Danger on the Ranch Read online

  As they clattered over the rocky ground and reached sea level, he saw Barber’s car parked on the edge of the dock. He slid off Rosie, leaving her loose, and sprinted to his father’s slip as quietly as he could, plastered against the cabin door. Bobbing his head up, he risked a look through the tiny window. He saw no one, but his glance had taken in an important detail—there was a pizza box open on the wooden table. Pops had never learned to like pizza, and the thrifty man would never have indulged in an extravagance for himself anyway.

  There was no time to wait for police or marshals or anyone else. He might be too late now to save his father’s life. He counted to three and charged in. His heart stopped.

  There were two bodies on the floor. Everything in him wanted to render aid, but the cop instincts were in full fire. He quickly checked from bow to stern and below until he confirmed there was no one hiding. Then he called for an ambulance, dropped the phone and gently rolled his father over. Blood stained his temple, and to Mitch’s great elation, he moaned.

  “Pops, don’t worry,” he breathed. “Ambulance is on its way.” He put his father on his side, draped a blanket over him and went to the second victim.

  His mind struggled to comprehend as he rolled Elaine Barber onto her back. She too was breathing, but bleeding heavily from a stab wound in her side. At first he’d thought perhaps Pops had defended himself, but this sizable entry point was not the work of any of Pops’s knives.

  He grabbed a clean towel from the drawer and applied pressure to the wound. The gleam of a chain around her neck drew his attention, and he pulled out a badge, spattered with blood—a badge he knew well.

  US marshal.

  He pulled her phone from her pocket and used her thumb to unlock it. Foley’s number was the first in her contacts. Foley had put a team into place, and Elaine Barber had been watching Pops’s place as a good agent should. Mitch guessed she’d tried to take Wade down and he’d won the contest.

  He put the phone on the floor and hit the speaker button. Foley’s phone rang once, twice. When Foley answered, Mitch barked into the phone. “You’ve got an agent down at my father’s place, bleeding bad. Go pick up Jane and Ben. I’ll stay until an ambulance arrives.”

  “Mitch...” Foley started.

  He cut through the reply. “Did you get Wade?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have to take Jane and Ben into custody. Right now. By whatever means necessary.”

  “Copy that,” Foley said. “Take care of Barber. She’s a good cop. I’ll send backup.”

  He took three precious seconds to tap out a text to Jane on his phone. Go with Foley.

  The towel was now soaked crimson, and he could do nothing but press both hands to Barber’s side and pray that Wade had not taken another woman’s life.

  * * *

  Jane answered her cell phone. “I’m coming over as soon as I get clear of this briefing to take you and your son into protective custody,” Foley said.

  “No,” Jane said, “I...”

  “Mitch just called me. He said to do it now. I’ll be there within the hour.”

  “I...”

  “Listen, lady. If you don’t come, I’ll leak this story to every wire service in the country. Everyone will know Jane Whitehorse is holing up at the Roughwater Ranch. Their mailbox will overflow with hate letters.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can, and what’s more, Mitch will approve. He said to take whatever means necessary. Be ready in an hour. I had to reroute the cop I had stationed at the ranch, so stay put.”

  Her heart quaked. Mitch? Mitch had stripped her of her right to choose for her son? In spite of his mistrust of Foley, he would hand her over to him? And Ben?

  She was back again in the moment when she’d realized it was all true—Wade, the man she’d trusted to be her life partner, had been the worst mistake of her life.

  And now, it seemed, she’d made the same mistake again. It burned like fire when she pictured Mitch, his dark eyes, the rare smile, the man of honor she’d thought him to be, the manipulation she’d fallen for. He’d decided to turn her over, to sacrifice her and Ben.

  The betrayal scalded.

  The shock swamped her soul.

  But what hurt most, deep down, was the fact that she realized that she’d almost allowed herself to fall in love with Wade’s brother, and she’d given him permission to hurt her, too.

  But not her son.

  She could still keep Ben safe.

  Through tears, she picked up her phone and called for a taxi. Then she went to tell the family that she would be taking her son away immediately.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  As he strained to hear signs of an emergency response vehicle, Mitch mulled over his mistake. His father had begun to rouse.

  “Pops,” he called. “Pops, it’s Mitch.”

  “Wade was here,” Pops mumbled.

  “I know. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stop him.”

  “He told me he’s going to take his son back.” A tear rolled down his father’s bruised cheek. “I’m too weak, too old. I couldn’t stand up to him.”

  Mitch swallowed hard. “Not your fault, Pops.”

  “The child... Is he safe? Is Jane?”

  He couldn’t answer.

  “I’m praying,” he said, eyes closed, lips quivering.

  Me, too, Mitch said silently, praying for the woman bleeding in his care, and the one who was painfully out of reach.

  * * *

  Liam, Chad, Gus, Helen and Ginny stood in the foyer as she shouldered the small bag Ginny had given her, now stuffed with new muffins and pieces of plastic-wrapped pie, as well as the toys Helen insisted that Ben keep. Ben stood at her knee, sobbing.

  “Don’t worry,” Aunt Ginny said. “We’ll take great care of Catty Cat, and when you come back, you can play with him.” She kissed Ben’s head.

  Liam said what they were all thinking, she imagined. “Stay here. At least until we hear from Mitch.”

  “I already heard from Mitch. He wants me to go with Foley. If I don’t, Foley will leak that I’m here and I’ll have to go anyway. This way I decide where and when.”

  “But...”

  She held up a hand. “You have all been nothing but kind to me, but I have to know that I’m still making the choices for Ben. He’s all that matters.”

  Uncle Gus cleared his throat. “At least let one of us escort you...until you get settled.”

  Jane smiled and kissed his cheek. “No,” she said firmly. “But thank you.”

  He reached for his wallet. “Well, you’ll need some money.”

  She shook her head. “We still have some from the sale of my shop in the bank. Enough to last a little while. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” She wished she could own the bravado she forced into the words. After kissing each one of them and clasping Ginny in a hug, she let herself out the front door and into the waiting taxi.

  Chad had already strapped the car seat into the rear, and she let Ben look back one more time and wave to the group gathered at the front door. He was still crying when she strapped him in.

  “Where to?” the cabbie said.

  “To the bus station, but not the one here in town. There’s one an hour north of here, right, in Ridgeway?”

  “Well, sure, but you can just hop onto a bus here in town...”

  “Ridgeway,” she said firmly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  She settled back in the seat and checked her phone again. There had been no further word from Mitch or Foley.

  Whip up or whoa, she thought.

  Through the thick lump in her throat, she forced out a breath. Time to whip up and get away while she still could.

  She leaned back in the seat and tried to close her eyes. It might be the last hour she’d have to nap f
or a while. She heard the cabbie’s sharp surprised breath and something slammed hard into the cab, knocking it off the road. She flung a hand out toward Ben, but the car toppled over. Her head smacked into the side door, and the world went black.

  * * *

  Elaine Barber somehow managed to survive, and the medics took over, working frantically to get her stabilized for transport on a helicopter. Mitch’s father was already being loaded into an ambulance, his pulse steady, his breathing strong. The cop Foley had sent was securing the scene, photographing every square inch inside and out of the boat.

  “Here,” a medic said, giving him some wipes to cleanse his hands.

  He did so absently, details and facts rolling over in his mind.

  “You saved her life, you know,” the medic said. “She would have bled out if you hadn’t found her in time.” Over his shoulder, a bird skimmed the cliffs.

  He froze, ignoring the medic’s comment. Falcon. The image stuck in his mind, him and Ben admiring the majestic bird. Falcon, emblazoned on Bette’s yellow T-shirt. The Fighting Falcons...the mascot of a Southern California college football team.

  He pulled out his phone and typed into the search bar.

  He heard Foley saying it again. We’ve been tracking all the contacts, letters written to Wade during his prison time. Plenty of hate mail, but one consistent writer. Postmarked from a town called Stottsville.

  But Bette was Wade’s victim...wasn’t she?

  Finally the phone supplied the answer. The Fighting Falcons were the home team of a small college in Stottsville, California. He knew deep in his gut that Bette Whipple was the one who had been writing letters to Wade in prison, the one who had probably helped him track Jane to Nana Jo’s, and for whatever reason, she was determined to hand Jane over to her psycho ex-husband.

  He bolted to Rosie and they galloped away, leaving the openmouthed medic standing on the dock.

  * * *

  Jane awakened slowly, a dull ringing sounding in her ears. Her nerves jerked into motion with one terrified thought.

  Ben!

  She was somehow on her knees on the grass, someone tugging at her arm. Blinking, she saw the upside-down cab, the driver feebly moving in the front seat. Ben, her heart cried again, and she lurched to her feet, realizing that someone was tugging at her arm, helping her along.

  It was Bette, clutching a crying Ben on one hip and yanking Jane with the other arm.

  “Hurry,” she said. “We have to go now. Before they find us.”

  Brain buzzing, limbs aching, she stumbled along, arriving at a car with a crunched front fender.

  “You...you hit the cabbie?” Jane mumbled.

  “Get in, quick.”

  She found herself tumbled into the back seat. Bette handed Ben into her arms and took off, the car lurching along at breakneck speed. Jane could do nothing but hold Ben close.

  “Where are you taking us? What is happening?”

  Bette smiled brightly in the rearview mirror. “We’re taking Ben back to his father.”

  Jane’s blood ran cold. “What? Bette, what are you doing?”

  Bette shot her a look in the mirror. “Wade and I are together,” she said with a smile. “I realized that he was the only man who really loved me.”

  “No,” Jane said in horror. “No, no.”

  “At first I didn’t think so, but after he went to prison, I wrote him. He explained that I was special. That’s why he let me get away. He knew we’d be together someday. I helped him escape from prison, you know, with a spike stick on the road.” She giggled. “Easier than I thought.”

  Jane tried to gather her wits. “Bette, listen to me. Wade doesn’t love you. He’s manipulating you.”

  “You can’t keep him for yourself, Jane. He asked me to help him kill his brother, and then you showed up and I was scared for a while. I thought he’d dump me for you, the wifey.” Her eyes narrowed. “But I helped him a lot, with money and a hotel, even got a box out of storage for him with his granddad’s gun. When my money ran out, he didn’t get rid of me, Jane. Do you hear? He kept me. That tells you something, doesn’t it? We went to his father’s house and took what we needed—food and the old man’s phone.”

  She frowned. “He had to stab the woman who barged in. Turns out she was a cop of some sort.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t Wade’s fault, though. He didn’t have a choice when she pulled her weapon.”

  Jane bit her lip to keep from crying out. Oh, Bette. What have you done?

  “Looking back on it, maybe I shouldn’t have handed him the picture I took of your kid, but that worked out well, too. Now he wants you dead. Don’t worry, though,” she said. “I’ll raise Ben as my own. He won’t even remember you after a while. He’s still young enough.”

  Jane searched desperately around the car. What could she use to overpower Bette? To escape? She couldn’t jump out at this speed without hurting Ben.

  “There he is,” Bette cooed.

  Jane looked through the dusty front windshield at the man standing on the side of the road. She didn’t need to see him close-up to know that the smile was in place, the cool, satisfied quirk of the mouth below flat, soulless eyes.

  Wade Whitehorse stood waiting for her. No, he didn’t value her life at all, she corrected.

  He stood waiting for her son.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Chad kept his briefing quick as he waited for Liam to saddle up. Rosie shifted under Mitch’s weight, amped from their gallop back from Pops’s place. “I followed the cab,” Chad said, “even though she waved us off. Two miles from here along the frontage road, it was hit by another driver. Minimal damage to car, woman driver. By the time I made it down there, they were moving, continuing south on the frontage road.”

  Uncle Gus scampered up, followed by Aunt Ginny. “Danny’s on scene. The taxi driver is okay, but the response vehicles are still blocking the road.”

  Giving Wade and Bette more time to abduct Jane and Ben. His teeth were grinding together so hard he had to make a conscious effort to talk.

  Liam swung up onto his horse. “Plan?”

  “We ride. Chad and Uncle Gus go around in the truck to see if they can stop them before they reach the highway. Foley is rolling also, so be cautious. Don’t confront Wade.” Leave that to me. “Just detain him if you can.”

  Liam crammed on his hat. “And you and me are gonna ride in like John Wayne?”

  Mitch was already urging Rosie toward the gate. “Got a problem with that?”

  “No way, boss,” he called. “That’s just the way I like it.”

  On horseback, they were able to make their own path, bisecting the green hillsides and cutting a direct path to the main road. From their elevated position they caught sight of the car, stopped in the road where a man stood in a black jacket and jeans, relaxed, waiting. Every muscle in Mitch’s body snapped tight.

  I’m coming for you, Wade. You won’t hurt Jane or Ben. Not gonna happen, not this time.

  Liam understood Mitch’s pointed finger. He wheeled his horse and galloped ahead. They would come at Wade from two different sides.

  The wind roared around him, and Rosie’s hooves thundered against the ground as they charged toward Wade.

  * * *

  Jane sat in the car, clutching her son, staring through the dusty windshield at Wade. Bette had slowed almost to a stop.

  “Bette,” she said, in one last effort. “Listen to me. Wade is manipulating you. He doesn’t love you. This...” She tried to keep the pleading out of her voice. “This isn’t what love looks like.”

  What did it look like instead? It came in the form of a huge man crouching low to play toy horses with a little child. It looked like one person risking their comfort and safety to help another. It appeared in the words I’m sorry and rang in hard-won laughter drifting up to a starlit sky. “Love is wantin
g more for the other person than you do for yourself,” she choked out.

  Bette thought for a long moment, and Jane felt the faint stirring of hope. All Bette had to do was push the gas pedal, drive right past Wade and away from his twisted power. “Wade’s close enough for me,” Bette said, edging the car forward.

  Jane had only a split second. She had one last decision to make, and she prayed God would give her the strength. Holding Ben tightly, she wrenched open the car door and tumbled out before Bette could gain much speed. She hit the ground, arms shielding her son, and rolled once. Then she was on her feet. She heard Bette call out to Wade, but she did not stop, sprinting toward the field, ducking under the wooden rails and through to the pastures. She remembered what Mitch had told her about cattle, that they were basically fourteen hundred pounds of unpredictable animal. She would take her chances with the beasts in front of her instead of the one closing in from behind.

  Ben began to cry. “It’s okay,” she panted. If she could cross through the pasture, maybe she would run into someone from the ranch, or a clump of trees to hide in, something.

  Her heart pounded mercilessly against her ribs. Run, run, run, her instincts shrieked, but it was slow going with a toddler almost choking her.

  When she finally had to stop to catch her breath, she found she was in a small dip of land where there was a watering tank and several dozen full-size cows, regarding her with suspicion. Surrounding them were acres and acres of wide-open range and not a solitary person anywhere.