Night Thunder

by Jill Gregory

  She didn’t want to bring this man anywhere near Ada’s house. But if she lost him . . . or hurt him . . .

  Fear jarred her senses alert as they crested the hill and pulled onto the clearing. No one was here. Shadow Point was deserted.

  Her pulse racing, she scanned the thick darkness, looking for embers from a leftover campfire, sticks, branches, or rocks she might be able to use against him.

  “Here?” He braked and stared at her through the nearly opaque darkness. Those black eyes slid over her almost as sharply as the blade of the knife had flicked across her ear.

  “Yes. Here . . . over there.” She pointed past a lone aspen.

  He opened the car door.

  “All right, blondie. Showtime.”

  Chapter 20

  TY CROUCHED IN THE DARKNESS BEHIND A clump of brush. With his gun drawn, he listened to Chance Roper, Denny Owens, and Fred Barnes arguing less than twenty feet away from his hiding place.

  “I’m telling you, Barclay’s not stupid, whatever you think,” Chance was saying. “He’s got deputies and ranchers like Big John Templeton and Wood Morgan and the like patrolling their back country—and one of these times they’re going to see something and then bam, you’re dead.”

  He pointed a finger at Fred as if it were a gun, but Barnes’s tough, pockmarked face looked merely contemptuous as he shrugged.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’ll be dead,” he suggested.

  Denny, his voice as calm and nondescript as his square, even features, spoke in a steady tone. “That’s why we moved on to the smaller guys, Roper. We’ll hit them for a while before switching back to any of the big shots. They can’t afford to keep up those copter patrols for long.”

  “Yeah, well, I still think it’s time to move on,” Chance growled. “I get nervous hitting the same area too long.”

  “Yeah, well, tell that to the boss,” Barnes sneered.

  “Damn straight I will. Soon as I meet him.” Impatience crept into Chance’s voice. “I thought it was going to be tonight.”

  “You thought wrong.” Barnes’s lip curled. “BJ don’t want to meet you—not yet.”

  “Why not? I got ideas—ways we could make this whole operation better for everyone.”

  “Actually, Roper, BJ’s kinda pissed at you.” Denny yanked a Camel from his shirt pocket and lit up. “You’ve been pushing too hard. Making waves.”

  Barnes’s tone was a low growl. “And BJ doesn’t take kindly to anyone thinking he’s smarter than the boss.”

  “To hell with you. What’d you tell him?” Chance’s voice had sharpened.

  Behind the bushes, Ty strained to see the three men, willing his eyes to pierce the darkness. This smelled wrong. Something was going down. His muscles bunched and tensed in the darkness, his finger curling around the trigger of his gun.

  “Told him everything.” Fred Barnes was jeering now. “He was mostly interested in how you want to quit and go into competition if he doesn’t meet your terms.”

  “You asshole.” Anger had crept into Chance’s voice. “I thought you agreed with me that we weren’t getting a big enough cut.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you thought all right.”

  The tip of Denny’s cigarette glowed orange in the night. “But BJ thought you were starting to sound like a troublemaker. We got no room for troublemakers in this outfit. Things have been going along just fine. You’re hired help, Roper, like us, no more, no less. Guess you kinda forgot that.”

  “BJ’s taking advantage of both of you, big-time,” Chance shot back. “He’s playing you for suckers. And here I thought you were smart, I thought you’d want to look after yourselves.”

  Crouching in the dark, Ty had to hand it to him. Chance sounded pretty damned cool for a man who’d just been betrayed by two of his partners. Instead of turning on their boss, Owens and Barnes had ratted Chance out. But he was still plugging away.

  Chance Roper was no lightweight. He knew what he wanted, and he didn’t sweat easy.

  Ty ignored his cramped muscles, focused on the three men beyond the bushes, and waited.

  Things were about to get interesting.

  Goose bumps prickled along Josy’s arms as Dolph tugged her out of the car and toward the tree.

  It was much colder up here, closer to the mountains, and the wind bit right through her drawstring pants and tank top. Her teeth were chattering as she stumbled along with Dolph over the rough earth.

  “Where’d you bury it?” he demanded, giving her arm a shake, and Josy met his gaze squarely.

  “By that big rock. Beside the tree stump.” She yanked her arm free, and pointed. “There.”

  He shoved her toward the rock, then pulled a narrow-beam flashlight from his windbreaker pocket, pointing it at the dirt.

  “Start digging.”

  “You’re not going to help me?”

  “You buried it, you find it. And I’ll take it.”

  Josy squatted on the ground beside the rock. She glanced quickly out over the valley below. Darkness, silence.

  Except . . .

  She thought she heard something. Voices. But they were faint, so faint she could almost be imagining them. They seemed to be coming from someplace below in the wooded valley—but she couldn’t tell from where, and the wind kept snatching them away. There were no lights. Just the tops of the trees, the flanks of the hillside, the incessant song of the crickets . . .

  And every so often, the low, indistinct sound of voices. Men’s voices.

  Dolph heard them too. “What the hell?” he muttered, spinning toward the valley. “Who the hell is down there?”

  The warning glance he flicked her way chilled her blood.

  “Don’t get any ideas. I can cut out your tongue quicker than you can scream,” he warned, and on the words, the knife flashed out again. He made a slicing motion in the air with the swiftness of someone comfortable wielding all manner of deadly things.

  “Don’t try anything stupid,” he said in a low tone. “Whoever it is must be a good quarter mile away. Much too far away to help you. So dig.”

  Josy picked up a short stick lying on the ground near the rock and began gouging out the dirt, even though she knew her lie was about to come back and bite her.

  The diamond wasn’t buried here. She’d hoped there might be someone here at Shadow Point to help her, and she’d gambled that Dolph wouldn’t kill her—even now— not until he had his prize.

  But as soon as she was forced to admit her lie, there would be a reckoning. Fear nearly paralyzed her fingers as she clutched the stick. A dreadful reckoning.

  Unless . . .

  The voices from below had stopped. Now there was silence, but for the crickets and the low moan of the night wind.

  But someone had been there—she and Dolph had both heard them.

  “How the hell deep did you put it?” She heard the impatience and suspicion edging his voice and tried not to think about the knife.

  “Pretty deep. I didn’t want anyone stumbling over it accidentally. Or an animal digging it up and—here!”

  He reacted instinctively, just as she’d hoped. He leaned over her, shining the flashlight, peering down into the hole.

  It was now or never and he’d just given her the opening she needed. As he bent forward she scooped up a handful of dirt and flung it in his eyes, then sprang up and stabbed the stick straight into his face with all of her strength.

  He fell back with a groan, blinded momentarily by the dirt and the sudden unexpected pain in the center of his forehead.

  That moment was all she needed. She dashed past him in a blur, hurtling down the track toward the valley.

  “Help!” she screamed into the blackness, praying there was still someone out there to hear. “Help me—someone!”

  “You made a big mistake, Roper,” Denny said slowly. There was a hint of regret in his tone.

  “Meaning?” Chance demanded.

  Barnes spat a wad of tobacco through the air. It land
ed on Chance’s boot. “It’s this way, Roper. The fact is, the boss doesn’t want to meet you, or negotiate with you— and he sure as hell doesn’t want to have to worry about you.”

  “He just wants us to take care of you—before you become a problem.” Denny threw down his cigarette, ground out the butt with his heel. “You see, when the boss has a problem, we take it sort of personal.”

  I’ll say, Ty thought, clicking off the safety on his gun. They’re going to waste him.

  He surged up and leveled the gun. But before he could order them to freeze, a woman’s scream tore down the hill.

  “Help! Help me—someone!”

  What the hell? Josy? Adrenaline rushed through Ty’s body as the three men in the clearing all swung toward the sound.

  “Police! Freeze!” he shouted, through sheer will focusing all his attention on the rustlers, his adrenaline pumping.

  Shots exploded, and Chance hit the ground. Ty saw Denny and Fred bolting toward their horse trailer twenty yards back.

  “Freeze!” Ty yelled again, but they kept running and he fired in the darkness. There was a yell and a thud as Denny Owens went down.

  Chance had his gun out and was trying to stand. Then all hell broke loose as a spotlight blasted from the trees and three sheriff’s deputies closed in on Fred Barnes from the other direction.

  “Police! Don’t move! You’re under arrest!”

  It’s about damn time, Ty thought, but he was no longer paying attention to the takedown—he was sprinting toward the track that led up to Shadow Point, where he could hear the sound of someone crashing down the trail.

  “Help!” That frantic scream pierced the air again, more ragged and desperate than before. It can’t be Josy, Ty thought, but it sure as hell sounded like her. Suddenly her voice cut off in midshriek and fear knifed through him.

  He charged up the track at a dead run, his feet slipping on loose stones, his muscles bunched with tension as he listened for more sounds.

  At first he heard nothing but the commotion from below and his own hard breathing in the darkness, then the sounds of a scuffle reached him from the trail above.

  “Josy!” Ty yelled. “Where are you?”

  No answer, but at that moment he rounded a turn and saw them.

  A man with a gleaming shaved head was dragging Josy toward the underbrush, his hand clamped across her mouth as she struggled to break free.

  Ty dove at him and he went down, Josy falling with them in the tumble. Somehow Ty managed to shift his weight so that neither he nor the stranger fell on her. An instant later, she was scrambling desperately aside as Ty smashed a fist against the thug’s head, slamming it against the ground.

  But suddenly the man elbowed him in the jaw, then with an adroitness born of brute strength and experience, he twisted more neatly than anyone his size had a right to, and threw Ty off.

  He rolled to his feet—Ty grabbed for his ankles and missed. The bald-headed man plunged back up the track like a fleeting nightmare, melting into the darkness before Ty’s eyes.

  Ty bolted after him, but twenty yards up, the trail branched off in two different directions, and the man had vanished down one of them.

  Ty stared through the darkness in both directions, but didn’t see anyone, didn’t hear anything.

  He paused, panting, all of his senses on edge. Josy was still down there—alone. What if the bastard doubled back?

  Wheeling, he ran back down the trail, skidding down rocks and past brush. He found her exactly where he’d left her—alone, sprawled on the ground, gasping for air.

  She looked like hell and she was shaking. There was blood on her ear, on her shirt and arm, and she looked to be freezing. Cursing, Ty stripped off his jacket and slid it around her as he knelt down on the grass and took her in his arms.

  “You’re okay. You’re safe now,” he said, his own breath coming fast. He resisted the urge to hurl questions at her, though God knew he had a million of them. But not yet. She looked to be in shock. Fear shone from her eyes.

  She threw her arms around him and clung to his neck.

  “He—He . . . he broke . . . in . . . my apartment . . . I tried . . . to run . . .”

  “It’s okay, Josy. You did good. You escaped . . . and you found me. By some miracle,” he added, stroking her hair as her entire body trembled against his. “He hurt you. Damn it, you’re bleeding. We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “No . . . no hospital. Just hold me, another minute. One more minute.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got you, Josy.”

  He couldn’t believe how calm he sounded as he held her close and moonlight spilled down on the jagged trail. He was trained to be calm, to react professionally to violent situations, but this all felt different. Gut-wrenchingly, staggeringly different.

  The sight of Josy shivering and frightened and bleeding swamped him with emotions he hadn’t felt in . . . a long time.

  Since he’d shown up at the precinct that day . . . since he’d seen Meg one final time after that lunatic got through spraying bullets into her . . .

  He fought to keep his feelings under control. “Tell me what happened,” he said quietly, though all hell was breaking loose inside him. How the hell had Josy ended up battered and bleeding on Shadow Point? What garbage was she mixed up in?

  What happend? Ty, don’t ask me that. Please don’t ask me that, Josy thought, feeling tears sliding down her cheeks. She didn’t answer him, merely nestled closer, clinging to his warmth and solid strength. I need one more moment, she told herself, wishing she didn’t have to let him go at all.

  Her head was still throbbing and she ached all over. She heard men’s voices down below in the valley, and she didn’t understand why those men were here, or why Ty was here. She only knew that by some miracle, she’d escaped that monster Dolph and his damned knife.

  And he hadn’t found the diamond.

  She drew a breath and looked at the sky. It would be dawn soon. She had to get the diamond, get it to Ricky . . . today.

  She needed to pull herself together.

  “Josy?” Ty shifted her away from him, holding both her arms carefully as if she were a rag doll who would flop over if he didn’t keep her up. Which, at the moment, she might very well do, she reflected weakly.

  “I need you to tell me what happened,” he said more firmly. “I can’t help you if I don’t know—”

  “Sheriff,” a curt voice suddenly interrupted and Josy tensed as a uniformed deputy appeared around the curve in the trail. “There’s something you need to see down here. Owens has a leg wound and needs to get to a hospital. And Roper’s hurt pretty bad. Ambulances are on the way.”

  “Roper?” Josy stared at the deputy. “Chance Roper?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Deputy Frank Tanner nodded politely, but his attention swiftly returned to Ty.

  “There’s some evidence in their vehicle you might want to take a look at.”

  “Right. Coming. Stay with Ms. Warner, Frank.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Ty looked back at her. “This won’t take long. I’ll be right back—”

  “What’s going on, Ty? And what happened to Chance?”

  “We busted the rustlers tonight. A couple of them, anyway. With any luck, it will lead us to the rest.”

  “So . . . it’s true,” she breathed, dismay rushing through her. “Chance is one of them?”

  “No.” His gaze was cool and grim now as he studied her distressed face. “Chance is a cop. He was working undercover. This is going to have to wait, Josy; I have to get down there.”

  “I’m going with you,” she said quickly. “I want to see Chance.”

  His mouth tightened. “Suit yourself. But don’t touch anything.”

  He escorted her down the trail in silence, steadying her when her foot slipped on a loose stone. She blinked at the scene before her, the spotlight bathing the area in eerie brightness, the police cruisers with their blinking red lights, the men swa
rming about a man on the ground with a blanket across his shoulders—and Chance, wrapped in a bloodied blanket ten feet away, his eyes closed.

  As Ty moved off toward a horse trailer nearby, she rushed toward Chance, her heart thudding. Memories of finding Archie surged through her. But this isn’t the same, she thought. Chance isn’t going to die.

  But he looked bad.

  “You’re going to be fine, Chance.” She leaned down, whispering in his ear. “Hold on and you’ll see. You’re going to be just fine.”

  For once in his life, Chance Roper had no quick and easy comeback, no charming compliment flowing from his lips. His eyes remained closed.

  She heard the blare of an ambulance siren and felt a dazed sense of unreality. A moment later Ty returned and took her arm. He steered her away from Chance as the EMTs rushed to get him onto a gurney.

  “We need to talk, Josy. Now. I want to put an APB out on that guy who hurt you, so you need to tell me—”

  “I can’t.” She broke free of him and stared miserably into his eyes.

  “Can’t what? Describe him? Then tell me how he got to you, where this started, what he wanted. What he did to you.” He gripped her arm, his tone laced with impatience. “Don’t you want him caught?”

  “Yes. No. I mean . . . not yet. Ty, I can’t tell you. Please, no APB, no questions. Just . . . let me go home.”

  “What’s this all about, Josy? You’ve been hiding something from day one. You’re mixed up in something, aren’t you? And it’s nothing good.”

  She didn’t answer, just gazed back at him, agony in her eyes.

  Ty’s gut clenched. He’d known all along that some things didn’t add up with her, that there was some mystery about her, but he hadn’t expected it to be anything serious—and he sure as hell hadn’t thought it would be criminal. But a man had hurt her tonight and probably had intended worse. Who the hell was after her?

  Frustration ripped through him and he didn’t know what he wanted more—to get his hands on the man who had attacked her, or to stroke her face, her hair, and erase the pain from her soul.