“Believe it,” Jeremy said softly. He propped a boot on his knee and studied the heel for a long moment. “That’s not the worst of it.” He lifted a solemn gaze to Jake’s. “Another draw was made five days ago.”
Jake stiffened. “So you think we should be expecting more trouble?”
“If I’m correct in my suspicions, yes, and I believe I am. If things go according to schedule, we can expect something to happen the day after tomorrow, maybe the next day.”
Indigo glanced up at Jake, her eyes filled with alarm. “Another cave-in, do you think?”
“There’s no telling.” Jake scratched his jaw. “We should start watching the mines tomorrow night then.” He shot Jeremy a look. “Each time before, the tunnels were sabotaged the night prior to the accident. It’d be my guess our man will stick to the same methods, since they’ve worked well. You couldn’t find any information that hinted at who their contact here might be?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Father’s too smart to leave written evidence of that sort. I’d guess it’s all been handled by verbal agreement, payoff in cash so it can never be proved.” He turned to regard Indigo. “You can’t know how sorry I am—about what happened to your father and everything. What must you think?”
“I think it’s very good of you to try to stop it,” she said softly. “And I pity your father. He must be an unhappy man.”
The coffeepot began to boil. Jake moved it off to the side so it wouldn’t spill over. To Jeremy, he said, “Are you up to some midnight vigils? I think we should watch both mines, just in case. If we can catch the bastard messing around at either site, we can get all the proof we need to confront Father.”
Jeremy nodded. “And then what, Jake?”
A tight feeling spread through Jake’s chest. He had never particularly liked his father, but the blood ties were there, and he couldn’t help but care. It hurt to think of bringing about the old man’s downfall. Then again, Jake couldn’t forget the harm done to Hunter Wolf and his family and countless others.
Not to mention his mother. . . . In a way, maybe it was fitting that her sons should destroy the man who had so callously destroyed her. Jake looked at Indigo. His wife. Now that he had lain with her, he felt a thousand times more protective. Never, he vowed, never in a thousand years would he repeat his father’s mistakes. Nothing would ever be so important to him that he would jeopardize Indigo’s well-being.
Dragging his mind back to Jeremy’s question, Jake replied, “I don’t know, Jeremy. I can’t think that far ahead yet. Let’s get the evidence, then worry about what to do with it. Retributions must be made—that’s a certainty. Beyond that, we’ll have to decide.”
Jeremy pressed his lips together, his face drawn. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He took a bracing breath. “So what’s the plan, you watch one mine and me the other?”
Jake nodded.
Indigo straightened. “I want to go, too. Three pairs of eyes are better than two.”
Jake looked over at her. Without any hesitation whatsoever, he said, “Absolutely not.”
Indigo stiffened. Jake’s stern tone brooked no argument, but this was far too important to let slide. “Jake, my father’s whole life is on the line. Everything we’ve worked years to build. If you’re worried about the danger, please don’t. It’s my risk and my decision.”
His jaw tensed. “Correction. It’s my decision, and I just made it. You’re not going anywhere near there.”
“But I—”
He riveted her with his gaze. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe I said the matter was open for debate.”
“Jake, there’s a large area to watch up there,” she cried. “We’d have a better chance of catching him if three people were in position. You’re being unreasonable.”
Looking into Indigo’s blue eyes, Jake could see how important it was to her that he allow her to go. Unfortunately, all he could think of was the possible danger. Letting her work was one thing, but he’d be damned if he would deliberately put her into a situation where she might get hurt. Her father’s damned mine wasn’t that important. Nothing was that important.
“If the need arises, I can take care of myself,” she assured him.
“You have a husband to take care of you now.”
“Please, Jake, this is important to me.” She curled her hands into fists. “Whoever it is nearly killed my father. I have a right to my little piece of revenge.”
Jake’s expression remained implacable. “I’ve made my decision.”
“Not a fair one.”
“I don’t have to be fair. You’re my wife, and you’ll do as I say, about this and everything else. End of discussion.”
Indigo felt as if she’d been slapped. Cheeks stinging, she sat there a moment and stared at the floor, acutely aware of Jeremy sitting across the table from her. A tense silence fell over the room. She remembered how solicitous Jake had been about her feelings last night and couldn’t help but feel he’d just done an about-face. She glanced up to find that Jeremy was smiling, as if he found the exchange between her and Jake hilariously funny. She wondered if Jake’s change in attitude had anything to do with his brother’s arrival.
“Some things never change,” Jeremy said with a chuckle.
Jake cleared his throat. “I hope you’ll excuse us. Like all newlyweds, we run into the occasional wrinkle that has to be ironed out.”
Indigo didn’t particularly appreciate having her feelings about something so important referred to as a wrinkle. She pushed up from her chair and, without looking up, said, “I believe I’ll lie down for a while.”
“I’ll haul in some water and put it on to heat,” Jake said.
Indigo paused at the door. “I’d really rather not take a bath this evening.” She shot a meaningful glance in Jeremy’s direction. “If I’m not better by morning, I can take one then.”
Jake drew the bucket from under the dish board. “Then you’d be sore all day tomorrow. I’ll holler when I’ve got the tub all ready. Jeremy can stay in the sitting room.”
Indigo’s nape prickled. He expected her to bathe when his brother was in the house? She stared at him. “Jake, I really—”
“Just leave it to me,” he came back.
For the second time in as many minutes, he was being arrogantly authoritative. Indigo flashed him a mutinous glare and left the room.
Chapter 24
FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL NIGHTS, JAKE dropped Indigo off at her parents’ house at about midnight so she wouldn’t be left alone while he and Jeremy kept vigil over the mines. Contrary to Jeremy’s prediction, no trouble occurred, and they saw no one lurking near the tunnels. One night Jeremy thought he spied a shadow moving near the entrance of Number Two, but when he crept close, there was no one there.
Reasoning that any vandalism would probably occur in the dead hours after midnight, the two men left their stands at about three and headed back for Wolf’s Landing. Jake wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Indigo resented being excluded from his and Jeremy’s nightly forays. He knew she would have preferred it if he hadn’t gone by her parents’ to fetch her each night on his way home. His only comfort came from the knowledge that his decision to keep her safely uninvolved was for her own good. One day, once she got over being angry, he felt sure she’d realize that.
Jeremy’s return from Wahat, the number two mine, took an hour and a half longer than it took Jake from Number One. That lapse in time gave Jake an opportunity to stay at the Wolfs’ to eat the snack Loretta had waiting for him each night and still have the necessary privacy to make love to his wife after he walked her home. He didn’t let Indigo’s initial reluctance forestall him from doing just that. He had never been one to resist a challenge, especially when the rewards were so incredibly sweet.
Indigo. . . . She was a fever in Jake’s blood. Even when she tried to resist, she responded to his touch with a passionate abandon that he had never expected. Jake tried a dozen different times to cajole her
out of being angry with him, but, as always, words didn’t serve him well. In his urgency to impart his feelings to her, he pressed his attentions on her with more passion and possessiveness than he might have if eloquence had been his.
He wasn’t certain how Indigo felt about making love with him when she was feeling resentful toward him. He knew it stung her pride a bit that a brush of his hand could send her senses reeling, but she surrendered so sweetly, Jake couldn’t resist. At least when she was in his arms, there was no anger between them. Like the explosives she so expertly handled, once he got her fuse lit, she went off like a little bundle of dynamite.
One night during preliminary lovemaking, he looked down into her passion-heavy eyes and couldn’t resist teasing her. “For a girl who didn’t want any part of this, you’ve sure taken to it.”
Breathless and trembling, she strained up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “The same thing happened with asparagus.”
Jake chuckled and cupped her fanny in his hands, lifting her against him so her mouth could reach his. “Asparagus?”
“Yes.” She nibbled impatiently at his lips. “I took one look and thought I’d hate it.” She ran her hands into his hair and drew his head down to accommodate herself. “Ma finally forced me to eat some, and for weeks, I couldn’t get enough.”
Jake’s last thought before he acquiesced and kissed the little hoyden was that he hoped she didn’t lose her craving for him in a few short weeks. He would need a lifetime of loving her like this to satisfy his own.
As had become her habit, Indigo lay in the circle of Jake’s strong arm after making love that night and wondered what had come over her. Since their disagreement, she had made the unnerving discovery that she couldn’t resist his touch, not even when she was angry with him. A strategic brush of his hand could make her quiver like a plucked bowstring.
The most humiliating part of it was that he knew the power he had over her. Sometimes, in the throes of passion, Indigo’s head would clear and she would look up into his eyes and see a possessive, satisfied gleam that said more clearly than words, “You’re mine—completely and irrevocably mine. Try to fight it if you like. When I touch you, you can’t hold on to your anger.”
And she knew it was true. The realization frightened her. Jake tended to be overprotective. If she gave in too easily over this, he might be just as autocratic about other things. It was crucial that she take a stand now and let him know she couldn’t be happy if he coddled her. If she melted in his arms every time he touched her, he wasn’t going to take her feelings seriously.
But melt, she did.
It was ironic in a way. All her life, she had dreaded being owned by a white man. Now she belonged, body and soul, to Jake Rand. He possessed her, not with force of arm, but with fragile threads of love and fiery tendrils of passion that curled around her and licked her into an inferno of need.
On the seventh night, Indigo immediately sensed something was wrong when Jake came by her parents’ house to walk her home. He usually began an assault on her senses the second they stepped off her parents’ porch, lightly caressing her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, her arm. By the time they reached the house, she was always tingling with eagerness for his kisses. But tonight, he seemed preoccupied.
“Jake? Has something happened?”
He looked mildly startled. “Happened? No.”
“You seem distant.”
He chuckled and looped an arm around her. “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering.” He traced a circle around her ear. “As soon as I get my thoughts together, I promise to concentrate on you.”
Indigo’s cheeks burned. “I wasn’t hinting for attention.”
“What a disappointment. You’re a fickle little thing. First you burn out on asparagus and now on me.” He bent his head to give her a kiss. “Mm, that doesn’t taste like no interest.”
Indigo rolled her eyes. “What were you woolgathering about? Is it something to do with the mines?” She leaned forward to look at him. “You can include me in that much.”
He sighed. “I’m not trying to exclude you, honey. I’m just not sure what it all means.” He shook his head. “Seven nights, and we haven’t seen a thing. I’m beginning to wonder if my father realized we were on to him and told Hank Sample to call off the dogs.”
Indigo chewed her lip. “If that’s so, then we’ll very likely never find out who caused the cave-ins. Your father will just move on to another mine, and the contact here who nearly killed my father will never be punished.”
“Exactly.” Jake sighed. “I’ve been hoping they’ll make a move. But it doesn’t look like they’re going to.”
As they stepped off the boardwalk, he whirled her into his arms and ran a hand under her skirt. The shock of cold air in contrast to his warm hand made Indigo gasp. She tried to resist and hated herself when she felt her pulse quicken.
“I’ve got to get more bloomers made,” she said breathlessly.
“I haven’t got a cent to spare for bloomers.”
His fingers slid to the cradle of her thighs. Indigo’s head fell back. “You’re wealthy. You can buy anything you want.”
In a ragged voice, he said, “What I want is to feel your bare little bottom.”
“Someone’s going to see!”
“It’s the middle of the night.” He tightened his arm around her waist. “You are so sweet, so unbelievably sweet.”
Indigo moaned under her breath and arched her back over his arm to stare up at the spinning sky. Tree limbs. A cloud-swept moon. Dim stars. And an upraised arm, holding a club. She focused just as it arced through the air at the back of Jake’s bent head. A sickening thud of wood buried itself into flesh and bone. Jake’s body buckled.
Before she could register what had happened, Indigo hit the ground on her back. Jake pummeled into her like a two-ton deadweight. She blinked and struggled to draw oxygen into her lungs. She heard Sonny snarling. Then he yelped and went silent.
Dazed, Indigo was slow to grasp reality. Jake, unconscious. The shadows of two men looming as they circled her. The feel of her husband’s lifeless hand lying on her leg. Lifeless. . . . A scream welled, but with no breath inside her to give it impetus, all she got out was a squeak. Jake, oh, dear God, Jake. . . .
One of the men knelt near her head. “One more sound, Indigo, and I’ll slit the bastard’s throat.”
Slit—throat—bastard. The words spun eerily inside her head, not making any sense. That voice, she knew that voice. She blinked and tried to see through the fuzziness. Brandon. Oh, dear God, it was Brandon. Movement on her other side snagged her blurry gaze. She dragged in a whine of breath, suddenly terrified. She wrapped her arms around Jake’s limp shoulders.
“Wh-what have you done to him? What have you done?”
Brandon leaned closer. She could see him now. Moonlight shimmered on his blond hair and glittered in his blue eyes. “So far, all I did was give him the makings for a giant headache. One false move from you, though, and he’s dead. Understand? It’s touching, you with your arms around him and all. But forget that and give me your knife. Real slow, Indigo.”
She drew one arm from around Jake and groped for her hip. As her fingers curled around the hilt of her knife, she considered her options and realized she had none. Brandon held a blade against Jake’s neck. She pulled her weapon from its scabbard and let it fall to the dirt. With a smile, Brandon knocked it away.
“Now I have you the way I want you. Defenseless.” He glanced up. “Gag her, Denny.”
Denny? A shadow leaned over her. Cruel hands forced her jaws apart. A rag was stuffed between her teeth. Denver Tompkins . . . Denny. She closed her eyes as he knotted a band of cloth over her mouth.
“My cousin Denver,” Brandon said with a chuckle. “You never made a connection, did you, you stupid little bitch. He was my inside source until your husband got rid of him.”
Pushing to his feet, Brandon gestured to Denver. “Pull her out from under the asshole so we can tie her up. And
watch her. She’s quick.”
Cruel hands hooked Indigo by the armpits and dragged her from under Jake. Instead of focusing on the pain, she concentrated on Jake’s warm, limp hand as it trailed down her thigh and slid off to plop on the dirt. She heard him moan.
Jerked to her feet, Indigo staggered dizzily and threw a frantic glance at the dark buildings along the street. Even if she could have screamed, there was no one to hear her. No one to come. She slid a sick gaze to Sonny and prayed he’d wake up and start barking. She couldn’t see a serious wound. Denver wrenched her arms behind her back. Rope dug into her wrists.
“There she is, all wrapped up, Bran, and tied with a bow.”
“Good work. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
Each man gripping her by an elbow, Indigo was half led, half carried between them into the dark woods behind the buildings. She heard the low rush of Shallows Creek. They made a sharp left. Minutes later, the two blonds took her right across her parents’ backyard. Indigo yearned to scream. Her father lay just beyond that rear window. Even on crutches as he was, Indigo knew he’d come help her if she could only wake him.
The brief flare of hope died as Brandon and Denver dragged her along between them toward the mountain. Indigo’s eyes bulged over the gag. Some of the cloth had inched up over her nose, and every breath she drew was an effort. The mine. They were heading toward Number One.
When the way grew steep, Indigo gave up hope of someone helping her. They were quite a ways from town now. No one would be passing this way in the dead of night. Jeremy’s route home carried him down the mountain a quarter mile to the east. Oh, God. . . . If Jake regained consciousness, he’d have no idea where she was.
Evidently her two captors shared her feeling that any chance of interference had passed, for they slowed their pace and turned loose of her arms. Indigo’s relief at being unhanded was short-lived. Brandon dropped back a few steps and planted the toe of his boot on her bottom. With a shove, he sent her careening. With her arms tied behind her, Indigo couldn’t break her fall. She hit on her knees, crashed face-first, and slid a few inches down the incline. Only the gag saved her face.
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