Buch lesen: «Danger On The Ranch»

ONE

Storm’s coming.

The illogical notion trickled again through Mitch Whitehorse’s gut as he surveyed the late-afternoon fog choking the windswept cove. Strange, since there was no sign of a weather front moving in through the mist. He fingered the scar that grooved his cheek, the rough patch oddly numb, a dead spot courtesy of his brother. The occasional blurred vision and migraines were an additional reminder of how close he’d come to dying at Wade’s hand.

But it wasn’t so much the pain of having his occipital bone crushed or the resulting symptoms that stuck in his mind—it was his brother’s smile. Even when Wade was led from the courtroom after the guilty verdict that would send him to prison for life, he’d been smiling right at Mitch, a smile of pure evil, cold as the grave, unrepentant, undefeated.

Rosie, the big roan mare, shifted underneath Mitch, probably wondering why they were standing on a bluff in the numbing fog, staring out at the crawling Pacific instead of sheltering from the February wind. They’d spent a full day moving a herd of cattle from one pasture to another and chasing down an ailing cow to administer medicine. Straightening, Mitch ignored the twinge in his back, courtesy of his days as a US marshal and the fact that he was now a hardworking cowboy staring forty in the face.

Storm’s coming.

There it was again, the warning his instincts kept whispering in spite of what his eyes could see.

Pure silliness. Nothing could shake Mitch anymore, least of all a mere storm. The worst evil he’d ever encountered, Wade’s heinous killing spree that left three women dead, was over. Wade was in prison, Mitch’s final act as a US marshal before he’d walked away from law enforcement and onto his uncle Gus’s Roughwater Ranch. He hadn’t put Wade’s wife, Jane Reyes, away for life, like he should have. Jane knew all too well that Wade had abducted those women, imprisoned them right on their sprawling property, killed them one by one, except for the last. Oh, he knew she had been an accomplice, but knowing and proving were two different things. Her sentence would have to come later.

Someone else’s battle to fight.

He eased the horse into motion. They took the trail down to the beach. Just a short ride to clear his head before they made their way back to his cabin tucked in the grove of trees far away from any living creature except his two horses. He had two, because living things weren’t meant to go it alone, except for Mitch Whitehorse. That was why he didn’t live on the ranch property like the other hands. It was one of the reasons, anyway.

Down where the salt water scoured the beach, he noticed right away the rough gouge of sand where a boat had been dragged up onto the shore by a trespasser. No sign of the boat now.

Habit had him reaching for the sidearm that was no longer there, hadn’t been for two years. It was just a boat, he told himself as he dismounted and left Rosie to nose at the clumps of seagrass. Though the beach was property of the ranch, Uncle Gus didn’t mind the odd fisherman or adventuring honeymooners looking for their own quiet stretch of sand.

But this section of beach was rocky, cold, perpetually blasted by wind, with no calm water to attract fish or people. His cabin was tucked behind the cliff close by, too close, and Mitch did not like people anywhere in the vicinity.

A clump of rocks rose in an untidy pile on the edge of the sand crescent before it was cut off by the cliffs. Big enough to hide a boat. He approached at an angle—old cop habit. There would be nothing to find but some harmless guy, taking time out to smoke a cigarette, or a beachcomber hunting for shells. The central California coast, after all, was a place that encouraged solitude, and that was why it was perfect for Mitch.

But the clenched muscles in his gut refused to relax as he reached the rock pile, skirted it and found the boat. It was a plain aluminum vessel with an outboard motor, glinting in the sunlight. Probably a rental from the dive shop. No one around.

If Mitch was a normal guy, he’d have his cell phone out, taking pictures, calling the local cops to report a trespasser, but he carried no cell phone and never intended to again. He waited, listening over the sound of the waves for the intruder’s whereabouts. Nothing. The wind whipped his battered cowboy hat, threatening to snatch it, as he hunkered down. Nothing and no one, not for the ten minutes he waited there.

Rosie nickered from the far end of the beach, her way of saying, “Whatsa matter with you?”

Good question. He turned to go.

A figure rose up from the rocks above, backlit by the fog-dulled sun. Black ski cap pulled down across the brow, wiry torso covered by a nylon windbreaker, black jeans, booted feet. Mitch could not see clearly for a moment, but he did not need to. His senses could not believe it was his brother, Wade, standing on the rocks staring down, but his heart told him it could be no one else.

Wade cracked a smile. “Hello, big brother. You’re ugly as ever. Scar hasn’t faded, has it?”

The ripped edges of the wound had healed, but the real damage never would. His brother, his blood kin, the psychopath, had escaped from prison. Mitch’s worst fear stood above him like the creatures from the old monster movies he’d watched as a kid. He’d stopped watching those flicks when he’d learned that man was the greatest monster of all, this man in particular, his brother, Wade.

Wade’s left hand was concealed behind his back. Mitch knew what was coming. Wade had him pinned right and proper. Wade was smart, probably smarter than Mitch. Only Mitch’s dogged determination had brought him down, but now Wade had the upper hand in every way.

You’re an idiot, Mitch, he told himself. Aloud he said, “Finished that prison sentence already?”

Wade laughed. “You know I’m the impatient type. Remember when I took your horse because Mom wouldn’t let me have the car?”

He remembered. Wade had whipped the horse until its sides were bloody, and Mitch had been so furious it had ended in a fistfight, with Pops barely able to separate them. It always ended badly when he was anywhere near his brother. The darkness in Wade’s soul rubbed off on those around him, like he suspected it had on Wade’s wife, Jane. Then again, maybe she’d been just as twisted as him from the get-go. Venomous, that was Wade Whitehorse, and anyone who stayed around him long enough got a full dose.

“Prison didn’t agree with me.” Wade smiled, teeth glaring white in the sunlight. “And I had a few debts to settle up, of course.”

“So you borrowed a boat and came to find me. I’m flattered.”

“You’re sloppy, and the boat isn’t mine. I don’t like the water, you remember. I prefer horseback. You have a routine, exercising your horse here along the beach at just this hour. You made it easy. Easier than escaping from the marshals during the prison transfer.” He clucked. “Disappointing.”

Now the hand came around from behind and Mitch saw the gun. He knew it instantly, bile rising in his throat.

Wade smiled. “You recognize it, I can tell.”

“Granddad’s revolver.” Passed down to their father. The first time he’d ever fired a gun had been with that revolver, his father standing tall and proud behind him. He’d loved that gun. “Wondered where it got to.”

“Pops never let me have it. I hated him for that.”

“He didn’t want to give a gun to a psychopath.” Mitch shrugged. “It’s called good parenting.”

Wade’s eyes narrowed for a moment, and Mitch braced for impact. Instead Wade laughed. “It’s okay. I got what I wanted. Stole it out of Pops’s gun safe when I was sixteen.”

“So how do you happen to have it now? Didn’t think they let psychos bring their guns to jail.”

“My wife stored it away for me. Janey. You remember Janey?”

He didn’t answer.

“She’s a good wifey, that Janey, in most ways.”

Wade’s fixed stare flickered a moment, caught by some movement Mitch couldn’t see on the water’s edge under the rotted dock pilings. His horse? Wade trained the gun away from him.

“Don’t you shoot that horse,” Mitch snapped.

Wade turned back, smiled. “I didn’t come here to shoot the horse.” Wade fired as Mitch surged forward in a futile effort. He felt a crease of heat on his temple and then he was falling into darkness. Just before the black closed in, he noticed a plume of smoke arcing over the sand like a striking snake.

* * *

She’d been too late. Mitch collapsed to the sand. Berating herself, Jane Reyes fired a second flare, aiming directly for Wade’s chest. She didn’t know if a flare would kill a person, but it might knock him back enough to warn him off. The horse waiting far off on the beach sprang into a gallop, ears pinned.

A shot whistled over her head, and she ducked down behind the dock pilings that hid her. They were remnants of some rudimentary boat landing that had long ago given way to the sea. Her breath came in panicked gasps as she crouched there. Would he come after her? She had no more flares and only a knife tucked into her boot. She’d been trying to pick out the rugged path up to Mitch’s property, after beaching her rented boat on the shore. Wind plucked at her hair, numbed her limbs.

Now she was trapped here, no cell reception, Mitch shot and probably bleeding to death, and her ex-husband stalking her from a scant fifty yards away from his perch on the rock pile. There was no one to help. Again she questioned the sanity of a man who lived in a location with limited access, by horseback, boat or on foot. So lonely, so desolate.

And why had she come here to this isolated stretch of nowhere to find Mitch? Put herself in such a vulnerable position for a man who believed she was a willing participant in Wade’s sick plans?

Because Wade was her worst nightmare, evil incarnate, and he’d found the house where she rented a tiny back room from Nana Jo. It was only by God’s grace that she’d been out at the time, able to flee. Mitch Whitehorse was the only one...the only person on earth who could help her put Wade back in prison, where he could not destroy any more lives. Only now Mitch was likely dead. Icy despair licked at her.

You can’t give up.

Wade’s voice, singsong and high-pitched, carried over the wind. “Who’s that shooting at me?”

Terror coursed through her at the sound of that voice, and his courtroom promise returned to her mind.

We’ll be together again, Janey. Don’t you worry, my dove. The smile, the soulless eyes. I’ll never let you go.

She clamped her teeth closed to hold in the scream and clutched the useless flare gun. Where was he? Still at a distance, judging from the voice. Stopped to examine her boat? Circling around to her position? She could not see through the thickening fog.

A flicker of movement up and to the right riveted her. He was climbing to a higher position, a spot on top of the craggy pile from which he’d be able to pick out her hiding place. But his movement gave her time, minutes maybe, no longer, while he threaded his way along the rocks. If she could reach Mitch, the boat, and get them into the water... The little outboard motor wasn’t terribly powerful and she’d be fighting the incoming tide, but it would put some distance between them, and maybe she could make it past the cove, out of range of Wade’s gun.

One thing she knew after a year of marriage to the monster was that Wade Whitehorse could not swim. Forcing herself to breathe slowly, she counted to three, pushed off from the rotted piling and ran as quietly as she could. Every moment she expected the report of a gun, the pain of a bullet plowing into her skull.

Panting, fueled by terror, she made it to Mitch and the boat.

As frightened as she was of Wade, it scared her even more to crouch behind a pile of sand next to Mitch’s sprawled body. He lay on his back, face turned toward her, one muscled arm out-flung. Blood stained his forehead, collecting in the puckered edges of his scar, dripping down to saturate the collar of his barn jacket. With shaking fingers, she checked for a pulse. His dark lashes twitched as she touched his cold throat.

Alive.

Mitch Whitehorse was alive.

A rock bounced loose from the towering cliff and tumbled to the beach. Wade was closing in, and if she didn’t do something fast, neither one of them would live to see morning.