end to this madness once and for all.

“Ain’t no point in hidin’.” Riley kept on, coming ever closer.

Suddenly, the realization struck Cole that Riley might not really be acting alone; Ellis could be silently moving along beside
him, the two of them working together to trick their intended victim into exposing himself. If that were the case, then the
very moment that Cole moved, he would be stepping right into the jaws of their intended trap.

Still, Cole knew that there was no way he could risk staying hidden, even if it meant that in revealing himself he would be
facing two men instead of one. Sophie’s safety, as well as that of her family, was resting in his hands. If it meant sacrificing
himself to ensure that the Hellers had a better chance of escaping, then that was a price he was willing to pay.

“What with the way you stood up at the diner, I didn’t expect you to be such a coward,” Riley snarled. “Your leg ain’t much,
but I figured you’d have a parcel of guts.”

Anger simmered in Cole’s chest at the man’s words. The irony was that they were remarkably similar to those he had spoken
the night he had been set upon by Graham Grier outside the school. When he had said such things, he had done so in an effort
to bait his opponent into showing himself, a tactic that had backfired; he hadn’t noticed his attacker until it was far too
late. Maybe now was his chance to return the favor.

I will not be beaten again!

Cornstalks rustled nearby and Cole tensed. His body grew ever tighter, coiling to attack at the first sign of the man. To
his immediate right, there was a parting among the stalks and the faint glow of the moon gave Cole enough light by which to
make out his target.

“Wait until that bitch gets a real man between her legs!”

Before Riley could finish his disgusting thought, Cole leaped from the deep shadows, crashing into Riley’s midsection and
driving both of them right through several rows of corn. They had no more than touched the ground before Cole planted himself
atop the man’s chest and began raining down punches on his exposed face. Right hand followed left as he showed no remorse,
hoping to end the fight before it had really begun. In a matter of seconds, his blows began to sound wet, slick with blood
from cuts gouged into Riley’s flesh.