The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Before she could complete the inadequate apology, her time ran out and the dial tone buzzed her ear.

  She took great care replacing the phone on the receiver, despite the violent urge she suddenly had to take her rage and guilt out on it by smashing it into little pieces.

  She had to make this right. No matter what, she had to stop this DeMarranville person and the men who worked for him.

  Because she had let them terrify her and send her running, a sweet, innocent old woman had suffered, but she wouldn’t let it go any further. She was going to put a stop to it. She was going to go to the police and tell them everything she knew.

  Colt would help her, she thought suddenly. Last week he had said he knew people she could talk to, people who could help her. She would wait for him to arrive in the morning and then she would begin the slow, painful process of reclaiming her life.

  No matter what she might have to face, she had to do this, for Rosie’s sake and for her own.

  Chapter 14

  Tired and irritable, Colt pulled his truck and horse trailer, next to Maggie’s rig.

  Damn woman. He’d been driving flat-out for seven hours to catch up with her. Now it was nearly dark, his back ached, and he had a headache that just wouldn’t quit, despite a double dose of aspirin and as much caffeine as he could stand.

  When he met up with her, he was going to wring her beautiful little neck for running off and leaving him behind. And then he was going to kiss her senseless.

  With that tantalizing thought in mind, he eased his sore muscles out of the truck. His boots hit the ground just as the aluminum door to her trailer opened.

  Maggie paused in the doorway and stared at him. “Colt!” she exclaimed, and he was gratified to hear a relieved sort of welcome in her voice. “What are you doing here? I didn’t expect you until tomorrow morning.”

  No way was he going to let her get off that easy. A little softness didn’t make up for the whole day of stress he had just endured. “Don’t you have more sense than to take off halfway across the West all by yourself?” he snapped.

  “Excuse me?” Any pleasure he might have heard before in her voice dried up now, leaving it as prickly as a cactus. “I didn’t realize I had to ask your permission.”

  “You don’t.” He bit down on his temper. Getting angry at her wasn’t going to solve anything. “You know you don’t. I’m sorry I snapped at you, but I was worried. You left without a word. Without even saying goodbye.”

  Before she could answer, a familiar little figure burst through the doorway and scampered past her down the steps, nearly knocking her over in his excitement.

  “Colt!” Nicky yelled, jumping into his arms.

  “Hey, partner.” The boy felt so damn right in his arms, like he belonged there. Colt didn’t want to let himself think about it, or about how much it would hurt when he wouldn’t see the little rascal anymore. “How was the ride down?”

  “Good. I saw some buffaloes and a great big elk and Mom let me get a hamburger Happy Meal for lunch.”

  “Wow. Sounds like you two had a real party without me.”

  Nicky giggled. “We did. Me and Cheyenne are makin’ cookies. Chocolate chip. You want to help?”

  “Mmm. My favorite. I’d love to help, but I need to talk to your mom for a minute. Is that okay with you?”

  Nicky nodded and wiggled to the ground. “Can I go now, Mom?”

  “Did you finish your dinner?”

  “Yep. Even the yucky peas.”

  “All right. Only until this batch is done, though. Then it’s bedtime.”

  “Save me a cookie, partner,” Colt said.

  “Okay.” Nicky galloped toward a trailer on the next row, leaving behind a tense, stilted silence that hovered between Maggie and Colt like an angry swarm of bees.

  Colt was the first to wade in. “Why did you run away?”

  For several moments, he didn’t think she would answer. She stared out at the mountains, then back at him, her brown eyes murky and troubled. “I needed time, space, to figure out where we go from here,” she finally said.

  “And?”

  “And I think we both know what happened last night was a mistake. A mistake that can’t happen again.”

  “Funny thing about that,” he said softly. “My head knows you’re right, that we’re headin’ for trouble. But somehow I’m havin’ a hard time convincing the rest of me, especially when all I can think about is taking you in my arms again.”

  “Colt—” she began, alarm flaring briefly in her eyes when he stepped forward.

  “One kiss, Doc. Just one, to see if you taste as sweet as I’ve been remembering all day.”

  For all her protests, she came into his arms willingly enough and lifted her face to meet his touch. He kept the kiss easy, nonthreatening, and was rewarded by the softening of her mouth, by her hands fluttering up to rest on his chest.

  Just when his body started clamoring for him to deepen the kiss, her hands fell to her sides, though, and she wrenched her mouth away. “Stop. I can’t think straight when you do that.”

  Well, that’s something, he thought.

  She stepped away a pace from him and folded her fingers together. “Actually, I’m glad you decided to come to the rodeo a day early. I—I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “I’ve decided to take my chances and contact the police. I want to give a statement about—about that night, about watching those men murder Michael.”

  He stared at her in astonishment. It was absolutely the last thing he expected her to say. “Why now?”

  Her shoulders tensed, her fingers tightening together until he could see the whites of her knuckles. “I told you about Rosie, didn’t I?”

  “She’s the woman who tended Nicky that night, right? Whose place you went to after the murder.”

  “Yes. When I...when Michael and I separated, she helped me find an apartment near her house so she could continue helping out with Nicky, even though I couldn’t afford to hire a full-time housekeeper. But she’s always been much more than that to me. She was...” Her voice wobbled slightly, but she quickly recovered. “She’s my friend.”

  Hearing that wobble, his shoulder blades started up with that damn itching again. “Something wrong with her?”

  “I tried to call her a few hours ago to ask what happened after I left her house the night Michael died, if the police officers I contacted ever showed up.” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I found out she’s been in the hospital almost as long as I’ve been away. She was attacked, beaten nearly to death, while she was cleaning out my apartment. I’m positive the men who hurt her are the same men who killed Michael.”

  He swallowed a harsh oath. Why hadn’t he heard about the housekeeper being attacked at Maggie’s apartment, something with such obvious significance to the case?

  “Don’t you see?” Maggie went on. “If I had stayed in San Francisco, if I had faced what happened instead of running away, Rosie wouldn’t have been hurt.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for this, Doc. You did what you thought was best to protect you and your son.”

  “Maybe I’ve been wrong. I can’t keep this up. I can’t just keep running away for the rest of my life. As long as I do—as long as I let my fear control me—these men will continue hurting people who are completely innocent in all of this.”

  “Including you and Nicky.”

  “I have to face this and go to the police. I would have done it earlier tonight, as soon as I talked to Rosie’s daughter and found out about her beating, but I didn’t know where to go. When I told you what happened, you told me you knew some people who might be able to help me. I want to talk to them. Now. Tonight.”

  “Maggie—”

  “I need you to help me, Colt. I have to make this right.”

  Now was the time to tell her. To whip out his badge and his Bureau identification from his back pocket and be done with the ugly lies. He couldn’t put it off any
more. He opened his mouth, searching for the right words, but the ones he chose burned in his throat like bitter acid.

  Before he could clear it away, a long, high shriek echoed through the evening air, followed immediately by the slam of a car door and squealing tires. A car’s engine rumbled, then began to fade as it left the campground, but the keening wails went on and on.

  A chill of foreboding slithered down his spine. He and Maggie shared an alarmed look, then they both raced toward the source of the cries. The chill turned into a downright deep freeze at the sight of Cheyenne, Maggie’s niece, standing in front of the trailer she shared with her grandmother.

  The girl’s eyes were huge and frightened, her hands were pressed against her cheeks, and she rocked back and forth on her heels, staring at the cloud of dust already beginning to settle.

  “What is it?” Maggie asked, grabbing Cheyenne’s arms.

  “What happened?”

  The teenager looked as if she had been seized by some deep, endless horror. She looked at Maggie and didn’t seem to recognize her for an instant, then her face seemed to crumple. “Nicky. They took Nicky.”

  Maggie reeled back as if she’d been punched in the gut. She swayed, then her face leached of all color and she started to fall just as Peg rounded the corner.

  Colt grabbed her before she could hit the ground and handed her off to her stepmother. “Take care of her,” he ordered, already heading for his truck, fiercely praying—as he hadn’t done in longer than he could remember—that he wouldn’t be too late.

  When he reached his truck, he swore, long and violently. Trying to pursue DeMarranville—and he was stupid if he didn’t think his old partner was behind this—would be next to impossible with the camper on the bed and the horse trailer still hooked up.

  He scanned the campground quickly and raced to the first vehicle he could see that wasn’t hooked to a rig, a late-model pickup, souped up with a big chrome rollbar and a wild, psychedelic paint job.

  “Hey!” A startled cowboy who had been sitting on the shiny fender flirting with some buckle bunny in tight jeans and caked-on makeup, jumped up when Colt opened the cab.

  “Where are the keys?” Colt yelled, conscious that with every passing second, his chances of finding Nicky dwindled.

  “Get the hell out of my truck!” The cowboy fumbled with the door.

  Colt yanked his badge out and thrust it into the cowboy’s face through the open window. “FBI! Give me the friggin’ keys.”

  The kid paused for just an instant, then dug them out of his leather vest pocket and tossed through them in the window. Colt caught them in mid-air, shoved them into the ignition and gunned the engine.

  As he roared out of the campground, the last thing he saw view in the rearview mirror was Maggie on her knees in the dirt, clutching her stomach and looking as if her world had just been destroyed.

  She was dying.

  As a doctor, she dealt with death every day. Sometimes, when she watched her patients cope with the knowledge of their own mortality, she had wondered what it must be like.

  Now she knew. It was agony. Sheer, unadulterated agony. Each breath felt like a hundred knives slicing at her lungs, as if two giant hands were squeezing the life out of her heart with every beat.

  Nicky was gone and her soul had gone with him.

  He had been gone less than an hour, but already she felt as if everything that had meaning in her life had been snatched away from her. She drew in a ragged breath, vaguely surprised that she could even go through even the most basic motions of living when the most important part of her had been excised so viciously.

  Colt would bring him back. She clutched the thought like it was her last link to sanity. Colt would find her little boy, and he would bring him back to her. He had to. The alternative was unimaginable.

  Without taking her gaze from the road, she rubbed a hand across her heart, trying not to think of her sweet little boy in the hands of the same evil that had killed his father.

  In the time since they had stolen Nicky away, the sun had slipped behind the mountains on the west side of Great Salt Lake. Around her, the other rodeo participants went on about their business, unaware of the drama being played out.

  The only one who had paid any attention was the cowboy whose truck Colt had appropriated. He had come over babbling some nonsense about cops and robbers and wanting to make damned sure his truck wasn’t damaged or the government would pay for it.

  She hadn’t been able to summon the energy to tell him he must have misunderstood and eventually he had wandered away.

  She sensed someone approaching and shifted her gaze from the road only long enough to see that the intruder was Cheyenne, her eyes swollen and red blotches covering her face from weeping.

  Her niece stretched a hand out and and touched Maggie’s shoulder with icy fingers. She felt as if she were made of fragile, handblown glass, as if she would shatter at even that smallest of touches, but she gathered the pieces of herself together and crossed a hand over her chest to lay it over the girl’s.

  She squeezed Cheyenne’s fingers, feigning a reassurance she was far from feeling.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Maggie,” Cheyenne whispered. “So sorry. I just went inside for a moment, I swear. I just needed to check on our cook—”

  Her voice broke, and it took a moment for her to compose herself enough to continue “The timer went off on our cookies. I just went in to take them out of the oven and I heard tires screeching. I thought it was just somebody driving too fast so I looked out the window to make sure Nicky was okay. Next thing I knew, a big dark car pulled up and two men jumped out and they grabbed Nicky and shoved him inside. They—they were gone before I could even make it outside.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Cheyenne.” Her voice sounded bruised, damaged, as if she’d been shouting. Funny, she’d thought all her screaming had been on the inside.

  “I should never have left him alone.”

  “It’s not your fault.” If anyone was responsible, she was. She was the one who was supposed to be protecting her son. She should have been more alert, more vigilant.

  Somehow she had led them here. She didn’t know how, but all her efforts to safeguard him had been for nothing. They had found her, anyway, and now held the one sure ace to make certain she cooperated.

  They had to know she would do anything, anything, if only they wouldn’t hurt her little boy.

  “Colt will find him. Won’t he?”

  She met Cheyenne’s gaze briefly, and the raw hope there made her ache and look away. It was too similar to what she knew must be burning in her own eyes.

  Tempering the hope was a sick, terrible fear that had begun to gnaw at her stomach. Even if Colt somehow managed to catch up with them, what could one man possibly do? He had no weapon, no armor. Nothing to protect himself against the kind of twisted men willing to use a little boy for their own ends.

  The pay phone across the road rang suddenly, jangling her already-frayed nerves. Cheyenne forgotten, Maggie stared at it for only an instant, then with grim foreboding, rushed to answer it, instinctively knowing who would be on the other end of the line.

  “Dr. Prescott.” The voice in her ear was smooth, cultured and had a rolling, hypnotizing cadence. Somehow she knew she was speaking with the devil himself. DeMarranville.

  “Where is my son?” she rasped out.

  “Your son is fine, I assure you. We’re treating him as our honored guest. Right now he’s enjoying himself watching a television program and eating ice cream, probably having more fun than he has in weeks.”

  “I want to speak with him. Let me speak with him.”

  “I’m hurt, Dr. Prescott. Don’t you trust my word?”

  She rubbed a fist against her stomach where nausea rolled and pitched. The bastard held her son’s life in his hands, and he wanted to play sickening little games with her. Slowly, painfully, she ordered herself to stay calm. Nothing would be accomplished by giving in to the fear
and fury roiling around inside her.

  “Please.” The word whispered between her lips, a prayer to the devil.

  DeMarranville must have taken pity on her. “Carlo,” she heard him say in the background, “the doctor would like to speak with her son.”

  A few seconds later she nearly sagged to the ground when she heard his high, sweet voice, sounding as clear and as unhurt as it had less than an hour earlier. “Hi, Mommy.”

  If she thought she knew death before, hearing his voice so far away from her gave the word a whole new dimension. The knives stabbed into her chest again and again and again, and she bled from a thousand cuts. “Oh, Nicky. Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  He sounded remarkably cheerful. “Yeah. I just had a bubblegum ice cream cone and later we’re gonna have some pizza and watch a Western movie Mr. Damian got just for me.”

  “That will be fun,” she forced herself to say.

  “Mr. Damian says I’m just staying with him for a while because you had some stuff to do. He’s pretty nice, I guess, but I’d rather be with Colt or Cheyenne.”

  “I know. But you’ll be back with me soon.” Please God, please God, please God.

  “Mr. Damian says I have to go now. I love you, Mommy.”

  How much more could she survive? She managed to keep the tears rolling down her cheeks from coming through in her voice. “Oh, sweetheart. I love you, too.”

  There was a silence on the line and then DeMarranville returned. “I told you he was fine. You should have trusted me.”

  “What do you want.” The words coming from her throat sounded more harsh than she expected, short and bitter and filled with loathing.

  “I think you know the answer to that. Your husband was a very bad boy, Dr. Prescott. Now it’s up to you to make it right.”

  “How?”

  “Simple. The money and the disk for the boy.”

  I don’t have them, she wanted to scream at the man, but fear held her tongue. If they thought she wasn’t cooperating, what would they do to her child?

  At her continuing silence, DeMarranville went on, “We know you must have them. We have painstakingly searched through both your apartment and through your husband’s home to no avail. Michael was most clear to my people that you were the one who knew where they were.”