Lone Rider Bodyguard

by Harper Allen

  “Frank was murdered because of me,” she whispered hoarsely. “If I’m linked to the killers somehow, then he was just as much an innocent bystander as Greta and Mr. Stephanopoulos.”

  “And you,” Del said sharply. “Don’t blame yourself for—” He stopped in midsentence, his jaw tightening. “What the hell does that damned fool think he’s doing? He’s got the animal on a slip-halter, for God’s sake!”

  Following his glance, she saw what he was talking about. Kevin Bradley, his face contorted in rage, was barely hanging on to the horse he was leading toward them. Even as she watched he wrenched viciously at the halter and the beast seemed to stumble.

  With a scream of agony that set off an answering wail in a startled Danny, it lifted its back leg off the ground. The next moment Susannah saw the horse jerk its head upward, its eyes rolling in anguish, and the lead shank Bradley had been controlling it with whipped out of his hand to trail uselessly on the ground.

  “Over there—the machine shed.” Del raised his voice above Danny’s frightened sobs. “Run to it as fast as you can, sweetheart. That animal’s out of its mind with pain and it’s heading this way.”

  But already she’d seen the danger for herself. Rearing and whinnying frantically, the gelding suddenly broke into a flat-out gallop, its front hooves smashing down with such force into the packed dirt that when a horseshoe made contact with a stone Susannah’s fearful gaze caught the flash of a spark. Desperately she began running toward the building Del had indicated, her arms wrapped tightly around Danny, adrenaline doubling her speed.

  And still she wasn’t going to be fast enough, she saw, cold fear coursing through her.

  Del’s disability was seldom allowed to curtail his activities, but in a situation like this there was no denying it held him back. As the animal had thundered by him he’d made a desperate attempt to catch the trailing end of its lead, but at the last minute it had changed course, veering out of his reach. Glancing over her shoulder as she ran, Susannah saw the pain-crazed gelding, its nostrils flared and ropes of foamy spittle swinging from its mouth, bearing down on her and her baby.

  She did the only thing she could think of.

  She let herself fall to her knees and then fully to the ground, her body curved protectively around Danny, who was now crying at the top of his lungs. Squeezing her eyes shut, she waited for the hammer-like hooves to come slicing down, her numb lips moving silently in prayer.

  Take me, Lord, but please—save my little boy. Thy—Thy will be—

  “Susannah!”

  Incredulously she looked up, her eyes flying open in shock.

  Tye was racing toward the runaway horse, and from the angle of his path it was obvious his intention wasn’t to draw level with the animal.

  He meant to cut directly across the path of nearly half a ton of dangerously out-of-control horseflesh, Susannah thought in terror.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Tye!”

  As Susannah screamed out his name she saw him take one last, impossible leap. A split second later he was in front of those scything hooves.

  “No!” The almost incoherent denial felt as if it was being ripped from her throat. She tried to scramble to her feet, but with both arms clasping her small son to her breast her balance was unsteady. A strong grip hauled her upright.

  It was Jess, his face a grim mask, but even as he took her arm his features froze. Her own gaze widened in disbelief.

  As the gelding’s front legs came knifing down, Tye’s leap became a paratrooper-like roll that took him just past those lethal hooves. He was back on his feet immediately, and grabbing for the trailing end of the lead.

  His palms closed over it. The next moment he was jerked sideways as the gelding’s momentum eliminated all slack in the rope. Half running, half dragged beside the animal, he didn’t release his hold on the lead, and as his boots found purchase and his heels dug into the hard-packed dirt his efforts finally paid off.

  The gelding’s head snapped around as the halter lead tautened. Tye instantly took advantage of the situation, bearing down on the lead to prevent the big animal from rearing up.

  As if some switch had been turned off in its brain, suddenly all fight seemed to go out of the horse. Flanks heaving, its shoulders trembling, it whickered once and then blew out its breath in a long, shuddering snuffle.

  “Hero material,” Jess said hoarsely from beside her. He shook his head. “Dammit, only Adams could pull off a stunt like that without killing himself. I thought for sure he was a goner.”

  “So did I.” Her own voice was equally unsteady. “How did he—”

  “Hold it right there, Bradley!”

  The curt command came from Del, Susannah saw, but the man it was directed toward ignored it. Kevin Bradley, his face white with fury, strode up to within a few feet of Tye and the exhausted, trembling horse he was attempting to calm.

  “Goddamn nag,” the hired hand said thickly. “I knew a week after I bought it I’d end up selling its carcass for dogmeat. Stand out of the way, Adams.”

  He brought up a shaking hand. The revolver he was holding wavered, and then steadied.

  “What nearly happened here was no one’s fault but yours, Bradley.” Tye’s tone was ominously even. “You’re not killing this animal to cover up your own criminal irresponsibility.”

  “You’re also not staying on my land another minute.” Leaning heavily on his cane, Del confronted the man. “I’ll give you two weeks wages in lieu of notice, and whatever you paid for this horse, Kevin,” he said quietly. “I just want you gone. Understand?”

  It seemed his ex-employee did, Susannah thought with relief as Bradley slowly lowered his weapon. Shooting a look of impotent dislike at all three men, he turned on his heel and headed for the bunkhouse.

  “Jess, you want to take over from here?” Tye’s voice was husky. “I better take a look at this shoulder of mine. Feels like I might have busted open a couple of stitches.”

  As Jess readily took the lead from him and coaxed the now-docile and limping animal toward its corral, Tye one-handedly unbuttoned his shirt and began shrugging his left arm out of its blood-soaked sleeve. Susannah bit back a gasp and stepped forward.

  “Heavens, Tye—that’s not from a few opened stitches! One of his hooves must have just missed crushing your arm!” She peered worriedly at the raw gash slicing across the original wound. “You’re going to have to have that looked at by a doctor. It could get infected.”

  “Susannah’s right,” Del interjected before Tye could voice a protest. “I’m taking you in to Last Chance to see Doc Jennings right now. You’re going to need a tetanus shot, for starters.”

  “In the morning,” Tye argued. “For God’s sake, I’m not going to get lockjaw overnight, Del, and I’m not leaving Susannah and Danny here unprotected.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy.” Jess rejoined them, his expression uncharacteristically somber as he took in Tye’s injury. “I don’t see why Johnson and I can’t keep a lid on things here until you and Del return. You’re not going to be much use to anyone if you end up in hospital with blood poisoning.”

  “Please, Tye.” Susannah looked down at a red-faced and tear-streaked Danny, whose sobs had trailed off into a steady grizzling. “Hush, starshine,” she said softly, dropping a kiss on the downy head. “It’s all over now. Tye saved us.”

  She looked back up at Tye. “You did save us. Again,” she added quietly. Her eyes met his, and for a moment it was as if there was no one but her and her baby and the man she loved. Then she took a deep breath and affixed a quelling frown to her features.

  “You might be a hero like Jess says, Tyler Adams. But you’ve got to be the most pig-headed, stubborn, exasperating hero the Double B ever produced. The ranch won’t fall apart because you’re gone a couple of hours. I won’t fall apart. And there’s another thing I don’t think you men have thought of.”

  Del nodded. “You mean that if Bradley sees us going into
Last Chance he’ll think twice about stopping there himself, and shooting off his mouth over a few beers at the local bar?” He looked at Tye. “You know the old phrase, ‘head him off at the pass?’ It might be a good idea to do some heading off with Kevin, before he tells all and sundry how ticked he was about guarding a woman and a baby on the Double B.”

  IT WAS ONLY that last that had convinced Tye, Susannah thought an hour later as she unlatched a sleepy Danny from her breast and rose to put him in his crib. Buttoning the bodice of her dress and stepping quietly from the room, she wandered into the kitchen, feeling oddly out of sorts and not knowing why.

  Oh, you do so know why, Susannah Bird, she chided herself mentally. It’s because you feel like you’re only half alive when he’s not around. It’s because you want him in your arms, want to have him wrapping his arms around you, want to hear him say again that he loves you and that he wants to marry you.

  Had he actually used those words? The question dropped, uninvited and unwelcome, into her mind. Frowning, she filled the cast-iron kettle and set it on the cookstove, but before she could continue her train of thought a soft knock came at the screen door a few feet away.

  “Miz Barrett?” Paul Johnson touched the brim of his hat and opened the door. His glance took in the kettle she’d just set to boil. “If that’s tea you’re making I wouldn’t say no to a cup myself,” he said, keeping his tone low. “Is your little mister asleep?”

  “I just put him down.” Susannah smiled. “You’re welcome to sit and have a cup of tea with me, Mr. Johnson. Pull out a chair while the kettle boils.”

  He shook his head firmly. “I wouldn’t feel easy leaving my post for that long, ma’am. I’ll do another perimeter check of the house and then have mine on the porch, if you don’t mind. It’s a whole lot more comfortable than sitting in the dark guarding the access gate like Mr. Crawford is right now, at that.” He gave one of his rare grins. “I just wanted to step in and thank you for the plate of supper you kept warm for me.”

  “I only wish you could have gotten it inside you sooner,” Susannah said regretfully. “Your ex-partner wasn’t the greatest company at the table, but I guess we won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  When Johnson had shown up after Del and Tye’s departure, he’d told her Del had informed him of Kevin Bradley’s altered status when he’d stopped at the perimeter gate on his way to Doc Jennings’s clinic with Tye. He’d known something was up when Kevin had driven by a few minutes earlier like a bat out of hell, without a nod or a lifted hand.

  On Del’s instructions, Paul had left his post at the gate and Jess had taken over from him—mainly, Susannah suspected, because Del had wanted to give the hired hand a chance to have a hot meal and because the ex-marine knew that even the most alert soldier could get fatigued without a change of scenery once in a while.

  “I feel bad I didn’t get on his case harder over that horse,” Johnson said with a grimace. “He didn’t like folks poking into his business so I didn’t make a point of looking the animal over myself. I should have.”

  “I know Del blames himself, too.” Susannah shook her head. “Like Tye said, it’s no one’s fault but Bradley’s, and it’s not as if there hasn’t been a lot else occupying everybody’s mind lately. Thank goodness the veterinarian seems to feel the poor thing’s going to pull through all right with the antibiotics he prescribed.”

  How could two men be so different? she asked herself as, with another brief touch to the brim of his hat, Johnson left to reassure himself all was secure outside. As Granny Lacey would say, it takes all kinds, she decided, dropping a couple of tea bags into a thick china teapot. A tiny bell rang faintly in her mind at the random thought, and she wrinkled her brow in an effort to pinpoint what it was that had just rippled across her subconscious.

  Did the police ever catch the hit-and-run driver who killed her?

  In the act of lifting the steaming kettle from the stove, Susannah froze. Slowly she set it down off the flame. Like an automaton she slid her hand into an oven mitt, picked up the cast-iron lifter and inserted it into the heavy metal cover, replacing the cover over the open hole in the stove’s surface. The red flicker of the fire beneath disappeared from view. Walking over to the table on legs that felt suddenly weak, she sat down, her thoughts racing.

  It had seemed outlandishly far-fetched when Tye had half suggested it a few days ago. But that had been when they’d still thought the killers who had been tracking her were connected in some way to Frank.

  “Except they weren’t,” she said out loud. “They’re connected to Fox Hollow. And that means there was a connection to Granny Lacey, too. Dear Lord—what if it wasn’t just a tragic accident? What if she was murdered?”

  Nausea rose in her throat, and she gripped the sturdy wooden edge of the table so tightly that her knuckles whitened. After a moment the sick dizziness passed and slowly she got to her feet again.

  Tye had likely come to the same conclusion, she realized. If he had, he’d probably alerted the Atlantic City police to reopen the file on the unsolved hit-and-run. Although just hours earlier she’d tartly informed him that she didn’t want to be left out of any part of this investigation, she didn’t really regret he hadn’t told her, she admitted unhappily.

  Alice Tahe believed in an evil that walked like a man, talked like a man, looked like a man when it chose to. Whether that stalking evil went by the name of Skinwalker or not, the old lady was right, Susannah thought. Lacey Bird had lived her life serving her God and bringing new life safely into the world, and something evil had brutally struck her down before her time.

  She squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears. Almost immediately they flew open again.

  From somewhere outside had come the sound of a heavy thump, as if a dead weight had fallen onto the porch. Even as Susannah froze into stillness all the lights, including the ones illuminating the yard, went out.

  The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be on instant full alert, straining to bring in whatever information—a sound, a scent, anything at all—might mean the difference between survival and death. She had no doubt at all that there was someone out there who wanted to kill her, and she was almost positive that the thump she’d heard had been Paul’s body hitting the porch.

  One by one, every defense had somehow been breached—she wouldn’t let herself wonder what had happened to Jess—and now all that stood between the evil outside and the innocently sleeping infant in the room just down the hall was her. For a moment a sense of hopelessness overwhelmed her, and she had the childish impulse to run into her bedroom, lock the door behind her, and huddle with Danny in the clothes closet until Tye and Del returned.

  And if they don’t return in time? she asked herself coldly. Is that how you want to die, Susannah Bird—like a rat hiding in the dark, hoping you won’t be found? Is that how you want to let your baby die—in the arms of a mother who was too frightened to stand and fight for him?

  There were guns in the cupboard by the screen door. They might as well have been on the moon, since she didn’t have the key to open it, and only this morning she’d asked Del to lock her own revolver in with the rest of the weapons for safety’s sake. Briefly Susannah considered edging over to the counter for one of the knives in the knife block sitting there, and just as quickly discarded the option. She could handle a gun, she told herself. She wouldn’t have the first idea of how to use a knife against an opponent, and the odds were good that the weapon would end up being turned against her.

  Which left…what? What could she use, not only for defense but to attack if she had to?

  Quietly she moved to the cookstove. On the counter beside it was the padded oven mitt and the cast-iron lifter—it looked like a bent handle—which, when inserted into a slot on one of the heavy metal disks covering the round holes in the top of the stove, was used to lift the hot covers safely. She did exactly that.

  The man stalking her coul
d be anywhere, and the longer she stayed here the longer he had that advantage over her. She needed him to be unsure of her whereabouts, too. Cautiously she pushed open the screen door and slipped out onto the porch.

  Her back to the wall of the house, swiftly she moved a few feet farther down the length of the porch. She paused, straining her ears for any hint of a sound, straining her eyes for the slightest shadowy movement.

  Nothing. She took another step.

  The next moment she was backing up frantically, shock washing over her in waves, her legs and arms feeling clumsy and in the way. Her balance wildly off-kilter, she grabbed desperately with her free hand for something to steady herself, and her reaching fingers clamped onto a familiar surface.

  For a long moment she just stood there, holding on to the back of one of the sturdy porch chairs and willing her heart to stop crashing against her ribs.

  She’d stepped on a body—or more exactly, a hand. She was pretty sure, Susannah thought disjointedly, that she’d just stepped on Paul Johnson’s hand. But she had to make certain. And that meant she had to go back to that lifeless form.

  It was Johnson. On her knees beside him a second later, first she recognized the feel of the oiled denim work jacket he’d been wearing when he’d spoken with her in the kitchen less than half an hour ago, and then her searching fingers brushed against the woven horsehair band she’d noticed he always wore around his left wrist. She sat back on her heels, fighting back grief and despair.

  This can’t be right, Lord, she thought numbly. The good ones keep dying and getting hurt. Maybe Granny Lacey could make some sense of this—likely her faith would be so strong she wouldn’t even need for it to make sense—but it seems all wrong to me.

  “It is all wrong,” she whispered. She picked up the stove plate in her mittened hand and slowly she stood, rising to her full height. Only then did she realize she’d been creeping along in a half crouch before. Her grip on the cast-iron lifter tightened.