Danger on the Ranch Page 10

  Not quite. The odd thought pricked through the desolation. Now Jane mattered, her life, her son, her freedom. Jane mattered. He wasn’t sure why that warmed something inside him, but it did.

  Another jar fell and shattered, jerking him away from the notion. Wade was at large, still. He had to make sure that knowledge eclipsed every other thought or feeling that rambled through him.

  He was about to leave when he noticed the kitten sitting on the top shelf, shivering. He picked it up gently, and the poor shocked animal went limp in his arms, bones as fragile as straw, fur matted with jelly or blood, he wasn’t sure.

  Why take the cat? The scrawny thing was malnourished, judging from the size, perhaps would not even survive until the morning.

  Why take the cat? Because it mattered to Jane, his heart told him unexpectedly. That thought froze him in place, cradling the fragile creature, standing in a pile of ruined glass. Why did he care what mattered to Jane?

  He turned the thought this way and that in his mind until a wisp of smoke infiltrated the space and brought him back to reality. Carefully, he tucked the kitten inside his jacket and let himself out into the night.

  * * *

  Jane tried to gather her composure, sitting in the back seat of the police car that carried her to the Driftwood police station. She yearned to turn around, stare out the window, peer into the gloom to spot Mitch, but he had stayed with another officer, watching his cabin burn to cinders. The reality of her circumstances almost rendered her immobile. Wade wanted her back or, barring that, wanted her dead. She was not sure which was the worse alternative.

  She squeezed her palms together. “Thank You, Lord, that he doesn’t know about Ben.” Patron led her to a chair, giving her a sweat jacket to drape over her shivering shoulders.

  “My wife’s,” he said, “but I don’t think she’d mind. She leaves an extra wherever she goes. We practically buy them by the dozens.” He pressed a disposable cup filled with steaming coffee in her hands. “It’s terrible stuff, like motor oil, but it’s warm.”

  The brew made her wince when she sipped it.

  “Motor oil?” he said.

  “Motor oil with a side of creamer.”

  He laughed, settling into his chair behind the cluttered desk. A silver frame showed a picture of Patron, his wife and three little girls clustered around their knees, grinning. Each of them wore Mickey Mouse ears.

  “Disneyland,” he said. “Still paying the bills from that vacation.”

  How she craved the freedom to take Ben to Disneyland someday, carefree, not looking over her shoulder, enjoying a normal life with her son.

  “Mitch and Foley are on their way.”

  “They... There’s no news?”

  He drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Not yet.”

  She wanted to press but didn’t.

  He quirked a smile. “I’ve been deputized by Foley as an official US marshal. First time in my career that’s happened. Never been part of a federal manhunt, either. We just don’t get that kind of excitement in sleepy little Driftwood.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing. I’d be happy living out my life in a quiet little town with zero excitement.”

  He nodded, added a packet of sugar to his coffee and offered her one. “So, you should know that this...situation has drawn attention.”

  Dread cascaded through her nerves. She knew before she even asked. “Reporters?”

  He nodded. “Woman called this afternoon, asking about Wade. Her last name is Barber, Elaine Barber. Somehow she managed to find out that Mitch lived in town. Asked for contact info, which I did not provide, since I know Mitch will welcome an interview about as much as a root canal.”

  She sighed. “Yeah. Talking isn’t big on his list.”

  “Cops and reporters, it’s like...” He stopped. “I was going to say gasoline and matches, but that seems in poor taste, considering.”

  She held her breath, sensing there was more coming.

  “This Elaine Barber also asked if you were in town.”

  “Me? How could she possibly know that already?”

  “Beats me.”

  The information burned a trail along with the acid of the coffee. They would come, hunting for a story, expose her to yet another community ready to despise her—and they’d reveal Ben.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She blinked, realizing she was clutching the arm of the chair like it was the pull cord on a parachute. “What?”

  “I told them nothing.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, cops and reporters are like gasoline and matches. We don’t play well together.” He reached into his desk drawer. “There was one other call from a second woman.”

  “Another reporter?”

  “She didn’t come off that way. She sounded troubled, desperate, if you want my honest opinion. She said she had to talk to you, that it was urgent.” He handed her a yellow paper with a phone number scrawled on it.

  “Did she leave her name?”

  “No.” He cocked his head. “She just said to tell you that she is number four.”

  Jane dropped the coffee cup, a dark lake spreading across the floor under her feet. Patron fetched a roll of paper towels, and together they sopped up the mess. The coffee was probably hot to the touch, but she could not feel it, could not feel anything in the wake of those words.

  Number four.

  There was only one woman who would have identified herself that way.

  Bette Whipple.

  The fourth victim, the only woman who escaped Wade’s death sentence.

  THIRTEEN

  There was no reason to stay and watch the volunteer firefighters work on dousing the flames. The best they could do was set up a perimeter and make sure the fire did not spread after devouring Mitch’s cabin. There was nothing much of monetary value in the structure. He would miss the rocking chair his father had made for his mother, and the old mantel clock, but most of all he’d miss his trains. He’d never reveal that fact, even under pain of death, but Wade would know. Wade had always known how best to hurt those around him.

  I’ll never be put in a cage again, Mitch. It wasn’t a threat as much as a promise, his second, delivered through the hacked edges of a solid wood door. The first quivered in his gut like a spear driven deep.

  She will be mine or she will die.

  As he drove the truck to the police station, the words thumped again and again inside him. What if Jane was right and the only way out was to stand and capture him together?

  The cop side of him balked. It was not logical. Mitch had no badge anymore. Foley and the marshals could provide organized protection and track Wade. It was what the marshals were created for, their mission since George Washington made it so in 1789. And the marshals were the best at what they did; he knew that firsthand. Accepting their protection was the wisest course of action.

  The kitten stirred against his stomach, soothed by the warmth, he imagined. He had no idea what he was going to do with a cat, and he had no brain space to worry about it. Foley’s voice via the cell phone had not been encouraging, so he suspected Wade had eluded capture.

  Then again, Foley might be playing with him, spooling out the drama until he could tell Mitch personally that he’d arrested Wade in spite of Jane’s unwillingness to take Foley’s advice and go into protective custody. Foley would relish the chance to tell Mitch he’d made the bust, taken care of a problem Mitch should have addressed decades before Wade’s serial killings.

  He’s your brother, your kin, your burden, and you left it to others to deal with. That would be the unspoken accusation, which Mitch could not deny, since it was the same one Mitch leveled at himself.

  Mitch had been a ruthlessly effective marshal, his tenacity in tracking fugitives unrivaled
. There were days, weeks even, when he had lived on a few hours of sleep and forgotten to eat while on the trail of a killer. “You’re a monster,” the sister of a fugitive he’d tracked had shouted at him. A monster, like his brother? Two sides of a deadly coin, the cop and the killer. He put every shred of energy into his job, perhaps to prove to himself on which side of that coin he belonged.

  Yet he had not tracked his brother. Mitch, the relentless marshal, had left the bomb to go off on its own, stepping in only after it had come out that Wade had killed three women, almost a fourth. Why had he buried his head in the sand? It should have been his responsibility more than anyone’s to know what his brother was up to, to snuff out the fuse before it triggered the explosion.

  But he hadn’t. He’d walled off that part of his life, his heart, his consciousness—to maintain his own sanity, he’d told himself. But his selfishness had come at a high price.

  God forgives, his father said, and Aunt Ginny concurred.

  But Mitch would put no stock in that. If this God his father knew had made Wade, then Mitch wanted no part of any of it. There was life and there was death, and the whys and wherefores he’d leave to the philosophers.

  As Mitch climbed out of the truck at the police station, the kitten turned around and kneaded his stomach with tiny paws. Mitch unbuttoned his flannel shirt and tucked the animal in. The kitten let out a soft mew and settled into stillness. The fragility of the living thing nestled next to his heart brought him back to a long-ago memory of his days with Paige Lynn, when he’d tried to rescue a fallen baby bird, tumbled from a nest above her porch light.

  He’d held the gaping, awkward thing while she tried to administer drops of water to the parched pink throat, afraid his big fingers would damage the wobbly neck. Finally he’d noticed her smiling at him, a glorious, joyful smile that made his insides lurch.

  You’re such a big bear of a guy, your emotions all locked up, but sometimes you let your tender side show.

  Sometimes, with her, he’d remembered he had a tender side, but when Wade had driven her away, he’d become that wild bear again, the immovable mountain with a feral heart instead of a human one. For the first time in a very long while, the thought pained him.

  When the kitten was once again settled, he strode into the police station. Foley stood, arms crossed, legs apart—cop stance.

  Danny Patron was sitting at his desk, fingers twiddling. His hair stood up in red thatches from his habit of raking his hands through it. Jane was sort of wandering in directionless circles, arms wrapped around herself. She went to him when he entered.

  “I’m so sorry about your cabin,” she said, and he was surprised to see the gleam of tears in her eyes.

  “Just a building,” he said.

  “What did you think was going to happen?” Foley snapped. “Wade was staking out your cabin, and you come waltzing in with his wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” Jane said through gritted teeth.

  “This isn’t her fault,” Mitch said. “What happened to the search?”

  “I lost him.”

  “How?”

  “He had a vehicle, a stolen car—he got enough ahead of me and ditched it. Took off on foot.”

  “What about dogs?”

  “Closest dog is in Copper Top,” Danny said. “I called. They’re coming in, but my guess is he’ll have doubled back to town, stolen another car.”

  “Why don’t you have a team in place yet?” Mitch demanded. A fugitive apprehension team should have been mobilized, fanned out over the area, watching bus stations, highways, all routes of escape.

  “Who says I don’t?”

  “I do. You lost him because you don’t have backup.”

  Foley’s eyes blazed. “You don’t get to tell me how to do my job, Whitehorse. You’re not a cop anymore. You’re just the kinfolk of a killer.”

  The statement ripped the air like an obscenity. Mitch lurched forward and so did Foley until Danny stepped between them, one palm on each of their heaving chests. “Fellas, we all want the same thing here.”

  Mitch wasn’t so sure. He saw something carved into Foley’s expression, something he did not trust. Why was there no task force in place? Had Wade escaped, or had Foley let him go?

  Foley stared a moment longer before turning to Danny. “I need to go over some details with you.” He shot a look at Mitch. “Official details. Not for public consumption.”

  Danny gestured to a room behind his office. “We can talk in there.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Foley said to Jane. “Think about what just happened. Your best chance to stay alive, maybe your only chance, is to let me take you into protective custody.”

  He followed Danny into the back room. They closed the door.

  Jane was standing hesitantly, bereft. She was not crying, but her mouth was pinched with fatigue, and she was slightly bent from the waist as if she’d been punched in the gut. Was she thinking of Ben? Wondering if Wade had somehow discerned where she was hiding him?

  What could he offer her in the way of hope? Wade was still at large and he’d nearly killed them both, again. He felt acutely the loss of his badge, powerless. While he searched for words, the kitten stirred. He extracted the tiny animal from his jacket and handed it to her.

  She started, taking the kitten and examining him carefully, before turning wondering silver eyes back on him. “You took him from the cellar?”

  He nodded.

  “I...I didn’t think you’d be the kind to rescue a kitten.”

  He blew out a breath. “Me neither.”

  “Why did you?”

  Because I knew it would please you. There it was again, that pesky instinct to care about what she needed. He coughed and scoured a hand over his chin. That was some kind of insane notion, which needed to be discarded immediately. “Didn’t seem right to leave it there,” he finally settled on.

  She smiled, and something about it poked through the darkness in his soul, shining the faintest glimmer of light into his misery. He yanked his shirt smooth in an effort to do the same with his thoughts.

  She reached up on tiptoe. Instinctively he bent to close the gap and she pressed a kiss to his cheek, just below the scar. “Thank you for saving the kitten,” she said.

  He shrugged, cleared his throat, straightened his belt. “We can take it back to the ranch. Aunt Ginny will know how to handle it.”

  Her expression clouded, the joy falling away, her voice a whisper. “I have to get Ben and run.”

  Mitch shook his head. “He’ll find you. He knows you’re close, and he’s going to circle like a vulture until he catches your trail and learns about Ben.”

  “What choice do I have? And don’t tell me to go with Foley, because I know you don’t trust him any more than I do.”

  He didn’t ask her how she knew. “There’s bad blood between us. He has reasons for his feelings, some valid ones. I have no evidence that he’s a bad cop.”

  She sniffed, cuddling the kitten. “I’ve never met a cop who trusted me, believed me...” Her gaze wandered to his face. “Including you.”

  The room went quiet save for the slow drip of the coffee machine. The hush seemed to squeeze the confession out of him before he made the conscious decision to speak. “I...I was wrong. I know now you weren’t Wade’s accomplice.”

  She bent her head to the kitten, stroking her cheek across his pink-tipped ears. He thought he’d said something offensive as the silence stretched on until he heard her shuddering breath and the sniffles that followed.

  He didn’t think then, just let his arms bring her close, folding her and the kitten gently to his chest.

  “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in years,” she mumbled into his shirtfront. “Thank you for believing me.”

  He found himself rubbing little circles into her back, as though his
hands acted without consent of his mind, his need to make physical contact with her inexplicable and irresistible. She was so small and delicate, fragile, like the kitten, but with something so much stronger threading through her soul.

  “What am I going to do?” Her voice broke on the last word.

  “You could stay at the ranch, hidden.”

  She shook her head, and he let his fingers trail away as she stepped back, rubbing a free hand over her wet cheeks. “I have to get Ben. He’s all that matters.”

  “So hide here in Driftwood. If you run, he’ll know it—he has help in this town, I think. I’ll get him to come to me. He wants to anyway. I’ll take him down. I did it before.”

  The look she turned on him was shocked and tender. “You’d...you’d help me catch him?”

  “Not help you—hide you.” His tone went hard and flat. “I don’t need your help to catch him.”

  “But you think I shouldn’t go with Foley?”

  He thought that over for a long moment. “I don’t know, Jane, but my instincts say he’s not telling us the complete truth.”

  “Maybe your instincts should be good enough for me.” Her lower lip trembled. “I can’t trust my own anymore.”

  She rested her head softly on the kitten until he could not resist. He crooked a finger under her chin and tipped her face to look at his. “Your instincts are to protect your son. You’ve done well at it so far.”

  “God’s taken care of us—it wasn’t my skill.”

  He sighed and stepped away. “Sure.”

  “You don’t believe in God?”

  “Oh, Aunt Ginny’s tried her best, but I see no proof around here of God’s goodness.”

  He was surprised when she laughed.

  “Something funny?”