As he turned off onto the county road, he glanced down at his odometer, checking the numbers for reference. Cameron had said Jim’s land was ten to twelve miles down the road on the left.
He had to slow his speed. The road was narrow, with potholes and crumbling asphalt on either side. He wanted to fly for the next ten miles, but instead he eased off the gas pedal and wondered how he’d even see her in the encroaching darkness.
He’d have to walk with a flashlight and yell her name, he thought. He’d have to hope and pray that she was in good enough condition to respond to his cries.
If only Cameron would call and tell him they’d found her and she was okay. But by the time he hit the ten-mile marker, there had been no phone call.
He stopped the truck and grabbed a high-beam flashlight from his glove box, then got out of the car and surveyed the area. It was impossible to tell if he was on the land Jim owned or not. But he would walk until morning, until every square inch of property that he could cover had been checked.
He turned on the flashlight and then cried out her name. He listened intently, but there was no response. That doesn’t mean anything, he told himself, fighting a wave of hopelessness. She might not be close enough to hear him. She might not be here at all.
Still, he couldn’t let go of the last of his hope. If she wasn’t someplace out here, then he was afraid they’d never find her.
He began to walk in a grid-like fashion, flashing his light left and right and stopping occasionally to call her name. Night had swooped down, making it impossible for him to see beyond the glow of his flashlight.
With each minute that ticked by, with every step he took, the fragile grasp on hope that he had loosened a little. Tears blurred his eyes, making it difficult for him to see.
He’d already lost so much in his life. He’d lost his parents when he was too young, his sister, Cherry, and his brother Sam. Wasn’t that enough?
He paused as he thought he heard a sound in the distance. It was too late for anyone to mow their lawn and in any case he was too far away from any houses to hear a lawn mower.
Cocking his head, he tried to discern the direction of the sound. It seemed to be coming from someplace to his left. As he continued to look in that direction, he saw lights coming toward him. A tractor? Who would possibly be riding a tractor at this time of night?
He stood frozen, his flashlight beam pointed at the lights as the noise grew louder as the tractor came closer. Definitely a tractor, he thought.
As his beam found the rider, a painful gasp escaped him. He ran toward the moving machine.
Melanie clung to the steering wheel, her face wraithlike in the beam of his flashlight. As he reached the tractor, she shut off the engine, and in the immediate silence she released a deep sob. “I can’t walk,” she cried.
“I know.” His heart beat so fast, so furious, he could scarcely talk. She was alive.
“No, I really can’t walk. I think he broke my other ankle.”
As Adam shone the beam of his flashlight on her swollen left ankle, on the bloody knees that showed through her torn pants, on her elbows, which were also raw and bleeding, rage momentarily stole his vision.
“He thought I was a helpless cripple, but I showed him.” The words came from her in a sound that was half hysterical laughter and another deep sob.
“Come on. Let’s get you out of here.” Adam reached up for her and she collapsed into his arms and buried her face in the hollow of his throat and began to sob in earnest.
He asked no questions as he carried her to his truck. It was enough that she was safe in his arms. It wasn’t until he had her in his passenger seat that she told him what had happened, how Jim had drugged her and taken her from the alley, how he had some kind of strange obsession that they were deeply in love before she left for New York and how he believed she’d abandoned him.
When she told him about Jim stomping on her good foot, he wanted to kill the man. He didn’t call Cameron until they reached the hospital, where she was immediately whisked away from him and into the emergency room.
As Adam stood in the waiting room, he took out his phone and punched in Cameron’s number. The sheriff answered on the first ring. “I’ve got her,” Adam said.
“Where are you?”
Adam had already decided what he intended to tell Cameron, a slight misrepresentation of the truth in order to assure that Jim Collins would be where Adam wanted him to be.
“We’re here at the hospital. She’s unconscious, so I don’t know what happened.”
“Where did you find her?”
“Near the café. She was on the side of the road. It was just a matter of chance that I saw her at all. She’s in bad shape, Cameron.”
“We’ll be right there.”
Adam slipped his phone back into his pocket and once again fought against a rage that knew no boundaries. He’d love to see the look on Jim Collins’s face when he heard the news that she’d been found by the Cowboy Café. The fact that Jim would be told that she was unconscious and had been unable to talk to Adam and was in bad shape would make the deputy believe that he still might be safe.
No place on earth was Deputy Jim Collins a safe man tonight. He couldn’t find a hole deep enough, a tree high enough that Adam wouldn’t be there waiting for him.
The agony that Melanie must have endured over the past hours pierced his very soul. She had to have suffered not only incredible physical pain but also mental anguish.
Pride surged up inside him as he thought about her slow, painful trek to the tractor. She was the strongest woman he’d ever met, and no matter how the two of them ended up, he would always be proud that he had known her, that he had loved her.
It didn’t take long for Cameron and several of the other deputies to arrive. As they all came through the emergency room door, Adam was pleased to see Jim among the group.
“How is she?” Cameron asked worriedly as the rest of the men crowded around Adam.
It didn’t take much for Adam to will tears to his eyes. “The doctor doesn’t know if she’s going to make it or not. She was beaten so badly.” Adam gazed at Jim as he spoke the last words, and didn’t miss the confusion that darkened the man’s eyes.
Adam choked back a sob. “No matter what happens, I know she’d want me to thank all of you for your efforts.” He shook Cameron’s hand and then moved to Ben Temple and shook his, as well. When he reached Jim, he clapped him on the back, then stepped back and sucker punched him in the nose.
Adam felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage as Jim yelped, fell backward to the floor and raised a hand to his blood-pumping nose.
“Hey!” Cameron yelled and stepped between the two.
“She wasn’t unconscious,” Adam said quickly. “She told me everything.” He looked at Jim’s bloody face as the man scrambled to his feet. “She told me how you took her out of that alley and drove her to your land, then stomped on her ankle to assure that she couldn’t move. But she did move, you bastard. She managed to crawl to your tractor.”
Jim took a step backward, his gaze darting to the outside door, but Ben grabbed his arm so any escape would be difficult.
“Jim, what in the hell have you done?” Cameron asked as he pulled his cuffs from his belt.
Adam thought Jim intended to deny it all, but suddenly his features crumpled into themselves as he looked around at the men who were his coworkers. “She was my soul mate. We were supposed to build a life together but she left me to go dance in New York. She had to pay for that. Don’t you see? She left me broken and she had to pay.”
Cameron cuffed him and then handed him over to Ben. “Get him the hell out of here,” he said with disgust. “Lock him up and we’ll see if the next soul mate he finds is a prison cell mate.”
As Ben led Jim away, Cameron turned back to Adam. “So how is she really?”
“She went directly into surgery. He did a number on her ankle and broke it. Other than that, she’s remarkably fine. She�
��s beautiful and strong.... She’s amazing.”
“You probably saved her life by thinking of Jim,” Cameron said.
“No.” Adam shook his head firmly. “She saved her own life.” Once again pride buoyed up inside him. Melanie didn’t need him; she would do fine on her own. He just wished she wanted him in her life as much as he wanted her.
He and Cameron sat in chairs as Melanie was in surgery. Adam told the sheriff everything Melanie had related to him on the drive to the hospital.
“According to Melanie their relationship was all in his mind. They’d dated a couple of times, casual dates, but he fantasized an entire future with her and was enraged when she wasn’t a part of it,” Adam explained.
Cameron shook his head. “He was right under my nose. Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I even think about it? He was sick with his rage and I don’t know why I didn’t even see a hint of it.”
“Those were the same kinds of questions I asked myself when Sam was arrested,” Adam replied. “I thought I’d missed so many clues, but Sam hid his rage well, just like Jim did.” He tried to stay focused on the conversation, but his thoughts were on Melanie.
Hopefully the surgeon would be able to fix whatever damage she’d sustained. He knew she’d depended on her one good foot to maneuver as well as she did around her house.
“Looks like I’m going to be hunting for a new deputy,” Cameron said, pulling Adam’s attention back to the conversation. “When this investigation is all over and done, come talk to me and we’ll see what happens.”
“Thanks,” Adam replied. “I’ll do that.”
Minutes later he was alone in the waiting room. Cameron had headed back to the sheriff’s office to interrogate Jim and all the other deputies had left, as well, to collect whatever they could to build a solid case against one of their own.
It was an hour later when Dr. Rice, the surgeon, came out to greet him. Adam jumped to his feet, instantly assured by the smile on the older man’s face.
“We’ve patched her up. She took a couple of stitches on both knees and the ankle had to be reset and she’s now sporting a couple of pins to help the ankle bone grow back properly, but she’ll be fine. She’s a tough one.”
“Can I see her?” Adam asked, needing to check for himself that she was truly okay.
“We’ve just moved her to room fifteen. She’s still pretty groggy, but you can go on in.”
Adam didn’t wait to hear anything else. He half ran down the hallway to room fifteen, which was semidark with just a small light glowing upward over the bed.
Her eyes were closed and she looked tiny and fragile, but he knew that was a false appearance. He knew the strength of will she had inside her and it awed him.
He slipped into the chair next to her bed and fought the impulse to lean forward and take one of her slender, graceful hands in his. It wasn’t his place to hold her hand. He was simply her boarder—the cowboy renting rooms upstairs—and that was it.
Chapter 18
Melanie awoke to the quiet of the hospital around her and she knew it must be the middle of the night. Her first realization was that she must still be drugged, because she felt no real pain anywhere in her body. Her second realization was that Adam was slumped down in a chair next to her bed, a faint snoring coming from him.
Her heart swelled with emotion. How had he managed to find her? He’d appeared like a knight in shining armor in the darkness of the night.
She closed her eyes and thought of that single moment when she’d finally reached the tractor seat, twisted the key, and nothing had happened. She had cried tears of fear, of frustration and exhaustion, and then she’d realized she needed to push in the clutch for the engine to start.
The foot that needed to push the clutch in was the one that Jim had stomped on. She managed to get her foot on the clutch and knew she’d probably only have one shot at pressing down before the pain would prove too much.
She’d screamed as she pressed in the clutch and turned the key. When the engine turned over, she used the hand throttle to keep it running as she fought to keep herself from fainting.
The tractor had been in first gear, moving at a snail’s pace, but she knew there was no way she could press the clutch in again to change gears.
And then Adam had appeared. Her heart, her soul, he’d been there to save her. She opened her eyes once again and found herself staring into the blue depths of his.
“Hi,” he said. “How are you feeling?” He leaned forward, as if needing to get closer to her.
“A little woozy. Was my ankle broken?”
He nodded. “You’re now sporting some metal in that ankle and a brand-new cast. You also have a couple of stitches in your knees.”
“And Jim?”
“Is in jail.” He offered her one of his slow, sexy smiles. “Unfortunately he had an accident with my fist and suffered a broken nose just before he was arrested.”
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“Not a problem. I only wish I could have done more.”
Tears suddenly burned in her eyes. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”
He leaned forward even more and took her hand in his. “You would have driven that tractor down Main Street directly to the sheriff’s office. You would have been fine if I hadn’t shown up.” Admiration shone in his eyes. “I told you, Melanie, there’s nothing you can’t do except walk.”
Her tears came faster. “I can’t love you,” she blurted out.
He squeezed her hand, a dark sadness gathering in his eyes. “I know you don’t love me, Melanie.”
“But I do love you and I can’t.”
He gazed at her, obviously confused. “Melanie, what are you saying?”
For the first time since she’d awakened, she felt the pain in her ankle, the familiar pain in her leg, but none of it compared to the pain that stabbed at her heart.
“Oh Adam, I’m probably going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.”
“And your point is?” he asked.
She swallowed hard against her tears, knowing she had to stay strong. “I would never want to burden you with me. You deserve so much more than I can be in your life.” With each word her heart broke a little more. “I can’t give you children and then chase after them when they learn to walk.”
“There’s nothing wrong with hiring a nanny for extra help,” he replied calmly.
He always made things sound so easy, she thought. He never saw the obstacles that she did. And yet every obstacle she had seen in the path that they had shared together had magically disappeared with him at her side.
His eyes shone with a light that threatened to steal her breath away. “Melanie, I love you and I have a feeling that rather than you being a burden on me, I’d spend most of my time chasing after you as you went about the business of living. Give us a chance, Melanie. If you love me half as much as I do you, then I know we can make it work.”
She tried to think of all the reasons why it wouldn’t work, but at the same time she realized one of the gifts he’d given her was the knowledge that she could do whatever she set her mind to. She’d done it tonight. Even though she couldn’t walk, she’d managed to escape a man who wanted her dead.
A ray of hope began to shine in her heart, hope that maybe she could be enough for him, that she deserved him. “When you look at me that way, you make me believe that all things are possible,” she said softly.
He stroked his hand tenderly down the side of her face. “Haven’t you heard the old saying that with love all things are possible?”
“Kiss me, Adam, and make me truly believe.”
He stood and leaned over her and placed his lips over hers. The kiss began soft and tender and grew in intensity until it held all the desire, all the love he felt for her. And with the emotions she tasted in his kiss, she believed in him, in their love, but most importantly, she believed in herself.
She could be what
he wanted, what he needed. Despite her limitations he loved her and he believed in her. As the kiss ended, he leaned back and eyed her worriedly.
“You aren’t so doped up from your operation that you won’t remember any of this tomorrow, are you?”
She smiled. “I don’t think so, but if I am, I’m sure you’ll remind me. And now I have a question to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
Her smile deepened as joy filled her heart, the kind of joy she once felt while dancing. “How fast can you move your things from upstairs to my room?”
“Consider it already done,” he replied and then took her lips in another kiss, which washed away any doubts that might have lingered in her head.
She could see their future, as bright as stage lights, as full of joy as dancing. It was filled with laughter and the kind of love that would last a lifetime.
* * *
It was almost dawn when Sheriff Cameron Evans left the jail, disgusted by his newest prisoner, exhausted from the long hours and yearning for a couple hours of sleep before he’d have to be at work once again.
He’d grilled Jim for a long time in an attempt to find out if he’d killed the waitresses as well as tried to kill Melanie Brooks, but while Jim had confessed everything he’d done to Melanie, he’d adamantly denied having anything to do with the two murders.
Unfortunately Cameron believed him, and that meant there was still a killer walking the streets of Grady Gulch. Cameron had a sick feeling in his stomach that it wasn’t just a matter of if the killer would strike again. It was only a matter of when.
* * * * *
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