Pretty Lawless

by Jodi Linton

  “Ain’t that funny, Colt.” I glared at Redbud. “The two of us are actually looking for Luke.”

  Redbud wiped the spit from his mouth. “I had a girl once. Pretty thing.” The darkness glimmered in his eyes. “Sort of like the peach standing by your side.”

  Crazy, much?

  Curiosity got the best of me. “What happened to her?”

  Snorting, Redbud jutted his chin toward the sitting room. When I saw Gunner being shoved through the doorway, arms held at bay by two dudes who were probably wrestlers in a previous life, and cussing up a storm, I knew we’d gotten in over our heads. “So, Laney Briggs, who’s gonna live—the Texas Ranger or the fed?” Redbud snickered. “The ball’s in your court.”

  My heart sank. I looked at Gunner as I felt Colt tighten his hold on me. It was now or never. “Okay, so a couple of swingers died, who gives a fuck.” Low, I know. But I was desperate to get out of this fucking party in once piece. “How about I give you Wagner in exchange for the ranger? And then the three of us will be out of your hair.”

  Redbud laughed, amused. “Why on earth would I make that deal? I already have Wagner.”

  “Always knew you’d be a crappy friend.” Larsen let his arm drop off my waist and stepped an inch away from my side with hands held high. “Do what you need to do, but first let the ranger and the girl go.”

  Redbud looked at Gunner, and then me. His slimeball smile slowly crept up into his pudgy cheeks. “Why not?” He shrugged, glaring at Colt. “I always hated the law.”

  And then something hard and cold whacked me on the back of the head, and the last thing I saw was Gunner falling to his knees.

  I blinked, then glared at a man who could’ve taken over for Shamu at SeaWorld. Bottomless black eyes scowled insincerely as a pair of rough, cracked hands swung a rope into view.

  Redbud grunted. “I bet you’re a ball of fun in the sack.”

  I squinted back at him and wrestled with my hog-tied wrists. “I’m more of a bitch. Just ask your new buddies.”

  A humorless cackle boomed in the tiny space, and a ghostly smile crept up his mouth as he threw back his head. Then, out of nowhere, he reached out and pulled my ass from the chair, flinging me facefirst onto the floor. I spat, tasting carpet on my tongue as I tilted my head back. There in a corner, bleeding and bound, were Colt and Gunner seated in chairs. I jerked at my arms, feeling the damn rope loosen slightly around my wrists. Danny Redbud had just moved to the top of my shit list.

  “Well, well…” Redbud strolled around a bar, clunked two cubes of ice in a glass, and poured a shot of whiskey. “All I really wanted to do was stick it to Mitch Wagner where it hurt, but this is much better. Kill two birds with one stone.” He eyed Colt and Gunner. Both men had their mouths duct-taped, although as Gunner kicked up a storm, my friend Colt was motionless and slumped over. Tears welled up in my eyes as I took in the blood-soaked pearl-snap shirt matted against his chest.

  “Laney, I think the two of y’all have met before.” He gestured to the side. A door flung open and, although only a minute ago I’d had hopes I’d be getting out of this ordeal alive, seeing my old childhood friend strutting into the room, all my hope took a gut punch. “It seems your rancher has struck a deal.” He looked over at Luke leaning smugly in the doorway. I had a new appreciation of hate for the Wagner name at that moment. “He’s willing to deal the guns and drugs for us out in Pistol Rock. And he has way better connections than that idiot cousin of yours.” Redbud nodded at the big guy standing in the far corner. “Pat the pretty deputy down, Gil.”

  My arms were lifted above my head, and then I felt a pair of burly hands roaming all over my body. Truly an experience I had no inclination to go through again. I stared Luke down while the big guy copped himself a damn good feel. The line of Luke’s mouth tightened, and he shifted in that hardboiled stance when the big guy tapped my ass. He was fixing to blow. He was on my side. And I was ready to fight.

  Big guy stepped back. “She’s clean, boss.”

  Luke was impatiently watching the exchange. I gave him the evil eye. If he thought for one second I was going to let this low-down shitty move fly, he had another think coming to him. “You aren’t a local.” With both eyes still pinned on Luke’s angry face, I plunged on. “If you were, you’d know by now that trusting a Wagner is like asking for a death wish.”

  Luke gritted his teeth. “Sometimes a pretty little deputy should just keep her damn mouth shut.” He pushed the hat up along his forehead, gaining a better view of me sprawled out on the floor. “Sometimes that deputy should learn when to take a backseat and let the big boys settle a score.” Luke narrowed his eyes, and then he had the nerve to mouth, “Shut up, Laney.”

  I’d definitely been wrong thinking we could still be friends. Screwing around with one too many cowboys had my past coming back to bite me in the ass.

  I looked at Redbud, the real guy I had a bone to pick with. “You got what you wanted, so how about letting the ranger and the marshal go.”

  Redbud gave me a menacing look; the raw desire to make me pay sparkled in his cold, dead-as-night eyes. This was so not good. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Deputy Briggs.” His brows furrowed. “I can understand how much it sucks to lose, but you just have to learn to swallow that jagged pill.” He drove his point home as he tossed back a sip of whiskey. “Or in your case, take the fall.”

  I was as cantankerous as a bull rider with a case of hemorrhoids. It was Luke, after all, who stabbed me in the back. I composed myself before I spoke, enunciating every single word.

  “You can keep Wagner,” I compromised with Redbud, jutting my chin in Luke’s direction. He’d crossed the line, and I was pissing mad. “I just want the ranger and the marshal.”

  The whiskey glass clanked on the bar top. “Boys, what do y’all want to see first? This little piece of tail getting the fucking she deserves?” Redbud snarled.

  Gunner squirmed in the chair. His brown eyes locked in on me, plagued in sadness, remorse, and love. Redbud edged around the bar and knelt next to Gunner. “Looks like you’ll be fucked, honey.”

  “No!” My Texas Ranger’s hoarse strangle damn near broke my heart.

  Redbud sauntered toward me, the lines of his face edgy and heavy with a dark lust. He smiled, head shaking in amusement as he crouched down before me. “This is exactly how I put my lover out of her misery.” He swept my hair off the nape of my neck; a few strands stuck, cold and limp, to my sweaty skin. “She was part of the murdered couples my cop friend tried to pin on your buddy Luke Wagner.” A 9mm grazed my breast. “Ready to get this show on the road?” Redbud stepped over me, flopped me to my stomach, and straddled my back. Then the rope loosened on my wrists as the butt of the gun pressed into the back of my head. “I bet Luke and the Texas Ranger never mentioned yours truly being Mitch Wagner’s bastard son.”

  My eyes flew wide and set on Gunner staring helplessly back at me. “Sorry to disappoint, but I know all about your family lineage.”

  Redbud laughed, the sound stuck all gristly in the back of his throat. He cut an eye toward Gunner and Colt tied up in chairs. “You really think these losers can save you?” He slouched down on my behind. “They can’t even move.”

  “Now, Laney!” Luke hollered as he barreled into Redbud.

  For a moment I was stunned as I watched them both go down like a sack of bricks. Then I collected my thoughts and spotted a gun on the bar top near Gil’s arm. It wouldn’t be that hard to grab the Glock and draw. I scrambled on my belly to all fours and lunged, yelling, “Horse’s ass!” as I propelled myself into the big guy.

  A chair knocked over, and my back slammed into the wall. I raised a knee and barreled it precisely into the guy’s nuts. He slumped forward, toppling over me. The air died in my lungs, and my shoulder hurt like the devil from the blow of his fist smacking the bone. When the back of my head crashed into the edge of the bar, I managed to wrap a leg around his waist before we both went down. Hard.

 
; “I’m gonna kill you.” The sound of Redbud punching Luke in the cheek filtered through the dizziness.

  I blinked. A faint taste of blood lingered on my lips. My head throbbed, and my body was pressed into the floor by a large dead weight. Licking my mouth clean, I opened my eyes to come face-to-face with a hand gunning for my throat. On instinct alone, I rolled, sending the big guy tumbling to the side. He hit the bar again and momentarily blacked out.

  Taking in my surroundings, I found Gunner trying to scoot across the floor and Colt still lifeless in a chair. This was not the time to shed a tear, because I was more concerned about that gun Redbud had pressed into Luke’s head. I dived to the floor like a baseball player stealing home. My thighs banged into the leg of a chair as I rolled to my side and grasped the gun that’d fallen from the bar in my struggle. Slipping a finger around the trigger, I turned on my side and aimed. “Drop the gun, Redbud,” I ordered.

  He gave me a sleazy smile, then dug the gun deeper. “You might want to say your last words.” The trigger clicked.

  Luke started to speak, but it was too late—I’d already aimed and squeezed.

  And then everything and everyone went deadly silent except for the resounding blast of my pistol.

  This was gonna be a fun experience to explain to my mother, especially when I filled her in on how Gunner and I wanted to get hitched in the local chapel. She might need to be tranquilized after word spread through town about my time spent at a sex party and that I’d finally agreed to marry the one person she hated more than finding out the Filler-Up gas station had run out of Marlboro Red cigarettes.

  Even though I’d aimed the gun at Redbud’s head, in the end it’d been his thigh that took the bullet.

  After the shit bag’s near-death experience, Luke helped secure our culprits before I crawled my way toward Gunner and freed him. Then I placed a 911 call and dialed in the extra cavalry.

  Now here I sat on the porch of Redbud’s pink granite mansion, sporting a sweaty blood-caked corset and scuffed-up red high heels, watching the gurney carrying a wounded Colt Larsen trundle out of the garage.

  There was a high probability the marshal might be in need of a very long vacation from me. I dusted my hands down my bare thighs and rose to my feet. Gunner was huddled nearby with a few rangers while they took his and Luke’s accounts of the situation. Smiling inwardly at the crazy turn of events to finally make the two men in my life friends again, I pushed past a local Odessa homicide cop and walked over to the EMTs attending to Colt.

  “Take it easy on this one, okay,” I said, placing a hand on his arm. “And make sure he gets himself a cute nurse around the clock.”

  Colt’s lips twitched, allowing a small smile to appear on his pale face. “I knew you cared for my well-being, Briggs.”

  I had to laugh at that one. Leaning down, I whispered through a kiss on his forehead, “Now don’t be a stranger, Larsen. I’ll swing by the hospital once I talk with the rangers and local police.”

  The EMT moved the gurney, and Colt moaned as they lifted him into the ambulance. “Told you it wouldn’t be easy to get rid of me.”

  “Go get that sponge bath. You deserve it.”

  Sirens whistled down the street as the ambulance pulled away. I glanced at the car-packed street just in time to find Elroy, my boss and Pistol Rock sheriff, hunched over with elbows resting on the cruiser’s hood. He straightened when I waved him down. With red heels planted on the cold, hard cement and my hands fisted at my sides, I moved through the chilly air fogging up the cop-littered lawn. “You hear about this over dispatch?” My breath puffed out in smoke. “Or did Gunner put a call in to the station?”

  I looked sidelong at the cops huddled over by the oak tree, and caught Gunner and Luke staring me down. They both smiled before turning their attention back on the local PD.

  Elroy spat at the ground and hiked up his pants. “No. Mitch Wagner asked me to meet him out here.”

  Mist belted my face and chilly wind rapped at the back of my neck. A Dodge Ram pulled to a stop near the curb, and then the front door to the mansion swung open wide and out stepped Redbud, cuffed and in the arms of two lawmen. I scooted to the edge of the lawn right as Mitch jumped down from the truck cab, twelve-gauge rifle slung in hand.

  Before anyone was able to shout, “Gun,” Mitch pulled the trigger, hitting his target. Redbud went flying back, and his limp body slumped to the ground. My ass slammed into the prickly lawn from the hard blow of Elroy smacking me in the chest with an arm. Vision a blurry mess and eardrums ringing loudly, I sort of made out Gunner and Luke rushing across the lawn as they propelled themselves into Mitch, tackling him to the ground.

  And as all the cops swarmed into the fold, I heard the sound of Luke’s bitter drawl.

  “God damn it, Dad.” Luke pinned his old man to the ground. “You just killed a man.”

  Gunner kicked the shotgun out of reach as he pulled his gun on Mitch. I watched, sprawled on my back and barricaded to the front yard underneath two tons of my boss’s weight, while Gunner whipped out his cuffs. “Always wanted to put your sorry ass behind bars, Mitch,” he told the murdering, rich rancher.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Laney

  It’d been two weeks since Mitch Wagner lodged a bullet in Redbud’s head—confessing after hours of interrogation to putting the hit out on Gunner’s parents because Tex Wilson had connected the dots to him being the leader of the Dirty Southern Mafia. Now he found himself awaiting trial for the murder of his bastard son, Danny Redbud.

  Two weeks since Colt checked into the hospital, and he’d requested first dibs on renting out my old farmhouse. And two weeks since Luke Wagner gunned it down the dirt road leading away from my home, leaving behind a friendly kiss good-bye and an early wedding present—a plaque engraved with Home Sweet Home to hang on my new front door and a note scribbled with his name and phone number. As if I’d soon forget my old childhood friend. Maybe one day we’d see each other again, and yet I understood Luke’s need to put things behind him and etch out his own path, wherever that might be.

  But right now? Right now I was fine with accepting the information Gunner and the Texas Rangers had fed me. Redbud was a career criminal who over the years had funneled the gun and drug trade throughout west Texas with the help of the Dirty Southern Mafia. And he was bat-shit crazy. He’d taken up residency in Odessa to seek revenge on the man who’d given him away…Mitch Wagner. And he found it in Luke Wagner. That, in turn, put him six feet under by the hand of the very man he so desperately wanted to stick it to.

  I grabbed the glass of iced tea I’d brought from home for Gunner before pushing open the car door. Today was a warm day. Today was a new day. The hem of my dress rustled back and forth, breezing past my knees. I lifted my hand to cover my eyes from the glaring sun. Fresh grass crunched beneath the soles of my boots as I focused on the future.

  The run-down white farmhouse would be fun. It appeared charming. Even warm. I could do this. I could embrace this new lifestyle. I walked up the porch steps and paused. There would be no more blame. I was good. We were perfect. On a gentle shove, the front door swung wide, and the welcoming scent of home engulfed me.

  “Heard there might be a Texas Ranger living here,” I called out.

  Stepping over a pile of boxes and trash bags, I edged past the open front door. The radio thumping loudly and the sound of whistling beckoned me home. About time I called the run-down farmhouse a new place to lay my head. As I eased inside what would soon be the ultimate country farmhouse kitchen, the midwinter morning sunlight slanted through the brown-tinged lace curtains bathing my Texas Ranger’s bare back in a seductive, mouthwatering glow. Wranglers hung mid-waist. Muscles clenched and flexed as he rotated the saw, cutting a piece of plywood in half. As I stood there, I drank him in, feeling completely relaxed with the life-changing events.

  In a month I would finally be Mrs. Gunner Wilson. And hell, it was sounding sweeter every time it rolled off the tip of my tongu
e.

  Clutching the mason glass of iced tea in my hand, I shouted above the buzz of the saw. “You look good as a handyman.”

  The humming noise faded into a soft putter. He placed the saw down and turned, hands perched on the makeshift butcher-block countertop. “You look good in that dress.”

  “Such a pathetic attempt to get a kiss out of me.” I pulled the glass to my lips and took a swig. “Sort of disappointed in you, Gunner Wilson. I mean, what happened to those smooth moves?”

  He straightened and squared his shoulders, that washboard stomach making my mouth dry, and began a slow, lazy stride toward me. “God, this dress might be the best thing I’ve ever seen.” Gunner winked, and before I could smile he’d snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me flush against his sweaty chest. “Makes it damn easy to reach my goal.”

  I hooked both arms around his neck and hitched a leg up on those narrow hips. My lips feathered across his sexy mouth, and the condensation from the sweet tea dripped down his lean backside as he moved in closer and nuzzled my neck. “Goal, huh?”

  His mouth descended on mine, and I felt the hard planes of his body mold to my curves as he yanked me up against him and fused us together. A callused hand cupped my cotton panty–covered ass, and heat flooded between my legs. He broke the kiss on a growl and smiled. “My goal is to knock you up before our wedding day, Laney Briggs.”

  Epilogue

  Gunner

  One month later

  She looked too damn gorgeous.

  And now I couldn’t breathe. Fuck, this tie was seriously trying to strangle me to death.

  I glanced around the small chapel and noticed that every single soul in Pistol Rock had parked their asses in the pews. Ruth, the soon-to-be mother-in-law from hell, had chosen a seat front row and center. Right next to her sat Laney’s old man, whom—thank god for me—had been cleared of any foul play during a round of questioning. Plastering on one of my pretty-boy smiles, I tipped the brim of my hat in their direction, only to gain a scowl from Ruth that would have made Satan himself slither back under his rock.