Taming the Rancher: Mail Order Bride (Brides and Twins Book 2)

by Natalie Dean

  She stood up, limping around for a second.

  The Celtic looked up at the abandoned building. They still had no idea that she’d busted out. Adrianna looked around at their surroundings. They were still in the same area, forest: pine trees littered the hills around them with long, waving grass all around. On the outside, it became obvious that the building belonged to an ice cream company, which pretty much turned Adrianna off of ice cream for life.

  They set off across the countryside. Both of them were pretty much falling apart. He’d been shot a couple times, and although none of the gunshot wounds were too bad—the bleeding had long since stopped—they were still a pain. Meanwhile, Adrianna’s rib was hurting and she never stopped to let her knee get back into place so it kept popping throughout the run.

  Sometime later, when the sun was high in the sky, they came across a road. It wasn’t much of a road—just a slab of concrete that stretched on and on through the winding way of the forest—but to them, it was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen.

  “Praise the Lord!” exclaimed The Celtic, slowing from a jog to a tired walk. “We found the road.”

  “I was starting to wonder if we would,” she panted back.

  “All right,” The Celtic said. “Based on the sun…” he went through a couple calculations in his head. “And the position of that there…town should be…” he made random hand motions while he thought. “That way!” he declared, pointing.

  “Wait, how’d you do that?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “Okay… are you sure?”

  “Of course not. I made that up right then.”

  She punched him in the shoulder. “Jerk. I believed you.”

  “Oww,” he grinned.

  “Quit complaining. You’re a professional fighter. That didn’t hurt.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  He grinned at her, and for half a second, he seemed truly happy. She felt comfortable with him, felt trusting with him. She’d never had that before. Any man she’d ever worked with was just an associate. She’d never had a partner. But there was something about The Celtic, something that she couldn’t explain, that made her want to know him better and perhaps… more.

  But then his smile faded. She saw a glimmer of emotional pain in his deep, blue eyes before he glanced away. Something was hurting him, and she felt a compelling need to help but she didn’t know how, so she stood there, frozen and hesitant.

  “We, uh… we better keep moving,” he said, purposefully avoiding her eyes. He turned in the opposite direction of the way he’d pointed and started walking.

  Adrianna reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, but thought about it and drew it back. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish, but she couldn’t think of what to say.

  So she followed him deeper into the forest, hoping that they were headed towards civilization and not deeper into the trap.

  Chapter 8

  When she first spotted the headlights, Adrianna thought she was hallucinating. It had grown dark, so they were walking along the road with only the moon lighting their way. Adrianna wanted to stick in the forest, but The Celtic didn’t want to lose the road, so they decided to walk along the road.

  They were both exhausted at that point, not just from lack of sleep but from the wear that their feet had endured. Adrianna was wearing combat boots, which were great for everything except walking and jogging for hours. The undersides of her feet were aching and her rib was absolutely killing her. It was getting old in a hurry to have the same routine working over and over: hurting, walking, running.

  So when the headlights appeared in the distance, Adrianna had a surge of emotions. One: she was happy that there was a car out there that might be able to give them a ride back to the city. Two: she was worried they might be the killers out looking for them. She doubted it; professional killers wouldn’t have the lights on. They’d be pursuing silently.

  But they skipped into the forest and waited until the lights got closer, throwing light across the waving trees. It turned out that the approaching vehicle was a pickup truck—one of those rich-boy trucks with the lifted suspension, mean tires, perfect paint job, tinted windows, and overall just too nice to actually be used for work.

  Was it possible that it was one of the killers? Yes.

  Was it likely? No.

  The two heroes dashed into the front of the truck. Well, not really dashed. Hobbled uncomfortably was probably a better way to describe their movement. For one second, the two thought that the truck was going to plow them, but the driver slammed on the brakes and stayed, frozen and surprised, with the blue, LED lights blinding the agent and criminal.

  “What the hell?” Adrianna heard the driver say.

  Adrianna raised her hands and walked towards the truck. She had no idea what to expect. He could be armed and she couldn’t see anything because of the light that was scorching her eyes. “My name is Agent Whetmore. I work for the FBI, and I need your help. I need a ride back to the city.”

  She got past the lights and saw the driver. Just like she expected, it was a prissy city boy. Nice looking kid—handsome 20-something-year-old with a Rolex and Star Wars shirt.

  “Umm….” His mouth was hanging open. She didn’t blame him. Not too many people have the ever-exciting opportunity to confront some lady claiming to work for the FBI with a person who had clearly been shot several times standing in the middle of the road, all while driving along an old country road in the middle of the night. “Do you, uh, have any…” he swallowed. “ID?”

  She patted her jeans down. Not too surprisingly, she didn’t have her ID on her. The killers must have taken it when they’d been interrogating her. “No. I lost it.”

  “You lost your ID?”

  “Kid, give me your phone.”

  Hesitantly, he pulled out a smartphone and handed it to her like she might bite. He unlocked it and she pulled up the internet.

  “What…. What are you doing?” he asked. He looked drunk. Wouldn’t be too surprising, since he was driving along the road at that time of the night.

  She typed in The Celtic MMA and up came a picture of the fighter along with the title “MMA fighter a killer?”. She clicked on the article and showed it to the guy. “Recognize him?”

  As he read, his eyes widened more and more as he registered that the man in front of his truck was The Celtic, the wanted professional fighter for murder of George Ortiz.

  “Oh…” he said. “Oh. Oh, get in!”

  She felt gratitude and surprise wash through her. She hadn’t really expected it to be that easy. She’d expected to have to use her silver tongue to convince him, but he evidently was easy to persuade.

  The two of them got in. Adrianna sat in the passenger seat and The Celtic piled in behind. Slowly, with the purr of a powerful engine, they set off towards the city. At first, the kid was full of irritating questions: Where’s your gun? Why did you shoot him? Are you on the run? Can I get a reward for this? Adrianna tried her best to answer all the questions, but eventually the kid picked up on the fact that she was exhausted and simply stared ahead, eyes wide and mouth open, still shocked.

  They were making excellent time along the old road. The kid had a lead foot and Adrianna sure wasn’t about to tell him to slow down. She had no idea where the killers were, but she felt confident that they had discovered her absence and were trailing her at that very moment. She anxiously looked out the windows for signs of movement. If someone tried to stop them, they were going to keep driving.

  “Look,” Adrianna said to the kid about fifteen minutes in. “I’ve been thinking. Let me drive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if someone tries to kill us, we need someone who knows how to drive a getaway car.”

  “If… if someone tries to kill us?” he whispered. “I thought you escaped.”

  “I did. And they probably won’t even see us, but if they do, we need to be prepared.”

  He looked terrifi
ed. She didn’t blame him for that either. He pulled over, scooted over into the passenger seat, and let her take charge at the wheel. She liked the truck. It felt like power. Stupid, unrealistic, unnecessary power, but power nevertheless.

  She eased onto the road and kept picking up speed. She had always had a knack for driving. She didn’t even have an accident until she was 29, when some idiot had plowed her car coming out of a parking lot. As she liked to remind everyone, it wasn’t her fault.

  “Hey,” Adrianna finally said to The Celtic. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

  He had been uncharacteristically quiet since he had smiled earlier that day, when they had made a connection. He hadn’t said a thing the whole trip; he had just sat silently in the back seat, studying her chair with his arms folded across his chest.

  When she spoke to him, he gave her the saddest smile she had ever seen before it wilted. “You would have done the same.”

  “You were right about the direction we were walking,” she said, hoping to cheer him up.

  “Yeah.”

  She gave up. Obviously, he didn’t want to talk and she couldn’t force him to. She didn’t really wonder why he was so silent. According to him, he’d be killed long before he got to trial. Every mile that inched by, the closer he became to what he felt was sure death. She was starting to believe him. At first, she’d assumed he was exaggerating, but after seeing the rather professional system The Owl had going, she started to see that he had been being honest.

  She thought about that the entire way towards town; if the Owl had found both of them out there instead of just her, The Celtic would have been dead. They both would have been out in the forest somewhere, dead. It was just good luck that they had found her instead.

  If the Owl figured out that The Celtic was going to testify against him, he’d figure out a way to kill him. You didn’t get to be the head of an organization like that without a little expertise. She had no doubt that somehow, someway, someone was going to kill The Celtic before he could testify unless the whole organization toppled.

  She thought about Agent Stone, and that he would never believe Adrianna’s warnings about The Owl. Then if The Celtic wound up dead, Stone would release a statement saying that the FBI had no idea that anyone was coming to kill him and that investigators were looking into it.

  She was silent the rest of the drive. The GPS clicked down way too slowly. According to it, they were merely ten miles from the city. They’d been an hour and a half away when they first got in the truck. Now that they were getting so close, she was starting to get nervous. Things rarely worked out that easily for her. Normally, she had to fight something right at the very end.

  So she wasn’t too surprised when she saw the barricade.

  It was obviously The Owl’s men. Cops didn’t carry heavy assault rifles, but they had somehow gotten ahold of some cars and tossed some flashing lights on top. Even worse, they were wearing uniforms. Your casual driver would see them as genuine cops, stop, and keep driving when the killers figured out that Adrianna and The Celtic weren’t inside.

  However, for the case of the rich kid, he had picked them up. He would be promptly dealt with should he have been driving. Adrianna, on the other hand, knew exactly what to do. The moment she recognized the face of the main cop—the biker—she gunned it.

  The engine roared, the tires spun, and they zoomed towards the barricade. It was a sizeable blockade—several fake cop cars lined up. If they’d happened upon a small city car, Adrianna would have had literally no faith in being able to bust through. However, since they’d come across such a monster pickup, the cop cars didn’t stand a chance.

  The truck slammed into the first car as the killers scattered. The grille smashed through the car without hardly a jolt, but the second car made it stutter for a second. The truck crawled over the carcasses and they were on their way, with broken sirens screaming angrily.

  Before they were gone, Adrianna rolled down the window and gave the killers the middle finger salute. They opened fire on the back of the truck, but by that time, they were too far gone. Only a few bullets hit them, although one did shatter the back window.

  “Bye, boys!” Adrianna yelled back. She had no idea if they could actually hear her, but it made her feel hardcore to say it.

  But then she realized that they hadn’t really missed. The low tire alarm appeared on the dash. A tire must have been blown. She glanced in the mirror. The monster back left tire was flapping madly.

  “We need to stop!” the kid yelled. “That’s not good for my truck.”

  “Uh,” The Celtic said, speaking for the first time. “I don’t think that’s an option.”

  “Why not?” the kid protested, apparently more concerned about his car. “We’ve left them behind!”

  “Because those weren’t their only cars,” The Celtic said right about the time that four cars roared around the corner behind him.

  Chapter 9

  Time appeared to slow down for Adrianna. The squealing tires of the cars rounding the corner behind them, closing in. The flapping, flat tire slapping up against the rim. The kid screaming at an impressively high pitched voice.

  You know, Adrianna’s brain said as time drifted to nearly a stop, I didn’t expect this stuff to happen when I took this assignment. She hadn’t. She’d expected your typical, routine bad-guy-catching. She’d track him using her powers. Catch him. Bring him back. Get her agency in the news. Good stuff. Maybe get into the lottery for a pay raise (yeah, right).

  But then she had to get to grips with her situation. It was funny. Of all the time she’d spent on that crazy assignment, that exact moment is when everything got real clear for her. The Celtic was in the back, jumping up for something. Maybe he was trying to get a better look at their pursuers. She didn’t know. The kid was beside her, screaming unintelligible things.

  And she realized that their lives were in her hands.

  If she failed, nobody would ever now what happened to them. You’d think FBI agents were pretty hard to get rid of without anyone getting suspicious, but the most obvious contender would be none other than The Celtic. She could see it now: Runaway Killer Murders Prize FBI Agent?

  Really, there wasn’t any other option but to succeed. Luckily, Adrianna thrived under pressure.

  They wanted to kill them?

  Come. And. Get. Her.

  She gunned the engine. The truck powered through its flat tire and roared off. The cars chasing them were going to catch them. If their getaway truck hadn’t been damaged, they might have stood a chance, but slowed like they were, they weren’t going to outrun anyone anytime soon.

  “Drive!” yelled The Celtic. “Drive, drive, drive!”

  “That’s what I’m doing!” she yelled back.

  “Oh my God!” screamed the kid. “We’re gonna dieeeee!”

  “Shut up!” Adrianna said sweetly.

  One out of four cars roared up beside them. Adrianna promptly cut the wheel towards him. He didn’t see that tactic coming and swerved off the road. He plowed a fence and slammed into a tree. Although the car didn’t explode into a ball of flame like Adrianna had been hoping, the driver did sail out of the window.

  “Did you see that?” yelled Adrianna childishly. “That was awesome!”

  And then the other car, which had been sneaking up on her, shot at her. The first bullet slammed into the radio, which somehow turned it on to an ear-shattering volume playing a classic rendition of You Ain’t Nothing but A Hound Dog by Elvis Presley.

  The second bullet, however, missed the radio and shot Adrianna in the forearm.

  Getting shot really doesn’t hurt at first because the shock’s just starting to kick in. Then, after a moment, it feels like someone has jabbed a red-hot poker into your arm.

  She swerved towards him, but he had seen that already, so he slammed on the brakes and avoided being run off the road.

  “Bikes!” The Celtic yelled.

  She twisted around to see two ki
llers jump into the pickup bed from bikes. The bikes flew away, but the two men were standing in the bed, so they didn’t need them anymore.

  Adrianna slammed on the brakes, sending one guy flying over the top of the cab. For a second, Adrianna felt pretty sure that he was going to get all the way over the front and get run over, but at the last second, his hand shot out and caught the bumper right in front of the right light. His legs were dragging along the ground, but he drew his gun and started firing away at them.

  The window splintered from the bullets. Adrianna fumbled with the controls and switched on the lights. For the first time in history, the high-powered LED lights did something helpful and blinded the guy. He fired off a couple more shots randomly, yelled, and fell off.

  They felt a brief bump as they ran him over.

  “Oh my God!” screamed the kid, who was by that time firmly in the grasp of shock.

  “You ain’t nuthin’ but a hound dog!” Elvis accused from the radio loudly.

  Meanwhile, while everyone had been distracted by the guy hanging off the bumper, the other biker jumped into the back seat from the broken window. In the flashes of his face that Adrianna got, she recognized him as the creepy biker that had tracked her at first.

  The Celtic, startled, didn’t react at first. After that split second of surprise, he tore into the biker like a mad dog. For the first time, Adrianna got to see his fighting first hand. She’d seen little clips of him as she studied the target, but that was against another professional fighter.

  The biker was a capable and tough man, but up against The Celtic, he didn’t stand much of a chance. The fight was brief but ferocious. Even hampered by his gunshots, The Celtic was fearsome. Adrianna felt just a flash of surprise, and pride in The Celtic.

  Although The Celtic was winning, the biker was much bigger of a man, so he had the upper hand strength-wise. He shoved The Celtic against the door. Adrianna couldn’t see much because of her position as the driver, but the next thing she knew, the back door was open and the biker had been tossed out.