Danger on the Ranch

by Dana Mentink

  And why hadn’t he done the same to her?

  As soon as he discovered she’d gone to his brother, he’d come after her with the full force of his evil. And if somehow he found out about Ben... The thought made her move quicker, edging closer to Mitch as they climbed up the cliff side.

  When she thought she could stand no more, when her palms were shredded and her muscles aching, they made it over the top. They lay panting in a grassy field, peppered with clumps of trees and scrubby bushes.

  Mitch got to his feet first, put his fingers to his lips and whistled. It barely carried over the sound of the wind. She struggled to her feet and looked for any sign of Mitch’s horse. Seconds ticked into minutes.

  “Which way is your place?” She found she had to bend over to continue sucking in deep lungfuls of air. “We’ll have to hike.”

  The ground vibrated under her feet, and a big mare trotted up, reins trailing.

  For the first time, she saw Mitch Whitehorse smile. He ran his hands over the animal’s sides. “You were scared, weren’t you, Rosie girl? It’s okay now. I’m here.”

  What tender words from a man who had about as much give as granite. Nonetheless, she was so happy to see that horse show up, she might have kissed both of them on the spot.

  He leaned his forehead against the horse’s neck and she thought at first it was a sign of affection, until she realized Mitch looked unsteady on his feet.

  “Are you okay?”

  He straightened. “Yeah.” But as he heaved himself onto the horse, he had to grip the saddle hard, face pale in the moonlight. He bent and extended his palm. “Climb up.”

  “Uh...” It was not the time to tell him she knew precisely nothing about riding. As she clutched his forearm, he swung her so she landed just behind the saddle. “Hold on to the cantle and keep your feet away from her flanks.”

  She had no idea what either “cantle” or “flanks” meant, but she tucked up her legs and grabbed on to the leather seat back where Mitch sat. There was no way she would wrap her arms around him, that was for sure.

  She wondered if the horse had the strength to carry both of them after wandering loose for hours, but Rosie seemed to respond quickly to Mitch’s click of the tongue.

  “How far?”

  “What?” he called over his shoulder.

  “I said, ‘How far?’” she started to shout when a gunshot broke the night. Jane felt the movement of air as the shot went past, and then the horse was running full out.

  She grabbed Mitch around the waist to keep from falling, and they galloped into the trees. Was Wade on foot? Horseback? On a motorcycle? She didn’t hear an engine, but the sound of her own frightened breathing and the pounding of the horse’s hooves would probably have drowned it out anyway.

  Rosie kept to the trees, slowing only enough to dodge branches and piles of rocks. No more bullets followed. Rosie slackened her pace. The woods fell into silence, broken only by the creak of the leather saddle and Rosie’s soft whinny. Jane began to believe, to hope, that Wade had not followed them into the woods, until his voice carried over the night noise.

  “Hey, Mitch. Who’s that with you? Have you got yourself a girl?” Wade asked in that singsong way that prickled her skin. Then his tone went hard and lethal.

  “Or have you taken mine?”

  FOUR

  The high trill of Wade’s voice brought back all the horror in one flash of skin-rippling nausea. Though Mitch had desperately wanted to deny the accusations against his brother, he’d known deep down that every terrible detail was true. Wade Whitehorse was a psychopath, capable of unspeakable evil.

  In spite of the respite he’d found working at Uncle Gus’s Roughwater Ranch, part of him had always known this day might come, the day his brother returned to destroy him.

  Mitch could feel Jane’s hands clutching the back of his shirt. Terror, it could not be anything else. So now she was scared of him? After being married to Wade and turning a blind eye to his brutal treatment of other women? It was incomprehensible. He bit back the rage and urged Rosie deeper into the woods.

  “Where is he?” Jane hissed.

  “At our ten o’clock, on foot, unless he’s got a horse.”

  “We have to get out of these woods.” Her panic transmitted clearly as she grabbed his waist and pressed her cheek to his back. “Please.”

  Please. An odd word for a killer’s wife to choose. He pressed Rosie to go deeper into the screen of trees. The branches shuttered out the moonlight, leaving them in inky gloom. Now her breathing was coming in frightened pants.

  “He’ll find us here—he probably has tools, night-vision goggles, military equipment.”

  I know, he wanted to snap at her. Tools he used to imprison women while you stayed quiet and let him. He clucked to Rosie encouragingly, urging her around a fallen oak, squeezing between clefts of rocks into what looked like a wild tangle of overgrowth.

  He could not see, so instead he let himself feel, turning his face until he caught the whiff of air that smelled of wet granite, cooled as it swept down from the mountain. He turned the horse east.

  Jane clutched him tighter. “There’s no path. We can’t hide. He’ll find us.”

  He’ll find us. Mitch had felt this showdown would come since that moment he’d seen his brother smile as he was taken to prison, but it could not happen now, not when Mitch was dizzy and weak, with Jane clinging to his back.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer, merely guided Rosie along, following the trail of chilled air. The ground was moist, muddy in some places, which caused the horse to slow. Mitch smiled. The more mud, the better. They had to push through dense thickets, which proved no trouble for Rosie, though the branches scratched at him and probably Jane a few times. The thicker the screen, the deeper the layer of muck under Rosie’s hooves, the better he felt. If Wade was on horseback, there was a slim chance he could follow their trail in the darkness, but if he was on foot, he would wait until daylight. One thing he knew about his brother—Wade could not stand to be dirty, not even for one moment.

  He recalled his own laughter as a high school senior when he and his girlfriend Paige Lynn came upon Wade, staring at the brown smear on his palm from the front door they’d just painted at their parents’ dilapidated house in Arizona. They’d offered Wade a rag, but he’d been so enraged he’d thrown it back at them, along with a vile diatribe that brought the neighbors outside. Wade had finally composed himself, and Mitch and Paige Lynn repainted the marred spot on the door. The next day Mitch found the front windshield of his car smashed, the interior ruined with paint.

  A thorn scratched his arm, but he hardly felt it through the cold. Pushing through a heavily forested area over the mucky ground would not be an option for Wade and might be the only thing that kept them alive.

  Jane had given up trying to question him, finally, which was a relief since they were both shivering fit to beat the band. He tried to blink away the waves of dizziness that hit him. If he fell from the horse...

  Grasping the reins tighter, he stiffened his spine. Only another quarter mile, he figured. At one point he stopped Rosie.

  Jane clutched at him. “What? Did you hear him? Has he found us?”

  “Quiet,” he commanded.

  Surprisingly, she obeyed.

  He heard nothing but the branches rattling in the wind like the sound of dried bones. A light rain had begun to fall. Her fingers were dead cold on his back. If they did not get to his cabin soon, they would both fall victim to hypothermia.

  Rosie responded eagerly to his click of the tongue and picked up her pace. Again they passed through an area of dense foliage, and he heard Jane cry out once when something pricked her. She sank back into silence until they emerged at his cabin, tucked in a cluster of pines.

  He stopped one more time and listened f
or a full minute before he was satisfied. Jane was already sliding to the ground, landing with a hard jolt. She tipped her head up to look at him, still on the horse, and he was struck by how small she was, backed by the sprawl of forest behind her. The monster’s wife had seemed bigger in his memory, stony faced at the trial, insistent that she knew nothing, stalwart in her lies.

  “Go inside,” he said.

  “Where...? What will you do?”

  “See to the horse.”

  She hesitated only for a moment and then walked to the wood-sided cabin, letting herself in through the unlocked front door. He climbed off Rosie and set about removing her saddle and letting her into the fenced area where Bud, the placid gelding, greeted her from the three-sided shelter. Though every muscle in him screamed its displeasure, he took the time to dump some feed into Rosie’s bucket and quickly wipe her down and tend to the scratch on her flank.

  “Thanks, girl,” he said. “You got us out of a real mess.”

  As he limped to the cabin, he saw Jane watching him through the window, standing back a bit as if she was afraid. Of him? Or the creature she’d been married to?

  And what exactly was he supposed to do with her? Everything in him wanted to toss her out into the woods and let her work out her own reconciliation with Wade. She’d made her choices; she should live with them.

  But the other part of him, the small part that was still clinging to some sort of goodness and decency, would not allow that. During one of her infrequent moments of sobriety, their mother, Phoebe, would kiss her three children—his older sister, Claire, Mitch and Wade—and tell them, “You all got more than enough goodness in you.” He was not sure now, when everything inside him felt dead and desiccated. He forced his legs to carry him away from his horses. He would let her stay until he figured something out, knowing it would have made his mother smile. Besides, he thought, as he crossed the porch, if Wade really was coming for Jane, she would be the perfect bait.

  And he would need every advantage he could get to catch his brother again, one final time.

  * * *

  Jane stood in the tiny front room of Mitch’s cabin, examining the cramped, moonlit space. The living area consisted of a hand-carved wooden rocking chair next to a standing lamp that did not work when she flipped on the wall switch. A shadowed alcove looked to be a minuscule kitchen across from an open door through which she glimpsed a neatly made bed and an attached bathroom. She was surprised he allowed himself the luxury of running water, this hermit of a man.

  But she could understand his craving for solitude. When the threats started coming during the trial—the rocks through the window, animal blood spattered across her front porch—she too had desperately wanted to disappear among the trees, somewhere, anywhere to escape the hatred. It seemed to Jane that she’d lost everyone—her mother, who’d been forced to quit her job as an elementary school aide before her lethal stroke, her sister, who cut off contact for the sake of her own family, and her friends—until there was nothing left for Jane but the tiny God-breathed life growing inside her. She’d promised herself that Ben would live and thrive far away from Wade and his terrible legacy.

  “He won’t ever be a part of your life,” she’d whispered over his downy head, soothing him in the one luxury she allowed herself in her run-down rented room, a secondhand glider rocker. Of all the possessions she’d abandoned, she missed that beat-up old rocker the most, patched arm, stained cushion and all.

  The twin pangs of despair and panic bit at her, through the numbing chill that stiffened her limbs. It was too late for Jane, but her son would have his chance at a normal life. Lord, please help me save Ben. Please.

  Arms wrapped tight around herself, she continued her perusal. There was nothing on the walls, no prints or paintings, no family photos, only blank wood panels. In the corner was a long shelf that ran the length of the wall, about five feet, crowded with something she could not make out in the gloom. She would have moved closer, but her legs were trembling so badly she stayed put until Mitch entered.

  He pulled the heavy curtains closed and shut and locked the door and did the same with the rear exit in the kitchen. Then he turned on a lantern and activated a generator, which hummed to life.

  “We’ll stick to lantern light, except in the bathroom. Water will be hot in a bit. Go shower. I’ll toss a clean towel in the door.”

  The veritable avalanche of words from this taciturn man unsettled her. “But...but you need medical attention.”

  “I don’t.”

  She’d leave that issue for now. “We have to call the police.”

  “No phone.”

  She gaped. “You don’t have a landline, either?”

  No cell service. No landline. No communication. It had been a long time before she’d realized the place Wade had purchased for their idyllic, romantic homestead had no cell coverage. And she had never so much as suspected he’d chosen it for that very reason until the end. Not idyllic—isolated. Not romantic—remote. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

  He jutted his chin at her. “Gonna get the heater started. It will warm quickly.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll, uh, find you something to wear while you shower.”

  “Let me bandage your head at least.”

  “Don’t want your help.” He said it without looking at her.

  I don’t want yours, either, she longed to say. No, she did not want it, but she and Ben needed Mitch Whitehorse desperately.

  Wade had gone on the run for a short while after his crimes were brought to light, and it had only been through the sheer grit and determination of his older brother that he’d been arrested and brought back for trial. Now Wade had returned to kill Mitch and make good on his promise that Jane would be his wife forever, his property—his or no one’s. The thought of being owned by Wade Whitehorse made her nauseous. The shivering now controlled her as her deepest fear began to grow roots down into her soul.

  What would happen if Wade discovered she’d had his son? She’d been careful, excruciatingly meticulous about keeping Ben away from the public eye, but if Wade found out... Panic made her dizzy, and she clutched the back of the rocking chair.

  Mitch loomed closer, dark eyes like pools of ink in the lamplight. He was so tall, features sharp and chiseled, his hair tar black. The glow caught in the rippled skin of his cheek, the scar caused, she knew, when Wade struck his brother full on in the face with a length of metal chain. It was a blow that probably would have ended the life of a weaker man. “Should you...sit down?” he said. The tone was not especially tender as it was neutral. For a man who believed the worst about her, it was the best she could hope for.

  “I’m all right. I’ll take that shower.” She could not resist tossing over her shoulder, “Don’t collapse while I’m in there, all right?”

  She heard his annoyed grunt and hid a smile. It was going to be the greatest challenge of her life to convince Mitch that she was not the person he thought her to be. Judging from his granitelike stubbornness, it might just be an impossible task.

  God had promised that nothing could separate her and Ben from His love, even those terrible crimes of her husband’s. It was the promise she’d clung to when there was nothing but hatred everywhere she looked. God loved them both unequivocally, she knew with every breath she took. He’d entrusted Ben to her to keep her son safe and as far away from Wade as possible.

  Mommy’s going to come for you soon, Ben bear, and it’s going to be all right.

  If only she could make herself believe it.

  FIVE

  Mitch held the clothes up to the lantern light. There was no way Jane would be able to wear anything of his. The best he could do was scrounge up his smallest sweatshirt, which would no doubt hang down past her knees. And socks. Those would go up over her shins, so he figured she’d be covered and dry. It was the best he could do.

  H
e found a clean towel. Quick as he could, he cracked the bathroom door and shoved the pile inside, yanking it closed before he changed into dry jeans and a long-sleeved flannel shirt. Every movement cost him a ripple of pain through his back. The side of his head felt like someone was striking it with a steel mallet, but at least he was dry. The space heater purred, and his own shivering had slowed. Using his mother’s dented old kettle, he set the water on to boil. The shower was still running. Easing on a black slicker and a baseball cap, he grabbed his rifle and slipped out into the night.

  The best practice would be to climb to the top of the rock ridge, which would give him a view of the hills below, but he was not sure he was steady enough to accomplish it, and the view would be clouded by the falling rain. He settled for doing a long, slow circle and checking for any signs that his brother had somehow persevered through the mud. There were no such indications, and the best tell of all was that Rosie and Bud were quiet and placid. Calmed somewhat, he hobbled back to the cabin.

  Jane screamed when he entered.

  He held up his palm, the rifle slung over his shoulder. “Just me. Property’s secure.”

  She clutched the sweatshirt in a terrified fist, the fabric dwarfing her small frame. It took a few seconds for her voice to start working again. “Sorry. I thought...”

  He knew what she’d thought, and he felt a stab of regret that he’d scared her. No regret necessary, he reminded himself sternly. Remember who you’re dealing with here. The kettle finally began to boil, and he plopped bulky tea bags into two squat mugs and added the water. While it steeped, he ran over various plans about what to do with the woman who was wandering his house, swaddled in his clothes, twisting her long hair into a wet coil. When the tea was ready, he still had only a sketchy plan of attack.

  Grabbing a bottle from the cupboard, he downed a couple of aspirin, swallowing them dry. He tossed the tea bags and carried the mugs, handing one to her.

  She sniffed the steam. “What kind of tea?”