Sunrise Crossing

by Jodi Thomas

  The professor drifted off then, leaving Yancy to think. At midnight, when he woke, Yancy had his questions ready.

  Galen Yancy Stanley’s eyes were clear as he answered every one of his son’s questions. He told the truth, the complete truth, for the first time since he’d climbed in the truck heading for Denver the night he’d been beaten. It was dawn before the professor finally leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Yancy smiled. “You know, Pop, you didn’t have to get me any Christmas or birthday presents. You piled them all in one when you saved Tori. I don’t hate you for leaving me. I’m just glad you came back.”

  An hour later, Yancy called Tori and told her his news.

  Tori didn’t sound surprised. She simply said, “I already knew it. I saw it in his eyes.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Summer orange

  CLINT MONTGOMERY STORMED the doors of the Dallas hospital. He’d waited six weeks for Parker to call and she must have lost his number. He’d called her assistant at the gallery so many times they’d be exchanging Christmas cards come December.

  Finally, he bullied Yancy enough to give him Tori’s number. Then the minute he got the artist, Tori started crying and saying that Parker had checked herself into the hospital and wouldn’t tell her what was wrong.

  Clint was in his truck before the line went dead. He was finished waiting around for Parker to figure out that they belonged together. He didn’t care if she was in the hospital or on the moon. He was going to her and talking until she realized they were meant to be together. If she wouldn’t come back to the ranch, he’d pack the horse trailer up and move to Dallas. He planned to tell her how he felt about her in words that left no doubt. After all, what did he have to lose? She already wasn’t taking his calls.

  “Sir! Sir!” A chubby little nurse trotted along beside Clint. “You can’t come in here with those things on.”

  He faced her. If she thought she was going to keep him from seeing Parker, she had another think coming.

  “You have to take them off.”

  The nurse jumped back when he growled, “I’m here to see Parker Lacey. I was told she’s in 403.”

  “Right.” The nurse straightened to her height of five foot nothing and pointed down at his boots.

  “I have to take off my boots. Hell, this place is worse than the airports.”

  “No, sir. You have to take off the spurs.”

  “Oh,” he said, feeling like a fool. “Of course, miss.”

  Clint figured he might as well get used to the feeling of being an idiot; it was probably going to happen again any minute. Unless Parker was sedated she’d probably start yelling at him at first sight. Parker had told him from the first that what they had wouldn’t be a forever kind of thing. Only he hadn’t listened, because it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. It still wasn’t. He wanted her. Whatever was wrong with her, they’d deal with it. He wanted to be with her the rest of her life, whether it was counted in weeks or years.

  He glared at the nurse. “What’s wrong with Parker Lacey?”

  “I can’t...” the nurse began. “Unless you’re her immediate family?”

  “I’m all the family she’s got.” Clint lifted his left hand that bore the wedding ring he’d never taken off.

  “She was scheduled for a knee replacement, but the doctor canceled it. He said he had to deal with a more urgent matter first.”

  “Hell.” Clint handed his spurs to the nurse. “I’ve heard of folks coming into a hospital with one problem and catching another.”

  “I don’t know about that, sir. Maybe you’d better ask your wife.”

  “I plan to do that. Hang on to my spurs. I’ll pick them up on my way out.”

  “Okay, cowboy. Room 403 is the second room off the elevator.”

  “Thanks.” He ran.

  Three minutes later when he walked into Parker’s room, she was crying.

  He didn’t need to ask. He knew the diagnosis must be bad. All the fight went out of him as he walked to the side of the bed and pulled her into his arms.

  For a while he simply rocked her while she cried. All the things he’d thought he had to say could wait.

  When she finally settled in his arms, he said, “I don’t care what it is, Parker. I’m here and I’m not leaving. We’ll fight this together.”

  To his surprise, she smiled. “All right. We’ll fight, but it might be hard. It could bankrupt us, wear us out, drive us nuts. We’re not young, Clint. I’m thirty-seven and you’re forty-three.”

  She was still smiling, and he considered the possibility that her illness could be mental. “Whatever this is, we’ll fight it together.”

  She must have been on heavy drugs. Parker just kept smiling.

  “All right. I’ll take you up on your offer to help, but it’ll be a twenty-four-hour fight for years and years. I’m pregnant.”

  Clint Montgomery did something then he’d never done in his life.

  He fainted.

  When he came to, he held her and they talked for hours. He told her how much she mattered to him. The sight of her the day she bought his slice of land had pulled him out of a hell he’d been in for months. The night he watched her at the gallery and decided to make sure her little farmhouse was ready for her when she needed to run. The night he’d made love to her so completely.

  They talked of the next six months. Her doctor had said she had a problem with her back and knee. She would have to wait for surgery while she took it easy during the pregnancy. “He almost cussed me out for running away from the hospital before I left for Crossroads and not having surgery before I got pregnant.”

  They talked about where they’d live and where they’d raise their child.

  Finally, Parker told him her greatest fear. “Laceys don’t live long. I worry about bringing a child into the world.”

  “Marry me, Parker,” Clint whispered.

  “Didn’t you hear me? Laceys don’t live long.”

  He kissed her gently. “I heard you. Laceys don’t live long, but Montgomerys do.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Home

  YANCY STEPPED OUT of the cool, fall night and into his workshop. As always, he tapped the board above the door. Missed you. Love, Rabbit.

  “I love you, too,” he whispered, wishing she could hear him.

  Everyone in the world seemed to have paired off but him.

  Clint and Parker had married in July, and no one had seen them since. Word was they were on his ranch. She’d turned over the day-to-day running of her gallery to her assistant, Minnie. Word was that Minnie had turned out to be more of a general than Parker.

  Even Fifth bought a ring, and had shown it to everyone in the county offices, but he said he wasn’t proposing to Madison O’Grady until they got to New York City. He’d laughed and said there was only one place for him to get down on one knee and pop the question.

  When Yancy asked where, the deputy had said, “Fifth and Madison, of course.”

  Rumor was, the whole O’Grady family was adding money to a pot to buy them tickets. Last Yancy had heard, Pearly and the Franklin sisters were planning the shower.

  Yancy was alone, but he wouldn’t complain. He had a dad who called him once a week. Gabe had turned out to be a cool guy, and once he’d got out of the hospital, he’d taken up his real name again and started traveling. Gabe hadn’t said he was looking for Jewel Ann, but Yancy had gypsy blood. He could feel things and he knew that was exactly what Gabe was doing.

  Every few weeks Yancy got a present from some place he’d never visited and the note with it always said the same thing: I’ll be home for Christmas, son.

  So, Yancy worked every night, hoping to have the old gypsy house complete before his dad came home. It’d be differ
ent this year. He’d have a tree, maybe put some lights on the house. Invite friends over.

  Yancy grinned. His heart might ache for Tori, but he was a rich man.

  Just then, something shifted in the loft above and he looked up. Tori, dressed in jeans and her paint-spotted plaid shirt, appeared above him. “You need some help?” she said, smiling.

  “I do.” He couldn’t stop staring at her. She was so beautiful.

  Then, without hesitation, Rabbit jumped.

  And Yancy caught her in midflight.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from WILD HORSE SPRINGS by Jodi Thomas.

  “Compelling and beautifully written, it is exactly the kind of heart-wrenching, emotional story one has come to expect from Jodi Thomas.”

  —Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas has captivated readers around the world with her sweeping, heartfelt family sagas.

  Don’t miss any of the titles in Jodi’s compelling and emotionally resonant Ransom Canyon series set in a remote West Texas town where family bonds are made and broken, and where young love sparks as old flames grow dim. Ransom Canyon is ready to welcome—and shelter—those who need it.

  Wild Horse Springs

  Sunrise Crossing

  Lone Heart Pass

  Rustler’s Moon

  Ransom Canyon

  Winter’s Camp

  (ebook novella)

  Get your copies today, wherever ebooks are sold!

  “Once I started [Ransom Canyon], I quickly found myself unable to put down this book.”

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  Wild Horse Springs

  by Jodi Thomas

  CODY'S CHAPTER

  CODY WINSLOW THUNDERED through the night on a half-wild horse that loved to run. The moon followed them, dancing along the edge of the canyon as they darted over winter buffalo grass stiff with frost.

  The former Texas Ranger watched the dark outline of the earth where the land cracked open wide enough for a river to run at its base.

  The canyon’s edge seemed to snake closer, as if it were moving, crawling over the flat plains, daring Cody to challenge death. One missed step might take him and the horse over the edge and into the black hole. They’d tumble maybe a hundred feet down, barreling over jagged rocks and frozen juniper branches as sharp as spears. No horse or man would survive.

  Only tonight Cody wasn’t worried. He needed to ride, to run, to feel adrenaline pumping in his veins, to know he was alive. He rode hoping to outrun his dark mood. The demons that were always in his mind were chasing him tonight. Daring him. Betting him to take one more risk...the one that would finally kill him.

  “Run,” he shouted to the midnight mare. Nothing would catch him here. Not on his land. Not over land his ancestors had hunted on for thousands of years. Fought over. Died for and bled into. Apache blood, settler blood, Comanchero blood mixed in him as it did in this part of Texas. His family tree was a tumbleweed of every kind of tribe who ever crossed the plains.

  If the horse fell and they went to their deaths, no one would find them for days in this far corner of his ranch. Even the canyon that snaked off the great Palo Duro had no name here. It wasn’t beautiful like Ransom Canyon, with layers of earth revealed in a rainbow of colors. Here the rocks were jagged, shooting out of the canyon walls from twenty feet in some places like thin shelves.

  The petrified wood formations along the floor of the canyon reminded Cody of snipers waiting, almost unseen, but deadly. Cody felt numb, already dead inside, as he raced across a place with no name on a horse he called Midnight.

  The horse’s hooves tapped suddenly over a low place where water ran off the flat land and into the canyon. Frozen now. Silent. Deadly. Black ice. For a moment the tapping matched Cody’s heartbeat then both horse and rider seemed to realize the danger at once.

  Cody leaned back, pulling the reins, hoping to stop the animal in time, but the horse reared in panic, dancing on his hind legs for a moment before twisting violently and bucking Cody off.

  As Cody flew through the night air, he almost smiled. The battle he’d been fighting since he was shot and left for dead on the border one night three years ago was about to end here on his own land. The legends of all the ancestors who came before him whispered in the wind as if calling him.

  When he hit the frozen ground so hard it knocked the air from his lungs, he knew death wouldn’t come easy tonight. Though he’d welcome the silence, Cody knew he’d fight to the end. He came from generations of fighters. He was the last of his line and here in the dark he’d make his stand too far away to call for help. He was too stubborn to ask for it anyway.

  As he fought to breathe, his body slid over a tiny river of frozen rain into the black canyon.

  He twisted, struggling to stop, but all he managed to do was tumble down. Branches whipped against him and rocks punched him with the force of a prize fighter’s blow. And still he rolled. Over and over. Ice on his skin, warm blood dripping into his eyes. He tried bracing for the hits that came when he landed for a moment before his body rolled again. He grabbed for a rock or a branch to hold on to, but his leather gloves couldn’t get a grip on the ice.

  He wasn’t sure if he managed to relax or pass out, but when he landed on a flat rock near the bottom of the canyon, total blackness surrounded him and the few stars above offered no light. For a while he lay still, aware that he was still breathing. A good sign. He hurt all over. More proof he was alive.

  He’d been near death before. He knew that sometimes the body turned off the pain. Slowly he began to take inventory. There were parts that hurt like hell. Others he couldn’t feel at all.

  Cody swore as loud as he could and smiled. At least he had his voice. Not that anyone would hear him in the canyon. Maybe his brain was mush; he obviously had a head wound. The blood kept dripping into his eyes. His left leg throbbed with each heartbeat and he couldn’t draw a deep breath.

  He tried to move and pain skyrocketed, making him have to concentrate to stop shaking. Fire shot up his leg and flowed straight to his heart. Cody took shallow breaths and tried to reason. He had to control his breathing. He had to stay awake or he’d freeze. He had to keep fighting. Survival was bone and blood to his nature.

  The memory of his night in the mud near the Rio Grande came back as if it had only been a day, not three years. He’d been bleeding then, hurt, alone. Three Rangers had stood on the bank at dusk. He’d seen the other two crumble when bullets fell like rain.

  Only it had been hot that night, and so silent after all the gunfire. He’d known every Ranger in the area would be looking for him at first light; he’d known he’d have to make it to dawn first. Stay alive. They’d find him.

  But not this time.

  No one would look for him tonight or tomorrow. No one would even notice he was gone. He’d made sure of that. He’d left all his friends back in Austin after the shooting. He’d broken up with his girlfriend who’d said she couldn’t deal with hospitals. When he came back to his family’s land, he didn’t bother to call any of his old friends. He’d grown accustomed to the solitude. He’d needed it to heal not just the wounds outside, but the ones deep inside.

  Cody swore again.

  The pain won out for a moment and his mind drifted. At the corners of his consciousness, he knew he needed to move, stop the bleeding, try not to freeze, but he’d become an expert at drifting that night
on the border. Even when a rifle had poked into his chest as one of the drug runners tested to see if he was alive, Cody hadn’t reacted.

  If he had, another bullet would have gone in his body already riddled with lead.

  Cody recited the words he’d once had to scrub off the walls in grade school. Mrs. Presley had kept repeating as he worked, Cody Winslow, you’ll die cussing if you don’t learn better.

  Turned out she might be right. Even with his eyes almost closed, the stars seemed to be growing brighter and circling around him like drunk fireflies. If this was death’s door, he planned to go through yelling.

  The stars were drawing closer. Their light bounced off the black canyon walls as if they were sparks of echoes.

  He stopped swearing as the lights began to talk.

  “He’s dead,” one high, bossy voice said. “Look how shiny the blood is.”

  A squeaky sound added, “I’m going to throw up.”

  “No, he’s not dead,” another argued. “His hand is twitching and if you throw up, Marjorie Martin, I’ll tell Miss Wright.”

  All at once the lights were bouncing around him, high voices all talking at once.

  “Yes, he is dead.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “You stop saying anything.”

  “I’m going to throw up.”

  Cody opened his eyes. The lights were circling around him like a war party.

  “See, I told you so.”

  One beam of light came closer, blinding him for a moment, and he blinked.

  “He’s hurt. I can see blood bubbling out of him in several spots.” The bossy voice added, “Don’t touch it, Marjorie.”

  The gang of lights streamed along his body as if trying to torture him or drive him mad as the world kept changing from black to bright. It occurred to him that maybe he was being abducted by aliens, but he doubted the beings coming to conquer the world would land here in West Texas or that they’d sound like little girls.

  “Hell,” he said and to his surprise the shadows all jumped back.