Chapter Fifteen
Dillon came up out of the darkness slowly. His head hurt like hell and for a moment he forgot where he was. He was so used to waking up in a prison cell that at first he thought he was dreaming. Especially when he saw Buford standing over him.
Dillon groaned and, holding his head, sat up. As he felt his skull and found the lump where someone had hit him, his memory gradually started to come back to him.
“What the hell’s going on, Buford?” he demanded, taking in the gun in his old friend’s hand—and the fact that the barrel was pointed at his chest.
“You should have stayed in prison.”
“I’m getting that,” Dillon said. “Look, I don’t know who else is with you, but don’t hurt Wilde, okay?”
“So it’s like that,” Buford said with a smirk.
“You know, I misjudged you.” Dillon’s mind was racing. He knew he’d never be able to get to his feet fast enough to jump Buford before he caught a bullet in the chest. But he had to think of something.
“Misjudged me?” Buford kept looking up toward the camp. Dillon was betting that whoever had hit him had gone there looking for Jack.
“I never figured you for the leader of this rustling ring. Frankly, I never thought you were smart enough. I guess I was wrong.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, Dillon saw that Buford wasn’t the man giving the orders. So did that mean whoever had gone up the bluff was?
“Just shut up,” Buford snapped. “Too bad he didn’t hit you harder.”
“Yeah.” Dillon reached back again to rub the bump on his head. “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you, were you the one who set me up the day Wilde caught me?”
Buford had always been a lousy poker player. Too much showed in his face. Just like right now.
“Well, that solves that mystery.” Dillon kept his voice light, but his heart was pounding. It was all he could do not to lunge at his old friend and take his chances.
“You were always such an arrogant bastard,” Buford said.
Dillon nodded in agreement, even though it hurt his head, as everything became clear to him. “It’s because I wanted to stop rustling cattle, wasn’t it.”
“You get us involved and then you want to quit just when we’re starting to make some money,” Buford said, anger in his voice.
Dillon stared at him, a bad feeling settling in his stomach. “You didn’t put all the cattle on the W Bar like I told you to.”
“What was the point? No one gave a crap about your warped attempt at your so-called justice. Waters bought out my family’s ranch just like he did yours. You didn’t see me losing sleep over it. The only reason I’d risk rustling cattle was if there was real money in it and not what you paid us to help.”
Dillon let that settle in for a moment. It explained a lot. Buford, Pete Barclay and Arlen Dubois had seemed guilty when he’d seen them. Now he understood why. He’d thought it was because they’d set him up. As it turned out, they’d done that, too—and double-crossed him.
“I’ve gotta know. Halsey’s good-luck coin…I’m betting you took it from his pocket at the funeral.”
“You’d lose that bet,” Buford said.
Then who? “So who do I have to thank for this lump on my head? Pete?” Buford’s expression told him it hadn’t been Pete. “Arlen?”
“I told you to shut up.”
Dillon frowned. If it really hadn’t been either of them, who did that leave?
“Where’s your girlfriend?” a very familiar voice asked, from directly behind him. Dillon felt his skin crawl, and heard Buford chuckle at his obvious surprise.
AS JACKLYN WORKED HER WAY around the rock bluff, the sun broke over the horizon. She would have less cover and more chance of being seen before she discovered what she had to fear.
The wind in the trees sounded like ocean waves. Past the trees, she spotted a pond, its surface pitching and rolling, the chop cresting white as it beat against the shoreline. The wind whistled past her, too, tossing her hair into her eyes.
Last night Dillon had taken out her braid…. Just the memory made her weak. His fingers in her hair… The two of them had made love through the night with an intimacy that she’d never experienced before. There was only one way she could explain it. Love.
The wind groaned in the pine boughs, whistling through the branches, making it impossible to hear if someone was sneaking up on her.
She pushed on through the tall grass. The sky stretched overhead, a pale blue canvas empty of clouds. But the wind had a bite to it.
She stopped to listen, the wind seeming to be her only companion. Ahead was another stand of pines, dark green. She had to be getting near the creek. Near where she believed Dillon had left the horses. She didn’t dare check the monitor again.
Angling down the mountain through the pines, she came across a smaller pond nearly hidden in the trees. There, with the dense pines acting as a windbreak, the surface was slick and calm. She stopped to listen, hearing the wind sigh among the treetops.
A track in the soft mud at the edge caught her eye. She stepped closer, crouching down to study the multitude of animal prints. In the middle of the deer and antelope tracks was the clear imprint of a boot heel.
She froze as she heard something other than wind in pine boughs. The water beside her mirrored the sky, the dark green of the trees towering over her. Something moved in the reflection.
She jerked back, her eyes on the pines, the fallen needles a bed at her feet. Even over the wind, she heard the soft rustle. Not of swaying branches, but something advancing through the grass, moving with purpose.
She unsnapped her holster and rested her palm on the butt of the pistol as she moved, just as purposefully, around the pond.
The wind whipped through the pines, sending a shower of dust over her. She froze, blinded for one terrifying instant.
Her prey had stopped, as well. A strange silence fell over the landscape. Shadows played at the edge of the water.
She started to take a step toward the cool shade in the pines as it burst from the trees. All she saw was the frantic flutter of wings. She didn’t remember pulling the pistol, her heart lurching, her breath catching. The thunder of blood in her ears as the grouse flew past was too much like the heart-stopping buzz of the rattlesnake.
Jacklyn sucked in a breath, then another, her hand shaking as she slid the pistol back in the holster. But she kept her hand on the cool, smooth butt, her eyes on the trees ahead.
He was here. She could feel him. Unconsciously, she lifted her head and sniffed the air. Crickets began to chirp again in the grass. Somewhere off to her left a meadowlark sang a refrain. Closer, the grass rustled again with movement.
Once in the awning of the trees, she saw the game trail. It wound through the pines, disappearing in shadow. She stopped, crouched and touched the soft damp earth.
Another boot print.
Few people ever knew this kind of eerie silence. Solitude coupled with an acute aloneness. A feeling of being far from anything and anyone who mattered to her. Entirely on her own. She’d been here before. Fighting not only a country wrought with dangers, but also men—the most dangerous adversaries of all.
Tracking required stealth, so as not to warn other animals of her presence. She’d walked up on her share of bears, the worst a grizzly sow with two cubs. The mother grizzly had let out a whoof, but the warning came too late. The sow’s hair had stood up on her neck as she rose on her hind legs, even as Jacklyn slowly began to back away. Then the sow had charged.
Jacklyn knew that running was the worst thing she could do, but in that instant it was a primal survival instinct stronger than any she’d ever felt. Fortunately, her training had kicked in. She’d dropped to the ground, curled into a fetal position and covered her head with one arm as she slipped her other hand down to the bear spray clipped to her belt.
The spray had saved her life.
Just as she hoped the gun would today, because whoever, whatever, was after her was nearby now.
MORGAN LANDERS MOVED around to stand in front of Dillon, flashing him one of her smiles. “I lied about hoping I wouldn’t see you again.”
“It seems that’s not the only thing you lied about,” Dillon said. He’d always thought he wouldn’t put anything past Morgan, but he was having a hard time believing she’d been the one to coldcock him. He had a sizable lump on his head. Morgan must have one hell of a swing. Unless it had been someone else.
He felt a sliver of worry stab into him as he realized that Morgan had just come from the camp on top of the bluff. “See Wilde while you were up there?” he asked, tilting his head toward the camp.
Morgan’s gaze said she had guessed how close he was with the stock detective, and didn’t like it. Too bad for Morgan. “As a matter of fact, she seems to be missing.”
Dillon felt his heart soar. Jack had heard the shot, and being Jack, she’d known what to do.
Buford swore. “So what are you doing here? Go find her.”
Morgan sent him a bored look. “It’s being taken care of.”
Jack was out there somewhere. She would need an advantage, because from what Dillon could see, there were at least three of them, maybe more. And as far as he knew she wasn’t armed. But Jack being Jack she’d have a second gun he didn’t know about.
What was also clear was that whoever was running this show wasn’t going to let them out of this alive.
“Being taken care of by your boss?” Dillon asked Morgan.
“I don’t have a boss,” she snapped.
“Right. I could believe Buford was running this rustling ring easier than I could you, Morgan.”
“You know, Dillon, you always were a bastard,” she said, stepping closer.
He grinned at her. “And you, Morgan, were always a greedy, coldhearted bitch.”
She lunged at him as if to slap his face. Buford yelled for her to stop, but Dillon was pretty sure she didn’t hear him—or didn’t care.
He grabbed her arm, using it as leverage as he pulled himself up, then swung her around in front of him for cover as he propelled her into Buford, knocking him off balance.
Buford’s gun went off with a loud boom that echoed in the trees as the three of them, locked in a tangle of limbs, went down.
JACKLYN FROZE as the sound of the gun report filled the air. Her heart lodged in her throat. Not knowing if Dillon was alive or dead was killing her.
Worse, that little voice in the back of her head kept taunting her, trying to make her lose faith in him, telling her it was him stalking her through the trees.
As the gunshot blast died away, she heard the rustle of grass, the crack of a limb and knew he’d circled around her and was now right behind her.
Jacklyn took a breath and turned, her weapon coming up and her mind screaming: Who are you about to kill?
He stood just a few feet from her. She could see both of his hands. He appeared to be unarmed. He looked confused, almost lost.
“Nate?”
“What happened to you?” Nate asked, having apparently noticed her limp.
“I sprained my ankle.” This felt surreal, as if she was dreaming all of it. She held the gun on him, but he didn’t seem to care.
“Any luck catching those rustlers?” he asked, his voice sounding strange, almost as if he was trying not to laugh.
She tightened her hold on the gun. “Nate, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. Dillon told me to find you and bring you back to camp.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?”
“He’s hurt.”
Her breath rushed out of her. “How did he get hurt?”
Nate shrugged.
“Is it bad?” she asked, her heart beating so hard her chest hurt.
“You’d have to be the judge of that,” he said. She wondered if he’d been drinking. She’d never seen him like this.
“Nate, what’s going on?” she pressed, the way she might ask a mental patient.
He tilted his head as if he heard a voice calling him.
She heard nothing. “Are you here alone?”
“Who would be here with me?” he asked, as if amused.
“I thought Shade might have come with you,” she said.
“Oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard. My father was murdered last night in his barn.”
DILLON ROLLED OVER, trying to catch his breath. He felt as if he’d been punched in the chest, all the air knocked from his lungs. His hand went there and came away sticky with blood. He’d been hit.
But after a moment, he realized it wasn’t his blood. It was Morgan’s.
She lay on her back, staring vacantly up at the morning sky. Her shirt was bright red, soaked with blood.
Dillon tried to get up, but Buford was already on his feet and holding the gun. The cowboy kicked at his head. Dillon managed to evade him, taking only a glancing blow, as he rolled over and came up in a sitting position, his back to a tree.
“You stupid bastard,” Buford swore. “You stupid bastard.”
Dillon focused on him, hearing the fear in the man’s voice. Buford was pacing in front of him, clearly wanting to shoot him. Had whoever Buford took orders from told him not to kill Dillon?
But looking into his old friend’s eyes, he saw that change. Buford raised the gun, pointing it into Dillon’s face. “You’re a dead man.”
JACKLYN STARED AT NATE in shock. Shade Waters murdered? “That’s horrible. Do they know who—”
“Sheriff McCray has put out an APB. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I saw Dillon Savage running away from the barn right before I found my father’s body.”
All the air rushed out of her as if she’d been hit. “Nate, that’s not possible. Dillon was with me last night.”
He shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to sell that to Sheriff McCray, but since Dillon made his getaway in your state truck, the sheriff thinks you might have been an accomplice.”
“What? Nate…” She felt fear seize her. “Nate, that’s crazy. No one will ever believe it.”
“No? Well, the sheriff says the only reason you got Savage out of jail is that you have something for him. And everyone knows he’s the one who’s been headin’ up this gang of rustlers. I’m betting the rustling will stop once he’s back in prison.”
She stared at Nate Waters as if she’d never seen him before. She’d never seen this man, and he frightened her more than if he had been holding a gun on her.
“You must be in shock,” she said, realizing that had to be what was going on.
He laughed as if that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “You know my father always blamed me for Halsey’s death. Dillon thought he blamed him, but he was wrong. I was the one holding the rope on that horse that day. I killed Halsey. His luck had finally run out. So I took his good-luck coin after I saw Dillon put it in my brother’s suit jacket at the funeral.”
The good-luck coin found near where Tom Robinson was attacked. Nate Waters had just implicated himself. “Nate, why don’t you take me to Dillon,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.
“Not until you put down your gun, Ms. Wilde.”
“I can’t do that.” Even though Nate didn’t appear armed, he was talking crazy. If anything he was saying was true, then he was responsible for the rustling, for the attack on Tom Robinson, the death of Reda Harper and… Jacklyn felt sick. And apparently the death of his father, Shade Waters.
“The thing is, if you don’t drop the gun, I’m going to give my men orders to kill Dillon,” Nate said. “His blood will be on your hands.”
His men? How many were there? “Nate, why would you do that?”
The smile never reached his eyes. “I think you already know the answer to that. The gun, Ms. Wilde. Drop it and step away.”
She didn’t move. She had to get to Dillon. But without a weapon, she knew they were both dead.
“Buford?” Nate called.
“Yeah.” The answer came from the trees behind Nate.
“Everything all right over there?” Nate asked.
“Yeah. Just a little accident, but everything’s okay.”
Jacklyn recognized Buford Cole’s voice and could tell that things were definitely not all right. She hated to think what that last gunshot was about.
“Well?” Nate asked her with an odd tilt of his head. “You want me to give the order?”
“How do I know Dillon isn’t already dead?”
“Dillon?” Nate called.
Silence, then a surprised-sounding Dillon said, “Nate?” as if he’d been trying to place the voice, since it had to be the last one he’d expected to hear out here.
“Dillon,” Jack called to him.
“Jack!” His response came back at once.
She heard so much in that one word that tears burned her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“He won’t be if you say one more word to him,” Nate said in that calm, frightening voice.
DILLON TOOK A DEEP BREATH, weak with relief. Jack was alive and Buford seemed to be using every ounce of his self-control not to pull the trigger on the gun he was holding on him.
The overwhelming relief was quickly replaced with the realization that Jack was with Nate. And Buford seemed to be losing it by the minute.
So Shade Waters was behind the rustling, just as Dillon had thought. He found little satisfaction in being right though. Shade was dangerous enough. But apparently, he’d sent Nate to tie up some loose ends. Nate was unpredictable. Maybe even a little unstable. No way was this going to end well.
“Oh man, I can’t believe this,” Buford said again as he began to pace back and forth again, always keeping the gun aimed in Dillon’s direction. He looked more than nervous; he looked scared to death. Unfortunately, it only made him more dangerous.
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” he said, raking his free hand through his hair. His hat had fallen off during the skirmish, but he didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I think you’d better tell me what’s going on,” Dillon said, trying to keep his voice calm. “What’s Nate doing with Jack?”
“You’ve messed everything up,” Buford said, sounding as if he might break down at any minute. “You killed Morgan. What’s Nate going to do when he sees that you killed Morgan? Hell, man, he married her. They were going to go on their honeymoon.”
“You pulled the trigger,” Dillon said. “I didn’t kill her. You did.”
Buford stopped pacing. His eyes had gone wild, and he looked terrified of what Nate Waters was going to do to him. Nate Waters, a kid they’d all teased because he’d been such a big crybaby.
Dillon felt bad about that now. Worse, because he had a feeling that Nate Waters was going to kill him. He just didn’t want the same thing to happen to Jack. He tried to think fast, but his head ached and Buford was standing over him with a gun, acting like a crazy person.
“You’d better let me help you,” Dillon said. “Nate’s obviously going to be upset about his wife.” Dillon avoided looking at Morgan, lying dead on the ground. Even though she was obviously in this up to her sweet little neck, she didn’t deserve to die like this.
Buford was right about one thing. Things were messed up big time.
“I’m telling you, Buford, for old times’ sake, let me help you.”
The man looked as if he might be considering it, so Dillon rushed on. “Come on, old buddy. Things are messed up if you’re taking orders from Nate Waters, anyway. Whatever he’s gotten you into, Jack and I can help cut you a deal. But if you wait and he kills anyone else—”
“There a problem here, Buford?” Nate asked as he came out of the trees, holding a gun on Jack.
Dillon groaned inwardly. A few more minutes and he might have been able to turn Buford. Now there was no hope of that.
“It was an accident,” Buford said. “Man, I’m so sorry. I…”
Nate pushed Jack over by Dillon. She dropped to the ground next to him and he put his arm around her. He could see that she was scared, and her ankle had to be killing her. But he knew Jack, knew she was strong and determined. And with her beside him, he told himself, they had a chance of surviving this. She owed him a dance. Kind of.
Mostly, he couldn’t bear the thought that they’d found each other, two people from worlds apart, only to have some jackass like Nate Waters kill them.
Nate walked over to where Morgan lay dead on the ground.
Dillon heard a small wounded sound come out of Jack. He pulled her closer and whispered, “It’s going to be okay.”
Buford was pacing again, swinging the gun around. “Oh man, Nate, I’m so sorry. It was an accident. Dillon, man, it’s his fault. You told me not to shoot him, but he jumped me. Morgan… Oh man.”
“Shut up,” Nate said, sounding close to tears. “She was just a greedy bitch who slept with anyone and everyone.”
“She was your wife,” Buford said, obviously before he could think.
Nate turned to glare at him. “She tricked me into marrying her. I don’t want a woman who’s been with Dillon Savage.”
Oh, boy, here it comes, Dillon thought, as Nate swung the gun in his hand toward Dillon’s head. Next to him, he felt Jack press something hard against his thigh. Apparently she’d taken it from one of her boots.
A knife.
He slipped his arm from around her. “What? This is about Morgan Landers?” He shook his head and sat up a little, dropping his hands to the ground next to him. “Come on. There has to be more to it than that.”
Nate stepped closer. “What would you know about it? You have any concept what it’s like to grow up with Shade Waters as a father? To live your whole life in the shadow of the great Halsey Waters? You have no idea.”
“So all this is to show your father,” Dillon said, closing his hand around the knife handle hidden beneath his thigh. If Nate came any closer…
“It was bad enough that he idolized Halsey but when you started rustling cattle to pay back the ranchers who you felt had wronged you…” Nate took a breath and let it out on a sigh. “The bastard actually admired you the way you slipped those stolen cattle in among his.” Waters’s laugh held no humor. “You were a damn hero. Even the great stock detective here couldn’t catch you. I was the one who put up the hundred thousand dollar reward for your capture from the money my mother left me. He never knew.”
“Damn, I wish I had known that. I would have had my friend Buford here collect it.” He looked past Nate. “But then he already had, huh?” Dillon remembered the truck Buford had been driving when he passed them, headed for the W Bar. It had been an expensive ride—not the kind of vehicle a man who works at the stockyards could afford. “So it really was you, Buford, who betrayed me.”
Buford Cole had looked frightened before. Now he looked petrified. “Kill him. Just get it over. You said nobody knows where they are. We can bury them with the cattle. Morgan, too. No one will ever have to know.”
Nate raised his gun, pointed it at Dillon’s head. Unfortunately, Dillon wasn’t close enough to reach him with the knife. Nor could he launch himself faster than a speeding bullet. He hoped his life didn’t pass before his eyes before he died. He wasn’t that proud of the things he’d done.
IT HAPPENED SO FAST that Jacklyn never saw it coming. She’d buried the hand farthest away from Nate’s view, grabbing a handful of fine dirt. She was planning to throw it in Nate’s face, anything to give Dillon a chance to use the knife.
But as she raised her balled fist holding the dirt, Nate swung around and fired. He couldn’t have missed in a million years. Not with Buford standing just feet behind him.
The bullet caught Buford Cole in the face. He went down with a thump.
But before he hit the ground Dillon was on his feet. He drove the knife into Nate’s side.
It took Jacklyn a little longer to get to her one good foot. She hit Nate in the face with the dirt and wrestled her weapon from him.
“Nate Waters? You’re under arrest for the murders of Buford Cole, Reda Harper, Morgan Landers—”
“Morgan Waters,” he corrected, holding his side and looking down at the blood leaking between his fingers, as if he’d never seen anything quite so interesting.
“Shade Waters and the attack on Tom Robinson.”
Nate looked up at her. “Tom died earlier this morning.”
“The murder of Tom Robinson,” she said, her voice breaking.
Nate looked up, his head tilted, as if again listening to something she couldn’t hear.
After a moment, he smiled. “Halsey said to make sure they spell my name correctly in the paper. Too bad Shade isn’t around to see it.”