Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  Zack tightened his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought of the rope he’d found, the rope that had made it impossible for Katie to escape the inferno of her bedroom. It had been a devious mechanism for death.

  He felt her gaze on him, stunned and with more than a touch of fear. He glanced at her, noting her widened electric-blue eyes, the paleness of her skin beneath the thick layer of soot.

  “The way I see it, the plan was that you would probably be overcome by smoke, the fire would overwhelm the house and that rope would have eventually burned away, leaving no trace of its existence.”

  “Who spotted the fire?” she asked. Her voice held the slightest tremble.

  “I did. I couldn’t sleep so I stepped outside the bunkhouse and just happened to glance toward the main house. That’s when I saw the flames and sounded the alarm.”

  “So, if you’d gotten a good night’s sleep you probably would have found me dead in the morning.”

  His hands once again tightened on the steering wheel. “It would seem that was the intent.”

  She leaned back against the seat and released a weary sigh. “Any suspicions on who might have set the fire?”

  He turned down the narrow road that led to the West property, wishing he had a different answer for her than the one he had. “None. When I woke up I just assumed all the men in the bunkhouse were sleeping, but appearances can be deceiving.”

  “So it might or might not have been one of the men in the bunkhouse.” Her voice was as weary as he’d ever heard it.

  “Katie, we’re not going to figure this out tonight. I’ll call Ramsey, but it’s too dark for anything to be done tonight. Let’s just get to my place, shower off the soot and smoke and get a few hours of sleep.” He felt her gaze on him and turned to meet it. “What?”

  “I don’t even know where your place is. Do you live with your father and Smokey?”

  “No, I live in a two-bedroom house that was originally built for the ranch manager. It’s small, nothing fancy, but it’s my space and gives me my privacy.”

  They didn’t speak again as he pulled through the gates of the West ranch and he drove past the large, sprawling ranch house. “What’s that?” she asked as his headlights fell on a smaller house that was in the building process.

  “That’s Tanner’s place. It burned down several weeks ago. While he’s on his honeymoon, he’s got a crew of men working to rebuild it.”

  “Yes I heard about that. Are fires a normal occurrence in the lives of the West men?” she asked dryly.

  He offered her a tight grin. “I’d say it’s less about the West men and more about the women they choose to hang out with.”

  He wondered how long she could maintain her calm, her seemingly nonchalant attitude in the face of her own attempted murder. He had a feeling she was suffering some sort of shock.

  No lights shone from the small, two-bedroom cabin Zack called home. As he pulled up front he recognized that over the past couple of hours his mind had gone from unwilling investigator to determined bodyguard.

  His head clicked and whirled with suppositions and possibilities as he parked and shut off the engine. “I want you to wait here while I check things out inside,” he said.

  By moonlight he once again saw her eyes widen. “Surely you can’t believe somebody might be inside waiting for us.”

  “If I’m to believe what you told me about the stampede and with what happened tonight at your place, I’d be a fool not to consider any and all possibilities. I’ll check things out, then we’ll get settled inside.”

  Armed with a heavy-duty flashlight that he pulled from beneath his seat, he left her locked in the truck. As he approached his front door he cursed the fact that he didn’t have his gun by his side, but rather had left it in the storage trunk at the foot of his bed in Katie’s bunkhouse.

  When he’d seen the flames of the fire, his gun had been the last thing on his mind. All he’d thought about was getting to the house and getting her out of danger.

  He had another gun inside and vowed that from now on he would go nowhere without a weapon. Using the powerful beam from the flashlight, he checked around the front door, making sure nothing appeared out of place or that the lock didn’t appear tampered with.

  He recognized that he was being overly cautious. Nobody could have known that he’d spirit Katie away to his place for the night, but he’d rather err on the side of caution just to be safe.

  He unlocked the door and carefully eased it open, all senses on alert. He flipped on the light switch that illuminated the living room. Before going further into the house he went to the small desk, opened the bottom drawer and withdrew the 9 mm.

  Armed with the gun, he set aside the flashlight and systematically checked the remainder of the two-bedroom cabin. It took only minutes for him to clear the cabin and to feel secure that nobody had been inside since he’d last been here.

  He returned to the truck and opened the driver’s door. “It’s okay. You can come on in.”

  She got out of the truck and he followed her across the short expanse of grass and through the front door. It was at that moment he realized what she wore.

  The silky, short, pink nightgown was smoke-blackened, but clung to her curves and exposed nearly the full length of her long, shapely legs.

  For just a brief moment as he walked behind her and took in the figure beneath the skimpy gown, he felt as if he’d plunged back into the flames that had engulfed the side of the house.

  The minute they were inside he closed and locked the door. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and stood in the center of the room as if shell-shocked.

  “Why don’t I get you some clean clothes and you can get into the shower? Then you can catch a couple hours of sleep before you have to deal with anything else.” He needed her to get out of that gown and into something, anything, less revealing. He had a feeling that if she stood just right in the light he’d be able to see right through the gauzy material.

  She nodded and he went into his bedroom and found her a black T-shirt and a pair of boxers. From the hall linen closet he grabbed a clean towel and washcloth, then returned to the living room to find that she hadn’t moved.

  Accepting the things he handed her, her eyes flickered with a whisper of anger. “If I wasn’t so exhausted, I’d be pissed off about all this.”

  He smiled, oddly relieved to hear those words. He’d rather her show a little spirit than be beaten into the ground. “Go take your shower. There will be plenty of time tomorrow to be pissed off.”

  As she disappeared into the bathroom, he breathed a sigh of relief and forced a mental image of her out of his mind. He had more important things to think about.

  He went into the spare room to make sure it was ready for her. There wasn’t much to get ready. He hadn’t lied when he’d told her there was nothing fancy here.

  While he’d been working for the family business, he’d spent little time here. The house was functional, but Spartan. The spare room held only a chest of drawers and a single-size bed. He knew the sheets on the bed were clean and was more interested in checking to make sure the window was locked and secure.

  He left the room and went to the linen closet to grab a towel. He’d shower later, when she was asleep, but he wanted to wash off the worst of the soot and grime.

  As he stood at the kitchen sink, using hot water and dish soap to scrub himself, his mind worked to make sense of what had happened.

  Somebody had tied Katie into her bedroom then had set a fire outside her bedroom window. He replayed in his brain those moments when he’d first awakened from his nightmare and had stumbled toward the door to get out of the bunkhouse.

  He’d told her that when he’d left the bunkhouse he’d assumed the men were sleeping, but the truth was, he wasn’t sure of that at all.

  He hadn’t paid any attention to the other men in their beds. For all he knew those beds could have been empty. It had been dark and he’d been half asleep. H
e couldn’t swear that all the men had been where they were supposed to be … in bed.

  Not only did he have those men to worry about, he also needed to find out who else worked for Katie who lived in town. It would have been relatively easy for somebody to park their car some distance away and carry a can of gasoline and a length of rope for their mission of death.

  How had the person gotten into the house? Had Katie neglected to lock the doors? Had an unlocked window been an open invitation? How many people had keys to the Sampson house? So many questions and no answers to speak of.

  Good, that gave him time to call Ramsey. It took him only minutes to speak with the Sheriff, who assured him that the police would begin an investigation first thing in the morning.

  He finished cleaning up, then went into the living room. The sounds of the shower let him know it would still be a few minutes before Katie came out of the bathroom.

  He sat on the edge of the sofa. He would sleep here for the remainder of the night, where he could hear if anyone tried to come in through the front door or the back door in the kitchen.

  Leaning back, he raked a hand through his hair and released a long, deep sigh. He’d vowed to himself he’d never do this again, that he’d never put himself into a position to be responsible for the safety of another human being. And now he found himself in the very position he’d vowed never to be in again.

  But he couldn’t walk away now. Even though there had been countless times in the past he’d personally wanted to throttle Katie Sampson, there was no way he could walk away from her and leave her alone and vulnerable for a killer.

  Kate dried off and pulled the clean T-shirt on over her head, her mind curiously numb. The shirt hit her mid-thigh and swallowed up the shorts Zack had given her, making it appear she was clad only in the shirt. She wadded the ruined nightgown into a ball and threw it into the trash can next to the sink.

  She found a comb in one of the vanity drawers and pulled it through her shoulder-length hair and it was only then that she realized how badly her hands trembled.

  She set the comb aside and sat on the edge of the tub, her stomach rolling with nausea as the enormity of what had just happened struck her.

  The stampede had scared her, but if she were perfectly honest with herself she had to admit that she’d entertained just a tiny bit of doubt about what, exactly, had spooked the herd.

  She’d believed she’d heard an air horn or something like that just before the stampede, but there had been a little part of her that had acknowledged that it might have been nothing more than a strange clap of thunder.

  There was no way she could make what just had happened a strange quirk of nature. Somebody had tried to kill her. Just as somebody had already killed her father. A chill raked up her spine, a chill she worried would never go away.

  The idea that somebody had tied her into a burning bedroom terrified her. Who would do such a thing? Who could hate her enough to want her dead?

  She rose to her feet. The cold grip of fear certainly wasn’t going to go away sitting here alone in Zack’s bathroom.

  As she entered the living room he stood from the sofa, it was obvious he’d done some cleaning up of his own. His face and torso were clean and his hair damp.

  “You can sleep in my spare room and I’ll bunk here on the sofa for the night,” he said. His eyes slid down the length of her and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “The sooner you get some sleep, the better we can deal with all this in the morning.”

  “I don’t even know where to start dealing with all this,” she replied. “But I’ll tell you one thing, nobody is going to force me to stay away from the ranch. I’m here tonight because it’s the smart thing to do, but tomorrow morning I intend to be back home where I belong.”

  “We need to take things one at a time. First thing in the morning we’ll deal with the problem of making your place secure. Until that’s done, you aren’t staying there.”

  There was a note of finality in his voice that made her want to kick and protest. She felt as if she controlled nothing at the moment and the feeling was frustrating.

  “I’d like to tell you that I intend to stay at my place whether it’s secure or not. Emotionally I don’t like that I feel as if you’re making that decision for me, but intellectually, I know you’re right. I can’t stay there unless the damage to the wall in my room is repaired so nobody can just waltz into the house from outside.”

  “Thank you for seeing things my way.”

  She offered him a small smile. “I’m only seeing things your way because at the moment it’s the right way.”

  “Let’s get some sleep,” he said. She followed him into a small bedroom and once again the icy hand of fear seemed to curl and squeeze around her heart. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but the bed is good and firm and you’ll be safe for the night.”

  He started out of the room but stopped as she called his name. For just a moment she didn’t know what to say to him. She refused to tell him just how frightened she really was, didn’t want him to know the depth of the despair that gripped her at the moment.

  “I know we’ve butted heads in the past, but I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I’m not facing this all alone,” she finally said.

  “Sleep with the door open,” he said, then turned and left the room.

  Sleep with the door open? She’d like to sleep in his arms! Not because he was Zack, but rather because she felt so unsafe, so utterly alone.

  Foolish woman, she thought as she pulled down the navy cord bedspread, then shut off the light in the room. Tomorrow when she got back to her place she’d get out her dad’s gun and strap it to her side. She didn’t need a man’s arms around her, especially Zack’s. All she needed was the comfort of a Smith & Wesson.

  She’d expected to have problems falling asleep, but she awoke with the first stir of dawn lighting the sky. For a long moment she remained unmoving, playing and replaying the last two weeks of her life in her mind.

  She’d thought the bottom had dropped out when her father had died. She’d believed nothing could get worse. She’d been wrong.

  The night replayed in all its horror … the smoke, the flames and the moment when she’d felt sure death was a heartbeat away. If Zack hadn’t noticed the fire and hadn’t been able to break down her door, she wouldn’t be here now.

  The scent of freshly brewed coffee filtered in through the open door of her room, letting her know that Zack was already up and around.

  She got out of bed, finger-combed her hair and pulled on the shorts she’d kicked off before climbing beneath the sheets the night before. It took her only a moment to make the bed, then she left the room.

  Zack sat at the small kitchen table, facing the direction of the living room. He raised a hand at the sight of her. She returned the gesture and beelined into the bathroom. She wished she had a toothbrush, a hairbrush, her own clothes. But she used her finger to brush her teeth, Zack’s comb to untangle her sleep-tousled hair, then left the bathroom in search of a cup of the coffee.

  “Morning,” she said to Zack as she entered his small kitchen area and spied the coffeemaker on the countertop. She poured herself a cup, then joined him at the table.

  Clad in a clean white T-shirt and a pair of jeans, he smelled of minty soap and shaving cream. He might look rested, but he still had a grim expression on his face.

  “Did you get some sleep?” she asked.

  “Some … enough,” he replied. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “I have a feeling it’s going to be the first of many long days,” she replied.

  They sipped their coffee in silence, as if each mentally prepared themselves for what lie ahead. Kate’s thoughts were purely practical ones as she wondered how much work it would entail to fix the damage from the fire so she could stay at her house tonight.

  First the dead cattle and broken fencing and now this, additional expenses she hadn’t planned. If these kinds of things continued, how long coul
d she survive? She wasn’t made of money. She shoved these disturbing thoughts aside.

  She refused to be displaced from her father’s home, from her own home. Her father would never want her to turn tail and run away from any conflict or danger. But he’d also want her to be smart.

  “As soon as you’re finished with your coffee, we’ll head up to the main house and give that file to Dalton,” he said, breaking the silence. “I’ll call Jim Ramsey from there to check in. My sister should have a pair of shoes you can borrow until we get back to your place.”

  She downed the last of her coffee and stood. “I’m ready when you are. I’m eager to get back to the ranch and get things going on fixing up the damage.”

  He stood, as well. “Before we go anywhere I need to get you something else to wear.” The muscle that had ticked in his jaw the night before was back.

  “What’s wrong with what I’ve got on?” Shorts and a T-shirt were not uncommon attire for her.

  The muscle ticked faster. “The shorts are too short. It looks like you don’t have anything but legs beneath that shirt.” Before she could reply, he disappeared into his bedroom and returned with a pair of sweatpants. “Put these on, then we’ll go.”

  Kate returned to the bedroom where she’d slept and took off the shorts and pulled on the sweatpants, her heart hammering rapidly, not in the rhythm of fear, but rather in the beat of something entirely different.

  There had been just a moment as he’d handed her the pants that she’d seen something burning in his eyes, something she’d never expected to see from Zack West.

  Desire.

  She’d thought she’d seen it in the depths of his eyes last night just before he’d left her porch, but she’d dismissed it.

  She’d assumed the crackling electricity between them had something to do with the negativity of their past relationship, but now she recognized what she’d been feeling for him was desire. And apparently he felt it, too.

  She had little time to digest this novel idea. She had a sheriff to talk to, a house to rebuild and a killer to catch. Zack was obviously ready to get the day under way for he stood at the front door, jingling the keys in his hand.