At least Wiley was honest with me. She couldn’t keep the thought back. Rodney had promised her the world and had been lying through his teeth the whole time. At least Wiley had been honest enough to admit he had nothing to promise.
And maybe that was the best she was going to be able to do. The thought made her suddenly very tired, especially when she realized how much planning she still had ahead of her.
“Spare me the platitudes, Rodney,” she said, moving toward the door. “I’ll ride out of here on the tractor if I have to, but I’m not staying here to—”
Two things happened at once. Rodney grabbed at her wrist, and she tugged against him to free herself. And at the same moment she heard voices from the hallway, and half fell sideways as Rodney pushed her aside and lurched toward the door, turning the key in the lock.
Except for Rodney, the house had been empty when she’d arrived. Renee always did the shopping on Wednesday afternoons, and the other ranch employees—the crew rebuilding the barn and the men who worked with the livestock—had probably gone into town, too, unable to work in the pouring rain. So who—
She had a momentary hope that it was the FBI, come to make the arrest that Wiley’s proof should have made possible by now. The voices on the other side of the door—demanding that Rodney open up, telling him they knew he was in there—could very well mean the official investigation had caught up with her ex-fiancé at last.
But the sudden panic on Rodney’s face made her think he knew these particular voices. And his words confirmed it.
“Oh, my God,” he said faintly. “We have to get out of here.”
“Who is it? Do you recognize them?”
“You don’t want to know.”
That told her enough. She should have realized right away that if Rodney was at home swilling brandy instead of at his downtown hotel meeting with his silent partners, as he’d arranged last night, something wasn’t quite right.
She held a hand over her belly and forced herself to think clearly. There wasn’t time to sort through Rodney’s dirty business, not if the vehement sound of the men’s voices outside the door meant what she thought it did.
“They’re going to find some way to open the door,” she told Rodney. “We need to surprise them when they do.”
“Surprise them?” His face was an utter blank. Rae-Anne realized with a renewed jolt of fear that his facade had collapsed completely, leaving him empty and slack.
She took hold of his arm and shook him the way she’d been wanting to ever since he’d answered the door. “Listen to me, Rodney,” she said decisively. “Those bookends are heavy. You take one, I’ll take the other. When the door opens—”
She was already on her way toward the bookshelves, reaching for the heavy bronze bookends that held up the expensive leather-bound books she’d never known Rodney to read. A moment later she heard a quick spattering sound that she didn’t recognize, followed by Rodney’s dismayed gasp.
She pulled down the first bookend and tossed it at him, not caring that he staggered under its weight. She could see the splinters of wood jutting out of the office door now, and knew that the spattering sound had been a muzzled weapon shooting off the lock.
“When the door opens, throw it,” she said, positioning herself just out of the line of fire in case their visitors came in shooting.
Luckily, they didn’t. And Rodney’s aim was off—the bookend he threw went wide of the door and crashed into the glass-fronted barrister cases along the wall—but the distraction worked to Rae-Anne’s advantage.
Her own shot was better, and she heard a heavy oomph as one of the two men reeled sideways. He careened into his partner, and the two of them were still scrambling for their footing and looking to see where all the projectiles were coming from when Rae-Anne slipped past them into the hall.
“Get her!”
The voice goaded her to a burst of speed she hadn’t known she was capable of. She dashed through the dining room and into the kitchen, her impractical leather sandals slipping on the linoleum floor as she turned toward the back door of the ranch house.
Behind her there was a sudden high yowl of pain, and she felt herself hesitate, hating to leave Rodney to the two shooters’ mercy. But then she heard heavy footsteps coming after her down the hallway, thudding closer. It was like listening to a gigantic version of the raindrops pounding on the stone patio outside.
She’d done what she could to give Rodney a chance. If his guilty conscience had paralyzed him to the point that he couldn’t take advantage of it, there was nothing Rae-Anne could do to help him. She had two lives to save—her own and her child’s—and she knew, as she flung open the kitchen door and sprinted into the rain, that it was going to take all her wits to do it.
“Looks like Rodney’s got company.”
At the head of the small procession of cars—his plus the three agents detailed to back him up as he arrested Rodney Dietrich—Jack turned in to the long driveway at the Dietrich ranch house. The wipers were on their highest speed, and Wiley could barely see the outline of the dark car parked in the exact spot where he’d picked Rae-Anne up last weekend.
What he could see was enough to slam his heart into the wall of his chest. “And I think I know who it is,” he muttered. All his vague fears of the past few days suddenly coalesced into one giant wave that threatened to engulf him. “Step on it, would you, little brother?”
Jack was a government employee, and to a certain extent he was bound by government rules. But Wiley had to say one thing for his brother. When things started happening, Jack was a good man to have on your side.
He seemed to hear the strain in Wiley’s voice, and he obliged by tromping down hard on the accelerator. “That the car in the last photograph?” he demanded.
“Yeah.” Damn it, Wiley told himself, he never should have let Rae-Anne out of his sight. He should have taken hold of her, insisted that she stay with him, demanded that she wait until Rodney was on ice before she— There wasn’t time for this. Jack’s car was screeching up behind the long dark vehicle, and Wiley vaulted out of the passenger seat even before Jack had gotten the gearshift into park.
At least he’d had the foresight to come armed. He hadn’t really expected a lot of resistance from Rodney Dietrich— the man had shown himself to be pretty spineless at the encounter in the town square last night. But something had prompted Wiley to pick up his revolver before joining Jack’s party. It rested reassuringly in its shoulder holster as he made a headlong dash up the shallow steps and pulled open the front door of the house.
He heard car doors slamming behind him and was aware of shouting voices, but he didn’t wait to see whether they were calling to him. From somewhere inside the big, low ranch house he could hear the moaning sound of someone in pain. It was enough to catapult him down the hallway without caring who might be lying in wait for him. If RaeAnne was hurt—
But it was Rodney Dietrich he found in the office, whose door appeared to have been shot through. The sandy-haired man was lying on the floor with both hands convulsively grasping his right leg. He’d been shot but not killed, Wiley realized. Now, what the hell did that mean?
He didn’t have time to find out. Rodney was Jack’s concern, not Wiley’s.
“Where’s Rae-Anne?” He knelt by the wounded man, shaking him roughly by one shoulder in an attempt to get through the pain-induced glaze over Rodney’s hazel eyes. “Is she here?”
So slowly that Wiley’s whole body ached with the effort of waiting for it, Dietrich’s eyes swiveled to see who was questioning him. “Rae-Anne,” he repeated, like a child hearing a word it recognizes.
“Is she here?” Wiley refrained—with difficulty—from jostling him again. “Come on, Dietrich, talk to me!”
“The… back door.”
Wiley didn’t stick around to express his gratitude. Jack’s men were erupting into the office, guns drawn, faces tense.
“She’s outside somewhere.” Wiley tossed the words over h
is shoulder as he headed into the hall. “I’m going after her.”
Outside, the rain made it nearly impossible to see or hear clearly. Wiley was soaked through almost immediately, but he barely noticed it, except to shake his head as the water started to run into his face.
He was scanning the familiar landscape, trying to look at it with new eyes. Where would Rae-Anne have headed to escape the men who’d shot Rodney?
There were a couple of guest cabins—too close, he judged, and too easy a target—and the sheds for the sheep and goats. She might be hiding there, although crossing the morass of mud in the paddocks surrounding the shed would have slowed her down dangerously.
No, the gravel road was a better bet. She might have headed toward the river, hoping to hide herself among the big cypress trunks. But if she was still wearing that white cotton dress, she would be an easy target in open territory, and that made him think she would head for cover. In that case, she might have thought of—
The barn. Somehow Wiley felt certain it would have crossed her mind. The old barn he’d been working on with Abel’s crew looked deserted, but in fact it offered more shelter than the shooters might expect.
He headed that way fast, keeping his eyes open for any sign of movement in the gray, rain-drenched landscape. Aside from a few placid cows waiting out the storm under a live oak tree, he couldn’t see another living creature. The whole countryside felt drowned, silenced, empty.
And then suddenly it wasn’t.
If he hadn’t been in such a state of alert he might not have noticed them. They were off the road, moving through the scrubby trees that dotted the whole ranch. And they were definitely heading in the same direction he was. He could see the pair of dark shapes moving smoothly through the rains each holding one arm in a characteristic way that made Wiley’s heart thud at his chest again.
You knew all this, he told himself. You knew they were armed. You know Rae-Anne’s out here somewhere. Get on with it, Cotter, and stop imagining the worst.
The worst got a little closer and a little harder to ignore when he came in sight of the old half-fallen barn. He’d gained ground on the two men, and he could see their confidence in the way they were approaching the roofles building. They knew they were stalking an unarmed woman and they were being businesslike about it, getting the jol done with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency.
The men each took one side of the barn. By the time the were ready to dart around the tumbledown stone wall, hoping to surprise their hiding quarry if she was there, Wiley had reached the shelter of one of the cypress trees that lined the riverbank. He was within shooting distance, and he had a clear view of the interior of the barn.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that he also had a clear view of Rae Anne.
He applauded her initiative—she’d managed to climb up to a short platform on the second level of the half-fallen building, and even to dislodge the end of one of the beams Wiley had helped to wrestle up there only yesterday. But she was still in big trouble, whether she knew it or not.
He could see her positioning the end of the beam on a jutting stone in the wall, and guessed at her plan. A falling twelve-by-twelve was a formidable weapon, if she timed it right.
But it would only work once, even if she was lucky enough to hit her target. And she couldn’t see that the two men had split up.
There wasn’t time to get too fancy about things. Wiley waited until the two gunmen seemed just about to spring, and then he loosed off a round directly at one of them.
The rain made it almost impossible to focus, and the bullet didn’t hit the target. But at least it redirected the men’s attention.
Wiley didn’t want to direct it too specifically to the spot where he was standing. He was still outgunned, and RaeAnne was still in a lot of danger. Getting himself killed wasn’t going to help either one of them.
So he crouched low and snaked his way through the saplings that grew between the bigger trees. The ground under his feet was slippery with rain and fallen cypress needles, and the Spanish moss hanging down from the live oaks between him and his opponents made everything seem blurred and unreal.
But it was real, and more dangerous than Wiley wanted to think about.
By the time he reached a new hiding place, the two men had each fired at least twice at the spot where he’d just been. He could see their bullets making little explosions in the dirt, scattering twigs into the sodden air.
If he could just distract them from Rae-Anne, there was a good chance Jack and his buddies would be drawn in this direction by the gunfire. But as he prepared to fire and move again, the two men said something to each other that he couldn’t overhear, and he saw one of them disappear around the corner of the barn while the second one kept his gun leveled in Wiley’s direction.
He fired a quick shot and saw the man duck behind the stone wall for protection. But the other one was loose, skirting behind where Rae-Anne stood on that high wall inside the roofless structure. If the gunman caught sight of her—
Wiley couldn’t take a chance on that happening. Aiming his shooting arm as steadily as he could, he burst out of his shelter, firing as he ran, and headed directly for the barn.
He heard the deadening thunk of the beam falling just as he reached it. And there were shots being fired at him, too, diverting his attention. He shouted Rae-Anne’s name, and saw her clinging unsteadily to the truncated stone platform she was standing on. Below her the first gunman lay sprawled in the mud, apparently stunned by a well-aimed release of the big beam Rae-Anne had maneuvered into place.
But there were two more dangers now. The other shooter was still on the loose, and Rae-Anne was in trouble. Wiley saw one of her feet slip, and felt a sick lurch of fear as he imagined how slick those limestone blocks would be under the smooth soles of her sandals.
“Hang on!” he shouted, and launched himself toward the spot directly under where she stood.
The second gunman came around the corner shooting, and Wiley felt something hot and sudden stinging his upper arm. He kept moving, suddenly not caring about his own life if it meant saving Rae-Anne’s. The whole world had focused to a single point, the place where she would land if she fell.
And she was falling. The effort of heaving the heavy beam had unbalanced her, and the rain was making it impossible for her to keep her grip on the smooth stone blocks. Wiley was peripherally aware of a gun firing again, but he couldn’t shoot back because he’d tossed his gun aside in his reckless dash toward Rae-Anne.
There was more gunfire, and a sudden yell to his left. And then he saw what he’d been most afraid of—Rae-Anne’s white, rain-soaked dress fluttering in midair as she lost her hold on the tiny platform she’d managed to climb up to.
Wiley pushed himself to cover the last few muddy yards between them. He stretched his arms out to break her fall, but the force of it knocked him off his feet. He couldn’t keep hold of her. Or maybe it was her own flailing limbs that propelled her out of his grasp and launched her toward the stone wall.
He saw her fall backward as he struggled to his feet in the mud. He reached her in the same sickening split second that her dark auburn head cracked against the limestone.
Wiley was too late, too late to do anything but gather her against him and say her name, urgently, hoarsely. She looked at him with wide, astonished blue eyes for one brief moment, and then Wiley watched the dismay in her pale, drenched face disappear into unconsciousness.
Chapter 14
She’s pregnant….
Why were those words running around and around in her mind?
Rae-Anne turned her face against the crisp white pillowcase and wished her head didn’t hurt so much. Someone was touching her shoulder, gently but insistently. She wished whoever it was would go away.
Damn it, would you hurry up with that thing?
It was Wiley’s voice she was hearing, although she couldn’t figure out why. She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, r
esisting the hand that was shaking her shoulder. Beyond the dull roar of her headache she could hear—in her memory, maybe?—the grinding of gears. It was all jumbled up with the rain and the gravel path behind Rodney’s ranch house and the shouting of voices, too many voices to keep straight….
But Wiley’s had been loud and clear. She tried to hang on to it, not wanting to open her eyes to the light.
“Come on, dear. I have to wake you up every hour, to make sure you’re okay. It’s standard procedure whenever there’s a chance of concussion.”
There had been gunshots. She wished she could sort it all out, but she just kept remembering the pelting rain and the quick biting sound of the guns firing. And her feet slipping out from under her on that stone ledge.
And then one isolated moment came into clear focus, like an image held in freeze-frame.
Any known medical conditions?
Someone had shouted the words over the spatter of the rain against the hard ground. And Wiley had shouted back, She’s pregnant. Be careful with her. She’s pregnant.
Her eyes flew open suddenly. Her whole skull felt invaded by bright light. She raised a hand to her face to shield it, and saw a nurse in a white uniform looking at her.
“There we go,” the nurse said. “How are you feeling now, dear?”
Rae-Anne shook her head at the question, keeping the movement short because it hurt so much to move. Speaking was an effort, too, but she fought her grogginess and the pain that seemed to be spreading all the way through her.
“The baby,” she said, focusing her eyes as well as she could on the nurse’s face. “Is the baby all right?”
“Oh.”
She knew it the moment the woman opened her mouth. Or maybe she’d known it already—known that something was wrong, something was missing inside her.
The Wedding Assignment Page 20
