Last Stand Ranch

by Jenna Night

  “Where are you?” Olivia wailed into her phone. At the same time she turned toward the front of the cottage and saw Elijah.

  She ran to him, threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest.

  He wrapped an arm around her while looking over her head. He wanted to feel relieved that she was safe in his arms, but he couldn’t. An uneasy feeling still squirmed in his gut. He hadn’t searched the whole cottage yet.

  Olivia suddenly let go of him, then grabbed his hand and pulled him toward Denise. “He was here!” She looked pale and frightened, her eyes wide. “Ted Kurtz was just here!”

  NINETEEN

  Elijah glanced down at Denise, still taped to the chair, strode into the kitchen to grab a knife from a wooden block to cut her free, and then came back.

  “Ted Kurtz was here,” Olivia said more forcefully. Elijah hadn’t reacted to that terrifying news yet and she wanted to shake him.

  She felt as if she was back in Vegas, still trapped in that world of fear Kurtz had created. All the healing she’d experienced since arriving in Painted Rock had vanished in an instant.

  Kurtz had promised to catch her alone and kill her. Olivia looked at poor Denise. Now he’d added tormenting everyone around her to the mix.

  Elijah took the knife and began sawing the bands of tape that bound Denise’s hands.

  In that horrifying moment when Olivia found Denise gagged and taped to the chair, her first thought had been to call Elijah. She’d torn the tape from Denise’s mouth, and while Denise had cried out to her, wild-eyed and frantic, Olivia had focused only on hearing Elijah’s voice. Now that he was here, Olivia could turn her attention back to what Denise was saying.

  “Go!” Denise strained toward Olivia despite the strong tape holding her to the chair. “He’s going to kill you. Get out. Leave town, now!”

  “Who’s going to kill her?” Elijah asked, sawing through the tape around Denise’s legs while she rubbed her freed hands together.

  “Ted Kurtz!” Denise practically screamed. “He was here!”

  Olivia’s breath froze in her lungs. She’d thought about the mob lawyer so much, feared him so much, that he’d become larger than life. A malevolent phantom.

  But now he was here, in Painted Rock. Flesh and blood, and all too real. Lurking on Claudia’s property. Maybe just outside the cottage. Or hiding inside it.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said as cold fear began a piercing climb up her spine.

  Elijah stayed crouched by Denise, knife in his hand. “Are you sure it was Kurtz?” he asked Denise.

  His calm, methodical manner was driving Olivia crazy. Didn’t he understand the danger they were in? Didn’t he understand they needed to get out, now?

  “I’ve seen his picture. It was him.” Denise stretched out toward Olivia, grasping at her with a damp, clammy hand. “He said if you stay he’ll kill Claudia.”

  Olivia’s stomach turned to stone.

  “He’ll go after everyone you care about. He’ll kill Elijah, Joe, Julie, me, all of us.” Hysterical, Denise started crying again. “You ruined his life and he said he’ll ruin yours.”

  “How can he be here?” Olivia asked Elijah. Terror and confusion mixed crazily in her head. Was Kurtz really that good, that well connected? Had he tricked Homeland Security and the State Department? “Wouldn’t Bedford tell us if he was back in the States?”

  Elijah held her gaze. Then he shook his head very slightly.

  “What?” Denise asked, looking dazed. “No, he was here. Right here. He broke through that window.” She pointed to it. “He grabbed me, he taped me up and told me next time he would kill me. He said all of us are marked targets as long as you’re here.” Now she was pointing at Olivia.

  “Where’s Raymond?” Elijah asked.

  “Outside. Repairing the lights.”

  “No, he isn’t.” His gaze shifted to the broken window, then back to Olivia. “Call Deputy Bedford,” he said. “And tell him to keep an eye out for Raymond when he gets here.”

  “No!” Raymond shoved open the closet door and pointed a rifle at Elijah’s head. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

  Olivia stared uncomprehendingly.

  Elijah lifted his hands and started to stand.

  “No! Stay right there.”

  “What?” Olivia turned to Elijah. “What’s happening?”

  Denise stood, all pretense of fear gone in an instant. She wiped away her false tears and pushed aside the tape Elijah had just cut through.

  “What’s going on?” Olivia asked.

  Denise barely spared her a glance as she kicked aside the discarded tape on the floor and reached under the bed, pulling out a shotgun. “Things were going just fine until you showed up and decided to stay. Why didn’t you just visit for a week and leave like a normal relative?” She pointed the shotgun at Olivia. “You didn’t care about the old lady. She had to hire us, complete strangers, to help her with this place. We deserve to inherit it more than you do. We’ve been more family to her than you have.”

  “We could kill Olivia and tell the sheriff we saw someone shoot her and run off toward the forest,” Raymond mused aloud. “We’d just need to wait a few more months to kill Claudia. To throw off suspicion.”

  Denise nodded toward Elijah. “Yeah, but what about him?”

  “We shoot him and tell the cops Kurtz killed both of them.”

  “Ted Kurtz is here?” Olivia asked, voice trembling.

  Denise rolled her eyes. “Who knows where Ted Kurtz is? Who cares?” She glanced at Raymond and ratcheted her shotgun. “Are we gonna do this?”

  A sudden tug on Olivia’s hand brought her crashing to the floor while at the same time Elijah sprang up past her, the glinting blade of the knife in his hand flashing as he lunged toward Raymond.

  Olivia’s forehead smacked the ground and for a few seconds she lay dazed. Wrenching herself back to the here and now, she recognized the sounds of a struggle.

  “Elijah!” He only had a knife. Raymond had a rifle. Denise had that shotgun.

  Frantic to help, she turned toward Elijah just in time to see Denise swing the butt of the shotgun toward her. Olivia jerked her head back at the last second but still got clipped on the chin, the force of the blow knocking her back flat on the floor.

  A rifle shot fired, sounding horribly loud in the small room. The mirror over the dresser exploded.

  “Elijah!”

  The room shifted uneasily through her blurred vision as she flattened her palms on the floor and pushed herself up. Elijah and Raymond were still grappling, shoved halfway into the closet, trading kicks and punches.

  Denise, standing near Olivia, sneered and swung her foot to kick Olivia in the head.

  Summoning every ounce of strength she had, Olivia reached up and grabbed Denise’s foot and pulled.

  Denise landed flat on her back, hard. Her shotgun clattered to the floor. She rolled to her side and reached for it.

  Quickly crawling forward despite her dizziness, Olivia’s fingers reached the cold metal near the trigger and shoved hard. The gun slid beneath the bed.

  With a feral growl, Denise crawled after it.

  Olivia pushed herself up onto the balls of her feet and sprang after her, only to be caught around the waist before she left the ground.

  Screaming and flailing, she wrenched around to find Elijah had grabbed hold of her. He grunted and shifted her to his side, encircling her body with an arm that felt as strong and solid as granite. He stepped forward and pressed a booted foot into the center of Denise’s back, stopping her from crawling any closer to the shotgun. “Don’t move,” he said, pistol in his free hand. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”

  Olivia looked toward the closet. Raymond lay crumpled and un
conscious. When she turned back she saw Elijah was bleeding.

  “You’re shot!” She tried breaking free to get a better look at his injury, but he wouldn’t loosen his grip. “I’m all right,” he said, breathing hard. His black eyes were deep wells of controlled rage. And then they softened with compassion. “It’s okay,” he said more gently. “We’re both all right.”

  She blew out a breath and let herself melt into the crook of his arm.

  “Elijah!” It was Bobby’s voice.

  “Back here!”

  Bobby cautiously peered around the corner of the open cottage door and into the bedroom, phone in one hand and pistol in the other. He looked first at Olivia, then at Denise and Raymond. Finally his gaze settled on Elijah and the growing bloom of blood in the side of his shirt. “You need an ambulance.”

  * * *

  “I don’t need an ambulance,” Elijah said to Bobby. He glanced at Raymond, happy to see he still lay unmoving on the closet floor. “He grabbed my pistol and got off a shot that hit the dresser mirror. It didn’t hit me.”

  Olivia stepped away from him and looked pointedly at the blood on his shirt. “Nothing to worry about,” Elijah assured her. “He managed to give me a slight scrape with the kitchen knife, that’s all.”

  He turned his gaze back to Denise. She was still on the floor, his foot still on her back to keep her from reaching the shotgun under the bed. Enraged, she cursed and shouted threats. No one was listening to her. “Just call the cops, Bobby.”

  “I already did. When I couldn’t find you or Olivia, I knew something was wrong. “His eyes were wide. “I’m so sorry, Elijah.” He turned to Olivia. “When did you come out here?”

  “You didn’t hear me call out to you?”

  “No. I had the TV on, and then I was talking on the phone. When I finished my call, I looked for you. Then I looked for Elijah. When Aunt Claudia told me she didn’t know where either one of you were, I figured I’d better call Bedford.” He turned back to Elijah. “I can’t believe this. What happened?”

  “I’ll explain everything when the cops get here. In the meantime, help me with this.” Elijah pointed to the roll of tape that had been used on Denise. While he kept his foot on her, he had Bobby tape her hands together and then her feet before doing the same to Raymond, who was starting to regain consciousness.

  Blue lights flashing through the open door of the cottage announced the arrival of Bedford and a couple other deputies.

  Bedford called for a medic despite Elijah’s protests. Olivia insisted he let the paramedic check out his injury and sat beside him in the back of the ambulance. Once his shirt was off, he had to admit to a little more than a scrape. The truth was Raymond had managed to get the knife away from him and plant it fairly deeply in Elijah’s side. But then Elijah knocked him out, so it was all good.

  “The tape will hold you for now,” the medic said after slathering him with an antibiotic gel, “but you’ll want to get some stitches.”

  “You’d better do it,” Olivia threatened.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Elijah looked down at her tense, yet smiling face beside him. She was a strong woman. She’d proven that over and over. It was good to know he could count on her to keep her head in a tough situation. Even better to know he could lean on her when he needed to.

  “You did all right back there,” he said, reaching out to trace a finger across her cheek. “You been in a lot of bar fights or something?”

  She laughed and looked down at her torn, disheveled clothes. “I’ve never been in an actual physical fight before.” She looked up at him with a proud, cockeyed grin. “That was my first.”

  “You did good. I’m scared of you now.”

  Her grin widened. “Thanks.”

  She was quiet for a few minutes. The paramedic and EMT were outside the rig, holding clipboards and finishing some paperwork. “You all right?” he asked as he jostled her slightly with his arm.

  She smiled at him and his heart did a slow, lazy dance. “I’m actually doing okay at the moment, thanks for asking.” She rubbed her hands together as if trying to warm them. “I might have a tough time later, though, when things calm down and I have time to think. But I’ll get over it.”

  “That’s how I live my life.” Elijah knew the pattern well. Faith helped him through. And family.

  “All that time fighting overseas?” she asked softly. “You’ll always have the aftermath of that to deal with, won’t you?”

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  She took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I could live with that. If we talked about things that were bothering you. Prayed about them. Got help if we needed it. We could be good for each other.”

  A delicate ache warmed his heart. Something so different from all the physical pain he’d felt. This was an emotional pang. Something he hadn’t let himself feel for a very long time. His closed heart was opening and he was letting it, even though it meant he could end up getting hurt. Or, worse than that, even if it meant he could hurt someone else. Not that he would intentionally hurt Olivia. Ever.

  “Does this mean I don’t have to worry about you running off after all?” he asked.

  She grinned. “I’ll stay long enough for you to heal up and give me a ride on that chrome beast you call a motorcycle. If you want me to stay longer than that, you’re going to have to charm me.”

  He leaned over to brush his lips against hers. She released a tiny sigh and he wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her closer.

  Claudia popped her head in the back of the ambulance. “Kids! Tell me you’re okay!”

  “More than okay,” Olivia murmured.

  Two of Claudia’s chubby little dogs managed to jump into the back of the rig and give Olivia and Elijah a worried sniff.

  Both Elijah and Olivia reached out to give them a reassuring pat.

  “Would you mind calling my parents and telling them everything’s okay?” Elijah asked Claudia. “They probably have their scanner on and I’m sure they’re worried.”

  “Of course. I’ll do that right now.” She called her dogs out of the ambulance and they left in an excited, barking huddle.

  “Let’s get out of here, too.” Elijah stood and clambered out of the rig. Then he held out his hand to help Olivia. Once she was out, he didn’t let go of her hand.

  Sheriff Wolfsinger rolled up in his patrol car. He stopped for a quick minute to make sure Elijah and Olivia were okay before heading to the cottage where Denise and Raymond had been separated and were being questioned.

  A short time later, Deputy Bedford finally came out to talk to them. “We got a hit on a set of prints we took from the house earlier tonight,” he told them. “They’re for a woman with a criminal record in Utah. She was blonde and blue eyed in the mug shot, but now the resemblance is obvious.”

  “You’re talking about Denise?” Olivia asked.

  Bedford nodded. “Yeah. Though that’s not her real name. She and her boyfriend, ‘Raymond,’ have been arrested several times for cons over the last ten years. More recently, they were suspects in the murder of an elderly woman they took care of. Just before she died, she changed her will and named them as sole beneficiaries to her estate. Her family was suspicious, asked for testing to be done and discovered her blood showed high levels of medicines her doctor had not prescribed for her.”

  Elijah felt a chill pass through him at the thought of what might have happened to Claudia.

  “Denise told me Aunt Claudia had memory problems,” Olivia said. “She was always pushing her to take some kind of special vitamins.”

  “Vitamins?” Bedford asked. “Did they make her sick? Change her level of consciousness?”

  “Thankfully, I think she was too stubborn to ever take any of them,” Olivia said.

  Elijah gave her hand a squeeze
.

  “When the family of the elderly lady asked for a formal criminal investigation, ‘Denise’ and ‘Raymond’ disappeared,” the deputy said.

  Olivia turned to him. “So they were after Aunt Claudia’s money from the moment they got here?”

  “Until you showed up and ruined their plans. They’d heard about Claudia downsizing her ranching operation after Hugh’s death from one of her former ranch hands. They asked a few questions, found out she didn’t have any family hanging around and offered their services.

  “Your aunt turned them down at first. But they convinced her she would need lots of help as she got older. Told her it would be more honorable to hire them than to expect her friends and neighbors to help her for free. They thought they’d found someone they could slowly poison with no one to get in their way.”

  Elijah turned to her. “You just might have saved her life by coming here.”

  “So far, we know Raymond drove you off the road hoping to scare you away. He shot you in the woods. He was the one who fired the shotgun, and then walked through the furniture store just as Elijah suspected. He had the shotgun under a long raincoat and no one thought to mention him to the deputies because they knew him.

  “Denise started the fire.” He looked at Olivia. “She thought you had gone back in the shed to do a little more cleaning.”

  Bedford took a deep breath and smiled grimly. “We should have all the specific details we need before the night is over. Sheriff Wolfsinger’s told them the first one to fully confess will get a plea deal. They’re ratting out each other as fast as they can.”

  “So Ted Kurtz had nothing to do with it?” Olivia asked.

  “Apparently not. When Claudia started talking about your upcoming visit, Denise and Raymond did some research and found out what happened with you in Vegas. They didn’t know Kurtz had threatened you, but figured you’d be worried about him wanting revenge. As soon as they heard you were assuming it was Ted Kurtz who drove you off the road, they figured they were home free.”