Cowboy Under Fire

by Carla Cassidy

  The last thing she remembered was that she’d been in bed, thinking about Forest, excited for morning to come so that she could tell him that she was in love with him. She’d had no idea how their future together would work, but she had been confident that they would figure things out, that they would make it work no matter what the obstacles.

  They were going to get married and have children and pot roast Sundays whenever she wasn’t on a job and working on the weekends. He’d work on their ranch and she’d be his life partner and they would live happily ever after.

  The sunlight blurred as tears sprang to her eyes. So, what had happened between then and now? She’d almost been asleep, eager for the morning to come so that she could tell Forest of her love for him. There had been a knock on the door.

  She frowned. Who had been at the door? A sting in her neck...a wave of dizziness and then nothing. Who had done this to her and why? Who had attacked her in the middle of the night and brought her here to die?

  By this afternoon she would have been leaving the ranch. Her part of the investigation would have been over. Why attack her now?

  Her legs twitched with nerves, and to her horror they sank deeper down into the corn, now burying her to a mere inch below her knees. In that instant she recognized the true danger she was in, that unless somebody found her soon, the corn would drag her down into its deepest depths and suffocate her.

  It was possible nobody would find her until the silo was emptied out and then all they’d find would be her dead body. She was even afraid to scream. By drawing in enough air to produce a good scream she feared she’d displace more corn and be buried deeper.

  There was a steel ladder descending into the silo, but it was too far away for her to reach and there was no way she could swim through the corn to grab it. Any chance at all of surviving depended on her staying perfectly still.

  She gazed up at the sun once again. It was rising higher in the sky with each moment that passed. Surely it was late enough that somebody would know she was missing by now.

  The cowboys were all probably out looking for her. But who would think to look inside the top of a corn silo? Whoever had done this to her had assured her death.

  Who? Who had done this and why didn’t she remember?

  She fought to find some modicum of hope. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to end. She’d finally realized the depth of her love for Forest. She’d embraced his dreams as her own.

  It just wasn’t fair that now she wouldn’t get a chance to act on her love, to build that future that promised bliss.

  She wasn’t supposed to die by being smothered in a vegetable she rarely ate. But it appeared that it was going to happen. She would suffer a slow, torturous demise as she sank deeper and deeper into the corn.

  * * *

  Even though she didn’t want him, even though she’d pulled out all of her defenses the night before, Forest was frantic as another hour passed and still there was no sign of Patience anywhere on the property.

  Even Devon had left the cool of the trailer to help in the search, his white lab coat like a beacon against the pasture as he walked from one building to another.

  Dillon’s men were also on foot, while the rest of the cowboys had taken to their horses to hunt for the missing woman. Forest and Dillon stood in Patience’s room, hoping to find an answer as to what had happened to her by being in the place Forest had last seen her enter.

  “It’s obvious she went to bed,” Forest said. His heart ached when he saw the edge of a tabloid peeking out from under the bed. Had she been reading one of those when something terrible had happened? Had she escaped into her world of fantasy to negate Forest’s words of love for her?

  Dillon checked the door carefully. “Nothing appears to be tampered with and there’s no sign of forced entry.”

  “It was unlocked when I opened it this morning.” Forest looked around the room and then went into the bathroom and checked the clothing in her laundry bag. He then went back and looked in the chest of drawers and checked through the clothes it held.

  “Wherever she is, I think she’s in her nightgown. I don’t see it anywhere here.” He fought against the burn of tears in his eyes. “That means she was probably taken at some point in the middle of the night.” Which meant she’d been missing potentially for eight hours or more.

  “It’s possible she isn’t even on the property any longer,” Dillon said, his gaze slightly sympathetic as he looked at Forest.

  Forest fisted his hands at his sides. “Dammit, why didn’t I hear anything? I’m a light sleeper. If there had been a struggle in here I should have heard something.”

  “If it’s any consolation, it doesn’t appear that a struggle took place,” Dillon replied and looked around the room once again. “And that means she opened her door to somebody or she simply took off on her own. There’s no sign in this room that a crime actually took place here.”

  “A crime definitely took place,” Forest replied forcefully. His gut twisted into a dozen knots. “There’s no way she would have just decided to get up in the middle of the night and leave in her nightgown to run away or take a midnight walk or whatever. She had reports to finish up for you and she’s a professional. Only something bad happening to her could account for the fact that she isn’t here and finishing up those reports.”

  “I think I’ll take a couple of men and go talk to Raymond Humes and his men,” Dillon said. “It’s a long shot, but maybe one of them knows something about this.”

  Dillon left the room and Forest remounted Thunder. He knew Dillon would find no answers at the Humes ranch. He was beginning to believe they weren’t going to find any answers on this ranch.

  His brain was overloaded, his emotions nearly wrung dry as he headed aimlessly toward the pasture. Was she still someplace here on the ranch?

  By now all of the outbuildings had been checked with no sign of her being in any of them. Without any success, the urgency that had marked the beginning of the search had eased somewhat as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky.

  Although the other cowboys were still sweeping the ranch land, a sick hopelessness filled Forest’s heart. He didn’t know where else to look. He couldn’t imagine where she might be, and he couldn’t forget Dillon’s words that she might not be on the property at all. Enough time had lapsed that she might be miles away from the ranch and the small town of Bitterroot.

  A weary hopelessness blurred his vision with the mist of impending tears as he steered Thunder in the direction of the pond and the place where he and Patience had shared their picnic. She had to be here somewhere—he refused to believe that she’d been kidnapped and taken away.

  In the back of his mind he hoped that he would discover her sitting in the grass beneath the leafy tree where they’d had their picnic. She’d be stretched out napping, unaware that anyone was worried about her.

  She’d wake up and tell him she’d come here to say a final goodbye to the ranch and had accidentally fallen asleep. Even though she didn’t love him, despite the fact she would never be a part of his future, he’d be all right just knowing she was safe and unharmed.

  Of course when he reached the tree near the pond where they had shared their picnic, she wasn’t there. He dismounted Thunder and walked to the wooden pier over the pond. He sank down to sit and tears began to flow.

  He hadn’t cried since the day of his parents’ funeral, but now he couldn’t stanch the deep sobs that racked through him.

  Too late. She’d been gone too long. They’d checked everywhere they knew to look with no success. She was gone. He was supposed to protect her, to keep anything bad from happening to her, but he’d failed. He’d failed miserably.

  There was no question in his mind that somehow she’d been taken from her room by somebody. She wouldn’t have just left of her ow
n volition in the middle of the night clad only in her nightgown. That didn’t make sense, and Patience would never do anything that didn’t make sense.

  He not only couldn’t figure out the who, but he also couldn’t guess at the why. She was finished here. The bones had all been retrieved and the skeletons put together and taken away.

  Why take her now? What danger could she possibly threaten anyone with at this point in time? Again and again those questions played in his mind. He swiped angrily at his tears. Sitting here and allowing his emotions to rule was accomplishing nothing.

  He pulled himself up from the pier, wondering what he should do next.

  Chapter 15

  Patience closed her eyes as the corn ate an inch more of her legs. It was like quicksand, slowly tormenting as it pulled at her in an attempt to swallow her whole.

  As her legs sank, she fought the impulse to use her arms or her upper body to counter the sink. She was at a forty-five-degree angle, almost “standing” with her upper body still free.

  But she knew it wouldn’t be long before the corn would shift, or she would make an involuntary move that would suck her completely down under.

  Part of her wondered why she was still mentally fighting what seemed like the inevitable. Why didn’t she just allow the corn to have her in one fast movement instead of letting herself be swallowed inch by agonizing inch?

  The instinct of survival was obviously greater inside her than the resignation of death—even a slow, suffocating death. She knew she was foolish, but she was waiting for some kind of a miracle.

  Maybe if she focused enough she would be able to levitate up, or shift to the side where she could grab hold of the ladder rungs and pull herself to safety.

  Perhaps her miracle would come in the shape of an oversized vulture swooping into the top of the silo and plucking her out, or a big, strong man...a man like Forest, who by some trick of magic found her.

  It was funny, and she might have laughed at herself if she didn’t know that in doing so she would descend deeper. She was looking for a miracle. She was a woman of science and facts, yet when staring at death, she desperately yearned for an unscientific miracle to happen.

  She didn’t give a damn about facts or scientific evidence. She wouldn’t even ask any questions if a straw-stuffed scarecrow suddenly sprang to life and jumped into the corn to pick her up and carry her out and away from the silo.

  The heat inside the structure had increased, stifling...sweltering. Her nightgown clung to her damply as she sweated and tried to keep breathing despite the dusty, suffocating hot air. And she was so thirsty. She longed for just a single sip of one of her cold sodas, or at the very least a tepid glass of water.

  Of all the ways she thought she might die, drowning in a corn silo had not even been on her long list. There had certainly been times when she knew Devon would have loved to throttle her.

  She suspected that there had been moments over the past month and a half that even Forest might have wanted to hang her from the nearest tree. Dillon had probably fought the impulse to put a bullet through her head to halt her haranguing of him, and then there were those nasty cowboys from the Humes ranch that she had ticked off.

  It was shocking now thinking back over the past couple of years of her life and her work and realizing how many people she’d offended because of her quick temper, how many people might have wished her harm.

  If only she could go back, get a do-over with the discoveries about real life, about good people and with the love that Forest had taught her burning in her heart. So many lessons learned and now no chance to be the person she most wanted to be.

  A single sob escaped her, and she fought against the second that begged to be released as her legs sank a little bit deeper.

  Who had put her here? Why couldn’t she remember? It was like after the blow on the back of her head that had knocked her unconscious when the events leading up to the attack had been fogged in darkness.

  All she remembered was her heart filling with love for Forest, a love she’d tried to deny and then a knock on her door.

  Forest, his face filled her mind’s eye. If she was going to die, then when she took her final last dying gasp, she wanted her final thought to be of him.

  He’d made her rethink her life and the past as it had been told to her. As important as anything else he had done, he’d made her realize that it was possible her mother hadn’t just walked away from them with the intention of abandoning her forever.

  After she’d left, perhaps her mother had tried to see Patience; maybe she had even wanted custody. Patience had no idea what her father might have hidden from her in his silent bitterness. She’d been too young, and as she’d grown, she’d been fed stories that might or might not have any basis in truth. In any case, at this point, it didn’t matter.

  Forgiveness for her mother flooded through her as she once again closed her eyes against the bright sunshine. She could even find a modicum of forgiveness for her father in the depths of her heart. Whatever had happened between her parents had broken them both in ways Patience would never understand.

  She certainly now understood how broken she had been before a big, protective and loving cowboy had stepped into her life.

  Once again she filled her mind with a vision of Forest. A strange peace swept over her as the corn beneath her shifted and she waited for death.

  * * *

  Forest stared at the nearest corn silo. The single moment when he’d kissed Patience there had been the instant she’d completely captured his heart. He started to turn away, but paused as something unusual caught his eye.

  There...on the fourth rung of the steel ladder that led up the side of the nearest silo, something white fluttered in the slight breeze. Curious, he walked over to the ladder to check it out.

  It was a piece of white material torn from something and trapped by the head of a rusty screw. It hadn’t been there the last time he and Patience had been here.

  He plucked it off the screw. It was white, thick cotton, and as he held it in his fingers his gaze moved up to the top of the silo.

  “No way,” he muttered beneath his breath. Yet, he remembered the conversation he and Patience had shared, when she’d not only told him about her bad experience near a silo, but also her fear of them.

  Had somebody been hiding nearby? Had somebody overheard that conversation and decided to put her in a place she feared most?

  He shoved the piece of cloth in his pocket and grabbed the third rung and began to climb up the side of the tall structure. He told himself that he was a fool, that there was no way she could be inside the silo, yet his heart didn’t get the message and began to bang against his ribs in a frantic rhythm.

  He climbed faster and faster. If she had been dumped inside, by now it was probable that the corn had swallowed her whole and he’d never know for sure if she’d been there or not.

  The instinct would be to attempt to “swim” to safety, a deadly choice that had killed many a ranch hand who had climbed down into a silo all over the country.

  He was halfway up the ladder when Dusty appeared on his horse below. “Forest, what in the hell are you doing?” he yelled up.

  Forest didn’t slow his pace. “Checking out a crazy impulse,” he replied, his feet and hands moving faster as he got closer to the top.

  He heard no screams, no shouts for help, but if this was where she’d been put hours ago, then it was possible she was already gone, buried deep within the grain.

  His grief had already been all consuming, but now it once again ripped at his guts and tore at his already tattered heart. He was vaguely aware of Dusty below as he reached the top of the silo.

  He peered inside and a stunned gasp escaped him. “She’s here!” he yelled down to Dusty. She was sprawled on her back, her arms stretched out on either
side of her and her legs from the knees down buried in kernels of corn. Her eyes were closed.

  “Patience!” His frantic voice echoed off the metal sides.

  Her eyes snapped open and he nearly fell off the ladder as relief shivered through him. He’d thought she was dead, but her eyes simmered with terror.

  “Don’t try to talk and don’t move.” He threw a leg over the top and grabbed on to the ladder that was inside the silo. “I’m coming. You’re going to be all right. I’m going to get you out of here.” The words tumbled from him as he scrabbled down the ladder.

  “I don’t like this, Forest. I really don’t like this.” She barely breathed the words.

  “I know, honey, and I’m going to get you out of here as quickly as possible.” He reached the spot where the corn met the ladder. With one hand he clung to the ladder, and with the other he leaned out and stretched in an attempt to grab her hand.

  So close, but still too far. Dammit, she was just inches from where he could reach her, but those inches might as well be a mile.

  He grabbed his gun from the holster and shoved it in the back of his jeans waistband, then quickly tore off his belt, the holster falling to the top of the corn by the ladder.

  He could have tried to lay his body flat upon the corn and attempt to reach her that way, but he couldn’t be sure of how stable the grain was, and he would be of no help to her if he only managed to get himself sucked down to death with her.

  He looped the belt and fastened it so that it was secured to the ladder. With one hand he held on to the belt buckle and propped his feet against the ladder so that he could swing himself out far enough to be able to grab her hand.

  She didn’t speak as she watched him get into position, but her terrified eyes told him all he needed to know. He leaned out and grabbed her hand, but her skin was slick with sweat and slipped out of his.

  A sob escaped her. Forest didn’t attempt to console her. He couldn’t be moved by her horrified cry. His sole focus was to save her life. He wiped his hand on his jeans and reached out again, this time managing to grab her by the wrist.