It awakened sensations that she had fought ever since he sang to her. Now, with fear forcing them close, she discovered that her efforts had been futile. She wanted him so much her bones ached.
In the side-view mirror, she glimpsed the motor home with blue racing stripes, coming around the corner. Alarm flashed across the driver’s face as he stomped his brakes.
Shifting her gaze to the road ahead, Kate caught a series of images, each as distinct as a photograph: Dexter diving for the creek; Nine Toes accidentally firing his gun at the ground, then hopping for safety; and the motor home skidding sideways amid the scream of ripping metal.
A split second later, the silver trailer rounded the bend, jerked and bucked, then fishtailed madly. Eons passed as vehicles slid, tilted, crunched, groaned, and finally came to rest in a tangled heap.
Mitch’s body over Kate’s allowed only intermittent glimpses of the wreckage. When at last silence fell, he sat up and started the truck.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“Getting out of here.” He edged back onto the road. “With any luck, they’re too dazed to notice which way we’re headed.”
Kate’s back stiffened. “We can’t leave the scene of an accident! What if people are injured?”
A jerk of his head indicated one of the RV drivers climbing out of his cab. “He looks mobile enough. I don’t see any fire and nobody’s been crushed. If they were wearing their seat belts, they should be shaken up at worst.”
“What about those two bandits?” she demanded. “They weren’t inside vehicles.”
“This highway is patrolled pretty regularly.” Mitch steered through a clear patch of roadway toward the turnoff. “Besides, one of these guys must have a...”
From down the canyon reverberated the scree-scree of a siren.
“Guess somebody heard the crash,” Mitch said.
Kate dropped her objections. With police on the way, Mitch needed to make himself scarce in a hurry.
“Do you think the bandits will report you?” she asked as they jounced from the pavement onto a rutted side road.
“If we’re lucky, they’ll be too busy thinking up lies about why they were toting those shotguns and blocking the road.” Mitch guided their rig uphill until a clump of pines screened the highway.
His words failed to reassure Kate. “Is there another way out of the canyon? I can’t imagine having to return this same way. It’s like a trap.”
“There may be an alternate route from the cabin to the highway. We’ll still be in the canyon, but at a different point. And it should be dark in a little over an hour.” He shrugged. “I’m willing to take my chances. What’s the alternative?”
Once, at a Las Vegas convention, Kate had balked at trying the slot machines. Now she was playing a game where the stakes were infinitely higher.
But as Mitch said, they didn’t have much choice.
NINE TOES’S FOOT HURT like fire, but he’d be danged if he’d say anything to those Department of Public Safety troopers. Like as not, they’d haul him off in one of their big white cars to some hospital or other.
What he wanted was to get up the trail and nail Mitch Connery before the varmint skedaddled. Nobody killed one of Nine Toes’s pals and got away with it, even if Jules had been setting a trap.
They’d called in from Albuquerque, only to have Billy order them back here. Dexter had groused the whole way, saying he figured Loretta kind of fancied him and he thought she would come real quietlike, maybe even help them catch that no-good cousin of hers.
They knew where she was staying. She’d charged the motel bill on her credit card and Billy had tracked it through his computer.
But back they’d come, and the job would be well and truly done by now if it wasn’t for those two roadhogging senior citizens. The geezers were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the road, each one complaining loudly to the troopers.
“Hey!” Tiny Wheeler hulked alongside him. “Man, you stupid? Hide the durn gun!”
Nine Toes started to sidle behind the rock and then thought the better of it. “My foot’s kinda sore. I reckon I stubbed it.”
With a look of disgust, Tiny grabbed the shotgun and headed for the van. A moment later, he returned empty-handed. “Where’s Dexter? He still hiding in the crick?”
“He gave up on that.” Nine Toes pointed to where Dexter sat on a rock, trying to wring out his clothes, which wasn’t easy because he was still wearing them.
“At least he had the sense to ditch his gun,” muttered Tiny.
“Ditch it?” growled Nine Toes. “He’s so yellow, he prob‘ly lost it runnin’ for cover.”
“Here’s the deal,” said Tiny. “Anybody asks why we stopped, we hit some kind of animal, like an armadillo or a coyote. We figgered we ought to finish it off. That’ll explain the guns, too, iffen anybody mentions ’em.”
One of the DPS troopers sauntered toward them. “Either of you fellas need medical attention?” “
They shook their heads.
“Who was driving?”
Tiny cleared his throat.
“Could I see your license, sir?”
The trooper took Tiny aside to get his account of what happened. That was when Nine Toes realized he had to speak to Dexter before the cops got to him.
No telling what that idiot might say. One hint that they’d been laying an ambush and they’d be searched, manacled and strung up.
Nine Toes waved at the gangly kid on the rock. No response. For some reason, even a simple arm gesture made his foot hurt worse, which got him mad at Dexter. Finally he yelled, “Hey, you young fool, git over here!”
The kid came loping across the highway, where cars and RVs had begun backing up. The trooper was busy directing traffic, which had to squeeze through the single open lane.
“Hey,” said Dexter when he arrived. In wet clothes, he looked like a scrawny chicken. “While them cops is busy, why don’t you ‘n’ me take the van up the road and finish the job?”
Nine Toes decided the kid wasn’t entirely stupid. They had Mitch boxed in, and who knew when they’d get another chance?
Of course, the cops might hear the shots. Also, he and Dexter couldn’t exactly drive away without anybody noticing.
He was weighing the possibilities when a whole wave of pain rolled upward from his foot. It hadn’t hurt so bad since the time he shot his toe off.
That was when he realized he hadn’t just stubbed it. With a curse that would have made his mama come after him with a paddle, Nine Toes stared down at the blasted remains of his boot.
“Well, dang,” he said. “I musta been in shock.”
“Sir?” It was the trooper again. “You’re bleeding. You need to see a doctor.”
He sure did. He no longer cared if they ever got Connery cornered, or whether they made it to Santa Fe, or even if Loretta preferred a scatterbrained young’un to a seasoned rangehand. He just wanted some doc to put him out of his misery.
“Naw, he ain’t no sissy,” he heard Dexter say.
Didn’t that just beat all? “Iffen you like it so much, next time you shoot... next time a truck runs over your foot, we’ll tell the doc to stay on home. Then ever’body can call you Nine Toes.”
“But that’s your name,” protested Dexter.
“Not no more it ain’t,” said Eight Toes, right before he passed out.
DESPITE A BRILLIANT sunset slashing the sky, the canyon lay in shadow. The road angled up a rocky slope toward a clump of cypress trees, but for the moment only the twilight provided cover.
At any moment, Kate expected to hear sirens gaining on them. But she detected nothing beyond the rumble of overheating engines below, echoing off the bluffs.
“What a mess.” Looking down, she could see a traffic jam, the smashed RVs and a clutch of emergency vehicles with lights flashing. “I hope no one’s hurt.”
Mitch kept his gaze on the path. “It’s a miracle there was no explosion.”
�
�Do you think Tiny Wheeler will give us away?”
“Considering how many shotguns he’s carrying, I expect he’ll want to attract as little law-enforcement attention as possible.”
He guided the truck around a rutted, sloping bend. Runoff had washed out the shoulder and the slightest skid would have sent them tumbling, but Mitch kept a steady hand on the wheel.
Through the open window, a breeze played through his shaggy hair. His confidence, and his air of being at home out here, melted the tension from Kate’s muscles.
She recalled the heat that had flooded through her in the moments before the crash. But the stimulus hadn’t just been physical.
Mitch’s first instinct had been to protect her. It was his caring, and his courage, that had energized her, not merely the powerful impression of his chest and hips and arms. On the other hand, she wouldn’t mind experiencing that same contact again under less stressful circumstances.
“Kate?” At a level spot sheltered by a boulder, he halted the truck.
“Is something wrong?”
“You tell me.” Gold-flecked amber eyes examined her. “You just went through a traumatic experience. Ever since, you’ve had a funny expression on your face. Do you feel okay?”
She managed a weak smile, relieved that he hadn’t been able to guess her thoughts. “I do feel kind of shaken.”
He reached for her arm and laid it across his thigh. Warm fingers pressed her wrist and she realized he was taking her pulse.
“I thought you were a lawyer, not a doctor,” she said.
“On a ranch, you’ve got to know a little bit of everything.” He checked his watch. “It’s elevated a little, but that’s okay.” He didn’t let go of her hand, though.
Silver glimmered through Kate’s veins. Despite the sounds of doors slamming and horns honking that drifted up from the highway, she didn’t want to move. Ever.
She could feel every sinew and muscle in Mitch’s thigh. She heard the deliberateness of his breathing and knew desire was growing in him.
This awareness of him as a man rippled through Kate, changing her in subtle and sparkling ways. She wondered if Mitch could see the glow in her skin. Even without looking in a mirror, she knew it was real.
Reluctantly, he removed her arm from his lap. “We need to go on.”
She nodded, afraid to speak. There was too much that might slip out, perhaps even a dangerous admission that could change her life forever.
Kate couldn’t keep lying to herself. She hadn’t simply been keyed up by her expectations of a wedding night. The truth was that Mitch awoke sensations in her that Moose never had, and probably never would.
Yet she was determined not to act on them. The discovery of her own needs didn’t mean that she had stopped being Kate Bingham.
She was still the principal on whom her school depended for its fragile, newfound return to high academic standards. She still loved her students, and her staff, and her hometown and the life she had built for herself.
It was a life that Moose, and only Moose, could share.
They were rumbling on their way. The moment had passed. Maybe, she thought with the tiniest glimmer of hope, the subject would never come up again.
In the midst of the cypress trees, they found a clearing studded with weathered stucco buildings connected by covered patios and archways. It didn’t resemble a cabin so much as a small outpost.
As he switched off the engine, Mitch nodded toward a building in the back. “There’s no water or power lines up here. Everything’s trucked in, dug up or generated on the premises.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble. I don’t see why anyone would want to...” Kate turned to open her door and for a moment forgot to breathe.
Through a gap in the trees, the earth spread out before her like a newly discovered planet, primitive and achingly raw in the purple dusk. Kate had the sense that prehistoric beasts still stalked these buttes, and that civilization remained a distant and uncertain possibility.
“That’s why,” Mitch said, and got out of the truck.
She dropped to the ground. The isolation of this place was almost overwhelming, yet the glory of it dazzled her.
Then, in the distance, a hot-air balloon danced above the canyon, its red, blue and yellow stripes a cheeky contrast to the red rocks. The sight of it jolted Kate back to reality. They had a mission to accomplish, and time was short.
She turned her attention to the premises. If people lived here, they didn’t put much store in landscaping. There was nothing but moss and a few scrubby bushes.
They had just reached the porch when the door opened. The movement was so unexpected that she missed her step and had to touch Mitch’s arm for support. Her cheek grazed his shoulder, and she inhaled deeply, braced as much by his subliminal essence as by the solid feel of him.
A woman emerged, fortyish, her gray-streaked dark hair pulled back and fastened with a clip. An embroidered vest topped a white blouse and jeans.
“Hello?” She blinked at them. “What’s going on? I heard an awful racket down...” Recognition dawned. “Mitch Connery!”
From her expression, Kate couldn’t tell whether the woman wanted to hug him or call the cops. One thing, at least, was clear: They had found Sarah Rosen.
DOC’S LIVING ROOM might be small and the furniture shabby, but there was a National Geographic-quality view through the picture window, Mitch reflected during a break in the conversation. He hoped the doctor had finally managed to exorcise the flatness of Texas.
“I’d take any reasonable offer for the place,” Sarah said as she served iced tea. “It’s a great place to paint, but I can’t make a living doing that.”
She had explained, once they got past the initial greetings, that her husband had died several months ago. A self-employed international business consultant, he’d left her with no insurance and a son in college.
Although she had found a teaching position at a private college in Phoenix, it didn’t pay very well. The cabin must be sold.
Sarah had aged markedly in the fifteen years since Mitch last saw her. Grief and time had darkened circles beneath her eyes and etched wrinkles into her forehead.
He wished he could help her, for Doc’s sake as well as her own. But right now he was in no position to help anyone.
“I’m sorry about not answering your letters,” she said. “After I got the first one, I tried to find out what had happened to the loan papers. If they’d still been here when Dad died, that would prove the quitclaim is a forgery. But we moved so much that mail went missing a lot, and Dad’s housekeeper was hard to track down. I don’t even know how much the loan was for.”
“Thirty thousand dollars,” Mitch said. “That much I do remember.”
She sat on a wicker chair and hooked one heel over a rung. Despite her current difficulties, there was still a brightness to Sarah’s face that reminded him of the energetic young woman who used to design floats for Gulch City’s annual Fourth of July parade.
“Dad left a lot of books and magazines and papers when he died,” Sarah continued, “and I could only stay a short time. The housekeeper had to sort things as best she could.”
“His death was written up in the Gulch City News,” Mitch recalled. “Billy must have seen it. Since he’d worked for Dad, he knew about the loan.”
“I never liked that man,” Sarah said. “Dad didn’t, either. I know he wouldn’t have sold Billy the loan. In fact, he’d eventually have torn up the papers even if it hadn’t been repaid. But I doubt he realized they were still here. Dad was pretty casual about loaning money to friends.”
“Was he getting forgetful?” Kate asked. “Could he have signed the quitclaim without realizing what it meant?”
Sarah shook her head. “Not in my opinion. But I couldn’t prove it in court.”
“Did you ever find the housekeeper?” Mitch asked.
“I finally found out she’s living with her son in Mexico,” Sarah said. “She wrote me that a man
came by who said he was a lawyer, and took some papers. Well, there was a lawyer in Sedona who settled Dad’s estate, but I don’t think he ever drove out here.”
“Could she identify Billy in court?”
“Maybe,” Sarah said. “But she’s pretty old. I don’t know if she could make the trip.”
Mitch could see how much it bothered her, not being able to help. “Don’t worry about it, Sarah—it probably makes no difference. The only courtroom I’m likely to see is the one in which I’m tried for murder.”
He had told her when they arrived about Jules Kominsky’s death. He didn’t want Sarah to find out about the murder charge later and believe he’d been trying to hide it. Thank goodness she’d believed in his innocence without question.
Kate, who had been listening intently, leaned forward. “This might be relevant to your defense, though, don’t you think? If you can prove that Billy went to such lengths to defraud you of the High C, that might make a jury more likely to believe he would set you up to get killed.”
The point was well taken. Mitch had been thinking like a rancher, not a lawyer.
Besides, although they seemed to have reached a dead end, he felt an itch, the kind that refuses to go away, to put his hands on something tangible in this cabin. “Are there any papers or records left? Maybe there’s something Billy overlooked.”
Their hostess got to her feet. “There’s a safe in the back. I left some odds and ends in it, since we were moving around so much.”
The two women preceded Mitch from the room. Although Sarah was taller, Kate’s swinging stride and authoritative posture gave the impression of greater height.
On their way through the house, he glanced into a couple of bedrooms. Bright serapes draped the walls, and multicolored rugs splashed the tile floors. Even in twilight, the house felt light and airy.
They entered a room lined with empty bookshelves. Sarah opened a closet and switched on an interior light to reveal the outline of a built-in safe.
Mitch wiped his hands on his jeans. They’d gone clammy on him, and his throat had tightened.
The Cowboy & The Shotgun Bride (The Brides of Grazer's Corners #1) Page 12