Last Second Chance (A Thomas Family Novel Book 2)

by Kristi Cramer

  The figure turned out to be Eddie, a man who had once been his friend. Eddie blocked Tim’s blow, and they grappled as Roo danced out of the way. Clearly, the horse wanted to run away from the thrashing men and the smoky air and, within moments, Tim heard him gallop off.

  He hoped he wouldn’t run far.

  “Eddie,” Tim ground out, coming face to face with his former friend. “I don’t want to hurt you, and you don’t have to keep trying to hurt me.”

  Eddie grunted as he pushed harder against Tim, who tried not to stumble on his bum foot.

  “Angelisa wants you dead,” Eddie said through clenched teeth. “She always gets what she wants.”

  “Only because people keep giving it to her.”

  “You see what happens when she is challenged.”

  Eddie’s words were strong, but his voice faltered. Tim thought maybe he’d struck a nerve. “Help me turn her in. You know she’s crazy. My sister is coming with the whole sheriff’s department. Help us get her. Turn yourself in and testify against her. Go into protection....”

  At that moment, they heard the clear, crisp sound of a gunshot. Both men froze.

  Tim couldn’t tell where the sound had come from, or what kind of gun it was. His thoughts flew to Janie, and fear gripped his heart at the thought of her getting hurt.

  Something in Eddie’s eyes gave Tim just enough warning. He shifted with the other man’s thrust, letting his legs give way as he pulled him over to the side so Eddie hit the ground first, awkwardly landing on his side. Tim heard the air rush from his lungs.

  The two men scrambled to get to their feet, but before Eddie could stand, Tim launched himself, putting his entire body into a punch that connected to the other man’s jaw with a sickening crack.

  Visibly dazed, Eddie tried to fight him off, scrabbling at the hand Tim wrapped around his throat. With his free hand, Tim delivered several more punches until Eddie’s eyes rolled back in his head.

  Satisfied that he was out, Tim searched him for any hidden weapons, finding only the butterfly knife, which he pocketed. He pushed himself to his feet, only then feeling what that last lunge had done to his ankle. Limping heavily, he moved to find the gun he had knocked out of Eddie’s hand, picked it up, and headed in the direction in which Roo had run.

  With luck, the horse hadn’t run far, and he would be able to find Janie quickly.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Janie didn’t have a clear idea of where she was going as she rode out of the old homestead and through the smoke, her shirt pulled up over her nose and mouth.

  Heading north took her away from the Homeplace, away from the river and away from the help she expected to arrive. Unless she could work her way back to the river....

  Carmelita fidgeted from the smoke, requiring more focus than she usually needed, and Janie hoped Tim was faring well with Roo. She urged the mare into a swifter gait, but the smoke was dense enough that she didn’t want to gallop blindly through it.

  The other problem with north, she realized, was that it was the same direction the smoke was blowing and it was keeping pace with her. At this rate, she wouldn’t come out of it any time soon. She paused, trying to decide what to do, as Carmelita danced beneath her. Looking to her right, she saw only more smoke. To her left, she thought she could see snatches of blue sky.

  That color drew her and she turned Carmelita without much more thought than that it was a way out. In a few moments, she was clear of the worst of the acrid cloud, where she could look around to get her bearings. What she saw caught her off guard.

  One of the strangers was running toward her. As soon as she caught sight of him, he dropped into a crouch and aimed his pistol at her. For one horrifying second, she froze before wheeling Carmelita back into the smoke, digging in her heels to spur the horse on.

  When the shot rang out, she fully expected to feel a bullet pierce her body, and she yelped an unfinished prayer. “Please, God...!”

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Angelisa waited as patiently as she knew how for something, anything, to happen. It was the one flaw in the hasty plan she had set into motion. She hadn’t imagined it would take so long to get results. There had been the single gunshot a short while ago, but nothing since.

  Staring into the smoke, she began to fidget, worried it would attract attention before too long.

  Finally, she heard a sound above the sighing of the wind and the crackle of the fire, but it was not a sound she expected to hear. The drumming of a horse’s hooves drew her gaze to the left, where she saw a rider headed directly at her. It appeared to be the woman—at least the rider wore a hat similar to the one the woman wore and carried a rifle.

  Since Tim had shown little interest in handling the guns she’d kept around the apartment they’d shared, Angelisa figured it had been the woman shooting at them.

  Before she could do more than squint at the rider and raise her pistol, she heard more hoof beats to her right, and looked to see Tim riding at her.

  Both riders galloped full speed at her, and the sight of the thundering beasts gave her pause. It was unnerving to say the least, but she rallied and brought her pistol to bear on Tim’s approaching form. The woman could wait. Tim needed to die. Now.

  Shouting at her wordlessly, Tim—bare-chested like some wannabe native—appeared to be trying to point a pistol at her, but the motion of the horse made aim impossible. She smiled, sure this annoying chapter in her life would soon be concluded to her satisfaction.

  A whooping call brought her attention back to the other rider. When she looked to her left, she was surprised to realize it wasn’t the woman. Instead, another man rode at her, rifle raised to his shoulder as he bore down on her. This rider displayed no awkwardness in the saddle, smoothly gliding with the horse’s motion, the rifle steady in his hands.

  Incredibly, she saw a puff of smoke issue from the rifle’s barrel, heard the crack as the round discharged, and felt a searing pain in her shoulder an instant later. The force of the bullet spun her around, her pistol falling from suddenly nerveless fingers. Stunned, she felt herself falling to the ground, her field of vision swaying to the sky above until all she saw was blue, with gray clouds scudding along in the wind.

  Moments after that, Tim stood over her. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear his words over the roaring in her ears. He bent down to peer into her face, then her vision faded.

  Belatedly, she realized there had always been the chance she might fail in her mission, but she had never considered this outcome.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tim had never been so happy to see his boss in his life. After he had caught Roo and mounted up, he’d turned in the direction he figured he’d find Angelisa, more than ready to confront her and bring this nightmare to an end.

  He didn’t know where Janie was or what had happened to her, but when he emerged from the smoke and saw another rider bearing down on Angelisa, he had thought it was her. Wild with fear, he’d kicked Roo into a gallop and drawn the pistol from the waistband of his jeans. Screw the rules. He would not sit helpless while a woman he cared about was gunned down.

  Of course, trying to shoot from horseback had proven too difficult to manage, but at least he’d drawn Angelisa’s attention away from the other rider. To say he’d been surprised when the other rider successfully shot her in the shoulder would have been an understatement. Shortly after that, he realized the rider dismounting and scooping up Angelisa’s fallen pistol was not Janie. It was her father.

  Sliding awkwardly off Roo, he hobbled up to the woman lying on her back, eyes staring at the sky. Only the rise and fall of her chest told Tim she was still alive.

  “Angelisa?” he asked, his voice shaking with adrenaline. “Can you hear me?”

  She blinked in response, then her eyes rolled back in her head as she passed out.

  Tim straightened to look at the aged veteran. “I’ve got to go find Janie,” he said by way of an explanation, then turned back toward Roo.

  “I
reckon she’s fine,” Colton said, hefting his rifle before jerking his head back the way he’d come. “I shot another one of these...hostiles,” he flapped a hand at the woman sprawled in the dirt, “back that way, and Janie rode off. Turn up shortly, no doubt.” Colton spat into the dirt, drawing Tim’s attention back to Angelisa. “That one’s still alive, I hope. Haven’t killed anyone since ’Nam.”

  Tim nodded. “It was an amazing shot, sir. They teach you that in the army?”

  “Not from horseback,” he grunted, then flashed a brief, wolfish grin. “That’s old school.”

  Just then, Tim heard the unmistakable whirr of a helicopter approaching. He looked up in surprise as a smallish chopper arrived, a red bucket suspended beneath it.

  “That would be Dylan, come to fight the fire with the Bambi bucket,” Colton said with satisfaction. “Sheriff won’t be far behind.”

  Sure enough, Tim looked back in the direction of the ranch and saw dust kicked up by a column of four-wheel drive vehicles racing toward them over the crest of a low hill. The sight should have allowed him to relax, but he still felt wound up as a junkie about to tweak the glass.

  So much was happening at once, he didn’t know where to look or what to do. Above the fire, the helicopter dropped a bucketful of water, then wheeled off, headed for the river to fill it again. As the sound of its engine faded, he heard the thrum of the trucks coming closer, and.... He whirled around, looking back toward the old homestead. Another horse approached, and Tim’s knees went weak when he recognized Janie.

  Stumbling toward her a few paces, he held out a hand as if to draw her closer, but he was really starting to feel the pain in his ankle that he’d managed to ignore up to that point.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  “Tim!” Janie cried, leaning forward to urge Carmelita into a canter. Before her horse had even fully stopped, she leapt to the ground and threw herself into his arms, squeezing him tightly. She communicated everything she had felt in the last few hours in that embrace. She trembled with fear, adrenaline, and now relief.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” Tim said, his lips against her hair. Janie felt a tremor in his body that echoed her own shakiness. “I heard that shot....”

  “I don’t know how he missed. He had me in his sights....”

  “Mr. Thomas said he shot another fellow.”

  “Daddy?” Janie said in surprise as she turned to him. She didn’t let go of Tim, keeping her arms looped around his waist. “How did you know we were out here?”

  “Saw the smoke,” Daddy said, hefting his Winchester .44-40. “Then I saw the fellow sneaking around with a gun. Didn’t add up, so I watched him for a while. When you came out of the smoke and he looked ready to shoot you, I put him down.”

  It was the longest speech Janie had heard out of her father in years.

  “He took out Angelisa, too. A good thing, ’cause I couldn’t have hit a barn with this thing from Roo’s back.” He held a pistol out to Janie, butt first. “You’d better take it.”

  Janie took it from him, afraid to ask how he’d come by it. She was even more shocked when he pulled out a second pistol and held it out to her, then a butterfly knife. She wasn’t sure what to do with them, since she still held the 30-30. She was very aware that the rifle was still loaded, and—she assumed—so were the pistols. She passed one to her father, and they each occupied themselves by unloading the weapons and pocketing the ammunition.

  When Mitzi and Sheriff Jonas arrived, along with deputies Quince and Peters, they stopped to look at Kenny’s body, which was off to the side. Peters knelt to check for a pulse, although it was apparent Kenny was quite dead. Mitzi peered down at Angelisa, then up at Tim with a question in her eyes.

  “She’s alive, I think. Mr. Thomas shot her.”

  Sheriff Jonas knelt to feel for her pulse, then nodded at Colton. No one moved to tend to her wound, and Janie felt bad. As someone with medical training, she really ought to see to her, but she was still too shaken up to worry about it. The wound didn’t appear to be bleeding too badly. Another minute or two wouldn’t make much difference.

  “There’s another guy around the west side of the fire,” Tim continued, “and another two on the east side.”

  “Dead?” Janie gasped.

  “I don’t think so. I clocked ‘em both real good, but they were alive when I left them. There was just the four of them,” he added for the sheriff’s benefit.

  “Let’s check it out,” Jonas ordered, gesturing for Quince to head west, and he and Peters headed east.

  They couldn’t talk for a moment as the helicopter returned with another bucket of water.

  “I take it Kenny helped them track you, and got shot for his troubles?” Mitzi asked once the noise died down again.

  Janie nodded, leaning against Tim again. “I couldn’t believe it when she pulled the trigger, just like that,” she whispered.

  That earned her a sharp glance from Mitzi. “You saw her pull the trigger?”

  “We both did,” Tim said, tightening his arm around Janie’s shoulders.

  “That’s great news, in the event of a trial,” his sister murmured appreciatively, cocking her head slightly as she gazed down at Angelisa. “She must have really thought she had you.”

  “She almost did.” Tim swallowed, squeezing Janie again.

  Janie didn’t want to think about how close it had really been. “Do you have a first aid kit in your truck,” she asked briskly. “I really ought to dress her wound.”

  “Do what you can,” said Mitzi. She headed back to her truck, and Janie followed. As she turned back with the kit, Mitzi keyed the mic of her radio, calling for paramedics and the volunteer fire department.

  For the next twenty minutes or so, she occupied herself by caring for the woman who had been ready to shoot her only a short time ago. While she worked, Jonas and Peters came back, each leading a handcuffed, bloody man. Shortly after that, Quince returned with a body over his shoulder, which he laid down beside Angelisa. He looked up at Jonas and shook his head slightly. This one hadn’t made it.

  Janie glanced up at her father, who frowned down at the corpse. Heaven only knew what he was thinking. He turned his head and spat, which Janie knew from experience meant he was very upset. She wanted to comfort him, but she also knew that nothing she said would put his mind at ease. Instead, she finished tying off the wrap she’d put on Angelisa’s shoulder, then stood to give her father a hug.

  And he hugged her tight. The only other sign of emotion was a little muffled grunt that reached her ears.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered in his ear.

  “My girl,” he whispered back.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  It wasn’t long before the space around the vehicles cleared out. Colton, the sheriff, and his deputies had gone to help fight the fire, since their remote location meant it would be at least thirty more minutes before any of the volunteers showed up. Dylan had been concentrating his bucket drops on the buildings, trying to preserve them, but it was getting dark enough that he was going to have to call it a night and land soon. The only thing anyone could really do was try to create a firebreak by digging up the shrubs and grass in the fire’s path, which wasn’t easy with the folding shovels they had at hand. It remained to be seen whether they would be able to save the structures.

  With his ankle, Tim couldn’t help, and there was no way Janie was going to leave him alone with the horses, two prisoners, and Angelisa, who still hadn’t regained consciousness. The two men, identified as Eduardo “Eddie” Guzman and Rico Jimenez, sat back to back with heads hanging, handcuffed to each other. Once the volunteer firefighters arrived, the sheriff would take them to jail. Despite her wound, Angelisa had been cuffed to the body of the dead man. Even if she regained consciousness, she wasn’t going anywhere.

  After checking on Angelisa to see if her bleeding had slowed, Janie came back to where Tim sat on the tailgate of Mitzi’s truck. He wore his sister’s windbreaker, and his foot was ele
vated to ease the swelling. She sat beside him, wrapping her arms around his waist, watching the silhouettes of the figures against the light of the fire. The sight was eerie and disturbing, but also fascinating.

  Tim settled his arm across her shoulders and leaned his head against hers. “Do I know how to treat a girl on a first date or what?”

  She thought there was more than a passing chance he was feeling loopy from the pain...or the meds Mitzi had given him.

  “Just how many pills did you take?” she asked.

  “I have to make fun of it, Janie, or I’ll just really freak out, you know?” He put his free hand on her forearm where it lay across his middle. “All this is just so far removed from what I had hoped for today. I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again.”

  Janie shook her head. “Maybe I’m crazy or in shock, but this wasn’t your fault, Tim. There was no way you could have been able to predict this. I think I know you pretty well by now, and I know that if you had believed it was possible for her to find you and come all this way, you would have done something about it. Since it did happen, you handled it the best way you knew how. Angelisa won’t ever be on the streets again. You put yourself in harm’s way to help bring her down. How can I blame you for that?”

  “But I put you in harm’s way in the process. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that.”

  Janie squeezed him. “I recall doing my part to draw her anger,” she said with a rueful laugh. “I’m the one who hauled off and punched her, so I don’t want to hear you trying to take the blame for this, Tim. It was a one-off situation, right?”

  “God, I hope so.”

  “It does nothing to ruin the impression you’ve made on me in the last month. If anything, it reinforces to me that you’re one of the good guys. I have no qualms about continuing to see you, and trying....” She faltered to a stop, not sure whether it was time to say what she had been about to say.