Jonas stared out at the empty canyon. This man could be right, he thought sadly. In spite of being a lawman like his father, maybe he was more like his mother than he wanted to think. Incapable of expressing or giving love to anyone. If that was the case, then all he could think was, God, help him.
A week after Alexa told Jonas to leave her room, she was in the little office located just off the den, where she’d been posting checks and filing invoices all morning. Close by, in a separate chair, J.D. was propped in a plastic carrier, his blue eyes trying their best to focus on his mother.
Each time she glanced at J.D., it never failed to lift her heart. Having a son was the richest blessing she’d ever been given, and her heart swelled with such love for him that at times it brought her to emotional tears.
Yet each time she looked at her baby, she was also reminded of Jonas and how he’d helped to bring the tiny boy into the world. He’d been so gentle and loving, and she’d clung to his cool strength like it was a lifeline in a howling wind.
But now, Alexa didn’t know what to think or do. He didn’t want her in his life. Or so it appeared. He’d made it painfully clear that he was going back to Texas without her. Where their relationship was concerned, that should be it. Yet Alexa couldn’t bear to think that everything they had shared, all she’d hoped for for their future, was over and finished.
Love couldn’t be turned on and off like a neon sign, and in spite of not seeing or speaking with him in days, she knew her love for Jonas was still burning brightly.
“Still working?” Frankie rapped her knuckles on the open door, then stepped into the room. “It’s time for lunch, and Reena has put out some of your favorite snacks.”
Alexa tried to chuckle, but the sound held little humor. “I don’t need to eat potato chips.”
Frankie clicked her tongue. “I don’t know why. You’ve lost so much weight since you had J.D. Too much.”
“Nursing him has pulled me down,” Alexa confessed. “But I’m eating plenty.”
Frankie leaned over the baby and rubbed her forefinger against his cheek. The baby squirmed and whimpered, and Alexa’s mother used that as an excuse to lift him out of the carrier and cuddle him in her arms.
While Frankie cooed at the baby, Alexa gathered her papers together in a neat pile.
Frankie went on with her motherly admonishing. “Well, as far as I’m concerned you’ve not been getting enough rest either. You’ve not gotten out of the house since you visited your grandfather. Why don’t you call Laurel and go out shopping with her or something? It would do you good.”
“Laurel has been putting in fifty-hour weeks at the animal clinic. I doubt she’d be able to take time off.” Alexa glanced gratefully at her mother. “But I’ve gotten most of the work here finished. So I was thinking about going for a ride this afternoon. Would you mind watching J.D. for me for an hour?”
Frankie looked relieved. “I’d be more than happy. Take more than an hour. Stay out as long as you’d like.”
After the women finished the simple lunch that Reena had prepared, Alexa walked down to the stables and picked out one of her favorite horses, Dudley. He was black, with four white stockings and a star on his forehead, but most of all, he was affectionate, and Alexa knew she could trust him to carry her safely wherever she wanted to go.
Since the doctor had pronounced her physically fit enough to do whatever she wanted, she’d gone horseback riding on three different occasions. It had felt wonderful getting back to doing something she’d always loved to do. She only wished that Jonas could be riding by her side, that she could look over and see his smile and know that whatever the future brought, they would deal with it together.
But since their confrontation, he’d not even slept in the house, and though her mother had questioned her about his absence, Alexa had not been able to tell her what had really happened with Jonas. Instead, she’d told her that the men were probably out on a roundup, and that he was staying out at the campsite with the rest of the hands. She didn’t want the woman knowing that her daughter had made another horrendous mistake and had fallen for a man that didn’t want to make a life with her.
Still, she couldn’t let it end like this, she thought doggedly. Somehow she had to make Jonas see that he couldn’t allow his past to keep ruling his future.
For the next hour, Alexa was so lost in her miserable thoughts that she didn’t realize just how far she’d ridden until glimpses of a county road could be seen through a dense stand of trees between her and the roadway.
Pulling back on the reins, she stopped the horse long enough to glance at her wristwatch and was shocked to see that she’d been gone for two hours. It was high time she returned.
Deciding it would be faster and easier to travel back to the ranch by way of the road, she urged Dudley forward. Once the horse moved from under the canopy of woods and stepped onto the graveled surface, waning sunlight slanted across the lonely pathway and warmed her shoulders.
She nudged the horse into a quick trot. “Okay, Dudley. Let’s go home.”
Only a quarter of a mile was behind her and her mount when she was alerted to the loud sound of an approaching vehicle. Pulling the horse to a walk, she maneuvered him to a safe spot in the road just as a large truck and trailer rounded the curve in front of her.
“What in the world?” She muttered the question under her breath. Was Ty Pickens leasing mountain land to a sheepherder? If so, it was sort of late in the summer to be moving sheep up to the mountain meadows.
Keeping Dudley at the side of the road, she waited for the big rig to pass. As it did, she peered through the metal slats of the long double-decker trailer.
Cattle were inside! Not sheep. Cattle! With spotted hides and long horns! Corriente cattle?
A cool chill ran down her spine; at the same time, her heart began to pump at a wild rate.
Don’t panic, Alexa! They can’t be the rustlers. Those are probably some longhorn cattle that Ty Pickens purchased, and they are now being hauled to his ranch. Just keep moving Dudley forward. Don’t pause. Don’t look back.
The truck moved on up the mountain, and she was about to breathe a sigh of relief when she spotted yet another truck barreling straight toward her. Apparently, the two vehicles were traveling together. And she didn’t have time to wonder if this one was hauling cattle, too. As she drew Dudley safely to one side of the road to allow the vehicle to pass, the semi rolled to a stop, and two men wearing sunglasses and baseball caps jumped from the cab.
Sensing she was in trouble, Alexa dug her spurs into Dudley’s sides, but the horse had managed to take only two leaps forward when one of the men grabbed the bridle’s cheek strap.
Alexa screamed as the other man yanked her from the saddle and began dragging her toward the semi.
“Stop! What are you doing? Who are you?” Alexa yelled the questions at them at the same time she did her best to dig her heels into the loose gravel of the road surface.
“Shut up, lady!” shouted the man who had her in his grasp.
Twisting her head to one side, she bit down hard on the hand that was gripping her arm.
The man yelped and cursed, and then suddenly something whammed her in the face, and everything went black.
Alexa wasn’t sure how long she was knocked out. But when she finally managed to open her eyes and look around her, it was apparent that a fairly substantial amount of time had passed. The sun was now down and twilight was descending over the forest.
Evidently they’d simply tossed her from the semi and left her exactly where she’d landed. She was now lying on her stomach, her face partially buried in a bed of pine needles. She had a dull pain in her forehead and down her left cheek, and she knew without being able to see herself that the eye she was looking through was on the verge of swelling completely shut.
Some twenty feet away, four men were gathered at the side of one of the trucks. Their conversation was filled with expletives and brash laughter, which told Alexa they weren’t t
he least bit worried about having an eyewitness on their hands. Probably because they didn’t intend to ever let her be a witness.
Beneath the belly of the truck, several yards beyond, she could barely make out the pieces of a portable pipe fence. She could hear the bawling cattle and smell the dust stirred by their hooves and she knew, without much deduction on her part, that the thieves had unloaded the animals for the night.
This was the scenario that Jonas had pictured, she thought sickly. These were the men he’d been trying desperately to catch.
Oh God, what was she going to do to get out of this mess? Her mother knew she’d gone riding, but Alexa hadn’t told her where or exactly when to expect her home. To make matters worse, the grooms had been busy with other chores, and Alexa had saddled Dudley herself.
Damn it, Alexa. Forget about not informing the ranch hands of your plans. With you meandering around in a miserable coma, not paying one bit of attention to the trail you were taking, it would be impossible for them to figure out where you are now!
Stupid, Alexa. Very stupid on your part.
Just as she was berating herself, another thought flashed through her frantically whirling brain. Before she’d left the ranch, she’d dropped her cell phone into her shirt pocket. If it was still there, and she could make a call without the men seeing her, she might get out of this mess before they decided to do something unthinkable to her.
Surprised that they’d not bothered to tie her up, Alexa carefully and slowly tried to move her arm and inch her fingers toward the pocket holding the phone without alerting the men that she’d woken.
With excruciating effort, her fingers finally reached the pocket. But the phone was gone, and her hopes were instantly dashed. The instrument had either fallen from her shirt when the men had nabbed her, or they’d taken it away while she’d been unconscious.
So now what? Common sense told her that if she tried to stand and run, they’d tackle her before she got five feet away. No, she was going to have to think of another plan and hope that someone at the ranch would eventually look for her on this section of the property.
Back at the ranch yard, Jonas had just returned from a trip to town and was walking to his office when Laramie approached him with rapid strides.
Pausing, Jonas waited for the other man to reach him. “Hey, Laramie. What’s up? Something wrong?”
“I’m not sure, Jonas. One of the grooms told me that Alexa rode out on Dudley earlier this afternoon, and she’s not returned. I called the house and talked to Frankie a couple of hours ago, and at that time she didn’t seem all that alarmed. She said that she told Alexa to ride as long as she wanted. But after it started growing dark and late, the woman called me back, and she’s practically hysterical with worry.”
Jonas was certain his blood had suddenly turned to ice. “Did Frankie know where Alexa was going to ride? What direction she took?”
“I asked her that,” Laramie replied. “She didn’t know. But she did say that Alexa took a cell phone with her and that there’s no answer when she tries calling it.”
“Damn it all!” Jonas muttered. “Well, the phone doesn’t mean that something has happened to her. She could have ridden into a dead zone.” He turned and began striding quickly toward the horse barn. “Gather the men, Laramie. I’m going to saddle up and ride out.”
“Where do you want us to look?”
Jonas groaned with utter despair. “Since we have nothing to go on, look anywhere and everywhere!”
Five minutes later, Jonas had strapped on his weapon, saddled one of the fastest horses from the work pen and loped out of the ranch yard.
For the next few minutes, the big mare ate up the rough ground as Jonas allowed her to pick her own path through the brush and trees. He didn’t know how far they’d traveled before it dawned on him that he was riding blindly, without any sense of direction. At the same time, he frantically realized there was no set direction for him to take. He had nothing to go on but his gut instincts.
Find her. Find her. Before something happens, find her!
Over and over the mantra screamed in his head, until finally he pulled the mare to a halt and looked around him. He’d unconsciously ridden along the same damn path he’d taken for several days now. He was headed to the canyon, and he knew Alexa wouldn’t be there.
He’d warned her several times not to ride to Pickens’s border fence, and she’d promised she wouldn’t. He’d taken her at her word and dismissed the idea that she would ever go against his wishes. She was not an idiot. Not one to do risky or stupid things.
Except fall in love with you, Jonas. That was purely stupid on her part. She should have known just how worthless and uncaring you were as a husband. You tried to warn her. But she’d not listened.
Had she also not listened to him about riding toward the Pickens ranch? Had she ended up near the old mining road?
Releasing a choked groan, he dug his heels into the mare’s sides and steered the animal toward the boxed canyon.
“What are we gonna do with her?” one of the men asked.
Alexa, who was now sitting propped against a wheel of one of the trucks, her hands bound behind her with a leather shoelace, covertly studied the four men. The one who’d just spoken appeared more nervous than the other three. Every few minutes he lit a cigarette and paced around the small fire that the men had built to ward off the chill of the evening.
“Relax, Randy, and quit worrying about the chick,” the tallest guy of the bunch said. “We’ll deal with her later.”
From what Alexa could tell, this tall man was the boss of sorts. At least, he was giving most of the orders, she decided, and the others were following them.
“We’d better leave her here,” said the one called Randy. “Rustlin’ charges ain’t nothin’ compared to what they’d do to us for kidnappin’. My plans don’t include rottin’ in a penitentiary!”
“Oh hell, Randy, use that pea brain of yours a little,” the tall one barked back. “If we get caught, it ain’t gonna make any difference what we’re charged with. We’ll be making license plates till we die.”
The youngest man, who wore wire-rimmed glasses and a Texas A&M sweatshirt, grinned and chuckled. “If that’s the case, then we might as well take the chick with us. Might be fun to have her on the trip. She’s pretty.” He glanced toward Alexa and grinned again. “Or she would have been if Cecil hadn’t punched her in the face.”
Alexa shivered with revulsion. She had no idea how long the men planned to stay here in the canyon. Long enough, she supposed, for the cattle to have a little grass and water while the men waited for their contacts. From what she could gather from their sporadic conversation, more men would eventually arrive at the canyon to haul the cattle on the last leg of their journey. In Texas, the herd would be taken to a certain place where the cattle could be tagged, then sold as legal livestock.
So far, since they’d discovered she was conscious, none of them had roughed her up. The youngest one had offered her a drink from his beer can and a candy bar. She’d refused both. Now they were mostly ignoring her and discussing her fate as if she wasn’t sitting within earshot.
“The bitch bit me.” Cecil sullenly defended his actions. “She deserved to be whacked.”
“Maybe you deserve a whacking, too, you damned coward!” the youngest man shot back at him.
Cecil got up and started toward the younger man, but the tall man ordered him back, with a pointed finger.
“Cool it, damn it! Both of you,” the tall man shouted. “And let me think about what to do with the woman. Right now, I’m not so sure takin’ her along is a grand idea. If we take her into Texas, the Rangers will be on our asses and quick.”
“I ain’t scared of no Rangers,” the youngest guy bragged. “But I don’t want to kill her. I wouldn’t cotton to killin’ no woman. I don’t care what you say about those license plates!”
Oh God, her baby! Would she ever see her son again? What would happen to all t
he plans she had for him? Who would love him, mother him? And Jonas. He lived and burned in her heart. Were all her hopes and plans for them to be together going to end right here at this boxed canyon?
The questions choked her, and she bit down hard on her lip to keep from sobbing out loud. If Jonas was in this situation, he wouldn’t panic, she firmly scolded herself. He’d try to think of some way to escape, some way to distract these thugs.
She was watching their every move, making every effort to conceal the movements of her hands as she raked the tangled shoestring up and down against the metal when Dudley suddenly let out a loud whinny and began to dance back and forth against the tied reins.
Hope surged. Another horse had to be around. She was sure of that. But was there a rider on it? Or was it just a herd of the Chaparral mares that roamed loose with their young colts?
Oh, God, she desperately prayed, let it be Jonas!
Alerted by the horse’s sudden behavior, the tall man, the one Alexa had mentally tagged the boss, jerked his head around in all directions, while the other three attempted to peer into the darkened woods.
“What’s the matter with that damned horse?” the one called Cecil mumbled.
“The cattle may have gotten loose,” the tall man said and motioned for the other men to follow him. “We’d better go take a look.”
All the men marched after the tall man, except the youngest man, the ladies’ man. But none of the others seemed to notice he’d lagged behind.
Alexa shivered inwardly as he sauntered over to where she sat, then squatted on his heels in front of her.
“Hey, pretty missy, how about me and you gettin’ out of here and goin’ for a little walk? I’m not like Cecil. I won’t hurt ya.”
It was all Alexa could do to keep from spitting in his face, but she somehow managed to bite back the urge. This young Romeo might afford her the only chance she had to escape, and no matter how repulsive he was, she had to take it.
“I do need to stretch my legs,” she admitted.
Her jaw hurt when she talked, and she wondered if it was broken. But a fractured jaw would be the least of her worries if these men carted her off in their cattle truck.
Lone Star Daddy Page 17