Branded

by Tori Carrington

  “Hit him with the bucket,” another voice said.

  Bucket? Who was going to hit him with a bucket?

  Then he remembered what had happened. Vern’s truck. The bottle of chloroform. The pillowcase sleeve. Was that what he’d been hit with? A bucket?

  He struggled to focus his gaze and sit up, even as what seemed like a ton of water landed on top of his head.

  He sputtered and struggled to his feet, wiping the water away. He finally focused on the two men in front of him, his brother and Clinton.

  “Damn it all to hell, what did you go and do that for?” Trace demanded.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Seems fine to me,” the stable manager said.

  Eric answered Trace. “Clint found you lying just inside the stable doors, dead to the world. When he couldn’t wake you, he came to get me.” He held up the bucket. “Water did the trick.”

  Trace shook his hands to rid them of water and then pushed his soaked hair back from his face.

  “What in the hell happened?” Eric asked. “You put back one too many?”

  Trace felt the blood stop cold in his veins. “Jo!”

  “Whoa.” His brother caught him by the shoulder when he tried to bolt through the open door. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Trace stared at him. “Jo’s in danger. The rapist wasn’t Southard at all. It was Vern…”

  “I OWE YOU A DEBT OF gratitude, little lady,” Vern said, resting his hand against his Colt revolver, secured in the holster at his hip. “Thanks to you, I found the perfect scapegoat for…well, let’s say my extracurricular activities.”

  Jo’s heartbeat raced and her mind filled with images of the night at the stables, the smell of chloroform as strong as if she had just inhaled it again.

  She recalled defending Carter, convinced he hadn’t been her attacker. But at the time she’d been unable to identify why. Then when the additional evidence against him had been produced, she was forced to question her own gut feeling.

  Oh, God…

  “You planted that pillowcase in Carter’s bike,” she said aloud.

  Vern appeared pleased that she had figured everything out. “I always thought you were quick. In fact, it’s what made you such a superb target. The others…the others had no way of identifying me, because I’d never met them before. But you. You were a challenge. You knew who I was. One wrong move, and my little escapade would be over.”

  “How were you able to plant the evidence?”

  “Easy enough. The night that Southard boy snuck in to see you, and Trace hurried to protect your honor?” Vern snorted and looked as if he wanted to spit again. “I was left behind to deal with the bike. That’s when the idea occurred to me—like the scent of a woman’s perfume before she even enters the room.”

  The door suddenly swung inward, making Jo jump. She watched Vern draw his gun and cock it, even as Trace and Eric appeared in the doorway, shotguns raised in front of them.

  “Christ, Vern,” Trace said, the butt of his weapon braced against his shoulder, his left eye closed as he placed the old ranch foreman in his crosshairs. “What in the hell were you thinking?”

  Jo began backing up. The best place to be just now was well out of the line of fire. With her standing so close to Vern, the brothers would risk hitting her if they shot at him.

  Vern appeared to catch on to her intentions, and grabbed her, moving faster than she would have thought possible. He swung her around to stand in front of him, his left arm bent around her neck.

  “Let her go!” Trace said, taking aim.

  Eric touched his arm. “You’ll hit them both.”

  That seemed to make Trace even angrier. “Let her go, you old messed up son of a bitch.”

  Vern’s head was next to Jo’s. He took a deep sniff, as if smelling her, and then chuckled. “You’re not giving the orders anymore, boy. I am. As it should have been all along.”

  Jo watched the two brothers look at each other.

  She tried not to lean against Vern as she reviewed her options. Particularly those that didn’t end with someone other than him getting shot.

  She swallowed hard. “All those people,” she said hoarsely, feeling his arm against her windpipe. “All those women you hurt…”

  He gave a short laugh. “You have no idea, girlie.” He shuffled her toward the bed, probably for better cover. “The local idiot sheriff thinks my deeds go back only six months. He didn’t think about looking outside the county.”

  Not good. Jo didn’t want him to confess. Because if he did, it would make them all witnesses. And if Vern held out a hope of coming through this unscathed, he’d have to kill everyone who suspected him.

  “I don’t give a shit what you’ve done, Vern,” Trace said, his stance unchanged. “Set Jo free and you can go on your way.”

  “Stupid, stupid boy. I always told your father you weren’t going to amount to much. And you’ve proved me right at every turn.” He spat again. “Of course, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now if everything had gone down the way I planned six years ago.”

  Jo froze, watching the brothers’ faces darken.

  “You two were supposed to be in that car with your parents the night they died.” His dry cackle sent a sheet of ice cascading down Jo’s spine. “Then things would have been as they should have.”

  “Are you saying you killed our parents?” Eric asked.

  Vern shrugged, forcing Jo’s chin up with the move. “If the boot fits.”

  “They died in a flash flood coming home from a barbecue.”

  “Which is exactly the way I planned for it to look. Their injuries and the damage to the car were in line with what might have happened during an accident. The flash flood…well, that was the cherry on top. There was no need to look beyond the obvious.”

  “But why?” Eric asked.

  “Because your damn fool father was too much like your brother, that’s why. He stumbled upon evidence of one of my…conquests.”

  Jo felt like she was making her way through a dark, twisted labyrinth as she followed his logic. The laid-back guy who appeared to have nothing to worry about but cattle was no such thing. Instead, his job had given him plenty of time to think up airtight schemes to cover his crimes. Crimes that included the murder of Trace’s parents.

  And as she listened, she realized what he was going to do now.

  He was planning to kill all three of them.

  “Now, you two be smart boys and put your guns down,” Vern said, pressing the muzzle of his Colt tighter against Jo’s temple. She winced. “Now.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Jo said between clenched teeth. “He’s going to kill us all.”

  Vern tightened his arm around her neck, making it almost impossible to breathe. “Shut up.”

  Trace and Eric appeared uncertain. But Jo was one hundred percent sure that if Vern was the only armed person in the room, he would be the only one to come out alive.

  “Now, goddamn it!” the foreman ordered, pulling back the hammer and cocking the revolver.

  Jo spotted her duffel on the bed just a few inches to her right. Hope rose in her chest. Vern had relaxed his hold to allow her to get sufficient air. Since she was his only bargaining chip, it stood to reason that a dead hostage was no good to him.

  She met Trace’s angry gaze, and nodded her head almost imperceptibly. He squinted at her and she nodded again, trying to tell him that she could take care of this. But she needed him and Eric to cooperate in order to do it.

  “Okay,” Trace said. He slowly lifted his shotgun up in the air. “We’ll lay down our arms. But you have to promise to leave us all alive.”

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Eric asked, gripping his gun tighter.

  Listen to your brother, Jo silently beseeched him.

  “Do you really think that son of a bitch is going to let any of us get out of here alive?” Eric asked.

  “Jo’s life is on the line h
ere,” Trace stressed, even as he leaned down and laid his shotgun on the floor at his feet.

  “Good,” Vern said. “No—you, too.”

  Eric appeared to understand that something was up, that Jo and Trace had a plan, but he looked wary. Jo could understand why. He had a fiancée and baby to worry about.

  Finally, Eric slowly laid his shotgun on the floor.

  “Good. Very good.” Vern jerked the arm he’d wrapped around Jo’s neck, and she coughed. He edged her toward the guns, using his boot to move Eric’s shotgun away from him. “Now I’ll finally get what’s coming to me,” he said. “I’m the reason why this ranch is successful. It’s only right that it should become mine.”

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Trace said.

  “Won’t I, now? Let’s see. Everybody and their brother saw you two go at it like a couple of wild bulls last night.” He shrugged. “And Trace and this one have been sneaking off into the bushes every chance they get.” He motioned toward Jo. “A couple of well-placed words and it won’t be difficult to get that idiot sheriff to believe some sort of love triangle was going on.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Eric said.

  “Is it? We’ll see about that. Oh, wait a minute. You won’t. Because you won’t be here.” Vern stretched his boot toward Trace’s shotgun. “Oh, and in case you think that pretty little filly you moved into the house is going to inherit anything, you’re dead wrong. And I just might have to have a little fun with her first. Ain’t never done a pregnant woman before. You know, right before she commits suicide because she can’t handle that her man was doing one of the ranch hands and that she’s left to live in shame.”

  With his foot stretched out, Vern was easily pushed off balance. Jo brought her left elbow back sharply, hitting him solidly in the solar plexus even as she twisted out of his hold and knocked his gun arm away from her. A shot rang out, but the bullet harmlessly embedded itself in the wall above the bed. Jo snaked out her ankle and tripped Vern up, causing him to stumble even as she reached for her duffel. In no time she located the gun, which had settled to the bottom of the bag. As Vern swung on her, Colt outstretched, she squeezed the trigger through the canvas, hitting him first in the right shoulder and then in the knee.

  Both Trace and Eric had recovered their guns. They stepped back, allowing Vern to slam to the floor, his Colt skidding out of reach.

  “I guess you were right about one thing, Vern,” Trace said, holding his shotgun on the man. “You are getting exactly what you have coming to you.”

  He cocked the gun even as Jo flung herself at him. “No!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A SCANT FEW HOURS LATER, Jo stood with Trace on the front porch of the main house, watching as Eric saw the sheriff off. Thankfully, Trace hadn’t given in to his desire to impose personal justice against Vern, and the older man had been airlifted to a San Antonio hospital with a deputy, under arrest for a list of crimes that boggled the mind.

  “I still can’t believe Vern was behind all this,” Trace said, shaking his head. “I’ve known the guy my entire life. If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I would never have believed it.”

  Jo wrapped her arms around herself even though the day was warm. In the house behind her, she smelled something roasting, probably for dinner. But all she could think about was how much she didn’t want to leave Wildewood…and why she had to.

  “And Carter?” she asked.

  Trace grimaced. “Poor sap. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Trace ran his hand through his hair. “To think I was a blink away from emptying my shotgun into his gut. Punishment for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “Do you think they’ll just spring him now that Vern’s been arrested on the same charges?”

  “No,” Trace said reluctantly. “The sheriff explained that the law isn’t all that neat.” He sighed. “But don’t worry. I have a cousin up in Dallas who’s a lawyer. She’s already taking the necessary steps to get Carter released and his record expunged of all charges.”

  Jo smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, it’s the least I can do, seeing as I’m to blame for his being arrested in the first place.”

  “And shot.”

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  They both chuckled, standing side by side, but not looking at each other.

  Trace’s brother climbed the steps as the sheriff drove off. “Well, that’s done then.”

  Neither Jo nor Trace said anything as he went into the house, the screen door slapping behind him.

  Jo felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket. Frowning, she pulled it out, staring at the screen: her father.

  “Something important?” Trace asked.

  “Huh? Oh. Um, no.” She slid the cell back into her pocket, watching as Scout lumbered up to the steps, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and plopped down right where he was.

  “Can you stay for dinner?” Trace asked hopefully.

  Jo looked over her shoulder, spotting Eric and Sara just inside the house. He had his arms curved around his pregnant fiancée and was holding her close.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Jo faced forward again and both of them fell silent.

  She should be trying to work out events in her mind, she decided. Everything that had happened over the past few hours. Everything that had happened over the past week. But her brain was unusually inactive. All she was aware of was a dull ache that in a short time she would be walking away from Trace, a man who had made her feel more in a few days than she had in years.

  “I have to go,” she said in a low voice.

  Curiously, she wasn’t sure who she was telling: Trace or herself.

  “I know.”

  She looked at him, but he still faced forward.

  Damn, but he was handsome. There was a strength, a steel in Trace Armstrong that made her want to reach out and touch him even now.

  He turned his head and met her gaze. Jo suddenly couldn’t swallow.

  If she was looking for him to give her a reason to stay, he didn’t appear about to do that. Instead, he turned away again.

  “Have a safe journey,” he said.

  Jo slowly descended the steps. “I will.”

  And she ordered her boots to keep walking when they wanted nothing more than to head back and park themselves next to Trace’s for the next fifty years or so…

  “YOU LET HER GO?”

  Trace couldn’t be sure how long he’d stood on the front porch after the dust from Jo’s truck had settled back on the Texas ground. He blinked at his brother.

  “Yeah. I let her go.” There was a note of surprise in his response that left him curious. He’d meant it to sound like a statement of fact.

  He leaned against the porch column and crossed his right boot over his left. “What’s it to you?”

  Eric leaned against the opposite column and sighed. “So we’re back to that again.”

  Trace shrugged. “You were the one who objected to our pairing. Said I should be courting Ashleigh.”

  “I never said any such thing.”

  “That’s exactly what you said last night before I knocked your lights out.”

  Eric chuckled. “No, what I said, or what I meant to say, was that you shouldn’t be messing around with the help…unless you’re serious about it. And that I didn’t think it was a good idea to have a woman crying in the middle of what was meant to be a celebration.” He gave Trace a sidelong glance. “And, as I recall, I knocked your lights out.”

  Trace eyed the land. Not a sign remained that there had been a party the night before. Not a banner, an empty beer bottle or a piece of napkin.

  What did remain, however, was the water fountain their father had built for their mother on the occasion of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The same fountain Eric had pushed him into.

  “I stand corrected,” he said.

  Eric paced the length of the porch and then came back to sit on the railing connected to the
column Trace still leaned against.

  “Look, Trace, I…”

  Trace squinted at him.

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking that I wish we could backtrack—forget this whole thing and start again.”

  “If you could, where would you begin?”

  Eric didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he muttered, “I’d say about six years ago.”

  Trace tucked his chin against his chest, staring at his boots. “I hear you.”

  “It’s just…I don’t know. After Mom and Dad died, I always felt this pressure to perform. To take care of you.”

  Trace frowned.

  “Trust me, it’s not the role I wanted or treasured. Hell, the last thing I wanted to do was worry about my snot-nosed younger brother.”

  Trace laughed.

  “But when it was just the two of us…I suppose I was thrust into a role I wasn’t ready for.”

  “Did you ever think we could have worked things out as equals?”

  Eric shook his head. “Never even entered my mind.” He met his gaze. “Until now.”

  Trace found it odd that it had taken being held at gunpoint to bring them to this important juncture. Nonetheless, he was glad that he and his brother were working their way back to a place of peace. Of connection. Of family.

  “Guys?” Sara called from inside. “Dinner’s on.”

  Eric told her they’d be inside in a minute, making no move to end their conversation.

  “So what do you propose we do now?” he finally asked.

  Trace looked off into the distance again, in the direction Jo’s truck had gone.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was so fixated on fighting you that I never considered how we might work this out.”

  Eric chuckled. “Me, too.”

  “So what say we play it by ear for now? See what happens?”

  His brother pushed away from the railing and patted him on the back. “I think that’s the best idea I heard all day. Let’s go eat…”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  JO WASN’T SURE what she was doing back in Beaumont. She’d pointed her truck west when she’d left Wildewood, determined to drive until she was at least in the next state before she gave any thought to where she was going.