Out of Control

by Mary Connealy

  “I come for what’s mine.” The man pulled her backward.

  “What are you doing?” Seth shouted. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “I won’t hurt no one if I get what I want.”

  Julia didn’t believe him for a second.

  “Tell us who you are and what you want.” Rafe’s voice was so steady, Julia felt the cold of it stab into her heart. His tone penetrated her terror. He didn’t look at her or act like he cared if she lived or died.

  “They call me Tracker.” He sounded half mad, and he smelled of rancid filth. “And I reckon I did a mighty good job of tracking you down.”

  “What do you mean ‘what’s mine’?” Rafe asked, his voice strong but collected, detached, as if he were horse trading. Julia’s heart sank. She knew how she’d feel if someone had a gun to Rafe’s head. It would be nothing like this.

  Rafe didn’t love her.

  He could never have been this controlled if he did.

  “She’s got money hidden at her place. Her pa stole it from my boss, and I come for it.”

  Julia had to find a way to survive. In the face of Rafe’s cool reaction, Julia knew she had to think about Audra and the children.

  “My father? Wendell Gilliland?”

  “Wendell is the last name of the man my boss is hunting. In town they called him Gill. I’ve been on his trail since he left Texas. The boss give me the job of tracking him down to get his money back.”

  She wondered if he knew Father was dead. “Why come for me?”

  “Your pa is beyond asking, isn’t he?”

  Julia’s jaw tightened, not sure what to say next.

  “Yes, I know your pa is dead. I been watchin’ you mighty close.”

  She shuddered at the rough tone of his voice. “But why?”

  “In Rawhide, I caught up to your pa. I laid low and bided my time, but there was no chance to grab him and force him to hand over the money. It took me a while to figure out he was sneaking out of town on weekends to come see you. I finally figured it out early one Monday morning when I saw him slipping back into town. So I set out to see where he’d been. I couldn’t follow his trail the whole way the first week or the second or the third. And I couldn’t spot your pa leaving town. He was a wily man, and he went out of town a different way each time. But finally his back trail led me to your place. I headed for town to catch him out alone but missed him.”

  “So are you really Seth’s friend?” Julia hated the thought that maybe Seth was in cahoots with this man. Maybe they’d planned all of this together.

  “If he’s my friend, he oughta put down the gun.” Seth nearly bounced with energy, but Julia thought he showed a lot of restraint not to come running at them. A lot of sanity.

  “I met up with Seth headed this way for home. When I realized how well he knew the area, I convinced him to ride along with me. I threw in with him figurin’ he’d know everyone who lived around these parts. But Wendell’s tracks didn’t go toward Seth’s home. And Seth’s the next thing to loco.”

  “Hey!” Seth clenched his fists. But again he stayed in place. Or maybe he just didn’t care that much that she had a madman threatening her.

  “Now, Seth,” Rafe said, “you gotta admit you’ve been acting a little crazy, even for you.” He crossed his arms as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Julia caught a little smile on Rafe’s lips, as if he was having fun teasing his brother.

  “He led me into the tunnel in that mountain valley and showed me how close it was to Wendell’s cabin.”

  “I didn’t know you were looking for Julia.” Seth’s eyes flashed wildly in the torchlight. “You said you liked caves.”

  “Why didn’t you just go on home from the cavern, Seth?” Rafe leaned his left shoulder on a man-sized stalagmite.

  “I . . . I meant to.” Seth rubbed both hands through his hair.

  “I figured out real quick he knew his way around down here and I wanted him to show me the tunnels.” Tracker’s voice was calm as he enjoyed boasting. “It’s a mighty good hiding place, easy to slip up close and watch for Wendell. So, when Seth woke up the first night screaming, I gave him some laudanum.”

  “You drugged me?” Seth lifted his head, his fidgeting stopped.

  “The first time I did it just to shut you up.”

  Julia had heard Seth’s nightmares. Terrible to listen to.

  “I forced you to drink it while you were awake enough to take the medicine but asleep enough to forget I done it. You woke up so confused the next morning, it was easy to keep you here and get you to show me this place.”

  “I . . . I don’t remember taking anything.” Seth turned to Rafe. “But I’ve been feeling so wrong, so lost.”

  Rafe crossed one leg over the other, nodding. “Makes sense. You’d be an easy one to fool, Seth.”

  Julia wanted to despair of Rafe’s tone. He didn’t seem to care about her or his brother.

  “Once we were down here, Seth seemed to forget all about how to get home. He’d say he wanted to go, but he never did, not as long as I kept dosing him with the laudanum.”

  Tracker leaned forward, and Julia saw him for the first time. His face was horribly scarred. He smiled and the scars drew his face into a nightmarish mask. He wore an eye patch on his left eye, the one closest to her as he leaned over her right shoulder, using her as a shield. Julia noticed his grip on her neck had loosened as he mocked Seth.

  “You seemed happy down here exploring, and I was learning my way around.” Tracker’s laugh echoed through the cave.

  Rafe’s eyes suddenly met hers. They hardened, then his gaze slid downward to the cave floor, and back up. The expression was gone almost instantly but it changed everything.

  Julia realized he wasn’t detached, he was controlled. Two very different things.

  Rafe was keeping his head. He was asking her to be ready. For what, she didn’t know, but he was planning something.

  “Seth always knew this cave best,” Rafe said. He reached up to rub the back of his neck. He looked for all the world like a man stretching, getting ready to yawn. But his right hand, his gun hand, settled at his side only inches from his revolver.

  And Julia needed to distract Tracker so Rafe could make his move. “What happened to your eye?” she asked, then turned just a bit so she could see him. She was on his blind side, so she was hoping he’d feel the need to turn his head to see her.

  “I spent a few years with no sight as a child after an explosion. A second accident, years later, restored the sight in my right eye. I was right at home in the dark and started liking it down here.”

  How much could he see? Enough, but maybe not everything. She leaned forward just a bit, until she was no longer pressed hard against his foul body.

  Busy gloating, he didn’t seem to notice. “We got here after your pa had gone back to town. By that time I’d figured out he wouldn’t be back until Saturday night. So we had some time to explore.”

  Julia bent just another fraction of an inch away. She only needed one tiny chance, and then she’d slip to the ground. She needed to mess up his aim. Rafe would never beat Tracker to the draw if Tracker’s gun was already out and cocked.

  “I have no idea where my father put his money,” Julia said. “I doubt he even has it anymore. He bought supplies to travel out here, and he bought a house and a business in town. I’m sure the money is all gone.”

  “Nope.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Julia took a quick look at Rafe, who was calm as ever. He didn’t even seem to be paying much attention, and Tracker had definitely decided he was in charge of the situation. “My father liked to gamble. He could have lost it.”

  Tracker scowled, then shook his head. “He stole a whole lotta money. Not much chance he could ever spend or gamble it all, even if he’d had it for a lifetime.”

  “Well, then why didn’t he buy us a nicer house?” Julia decided arguing with him was the best way to draw his attention away from Rafe. She w
atched out of the corner of her eye to see if Rafe would signal her again and realized the rope around Rafe’s waist had gone slack; he’d untied himself from Seth.

  “Your pa was pure mean, that’s why. Besides, I’m sure he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself by being a big spender.”

  “But what do you expect Julia to do?” Seth asked.

  Julia wished he’d be quiet. Now Tracker was watching the men.

  “If her pa died, then the hiding place for the money died with him.” Seth sounded so reasonable. “So what’s the point in threatening her?”

  “If she doesn’t know where the money is, at least she knows her pa.” Tracker turned to her. She was grateful he was again focused on her, until she saw the cruelty in his eyes. “You might have some idea of where he’d hide it.”

  “If I did, I’d tell you. Did you search his business in town?”

  “Yep, little rattrap of a building. Nowhere to hide much of nuthin’. He didn’t have anything in there but a deck of cards or two and some whiskey. No money I could find. I had to be careful, though, so your pa or anyone in town wouldn’t notice I’d been there. I didn’t want him to hightail it.”

  “But our cabin is so small,” Julia said. “There’s nowhere it could be hidden. I can’t help you. I give you permission to search for the money as long as you like. Let me go, and we’ll walk out of here. If my father stole money from someone, then I’ll gladly return it. But I have no idea where to begin searching.”

  “I think you might know more than you realize. I think if you stay down here long enough to know I’m dead serious and willing to hurt you, you’ll try hard to come up with a hiding place your pa might use.” He looked toward Rafe and Seth.

  “She knows her pa as well as anyone. And I think, if I let her go, she’s gonna want that money just like anyone else does and she’ll decide not to share it. So I’m gonna take her away.” He gestured toward a tunnel opening with the gun.

  Rafe drew his Colt. Julia dropped. Tracker’s grip slipped, but he dove for the floor. Rafe’s bullet missed. Seth ran straight at Tracker, putting his body between the gunman and Rafe, just as Tracker fired. The bullet slammed into Seth, but the forward momentum kept Seth flying forward. He struck Tracker but dropped to the floor like a dead man. Tracker staggered back. His gun fired into the ceiling again and again. A massive stalactite cracked overhead just as Rafe rushed into the fight and grabbed Tracker’s hand, trying to wrench the pistol free.

  Julia scrambled to her feet. “Rafe, look out!” A heavy stone plummeted from the ceiling, striking Rafe on the shoulder and knocking him down. Tracker was on his feet, still shooting and laughing like a madman. He grabbed Julia as more stones cascaded down.

  Dust exploded from all directions. Screaming over the thundering gun, Julia saw Rafe slump to the ground unconscious. Seth sprawled facedown on the floor as more stones bounced off both of them, burying them.

  Flames whooshed up from one of the lanterns, racing in a path straight for Rafe and Seth, who lay under falling stone.

  “No!” Julia twisted wildly to escape Tracker’s grasp.

  Tracker laughed wildly and continued shooting into the ceiling.

  She screamed as he dragged her into a tunnel. An unmarked one, pitch-dark. The man had no light. Her lantern was gone.

  The cave ceiling continued to collapse. Stone crashed down.

  Tracker laughed. Hot breath blasted her face. His clawing hands sunk into her belly, latching on to the rope she had around her waist.

  Crying out, Julia grabbed the edge of the tunnel, but Tracker tore her hands loose just as the entrance to the tunnel vanished under stone.

  Seth and Rafe were buried. Her only way out was cut off by tons of stone.

  The mountain had fallen on Rafe.

  And Julia was buried alive, trapped in total darkness with a madman.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Rafe raised his head to see Julia dragged into a tunnel. Stone poured down, cutting him off from her and leaving her trapped with a madman.

  “No! Julia!” Rafe shouted in horror. Grimly he shoved himself to his hands and knees.

  I’ll dig my way to you if it takes me the rest of my life.

  Something slugged his back. Twisting, ready to fight, he saw a floor-to-ceiling column of stone yaw in his direction. Stones rained down from the ceiling as the column pulled loose overhead. Flames from a shattered lantern crawled along the floor toward him.

  He leapt to his feet, staggered from the blows of battering rock. The column tilted straight toward him. With a rumble, jagged cracks streaked away from the shuddering stone tower where it attached to the cave ceiling.

  A tug on his arm turned him to face Seth, bleeding from his chest but on his feet, alert.

  Sane.

  “Now! Move!” Seth jerked Rafe backward as stones avalanched. It was Rafe’s own nightmare come to life. The mountain collapsing on him, crushing him.

  Seth dragged him. For Seth the nightmare would be the fire. Burning.

  The column rushed toward him. Rafe saw where Seth was headed, the only way out of this disintegrating space.

  They ducked into a tunnel just as that stone column slammed onto the cave floor, trapping them. Choking grit billowed in. White-hot flames blasted in with the dust and blew through the tunnel.

  Seth screamed and fell backward. Rafe threw his arms in front of his eyes. The flames crackled and raged, then with no kerosene to feed them, vanished.

  “We’ve got to save Julia.” Rafe remembered when Seth had nearly died so many years ago. He remembered the panic. Running. Abandoning his brothers.

  He remembered it, and for the first time remembered that, yes, he’d been terrified, but he’d gotten control of himself. He’d done the right thing. He’d do it now, too.

  “This way.” Rafe’s arm was caught, and Seth dragged him downhill, away from Julia.

  “No, we have to go back.” The darkness was total. Rafe could see nothing.

  “There is no back, Rafe. We can’t get out that way.” Seth quit yanking on him, and with a scratching noise, a light popped on.

  A match. Light down here in the deep. And Seth walked only a few yards forward to a torch.

  Just like light could be down here, so could God. The thought steadied Rafe, and he turned to face that cave. He would dig his way through.

  “We can’t go back. The whole cave was coming down. We can’t get through there.”

  “We have to. We have to get to the tunnel she went down and save her. Even if we have to move an entire mountain’s worth of stone, I’m not giving up.”

  In the growing light of the torch, Rafe saw his little brother smile and was prompted toward violence. He’d decided too soon that Seth was sane.

  “No, we’re not giving up.” Despite the stupid smile, Seth looked more rational than Rafe had seen him since he’d come home. “Tracker may think he knows his way around down here, but he hasn’t begun to learn this cavern as well as me.”

  “What do you mean?” Rafe clenched his fist, in no mood for Seth’s games.

  “I mean, down this far these tunnels twist all around like a maze, curve up and down, and cross each other.”

  “Cross each other?” Rafe wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “Yep. We may be cut off from Julia the way we came, but there are other ways to get where Tracker is going.” The wild look was back in Seth’s blue eyes. “Faster ways.”

  Rafe had just a second to wonder if Seth was loco. Was he going to lead Rafe to Julia or lead him forever down?

  Right now, his choices were real limited. And he’d prayed for God’s help. And Seth, the man who knew these caverns better than anyone else in the world, was what God provided. He could either pick up a whole mountain, one stone at a time, or . . . “Lead the way, little brother. Let’s go get her back.”

  Seth’s eyes flashed, and he turned and rushed in the exact opposite direction from where Rafe had last seen Julia. If Rafe fol
lowed and Seth didn’t know what he was doing, then Rafe might never see Julia again.

  Rafe charged after his brother into the belly of the earth.

  Julia thought of Rafe, buried under the crushing weight of the mountain and wanted to die, too. But it wasn’t in her to give up. The lunatic had a firm grip on the rope still tied around her waist.

  Slow him down. Think. I need time to think.

  She dropped to the floor, and he dragged her along for a few feet.

  “Get up, pretty lady. Or I’ll drag you by that long red hair.”

  “I fell.” Julia didn’t have to try very hard to get her voice to break. “You’re going too fast.”

  She swept her hands along the ground, wishing she could find a nice heavy rock she could use on the man’s skull. Finding nothing, she had another idea. Not as good, though honestly, nothing would sound as good as bashing his head in. But it was something, until a rock came to hand. She thought he’d dropped his gun in the melee, but even if he opened fire, she was going to make her break, and soon.

  She stood as slowly as she thought she could without earning his fist. She had enough time, in the pitch black, to get herself ready to fight back the only way she could think of.

  He caught hold of the rope.

  “Please, I’ll fall again if you move so fast. What’s the point? Rafe and Seth are . . .” Her voice broke again. No need to fake it.

  “I buried ’em good, didn’t I?” His laugh was mad. Ugly. Cruel. All things that described this man perfectly.

  “So, th-then . . .” She fought to control her voice, not sure if it mattered. Maybe if she cried and begged it would help, but it was so distasteful to be so out of control. “What’s the hurry? If you want me to stay on my feet, slow down.”

  He did.

  Julia kept the pace slow and stayed at full attention. She was being led along like a trained dog, which reminded her of a wild dog she’d tried to tame once.

  He’d bit her.

  Her right hand was busy running along the wall of the tunnel. But with her left hand, she felt around at the rope, doing her best to jostle her body so he wouldn’t notice a few extra tugs. They stopped.