by Stacey Kayne
She had loved him with an honesty and trust that shook his soul, yet she didn't trust him completely. Not with what mattered. Her dreams. Her future.
And who can blame her?
My father taught me not to put my trust in illusions. Your smile is just one more illusion. You're just like my father ...it was never about the destination...he loved the adventure.
The memory of her words sent a sharp pain ripping across his chest. At the time he hadn't noted the comparisons that now struck him like a jolt of lightning.
Tucker was tempted to crawl into Skylar's tent and convince her that he wasn't a damn thing like her father, and that she was the only adventure he needed, but he knew he wouldn't try to convince her with words alone. He couldn't be close to her and not give in to the powerful yearning to hold her, to love her.
"You look like hell," Chance said, glaring at him over the rim of his coffee cup. "Must have been rough, balancing Sky and the horses in all this rain."
"What the hell are you talking about? I've been on watch."
"Stop treating me like I'm an idiot."
"I haven't been with Skylar. She's barely talked to me since she tossed me from her tent."
"Then where's she at?"
Tucker gaped at him. "She's not here?"
"No. I figured you ran into her near the river and—"
Tucker's coffee dropped to the ground as a rush of panic welled up inside him. He sprang to his feet and ran toward the shelter Garret had put up for Skylar. He pushed back the canvas flap, his gut twisting into knots at the sight of Skylar's supplies sitting in the dark shadows of her tent, exactly where Garret had tossed them this afternoon. Her bedroll was still wrapped up in a tight tube.
He dropped the flap and spun on Chance as he walked up behind him. "Why didn't you come tell me she never came back to camp?" he demanded.
"I figured she was out romping somewhere with you."
Tucker closed his eyes, trying to calm the fear crashing over him. They should have told her about Randal. "Dear God, she's gone after the horses," he said, certain she'd gone to face Randal alone.
"Whose horses?" asked Chance.
"Hers."
"You told her about the tracks? We agreed we wouldn't tell her!"
"I didn't tell her! That doesn't mean she didn't find the tracks on her own."
"You think she'd go it alone?"
Tucker didn't take the time to answer. He was already in a full run back toward his saddled horse, pausing only to grab a lantern. He rode out to the hillside they'd been on earlier and carefully followed her tracks leading toward the river. He found a place where her horse had stood idle, along with unfamiliar boot prints leading to, and away with the horse.
A sense of dread coiling up his spine, he followed Skylar's smaller boot print to a grassy embankment beside the river. Her tan coat stood out like a warning beacon on the damp grass.
She wouldn't have left her coat. He picked it up and swept the light across the ground. A few yards away a patch of mud revealed the tracks of three horses. His heart thundered with the sound of Chance's approaching horse. Clutching Skylar's jacket, panic constricting his chest, Tucker knelt beside the meshing of footprints.
They took her.
Chance crouched beside him a moment later and inspected the imprints in the soft mud. "Who the hell—"
"God, Chance, she didn't go after Randal. He took her!"
"He's baiting a trap."
"Trap or not," Tucker said as he straightened, "I'm going after her."
"We're only a day away from the ranch. The sole reason we've deliberately avoided Randal is so we wouldn't be outnumbered."
Chance's reluctance stunned him. "She could be dead before we reach the ranch!" Tucker put out the lamp then swung back into his saddle and started racing back toward camp to get the supplies he needed. Chance followed close behind him.
"You're going to track her in the dark?" he asked, on his heels as he rushed into camp.
Tucker crouched beside a pile of supplies. "It's how I made my living, remember?" He reached into one of the sacks, retrieving a rifle and another revolver.
"What about the mustangs we've been busting ass to drive this far?"
"I don't give a damn about the horses," he shouted as he
straightened. "What's wrong with you? Randal has had her since nightfall. The man backshot her father!"
"What's going on?" Garret asked, emerging from his tent. Barefoot and dressed in the red one-piece woolen underwear Tucker had bought for him, he rubbed at his eyes.
"Randal has your sister," Tucker said flatly.
The boy's body snapped to full attention. Tucker tossed the kid a rifle, saying, "She was taken before sundown. We're getting her back. Now."
"Yer damn right we are," said Garret. He turned and ducked back into his shelter.
"If he's baiting us," Chance said as he shoved a bullet into the chamber of his revolver, "he's likely after the deed."
"But I don't know where she put it," Garret called out from inside his tent.
"I have it," said Tucker.
Chance's eyes widened a fraction as his brother dipped his hand inside his coat. He swore under his breath when Tucker held up the deed. "How long have you had that?"
"Skylar gave it to me earlier this evening."
"Were you planning on telling me?" Chance all but shouted.
"It slipped my mind."
His brother's eyes widened with disbelief. "Slipped your mind? She gave you our deed and it slipped your mind?"
"What the hell are we standing around for?" Garret said, stepping from his tent fully dressed.
Tucker turned away from Chance. "We'll need the lanterns."
A few hours later Tucker was at the crest of a hill, crouched between Garret and Chance, their gazes locked on a herd of horses too large to hide. A hillside spotted with evergreens sloped down to a thick grove of tall trees. High jagged cliffs rose up on the far side. They needed to move fast. The sun would soon be peeking over that eastern rise and stealing their cover. In the last bit of moonlight, they saw two men on horseback guarding the herd on fairly open ground at the northern end of the grove.
Randal's camp had to be in the trees.
"We'll have to leave the horses," whispered Chance, who'd finally come to his senses.
Tucker nodded in agreement.
"We still need some sort of plan," Chance continued.
"I say we stick together," said Garret, "find Skylar and get the hell out of there before anyone sees us."
Tucker glanced over Garret's head. Chance was looking at the kid with a measure of bewilderment. "Remember bein' that young, Tuck?" he whispered.
"No," he answered honestly.
Their attention was drawn to movement in the shadows below them. Tucker's eyes narrowed as he spotted a man riding through the trees. One of Randal's men.
The camp was well guarded. It was going to take them twenty minutes or better to get down to that grove while having to sneak their way past guards. By then, the sun would be fully up.
"I got him," Chance whispered, and drew his knife from the scabbard at his waist.
"I can get him from here," Garret said, raising his rifle toward the man clearly visible as he rode into another patch of moonlight.
Tucker put his hand over the barrel. "No guns. We don't want that camp full of men to know we're coming to call."
"And put your damn hat on," ordered Chance. "All that white hair glows like a lantern."
Garret nodded at Tucker, then cast a frown at Chance as he tugged his hat on.
Chance started stalking down the hillside.
"I'm comin' with you," Garret insisted as Tucker moved to follow his brother.
"Sit tight, kid. We won't descend this ridge without you, I promise. Remember, no gunshots. Got it?"
Garret took a deep breath, controlling the adrenaline they were all struggling to contain, and gave a sharp nod.
Skylar fought not to give in
to the dark relief of unconsciousness. Never had she experienced this type of cold. Sitting on her knees, crumpled forward with her hands bound behind her, her body was consumed by a combination of numbness and stinging shafts of pain.
Sometime during the long night she had stopped shivering, her muscles too exhausted to twitch. Intermittent showers had kept her hair dripping wet and clothes damp as moisture drizzled beneath Duce's coat. The last time she'd opened her eyes, the dreary gray sky held a translucent glow—signs of the sun beginning to rise behind the dark clouds. Her time was running out.
Tucker, where are you?
"Morning, princess."
Skylar didn't move as Randal knelt beside her. She couldn't, her body was too sore and stiff. The warmth of his fingers sliding beneath her chin burned against her chilled flesh. He lifted her face, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"I trust you slept well?" His bruised lips shifted into a smug grin.
"Coward," she seethed with a shallow breath.
Randal's expression stoned over as he snatched his hand away from her face. He released her bound hands from the stake. Skylar cringed as his warm palms closed over the sides of her shoulders. Pain sliced through her cramped muscles as he hauled her to her feet, ripping a sharp cry from her lungs.
She heard the sound of her feet hitting the ground as her legs unfolded, but she couldn't feel them. The moment Randal eased his hold, she began to slump back to the ground. His arm banded her waist.
"Don't worry, princess," he said, lifting her. "I know just the thing to warm you up. Being the gentleman that I am, I've even managed to find us a honeymoon shack."
Skylar barely registered his words, unable to focus beyond the sharp talons of pain ripping at her skin with each shift of her body as he hoisted her over his broad shoulder. Her teeth chattered as her muscles began to awaken and quiver. Holding her like a sack of potatoes, Randal turned on his heel and her world spun.
He seemed to walk for a mile before he finally lowered her, letting her slide down the front of him.
"Wake up, princess." He set her feet on the ground and shook her until she made an effort to stand. Skylar opened her eyes. They were surrounded by granite cliffs reaching high into the thick gray sky. They stood before the wooden door of a tiny cabin wedged into a crack in the stone mountainside. A wide piece of metal banded the door, a lock securing the latch.
"This little ole rat hole ain't worth locking," Randal said as he slammed the butt of his gun against the metal. The lock fell open. Randal's eyes snapped toward her. "You're mine."
He was wrong. Dead wrong. Tucker would come for her.
"I plan to break you in good," he said as he yanked open the flimsy door.
A film of white covered the open doorway. Intricate patterns of silken thread, several webs overlapping with one another. Spots of black scattered to the edges of the door frame as daylight spread across the entry way.
Spiders.
Skylar's body stiffened. Her feet suddenly braced beneath her.
Randal's hand shoved against her back.
Sticky white fibers clung to her face as she stumbled forward, breaking the thick webbing away from rotted wood, pulling the spiders down—onto her.
Skylar's lungs expanded with a deep gasp of primal fear.
Chapter 25
"Shh" Tucker instructed as he knelt behind the broad shoulders of a man with flaming red hair. The man Garret had identified as Duce.
"Morgan?" he whispered.
"Yeah," Tucker answered, peering over his shoulder at the quiet campsite. A few yards away, five men sat around a campfire talking amongst themselves. Tucker imagined there were more in the five tents spaced throughout the trees.
"Lift your hands over your head, real slow like you're stretching."
Duce followed his instructions. When his hand dropped back behind his head, Tucker cut through the rope then moved on to the second man.
"How many men?" Chance asked as he and Garret moved in beside him.
Duce's eyes widened as his gaze shifted to Chance. "Twelve," he whispered.
"Only nine now." Chance slid a revolver beside Duce then glanced at the other three men. "The rest of you will have to find your own."
Tucker cut the ropes of the second man then handed him the knife. He studied each of the four faces, not wanting toshoot one of his allies by mistake if all hell broke loose. "Where's Skylar?"
"He took her from that stake a short while ago," said the gruff voice of the second man.
Tucker's heart constricted as he spotted the stake on the open wet ground and the small dry patch in front of it where she'd obviously been sitting. Oh God! Skylar. I'm sorry.
"She couldn't even walk when he dragged her off," said Duce, his whispered voice filled with disgust. "He said somethin' about a honeymoon shack."
"That ba—" Chance's hand clamped over Garret's mouth, cutting off his angry words.
Cursing under his breath, Tucker's body coiled with rage. "Which way?"
"East, toward those high cliffs."
Tucker glanced toward the high rocky peaks rising up beyond a stream on the other side of the camp.
"I reckon he found a miner's—"
"Tucker!"
The bloodcurdling scream tore through the crisp morning air. The sound of Skylar shrieking his name raised every fine hair across Tucker's skin. Reflexively, he drew his revolver and answered her call, shouting her name as he leaped past the seated men and began running in the direction of her voice, barreling through the camp full of armed men.
The five men by the fire seemed just as startled by the shrilling voice echoing off the granite cliffs. Tucker shot the first one who reached for his gun. The others threw their hands into the air, their gazes looking past him.
Trusting that Chance had his back, Tucker ran toward the stream on the far side of the camp. He splashed through the water, his gaze moving over the jagged cliffs that rose up on the other side. Jumping onto a wide boulder, he bypassed the winding path that lead to a break high on the stone mountainside. He was at the top of the pass with a few leaps.
Skylar's screams hadn't stopped.
His heart raging, Tucker paused as he came to a three-way split in the maze of rock.
Keep calling me, angel.
Gunfire erupted from the valley behind him as he chose the channel to his left. He followed the narrow path and rounded a bend to his right. A small shack came into view up ahead. The wide frame of a man with long black hair filled the doorway. Randal struggled with Skylar who was thrashing and screaming on the floor beneath him. His filthy arm swung back, preparing to strike her.
"I wouldn't!"
The large man turned, his expression gaping as Tucker charged toward him. "How the hell did—"
The mangy bastard reached for his gun as Tucker's fist slammed into his jaw, knocking him away from the cabin.
Somebody had already whupped him hard with an ugly stick, Tucker noted as his gaze swept over his mangled face. Not nearly hard enough.
Tucker laid into him, slamming a fist into his gut as Randal's knuckles cracked against the younger man's jaw. The pain exploding through his face made him think of Randal using those heavy fists against Skylar. Randal's size and strength better than equaled Tucker's.
In a blur of murderous rage, Tucker swung wildly, delivering blow after blow, accepting a few punches in return as he drove Randal back, farther away from Skylar.
As sun broke from the cloud cover, blasting them with a blinding dose of intense sunlight, Randal lunged at him, clamping an arm around him, and trying to knock him to the ground. From the corner of Tucker's right eye, he saw a valley open up beside him. He hadn't noticed the sheer drop-off hidden in the gloomy gray haze. Randal's weight shoved him toward the edge.
He's trying to toss me off the cliff!
Tucker dropped low and kicked his leg out, sweeping it against Randal's heels.
Randal fell back, his head slamming against the rock surface with a fier
ce crack. Tucker bent forward, planting his hands on his knees as his lungs pulled for a full breath.
Randal didn't move.
Behind him, Skylar screamed at the top of her lungs. He pushed to his feet and ran back to the cabin. She was still on her knees inside the shadows of the cabin. Tucker crouched behind her and had to work to capture her bound hands as she thrashed in full hysterics. The second he cut her hands free, her fists started swinging.
"Skylar," he said, trying to capture her flailing arms. "Angel, it's me!"
"Spiders! They're on me!"
Realizing she wasn't fighting him, but the sticky film of spiderwebs clinging to her head and shoulders, he grabbed her by the waist and yanked her out into the increasing sunlight. He pulled at the webs and knocked a large spider caught in a clump of its own web from the back of her tangled hair.
"They're gone," he said as he peeled the rest of the sticky mass from her damp hair and clothes. "Relax, honey, they're gone."
She stopped twisting, her lungs gulping for air as she glanced up at him. "You're sure?" she asked, her voice trembling as violently as her body.
The stark fear in her glistening blue eyes twisted into his heart like a dagger. "I'm sure," he said, pulling her into his arms. The chill of her body stung him through his clothes.
"Don't let me go," she sighed.
"I don't plan to." Not ever again.
She sagged against him, nearly slipping from his grasp.
"Sky?" he said, afraid she'd passed out.
"Where's Garret?"
As if on cue, Garret shouted Tucker's name from somewhere behind him.
"Over here," Tucker called back, glancing over his shoulder as Garret rounded the mountainside.
"Skylar!" the kid shouted, his face brightening.
"Now, ain't that sweet."
At the sound of Randal's cold, gritty voice, Tucker let Skylar slide gently to the ground before he turned to face him.
I should have kicked him off the mountain when I had the chance. Randal stood in the very spot Tucker had left him, his revolver trained on Garret who had backed up against the cliff, his eyes wide with fear.
Randal's thumb slipped over the hammer of his gun and clicked it back. "Now walk on over here," he said to Garret.
