The Sheriff Catches a Bride

by Cora Seton

  Gunfire burst out again, bullets whizzed past Rose on all sides. “Down! Fila get down!” she yelled, dropping to her stomach and dragging Hannah and Fila with her. She pulled them close and lay as flat as she could, one hand gripping Hannah’s arm, the other holding Fila.

  “We’re caught in the middle!” Hannah shrieked.

  “Just keep down. They can’t see us,” Rose said. She pressed her face into the dirt and began to pray.

  The gunmen had broken through on two sides and now there were no lines, there was no order to any of this. Cab returned the fire of the man who remained between him and the road, but Ethan now faced toward Carl’s, trying to stop the intruder who was circling around. Rob was hurt, he didn’t know how badly, and Jake and Luke were taking the brunt of the attack to his left. In a chaos of gunfire and shouting, he didn’t see how it could get worse.

  “Down!” a female voice rang out. “Fila, get down!”

  Rose.

  Cab spun around, trying desperately to locate her. She was back toward Jake and Luke somewhere.

  Trapped.

  A bullet whipped past close to his ear and Cab swore when he realized one of their opponents had made it past their line and circled around. Wherever those women were they were in the center of the gunfight now. With this kind of crossfire there was no way to get them out.

  A shuffle of noise got his attention and Ned crawled up beside him. Cab grabbed his arm. “One of them has wrapped around behind us. Get as close to him as you can,” he shouted in his ear over the deafening noise. “Take him out. You have to take him out!” He hoped Ethan’s shots would soon find the one making his way toward Carl’s.

  He ducked as low as he could manage and darted toward where Rob still groaned in pain. Jake was crouched over his brothers’ prone form. “Is he okay?”

  “Don’t know. Nothing we can do until we take them out or get some help.” Jake waved a hand at the darkness, where gunfire still rippled out, keeping everyone pinned down.

  “Where the fuck is that backup? They should be here by now,” Cab growled. He moved beyond Rob, positioned himself in a half-crouch and joined Luke in holding off the other two gunmen. Just a few more minutes. Just a couple more minutes, he told himself again and again. They could do this. They could hold the gunmen back.

  Another man’s cry rang out.

  Jamie. That’s Jamie, Rose thought fighting to hold back tears. She was sure of it. The sound had come from the side of the woods nearest Carl’s house. Beside her, Hannah cried out. Fila lay stiff and straight.

  “We have to do something,” Hannah hissed, her voice breaking.

  “What?” Rose hissed back. “We don’t have any weapons.”

  “That was Jamie!”

  “I know it was. Shhh!”

  Another man shouted and the gunfire dipped. He called out angrily, a torrent of foreign words that seemed to go on and on. Rose bit her lip, her fingers tight on her friends’ arms. The gunfire slowed, but didn’t stop. Still the man shouted. Rose didn’t understand a word. Was that Arabic? Something else? What did they speak in Afghanistan?

  “What is he saying?” Hannah hissed.

  “I don’t know,” Rose said. She recognized the tone though—anger, righteousness.

  Persuasion.

  Something shifted beside her. Fila.

  Rose whipped her head around. “No! Don’t move! Whatever he’s saying, don’t you listen, Fila!”

  “He’s saying they’ll let you go. They only want me. They don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Don’t believe him! You know it’s not true.” Rose let go of Hannah and clung to Fila with both hands.

  “It’s the only way,” Fila said, pulling away from her. She was getting to her knees, Rose realized, preparing to stand up.

  “No. He’s lying! He’ll still kill us all. He’ll start with you.” Rose scrambled up, too. Fila tried to detach herself but Rose clung on. “Get back down. You’ll get us all killed.”

  “This is all because of me.” Fila tugged free, but Rose flung herself forward and caught her ankle as she stood up. She jerked it hard and Fila crashed to the ground with a cry of pain.

  Shouting erupted from all sides. Fila yanked her leg free again and scrambled forward on all fours. Rose went after her, but Hannah cried out, “No. Rose, stop!” as the gunfire intensified. While Hannah held her back, she watched in horror as Fila stood up to her full height and began to shout.

  Cab’s worst nightmare had come to life. Gunfire rang out from all sides, he couldn’t see a thing in the dark, two of his friends were hurt and his backup was missing. When the gunman began to call out, at first he thought Cab might be asking for a truce, but the tone of the man’s voice soon disabused him of that notion. He was haranguing someone. Calling them out.

  Calling Fila out. The mystery woman. Cab was sure of it.

  What would he say in this situation if he were the gunman? Come on out. We won’t hurt your friends. Would Fila be smart enough to understand the game? Or would she fall for it and expose Rose, too?

  Stay put, stay put, stay put, he willed at her, but when Rose cried out, he knew it was all over.

  “No! Don’t move! Whatever he’s saying, don’t you listen, Fila!” Rose shouted. A scuffle, more shouted words, and a lithe, dark shape rose up in the middle of the gunfight. It called out in a woman’s voice.

  Cab wished he knew what she was saying because her words chilled him to the bone like nothing else had this night. She didn’t plead or cry or show any sign of weakness. She was giving it back to the man as good as she’d got. The minute she started speaking, the gunfire cut out. At first silence greeted her words, then a babble of foreign male voices. A shot rang out. Another burst of gunfire.

  “Rose, stay down,” Cab yelled. “All of you stay down!” He whipped around to face the source of the shots, squeezed off several of his own. A man cried out, something dropped to the ground and all was still again.

  Fila, silenced a moment, began again, a river of shouted words he thought could skin a man alive. The other gunmen shouted back at her, furious replies to her harangue. They were moving, Cab realized. Bunching together. He called out a warning, just as the three men burst forward in a blaze of gunfire. His own friends returned fire from all sides, but Cab knew the women couldn’t last in this kind of fight. Abandoning reason, he threw himself toward them, his only goal to get between Rose and the bullets.

  As the gunmen raced forward, and the distance between them and Fila, between them and Rose shortened, Cab knew his cause was lost. He couldn’t reach Rose in time. Couldn’t stop these monsters. Couldn’t…

  A new sound shook the ground and at first Cab thought it was a bigger gun. He felt the shudders through the dirt beneath him. They vibrated through the soles of his feet, to his ankles, to his calves, to his knees. Something was coming.

  Something big.

  “We’ve got to stop her. She’s going to get killed!” Rose cried as Hannah kept her from dashing after Fila.

  When Fila began to shout at the gunmen, Rose fell back with a cry of fear. As tears rolled down her face, the forest filled with shouts and gunfire. The foreign men were grouping together. Pushing forward.

  Coming for Fila.

  One of the foreigners yelped in pain and there was confusion for a moment, but then the gunmen regrouped and pressed forward again. All the time Fila yelled streams of angry words back at them. The men answered, their guttural syllables as rough and frightening as their bullets.

  Rose raised her hands to her face. Wanted to hide her eyes but couldn’t. She could hardly see Fila in the darkness or make out anything else for that matter, except the sound of the weapons firing all around her.

  “Oh, my God,” Hannah gasped. “Oh no.” She got to her knees.

  Now Rose felt it too; something rumbling through the ground at them. An earthquake? Thunder?

  “It’s Gladys,” Hannah said.

  A high-pitched scream pierced the air and Fila cra
shed to the ground. The gunmen surged forward in a clash of shouts and gunfire.

  A man bowled into Rose from the opposite direction, knocking her flat to the dirt. “Stay down,” Cab hissed in her ear. Hannah huddled close to her and Cab flung an arm around them both.

  The bison charged past, its hooves flashing, clattering against the hard-packed ground. The gunmen’s shouts turned questioning. Fearful.

  Terrified.

  They scattered as Gladys charged through them. Rose heard the sickening crack of broken bone, a piercing shout and then silence.

  A second later, voices echoed all around them. Men in uniform flooded the forest. Above them, the whirr of a helicopter’s rotary blades split the air and a bright light turned night into day.

  Rose wept with relief and terror as Cab held her. Police, deputies, and SWAT team members streamed toward them, flowing through the forest. Overrunning her sanctuary.

  Rose clung to Cab as the world lurched, tipped, and finally went dark.

  ‡

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Come back to us, sister. Let us make a gift of you to our brother-in-arms. These infidels will suck out your soul and poison you with their capitalist ways. Give your heart to Allah. Rejoin us, your brothers. Remember the true path!”

  Wahid’s voice had thundered through the night air, cutting through the gunfire like a knife aimed at her heart and Fila knew that she couldn’t hide and risk the lives of the women who’d tried to save her. When she stood up, she didn’t expect to survive, but before she died she was determined to finally answer back to Wahid and the rest of the men who had stolen her life.

  “You don’t know Allah. You don’t know God. You think you’re martyrs and instead you are nothing! Don’t you have eyes to see? Ears to hear? A heart to feel? Haven’t you noticed the screams and tears of the women you pretend to protect? Haven’t you realized we’re just as real as you are? A woman isn’t a gift—she is a person. I am a person and I say no to you! I was never the woman you thought I was. I was never cowed. I never believed in your cause. And I am living proof that in the end you will fail!”

  She expected every moment one of the bullets to tear her heart from her chest, but when the pain came it was her shoulder instead. Although the impact dropped her to the ground, the doctors now assured her she would recover fully. Her assailants had been captured. One had been killed.

  It was over—ten long years of terror, hiding, running—over. For the first time in days she drifted into a heavy sleep.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t there,” Ethan said, sitting back against the hospital waiting room seat. “A bison running loose in Carl’s woods.”

  “How the hell did it get there?” Jake asked.

  Cab thought he knew, but he didn’t have the energy to speak just now. He’d spent the last six hours giving his own statement and helping to take the statements of all the other witnesses and participants of the night’s shootout. It would take weeks to sort this mess out, but he didn’t care.

  Rose was alive.

  Shaken, but alive. She was being kept under observation in a room down the hall shared with Fila, who’d received a superficial gunshot wound.

  Jamie occupied another room with a bullet wound to his hip. Rob shared it, the most seriously hurt of all. He’d been hit just below his left shoulder, far too close to his heart for comfort. The bullet broke two ribs, but didn’t penetrate past them. If it had, he was sure Rob would be dead.

  Terrorists in the woods of Chance Creek. Just as Kevin had said.

  He still couldn’t decide if the old man got lucky on that one, or if he’d really seen the same men who came for Fila driving through town. Probably the latter, as much as Cab hated to admit it. If he had to start investigating every off-the-wall claim that man made, he’d never sleep.

  Better not to sleep than to let Rose venture into danger again.

  He’d paced the woods with the rest of the uniformed men after the victims were cleared, floodlights lighting every inch of the ground. When they found Rose’s tree house, he’d nearly broken down. Filled with sleeping bags, clothing and evidence of the two women’s dinner, it was obvious they’d felt safe there, nestled in their hideaway.

  He wondered if they’d ever feel safe again. His heart ached for both of them. Hannah, too. The receptionist wasn’t injured but she’d definitely been in shock when it was over. Her face as pale a sheet when they helped her to an ambulance, she kept looking around. Searching for something that wasn’t there.

  “I’m glad Rob’s going to be okay. How’s Rose doing?” Ethan asked.

  Cab nodded. “Good. But I think I’ll go check on her again.”

  He paced down the hall heavily, feeling far older than he had when he got up today. Yesterday. Whenever it was he’d slept last. When he reached the door to her room, he opened it to find Fila dozing, and Jason and Emory Thayer at the side of Rose’s bed. He nearly closed the door again and left them alone, until he caught what Emory was saying.

  “Rose knows she made a mistake, Jason. Didn’t you, Rose? Just as soon as you’re home for good, the two of you will get married, just like you always planned.”

  Rose looked miserable lying under her covers, and Cab knew instinctively that left alone with Jason and Emory, she’d cave in to their demands. They were too much to face on a normal day. Now she was hurt, terrified. He wouldn’t let them bully her into anything.

  He let himself into the room quietly and took a seat on a hard plastic chair near the door.

  “Won’t you, Rose?” Emory demanded.

  Rose cast a glance at Cab. He met her gaze and held it. He willed her to know how much he loved her. How much he wanted her to be a part of his life. And how he’d back off and let her make up her own mind.

  “No,” she said.

  “What do you mean, no?” Emory said.

  “Dad,” Jason said. “Let it go. I told you; it’s over.”

  “You’ve been engaged for six years. It can’t be over.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rose touched Jason’s hand.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Jason said. “Both of us changed. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” Emory turned on him. “What’ll you come back for, if it’s not for her? You certainly won’t come back for me! Who’ve I got now that your mother’s gone? No one!”

  Jason turned to him in surprise. “I come back all the time!”

  “Twice this year is not all the time!”

  Cab stood up, crossed the room and shepherded them both toward the door. When he’d pushed them gently but firmly out into the hall, he said, “Time for the two of you to sort things out between yourselves without putting Rose in the middle of it all.”

  Several hours later, Jason slipped back into Rose’s room alone and Rose understood he’d come to say good-bye. She knew it was the right thing for both of them, but now it came time to actually do it, she found it harder than she’d expected. They’d drifted apart this last year, but he’d been a fixture in her life for a long time. They’d been friends and lovers, and she’d dreamed for years of a future together. It was hard to let all of that go.

  He sat beside her on the hospital bed and took her hand. “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t come to North Dakota and sort things out in person,” she said. “I took the coward’s way out.”

  “Rose, whatever you are it’s not a coward. If anyone was cowardly, I was. I didn’t tell you what was going on. I didn’t trust that you would understand.”

  “What was going on?” she asked softly.

  “I didn’t save up any money,” he said. “I lied to you the whole time.”

  Rose blinked. “You didn’t save…” That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. She figured he’d simply found another girlfriend. “What were you doing all this time?”

  Jason’s cheeks reddened. “I’m in college, honey. I’ve been in school for nearly four years. I’m so sorry I didn
’t tell you. I didn’t tell Dad, either. I guess I was afraid both of you would think I was being selfish. I didn’t save a dime for our house. I spent it all on myself. That’s why I had such a hard time coming here and being with you. I felt so guilty every time I saw the ring on your finger. I’d… promised you this life that I didn’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to come back to Chance Creek. I don’t want to settle down. There’s a whole big world out there, Rose. I want to see it. I want to travel. I want to go where the money is. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Relief flooded Rose. Jason hadn’t wanted to marry her any more than she wanted to marry him. “You can’t blame yourself for your plans changing,” she said. “We were eighteen when we got engaged, for crying out loud. Why did our parents even let us do it?”

  “I’m not sure they could have stopped us.” Jason grinned. “I don’t think they wanted to. They wanted our families joined. They wanted us both to stay in Chance Creek.”

  Rose nodded. “But you don’t want to stay. I understand that. I understand your wanting more from life, too. I want more from life than I wanted at eighteen, you know. I want to pursue my art. I want a chance to see what I can do.”

  He looked down. “That’s the worst of it, isn’t it? I’ve been telling you not to do it. I was afraid if you started spending money on school you’d ask me to help with your rent and all that… and you’d catch me in my lies. I’m such a fool.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I don’t hold anything against you, I hope you know that. I was in love with you when I said yes to your proposal.”

  “But now you love Cab.”

  She looked away, tears filling her eyes. “Yes. I think I do. Just promise me you won’t be unhappy, Jason. Tell me the truth.”

  “The truth? It hurts, breaking up like this. It hurts to see you with Cab. But it’s a clean pain. I’ll get over it. Now I can move forward without feeling bad. Know what I mean?”

  “Definitely. I can’t wait to hear what you get up to, you know. Send me some postcards.”

  “Oh, you’ll hear about me. I promise. I’m going to make a name for myself. And I’m going to come back and spend time with Dad, too. I should have been doing that all along.” He raised her hand to his mouth, kissed it gently, and walked toward the door. “Don’t wait too long to say yes to that sheriff of yours. Make him a happy man, Rose. And let him make you happy, too.”