by Cindi Myers
“I heard he approached the Southern Ute tribe about raising cactus on their land,” Jake said.
“Except collectors don’t want farmed cactus,” Werner said. “The ones who will pay the most money—collectors in Japan and Germany—they want wild plants. I told you Karol is fascinated by the whole mountain man, cowboys-and-Indians thing. He thinks, because he isn’t from the United States, he really understands Native Americans. He thinks they will accept him as one of their own. I tried to tell him he was full of it, but he’s crazy. He gets an idea in his head and decides that it’s right and there’s no talking him out of it.”
“What idea made him kidnap my sister?”
Werner looked more woeful than ever. “I am sorry, I do not know. I truly believe he is crazy.”
Jake might go crazy if anything happened to Sophie. Werner stopped at a pull-out alongside the road. “We camped in a place very like this, but I don’t know that Karol would come back to the same place. It was only a hunch.” He looked around them. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“Let’s walk a little farther,” Jake said. They were very near where he had camped when he had first come to the area to look for his mother and Sophie. So much had happened since then—he didn’t even feel like the same man. He had had a mission then, but the mission had changed to one that was so much more important. He was still on the trail of a smuggler, but his sister’s life was at stake. He couldn’t make any wrong moves.
He studied the terrain, searching for anything familiar, and tried to put himself in the crazy Russian’s head. That’s what they had taught him in the military—think like the enemy.
Petrovsky would want a good position from which to hold Sophie but also a camp that enabled him to see anyone coming, without being seen himself. He was a fan of cowboys-and-Indians stories. Where had the cowboys always holed up? Jake’s store of cowboy lore was painfully small, but hadn’t there been something about Butch Cassidy and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang making their camp in a box canyon? The Russian would like that—only one way in, and he could look out on the world from safety.
Jake pulled out the map they had brought along, spread it out and studied it. After a few minutes, he found what he was looking for. He put his finger over the squiggly line that outlined the box canyon. “That’s where I think he is,” he said.
“What do we do now?” Werner asked.
Jake folded the map and stuffed it into his pocket. “Come on.” He traveled away from the canyon, then circled back to approach it from the side. Behind him, Werner, hands cuffed in front of him, panted and puffed, occasionally stumbling and grunting, but the German made no protest. When they were at the rim of the canyon, Jake stopped. “Sit here and don’t make a sound while I check things out,” he said.
Werner’s face drooped. “At least remove the cuffs,” he said. “I will do whatever I can to help you save the girl.”
“I don’t take chances.” Jake moved toward the rim of the box canyon, crouching, and finally dropping to his stomach and crawling the last few yards. His hunch about this place had been right—someone had set up camp down below, with a tent tucked into the cover of trees, a campfire ring and various supplies scattered about. As he scanned the area a slight figure emerged from the trees—Sophie. She was bound hand and foot, her head down, shoulders slumped. The sight rattled Jake—it took all he had in him to push aside the rage and fear that threatened to crowd out everything else in his head. He had to keep it together if he was going to save her.
Another figure emerged from the woods behind Sophie. Carmen walked with her head up, her expression fierce, and Jake had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep back a roar of rage. He had expected to find Sophie here and had prepared himself for that. But seeing Carmen held prisoner touched something deep inside of him, a core need to protect the woman he loved, whatever the cost.
He hadn’t let himself admit he loved her until that moment. He had been on his own since he was a teenager. He didn’t need other people. He certainly didn’t need a woman. Yet right now, at the very core of his being, he needed Carmen. He needed her faith and trust in him, and he needed to be the man he saw reflected in her eyes when she looked at him with love.
He crawled back from the edge of the canyon, then stood and raced back to Werner. When he pulled out his knife, the German shrank back, wide-eyed, but Jake only cut the plastic cuffs, then pulled out the keys to his truck and pressed them into Werner’s hands. “Do you remember where I parked?” he asked. “Can you get back there?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Drive to Ranger headquarters. Let them know where I am.”
“You have found him?”
“Yes. Can you give the Rangers directions to this place?”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to keep an eye on him until you bring help.” He put a hand on Werner’s shoulder. “I’m trusting you on this. If you steal my truck and drive away without getting help, I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting you down.”
Werner nodded again. “I will bring help, I promise.”
“I’m counting on it.” He clapped the older man on the back. “Now go.”
As soon as Werner was out of sight, Jake moved back to the canyon rim. Stealthily, he dropped down, moving from the cover of rocks to trees to shrubs, until he was only a dozen yards above the trio in the camp and could hear them clearly. Then he settled in to wait for either the Rangers or the Russian to make a move.
* * *
CARMEN WORKED TO keep her expression calm and impassive as the Russian talked on and on about first one subject, then another. She had met his type before—give him a captive audience, and he would recite the history of the wrongs that had been done him. Since she was Native American, a member of another oppressed group, she was supposed to sympathize.
Beside Carmen, Sophie sat very still. Carmen worried the girl was in shock. She hadn’t said a word since they had returned from a short trek into the woods, where Petrovsky had allowed them to relieve themselves, Carmen standing as a shield for the girl. When the Russian turned his back for a moment, Carmen tried to catch Sophie’s eye. She gave her a look that was meant to be encouraging, but the girl didn’t respond.
“The people in the United States still see Russia as their enemy,” Petrovsky said, turning back to them. “They look at every Russian as if he is a criminal, and they don’t want to do business with me.
“Your people—” he pointed to Carmen “—they are different. They are outsiders, too. I think we could do business. I have experience they could use. I know how to get back at the Americans who have taken advantage of us for too long.”
Carmen could have pointed out that the Southern Ute were not a bunch of naïve savages but successful businessmen and -women in their own right. They didn’t need to take revenge on anyone. But arguing with the Russian wouldn’t gain anything. She needed to stay in his good graces and watch for the opportunity to flee with the girl.
“My stomach hurts.”
The sudden outburst from Sophie startled Carmen and cut off Petrovsky in mid-sentence. “What?” he barked at her.
“My stomach hurts,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom again.”
“No!”
“Please!” She doubled over, hugging her stomach. “I have to.”
“Do you think I am stupid?” Petrovsky asked. “If I let you go off in the woods again, you will try to run away.”
“No, I won’t,” Sophie said. “I promise.”
Carmen studied the girl. Something in her tone didn’t ring true. Petrovsky was probably picking up on that. She was a terrified fourteen-year-old—Sophie gave her props for trying. But what had prompted her sudden acting job?
A flicker of movement in the bushes over Petrovksy’s shoulder caught her attention. Someone was up there. No wonder Sophie had felt the nee
d to cause a distraction. “I think she’s telling the truth,” Carmen said. “You’d better let her go.”
“Please let me go!” Sophie wailed.
Carmen squeezed her hand, both to signal that she should tone down the overacting and to distract her from looking behind Petrovsky, where Jake was visible through the trees, moving stealthily toward them. But he still had a ten-yard gap of open space to cover to reach them.
“What are you looking at back there?” the Russian demanded. He drew his pistol and whirled, just as Jake stood and aimed his own weapon.
Carmen pulled Sophie down on the ground beside her, out of the range of fire. She heard a barrage of shots—maybe three or four—and the grunt of someone who had been hit. “Jake!” Sophie cried.
Carmen looked over her shoulder in time to see Petrovsky take aim at a large tree Jake must be using for cover. The Russian was hurt, blood running from his left shoulder, but the hand holding the weapon was steady. Sophie tried to break free of Carmen’s grip. “We have to help Jake,” she sobbed.
Petrovsky glanced back at them. When his eyes met Carmen’s, she felt the cold of them clear to her heart. She pulled Sophie behind her and started backing toward the cover of the trees, even as the Russian swung around and aimed at her.
The shot went wild, the report of the bullet merging with the sound of the shot that brought him to his knees. He toppled over, dead from the bullet Jake had fired. Jake emerged from behind a boulder, the smoking weapon still in his hand. Carmen tried to walk toward him, a sobbing Sophie clinging to her, but her legs didn’t want to work. She could only stand in place while he came to her, and the three of them embraced.
“I was going to wait for help,” he said into her hair, between kissing it and stroking her shoulder. “But I couldn’t be sure anyone would come, and I was too afraid to waste any more time.”
“I knew you’d come.” Sophie looked up at him, tears still streaming down her face.
“I wouldn’t leave you.” He wiped her tears away with his thumbs. “I won’t leave you ever again.”
She nodded and buried her face against his chest. He shifted his gaze to Carmen. “I won’t leave you, either,” he said. “If you’re willing to let me stay.”
“Just try to get away, Soldier Boy,” she said and kissed him, the kind of kiss that said more than words and promised a lifetime of such kisses.
Epilogue
“Maybe I should have brought a gift or something.” Jake tugged at the collar of his white Western shirt and loosened the turquoise and silver slide on his string tie. “A bottle of wine, or maybe some flowers?”
“There’s no need for that.” Carmen reached over from the passenger seat of her SUV and took his hand and squeezed it. “This is just a family dinner, nothing formal.”
“A tribe is a kind of family, isn’t it?” Phoenix spoke from the back seat. Carmen half turned to address the older woman. She had more color in her cheeks now, since she had completed the interferon treatments for her hepatitis C. She had put on a little weight and definitely had more energy. With proper care, she could remain in remission for years, possibly forever.
“A tribe is a real family,” Carmen said. “One where people are related to each other by both blood and tradition.”
“Are there any girls my age there?” Sophie asked. “Cousins or something?”
“I have a couple of cousins who have kids close to your age,” Carmen said. “Girls and boys.”
Sophie smiled shyly and smoothed the sides of her hair, which she had had cut last week into a fashionable, spiky bob. That and her new clothes made her look like any other teen girl, something Carmen knew delighted her almost as much as it worried Jake.
“Is Captain Tomato going to be there?” Jake asked.
“Chief Tonaho will not be there,” Carmen said. “But, even if he is, I expect you to act like a gentleman.”
“I’m getting better at controlling my temper,” he said. “But you can’t expect me to keep quiet if anyone says anything about him being your family’s first choice for you.”
“I do expect it,” she said. “After all, you’re my first choice, and that’s all that matters.”
Still holding Carmen’s hand, he rubbed a finger over the large chunk of polished turquoise set in a wide silver band that she had selected instead of a diamond for her engagement ring. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said.
“Will we get to see the place where you’re going to have the wedding?” Sophie asked.
“Of course,” Carmen said. “After dinner, we’ll walk up there. You can see most of my family’s ranch from there. I’ll show you exactly where you’ll stand during the ceremony.”
“I can’t wait,” Sophie said. “Don’t you wish you could get married today?”
“There’s a lot to do to get ready for a wedding,” Phoenix said. “The next two months will fly by.”
“The main thing I’m waiting for is all the paper work to go through for my transfer to the Grand Junction field office,” Jake said. “Ron Clark promised me it would be ready next week.”
“You don’t think anything will happen to hold it up, do you?” Phoenix asked.
“No. Clark is only too happy to get rid of me after he spent months—and a lot of resources—making a case against Werner Altbusser and ended up with nothing to show for it. With Petrovsky dead, his bosses didn’t even think they had enough to go after the international organization and, by the time they got back to Werner, he had gotten rid of any of the cactus he’d collected on that last trip and was safely back in Germany, lawyered up and declaring his innocence.”
“I hate that you worked so hard and have nothing to show for it,” Phoenix said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Jake slowed for the turn into the Southern Ute Reservation, and his eyes met Carmen’s. “I’d say I got a lot out of this case. More than I’d ever bargained for.”
She reached over and clasped his hand again. “I guess we both came out winners in this case,” she said. All those years she had been so focused on proving herself, yet with Jake she didn’t have to prove anything. She only had to love him, and be loved in return.
* * * * *
Look for the next book in Cindi Myers’s
THE RANGER BRIGADE: FAMILY SECRETS miniseries,
MISSING IN BLUE MESA,
available next month.
And don’t miss the previous titles in
THE RANGER BRIGADE: FAMILY SECRETS series:
MURDER IN BLACK CANYON
UNDERCOVER HUSBAND
MANHUNT ON MYSTIC MESA
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FBI Agents Macey Night and Bowen Murphy
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Read on for a sneak preview of
INTO THE NIGHT,
the next book in the KILLER INSTINCT series
from New York Times bestselling author
Cynthia Eden.
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Into the Night
by Cynthia Eden
THE LIGHT WAS in her eyes, blinding her. Macey Night couldn’t see past that too-bright light. She was strapped onto the operating-room table, but it wasn’t the straps that held her immobile.
He’d drugged her.
“I could stare into your eyes forever.” His rumbling voice came from behind the light. “So unusual, but then, you realize just how special you are, right, Dr. Night?”
She couldn’t talk. He’d gagged her. They were in the basement of the hospital, in a wing that hadn’t been used for years. Or at least, she’d thought it hadn’t been used. She’d been wrong. About so many things.
“Red hair is always rare, but to find a redhead with heterochromia...it’s like I hit the jackpot.”
A tear leaked from her eye.
“Don’t worry. I’ve made sure that you will feel everything that happens to you. I just—well, the drugs were to make sure that you wouldn’t fight back. That’s all. Not to impair the experience for you. Fighting back just ruins everything. I know what I’m talking about, believe me.” He sighed. “I had a few patients early on—they were special like you. Well, not quite like you, but I think you get the idea. They fought and things got messy.”