Lone Rider Bodyguard

by Harper Allen

  “What do you mean? Where’s Susannah?” Too late Tye realized he’d barked the questions at the woman, but she seemed to understand his concern.

  “Nothing’s happened to her. She’s gone up the road to get—”

  The rest of her sentence was lost as the unmistakable sound of a rifleshot rang out, so loudly that it felt as if it was splitting the very air around them. Tye froze.

  The next moment he was sprinting toward Matt’s vehicle.

  “Adams, wait! This is police business.” Matt caught up with him as he swung himself into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. The motor roared to life.

  “I don’t think so. Susannah’s safety is my business,” Tye said hoarsely. “Besides, there may be more than one shooter on the loose, and someone has to stay behind to guard Danny. Get out of my way, Matt, or I’ll—”

  “The shotgun’s loaded. There’s more ammo in the box under the seat.”

  Matt leapt from the truck’s running board as Tye threw the vehicle into Reverse. Gravel flew up as he backed out of the parking lot and then shot forward, the engine racing as he sped down the road in the direction the shot had come from. One-handedly he unclipped the short-barreled shotgun from its cradle on the floor beside the seat.

  He’d been so sure, so criminally sure nothing could harm her here, he berated himself, pushing the accelerator pedal to the floor and correcting the truck’s progress as it started to slide into a skid. Strangers found it hard to pass unnoticed on the Dinetah, and he’d counted on that to discourage Susannah’s pursuers from targeting her while she was with Joanna Tahe.

  He was lying to himself, he thought coldly.

  “That’s not why you went off with Matt chasing ghosts and witches that didn’t exist, Adams, and you know it,” he said to himself between clenched teeth. “Sure, you let your guard down because you were on the reservation but admit it—you were glad of the excuse to get away from her. Just being near her is driving you crazy…and you can’t stand feeling that way, especially when you know there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  A second shot rang out. Rounding a bend in the road, through the pelting rain he saw a splash of color against the gravel up ahead—a splash of blue and white, like the blue-and-white dress Susannah had been wearing when he’d left her at the clinic an hour ago.

  Susannah was lying facedown on the road only yards away. Even now she could be dead.

  The truck tires bit into the gravel and locked as he braked, but already he was out of the vehicle and running the last few feet to her. As he fell to his knees beside her she raised her head fearfully.

  “Tye!” There was a nasty graze on her cheek and her face was smeared with mud, but all he could see was that golden-brown gaze, wide with apprehension. Relief flooded through him. “There’s someone shooting at me, Tye. What are we going to do? I think he’s somewhere in the trees behind that trailer, just waiting for us to make a move.”

  “Then his wait’s over,” Tye said harshly. “I have to get you out of here, honey, and the truck’s our best bet. On the count of three, run. I’m going to be with you every step of the way, firing back at the bastard. One, two—”

  “Tye, wait!” Her voice was thin. “If something happens to me—”

  “I’m going to make damn sure nothing does happen to you—” he began. She cut him off, her tone strained and urgent.

  “If something happens to me I need to know Danny’s going to be in good hands. Maybe this isn’t formal or anything, but if you say you’ll care for my boy that’s enough for me. Will you, Tye? Will you look after Danny if…if his mama’s not around for him?”

  Her eyes, wide and pleading, met his. Something in him felt like it was cracking in two.

  “You don’t have to ask, Suze,” he said huskily. “But it’s not going to come to that. Now, on my count run for the truck and don’t look back no matter what. If I don’t make it, head for the clinic and tell Matt what’s happened.”

  “Leave you behind? No, Tye, I couldn’t—”

  “Three!”

  As he rasped out the command, he rose, jerking her up with him. Almost immediately he heard the flat whine of a shot, and, giving Susannah a push to propel her forward, he fired back in the general direction of the trees behind the trailer.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw her take a halting step. Her face went white with pain, and she came close to falling.

  “My ankle,” she gasped. “I twisted it on my way here.”

  “Hold on to me,” he said swiftly, pulling her to him with his free hand and taking care to keep his own body between her and the hidden rifleman. “Only a few more yards, Suze. Come on, you can make it.”

  He didn’t hear the shot that ploughed through his shoulder, and for an instant he didn’t even feel it. Then the pain bloomed, hot and wet and immediate. He ignored it. Forcing his arm up he pulled off another one-handed shot, all the while stumbling toward the truck with Susannah at his side. As they reached the vehicle’s open door he boosted her up onto the seat.

  “Scoot over, honey.” He could barely recognize his own voice. “Take the shotgun and start firing out the window to keep him occupied.”

  She hesitated, and then grabbed the weapon from him, her expression set. He kept forgetting one simple fact, Tye thought disjointedly as he hauled himself behind the wheel and reached for the gearshift, glad it was his left arm and not his right that was useless. This woman had survived a deadly hunt that had stretched over eight states. Despite her gentle exterior, Susannah Bird had a core of forged steel.

  “You’re hurt!” Appalled dismay shadowed her eyes as she glimpsed the blood now soaking the left sleeve of his shirt. Her lips firmed to an angry line. “Keep him occupied? If he steps out from cover just once, I believe I’ll do a little better’n that, Tye.”

  They were a regular Bonnie and Clyde, he thought lightheadedly as the truck slewed backward through the pouring rain at top speed, Susannah firing steadily. Her maneuver had the desired effect of allowing them to reach the curve in the road without further incident. Gunning the motor, he let the back end of the vehicle swing around in an unstable arc before taking the truck out of reverse and heading for the clinic.

  As they neared the building he saw Matt Tahe about to get into the truck he and Susannah had arrived in, but as the Navajo lawman saw them he strode toward them, his relief at their return evident on his rain-wet features.

  “The shooter was firing from somewhere near the house-trailer down the road. I took one of his bullets but I don’t think any of mine hit him,” Tye said without preamble as Tahe reached the truck. “He had damn good cover, so you’re going to need me with you when you go in after him. If we can find something to strap up my arm I should be able to hold a shotgun.”

  He wasn’t sure if that was true. His shoulder felt as if it was attached to his body with a rusty steel spike, and even the slightest movement seemed to drive the spike farther in.

  “Jimmy Rock’s place?” Matt looked grim. “There’s a couple of accessible trails leading from his property. His son has a backhoe and Jimmy got him to carve out some extra roads, which isn’t going to make my job any easier.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and Tye saw a Tribal Police vehicle barreling into the parking lot, a young policeman at the wheel. “And thanks for the offer, Adams, but judging from the look of that shoulder I’d say you’re on the disabled list for the time being. Besides, I think the best thing you can do right now is to get Susannah and that little guy of hers back to the Double B. Your son’s fine,” he added to her. “A friend of Joanna’s came by just after you left, and I put her on baby-sitting detail.”

  Tahe was a highly capable law officer, Tye thought as the Tribal Police vehicle pulled out of the parking lot at top speed. But he’d been right in his assessment of the situation—it wasn’t going to be easy finding the shooter. As worrying as that was though, what concerned Tye even more was that the shooter had found them.
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  Encountering an unprotected Susannah by Rock’s trailer had to have been nothing more a lucky break on the part of her assailant, but the fact remained that her would-be killer had obviously followed them onto Navajo land in readiness for just such a break. Up until now he’d been assuming the men who’d been hunting her since Frank Barrett’s murder in New Jersey were hired enforcers; good at what they did, certainly, but readily identifiable as what they were. He’d based that assumption on the man he’d taken out in Greta’s garage, Tye acknowledged. Today had proven that assumption dangerously wrong.

  One of the three who’d pursued Susannah to New Mexico had the ability to blend in with the local populace, at least to the extent that his presence here on the Dinetah had roused no instant suspicion. That was bad news, he thought grimly. In fact, the only bright spot in this whole disastrous day was that the lone gunman by Jimmy Rock’s trailer had been just that—alone.

  Which means the bullet you fired into his buddy the other night either put him out of the running for good or at least eliminated him as a threat for the time being, he told himself. I wouldn’t count on it being the former, Adams, given your dismal track record on this case so far.

  Greta’s surgeon had said that she had to have had a guardian angel. That same angel must have put in some overtime today watching over Susannah, he thought bitterly, because her so-called bodyguard couldn’t take any credit for her survival.

  His hand on the door, he turned to her. “Matt’s right, Suze, the Double B’s the best place for you and Danny. One of Del’s men can stand guard at the house itself while the other’s stationed at the gate leading onto the property, and Del should be back from the hospital later this afternoon. With three able-bodied men on alert you’ll be safe.”

  Cautiously he moved his arm, and bright pain stabbed through him. He ignored it and went on, seeing no reason to modulate the self-condemnation in his tone. “But it’s up to you. I wouldn’t blame you if you decided not to accept my assessment of the situation and tell Bannerman you’ve reconsidered his offer of protective custody. What nearly happened to you today was my fault, and I know it.”

  Susannah frowned. “What in the world are you talking about? That bullet you took was meant for me, Tye. You’ve saved my life twice now—maybe three times, because I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come by when I was giving birth to Danny.”

  Her face was mud-streaked and her hair was plastered wetly to her skull. Her dress was ruined. He kept seeing her at her worst, Tye thought. At her worst she still had every other woman beat hands down. At her worst she still had the power to make his heart turn over.

  Gratitude was the last thing he wanted from her.

  “I didn’t save your life, I put it in jeopardy,” he said harshly. “If that shooter today had taken me down it wouldn’t have been any more than I deserved, honey.”

  “Tyler Adams, you hush your mouth!” Her eyes blazed with sudden fury. “For some reason being a hero doesn’t sit well with you. That’s just too bad, because from where I’m standing that’s exactly what you are, so for heaven’s sake get used to it!”

  He stared at her, too taken aback to attempt a reply. She stared angrily back at him, her attitude so tensely electric it seemed as though the lightning outside had charged the air between them.

  He always swore later that she cracked first. She always insisted he hadn’t been able to hold back the grin that had broken her composure. However it happened, one moment the two of them were glaring at each other and the next thing Tye knew they were both laughing, Susannah so hard the tears came to her eyes.

  And then the tears took over.

  “Suze, honey, don’t cry.”

  He’d dated one or two actresses in his time, he recalled distractedly. Crying had been something they’d been able to do at will, and they’d looked heartbreakingly gorgeous while the tears had slowly slid down their faces. The same with the models he’d known—like liquid crystal, shimmering drops had trembled on their lower lashes, sometimes even splashing to their chiseled cheekbones. He’d always caved at the sight of female tears.

  But he’d never felt like this—as though he would gladly tear out his heart and give it to her if by doing so he could take all her unhappiness, all her sorrow, away.

  She didn’t cry like a model, or like an actress. She cried like a woman.

  “You could have been killed, Tye.” She rubbed the heels of her hands across her cheeks, smearing the dirt into a paste. She shook her head, and fixed him with a red-rimmed gaze. “That’s all I could think of while we were driving back here just now—you could have been killed, and I never would have gotten the chance to…the chance to…”

  Her eyes squeezed shut and she pressed her lips together, as if to keep whatever it was she’d been about to say locked up behind them. Helplessly he touched her hair.

  “I wasn’t killed, Suze. But I died a thousand deaths when I thought something had happened to you.” Desperately he searched for something that would take away the anguish in her voice. “Looks like we both got second chances at making sure whenever our time really does come we’ll have done everything we wanted to in this life.”

  It had been the first thing he’d been able to think of, but it seemed he’d struck a chord with her. She opened her eyes.

  “You mean without having to regret the things we didn’t do,” she said slowly, not phrasing it as a question. She looked at him, and beneath the mud on her cheeks he saw a faint touch of pink.

  “I saw a greeting card once, Tye. It said, ‘Life’s a party. Eat cake.’ Granny Lacey said it was foolish, but I…” She swallowed visibly. “I wondered if maybe eating cake wasn’t sometimes just as important as everything else. Perhaps even more important, once in a while.”

  She’d grown up moving from town to town with a woman who, however much she’d loved her, couldn’t have completely filled the place of the parents a five-year-old Susannah had lost so tragically, Tye thought slowly. And Lacey Bird’s first priority would always have been to make sure she kept her dutiful granddaughter’s feet on the straight and narrow path, rather than unnecessarily smoothing that path for her. From what Susannah had said, they’d never had much money. From what she’d left unsaid, it was a good guess that any extra hadn’t been spent on what Granny Lacey would undoubtedly call fripperies, but put in the collection plate or given to charity.

  He’d never seen Susannah in anything but the cheapest of cotton dresses. The tiny collection of toiletries she’d lined up on the bathroom shelf at Del’s were utilitarian bargain brands.

  He didn’t know what it was she’d been about to say a moment ago, but it wasn’t hard to guess. If her life had been cut short today there was a world of things she wouldn’t ever have experienced. He intended to set that right, starting now.

  “Eat cake,” he said quietly, looking at her and seeing the fugitive wistfulness behind that steady gaze.

  There was a good possibility he wasn’t the man for her. He knew that, although just acknowledging it came close to tearing him in two. She deserved someone better than Frank Barrett, someone better than Tyler Adams. She deserved a man who could believe in dreams and make them come true for her, and he wasn’t sure he was that man. But whether he was or not, he was going to make everything up to her.

  “Eat cake?” he repeated. He shook his head solemnly, his gaze holding hers. “That doesn’t sound foolish to me, honey. That doesn’t sound foolish at all.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Miz Barrett, it’s been too long since I had chicken-fried steak like that.” Paul Johnson leaned back in his chair and patted his lean stomach. “And those mashed potatoes weren’t anything like what we usually chow down on here. Del’s pretty good at whipping the youngsters who come to the Double B into shape, but his potatoes usually end up a tad lumpy. He’ll be sorry he missed this.”

  He gave a thoughtful shake of his head. “Or maybe not. As good a cook as you are, I guess his ladyfriend com
es first with him. Can’t blame the man for wanting to stay overnight in Gallup just to be on hand if she needs him.”

  “Great meal, Suze.”

  Tye was wearing faded jeans and a sweatshirt with the arms cut off, the better to accommodate his bandaged shoulder. Susannah knew the quick heat she felt touching her cheeks as she acknowledged his compliment wasn’t solely due to pleasure that he’d enjoyed the food she’d cooked, and it didn’t have anything at all to do with the fact she’d been standing over a stove. He raised his coffee cup to his lips, and the biceps she’d been staring at shifted slightly beneath the tan of his skin.

  She snatched her gaze away. To her relief Paul Johnson spoke again, his tone more somber this time.

  “The rez police didn’t come up with any leads on the shooter? Seems to me like someone must have seen something.”

  “Tahe says not,” Tye answered, frowning. “If these guys are mob hit men like Jess thinks, they should be sticking out like sore thumbs, but the shooter got on and presumably off Navajo land without raising an eyebrow.”

  “Matt’s grandmother’s going to be all right, at least,” Susannah said. “When Joanna phoned she told me it hadn’t been a full-blown attack, but more of a warning signal to the old lady. Not that Alice Tahe is taking any heed of the warning,” she sighed. “Apparently she’s more convinced than ever there’s a ghost or a spirit behind all this.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled for a haunt, then,” Johnson said, the almost unnoticeable crease in his cheek the only indication that his sunbaked features had briefly moved in a smile. He stood, and picked up a battered cowboy hat. “I’d better be getting along to my post. Miz Barrett, thanks again for the meal.”