Heartland (24 page)

“Damn, wish we had a clear shot.” Clint ground out the words as he lowered his own Glock then spat on the dark ground.

“I know.” He patted his lieutenant’s shoulder and turned in a crouch toward his other three deputies. “I can’t remember if this thing has a back door or not, but I’m sure it has a window. Bucky and Billy, the two of you go around back. Shoot the bastard on sight if you get him in your crosshairs. Understand?” Whether or not, they could see the hatred in his face, he didn’t know, but he poured more than enough into the last word. The deputies nodded and didn’t question his order. Glancing at Clint and Deputy Joe Kinkaid, he said, “The three of us are going through the front door.”

EJ heard the sounds of what may have been a scuffle inside and the cry of pain from a woman--from Emily. With as much speed as the undergrowth and the years of dry leaves would allow, they half ran, half crawled to the front of the cabin.

He motioned for Joe to stay put and to cover them if need be, then he and Clint pulled their guns and bounded the last yards for the porch. When a shot rang through the night from behind, EJ’s heart leapt into his throat. Was Ritter dead? In the low light from the windows and the full moon above, he and Clint looked at each other as they settled against the wall on either side of the door between the curtained rectangles. Clint nodded, and EJ reached for the doorknob.

“I’ll kill her if anyone out there makes another move.” A rifle shot and a scream from Emily, followed by loud sobbing, punctuated the words.

“Bucky. Billy. Do you copy?” Clint called out to the two deputies in the back of the cabin on his radio pinned to his shoulder.

“Billy’s been shot.” Bucky McCoy’s call over the radio clipped by EJ’s ear stopped him from barging into the cabin. “He’s okay--shoulder shot. We’re pulling back out of line of fire.”

“Roger. Billy, if you can get back to the medics, go.” Clint answered when EJ didn’t.

“I’m okay,” Billy said with an air of defiance. “A glancing shot. I had him in my sights, but damn, he must have seen me or something, because he shifted enough that I missed him and he got me.”

They had to stay to the shadows. The moon was high enough to give off enough light for Ritter to see through the holes in the burlap. EJ fisted his hand on the door handle and swallowed the bile rushing up his throat. He was as much a prisoner as Emily. If he barged in, he’d either get Emily killed or one of his men, but how could he do nothing?

He turned toward the window by his other side. The thing was covered with burlap, but he found a hole and peered into the cabin. A gasp ripped out of his throat when he saw Emily tied naked to a cot. He stopped breathing when he saw the blood between her thighs. Oh, Christ was she hurt? Had the bastard raped her?

What he could see of her face was pinched as her body undulated as much as her bindings would allow. “EJ! Help! Oh, God,” she gasped in pain. “I think I’m losing the baby.”

The sight of her sent a cold spear of determination though him. He searched the visible cabin for Ritter, but the hole didn’t allow him to see much.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” Ritter’s words were as frigid as an arctic wind. “Or, I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

Emily let out another sobbing groan. If he didn’t make a move, Emily and her baby would die. But if he did… He couldn’t think of the what-ifs.

Motioning for Joe to come up on the porch, he pressed his back against the other side of the window, his gun held up in the ready. EJ pointed to the stacked firewood between the end porch post and the wall of the cabin and gestured to the two windows, then whispered, “On three.”

Joe and Clint nodded understanding. Clint picked up two chunks of the wood and took his place against the door again. EJ turned toward Joe and jerked his head toward Clint’s side. “Cover me from the other side of the window,” he whispered. “Draw off his fire. Clint, you open the door once I shoot the son of a bitch.”

Joe nodded and ducked below the glow to come up on the far side of Clint’s window.

God, he hoped to heaven and hell this worked. Holding up his Glock with his finger hovering on the trigger, he whispered, “Three, two, one!”

Clint tossed the heavy chunks of wood into the windows on either side of the door, breaking glass and pulling the flimsy coverings off. Joe shot into the room, while EJ sought out Mike down the barrel of his gun. Ritter hid behind the turned-up table in the far corner with the sideboard to his back. EJ didn’t have much of a target, but then he didn’t need one. The top of Ritter’s head popped up as he aimed at Joe. He must have seen EJ and turned to fire at Emily at the same time EJ pulled the trigger.

The combined racket of gunshots going off in close range was nearly drowned out by the screams from the bed.

Chapter 20

Sweet Jesus, she was tiny.

EJ peered through the plate glass window separating the visitor’s gallery and the newborn intensive care unit. Cadence Susanna lay in an incubator on a pink blanket. Her name was bigger than she was. He snorted at the thought. The diaper seemed to swallow her scrawny body. The doctor said she weighed two pounds, three ounces and was thirteen inches long. Her legs and arms appeared not much bigger than the numerous tubes and wires attached to her.

God, she was beautiful.

Please give her strength.

His heart seized as he silently prayed that she survive. He had a horrible fear her small life would disappear, despite the assurances from the pediatric specialist taking care of his daughter that she was healthy and had a better chance than most premature babies.

Emily would be okay. She’d gone into early labor, most likely brought on from the stresses of the day and the injuries she’d sustained to her abdomen. Her labor had started after the fucking bastard had punched her. The sight of her tied naked, battered, and bloody to the filthy cot would haunt him for the rest of his life. He’d untied her and wrapped a blanket around her, praying to heaven she hadn’t been raped. At the memories, EJ swallowed the bitter satisfaction that he’d shot the son of a bitch dead.

He shook all thought of those horrible minutes from the time he shot Ritter, to him carrying Emily out of the cabin and looked to the future. As soon as Emily was discharged and Cadence was out of danger, he planned to ask her to marry him.

“Is she going to live?”

He turned at the British accented voice and stiffened his spine. Fabian McPhee stood next to him, his hands shoved into the pockets of his black leather coat.

“Yes.” He looked back at the rock star and forced the fists at his sides to relax. Punching the SOB wouldn’t do anyone any good.

McPhee squinted in at the baby. “What are all those tubes coming out of her?”

“Life support.” EJ’s shoulders sagged as he stared at the baby. Emily’s parents arrived at the Amarillo hospital at about the same time Fabian had, but it was EJ who’d stayed with Emily while she delivered the baby. He’d held Emily’s hand and poured his strength into her, fighting his own fears and heartache that her--their--baby wouldn’t survive. “She isn’t able to breathe on her own yet. The pediatrician is hopeful she’ll quickly be weaned from the respirator.” She had to be or she wouldn’t live, but he kept the knowledge to himself, hoping if he didn’t speak about it, everything would be okay.

He sensed the other man’s gaze on him.

“You love her.”

EJ turned to look at the other man. Was he talking about Emily or the baby? Did it matter? “Yes. I want to marry Emily”--he swallowed hard and glanced back at the baby--“and raise Cadence as my own.” He braced himself against the other man’s objections.

Fabian let out a breath. “I’m glad she’ll have a good father.”

The quiet words brought EJ up short and he faced him. Fabian gave him a wry smile and shrugged his leather-clad shoulders. Long, dyed-black hair fell over his forehead, and he brushed it back with fingers tipped with dark polished nails. With his all black attire, he was the picture of the Goth music genre and the hard metal music it produced. Fabian cleared his throat and looked in at the baby. “My parents divorced when I was three. Mum and Dad had created this band--The Dark Fairy.” He grinned at EJ, showing two slightly crooked front teeth. “Dad was Scottish and the name is a play on the original Gaelic meaning of McPhee. The band failed before it ever got off the ground. I named my band the same thing because it seemed to be a good name for a Goth pop band.”

EJ had done some research on McPhee, and his story corroborated what he already knew of the man. His mother was killed in a car accident when he was four years old, and his father had remarried a half-dozen times before his death from a heart attack eighteen years ago when Fabian was nineteen years old.

“My father never wanted me around and sent me to one boarding school after another, going as long as two years before I’d even see him and whatever increasingly younger new wife he’d married.” Fabian’s voice took on a bitter note as he spoke. “I don’t want that for my kid.” He shook his head and lifted his shoulders in what might have been a shrug or an intake of breath. “That’s why I didn’t want any. I know I’m not father material.”

EJ met Fabian’s gaze and was taken aback by the pain shining in the man’s dark blue eyes. Before he could speak, Fabian held out his hand to him. EJ shook it, surprised by the other man’s strength.

“Take care of my daughter, Sheriff.”

“I will.”

Fabian headed down the hall, but before he turned the corner, he looked back at EJ. “I want you to adopt her. If Emily wants her to know I’m her biological father, fine.” He shrugged and gave him that wry grin again. “If not, I know she will be in good hands.”

* * * *

The last two months had flown by in spurts of worry and joy as baby Cadence agonizingly matured enough to leave the hospital. Emily sat in a padded rocking chair at the window of the room EJ had first given to her and held her baby to her breast. The bed she and EJ had first made love in had been taken down and stored in the attic. In its place was a beautiful white crib, a gift from her parents. After a moment of gazing on the perfectly rounded, red fuzzed head, she leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the strangely comforting pull of the baby’s mouth on her nipple.

She’d never thought much about breastfeeding, but when the pediatrician and two nurses entered her room shortly after the birth and informed her mother’s milk would be the best thing she could do for the baby, she didn’t think twice about it. The nurses showed her how to pump her milk and instructed her on how to store it for when she was discharged. She’d brought the bags of frozen milk to the hospital on a daily basis for the tiny baby fighting for her life. Cadence flourished. By the time she was two weeks old, she or EJ could sit in the nursery and feed her from a bottle. It was on one of these visits a few weeks before she was released, Emily had asked about breastfeeding. The nurse had told her most likely Cadence wouldn’t latch on, but they could try. With a lot of awkward coaxing, Cadence’s tiny mouth latched on, and Emily had never experienced a closer bond to her daughter.

When Cadence let the nipple fall from her slack mouth, Emily glanced down and smiled at the sleeping baby. She shifted her to rest over her chest and gently patted her back until a loud un-baby-like belch emitted from the comatose bundle.

God, she hoped tonight would be the night she slept through till morning, or at least longer than her usual two-hour stretches. Despite the exhaustion, Emily was reluctant to put the baby down, but eventually, she stood and laid her daughter in the crib and tucked the soft blanket EJ’s aunt had made around her still tiny body.

She looked one last time at the white crib and the baby within, before closing the door to stand ajar and heading across the hall. At the open door, she leaned against the doorframe and let the smile deepen at the scene before her. EJ sat on the edge of a twin-sized bed reading Dr. Seuss’s
Cat in the Hat
to giggles from the squirming tow-headed boy in the bed. When Austin took notice of Emily, he scrambled out of bed and ran to her.

“Is sissy sleepin’?”

She reached down and swung the almost three-year-old up into her arms. “Yep. You are supposed to be sleeping, too, squirt.” She blew a raspberry on the bare belly his scrunched up t-shirt revealed.

He let out a chorus of giggles and returned the favor with a big wet imitation on her cheek. “I’m not tired.”

She fought the urge to wipe at the slobbery residue on her face. “Well, Daddy and I
are
tired.”

“Ain’t my fault sissy keeps you up,” he said matter-of-factly, and she almost laughed.

EJ did chuckle, but ran a knuckle under his nose to stifle it when she frowned at him. He wasn’t helping. “No, it isn’t your fault, but it would be a big help if you did go to sleep.”

He puckered his mouth as if in deep thought, before shrugged his little shoulders and flippantly, saying, “Okay, Mama. I’ll go to sleep. If you sing the pretty song.”

EJ and she had talked about what Austin would call her once he returned to Texas. At first, she was reluctant about him calling her any form of mother, but Austin had decided what to call her soon after arriving back home. Within two weeks, he was calling her mama. She’d tried to correct him, but EJ had assured her he’d already adopted her as his mommy and to tell him to do otherwise would only hurt him. Austin had never known Raquel, and pictures and half-remembered stories wouldn’t ever fill the void left from not having a mother’s love.