While he was almost positive Charles didn’t know that Moira might be leading him right in the jaws of a potentially pissed-off mama gator, he wasn’t going to risk that he and Zeke were inferring more into her comment than what was there.
And that was Moira.
He wasn’t going to let her near a fucking gator either.
Especially a mama with young.
Charles, though … well. Moira had mentioned him being gator bait.
Breathing slow and steady, Gideon continued his deliberate trek through the heavy growth, never once taking his eyes from Moira and Charles.
Each time Charles stumbled, Gideon weighed his options.
Each time, the son of a bitch steadied himself before Gideon had the chance to decide if he could safely get in a shot.
Keep her safe. This time, he wasn’t praying. He was demanding. He knew it didn’t work that way, but he didn’t care.
* * *
Moira’s head bobbed and swayed and the red seemed to blur in and out of focus, but Charles kept his eyes focused on the one that seemed most … well, real.
Every once in a while, there would be three of her and wasn’t that a pisser.
One Moira McKay was quite enough, thank you.
The shock had long since faded and Charles thought briefly of making her stop and do something to tie off his arm. He was losing blood and quite a bit of it, but it was no longer pulsing from him in a steady flow, so there was no arterial damage. He remembered that much from university, back before the stupid fucks had decided he wasn’t quite up to snuff.
Not that he’d wanted to be a bloody doctor anyway, but it would have been useful. Had proven useful anyway in the long run, hadn’t it?
He could make it to the jon boat and once he did, he’d figure out what to do with his arm.
Bugger, but it hurt.
That dog.
He should have killed it when he had the chance.
Moira stumbled ahead of him and he snarled. “Fuck me, Moira. You’re all cack-handed. Can’t you stay off your bloody arse?”
She turned her head as she rose to her feet, giving him a chilly smile.
Perhaps that smile should have warned him.
But he’d seen that icy smile before.
It was the one she wore when she was brassed off and he hadn’t expected anything less from her. He truly hoped she’d be angry. Because it would be that much more enjoyable to crush her to nothing.
She caught a tree when her foot slid on something and she gasped.
Swearing, he shouldered past her. “Stop your bloody whinging.”
“You’re not the one stomping around in the winter barefoot, you dumbass,” she said from behind him.
“There’s my dear wife. So eloquent and elegant.” He said it mockingly as he squinted into the bright sunlight. The tree line had ended some yards back but they were just now breaking free of the shade. He squinted into the light as he turned to look at Moira. “Come along, love. We’ve got so much to discuss. You cannot possibly understand how long I’ve waited for this.”
“Sure.” Moira took one slow step toward him, her eyes flicking past him. “Ah … Charles? You might want to be careful.”
He gestured at her. “Enough with the games, pet. Come on.”
She took one more small step forward, her eyes still on the ground. “Know what I said I’d do to the man who put these marks on my neck? I told Gideon I’d turn him into gator bait.”
“Yes, I’m sure you did.” He dipped his head and gestured toward the riverbank—and his boat. “Let’s go.”
He took one step.
There was a strange hissing sound.
“Charles … did you know that alligators don’t hibernate in the winter? They go torpid, but if it warms up enough…”
Moira’s eyes were narrowed and she was no longer looking at the ground. She was staring at him with cold practical calculation. Slowly, Charles lowered his gaze.
His breath froze.
His very blood froze.
The knobby eyes protruding from the top of the skull looked up at him with nothing more than pure, predatory intent. There were smaller ones around the big one and dimly, Charles had some vague memory of his father talking about his mum—it would have been Charles’ gran. He’d never met her. But his father had talked of her often … She was something, Charlie. Would have fought the devil for me. Would have taken on ol’ Paddy McKay himself too.
The alligator hissed. Charles threw himself toward Moira, grabbing her. “Not so fast, you little cunt,” he snarled. She drove her elbow into his gut. A shot rang out. It hit the dirt near his feet.
“Try it again and I’ll throw her to that fucking monster over there!” he roared.
Moira sank her teeth into his hand, fighting like a wild beast. She kicked at his shins and swung back with her head.
“I’ll fucking do it,” Charles said, wheeling around to look for the alligator.
It was back in its spot, staring at them as they struggled. He hauled Moira farther into the trees. It took them closer toward where the gunfire had come from, but he had a feeling the shooters would easier to rationalize with than a prehistoric eating machine.
The alligator slowly lowered her head.
The adrenaline flooding him started to ebb.
Another shot came tearing out of the woods and he swore, wheeling around. But it hadn’t come from the hill.
Eyes wide, he looked up.
Gideon stepped out from behind a tree, weapon steady.
The one Charles held was anything but, and his vision was graying around the edges too. He grabbed Moira’s throat, struggling to think. That dog. Stupid, miserable dog.
“I should get that dog, feed it to the alligator,” he said against her ear as he stared at Gideon.
She called him a coward, and he squeezed her throat until the noise cut off.
“Let her go, Charles. You got nowhere to run and you know it.”
As if to reiterate that, the white dog emerged from Charles’ left, followed closely by Zeke. Charles started to edge through the heavy growth toward the west. There was no path there, but they could all see the river—
A line of fire was laid down.
Gideon smiled at him, his eyes cold and flat.
Those eyes made him think of the alligator’s. Full of nothing but predatory interest. “Maybe I’ll just take her with me,” he said, surprised at how level his voice was.
“We’ll kill you before you have the chance, boy,” the old man near the dog said. “Although I’m thinking I’ll just shoot you in the fucking kneecaps and let the gator eat you. They don’t get as much to eat in the winter. And they ain’t picky. They’ll eat any old piece of shit.”
He eased up on the pressure on Moira’s throat as he thought through his options. They were getting decidedly slim.
However, he wouldn’t die on this island. Not here. Not where everything had started. Patrick McKay had started it all here. He’d taken the money that would have been his—George’s, he told himself. But it would have come to him. He would have had his own fucking dynasty, just like the McKays.
He squeezed Moira’s throat one final time, hard, brutal, fast.
Then he flung her toward Gideon. “Here. Take your slag, Marshall.”
He darted behind the fallen tree near him, ignoring the voices shouting after him to get on the ground. Like that would bloody happen. Another shot rang out, close—too close. He crashed into a rotting stump when he instinctively ducked, his right arm smacking into it. The scream that tore out of him sounded like nothing human.
Sensing the men drawing closer to him, he lurched out of the trees, focusing on nothing but the glint of sunlight on water.
He didn’t see the wriggling little body until he’d already stepped on it, nor would he have cared.
Mama gator cared, though.
There was a shout. If he heard the panic, it didn’t quite penetrate.
It wasn’t unti
l something grabbed his leg that the urgency in those shouts actually penetrated the pain fogging his head, and then the pain got worse.
So much worse.
He went down.
Instinctively, he kicked out, but part of him thought … well, mate, that’s it then …
A boom echoed in his ears.
Somebody shouted.
A face appeared in his line of vision and then hands grabbed him, dragged him away. He found himself looking up into Moira’s face.
She really was rather lovely.
She glared at him. “Don’t say that, you son of a bitch.”
“I di…” He frowned. Had he said that outloud? And why couldn’t he …
He was cold.
Reaching up, he went to rub at his eyes.
Seemed darker than it should be. Something smacked him in the face and he blinked, confused.
The locket.
Moira’s locket. Everything felt slow and stiff as he grabbed at it, held on.
“Where’s the treasure, love?” he asked, his tongue so thick it was hard to form the words.
“There isn’t…” She sighed. “Let me have my locket, Charles. I’ll show you how to find it.”
“That’s right, love.” He blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes, then he swore as pain tried to eat up his leg.
Voices clamored all around, like gnats buzzing in his ears. “Fucking noise. Sod it. Where’s the treasure, Moira? Told my father I’d find it. Promised.”
“I imagine you did.” She held something up and he looked.
“I don’t…” He blinked and tried to catch the swaying, shining …
Moira guided his hand, steadied it as she guided the locket closer.
His gaze swam in and out of focus.
From a distance that seemed like miles, he thought he heard Marshall barking orders. “Keep him talking, Moira … fuck.”
“Tell that prick to…” Charles blinked, then his voice trailed off as the words on the locket finally swam into focus. “No. No, that can’t be…”
“It is. It was there all the time, Charles.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“He didn’t make it.”
Moira rubbed the locket with a soft rag somebody had given her. She didn’t know who. She’d been cleaning unseen blood from the surface for what seemed like hours.
They’d sat in the small, rundown county hospital for nearly two hours while doctors tried to save Charles Hurst, the man she’d tried to convince herself she loved.
Gideon sat across from her.
“Mac?”
Slowly, she lifted her eyes and met his, a knot in her throat bigger than the entire damn state. “Am I a killer now?” she asked, her voice raw.
“No…” Gideon came to her, his voice raw. “Baby, no.”
“I knew that alligator was there. I knew she had her young with her and I knew Charles probably didn’t know much about them.” Tears blurred her eyes. Pressing her face against his neck, she tried to hold back the sobs, but she couldn’t. They ripped out of her and for the next few minutes, it was a chore just to breathe with all the pain that came tearing out of her.
Gideon rocked her, stroking a hand up and down her spine, his cheek resting on her hair.
When the door burst open, he wasn’t surprised to see Brannon and Neve, followed closely by Ella Sue and her husband, along with Ian and Hannah. Hannah was moving a little slower and Ian stayed with her, allowing the siblings to get to Moira first.
Family, he thought absently. It was a family bearing down on them.
But they came up short when they saw Gideon holding Moira cradled against his chest.
Neve went to lunge for them, but Ella Sue caught her arm, giving Gideon a questioning look. He lifted his head just a fraction and shook it in response to that silent question.
Not yet.
So they retreated.
Because that was family … sometimes pain cut too deep to share all at once.
Long moments passed before the storm of misery eased. Gideon didn’t think Moira had even realized the others were there. From time to time, he saw them pacing just beyond the narrow slit windows, their frustration palpable. But his concern was Moira. As it always was.
She sniffed against his neck.
“How mad are you?” she asked, her voice raspy.
He didn’t pretend not to understand.
“At you walking off with a man who had a loaded gun? Oh, I don’t think mad covers it. I’m thinking about spanking you.”
She gave a watery laugh, then snuggled in closer. “Okay.”
“It’s no fun for me if you’re okay with the idea. Well, yeah it is. But you could pretend some reluctance.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair.
“I don’t have the energy for that.” Another sigh shuddered out of her, a wet sound that was too much like a sob for his comfort. “I keep seeing the way he looked when he went down.”
“He could have lowered that weapon at any time, Moira. He could have walked away. He made his choices. You told him that she was active—he’s seen enough gators moving around in the summer to know what that means, baby.” He’s … Mentally, he corrected himself. Charles had seen. He’d never see another.
The mother alligator had sank her teeth into his lower leg and torn at him, ripping at his leg and severing it right at the knee.
Logically, Gideon could say she’d been doing what any decent mother would do—protecting her babies. Charles had stepped on one of them when he’d been stomping off after Moira had already warned him about the alligator.
If he hadn’t already had some blood loss, Gideon and Zeke might have been able to do more for him, but by the time EMTs, quickly followed by paramedics, had arrived, Charles had already been hovering right at death’s door.
Gideon didn’t mourn the bastard.
But he mourned for Moira.
Sinking his fist into her hair, he tugged until she lifted her head and then he rubbed his lips across hers. “You are not a killer. You were fighting for your life … for mine. He’s been targeting all of you for years. You were fighting for all of you. You’re a fighter, Mac.
A sigh escaped her and this time, it was steadier.
It parted her lips, and he let himself kiss her.
A quick kiss, he told himself. Just one.
But as she opened for him and sank into his arms, he had hot, ugly flashes of the day slam into him. One right after the other. Neve showing up at his house, showing him the information she’d found. Himself, showing up at Brannon’s only to find Moira missing. Charles’ house, empty.
The call from Zeke.
Seeing that son of a bitch holding her, one hand at her throat.
Moira whimpered against his lips and strained closer. He shifted her around in his lap and shoved both hands into her hair, craning her head farther back as he hauled her closer.
Need punched into him hard and brutal.
She was alive.
She was safe.
She was alive.
Part of him still didn’t believe it, not yet, but each stroke of her tongue across his and each delicious bite of her fingernails into his arms made him more and more aware.
If it hadn’t been for the gentle clearing of a throat, Gideon later realized, he might have done something that would have embarrassed them both.
Tearing his mouth away from Moira’s, he looked up, dazed and a little surprised to see the plain, utilitarian white walls of the surgical waiting room around him.
Hospital.
Damn.
Hell.
“Shit.”
Ella Sue cocked a brow at him.
She stood inside the door. She was the only one inside, but several other faces were all but smashed against the glass. Neve wagged her eyebrows. Brannon scowled at him, while Hannah and Ian looked like they wanted to bust out laughing.
Moira stiffened in his arms, her breathing slowly returning to normal. “Why do I get the odd feeling tha
t Ella Sue is staring at me?” she asked, looking at his throat.
“Well.” Gideon flicked a look from Ella Sue to Moira.
“You called them.”
“I did.”
Moira dropped her head onto his shoulder. “That’s … well, that’s good. I guess they’ve been worried.”
He slid a hand up her back. “Yeah. Look at it this way. I think you’ve scarred your brother for life. Your day has one bright spot, right?”
She snorted out a laugh. It had that odd, half-sob sound. She went to hug him, and her locket smacked into his cheek. “Beating me with jewelry won’t help, Mac.”
He tugged it from her hand as she looked over her shoulder at Ella Sue. “They can come in,” she said softly.
Ella Sue stepped aside. Brannon was the first one in.
“Say one thing, kid, and I’ll tell you all about the time I walked in on Mom and Dad having sex,” Moira warned.
Brannon stopped dead in his tracks.
Hannah sniggered.
Gideon smiled a little but was staring at her locket. She’d shown this to Charles as he lay there, bleeding to death. She squirmed off Gideon’s lap, glancing down at him before she turned to face her siblings and Ella Sue.
While they wrapped her up in hugs, Gideon flipped open the locket.
There was a tiny, hand-painted miniature that he knew was of Madeleine, Patrick McKay’s wife. On the opposite side of the locket was an inscription.
Gideon frowned as he read it through once, then a second time.
My Greatest Treasure
Moira eased down into the seat next to him. Everybody was firing questions at her, but when they saw the look on her face, oddly enough, silence fell.
Moira took the locket from him gently. “He was looking for a treasure. The past hundred fifty, hundred sixty years people talked about some mythical treasure that Paddy had buried somewhere, all because of a few words he wrote in a journal that disappeared. He’d talk about it, too, I know, when he was drunk, which was probably more often than he needed to be. But they never seemed to get it.”
She lowered the locket and Gideon watched as she pressed on something with the edge of her thumb.
“Madeleine was pregnant when he had that commissioned,” Neve said.
Gideon looked up, saw the smile on the youngest McKay’s face. She leaned against Ian, her head on his chest. Although Brannon didn’t say anything, he reached over and rubbed at Hannah’s swollen belly.
The Right Kind of Trouble Page 31