Tall, Dark and Cowboy (25 page)

Chase flicked off the radio and tapped his fingers meditatively on the steering wheel, barely registering the scenes from his everyday commute as the truck ate up the miles. He was surprised he hadn’t caught up to Cody yet. Maybe his friend—his former friend—hadn’t gone looking for Lacey.

But he didn’t trust Cody any more. The guy was hiding something. Chase had always known that. He’d had reservations about his sister dating Cody, but Pam had insisted he was a good guy and there had never been any evidence that he was anything but a straight shooter until the thing with Janice. Chase didn’t know who the woman was, but she was with Wade Simpson—and that meant she was definitely trouble.

Meanwhile, it was getting dark, and Lacey was still in the woods. He wondered if she’d gotten the note. If she’d splinted poor Captain’s leg. He was tempted to turn off the ranch road and take a shortcut through the pasture. Hell, he’d been tempted to drive overland, taking a shortcut across Galt’s ranch, but the old guy hated four-wheelers with a passion. Chase had flicked his headlights on ten minutes ago, and if Galt saw a vehicle on his land, he was liable to come running with a shotgun. Besides, if Wade and Janice were still watching, he’d be lighting a trail straight to Lacey.

Instead, he passed the turnoff to the house and drove another hundred yards, then hung a left and drove toward the hill where he’d seen her pursuers last. There was an old two-track that was barely visible in the near dark, but he managed to navigate far enough to see the side of the hill where Annie had spotted the sedan an hour earlier.

There was nothing there but tire tracks. They must have given up for the night. Revving the pickup over stones and through a shallow stretch of alkali, he swung around the far side of the hill and sped up the ranch road.

They were gone. He could finally rescue Lacey.

He hoped she was okay. He really shouldn’t have scared her with all that talk about bears and mountain lions. He just couldn’t believe she’d thought the wooded area was safer than the plains.

The plains were far more safe. You could see what was coming from miles away, and they never changed. Winter might toss a blanket of snow over the dry grass, and spring might turn the yellow hills to green velvet for a week or two, but you could always count on the unchanging landscape. Since he’d moved to Wyoming, their permanence had been a comfort and a touchstone—a promise that he could depend on the land forever.

But maybe change wasn’t such a bad thing. Spring would come, and with it a new year. New flowers would bloom, and new calves would be born.

He wondered if Lacey would be there to see it.

***

Lacey glanced around the cabin, wondering if she should hide under the bed, run into the kitchen, or jump out the window. The first two options would leave her trapped inside the cabin; the third would put her out on the plains with no place to hide.

She heard footsteps crunching on the dirt of the cabin’s parched yard and waited for the familiar hitch in her breathing, the dizziness, the helpless thudding of her heart. If ever there was a reason for her to panic, this was it—but to her surprise, her lungs continued to function, her heart kept its normal beat, and she didn’t feel dizzy in the least. In fact, her mind felt oddly alert.

The interior of the cabin was lit by a slash of light where the headlights of her unexpected guest shone through the window. Everything in the light seemed unnaturally clear—the dry floorboards with their grain raised by a century of summer heat and winter cold, the chipped white paint on the iron bedstead, the torn shreds of wallpaper dripping from the walls. Metal scraped on metal as the rusty doorknob turned, and she dodged behind the door and pressed her back against the wall.

The door flew open and gave her a full-frontal smack-down, skinning her toes to slam against her body and knock her head into the wall behind her. She blinked away the stars and planets whirling inside her head and saw a hunched figure stomp into the room raising a shotgun to his shoulder. He was backlit into a silhouette against the gleam of the headlights.

She screamed without thinking, loud and long. Why did her lungs have to work now? If the panic was going to steal her breath, why couldn’t it happen when she needed to be sneaky?

The sheer volume of the scream made her gun-wielding assailant stagger backward. Sinclair let out a high-pitched bark and the man swung the gun toward the dog. Lacey dove to the floor and grabbed the intruder’s ankles, knocking him off-balance so he fell backward. Later, she wasn’t sure if she’d been heroically protecting her dog or just trying to avoid being shot, but the net effect was to make the man tighten his finger on the trigger. He blasted both barrels at the cabin’s peeling ceiling, sending a shower of plaster and paint chips onto the floor.

Sinclair let out another bark and ran outside, his tail plastered between his legs. Lacey scrambled up on her hands and knees. Grabbing the barrel of the gun, she pushed it away and looked down into the face of Fletcher Galt. The old man looked shocked for just an instant before his sagging, wrinkled face hardened and twisted. His eyes squinted up at her with a malevolent glare.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?”

“Oh, this is
your
house?” She’d play dumb—it was her only hope. She tried to look confused and helpless while still stiff-arming the gun. “I thought it was Chase’s.”

The man clenched his face like a fist, wrinkling his nose, scowling, and lowering his brows so that all his features squinched into the center of his face. “This is
my
house. Caldwell might think he owns the whole county, but he don’t own this. It’s
mine
. Should have been my boy’s by now.”

Great. Mentioning Chase was probably the worst thing she could have done. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Bastard stole my land, you know. Stole it.”

“He did?” Lacey was so surprised, she let the gun go and sat up on her heels, letting the old man scramble to his feet.

“Came in here and took advantage when I was grieving,” the old man said.

“You’re kidding. Chase did that?” She knew she should feel disillusioned and disappointed, but the idea that Chase might not be the blameless, morally perfect model of a man he seemed to be was strangely gratifying. Wait until she saw him again. Just wait. “I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible. I had no idea Chase would do a thing like that.”

The man still clutched the gun, but his features were starting to relax. Instead of looking ornery, he just looked craggy and tired. She gave him her best flirty smile, but he was apparently immune to her charm because suspicion crept back into his eyes again as if he’d realized he’d let down his guard. “So what are you doing in my house?”

“Hiding.”

“What, is he beating you? That bastard. I’ll…”

“No. He’s—he’s actually trying to protect me.”

The man snorted.

“Seriously. And he was doing a pretty good job. The guy who’s looking for me—he’s at the ranch, and I guess he’s watching, and we came out here and the horse got hurt and now he can’t come get me because they might see, and…”

“Whoa, honey, whoa. I can’t follow all that. Who’s…”

He paused and grabbed her arm as headlights swept across the far wall of the cabin. “Git down,” he hissed, pulling her to the ground. “If somebody’s huntin’ you, we’re rats in a hole.” He grabbed the gun and scuttled over to the window, jerking his head as an indication for her to follow. Lacey followed as he levered himself up and out of the window with surprising agility. The rough wooden sill scraped her already bruised body as she scrambled after him and fell to the ground.

Galt stood to one side of the window, his back pressed against the cabin wall. He brought his finger to his lips to signal silence as a new set of headlights cast a fan of light on either side of the cabin. She was out in the open now, barely hidden by the shadow of the house, but she had Galt and he had a gun.

A cloud of dust drifted into the darkness as the car skidded to a stop. A door slammed.

“She’s here somewhere.”

She knew that voice. It sent a shudder rippling up her spine and pooled dread in her belly. Wade Simpson.

He’d found her.

She’d known he was coming. Chase warned her in the note, and once Galt had found her, she knew the light in the cabin had doomed her to discovery.

But still, the sound of his voice scraped up her spine like icy fingers, leaving her almost dizzy. When a low growl rumbled from the darkness, she felt the night get a little darker.

“Look. It’s a fuckin’ dog.”

Oh, God. What would she do if Wade hurt Sinclair? He was just a mutt she’d rescued from a service station on the highway, but he was Annie’s dog now, and she couldn’t let anything happen to him.

“Come on, boy.” Wade’s voice slid up to a higher register, taking on a sweet, insipid tone that made Lacey’s flesh crawl even more than his usual rasp. “Where is she, buddy? Go get her. Go get her.”

Sinclair growled again, then let out a high, questioning bark as if he was trying to determine if Wade was a new friend. Was he going to lead her stalker straight to her? She glanced over at Galt, who was still pressed against the side of the house, the shotgun across his chest. One hand was on the barrel, the other wrapped around the stock with his index finger just above the trigger. His thin lips were drawn into a tight line. If you replaced his John Deere cap with an army-green helmet, he’d look like an old
Life
photo from Vietnam.

Sinclair growled again, louder and higher this time, and then yipped in pain. Wade must have kicked him. She heard the dog scrabble over the dirt and saw his shadow as he ran off into the night. At least he didn’t come straight to her. She felt a little disappointed that he would abandon her, but it was for the best.

It wasn’t like she could help him survive.

Wade flicked on the lantern and she winced as the bright light shafted across the plains. How could she have been so stupid? She might as well have put up a blinking neon arrow pointing to her location. She felt her heart speed up as her chest constricted. Closing her eyes, she chanted to herself.
Calm, calm, calm.
She sucked in a breath, then let it out.
Calm.

She was getting better at this. Her heartbeat was slowing, the ache in her chest easing. Maybe it helped to have a grumpy old man on your side. She stayed flat against the wall as a second pair of feet hit the cabin floor and clicked across the room. They sounded crisp, authoritative, feminine—like teacher shoes clicking down the hallways at school. Sure enough, the shadow that appeared was distinctly feminine. And it was growing—getting closer and closer to the window.

“So help me, Wade, if you led me on a wild goose chase, I’ll sue you for new shocks.” The voice was high—definitely a woman—and it rose in volume as she neared the window. “That car’s no redneck four-wheeler. That’s my dad’s fifty-thousand-dollar Lincoln.”

“Well, your dad’s not gonna have much use for it if he ends up in jail, is he?”

Her dad. Who could her dad be?

“And if we don’t find that bitch and use her to shut up Bradford, the only chamber your daddy’s gonna be looking at is the inside of a jail cell.”

Chamber.
Chamber of Commerce? Senate chamber?

That was it. The woman had to be Senator Carrol’s daughter. She’d been a quiet girl all through school, but Lacey had seen her standing behind her daddy at press conferences. Evidently, Wade had talked her into some scheme to save her father’s reputation by keeping Trent from talking.

Beckoning to Lacey, Galt dropped down and duck-walked sideways to squat under the opening. She followed his orders without thinking, and the two of them crouched together like soldiers in a foxhole. If the woman looked out, she wouldn’t see them, even if she looked both ways. Long as they didn’t look down, they were safe. But how likely was that?

“Should have shot the dog,” Wade said in a casual, conversational tone. “It’ll probably run back to the house, and then he’ll know something’s wrong.”

“Who, the cowboy? He’s not there.”

“He’ll get back eventually.”

Chase wasn’t
there
? He
left
her? She felt a rush of hopelessness, then anger at the thought that he’d abandoned her. Then she remembered Annie and prayed he’d taken her home. If Wade got anywhere near Annie, she’d shoot him. She longed to yank the shotgun from Galt’s grip, but judging from his determined expression, he’d probably shoot the first person who crossed him even if it was her.

It was just as well. The man seemed a little crazy, and you probably had to be nuts to actually shoot another human being. She might want to in theory, but who knew if she’d be able to actually pull the trigger?

She realized she was closing her eyes, as if that would keep them from seeing her. She forced herself to open them and saw Wade step around the corner of the house. The light streaming from the windows and doors illuminated the whole area, so she could see him clearly. He stood in a fighter’s stance, feet apart, hands hanging loose like a gunslinger’s, and surveyed the prairie. She felt totally exposed as his glare swung her way, but his eyes weren’t accustomed to the dark and they flicked right past her.

“You idiot, she’s right
there
,” said a voice from behind her.

The beam of the flashlight slashed across her face, and she sprang to her feet and bolted. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. She sprinted across the flat ground, but she wasn’t much of a runner.

Shoot.
She aimed her thoughts at Galt.
Shoot.

Apparently he got the message. A shot split the quiet night, but when she glanced back, the old man lay on the ground and Wade was gaining on her, a pistol in his hand. Putting on a sudden burst of speed, she pitched forward as he hit her legs in a flying tackle.

When she struck the ground, Galt’s shotgun roared from somewhere behind her, but the shot scattered harmlessly out over the empty pasture. She pictured the pellets speeding across the open ground, heading for the quiet woods where the mountain lion lurked. There was a sickening thud like someone dropping a melon, a grunt from Galt, then silence. She looked back to see the woman standing over his prone body holding the shotgun like a baseball bat. The stock was shiny with blood.