by Vonna Harper
Things were getting interesting. If the stranger reached the bottom, he’d run into the workmen. The only chance he had of getting to the top of the canyon and possible freedom was to come around to where Maco, Broomtail, Bruce, and the trail waited.
The stranger was trapped. No way could he outrun Silver. Hopefully he believed Silver was part mountain goat and thus capable of coming after him.
As he rubbed a still unalarmed Broomtail between the ears and muttered nonsense to Bruce, Maco pondered the stupidity of a man who’d come alone and unarmed to a place where he’d stand out like a sore thumb. Where the land was open and isolated.
Unarmed?
Alarmed, Maco cursed himself for not warning his brother that the trespasser might have a gun on him. Holding his breath, he pulled his Colt free of the holster and aimed it one-handed at the intruder. The man kept looking back at Jason, his boots occasionally slipping on the rocky slope. Going by Bruce’s demeanor, Maco knew the dog had spotted the trespasser and was waiting for a command. Instead of giving in to the impulse to let Bruce loose on the bastard, however, he held back. He didn’t want to risk getting sued by some lamebrained reporter.
More to the point, he didn’t want Bruce shot.
The man had been on a particularly steep slope when things started, but he’d reached an area where the ground was anchored with dried grasses. Apparently he felt safer because he started running. A now-trotting Silver kept pace. Knowing his younger brother as he did, Maco suspected Jason was taunting the trespasser.
Don’t! he silently warned. The man had already been pushed to the edge. At the same time, the thought of Jason and himself as western gunslingers going after a cattle rustler lifted his lips. Though with the distance between them and the lay of the land, Maco wasn’t sure he’d hit his target. One thing for sure, he wasn’t going to risk hitting his brother or Silver.
Bruce growled. The trespasser reached for something at his waist. Even from this distance, the damnable pistol looked immense, a monster.
“Get him!” Maco yelled at Bruce. Shari, if anything happens to him, I’m sorry.
Low to the ground, the Doberman took off. He became a blur, bundled muscles and teeth made for injury, maybe even death.
“You there, stop!” Maco bellowed even though he didn’t think the man, who had his back to him, could hear. “The dog—” Giving up, he dug his knees into Broomtail’s sides. Loyal to the end, the gelding fought to keep his footing.
The man planted his feet so he was facing Jason. He held the pistol in both hands. Silver was too big a target, something even a first-time shooter had a chance of hitting. Perhaps Jason had the same thought because he catapulted off his fast-moving mount. His brother hit the ground hard, started to stand.
Bam!
Jason hugged the ground, whether for self-preservation or because he’d been hit, Maco couldn’t tell. Snorting in alarm, Broomtail wheeled to the right.
Bam!
The sound was still echoing when Bruce struck the shooter at full speed. Maco was so intent on staying on the now-sliding Broomtail that he didn’t dare do more than glance at man and dog now locked together. Bruce’s growls would have frightened the dead while the man’s screams gave Maco chills. The instant he was certain Broomtail wouldn’t fall, he dismounted.
His boots were made for riding, not running; still, he raced toward Bruce and his victim. Shari was somewhere else and safe. The dog she’d spent countless hours training was doing a magnificent job.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Maco stood over the combatants. He stagger-stepped forward only to jump back to escape thrashing legs and errant fangs.
“Stop him. Oh God, stop him!”
“Where’s the damn gun?”
Bruce had hold of the man’s elbow and was using his grip and backwards march to keep the enemy from getting to his feet. Instead of trying to attack Bruce, the man kept his free arm tucked against his side. His howls were more animal than human.
“I said,” Maco repeated, “where’s the damn gun?”
“I don’t know. Oh God, he’s killing me!”
A trickle of blood ran down the man’s forearm, but Maco didn’t think a bone had been broken. Even when he’d made the decision to bring guard dogs on to the property, he hadn’t believed this would be happening. The dogs were supposed to be deterrents, a warning, but Bruce was more than that. Under his command, he’d become a killing machine.
Or he would if he got his teeth on the man’s throat.
“Down!” Maco commanded. With adrenaline storming through him, he was surprised he remembered the order Shari had taught him. “Down. Now.”
Once second Bruce was a savage, the next the Doberman became an excited but controlled observer. His tail stuck straight out, and his wet fangs showed. His growl was a constant.
Bruce’s victim lay in a near-fetal position. He cradled his wounded arm, and his eyes never left his canine attacker. “Don’t let him—keep him off me, please!” he babbled.
“I will, unless you’ve shot my brother.”
“He hasn’t.”
Jason’s voice had never sounded so wonderful! Blinking back tears, Maco turned toward the dust-covered sibling walking toward him. If Jason had ever looked angrier, Maco couldn’t remember. He felt the same way.
“That damn bastard tried to kill me.” Jason stood over their captive with clenched fists and jaw.
“No! No, I swear I’d never—”
Leaning down, Jason grabbed the man’s shirt at the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Bruce, who’d been standing at Maco’s side, stepped closer and sniffed the man’s legs.
“Please, please! He’s going to kill me.”
“Not as long as you do what we tell you to.” Maco aimed his revolver at the man but couldn’t keep his attention off Jason. Safe. His brother was really all right. “Now, what are you doing here?”
“Nothing.” The man’s attention skidded from Maco to Jason then to Bruce. Finally he stared at the Colt, eyes widening. “Just looking.”
“The hell you were.” Jason bumped his chest against the man’s. “If you were sightseeing, why were you armed?”
Instead of answering, the man started rocking back and forth while clutching his bleeding arm against his middle.
“Okay, another question.” Maco was surprised he could speak in a controlled tone. “Do you belong to Greenspeakers?”
When, except for a low whimper, the man remained silent, Maco looked around. The pistol was on the ground some twenty feet away. Thank God for Shari’s work with Bruce.
Thank God she was home and safe.
“What’s your name?” Jason demanded.
Chewing on his lower lip, the man continued to stare at the Colt. “I’ve never—where’d you get that damn thing? You some—”
“Answer,” Maco interrupted. Widening his stance, he pictured himself as a western marshal deciding what to do with a cattle rustler. “What’s your name?”
As if reading Maco’s thoughts, the man started to shake. “Dyson. Dyson Walts.”
Speechless, Maco stared at his brother, who did the same.
19
Fifteen minutes later, Maco, Jason, and Dyson sat in the cramped office. While Jason had rounded up the horses and put them back in the corral, Maco had used one of the first-aid kits they kept on hand to clean their prisoner’s elbow. The four puncture wounds would have to be looked at by a doctor and probably need stitches, but Bruce’s fangs hadn’t hit a vein, not for lack of the dog trying.
Jason had planted Dyson on a metal folding chair so Maco could tend to him. Dyson had whimpered the whole time Maco worked on him, not that either brother acknowledged his pain. Now Dyson remained sitting while Maco and Jason stood over him. Dyson’s pistol, minus its bullets, lay on the nearby desk while Maco had put his back in his holster. The frontier marshal image was still making an impact on Dyson, so he might as well capitalize on it.
“We’re going to call the sheriff,�
�� Maco began, “but before we do, you’re going to tell us what the hell you thought you were going to accomplish today.”
Dyson glanced toward the door where Bruce and Tucker sat. “The bomb,” he muttered.
“What about it?”
“I had to try to find it.”
Did this mean Dyson didn’t know about the recently conducted search? Oh shit, what if the bomb squad hadn’t uncovered it! “What do you mean, try to find?”
“That’s what I said.” For the first time, Dyson sounded as if he had a bit of a backbone. Given his rock-hard physique beneath the oversized shirt he’d been wearing, Maco was surprised Bruce had had so little trouble overpowering him.
“You didn’t know where it was planted?” Maco asked. If it was placed here. “Sorry, but I don’t buy that. You’re a Greenspeakers member. Why the hell would they keep that piece of information from you?”
“You don’t understand.”
Dyson was back to acting like a whipped pup. A look from Jason said his brother approved of getting as much as possible out of their prisoner.
“You’re damn right, I don’t.” Maco pointedly stared at the alert dogs. “This is how it’s going to be. Either you fill us in on everything, and I mean everything, or we’ll give you another demonstration of what these mutts are capable of.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You’re trespassing and carrying a loaded weapon. The cops will say I did what I had to in order to protect myself. My word against yours; guess who they’ll believe. First things first. What are you doing here?”
“I told you, the bomb—”
“Why didn’t you know where it had been planted?”
“Not everyone knows everything at Greenspeakers.” Now Dyson seemed to be trying to take comfort in what lay beyond the small window. “Everyone has their assignment, their specialty.”
“And one of them specializes in manufacturing incendiary devices, right?”
“I don’t know.”
Going by Jason’s grunt, his brother’s impatience mirrored his. “What the hell do you mean?”
Dyson raked his good hand through dirty and thinning hair. “Rachele—do you know who she is?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Your ex-girlfriend.”
“That was her idea. I never wanted—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jason interrupted. “What about her?”
“I brought her to a Greenspeakers meeting. She wasn’t crazy about going, but I talked her into it. They tried to get her to see things their way, only it didn’t work. Her mind wasn’t open. And they pushed too much.”
“Go on.”
Dyson swallowed. “After it was over, I felt like hell for taking her there. I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to get her to see me in a different light, I guess. If she saw how committed I was to protecting the environment, she’d—she insisted on leaving.”
“No shit,” Jason muttered. “She wanted you out of her life.”
“I know.” Dyson again sounded as though he was going to cry. “She wouldn’t talk to me. Later, Dave asked me about her.”
“Dave?”
“He’s the president, not official ’cause that’s not the way they run things, but he’s the one in charge.”
Reminding himself to tell the sheriff that, Maco nodded to indicate he was waiting for Dyson to continue. Now that he was no longer afraid for his brother’s life, his world was beginning to fall back into place, including the memory of Shari’s concern for him.
It’s okay, he told her. I’m okay.
“Dave wanted to know why the hell I couldn’t win Rachele over and what if she turned on us, went to the cops.”
“Which she did.”
His eyes welling, Dyson nodded. “Dave said he couldn’t trust me no more. Said he’d try to find a use for me, but he didn’t know what it might be. He, ah, he told me not to come to the next meeting.”
“Did he,” Jason muttered.
“I didn’t know what to do. Then Dave called to tell me about them planting a bomb. He said he’d been wrong to get pissed at me like that. I’d always been there when they needed me, offering muscle, if you know what I mean.”
Muscle and no brain was more like it.
“Dave wanted me to know there wasn’t going to be no more playing around. Soon as the bomb went off, everyone would know they meant business.”
“Even if innocent people got killed.” Maco spoke through clenched teeth. “It didn’t matter to Greenspeakers that the people who work here are just doing their jobs?”
“I don’t know.”
If there were some way of knocking sense into Dyson, he’d be doing that right now. However, he guessed it was a lost cause. “You still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.”
Dyson met Maco’s gaze. “I’m no brain trust. Hell, I know that. But Rachele didn’t mind for a long time. She was good to me, up for our working out together, going for hikes, watching old Rocky movies together. She was a great cook, always making sure I got enough protein. She’s the first woman I dated who really understood what goes on at power lift meets, the kind of preparation it takes. She rooted for me all the way. She knew to leave me alone if I lost.”
Listening to Dyson, Maco amended his assessment of the man. He might be short on gray material, but he knew a good woman when he saw one.
However, he’d lost her.
Dyson might not be the only one.
“It was stupid,” Dyson muttered and turned his attention back to the dogs. “I thought by telling Rachele what I knew about the bomb, she’d give me another chance. She’d see how honest I was.” He briefly closed his eyes. “Instead she went to the cops. There was only one thing I could do.”
“Try to find the bomb yourself?” Maco asked.
“Yeah.”
“And the gun?”
“I don’t know.” Dyson began rocking again. “Damn, this hurts. I swear I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Maco said, believing him. “I’m going to call the sheriff now, but while we’re waiting, my brother and I want to hear everything you can tell us about Dave and the others. Keep nothing out, understand?” He nodded at the dogs.
“Yes,” Dyson fairly whimpered.
“How did it go?” Shari asked Rachele, who’d just poked her head into the office where Shari was trying to put her mind to paperwork. Although she’d been back for several hours, she hadn’t accomplished zilch and was glad for the interruption/ company.
“Kind of a waste of time, actually.” Instead of joining her, Rachele went into the kitchen and returned with a couple of glasses of iced tea. “I was able to give the sheriff a few more suggestions about where Dyson might be—hiking places we’d gone to—and some names of his friends. Sheriff Bill kept going back to the Greenspeakers’ membership, but I don’t personally know any of them, thank goodness. I just don’t see Dyson hiding for long, but what do I really know about him? Why can’t life, and men, be simple?”
“I’m the wrong one to ask.”
“Speaking of, have you heard from Maco?”
“No, and I don’t want to. If he calls, I’m not going to answer.”
“Huh, why not?”
“I need my space, get my thinking straight.”
“Which you can’t do around him because why?”
Shari did her best to ignore Rachele’s I know look. “Just ’cause,” she muttered. “I don’t have time for a man.”
“Especially one who scratches your itches as well and unnervingly as he does, right?”
Sighing, Shari got up and walked into the living room and over to the front room window. “The other night when we were together, I had this kind of flashback about my distant past, a not-good part. It all exploded around me until I didn’t know whether I was a scared child again or an adult. I’ve never felt so off base around a man.”
“Hot and bothered.”
She blew out a breath. “That and more. I didn’t know it was possible to
feel this way. Like my body doesn’t belong to me anymore.”
“Go on.”
Although it was safer to continue looking out, Shari glanced back at Rachele, who was making a show of fanning herself.
“I’m serious,” Rachele went on. “I haven’t had sex in—since a while before Dyson and I broke up. Let me live vicariously. We’ll get into the other stuff, the part about regressing into your traumatic past, later.”
Tempted as she was to tell Rachele about spreading her legs for a man she barely knew simply because her hormones or something had been in overdrive, she didn’t.
“Okay.” Rachele sounded disappointed. “Maybe after a glass of wine. Are we going to use what’s left of the day to work with Rex?”
She’d gotten Rex, a Rottweiler mix, from the Humane Society after someone she knew there called to tell her the stray might have potential as a guard dog. If she hadn’t been so focused on working with Bruce and Tucker, Rex would be ready for placement. The big, fierce-looking dog still had a tendency to lose focus.
“No.” She drew out the word. “I just can’t get motivated. Rex would pick up on that.”
“Maybe I have the cure for what ails you, specifically the bottle of wine I have in the car.”
Appreciative of Rachele’s consideration, she shifted so she could see Rachele’s vehicle. It might be a little early to start imbibing, but by the time they’d exercised—
Barking from the kennel holding the boarding dogs began at full throttle. Despite the insulation, she had no trouble hearing them. Rachele joined her in staring in that direction. “What the hell’s gotten into them?”
If anything, the barking increased in volume. Ona, who’d been sleeping in the office, trotted out and stood looking at the window with her head cocked, whining. There was something off center about the barking, a mass warning that this wasn’t about trespassing rabbits or out-of-reach squirrels.
“Not good.” That said, Shari hurried for the front door. Rachele kept pace. Determined to protect Ona from what she didn’t know, she left the older dog inside.