by Janet Dailey
He climbed on and wrapped his arms around her neck. “Are we going to ride Molly again?”
“Not this time, honey. This time we’ll have to run until we find Dad. Hang on tight now.”
Outside, the guineas set up another racket. Cat stopped halfway to the slanted door, fear striking deep in the pit of her stomach when she heard a voice muttering.
“Damned noisy birds. Don’t you know that I’m the one that buys your damned feed.”
“It’s them, Mom.” Quint whispered near her ear.
Cat swung him off her back. “You hide right there by that door. When he comes in, I’m going to talk to him so he won’t see you. You run outside as soon as you can—and you run that way.” She pointed in the direction of the highway. “Don’t wait for Mom. You run as fast as you can.”
He nodded, his eyes big.
She could hear footsteps now. “Hide, quick,” she whispered and pushed him toward the side of the door.
As soon as he was hugged against the edge of it, Cat pulled the string, switching off the overhead light. She backed up a couple of steps and bumped against the shelf door. Hearing the clink of jars, she reached around until her fingers touched smooth glass. As she eased the jar off the shelf, the slanted door was raised up. A moonlit sky showed the bulky silhouette in the opening. Cat knew she had only seconds before he turned on the light and saw her. She prayed she could distract him long enough for Quint to get away.
His hand reached for the string. Cat heard the slide of the chain and closed her eyes against that first blinding glare. It flashed against her eyelids.
“What the hell—” Rollie stared at her in openmouthed shock, then took an angry step forward.
Cat threw the jar at his head. “Run, Quint! Run!” She grabbed for another jar, her heart soaring at the sight of Quint darting into the open doorway.
Rollie looked back in time to see him scamper outside. He charged after him, bellowing, “Lath! Get out here! The kid’s loose!”
Cat ran after him and jumped on Rollie’s back, hammering at his head with the second jar. A door slammed. With an angry roar, Rollie threw her off. She landed hard and struggled to get up. She had one short glimpse of her barefoot, pajama-clad son running as fast as he could over the rough ground. But a little boy’s ‘fast’ wasn’t fast at all. Rollie could catch him easily, and he had already started after him.
“You fool, get her!” Lath yelled. “She’s the one that can get us the death penalty. Here.” He threw something to Rollie. Cat saw the flash of moonlight reflecting on metal and knew it was a gun. “I’ll grab the kid.”
In those seconds while Rollie caught the gun, shifted it into his grip and turned toward Cat, she scrambled to her feet and raced for the tree-covered hillside five yards away. Footsteps pounded after her. As she ducked behind the first tree, Cat heard that sharp crack of sound. Bark chips flew. She ran to the next tree.
“Throw down your weapon, Anderson!”
Logan. Cat swung toward the sound of his voice. Lath let loose with his automatic, raking the brushy edge of the clearing with a spray of bullets. At almost the same time, a skinny pajama-clad boy scurried into the concealing brush.
“Keep running, Quint. Keep running,” she whispered.
Twigs snapped not far from her location. Cat instantly changed directions to lead Rollie away from Quint. But it was Logan she was worried about, conscious of the silence that had followed Lath’s gun burst.
Logan melted back into the trees, away from the yard, placing each foot carefully and angling to intercept Quint. Once he had his son out of harm’s way, he could concentrate on Cat.
Somewhere Lath moved along the tree edge. Once in a while, Logan could hear a faint rustling. The trailer door opened a crack, letting out a sliver of light. “Lath,” a woman’s voice called softly. “Did you get him?”
“No,” came the answer far off to Logan’s right. “But stay inside. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”
The heel of his foot touched a rock. Logan shifted silently off it, then picked it up and hurled it as far as he could to the right, where the voice had been.
It landed with a thud, drawing another spate of bullets. Logan used the masking noise to sprint closer to where Quint should be. He spotted him just ahead, running awkwardly in his bare feet, the moonlight picking up the paleness of his light-patterned pajamas.
“Quint,” he whispered.
The boy stopped and turned his tear-streaked face toward him. “Dad,” he sniffled, his face crumpling.
Logan scooped him under his arm and angled back toward the ranch lane and the waiting patrol car. Seconds after he intersected the rutted tracks, he heard footsteps running toward him, coins jangling in a pocket.
“Garcia,” he called out softly.
The stocky deputy puffed to a stop. “Logan, thank God. I heard gunfire.”
“Is our backup here?”
“Not yet.”
“Take Quint back to the patrol car.” He handed him into Garcia’s arms.
“Dad, no.”
“I’ve got to go get your mom.”
When he made his way back to the ranchyard, Logan saw that all the lights had been turned out inside the trailer. He scanned the area, trying to locate Lath’s position, sweat beading along his upper lip.
A partially muffled outcry came from high on the hillslope, followed by scuffling sounds. Abandoning caution, Logan broke toward it, fully aware that Cat was a bigger threat to the Andersons alive than she was dead.
Gunfire exploded again, bullets chopping the brush directly ahead of him. Logan skidded to a stop, going to the ground in a feet-first slide as a shower of leaves and branches rained on him.
Gathering his legs under him, he sprang into a crouching run, making for the nearest tree, snapping off three shots as he went. His shoulder hit the solidness of the trunk and immediately he dived behind a boulder an instant before another spray of bullets chewed the tree bark.
The shooting had driven the guinea fowl from the house yard. Their disturbed racket now came from somewhere near the old ranch buildings. Under their covering noise, he scooted back to another tree and stood up behind it, taking off his hat to peer around it and locate Lath’s position.
Something moved in the shadows near the trailer steps. Logan shifted to another tree for a better look. Suddenly there was Lath vaulting onto the wooden stoop and yanking the door open.
Above the boom of a shotgun, a voice yelled, “You ain’t takin’ my boys!”
The blast blew Lath back against the railing. Logan briefly closed his eyes against the anguished scream that followed, then he looked to the hillside, his fingers tightening around the .45. Cat was up there somewhere.
With the gun pointed straight at her head, Cat didn’t move. The sharp rock digging through the denim sleeve into her elbow didn’t register, nor the trickle of blood from her scraped knee. The piney smell of resin was all around her. There was a sharpness and a clarity to every sight and sound that gave all of it a feeling of unreality.
But that gun was very real. Cat forced her eyes to look beyond the muzzle’s deadly maw at Rollie. Anger and regret warred in his expression.
“Why? Why did you have to follow us?” The gun shook with his tightly bit words.
Hope sprang. If he truly wanted to kill her, he would have already pulled the trigger. “Don’t do this, Rollie.” Her voice sounded thin. She worked to strengthen it. “It will only make things worse for you.”
“It can’t get any worse.”
Cat heard the sob in his voice. “Yes, it can. Rollie, I can testify for you. I—”
“You wouldn’t before!” he raged. “Vengeance, that’s what you wanted. Now I’m getting mine.”
His voice was low and ugly, hard purpose ridging the set of his jaw as he looked down the barrel of the gun. “Rollie—”
An explosive blast reverberated through the night. Cat flinched, thinking he had fired, but he was spinning away. A keening w
ail came from the house yard. Rollie took a step toward it, his whole body tense, listening.
Seizing her chance, Cat was on her hands and knees in a flash and scrambling away even as his voice rang out, “Ma? Ma!” Then the rattle of stones alerted him to her escape. “Come back here, you little bitch.” He lunged after her.
Her foot slipped on a rock. She stumbled. His fingers closed around a handful of denim, pulling her back. With a wild, twisting shrug, Cat was out of the over-sized jacket. Before she had taken two scrambling steps, he grabbed her hair and yanked her back, muscled arm banding itself across her throat in a chokehold. Her hands came up to pull at it and release the pressure.
“Let her go, Rollie.”
Cat instantly stopped struggling at the sound of Logan’s voice, relief soaring through her when she saw his dark shape near a tree, his outstretched arms braced in a shooting stance. It crashed at the cold feel of the gun muzzle pressed against her temple.
“Drop the gun, Echohawk. Drop it or she dies.”
Logan never changed his stance. “You’re no killer, Rollie. We both know that. Now, give it up. It’s over.”
“It isn’t over yet. Lath—”
“Lath is dead.”
“You’re lying.” A tiny mewling sound came from Rollie’s throat. “Get away from that tree. Step out here where I can see your face.”
Cat gasped at the sudden, hard jab of the gun against her temple, then bit down on her lip to stifle any further cry. With frightened eyes, she watched Logan move with slow, deliberate steps into the moonlight, keeping his gun still pointed at Rollie.
“He’s dead,” Logan repeated. “Now drop the gun. It’s over.”
The muzzle eased back from her head. Testing its closeness, Cat turned slightly, felt it and felt the movement eliminating some of the pressure against her throat. If she could turn her head all the way to the side, if he took the gun away, Cat was certain she could duck out from under his arm.
“Ma?” Rollie said in a kind of question.
“She’s crying over your brother. She won’t want to lose both her sons tonight. Drop the gun, Rollie.”
“You did it, didn’t you?” Anger trembled in his voice. “You killed my brother!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Cat saw the barrel of the gun swing toward Logan. She didn’t remember anything; she didn’t remember twisting her head out from under Rollie’s arm, only the gun centering on Logan. She didn’t remember dropping to the ground to be out of Logan’s line of fire, only the explosions coming one on top of the other.
She didn’t remember screaming, only the sight of Logan falling in that sharp limp way that told her he’d been hit.
Sobbing, Cat ran to him.
The pain, he couldn’t breathe. Eyes closed, Logan felt himself rise, then fall back again. A whisper of perfume came to him. The fragrance of it made him open his eyes and make sure it was real.
But Cat was with him. She sat on the hard, dusty ground and she had taken his head onto her lap and her hands now tugged at his shirt. She looked down, her eyes a shimmering green. This close to her, Logan noticed the length of her lashes, the curve of her cheek, and the grimly determined set to her mouth, something willful and steel-proud about her expression. Her breasts were against his head so that he felt the quick and frantic beat of her heart.
“Logan, please don’t die,” she said with a sob in her voice. “I love you too much. Please.”
“No.” He had to fight for the breath to speak, his mouth curving in a weak smile as he tried to get out the words. “I’m…okay. The vest…” He slid a hand up his stomach and fingered the hole in his shirt. “No…blood, Cat.”
He heard her gasp, then her lips came down, hot and firm on him. A tear fell onto his cheek. His hand came up, fingers touching her face, feeling the other tears that were there. She caught it and pressed it to her face, eyes closing in happiness.
“When you fell, I thought—” She couldn’t finish it.
“Close range like that…the bullet packs…a wallop.” Logan tried to sit up, but every muscle in his chest protested the attempt. He looked at the man lying on the ground. “Rollie?”
“I think he’s dead.” She glanced briefly at the body.
“Help me up,” he said with a grimace. “Quint will be worried.”
“He found you?” Propping and lifting, Cat got him to his feet.
“More or less.” He leaned on her, his mouth crooking in a small smile that sent her heart tripping over itself.
Emotions trembled through her—relief, fear, love—most of all, love. He was safe, and Quint was safe. At the moment, nothing else mattered. Cat wrapped both arms around him, content to simply hold him and feel his solidness and strength.
Below them, Logan saw Garcia and the long-awaited backup moving in, approaching the house trailer and the sobbing woman with caution. The ordeal was over. There would be time enough later to count up the toll—and to tell Cat about her uncle.
But right now, Logan wanted only one thing—to hold both his wife and his son in his arms.
The future is before you,
The ones you love at your side.
You’ll walk this land together
And you’ll do it with Calder pride.
About the Author
JANET DAILEY is the author of more than ninety novels. She lives with her husband, Bill, in Branson, Missouri.
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RAVES FOR JANET DAILEY AND CALDER PRIDE
“Dailey has written a tale as clearly branded with her imprimatur as the herd on the Triple C Ranch is branded with the Calders’ C’s. By turns an old-fashioned western and a thoroughly modern romance, this update on the Calder family shows Dailey gamely back on the horse and riding well.”
Publishers Weekly
“Entertaining. Fans of the series will find it comforting to return to the Triple C Ranch in Montana to pick up the family saga, which Dailey has done well to keep alive.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“An epic tale, an intimate romance.”
Vero Beach (FL) Islander
“Ms. Dailey [has been called] ‘queen of the Western romance’ and this book proves it.”
Dallas Morning News
“One of the writers who pioneered modern romance fiction.”
Tuba World
“A master storyteller of romantic tales, Dailey weaves all the ‘musts’ together to create the perfect love story.”
Leisure magazine
“Dailey is a smooth, experienced romance writer.”
Arizona Daily Star
“[Ms. Dailey]…has had ample practice in tugging at heartstrings while creating suspense. It’s a sure fire combination.”
Cape Codder
“Janet Dailey’s mastery of sweeping romance, divided by loyalties, and searing passion has made her one of the bestselling authors of all time.”
Lanier County (GA) News
ALSO BY JANET DAILEY
Illusions
Legacies
The Proud and the Free
Tangled Vines
Aspen Gold
Masquerade
Rivals
Heiress
The Great Alone
The Glory Game
The Pride of Hannah Wade
Silver Wings, Santiago Blue
Calder Born, Calder Bred
Stands a Calder Man
This Calder Range
This Calder Sky
Night Way
Ride the Thunder
The Rogue
Touch the Wind
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CALDER PRIDE. Copyright © 1999 by Janet Dailey. All rights reserved under In
ternational and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition April 2007 ISBN 9780061739866
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