by Ann Major
Tad let go of him so abruptly that Granger's face fell into the dirt. Granger whimpered with pain. Tad turned on his heel in disgust and strode away until the darkness swallowed him. "Come on boys, before she blows."
Granger's gaze went to the thread of blue-and-gold flame creeping ever closer. Then he became crazy with terror all over again. "Okay," he blurted. "You win. Jackson... Jackson! Don't leave me."
There was an eerie silence. Twin threads of flame licked the black night.
"Jackson!"
Out of the darkness came two words. "Tell me."
And Granger whispered a single name.
And to Tad that name was a knife blade of betrayal. Because it belonged to the one man in Australia Tad had trusted. Maybe he hadn't always liked that man, but he had trusted him. Jackson's pulse throbbed unevenly, sickeningly. He stood frozen in the darkness.
"For God's sake, get me loose!"
"Let him go, Ned!" Tad hissed. "Quickly!"
Ian McBain. Friend. Confidant. Fighter for justice.
Ian McBain. Murderer. Betrayer. Ambusher. Vandal. And maybe Deirdre's lover.
The damned bastard had bolted MacKay inside the stables. He hadn’t been letting him out of it!
It didn't fit.
And yet it did.
Ian!
Why?
Two minutes after they pulled Granger to safety, the Jeep exploded, and while he watched it burn, Tad staggered backward. He was remembering Jess's funny, sweet smile.
She had known all along.
She was back at Jackson Downs—with him.
Rage filled Tad, but it was instantly obliterated by a far more powerful emotion that held his heart in a tight-fisted grip—terror.
Ian McBain.
Tad felt like he'd just been punched hard in the gut.
Deirdre must have told Jess something in India.
Something that had made her go to that island.
Something incriminating that had made her call Ian in the first place—instead of him—when she'd first come to Australia.[JO24][JO25]
Tad stared a moment longer at the burning Jeep. Why hadn't he seen it?
Tonight Jess had deliberately put herself in danger. She'd put his child in danger, as well as everyone else he'd left behind at Jackson Downs—because she wanted to go after Ian herself. For that, Tad would never forgive her.
She'd done this to him for the last time! She had proved that she could never be trusted. If he got her out of this alive, he was through with her forever.
Jess had betrayed him, betrayed his trust, betrayed him in the single way that could most hurt him. And yet all that he could feel was the same nauseating fear Granger had known as he lay pinned beneath that burning Jeep.
Ian had Jess. Deirdre must have thought she loved McBain. She'd gone to the island, trusting him, and he'd murdered her and tried to set him up as the murderer. What would he do to a woman as mule-headed and feisty as Jess?
Fear was bile boiling in Tad's stomach.
Jackson doubled over, sick with fear, and threw up on that dry, barren ground. Then he started running.
*
Jess was quite calm as she stole silently through the house with Lizzie sleeping in her arms. Meeta raced behind them, carrying blankets. The feeling of calmness had crept over Jess gradually as she'd listened to the vanishing drone of Jackson's planes when he'd flown away.
She had deliberately let herself be trapped at Jackson Downs with a man who might be a murderer, with the man who might have cold-bloodedly taken Deirdre's life. It wasn't something Jess had deliberately planned, although Tad would undoubtedly believe she had. That cry for help from Noelle had been real. Jess had had to send Tad to help her.
But now there was no one to save this sleeping child in the trailing purple nightgown, no one to save the others. No one except herself.
She had five minutes. Max. Before Ian made his move. If it was Ian.
Her day of housecleaning had not been in vain. She had discovered beneath the oldest part of the house a cool cavernous basement that was naturally ventilated. With its great doors locked from the inside, it was a natural fortress. In it she had stored food and water, guns and ammunition for just such an emergency.
After she'd placed Lizzie with Meeta on a pallet, Jess went and brought Mr. and Mrs. B. downstairs to guard them.
"You must do as I say," Jess ordered crisply.
The two days Jess had spent bossing everybody about until they were thoroughly under her control had not been wasted. The B.'s would not have argued with her if she had told them to burn the house to the ground and bury themselves alive beneath it.
"Do not open these doors unless you know who it is[JO26][JO27]. If someone forces this door, shoot to kill."
Mrs. B. picked up the gun and stared at Jess with wonder and admiration. "You would think the men would do something," she muttered.
"It's up to us—to the women," Jess said in a conspiratorial tone that won Mrs. B. completely.
Jess closed the door, and she heard Mrs. B. order Mr. B. to bolt the doors from the inside.
Jess had given Kirk a powerful narcotic. Her belief had been that if he posed no threat to the murderer, he would be in no danger, either.
Jess went back to Jackson's bedroom and locked the door. She pulled on a black shirt and a pair of black jeans. She got the loaded .38 that she had hidden out of the drawer, tucked it inside the waistband of her jeans, and softly raised the window. If she could just get to the desert, maybe she could hide until daylight. Until Jackson got back from Martin Reach.
Outside the sky was as black as old, congealed blood, and a sliver of moon hung in that menacing curtain of death like a wicked dagger's blade.
She threw a leg over the windowsill.
She was halfway out of the window when he seized her.
*
Ian grabbed her gun and shoved Jess mercilessly forward toward one of the great outbuildings.
He was hunched forward as he walked, his lips drawn back over his teeth in a savagely crazy grin. "You're too smart for your own good. You were on to me from the first."
"Not from the first. Not till now. But I was almost sure, when you were bolting Kirk inside the stables rather than unbolting those doors, that you killed my sister."
"You won't get a confession out of me."
"I won't need one. Wally's going to find her body with his bulldozers before too long. The boy saw you kill her, didn't he? You've been back to the island, and he saw you then. I don't imagine it will be too hard to get him to talk. He gave me her wedding ring. You were her lover. Why did you kill her?"
"Everybody was her lover."
"But it was you she went to meet on the island."
"Maybe."
"She came to you in the first place because she was afraid of the violence on the station. You seduced her."
"Don't kid yourself there. She was willing."
"Then she came back to Australia because she loved you. [JO28]You sent her to Jackson Downs to steal Jackson's operating cash—to cripple him."
"Deirdre couldn't have told you that," Ian said with a smile.
"She told me enough so that I could figure out the rest for myself."
"You should have stayed in India where you belonged."
"And let you get away with murdering my sister and destroying my beloved niece’s home? I belong here."
He grabbed her arm and held it bruisingly. "No, I belong here. This land was my family's long before the Jacksons."
"It's over, Ian. Too many people are involved now. Maybe this started out as simple greed or revenge. Maybe you just wanted the land your family lost and the Jacksons happened to own, but you went too far."
He flung open the door to the outbuilding. It smelled of hay and heat and animals.
"A little gasoline and this place will go up like a torch, the same way the horse stables did."
"Why, Ian?" Her voice was pitched higher than she intended. It sounded shrill an
d hysterical. "You don't strike me as a sentimental man. I can't really believe you want this place because you lived here once. Why did this land suddenly become so valuable to you after Holt Granger died on that mountain? He was a geologist, wasn't he?"
Ian smiled pleasantly and kept pushing her. "You figure it out, Miss Know-it-all." He shoved her inside. "Now it's your turn to answer my questions. I want the kid and the old couple. Where are they?"
She cringed away from him, but he shoved the muzzle of his gun into her belly.
"I can't have any witnesses." His trigger finger jumped, and the gun made a menacing click. "Tell me, damn it."
He grabbed her blouse to pull her closer, and the flimsy material tore. She shuddered from his closeness, from his hot, vile touch, but he yanked her toward him. The back of his hand gripped the creamy top of her lacy brassiere. She stiffened with alarm when she felt his hand, hard as a hot steel claw, there.
"You're a damned beautiful woman," he muttered, drawing her even nearer to his own bulky, powerful body. She shuddered again. "Damn beautiful."
She felt his fingers tighten on her blouse. "Tell me where his kid is. You can die quickly, or you can die so slowly you'll pray for death to come."
She paused and took her time considering both charming possibilities.
Then in answer she leaned forward and sunk her teeth into his fleshy wrist so hard that he flung her back against the wall. A burning pain shot through her head when it bounced off wood. She could feel a hot stickiness trickling through her hair. Everything started to swirl and darken.
"So you want it slow," he murmured viciously.
She had to stay awake. She had to keep him distracted from Lizzie. Until Jackson could get back from Martin Reach.
That could be hours. Hours... It was hopeless. She would be dead by then. More than anything, before she died, she wanted Jackson to hold her. Just one more time.
Her thoughts began to fade.
Dimly she was aware of Ian looming over her, his hands fumbling at his belt buckle.
What was he doing? Something too horrible to contemplate.
As she lay in the hay, helpless, broken, her hand closed around a rock on the ground. No... If he touched her, she would hit him over the head and kill him.
Then she heard a sound at the door. Ian must have sensed it, heard the rush of hot wind or seen a blur of ghostly movement behind him, because he turned.
Buckshot was racked into a shotgun chamber. There was an explosion like an incendiary bomb. Then a shotgun blasted wildly a second time into the ceiling.
The silence afterward was numbing, deafening.
A pile of hay began to burn. The flames cast eerie shadows. In the leaping light Jess could make out Jackson's tall, broad-shouldered form just inside the doors. One of his sleeves was torn halfway off his bronzed arm. His handsome features were wild with hate.
"Let her go, McBain." Jackson's hard voice vibrated like angry thunder in the empty building.
Flames raced up the wall behind Jess.
Ian leaned down and jerked her savagely to her feet. She could hear him laughing softly, nastily against her ear.
"I said let her go!" Jackson raged, aiming his shotgun at them. "My men are outside."
"I've got a gun to her head! I don't have to take your orders, you bastard!" Ian shrilled.
"Let her go or I'll kill you, McBain!"
The heat was like a furnace, and Jess began to cough from the billowing black smoke.
"It's the other way around! Throw your gun down! Or I'll kill her!"
The two men were staring at each other across the darkness, the smoke, the flying sparks and the flames, each man screaming crazily.
The atmosphere was insane, highly charged, electric.
Something had to happen, and soon, or they would all die.
But the tense, silent moment dragged itself out in slow-motion while the flames flew higher.
Then a stray spark landed on Jess's blouse and she jumped. Ian ground his blunt nails into Jess's neck and she screamed in terror.
With a cry Jackson threw his shotgun to the ground.
"No," Jess moaned in defeat as she watched Jackson's gun fall. They were lost. Dear God! They were lost.
Ian yanked her closer to his own body in savage triumph.
"You said you'd let her go, McBain."
"I lied." Ian held Jess so tightly she screamed again. Then he pointed his gun at Tad.
"Why, Ian?" Jackson demanded.
Racing, shimmering walls of fire surrounded them. Sweat ran down Jackson's handsome face in glimmering rivulets.
"I grew up on this land, but we suffered a reversal of fortune and lost it. You Yanks got it. I always wanted it back. That's why I was so anxious to make your acquaintance when you came over here to run things. Holt Granger worked for me. So did Martin. Holt was looking for uranium before he died. After his plane went down, I sent another geologist into Woolibarra with a Geiger counter. There's uranium down there, all right. Mine. I tried everything I could think of to keep you distracted so you couldn't discover it for yourself. I got Martin to make you the offer to buy you out. I already owned his land, you see. He was just a front for me. Martin set up the attacks. But you kept fighting. Noelle kept snooping around, pestering Granger. She got on to him there at the last, and I ordered him to take care of her. Deirdre came to Brisbane seeking my help. She played right into my plans. Not that she knew what I was really up to. I had to kill her when she finally figured everything out. She was more loyal to you than either of us ever realized."
Ian was backing out of the burning building with Jess. Leaving Jackson to die.
"Well, this is goodbye, Jackson. You're too damned stubborn for your own good. You should have cooperated a long time ago. Get over in that corner."
Tad backed slowly into the corner. "Just let her go."
Ian gripped Jess's arm. "No way. I need her to get out of here. Then I'll have to kill everybody."
"You're crazy."
"Don't say that!" Ian smiled. "I need her to get your little girl. If I can break you, I can break the old couple guarding her."
Something inside Jess snapped. She had been listening to everything he'd been saying limply, lifelessly, enduring the unendurable heat. But his last, gloating threat brought the will to fight charging back to life inside her.
Ian was going to kill them all! If she didn't do something, he was going to kill Lizzie!
Long ago, when Jess had been living in Indonesia, her father had taught her how to fight. What had she been waiting for?
For the right moment. For the exact second when the murderer was so sure of his success that he relaxed his grip on her just a fraction.
She screamed, a high-pitched Samurai yell that was louder than the roaring fire. Then she slammed the rock into Ian’s nose and kicked him hard in the groin. She whirled like a dervish, jumped and jabbed her heel into his throat. He dropped his gun. She grabbed it.
Jackson lunged at Ian and sent him toppling. The two men rolled in the dirt, fighting, grunting, grappling.
Above them the roof was on fire.
Jackson was younger, stronger, and Ian wasn't writhing in pain from Jess's blows. Jackson straddled Ian and began pounding him with his fists. Then Jackson's fingers circled Ian's thick throat and squeezed until Ian's face turned purple. Jackson's expression was hard and savage with fury.
Jess rushed to them and tried to pull them apart. "No! Jackson! You're killing him!"
Outside the night filled with bobbing flashlights. Jackson's men came running into the barn.
Jess turned to them pleadingly. "Stop him! Please!" Ned lifted her into his dark arms, held her close against his body, then carried her outside. The other men grabbed Jackson and Ian, pulled them apart and hauled them bodily outside.
They had hardly stumbled to safety when behind them there was a terrible, rending sound, a rupture that sounded like the end of the world. Flames shot even higher into the black ebony of
that long night.
Then the roof caved in. The ground shook with an awful thud as the building collapsed.
Jess scarcely felt it or saw it. She had eyes only for Jackson. Jackson would not even look at her.
"Jackson."
His grimly handsome face was streaked with grime. He gave her a long, hard stare.
Then she remembered that she had defied him.
He was done with her. She could see it in his eyes, and his harshness was killing her. He had come back to save her, had risked his life to do so. He would have gladly died for her in that burning barn. All that she saw. But he didn't want her anymore because she hadn't told him of her suspicions about Ian.
Jackson was too proud, too stupidly masculine.
He turned and began to walk slowly toward the house.
She had never been more aware of how heart-stoppingly virile he was until that moment when he was leaving her.
Through the mist of her tears and pain she devoured that male swagger in those skintight jeans.
Damn him. A sob caught in her throat. She wasn't going to let him walk out on her. This wasn't just his show. He still hadn't learned, had he? He wasn't the only one who was going to make the decisions in their lives.
She raced across the hard-packed dirt and flung herself into his arms.
For a moment he was stiff, unrelenting.
"I love you," she cried, touching him pleadingly. She felt him flinch when her fingers grazed his shoulder where the shotgun had kicked him. "Whatever I did, I did to save you. I love you. Doesn't that mean anything?"
For a long moment he studied her tear-streaked face. She could feel her hair, soft and streaming in the warm breeze. She was aware of his height, of the way he towered over her, making her feel smaller than usual. She was aware of the tension in him. It seemed that his emotions were strung as tightly as wire.
"I love you," she said. "I would do anything...anything for you. Why won't you see I'm the right woman for you? The only woman... But I’m who I am, and I won’t change. I can’t. I can’t be the sweet, feminine, obedient kind of woman you want."
The silence between them stretched until it was almost unbearable. After that agonizing length of time, she finally felt the terrible tension drain from him. A gentle, almost loving look came into his eyes.
