Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) (24 page)

But then he looked down at Kip, still sleeping. He’d seen what killed her parents, what carved him up—well, he’d sort of seen it, but it had been real. And he still hadn’t been able to plan for it. He still couldn’t make a damn bit of sense about the whole thing.

Rebel seemed to sense his confusion. “Understanding the past can be complicated. These things are always open to interpretation.” Jacob followed his gaze to Nobody. The silent man stood, apparently unmoved by Rebel’s story, but Jacob saw the scars that covered Nobody’s arms and remembered the gunshot wound healing on his shoulder.

“Okay.” Mary Beth exhaled loudly, breaking the tension in the room. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I believe everything you’ve said tonight—about Kip being special but not that
kind
of special, about seeing and visions and whatever the hell a Sun Dance is. Stranger things have happened, sure. But the question remains—how does that explain anything
now
?”

Her hand was still in his, resting on top of Kip’s rising and falling tummy. All he could think was,
she’s got a hell of a mouth on her
. And she was here with him.

“That,” Rebel said with a sheepish grin, “is the tricky part. But this vision has come to me twice now. These things don’t usually happen in repeats. It means something.”

“But
what
?”

Jacob squeezed her hand. It was a damn fine question, but she had a particular way of asking it that he liked. Hell, there wasn’t much about her he didn’t like.

“I think it means that the shadow is still out there. But what that shadow is—a rancher doing something in the fields or whatever took her parents—” he motioned to Kip, “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the same person, as much as some people might like it to be.” Rebel pointedly looked at Jacob. “All I can say at this point is, keep her safe.”

“I do.”

“Not enough.” When Nobody spoke, Mary Beth about cleared her chair, causing Kip to curl into a tighter ball, her eyes squeezed shut.

“What?” Jacob demanded.

“It’s not safe enough, your place. One way in, one way out. No phone, no way to call for backup.” By any objective measure, that was a lot of talking for Nobody. “Someone lights a fire, drives you out, picks you off. Easy.” He made a popping noise with his mouth that made Mary Beth jump again.

“I can protect her.”

Nobody stared down at Jacob, who suddenly realized he’d left his gun at Mary Beth’s house.

“I’ve seen tracks.”

“
What
?” Jacob shot out of his seat, causing Mary Beth to have to scramble to keep Kip from falling to the floor. “What do you mean, you’ve seen tracks?”

Nobody didn’t flinch. “Been checking.”

Rebel was up now, positioning himself between the two of them. “Easy, boys.”

“
Fuck
easy,” Jacob said as he shoved Rebel. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, stalking around my trailer?”

“Watching your back.” Nobody’s words were tight. Angry.
Dangerous
.

“You stay the hell away, you freak.” At this, Nobody took a step forward, his arms down low. Jacob knew he wouldn’t win, but he’d be damn sure he went down with a fight on this one.

“That’s enough!” The lady doctor’s ice-cold voice sliced through the air, bringing everyone up short. She stood and glared at Nobody, who took that step back and dropped his eyes. “You—stop stalking people without their express written permission. And
you
.” She turned to Jacob, her mouth twisted into something that was more horrific than mean. Against his will, he shrank back. “Accept that you’re not in this alone. Both of you, shut up. You’re scaring the girl. I swear, I won’t stitch either of you back up.”

Jacob spun to see Kip curled up into an impossibly small ball on Mary Beth’s lap, her eyes wide open, staring at the window at the last gasp of the sunset. Shit. He’d woken her up.

Plus, Mary Beth was trying her damnedest to kill him with her eyes. “For crying out loud,” she muttered, rubbing Kip’s back. “Are you two done yet, or should we come back later?”

He wanted to apologize to her and to Kip—especially to Kip, poor kid—but not in front of Nobody.

Ever the diplomatic one, Rebel asked, “What kind of tracks?”

“Don’t know. Couple of human tracks one night—maybe size twelve, men’s—but then…” he shrugged. “Don’t know what those other things were. Bigger. Pointed.”

Flashes of the thing that had cut him passed before Jacob’s eye. Big—bigger than a man and not quite human. “Hooves?”

“Or something someone wanted to be a hoof,” Nobody agreed.

A tiny noise, barely audible, came from behind him. Then Mary Beth gasped. “Did you hear that?” she demanded in as quiet a voice as she could.

“Was that you?”

“It was Kip.”

In an instant, Jacob, Rebel and Madeline were all crouched around the small girl. Even Nobody had come closer, looming over everyone.

No one spoke. Instead, they all stared at Kip, who, if anything, had curled into an even smaller ball. Eventually, her eyes closed, but not in sleep. Instead, her forehead creased with the effort. She looked like she was in pain.

It was still out there, whatever
it
was. And Rebel had spoken the truth—maybe it was tied to the rancher or Buck, maybe it wasn’t. That didn’t change things. He still had a duty to keep Kip safe. He owed it to her, to her parents and to himself.

“Nobody’s right,” Rebel said after another silent moment had passed. “Your trailer isn’t safe enough.”

“Where are we supposed to go?” Kip did best with her routine. She was already so scared…

“You’ll stay with me, of course.” Mary Beth’s tone made it clear she wouldn’t take no for an answer. “I have a land line, a smart phone and a back door. The porch is crumbling, but it’s an exit. And if anyone tries to smoke us out, we can open a window and yell for Robin and Ronny. Problem solved.”

Jacob felt everyone else in the room relax—everyone except him. If he started crashing at Mary Beth’s house, people would notice. People would
talk
.

For some crazy reason, that made him almost as nervous as knowing something had been stalking him to his trailer.

“Jacob,” she said, her voice dropping down several notches until it bordered on sultry. “Trust me on this.”

Hell
.

After Mary Beth and Madeline had exchanged office numbers, home numbers, cell phone numbers and email addresses, she and Jacob loaded Kip up into the truck. Night had well and truly fallen, the dark sky endless over the grasslands of the rez.

“Dinner?” he offered. He’d promised, after all.

He remembered. She smiled at him, but it felt a little shaky on her face. “I think…” She looked up at the night sky, interrupted only by the light of the clinic. “I think I’d like to go home now.”

Jacob looked at her with his one eye. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Hell, she didn’t know what to think anymore. This world she’d stumbled into? If she believed. The problem was, she didn’t know
what
to believe anymore.

Jacob nodded. The only talking was him giving her directions up to the highway.

Finally, after a long forty-five minutes, they hit the Faith Ridge exit. Mary Beth took the corners a little faster than she normally would have, but she couldn’t help it. The night seemed extra scary.

She tried to tell herself that she was being ridiculous, that that they were in no immediate danger, that even if something—besides a very scary man named Nobody, that was—was stalking them, it’d take everyone a few days to realize that Jacob and Kip were staying with her, but all those true things didn’t stop Jacob from flinging open the truck doors, grabbing Kip and racing into the safety of the house with her hot on his heels. It wasn’t until the doors were safely bolted and the table safely shoved behind it that Mary Beth realized that Kip was out like a light.

“She fell asleep, even after that nap earlier?” Mary Beth whispered in surprise.

“She always liked the movement, even as a baby.” Jacob carried her back to the bed. When he came back out, he continued, “Freddie always used to ride her around on this old gelding he had when she was fussy. Worked every time.” His smile grew as he kicked off his boots. “You should have seen them. Fred was this big guy—made Ronny look tiny—up on this old horse with this little white baby over his shoulder. That’s what he was doing the day I found them.”

It was unusual for him to talk about Kip’s family, but then, what part of tonight had been normal? “How long had you been looking?” she carefully asked as she slipped off her jacket and curled up next to him.

“Three weeks. And it’s not what you were thinking,” he defended.

“What? I didn’t say anything. What was I thinking?”

“I didn’t go looking for Susan. Freddie won her fair and square. I loved them both.” His eye grew misty as he ran a hand through his hair. “After my grandfather died, I didn’t have any other family except for the Benges and the Yellow Robes and Fred and Susan—you know. The tribe was my family.”

Mary Beth nodded. One big extended family, linked by blood. Once, they’d taken care of him, and now he returned the favor as best he could.

“But by the time I finished college—well, I only had Fred and Susan. Ronny was back from Iraq, but he wasn’t
back
from Iraq, and Tommy—well, he had it rough for a while, and I didn’t have anyone else.”

She’d never asked, partly because she’d never thought it was any of her business. But he was making it her business, even after he’d told her he didn’t have anything else to give.
One of these days
, she thought as he leaned his head against hers,
I’m going to figure you out. It’s just not going to be today
.

“I didn’t want them to just go away. I didn’t want to feel so…alone,” he whispered.

She fought the urge to tell him if he stayed with her, he’d never be alone again. “So you tracked them down.”

“Freddie was plenty mad at me at first. They didn’t want to be found, and they figured that if I found them, others would too, but Susan…she was smart. You would have liked her a lot.” He smiled at the memory, and Mary Beth was sure she would have.

Once, Susan had loved him. Mary Beth couldn’t help but wonder what had changed that. Maybe it hadn’t been her destiny. Sometimes, fate had a funny sense of humor.

“She cooked up the idea that I would say I’d heard from them in Pierre and stuff,” he continued.

“You became the decoy.”

“And the pack mule.” He snorted. “You can’t just go off the grid with a three-month-old, you know. You need stuff.”

Mary Beth smiled. “I can just see you buying Pampers and formula.” Strangely enough, she could. He wouldn’t be terribly good at it, like he wasn’t any good at dressing Kip, but he’d do it without blinking an eye. One eye.

“Yeah, something like that,” he said with that half-shrug. “I went out every week or so, stealing a day from studying. Made sure to take a different route every time. Never the same way twice.”

The
until
hung in the air as his face darkened and stilled into the stone-faced cowboy again. “Jacob,” she said quietly, “I’m sorry they died. I really am.”

“Yeah.” He picked up her hand and laced his fingers between hers. “It just doesn’t make any sense why this is happening.” He looked around, coolly assessing the defenses. “Only the porch door in the bedroom and that one window?”

She nodded.

“Tomorrow, we’ll move the bookcase in front of the window. She can sleep with you, and I’ll guard from the couch.”

The horrifying image of a shadow—a thing with big hooved feet chasing a dancing warrior around—floated up in her mind again. “What about tonight?”

“Tonight?”

Mary Beth stood and faced him. Her smart mouth deserted her and she felt small and insignificant in the face of something she couldn’t even begin to understand. “Jacob, please, I don’t want to be alone tonight. Please.”

He wrapped those strong arms around her and kissed her forehead. “Yeah. Neither do I.” He turned and pulled the sweatpants out from behind the TV.

“You left those here?” She almost laughed.

“I was planning on coming back,” he sheepishly explained as he began to undress.

But this wasn’t a show. This was life or death hanging in the balance, and sex was not part of the equation, not tonight. So she turned away and went to change in the bedroom.

As she slipped her old Garfield nightshirt over her head, Jacob silently padded in. They worked in unspoken unison as they slid the dresser in front of the door. While Jacob took the shade off the lava lamp and set it under the window, Mary Beth scooted Kip off the covers and climbed in bed.

She wrapped her arms around Kip, and seconds later, Jacob was behind her, his arms circling her waist as his stiff leather nose poked through her hair.

She half-rolled over. “Do you always sleep with the mask on?”

“No,” he whispered, looking ashamed.

With her free hand, she reached up and traced the edge where leather met skin. “I won’t look. I promise.”

As she rolled back over, she heard three small snaps before his arm was back around her.