Bounty Hunter’s Woman

by Linda Turner

  Not for the first time over the course of the last fifteen minutes, he marveled at the sheriff’s cockiness…and stupidity. The jackass had been so anxious to slap cuffs on them and arrest them that he hadn’t taken time to search them. And that was going to cost him.

  Keeping his gaze lowered so that the sheriff couldn’t see the satisfaction gleaming in his eyes, he slowly dropped his cuffed hands between his knees and carefully searched the hidden pocket in the top of his boot for the tools of the trade he never went anywhere without. Within seconds, he found what he was looking for. To the untrained eye, it looked like nothing more than a small piece of wire, but it could open almost anything. The trick was to do it without making a sound and alerting the sheriff to what he was doing.

  Beside him, Priscilla shifted slightly in her seat, and his eyes met hers. She didn’t say a word, but her gaze dropped to his hands. She knew exactly what he was up to, and she waited patiently for him to make his move.

  Positioning the wire in the lock, he glanced up at the rearview mirror and said, “Do you usually take detainees with you when you’ve got another call, sheriff? We have a right to a lawyer—”

  His gaze meeting his in the mirror, the sheriff laughed, completely unconcerned. “This is my county, son, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m in charge. The only way you’re calling a lawyer is if I say you can call one, and that’s not going to happen.”

  “So what…you’re just going to lock us up and throw away the key?” he asked as the handcuffs soundlessly clicked open. “Do you really think you’re going to get away with that? Priscilla’s family is expecting us. They know she’s in the area. There’s no way in hell they’re going to let her disappear off the face of the earth and not come looking for her.”

  Far from concerned, he only laughed again and seemed to have no idea that he sounded more than a little mad. “Do you really think I’m worried about the Wyatts? Nobody wants them here. Nobody will care when the rest of them end up dead, too.”

  “So you’re going to kill us?” Donovan asked as he very carefully reached over and unlocked Priscilla’s cuffs. “That’s your plan? To take us out in the middle of nowhere and shoot us? Then when Priscilla’s family shows up, you’ll pick them off, one by one, won’t you?”

  The sheriff just shrugged. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

  “Maybe,” Donovan said. “So what are you going to tell the FBI? They’ll show up, you know. We’ve already talked to them, and trust me, they’re checking your ass out. And when we end up dead,” he added, “they’re going to shut down Willow Bend and take a good hard look at everyone. That includes you. Then what are you going to do? Claim that we tried to escape and you had no choice but to shoot us? What about the rest of the family? What excuse are you going to come up with for killing them?”

  Sheriff Clark shrugged, unconcerned. “They snapped when they heard their darling baby sister was dead and came after me. I had to protect myself.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Priscilla cried. “This is crazy! What did we ever do to you? We don’t even really know you.”

  “You took what was mine,” he said coldly. “And for that, you’re all going to pay.”

  “Yours? What are you talking about? We don’t have anything that belongs to you.”

  “The hell you don’t,” he snarled. “The Broken Arrow is mine. Mine! And if you think I’m going to stand by and let you steal it right out from under me, then you obviously don’t know who you’re messing with. Nobody steals from me and gets away with it.”

  Priscilla and Donovan exchanged a glance and read each other’s minds. He was crazy. There was no other explanation. Not to mention dangerous. If they were going to get out of this alive, they were going to have to be very, very careful.

  For the moment, though, they were trapped in the back of the sheriff’s patrol car. And even though their hands were now free, the doors were locked and controlled by the sheriff. Effectively caged, there was nothing they could do until he stopped and let them out. Donovan didn’t even want to think about what their odds of survival were if he decided to shoot them right there in the car.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why do you think that the ranch should be yours?” Donovan asked. “From what I’ve heard, everyone in Willow Bend seems to think they’re entitled to it.”

  “They’re all fools,” the older man retorted. “Tom Stevens, Rachel Carter, Michael Iverson, even Judge Garrison. They all thought they were so clever, but I knew everything they were doing—”

  “And did nothing to stop it,” Priscilla said bitterly. “What kind of sheriff are you?”

  “Why would I stop them? They were damn helpful, even when they were amateurs and pretty much stuck to cutting fences and stealing cattle. Though Judge Garrison came in real handy when he ordered the wiretap,” he added. “After that, I could keep track of everything going on at the ranch.”

  “So you and the judge were working together?” Donovan said. “What about the rest of the local law enforcement? Were the police helping you, too?”

  “No one was knowingly helping me,” he replied smugly. “They were all looking out for themselves…or so they thought. The poor fools never realized they were wasting their time. Just because Hilda Wyatt was friends with everyone in the county didn’t mean she ever had any intention of leaving the Broken Arrow to anyone but family.”

  Donovan frowned. “If that’s the case, then aren’t you wasting your time, too? After all, you’re not any more family than anyone else in Willow Bend. So why would Hilda make you the unnamed heir? Were you a special friend of hers or what?”

  “No, we weren’t friends,” he snapped, fury flashing in his eyes. “We were a hell of a lot more than that. She was my mother!”

  “She was not!” Priscilla said indignantly, shocked. “She never had any children. She was an old maid.”

  “She was raped when she was sixteen and got pregnant. She was sent to live with an aunt in California where she had me and then gave me up for adoption.”

  Stunned, Priscilla wanted to believe he was lying, that the wonderful woman who left the ranch to her and her siblings hadn’t suffered the nightmare of a rape and then a pregnancy when she was barely more than a girl. But why would he make up such a thing? He obviously was one step away from insanity, but his words had the ring of truth. And all she could think of was poor Hilda, who never married, never had another child, and had, obviously, never spoken of the rape to anyone outside her immediate family. If she had, the locals would have been only too eager to spread the word that Hilda had an illegitimate child who should inherit the ranch.

  Blinking back tears, Priscilla could only imagine what a rape and unwanted pregnancy must have done to a young girl growing up in a small community in the 1930s. No wonder she never married. She must have hidden her secret all of her life and feared the day her child of rape showed up on her doorstep.

  “You confronted her, didn’t you?” she demanded. “You found out who she was, tracked her down and confronted her.”

  “You’re damn straight I did,” he growled. “She was my mother. I had a right to know her.”

  “And how did she react when you told her who you were?” Donovan asked.

  “I’d been looking for her for years,” he said bitterly, “and she acted like I was the one who raped her. She made me promise I would leave her alone and wouldn’t tell anyone who I was.”

  “And you agreed?” Priscilla asked, surprised. “Just like that?”

  “I did after she promised to leave the ranch to me,” he retorted. “Lying bitch! She tricked me into staying away from her and then denied me my birthright. What kind of mother would do such a thing?”

  The kind who obviously wanted no reminders of a horrible rape, Priscilla thought, but that was something she kept to herself.

  Snarling a curse, the sheriff hardly seemed aware of what he was confessing when he said half to himself, “I couldn’t let her get
away with that. I was a Wyatt. I deserved my share of the Broken Arrow, and she wasn’t going to stop me from getting it. Nobody’s going to stop me.”

  And with no other warning than that, he turned off the country road onto a dirt road that led into a canyon. And the deeper he raced into the canyon, the more the dirt road deteriorated. The undergrowth pushed in on them, and seconds later, they came to a dead end.

  When the sheriff pushed open his door and stepped out of the patrol car, Priscilla paled. When he started to open her door, fear coiled through her. What now? she thought wildly. Was he going to dump them there and leave them in the middle of nowhere? Shoot them? Kill them?

  “Don’t let him see the cuffs are open,” Donovan said in a hushed whisper. “Follow my lead.”

  She wanted to ask him how she was supposed to do that when she was scared out of her mind, but there was no time. Her door was jerked open and the sheriff bellowed, “Get out.”

  Shaking like a leaf, she did as he said, but it wasn’t easy. She was wearing a long-sleeved sweater, and that helped hide the unlocked handcuffs draped loosely around her wrists, but with every move, she was terrified that they would clink together. Afraid he would notice, she said loudly, “Why have you brought us here? What do you want from us? We didn’t write Hilda’s will. If you want to blame someone, blame her.”

  “Oh, she’s got her own special place in hell,” he said coldly as Donovan stepped out of the car and joined her. “And so will the two of you and the rest of the Wyatts.”

  When he jerked his service revolver out of the holster on his hip, Donovan swore. “Are you sure you want to do this? Killing us won’t accomplish anything, you know. There are three more Wyatts at the ranch. You can’t kill all of them.”

  Madness gleaming in his eyes, Sherm Clark grinned maliciously. “Why can’t I? And I can start with Miss Prissy here.” In the blink of an eye, he pointed the gun straight at Priscilla. “Where would you like the first bullet, sweetheart? Your head or your heart? Or I can do both, one after the other. You won’t feel a thing.”

  “Leave her alone, you bastard,” Donovan growled.

  The sheriff never took his eyes off Priscilla. “Go to hell.”

  Donovan told himself Clark was bitter and twisted, but he wasn’t the kind who did his own dirty work. He stood back and let other people do that. He’d never have the nerve to kill someone himself.

  But even as Donovan tried to convince himself the sheriff was just trying to scare them, the older man’s face hardened. Something flickered in his cold blue eyes, something that turned Donovan’s blood to ice. “No!”

  Throwing his handcuffs at the older man, he jumped in front of Priscilla just as Sherm Clark dodged the handcuffs and pulled the trigger. Donovan felt the bullet, hotter than hell, slam into his shoulder, and sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the handcuffs. If he hadn’t distracted him so he had to dodge the cuffs, he would have blown his head off.

  “No!” Priscilla screamed when he was knocked off his feet. Throwing her own cuffs at the sheriff’s head, she missed, but she hardly noticed. She couldn’t take her eyes off Donovan.

  “Get back!” the sheriff snarled when she took a step toward Donovan. “I mean it! You take three steps back or I’ll blow your damn head off. Move. Now!” he cried, and aimed the revolver right at her head.

  Pale as a ghost, she stepped back because he didn’t give her any other choice. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “It isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “Shut up!”

  Hate etching his face, he took a step toward her, the gun never wavering as he pointed it at her head. Unable to take her gaze off the gun, Priscilla paled as his finger moved on the trigger. “No!”

  Her scream echoed down the canyon just as two shots rang out. Petrified she waited for a bullet right between the eyes, but it was the sheriff who cried out when a slug slammed into his hand and his pistol went flying. A split second later, a second bullet caught him in the leg, and he screamed in pain.

  Stunned, Priscilla didn’t wait to see who had come to her rescue…or if whoever had shot the sheriff also intended to shoot her. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Donovan.

  Rushing to his side, she dropped to her knees and was alarmed to see the blood streaming from the wound in his shoulder. “Oh, my God!”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said tightly, struggling to sit up and wincing in pain. “We don’t know where those shots came from.”

  “I don’t give a damn where they came from,” she retorted. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding before you bleed to death!”

  “Let him bleed,” the sheriff grumbled, trying to wrap a handkerchief around the wound in his calf. “He deserves it and so do you.”

  “Get the first aid kit out of the patrol car, sweetheart,” Donovan told Priscilla. “And bring me the sheriff’s gun. I don’t trust the bastard.”

  She looked around for the gun and spied it on the ground, five feet from where Sherm Clark had fallen. Just as she hurried over to it, he lunged, scrambling for the gun.

  It happened so fast, she didn’t have time to think. “No!” she cried, and dove for the gun.

  Caught up in the fight for control, she didn’t hear Donovan curse or see him struggle to come to her aid. There was only the sheriff…and the gun. The thunder of her heart loud in her ears, she reached for the revolver, felt the cold metal under her fingers.

  “Bitch!” Clark screamed and wrapped his fingers in her hair. Giving a fierce yank, he laughed as she gasped in pain.

  Tears flooding her eyes, Priscilla wasn’t going to let him win. Her scalp burning and her head jerked back at an excruciating angle, she threw the gun with all her might into the bushes ten feet away.

  Bellowing in rage, the sheriff released her hair, only to backhand her across the face. Stars exploded in front of her eyes, then went black. Without a sound, she slid boneless to the ground.

  “Priscilla? C’mon, sweetheart, open your eyes. You’re going to be all right.”

  “It’s over, Sis. Wake up. You’re safe. We’re all safe now.”

  From what seemed like a thousand miles away, Priscilla heard Donovan and her brother calling to her. She struggled through the blackness that engulfed her, only to moan as pain pulled at her, dragging her back to consciousness.

  “My face hurts,” she whispered. Barely able to open her eyes, she frowned in confusion at the sight of her brother and her soon to be brother-in-law, Hunter, flanking Donovan and hovering over her worriedly. “What happened? Where did you two come from?”

  “After Donovan called and said you were on your way to the ranch, Buck was afraid you weren’t going to make it safely, so we came looking for you,” Hunter explained.

  “We saw the sheriff stop you,” Buck added, “and stayed back far enough that he wouldn’t notice us trailing him. I think he was so excited about catching you that he completely forgot to check his mirrors. When he stopped and let the two of you out of the car, we were too far away to do anything when he shot Donovan.”

  At her brother’s words, Priscilla gasped as the horror of the last hour came rushing back, and her eyes flew to Donovan’s bloody shoulder. “Are you all right?” she asked him. “We’ve got to call an ambulance!”

  “Two are on the way right now,” Buck assured her. “One for you and Donovan and the other for the sheriff.”

  Outraged, she couldn’t believe she’d heard him correctly. “You called an ambulance for that jackass? He shot Donovan! And hit me!”

  “And Donovan beat the stuffing out of him,” Hunter told her with a grin. “For a man with a bullet hole in his shoulder, he packs a whale of a punch. It took both of us to pull him off the jerk.”

  Surprised, she looked at Donovan with a new level of respect. “You hit him for me?”

  His lips twitched slightly. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?”

  No. When he reached for her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers, she knew he would tak
e on the devil himself to protect her—and very nearly had. If he’d jumped in front of her five seconds earlier, if Sherm Clark had realized eliminating her wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d just killed Donovan first, he would be lying dead on the ground instead of holding her hand.

  Tears welled in her eyes at the thought. “I could have lost you,” she choked out.

  Uncaring of the fact that her brother and Hunter were right there, listening to every word, he said, “That was never going to happen, sweetheart. Do you really think I’d let that bastard take me away from you? I love you. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  “I think that’s our cue to give you two some space,” Hunter said with a grin.

  “I hear the ambulances coming,” Buck added, his blue eyes twinkling as his sister looked up at him, dazed. “The way I figure it, you’ve got ten minutes, tops, before you’re both whisked back to the hospital and Donovan’s operated on. After that, he’s going to be so weak and drugged out, he won’t know which end is up for at least forty-eight hours. If I were you, I’d talk fast.”

  Donovan gave Buck a sharp look. “I’m not playing games. I love her. Do you have any objections to that?”

  “She’s a grown woman and knows what she wants,” her brother said. “If you haven’t figured that out by now, you don’t know her well enough to love her. Don’t tell me. Tell her.”

  Grinning, Donovan turned back to Priscilla. “You heard him. I love you. Do you have any objections to that?”

  “Just one,” she murmured as she swayed toward him with a wicked grin. “What took you so long?”

  Epilogue

  Two Weeks Later

  Harvey Pritchard was tall and as thin as a rail and could have passed for Jimmy Stewart. Pushing seventy, he was methodical and detail-oriented, and always on time. One year to the day after he’d first read the will to the Wyatts and made sure they understood the conditions of Hilda’s will, he showed up at the Broken Arrow with paperwork for them to sign.