The Littlest Cowboy (28 page)

“Just something I picked up,” Ben said. “Never thought I’d have to use it in a fight, though.”

“What the hell else would you use it for?”

Ben lifted his pain-filled eyes to meet Wes’s. “Peace,” he said softly.

Lash knew, because Jessi had told him, about Ben’s short marriage to the woman he’d known was dying from the day he’d met her. And he knew Ben had taken off right after he’d buried his young wife. Gone into seclusion in the wilds of Tennessee.

“Did it work?” Wes asked, his voice soft, husky.

Ben lowered his eyes. “Not yet.”

Adam groaned a little, and his eyes fluttered open.

“You’d best not spend too much more time in New York City,” Wes said, gripping his hand and pulling him to his feet. “It’s making you soft.”

“He caught me by surprise,” Adam argued, but he looked rather sheepish as he dusted himself off.

From below in the canyon, Chelsea cried out again, and every eye turned in that direction.

“We’d better get down there,” Jessi said. “And we’d better make it fast.”

D
e Lorean held Chelsea to his chest in a crushing grip, his head bent close to her ear. “He’s surrounded, you know. But you’d already guessed, that, hadn’t you? That’s why you’re trying so hard to keep quiet. Isn’t it, Chelsea Brennan? That’s why you’ve bitten your lip until it bleeds, because you know the second he steps into the open he’s a dead man. He’s going to join all the others who’ve died here in this canyon down through the ages. The Comanche say it’s haunted, you know. They say the spirits of the murdered still linger here.”

He’d twisted her arm behind her back, trying to make her cry out. Trying to make her scream, so Garrett would step out of the sheltering rocks. And she’d clenched her teeth, refusing to make a sound. Until she’d felt the popping of her shoulder, and her cry had been wrenched from her unwilling lips.

Garrett lunged from the cover of the boulders and dashed across an open expanse, and she would have shouted a warning if de Lorean’s hand hadn’t been clamped firmly over her mouth. His paw covered her nose, as well, and she couldn’t draw a breath. But the panic of not being able to breathe paled beside her fear for Garrett. She kept her gaze on him as he ran, fully expecting to see him cut down at any second. But somehow…somehow he made it. He dived behind another cluster of boulders, this one not bathed in white light as the other had been.

De Lorean’s hand on her mouth eased its pressure, and she dragged a gulp of air into her lungs, then released it slowly in relief. She felt de Lorean’s head moving as he scanned the ledge above, and he cursed in hot whispers that made her skin crawl. Why hadn’t his men fired at Garrett? It was obvious he’d expected them to.

Her shoulder screamed, though the pressure on it had eased. Her eyes watered, making it even harder to see through the inky darkness to where Garrett now crouched.

De Lorean seemed to compose himself. He straightened a little, turning slightly so her body still remained directly between him and the boulders sheltering Garrett. A human shield, she thought, and hoped that wouldn’t stop Garrett from shooting. He ought to shoot right through her to get this bastard.

But Garrett wouldn’t. He was no more like her father than she was. She accepted that knowledge slowly, with dawning wonder, though she guessed she’d known it all along. Garrett was nothing like her father. Nothing like de Lorean. Nothing like any other man she’d ever known. She’d thought she could never love a man because of all she’d witnessed of that gender. But she’d been wrong.

“Very impressive, Brand,” De Lorean called, not so loudly as before since Garrett was closer. “But I didn’t see my son cradled in your arms as you sprinted past. And unless I see him soon, Miss Brennan is going to join her sister in death.”

Garrett said nothing, didn’t make a sound. Chelsea was glad. No use in his giving those killers above anything to shoot at–not even the sound of his voice.

Then de Lorean wrenched her already throbbing arm still higher behind her back. She hadn’t been expecting that, and she cried out again, but quickly bit down on the scream. Damn! The fingers of her right hand were within reach of her left ear, and they were tingling and slowly going numb. Sweat popped out on her face, trickling into her eyes, and pain made her breathing quick and shallow. It hurt! The entire right-half of her torso was on fire. Even drawing too deep a breath brought more intense pain.

De Lorean gave one more tug, and dizziness swamped her. Her stomach convulsed, and her inability to move with the spasm only resulted in more agony. She thought she was going to vomit soon.

“You’ll never see your son unless you let her go. Now, de Lorean! Let her go!”

So he could see her now. She realized that, and as she did, she lifted her head and straightened up as much as her captor would allow and tried to force her facial muscles to relax. She didn’t want to look as if she was suffering. She didn’t want to do anything to help the lowlife who held her.

“You didn’t bring him, did you, Brand?” de Lorean observed flatly. “I should have known better than to trust you.”

“De Lorean–”

“Pity. Now I’ll have to kill you both. I, you see, am a man of my word.” He lifted his gun to the side of Chelsea’s head. She felt the cold steel, the circular shape of the barrel pressing tight to her scalp.

“No!” Garrett leaped out of his hiding place and ran forward.

In slow motion, it seemed, de Lorean’s gun swung toward him, away from Chelsea, and his other arm fell away from her, as well. Leaving her free to sink to her knees in agony, or to run for her life. And in the split second she had to decide which to do, she knew that had been Garrett’s intention all along. To distract de Lorean and give her the chance to escape. To take the violence that was directed at her, to take it himself in her place.

Just the way her mother had done.

Rage filled her and escaped in the form of a tortured cry that sounded only half-human as it split the night and echoed from the canyon walls.

Chelsea hurled herself at de Lorean while her battle cry still floated skyward, and at the instant she hit him, the gun he held spit fire and death. An earsplitting explosion was followed by the acrid scent of sulfur. Garrett jerked backward, his eyes wide, then closing as he staggered, teetered and fell like a giant redwood. Chelsea screamed, clinging to de Lorean’s back, kicking and clawing him with renewed vigor. De Lorean wrenched her free and slammed her to the ground. She landed on her wounded shoulder, the wind knocked out of her, and fought for breath even as she scrambled to her feet again. De Lorean walked forward slowly until he stood right over Garrett’s big, prostrate form.

“Where is my son, you bastard!”

But Garrett didn’t answer.

“Die, then,” the monster said, and he pointed the barrel downward.

She couldn’t get there in time. She couldn’t…

Two things happened at once. A knife came flipping through the dark, and a lasso sailed into view. The blade embedded itself in de Lorean’s right arm, and he screamed aloud even as the lasso settled around him and was pulled tight. His gun fell and landed on Garrett’s chest, and Chelsea wondered for a moment if the spirits said to haunt this place had come to Garrett’s aid.

Then with a jerk of that spectral rope, the criminal was yanked right off his feet. He landed with a thud and a grunt. And as Chelsea looked on, shocked, forms took shape in the darkness. She only realized they were actual human beings when she heard a voice she recognized.

And then it didn’t matter. She ran forward to where Garrett had fallen, and flung herself on him, heedless of the raw pain slicing her shoulder to ribbons. The tears she cried dampened his face. But there was more on his face than just her tears. Blood. Lots of blood. So much she couldn’t even see his features. God, he’d been shot in the head. Chelsea went cold all over as nightmarish memories swamped her. For an instant she was a frightened little girl again, clinging to the lifeless body of her mother. That same sickening horror engulfed her now as she realized that her worst fears had come true. Garrett had stepped in to protect her, just as her mother had. And just as her mother had, he’d….

“No,” she whispered. She gripped his shoulders, shaking him. “No, Garrett. Not this time. Not you, too!”

A warm hand closed on her shoulder. “Easy, Chelsea,” Wes said softly, bending over her, touching his brother with his other hand. “He’s still alive.”

Chelsea collapsed on Garrett’s chest, sliding her arms beneath him and holding him to her as she sobbed in a terrifying mixture of relief and fear. “Please, Garrett. Please be all right. Just open your eyes and tell me you’re all right.”

But he didn’t. And it took several pairs of hands to pull her away from his still body so his brothers could get close enough to inspect the damage, stanch the blood flow, then lift him into de Lorean’s Jeep.

Jessi was there, climbing into the back with Garrett. And Lash, who told her he could help. Wes firmly guided Chelsea to the passenger seat, though she’d wanted to climb into the back with Garrett. Then Wes went to the driver’s side and started the vehicle.

He shouted at his brothers through the open window. “Hog-tie that bastard and get him into town. Lock him up and notify the Rangers. If I stick around here, I’m liable to kill him. Leave the others. One’s dead, and the rest will keep. They aren’t going anywhere.”

“Don’t worry, Wes, we can handle them. Take care of Garrett,” Elliot replied, sounding older than he ever had.

And then the Jeep was bounding over the trackless ground.

“…hospital,” Jessi was whispering in the back.

“Moving him any more than we have to is liable to kill him, Jes,” Lash argued gently. “We can’t even see how bad the damage is! Let’s get him to the house and call for help.”

Chelsea turned in her seat, reaching over it to lay a hand on Garrett’s face. She had to touch him, to cling to him, as if doing so could somehow keep him from leaving her. She closed her eyes, a feeling of dread such as she’d never known settling in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t live with another death on her conscience. She simply couldn’t. And she found she didn’t really want to. Not without Garrett.

Something was pressed into her free hand, and she glanced down to see a cellular phone.

“Call for help, Chelsea,” Wes instructed. “Tell them to meet us at the ranch.”

She blinked up at the hoarse tone of Wes’s voice and saw unashamed tears glistening on his dark lashes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Sorry?” He shook his head and reached for her, stroking, the hair away from her face with a gentleness that surprised her. “Hell, Chelsea, he’d have been dead for sure if it hadn’t been for you. De Lorean had him point-blank when you jumped on him. You saved my brother’s life. I’m not gonna forget that any time soon. None of us are.”

“B-but…if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be…he shouldn’t have…why didn’t he just….” Her throat closed then, making it impossible to speak.

“Because it isn’t in him, that’s why.”

Wes’s hand touched her good shoulder, squeezed a little. It reminded her of the way she might have touched her own sister once upon a time. A reassuring shoulder squeeze–sometimes it worked wonders.

“Now stop your blubbering and make the call, okay?” He sniffed and took his hand away to knuckle his own eyes dry.

G
arrett’s head seemed to be engulfed in a cloud of pain. The waves of throbbing encompassed his skull and even reached down into the base of his neck. He couldn’t pin-point the epicenter from which the waves emanated. It hurt everywhere. And his brain didn’t seem to be functioning on all eight cylinders. Because it was a full minute before he heard the soft crying, and he still wasn’t sure where it was coming from. And it was still longer before he smelled the combination antiseptic-and-mothball aroma that seemed to cling to Doc wherever he went, or felt a pair of old, leathery hands pressing against his head and causing even more pain.

It took even longer for him to think to open his eyes, and when he did, it took a while for his eyes to get the message.

“He was lucky,” Doc was saying in his thick Spanish accent. “The bullet, it only grazed him. Lots of blood, but little damage.”

“Guess we can call off the medevac chopper,” said a voice that sounded an awful lot like his brother Ben.

“Hell, I can still use it. I think that jerk broke my jaw,” said another, that sounded an awful lot like his brother Adam.

“So maybe you’ll learn to duck when some Neanderthal takes a swing at you.” Ah, now that voice made more sense. Wes.

“Now, Señorita Brennan,” Doc said, “you will let me take a look at that shoulder of yours. And I will not take no for an answer this time.”

“But, Doctor, he’s still unconscious.” Ah, that was Chelsea’s voice. The one he’d been waiting to hear. He sighed inwardly in relief. “Surely if it’s only a graze and not serious, he should be awake by now.”

Gee, she sounded awfully worried about him. He tried to smile at the thought, but wasn’t sure if his facial muscles responded or not.