Defending the Rancher's Daughter

by Carla Cassidy

  He stood on the porch, trying to figure in which direction to begin searching. Odd, that Sonny had appeared to be hurrying away from the side of the house. Even more odd that he’d been on foot. He was usually on horseback.

  Heart bumping, adrenaline flooding, he stepped off the porch and headed around the house. Nothing appeared to be amiss as he walked to the back.

  The back door was locked tight, all the windows seemed to be fine. Everything looked perfectly normal, but his anxiety level was off the charts.

  As he rounded the last corner of the house he saw the root cellar door. Somebody had recently cut the weeds away from the metal door that led into the ground. But that wasn’t the sight that chilled his blood. On top of the door lay a dozen concrete blocks…blocks that hadn’t been there the last time he’d walked by it.

  Why would somebody go to the trouble of putting so many of the heavy concrete blocks on the door? Surely they hadn’t been placed there to keep somebody out. The only reason for them to be there was to shut somebody in.

  Zack scrambled to remove the blocks, throwing them off the door helter-skelter, his heart once again crashing with an unsteady rhythm.

  When he had the blocks removed, he opened the door. “Katie?” he called.

  “Don’t come down here.” Her voice was low and held an unsteady intensity.

  He leaned down and peered down the stairs and the sight that greeted him shot ice through his veins. Katie stood on an overturned bucket frozen like a statue. Rattlesnakes writhed around the bucket. Their tails rattling to warn of imminent and deadly strikes.

  Chapter 17

  The moment the door opened overhead and she heard Zack’s voice, Kate had wanted to scream with joy, but she knew any sudden movement, any loud noise, could mean her death.

  She’d feared she’d die down here among her mother’s jars of canned goods and ancient newspapers. She had no idea how long she’d been frozen in place, silently weeping as she faced her own death and a million regrets.

  Zack came down the first two steps and crouched there, the look in his eyes emphasizing the seriousness of her situation. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “As okay as I can be,” she replied.

  “We need to get you out of here.”

  A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to erupt. “Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to get out of here. But how?” The laughter disappeared as despair took hold. “If I step down, I’ll be bitten. They’re agitated.” As if to punctuate her sentence several of the snakes coiled and rattled.

  He frowned. “I can’t shoot them down here. The noise alone would make the others strike.”

  “Somebody threw them down here,” she said, horror filling her for the hundredth time since that burlap bag had been tossed down the stairs. “Somebody knew I was down here and threw them, then shut the door.” She paused. “It wasn’t Brett, was it? We made a mistake.”

  “It seems we did.” His jaw clenched tight. “Katie, you can jump to me.”

  She stared at him in horror and new tears sprang to her eyes. “No! No, I can’t. It’s too far.” The thought of even attempting such a jump filled her with fear. If she didn’t make the distance the snakes would kill her with their deadly venom and she would die before help could arrive.

  “Katie, honey, listen to me.” Zack’s voice was as smooth and calm as she’d ever heard it. “I’ve seen you jump from the tallest branches of a tree down to the ground. You used to leap from one porch railing to the other trying to get your dad’s attention when I’d come to visit. You can do this.”

  “It wasn’t about me wanting my dad’s attention.” It was suddenly vitally important that he know what she had discovered about herself, about him, during the course of the morning. “It was about me wanting your attention, Zack. I was nothing but a kid in your eyes, but even then I wanted to be so much more. I love you, Zack. I’ve been in love with you since I was a kid.”

  Her words had stunned him. She could tell by the expression on his face. “It’s okay, you don’t have to love me back,” she continued. “I just needed to tell you, I wanted to tell you in case I die.”

  “Katie, honey, can we talk about this after we get you out of here?”

  “Zack…I can’t jump that far.” Again, fear trembled through her, making her legs feel like jelly.

  “Yes, you can. I know you can and if you get to the stairs I’ll grab you. Dammit, Katie, you can do this.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Katie Sampson afraid? I never thought the day would come that a little jump would freeze you with fear. Now, come on. Jump to me, Katie. Jump into my arms.” He held his arms out toward her.

  Oh, to be in his arms again, she thought wistfully. Although she wanted to escape the snakes, she wanted more to be pulled against his chest, to feel his heartbeat against her own.

  If she thought about what she was about to do she knew she’d freeze up or stumble over her own feet. Instead she focused only on Zack, telling herself she wasn’t jumping over or away from anything but rather leaping into his arms.

  Summoning her strength and her will to survive, she leaped…and gasped as she connected solidly with him. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up the stairs, away from the deadly rattlers.

  “Are you all right?” He placed his hands on either side of her face. “No bites?” She shook her head, too weak with relief to respond. “Go to the house and lock yourself in. Call Sheriff Ramsey and get him out here. I know who did this.”

  “Who?” She managed to squeak the words.

  “I’ll tell you later.” He kissed her then, a hard crush of lips that stole what little breath she had left. “Go,” he ordered, and pointed to the house.

  Although she wanted to ask him why he’d kissed her, wanted to know why he’d called her honey, she was smart enough to recognize she needed to do as he’d said.

  As she hurried toward the front door she saw him walking away, a determined strength in his shoulders, his gun held firm in his hand.

  It wasn’t until she was safely inside the house and had made the call to the sheriff’s office that the trauma she’d just endured struck her. She sank to the sofa and wept tears of relief. The tears lasted only a moment as questions filled her head.

  She got up and went to the front window and peered outside, thinking of the evil mind, the hatred it took to lock her in the cellar with a half dozen poisonous snakes. It was the same kind of devious mind that had tied her into her bedroom then set it on fire.

  Who? Who would have done such a thing and why? There was only one person who had known that she was going to be in the root cellar that day. Sonny.

  Sonny had been absent the night of the fire. He’d been Johnny on the spot right after the stampede. And, it was in the direction of Sonny’s small cabin that Zack had stalked with gun in hand.

  Her heart pounded with anxiety. Sonny wasn’t a drunk, nor was he a young greenhorn. He knew how to handle a gun and was as strong as a moose. She hoped the sheriff arrived soon. She needed Zack to be safe…so he could tell her why he’d kissed her with such fervor.

  Zack knew he had to get a handle on the fury that gripped him as he walked toward the small cabin Sonny called home. Seeing Katie surrounded by those snakes, hearing the trembling fear in her voice, had filled him with a killing rage of his own. Somebody was going to pay for Katie’s terrified tears. Somebody was definitely going to pay.

  He approached the cabin cautiously, using the woods surrounding the place as cover. He had no idea what Sonny’s motive might be for wanting to hurt either Gray or Katie, but Zack knew in his gut the man was responsible for the snakes in the root cellar.

  His suspicion was confirmed as the door to the small cabin swung open and Sonny hurried out, carrying two suitcases in his hands. He threw the suitcases into the back of his truck then disappeared into the cabin once again. Looked as though he was packing up to leave town. Only the guilty ran like a cockroach in the mornin
g light.

  Zack moved closer, crouching by the side of the truck opposite the front door. It was several minutes before he heard the screen door slam and knew Sonny had exited the house once again.

  He clicked the safety off his gun and stood. “Going somewhere, Sonny?” He held the gun steady in front of him, pointed directly at the man he believed responsible for the misery in Katie’s life.

  “Zack! Since when do you greet me with a gun in your hand?”

  “Since you chose to attack what’s mine.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sonny was bluffing.

  The man’s hand moved toward his holstered gun.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Zack warned. “I’m just itching to blow a hole through your hide. Just tell me why, Sonny? Why would you want to hurt Gray? Hurt Katie? You were like family to them.”

  Sonny snorted in derision. “Don’t be stupid. I wasn’t like family. I was the hired help, busting my butt year after year, knowing that I was never going to get ahead.”

  “So, you killed Gray?” Zack looked at him with disdain.

  “I’m not about to admit to anything,” Sonny replied, but the look on his face told Zack his answer. Sonny had been responsible for it all.

  “What did Katie ever do to you?” Zack wanted to punch the man in the face as he thought of the terror that Katie had endured.

  “Nothing. And Gray never did anything to me. It wasn’t personal, Zack.” His eyes gleamed with secrets. “It was strictly business and it’s bigger than Gray and Katie and that’s all I’m going to say.”

  That’s all he had an opportunity to say for at that moment the sound of a siren split the air and within minutes Jim Ramsey had pulled his patrol car in front of the cabin.

  “Zack,” he said as he sized up the situation. “Kate filled me in a bit on what’s going on. Sonny, you got anything to say?”

  “I got nothing to say to nobody.”

  “Okay, then.” Sheriff Ramsey handcuffed Sonny and placed him in the back of the patrol car. “You and Kate need to come down to the station and make statements. I have a feeling it’s going to take a while to sort this all out.”

  As the sheriff drove off with Sonny in the back of his car, Zack trekked back to the house to Katie. She must have been watching for him because before he hit the porch she opened the door.

  “Thank God, you’re all right,” she said.

  “Ramsey arrested Sonny. We need to go down to the sheriff’s office and make statements.”

  She nodded. “Just let me get my purse.”

  She disappeared into the house while Zack remained on the porch, his thoughts spinning in a thousand different directions.

  Although Sonny had clammed up the minute the sheriff had arrived, what little he’d said before Jim had arrested him merely confused the whole situation.

  Bigger than Gray and Katie. Katie had told him she loved him. Nothing personal…she’d loved him for years. Strictly business. This job had become so much more than strictly business.

  He couldn’t think about his relationship with Katie until things with Sonny were taken care of. He turned as she came out of the house.

  Moments later they were in his truck and he was telling her what Sonny had said to him. When he finished, she frowned. “What did he mean, Zack, that it was bigger than me and my father?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe by the time we get to the office Jim will have some answers for us. All I know for certain is that Sonny is responsible for your dad’s death as well as the attacks on you. He must have placed the gun and the air horn in Brett’s footlocker to point suspicion in another direction.”

  “I thought I was going to die in that cellar.” Her voice held a faint tremor. “I thought nobody would ever find me and eventually I’d grow tired and fall off the bucket.” He felt her gaze on him. “What made you come back?”

  “It didn’t feel right. All my instincts told me we had the wrong man in jail. All my instincts told me Brett wasn’t smart enough to pull off something like this.”

  “I’m glad you came back. I’m sorry. All the things I said to you this morning, I was upset and I didn’t mean them.”

  “It’s all right. We’ll talk about it later. Right now we need to make sure we give Sheriff Ramsey enough information to keep Sonny in jail for a very long time to come.”

  By the time they arrived at the sheriff’s office Jim had already dispatched several officers to the cabin with a search warrant and had received a phone call from one of the officers calling in what they’d found.

  “A couple of things of interest,” he said to Zack and Katie as the two sat with him in his office. “They found an aquarium that was used to keep snakes. They also found the same kind of rope that was used to tie your door shut on the night of the fire.”

  “Has Sonny said anything else?” Katie asked. “Has he said why he did all this?”

  “He’s refusing to say anything,” Jim replied. “My men also found a savings account book in his bedroom. It shows a deposit of one hundred thousand dollars on the afternoon of your father’s death.”

  Zack narrowed his eyes in thought. “So, he wasn’t acting alone.”

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Kate,” Jim said. “We’ll chase down the source of that money and figure out what in the hell is going on. I swear to you both, we’re going to stay on top of this.”

  Zack believed Jim meant what he said, but he intended to see to it that Wild West Protective Services used every resource in its power to investigate, as well.

  Bigger than Gray and Katie. “You might want to reopen the investigation into Joe Wainfield’s death,” Zack said, once again functioning on instinct.

  Jim Ramsey’s raised a grizzled eyebrow. “You think there’s a connection?”

  “I think anything is possible. Sonny said it was bigger than just what was happening at the Bent Tree Ranch. Maybe you need to see what’s happening on the other ranches around the area.”

  Ramsey nodded. “Looks like I’ve got all I need from you two. I’ll stay in touch and let you know anything that turns up.”

  As they left the office Zack wondered if Katie’s words to him while she’d been in the cellar had been the truth or simply the hysterical muttering of a woman afraid of death.

  Facing Sonny had been nothing compared to the nervous tension that now rolled in his stomach as he waited to see what Katie might say.

  It was almost four by the time they arrived back at the ranch. The drive home had been filled with meaningless small talk, all the while Kate had wondered what Zack was thinking, if he remembered at all the heartfelt confession she’d spilled while standing on the bucket contemplating her possible death.

  They got out of the truck but instead of going inside she dropped into one of the two chairs on the porch. He eased down into the other chair.

  “It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve sat here,” she said.

  “I think any immediate danger to you has passed. Whatever was going on, whoever was ultimately responsible, with Sonny in jail they must realize their days are numbered.”

  “It will be nice to have my normal life back.” Would anything ever feel normal again? she wondered. Her heart was so filled with Zack she wasn’t sure how life would be without him. She only knew it would be lonely and desolate.

  She expected him at any moment to get up and leave, to tell her a final goodbye and not look back. But he seemed to be in no hurry to go.

  When she’d bared her soul to him, telling him that she loved him, that she thought she’d always loved him, he’d told her they would talk about it later. She couldn’t bring it up now, her pride wouldn’t allow it. The ball was in his court and it was up to him.

  Minutes ticked by as they sat silently. Each minute was torture for her. Why didn’t he say something? And if he wasn’t going to say anything, then why didn’t he just go?

  Before she broke down. Before she c
ried.

  “You know I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life.” He finally broke the silence. “I know I don’t want to work for the family business unless it involves something here in town. I might run for sheriff when the time comes, but that’s not a guarantee.” He didn’t look at her, but rather stared off into the distance. “But I’m a good ranch hand and rumor has it you’re in the market for a new ranch manager.”

  She was in love with him and he was talking to her about job opportunities. She tried to imagine seeing him every day, having him work with her around the ranch. She wanted him as a partner, a soul mate, not simply as a ranch manager.

  “I can’t do that, Zack. I can’t work with you every day knowing that come night you’ll go back to your own house.”

  “Then maybe I shouldn’t go home nights.”

  He looked at her then, holding her half-breathless with an intense gaze. “Maybe I should stick around until we know who was the mastermind behind your dad’s murder and everything that has happened here on the ranch.”

  There was something in his gaze that gave her hope. “Who knows how long that could take,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I mean, it could be months…maybe even years before we know the truth.”

  He nodded. “I promised you before that I was in this until the end.” He stood and held out his hand toward her. She didn’t hesitate, she rose and grabbed his hand, her heart thudding furiously.

  “I’m not always an easy man, Katie. I’m stubborn and can be difficult.” A smile curved one corner of his mouth. “In other words, I’m not exactly Prince Charming material.”

  She squeezed his hand. “That’s a relief, because I’m not exactly Sleeping Beauty material.”

  He pulled her up against him, his mouth mere inches from hers as his arms enfolded her. “I didn’t expect to fall in love with anyone, especially you. But you’ve turned my world upside down and the only way to make it right is to spend the rest of my life with you.”