Crack!
“Who d’ya think you are?” he’d roared, advancing. “Sneakin’ in here like a damned thief after takin’ my truck?”
Shiloh had backed up, glanced past him to her mother, still cowering in the doorway to the bedroom she’d shared with this beast.
“And look at ’cha. Half naked.” His eyes raked over her body. He was right. She was in her cutoffs and a shirt, no bra, no underwear, both items having been lost in her race through the woods. She doubted he could tell she was missing her panties, but her breasts were visible through her T-shirt. “You been out whorin’.”
“No, we . . . we just went skinny-dipping.”
“You and who else? Some horny fuckin’ teenage boy?”
“Larimer,” her mother whispered, but he paid no attention.
“No!” Shiloh wasn’t about to give him the names of her friends. Who knew what he’d do?
“I won’t have it. Not in my house.” Again he cracked the whip, and she witnessed pure evil in his eyes. Her blood pounded through her veins. Given the chance, he would seriously hurt her in as many ways as possible.
“Larimer, she’s just a girl,” her mother pleaded.
He turned his head to glare at his wife. “Shut up, bitch,” he growled.
Shiloh hadn’t waited. As Tate’s focus had shifted, she made a lightning-quick decision. She had to leave. Right then. No turning back. She bolted through the open door and took off, first on foot, racing across the summer-dry fields. Then when she reached the county road, she stuck out her thumb and hitchhiked the rest of the way out of Prairie Creek.
She might never have come back at all except for the urgency in her mother’s voice last night, and the sound of her cough, a wet rattle that was far worse than the usual dry hack caused by Faye’s cigarettes. “If you won’t come back for me, do it for Morgan.”
Still, Shiloh had resisted. “I don’t know Morgan.”
“She’s your blood, Shiloh. Your sister. The only one you’ll ever have. I didn’t tell you, but your father died last year.”
“What?” Not that it really mattered; she couldn’t remember the bastard who’d sired her, married Faye in a shotgun wedding, and then took off. Still, it was a shock.
“And I might not be long for this world.”
“Mom—”
“Come home, Shiloh. Morgan and I need you.” Another chest-shuddering cough, and Faye, out of character, hung up. When Shiloh had dialed her back, the phone hadn’t connected, a busy signal bleeping in Shiloh’s ear. All night. So she’d packed up the next morning, made arrangements with Carlos to take care of the horses, then hit the road.
Now she stared at the screen door, and all the old memories washed over her. Of swimming in the pond in the nude, of the old tire swing on the long-downed tree in the backyard, of crushing super hard on Tommy Monroe before he’d moved away, of the first stubborn colt she’d ridden after being scraped or bucked off what had to have been fifty times or more. And then the darker memories of Larimer Tate and the night that had propelled her out of Wyoming, when Ruthie had been assaulted and the three girls had nearly died at the hands of the madman.
Damn it all, they should never have remained silent, never have agreed to Ruthie’s desperate pleas. They’d been young and foolish and scared.
Tires crunched against the sparse gravel, jolting her back to the present.
She looked over her shoulder to see the same beat-up pickup that had been following her driving up the lane. He’d been following her all this time? What kind of small-town road rage was this? Or . . .
She was starting to connect the dots when the truck stopped. A tall, rangy man in faded jeans and a ripped T-shirt climbed from the cab. With wide shoulders, slim hips, a hard jaw, and hair that hadn’t met a comb recently, he glared at her as if she were the interloper. A dog that looked part German shepherd hopped to the ground and trotted toward her.
She braced herself.
The dog gave her a once-over, then beelined for the front porch.
He asked, “Can I help you?”
“Help me? You followed me here.”
A thin smile stretched over a beard-stubbled jaw. “I think you led me.”
“Why are you here, and who are you?”
His eyes narrowed, and that damned good-ol’-boy grin tightened a bit further. “Funny. That’s just what I was gonna ask you.”
“I live . . . I used to . . .” She snorted in annoyance. “My mother lives here,” she finally got out. Something flickered in his eyes. Recognition? But she’d never seen him before. Or? Was she wrong? Had her mother moved? No way. Shiloh had spoken to Faye just yesterday, and there had been no mention of a move.
Before he could say another word, the screen door banged open, and a girl flew out. Gangly and tanned, with wild, strawberry-blond curls and freckles dusting a tiny nose, the girl, around twelve, stared at Shiloh with wide, suspicious eyes. “You’re Shiloh,” she declared.
“Uh huh.” Shiloh recognized the kid from a few pictures Faye had sent over the years. “Hi, Morgan,” she said, but the girl didn’t smile, just turned her attention to the man standing next to her.
“We have to go!” she said tightly. “I called nine-one-one. The ambulance came. They took her to the hospital.” Her eyes dampened as she ran toward the stranger and vaulted into his waiting arms.
“It’s all right,” he murmured into her hair, his voice rough. He gazed over her shoulder, his intense hazel eyes finding Shiloh’s. “We’ll go there.” Morgan was sobbing now, her shoulders lifting and falling as she buried her face in his neck.
“Now?” the girl whispered.
“Yes.” He gently turned her toward his truck, throwing over his shoulder to Shiloh, “You coming?”
“Who are you?” she asked again, but she knew, deep in her gut, before he could say a word.
As he helped Morgan into the cab and she scrambled over the driver’s seat and console to the passenger side, he sent Shiloh another hard look. “I’m Beau.”
As in Beau Tate, Larimer’s son, whom she’d never met and had only heard mutterings of “that damned no-good kid” from her stepfather before she’d hightailed it out of Prairie Creek. She saw now that Beau resembled his old man, from his sun-streaked brown hair to his deep-set eyes and strong jaw. Yes, he had Larimer Tate stamped all over him.
He hauled himself behind the wheel and yanked the door shut. The dog whined. Through the open window, Beau said, “Don’t know how long I’ll be, so you’d best stay.”
Was he talking to her or the dog?
“Hold on, Tate. What happened? It’s Mom, right? Something happened.”
His silent stare through the window said it all: Faye was in really bad shape.
“But she’ll be okay.”
When he didn’t respond, the breath rushed out of her lungs in a whoosh. It was this serious? As in life and death? “What . . . what hospital?” As far as she knew, the nearest hospital was hours away.