Danger on the Ranch Read online

  Both? Kill his accomplice? Mitch shook himself to try to clear away the fuzz, but the movement made him groan. She was grabbing him again, yanking and pulling, and he moved more to get her to stop jarring his nerves into white-hot pain than to cooperate. Suddenly he found himself in the bottom of the boat that she began to drag to the water’s edge.

  He clamped a palm over the gunwale and hauled himself up to his knees, but she’d managed to get the boat in the water and it was all he could do to hold on against the movement.

  There was a crack, the whistling noise that he didn’t have to see to know was a bullet. She threw herself to her knees.

  “Wade?” he grunted.

  “Who else?”

  “Why’s he shooting at you?”

  Her eyes rounded in exasperation. “He’s shooting at you. I don’t think he knows it’s me yet. You didn’t know he’d escaped from the marshals?”

  “Just found that out.” Before he’d formulated his next question, she yanked the outboard to life. The motor throbbed, and she guided the boat into the grip of the tide. He would rather have jumped into the waves and swum than been in the company of his former sister-in-law and the woman who’d aided Wade in his horrors, but his vision was blurred and there was a dull ringing in his ears. He forced himself to breathe through his nose, praying the dizziness would subside long enough for him to take action. Another bullet followed the first, closer this time. Wade had gotten to a better position for the kill shot.

  Now he’d hauled himself to his knees just as a shot took a chunk out of the side of the boat, startling Jane. She flipped over backward into the waves, going under. Breaking the surface a moment later, she looked at him with wide eyes of a color caught between ice blue and silver. She coughed, wet hair clinging in long dark clumps to her cheeks.

  Indecision clawed at him. She was his enemy, but she was also a woman, a small woman with a mouth pinched in fear. Without allowing himself to think it over, he stuck an oar over the side, and she grabbed on.

  Fighting through pain and the disequilibrium of the rocking boat, he began to pull her in, until another shot furrowed the water so close she lost her grip. Hands flailing, she fought against the current, but it sucked her back toward the rocks. He tumbled out after her, a messy splash into cold that seeped right into his core.

  He struck out as best he could in the direction she’d been swept. Without the protection of the boat, there would be nothing stopping Wade from shooting them except perhaps the layer of fog, which had thickened to be almost impenetrable.

  His fingers felt something soft, and he grabbed at it. It turned out to be her jacket sleeve. He clung to her wrist and reeled the rest of her body close to his until he’d encircled her in his arms. She was smaller than he’d thought.

  She looked up at him with those strange-colored eyes.

  The lights from a boat sliced through the water, bouncing off the mist. “Driftwood Police Department,” a voice called. “This is private property, and there is no shooting allowed here.” It was a voice Mitch knew well. Danny Patron, an avid fisherman, hardworking cop and father of three, who was assigned the lonely job of watching the coastline.

  “Hey,” he yelled. “Danny! Over here.” He continued to shout as loud as he could, and Jane joined him, but the thrum of the motor indicated the vessel was passing them, unaware of the two victims fighting the waves and buried in fog.

  By now Mitch was tiring, the energy seeping out of him as he struggled to tread water. He could not see what had become of the boat, and it took all his reserves to keep them from smashing against the sharp rocks.

  He realized Jane had freed herself from his grasp and taken hold of his sleeve. He resisted, but she dug her fingers into his bicep.

  “This way.”

  Again, he was forced to make a decision—follow a woman he would not even trust with his cowboy boots, or stay put, fighting the tide until he would certainly drown?

  “Where...?” he tried, but she did not allow him to utter the rest. He found himself towed along through the icy water, following the woman who’d married the monster.

  * * *

  Jane felt as though her limbs were carved from a block of ice. She held on to Mitch as long as she could, but he slipped out of her numb grasp at some point, though she could still see his dark head just behind. He shouted a couple of times, but she could not understand over the roar of the surf, nor did she want to. There was only one thing on her mind: getting them out of the freezing grip of the waves before they drowned.

  Her knee banged into a submerged ridge, the bottom of the cliff that rose straight from the water like a shark fin. She hauled herself out, gasping as the wind robbed her of any remaining warmth.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Mitch grunted behind her. “If you climb, he’s got an easy target.”

  She didn’t respond, fingers clawing as the rocks tore into her flesh. It was here, had to be.

  “Hey,” he said, but his words were cut off by a grunt of pain. From his injury or the rocks that surely sliced at him, too.

  What if she’d been wrong? Again? What if Mitch was right and there was nothing on this cliff but certain death? No, this would not be the end. This was her only shot at life, real life, one last chance to make things right. Teeth gritted, she hauled herself along the sharp crack, praying that the fog and the police had been enough to frighten Wade away.

  But Wade was never scared.

  That part of him was missing; instead there was an empty void where human feeling should reside.

  She was shivering uncontrollably now. Her legs felt like they were as insubstantial as the fog. Despair gripped its way into her belly. And then she saw it, the cutout that marked the cave she’d spotted on her way into the cove, high enough that the tide would not flood it, or so she hoped.

  “Come on,” she ordered him and climbed as quickly as she could until she crawled through the opening. It was a harder squeeze for Mitch, as the guy was broad shouldered and a hulk at somewhere over six feet.

  He hunched inside the cave, water streaming from his clothing, eyes ink dark, narrow, suspicious.

  “You’re Wade’s wife.”

  It was like the executioner pronouncing sentence.

  “No. Divorced.”

  “Why are you here?” His shirt was stained with blood, and his teeth were chattering as badly as hers.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  “I don’t take orders from you.”

  “Okay then, stand, but when you fall over, try not to hit your head. You probably already have a concussion.”

  He did not sit, but she noticed he grabbed an outcropping of rock with one massive palm.

  She scanned the cave floor until she found a meager supply of semidry leaves and some driftwood. Piling it onto the driest spot she could find, she pulled the Ziploc bag from her jacket pocket. With trembling fingers, she struck the match. It fizzled as soon as she touched it to the leaves.

  “We won’t have to worry that he’ll see the smoke with all this fog,” she said, more to herself than him. I hope. There wasn’t much choice, anyway. They were dangerously close to hypothermia. Cold or bullets? Which one would get them first? She ground her teeth together. Neither, if she had a teaspoon of strength left in her. Patting her pockets, she realized her cell phone was somewhere at the bottom of the cove. At least the small pouch hooked to her belt was still there, for what it was worth. Her driver’s license, ATM card and a soggy ten-dollar bill. Not much, but keeping hold of some small thing helped her feel the tiniest bit less exposed.

  Mitch swabbed a sleeve over his face. “Where’d you get the matches?”

  “There was a kit in the boat. I grabbed it just before I started the motor. I thought there might be some first-aid supplies.”

  He was silent as she struck the second match, which was snuffed just
as quickly.

  “Here,” he said, dropping to one knee and taking the box of matches from her. He bent close to the debris with a wince and a groan. Slowly, patiently, he held the lit match to the barest edge of the driest clump of pine needles. It kindled orange and smoked. He blew softly, cupping his shaking hand around the needles until they were fully aflame. With more gentleness than she’d thought him capable of, he eased the pine needles back into the pile. She held her breath as the debris grudgingly took.

  Fighting back tears of relief, she scooted as close as she could to that small spot of warmth. With quaking fingers, she fished out a bandage from the bag and thrust it at him. “You’re still bleeding.”

  Ignoring her offering, Mitch eased to a sitting position across from her, mouth tight with pain. “Why are you here?”

  “To find you. And it wasn’t easy. You have no cell phone, and your house is like some kind of remote fortress or something.”

  “Not remote enough, if you found it.”

  She pushed another twig into the fire and edged so close her knees were almost touching the flames. “I...came to warn you that Wade had escaped.”

  “Police could tell me that. So why did you come? Not just to warn me. You don’t care about me. Why?”

  She was quiet. The little flames danced and popped, painting light and darkness across his face. Was there any of Wade’s darkness in his brother, Mitch? They shared genes.

  That doesn’t mean anything, she told herself savagely. DNA doesn’t determine who you are—your soul does. But what kind of soul did Mitch Whitehorse have? Didn’t matter. He was the one, the only one, who could save what mattered most.

  “I came because I need you to help me put Wade back in prison.”

  He blinked. “So now you’re afraid of him, too? Why? You turned a blind eye while he kidnapped and murdered three women.”

  She sucked in a breath. “I know you don’t believe me, but I didn’t know what Wade was doing.”

  “You didn’t know the guy you married was a serial killer?”

  The judgment was there in his eyes, the same she’d seen in the courtroom, the cops, the people who drove by her house and threw rocks into her windows, flattened her tires, sent death threats.

  She swallowed hard against an onslaught of bitter tears. “I was blind, stupid blind, but I did not know.”

  A long moment passed between them. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

  She sagged. What else had she expected? Why would Mitch be any different? “Okay. Don’t believe me, but Wade has come here to kill you, and after he does that, he’ll kill me, too.”

  “Why would he want to kill you? If you’re really innocent, why would Wade want to do that?”

  “Because he will eventually find out that I have something he wants, something that I won’t ever give to him while I have breath in my body.”

  “What could you have that would make him care enough to come after you?”

  Her head spun, and she fought for breath. Tell him? What choice did she have?

  “I have his son.”

  THREE

  She was lying, Mitch thought. Manipulating him, just like Wade. He crawled to the cave entrance both to scan for any sign of Wade or the returning police and to give himself a moment to think. It wasn’t easy with the hammering pain inside his skull and the cold that still made every movement arduous.

  I have his son.

  “I was pregnant,” she said, so low he almost didn’t hear it. “At the time...when things began to come out. I...I didn’t love Wade, hadn’t for a long time, when I began to notice things about him, scary things.” Her gulped breath made something inside him tense. “I was making secret plans to get away, which I’m sure you don’t believe.” Flames crackled as she threw another twig on the fire. “I was only four weeks along when the police came to arrest Wade. Two months at the time of the trial.”

  “And he didn’t know?”

  “No, but I was terrified he’d guess. I moved away and changed my identity. Wade found my hiding place two days ago, but I was out at the time and I got away.”

  “Why’d he come for you, then, if you aren’t his accomplice?”

  He saw a shudder pass through her. “He told me we’d always be together. I think he believes I belong to him and I’d help him.”

  The starkness in her tone was convincing, but he’d heard a lot of convincing liars before. “Where’s the kid?”

  She flinched. “Somewhere close. Safe.”

  He yanked around to look at her. “Where?”

  Her eyes flashed silver fire at him. “Somewhere safe,” she repeated, the words hard and clipped. Then she cleared her throat. “Ben is not even three yet, so he doesn’t understand any of this.”

  “You need to tell me where he is.”

  Her chin went up. “I don’t need to tell you anything.”

  He stepped closer, staring her down. “If Wade suspects, he’ll get to your boy, no matter what kind of hiding place you’ve found.”

  Her chin trembled, or maybe it was a trick of the firelight. “You don’t think I know that?”

  “Then tell the cops. They’ll protect you.”

  Her laugh was filled with bitterness. “The cops didn’t keep Wade in prison. They didn’t prevent people from sending me death threats and vandalizing my house. No one protected me.”

  “Because you and your husband killed three women and almost a fourth if she hadn’t gotten away.”

  She jerked as if he’d slapped her, then wrapped her arms around her middle and stared at him. “I...didn’t...know.” The lines around her mouth were hard, and every muscle in her frame was taut. “I didn’t know.” She moved quickly, snatched up a stick and cracked it in two. “You’ll never believe me. Think what you want, but...” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat and restarted. “My son, my little boy, does not deserve to pay the price for his father’s crimes. Please.” She was still on her knees, crouched in front of the meager fire. “Please help me. I have no one else.”

  No one else.

  He rubbed a hand through his hair, but it ignited a trail of pain, so he stopped. “I’m not your guy.”

  “I saved your life.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.” His harsh tone bounced back to him.

  She stood now. “I’m not asking for myself. This isn’t about my life. It’s about my son’s.”

  Silence grew between them, interrupted only by the pop and hiss of the fire.

  “Right now we have to figure out how to get out of this cave without getting shot. That’s all.” He turned his back on her again and surveyed the cove. The fog had thinned a bit after the sun sank into the choppy waters. It was almost fully dark. The only way they were going to survive was to retreat from the cave back up to the trail that loped along the cliff top.

  “Gonna climb up to the trail. Rosie will get us back to my place.”

  “Who’s Rosie?”

  “My horse.”

  “I saw her run away.”

  “She’s somewhere, waiting for my signal.”

  “How do you know?”

  He didn’t answer. “You can warm up and I’ll give you some clothes. I’ll take you to the police when it’s safe.”

  “So you won’t help me yourself?”

  He tossed another twig into the fire. “We’ll leave it burning. If Wade is watching, might be a diversion.”

  “Do you think Wade’s given up by now?”

  “Do you?”

  Her gaze became uncertain, dropped away. “No.” She paused. “Soon after we were married, a couple of teenage boys snuck onto our property and had a little party. They didn’t damage anything, just left some bottles and a bag from their snacks. Wade hid there every night for five weeks until they came back, and then he scared them so badly they never retur
ned.” She shivered, and he suspected it wasn’t from the cold. “Every single night for five weeks.”

  She knew just as well as he.

  Wade hadn’t given up, and he never would. Their best and only chance was to use darkness to conceal their escape.

  But Wade knew how to use the darkness, too.

  Like the monster hiding in the shadows, waiting for the kill.

  * * *

  They crawled out of the cave, and every inch of Jane’s body screamed in protest. Cold air whipped her mercilessly and she felt powerless against the elements, to the threat that was waiting out there. Mitch startled her by gripping her shoulder. His hands were massive, but his touch was surprisingly light.

  “Stay low. Keep a couple of feet back from me so you have time to get away if he starts shooting.”

  And what was she supposed to do if Mitch got shot again? She decided to keep that thought to herself. One foot in front of the other, Jane. It took her feet and her clawed fingers to cling to the slippery rocks. Mitch tried to keep them in cover as best he could, and she hoped the fog was enough to conceal them further. Still, her skin prickled both from the cold and the knowledge that Wade was out there.

  Did he know it was her?

  Who’s that shooting at me?

  He probably did not blame her for her testimony—she had in fact known nothing about his crimes—but the divorce papers he’d been served in prison had been another matter. He’d never signed, and she’d had to withstand the interminable statutory waiting period before the marriage was dissolved without his consent.

  I’ll never let you go.

  She thought for the millionth time about what kind of a man he’d seemed to be, charming, sweet, thoughtful, intelligent. And he’d used those charms to lure young women, abduct them and force them to deplete their bank accounts. Then he’d imprisoned each for some sick, twisted thrill only he understood before he killed them. How had she not known? Not seen? Not heard anything from the underground bunker in the woods where he’d kept them chained?