by LENA DIAZ,
“Hell of a way to go, Jedidiah. What’d you do, come here with Shane to dig up your millions, and then you double-crossed each other?”
Jedidiah rolled his head back and forth. “Not with Shane.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Here to warn Piper. You. Tried to stop him.” He coughed, then started choking on the blood.
Colby shoved his gun in his holster and pulled Jedidiah up on his lap, turning his head sideways to let the fluid run out of his mouth.
The coughing eased, and Jedidiah drew a deep breath. He smiled. “Knew you were a good man. You even help the bad guys. I’m sorry for what I did to you. To Piper.”
“Yeah, well, everyone says they’re sorry when they see the grim reaper knocking, don’t they?” Colby scanned the woods, then back toward the house. “Who came with you? Just Shane, or does he have more thugs again?”
When Jedidiah didn’t answer, Colby looked down. The mountain man’s eyes were open but unseeing. Air no longer wheezed out of his chest. He was gone.
Even though Colby doubted the man’s sincerity, doubted that he was really there to help them, part of him hoped it was true and that Jedidiah had made peace with his maker before the end. He closed Jedidiah’s eyes and said the same quick prayer that he’d said for the deputy. Then he eased the body onto the ground.
Another shot rang out in the distance. Then another. It sounded like they were coming from the stables. Colby jumped up, then hesitated. The stables were far away. If Ken was in trouble, he needed to get there fast. Colby had already arrived too late to save two men tonight. He didn’t want to make it a third.
He ran to the open door and pulled the deputy out of the car. After gently laying Hollenbeck on the ground beside Jedidiah, he hesitated again. Then quickly unbuttoned the man’s shirt. A minute later, he jumped into the patrol car and took off for the stables.
* * *
PIPER’S HANDS SHOOK so hard she was surprised that she didn’t drop Deputy Hollenbeck’s gun. Her father would have been ashamed that her training was so rusty. Then again, he’d probably understand since he’d accused her so many times of having too soft a heart. Tears streamed down her face as she turned away from the two dead men.
She didn’t know what was going on or who had killed them. But she did know that the man who she’d finally realized she loved was out here somewhere with gunshots going off. And she wasn’t going to cower in a closet while he faced her enemies without backup.
Bam!
She automatically ducked even as she realized that the latest gunshot was too far away to have been aimed at her. She drew a shaky breath and double-checked that her knife was in her back pocket. Then she climbed into the golf cart.
After carefully laying the huge gun on the seat beside her, she slammed the accelerator to the floor and took off at a teeth-grindingly slow pace toward the stables where the shots seemed to be coming from.
* * *
COLBY LEFT THE patrol car at the bottom of the hill, hoping for the element of surprise. He crept toward the stable’s double doors, sweeping his pistol back and forth.
There’d been a spatter of gunshots less than a minute ago. But now they’d stopped. Did that mean that the fight was over? Had Ken Taylor managed to shoot Shane? Or the other way around? Or was there someone else out here, maybe more of Shane’s jailhouse buddies?
A dark shadow ran from a tree to the right of the stable and pulled one of the double doors open. The lights inside illuminated his profile before he ducked behind the doors, but Colby would have known him anywhere.
It was Todd Palmer, aka Shane Crowder.
Which meant... Colby took off for the tree where he’d just seen Shane. When he saw the man lying there on the ground, obviously dead, he slammed the flat of his hand against the tree and cursed a blue streak.
He immediately regretted his outburst, realizing he may have just given up the element of surprise. And his hand was throbbing. But he was so sick of the waste of life. Ken Taylor didn’t deserve to be murdered and left lying on the ground like yesterday’s garbage.
Once again, Colby dropped to his knees and performed the now far too familiar ritual of closing a dead man’s eyes and whispering a prayer over him. Then he climbed to his feet and reevaluated the situation.
He scanned the area again, then crouched down, keeping close to the stable until he could reach the next tree and retreat to the patrol car. There was no one else left to save except Piper. He’d leave capturing Shane to the local cops. He was going back to the house to keep Piper safe.
He’d just reached the double doors when they burst open and a horse ran out.
“Yaw!” someone yelled from inside.
Colby jumped back as more than a dozen horses ran out and galloped off into the night. The last one was a very familiar black stallion with a flowy main and tail—Gladiator. What the heck was going on?
He backed up some more, realizing he was a sitting duck if anyone came out the open stable doors. Just a few more feet and he’d be back at the tree.
Two dim lights shone ahead of him, coming up the hill from the direction of the house. Colby froze, immediately recognizing what it was. The golf cart that Piper used.
The buzzing sound of the electric motor reached his ears even before he could see well enough to make out Piper’s form sitting in the driver’s seat.
Shut it off, he’ll hear you. Shut it off.
He crept forward and waved his arm, trying to get her attention. But she didn’t seem to notice him. She’d stopped and was staring at the horses running across the fields downhill from the stables.
Colby moved forward again, glancing between the open stable doors and Piper. When he reached the opening, he leaned around the door to peek inside. Empty. Where had Shane gone? To the tack room? A stall? Maybe out the back door? Heck, he could even be upstairs in Ken’s apartment.
He started to edge his way past the open doors to cut Piper off when he stepped on something hard and unyielding. An electric cord snaked beneath his feet. One end led to a stand of pines about forty feet from the front of the building. The other end ran straight through the stables, down the middle aisle, then off to the last stall on the left—Gladiator’s stall. Why would someone run a cord through the stables?
The answer came to him in a flash. All of the puzzle pieces slammed together in his mind.
The stables were a little over eight years old.
Shane had served eight years for the bank robbery.
Which meant the foundation for those stables was poured right around the time that Shane stole five million dollars and it disappeared—somewhere on Piper’s land. If someone buried something beneath several feet of concrete footing, how would they get it out? One way was dynamite. Shane Crowder was an explosives expert.
Colby whirled around and sprinted for the pines.
Was that laughter he heard?
Boom!
Searing heat slammed into him, tossing him into the air. The ground flew up to meet him at a dizzying speed. Then...nothing.
* * *
PIPER STARED IN shock at the hole in the stables where the back corner used to be, where Gladiator’s stall used to be. Small bits of wood rained down like ash. And Colby, who’d been in front of the open double doors just seconds earlier, had been blown through the air and dropped to the ground, flipping end over end like a rag doll. And now he wasn’t moving.
She shook herself into action and hopped out of the golf cart. After grabbing the gun, she took off in a sprint toward him.
Please let him be okay. Please let him be okay.
A sob escaped her as she dropped to the ground beside him. “Colby? Colby? Can you hear me, sweetheart?” She leaned over him. His eyes were closed and he lay on his side in the fetal position, facing away from her. “Colby?” She put her shaking hand to his throat, feeling for a pulse.
> “He’s dead, sweetheart.”
She jerked her head up, blood freezing in her veins when she saw who was standing over her. “Shane.”
His brows arched in surprise. “You figured it out, huh? I’m impressed.”
She swung the gun up toward him.
He cursed and grabbed her arm, giving it a brutal twist.
She cried out and the gun dropped to the ground. He jerked her to her feet, his fingers like claws digging into the flesh of her upper arm.
“You got any more cops on the way?” His fingers squeezed harder.
Gritting her teeth against the urge to cry out, she shook her head. “N-no. I don’t think so. Deputy...Deputy Hollenbeck was doing a routine check to make sure everything was okay.” She tried not to remember how the officer had looked when she’d last seen him. If she thought about that, she’d be frozen with fear.
“Routine check, huh?” He laughed harshly. “More like he was looking for me, just like that stupid Jedidiah was.” He said several foul things about Jedidiah and his questionable parentage. “We were supposed to split the money. But he developed a conscience, didn’t want anyone hurt. How he ever made it in prison before I met him is beyond me. Got what was coming to him, though. He tried to ambush me.” He leaned closer, his hot breath washing over her. “What an idiot.”
She craned her neck, trying to twist back to look at Colby. Was he breathing? A sob caught in her throat.
Come on, Colby. Move. Do something so I know you’re alive.
He shook her violently. “I told you he’s dead. I saw him nosing around the stables and pushed the button at just the right time. Now it’s just you, me and five million dollars.”
He let her go and shoved her toward the stables. “Keep moving. You can help me load the money. It ain’t as heavy as you’d expect, but there’s a lot of it. It’s in that stupid black horse’s stall. Or what’s left of it.”
He laughed as he walked behind her. “Pretty clever, burying it in the foundation if I say so myself. Kept it safe for me all these years. But figuring out how to get it out has caused me nothing but trouble. If you’d just closed the stupid ranch down, I could have gotten it without anyone hearing a dang thing.”
Anyone except her neighbor Mr. Wilkerson. Then again, if Palmer—Shane—had been successful in his campaign to get her to give up on the ranch, he probably could have retrieved the money while Wilkerson was out of town. No one would have known until the property was being made ready for resale and they saw the condition of the stables with a hole blown in the side.
“Stop right there,” Shane ordered.
They were just inside the entrance now. She turned around, desperately trying to see Colby through the open doors.
“I didn’t say turn around.” Shane pushed her shoulder and she stumbled backward, catching herself against the first stall.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
He laughed. “Now, there’s that spunky Piper Ann from up in the mountains.” His smile faded. “You’re going to help me load those stacks of bills into the back of my truck. It’s parked right outside the hole in that black horse’s stall. If you try to run, trust me, you can’t go faster than one of my bullets.” He tapped the gun in the holster at his waist. “If you’re nice, I just might keep you as a hostage until I’m good and out of here.” He shoved her toward Gladiator’s stall.
She climbed over debris and piles of sawdust, kicking boards and remnants of halters and bridles that had been blown off hooks on the walls out of her way. And the whole time she silently prayed for Colby and the one other person whose fate she was terrified to guess at—Ken Taylor. Was he upstairs, hiding? Or had Shane taken care of him the way he’d taken care of the deputy and Jedidiah? And Colby?
Her throat nearly closed with grief. Had she really thought that she couldn’t use her knife on someone earlier? Because right now her fingers itched to pull her knife from her back pocket and show Shane just how good her aim could be. The image of Colby lying on the ground, eyes closed, would be all that she needed as motivation.
When she reached the back left corner of the stables, her mouth fell open at the extent of the damage. Not only was everything obliterated inside, but about ten feet of the exterior walls in both directions from the corner that used to be there were completely gone.
“Move,” he ordered. “Get in that hole and start handing me money. And remember, you can’t outrun a bullet.”
The hole in the ground was a ragged L shape, following the line where the walls and their foundation had been. She climbed over yet another pile of wood and sawdust to reach it. An L-shaped metal box fitted neatly inside. What had once been its top was now a mangled, jagged piece of metal lying on the ground where it must have fallen after the explosion. And sitting inside the box were perfect stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills with bands around them.
“Pretty clever, huh?” Shane laughed. “Worked better than I ever dreamed. I had to rig a special compartment on top of the box for the dynamite. It had a V shape to angle the explosion up and out instead of down toward the money. I worked construction that summer and I’m the one who poured the cement back here.”
Her entire body went cold. “There was dynamite under the walls all this time?”
“Yep.”
“But...if I’d decided to expand the stables while you were still in prison, someone could have dug into the box and it would have exploded. They could have been killed.”
He shook his head. “Nah. I kept tabs on this place. I would have found a way to stop you, even from prison.” He waved toward the box. “It was the perfect setup. I just ran a line to the detonator and pulled it through a PVC pipe in the wall. Tonight all I had to do was connect another wire to that one and boom.”
He laughed again, clearly impressed with his own prowess. “Obviously I couldn’t let you expand the stables or someone would have found it. I had to scramble and move before I was ready because of your stupid plans.” He shrugged. “But, hey. It all worked out in the end.”
“Worked out? How many people have died for your schemes? How many people’s lives have you ruined, like Arlene’s?”
“Arlene?” He frowned in confusion. “Is she someone I killed? Can’t say I remember that one.”
She shivered at his cold disregard for human life. “The young kid you and Jedidiah blackmailed into causing all the problems at my ranch.”
He snickered. “You can blame Jedidiah for that one. I told him to wreck things around here to make you give up on the place and shut it down while I was trying to shake the feds off my tail. If he made someone else do his dirty work, that’s on him.”
He stepped over the hole in the floor and lowered the tailgate on a black 4x4 pickup parked outside. Had he knocked down a fence at the back of her property to get the truck inside? She certainly hadn’t seen it or heard it approach the house.
It had a lockable top that could cover the whole back, but that was propped up on its hinges.
“Throw me some of those stacks of bills.”
She looked around, then grabbed a piece of wood and set it across the box in the ground. Then she sat on it with her legs on either side of the hole and reached down for the money.
“Smart,” Shane admitted. “I wouldn’t have thought of that. Now, hurry up.”
She tossed the stack to him and he tossed it into the back of the truck.
“Faster. More stacks.”
It didn’t take long before half of the money was in the truck.
He leaned over, his back to her as he shoved the bills farther into the truck bed to make room for more.
Piper braced her hands on the sides of the hole and hopped out. She scrambled over the debris and made it to the aisle.
Click.
“One more step and you lose your head.”
She froze and then, very slo
wly, turned around.
Shane faced her from the other side of the hole, his pistol leveled at her head. “We’ve got about two and a half million dollars left to load. You ain’t done yet, Piper Ann. Get back here.”
She hesitated. Once they finished loading the money, he’d kill her without a second thought. But Dillon and Blake were on their way, weren’t they? How long ago had Dillon called? If she could stall him long enough for them to get here, maybe—
“In the hole,” he bellowed, his face turning red.
“Why do you call me Piper Ann? That’s not my name.”
He frowned. “That’s what your father called you.”
“My middle name is Leigh. My dad’s the only one who ever called me Ann. How did you know that?”
He shrugged. “Your mom and dad came over to visit me one day and I remember him talking about you. Your mom brought a batch of homemade cookies.” He smiled as if reminiscing. “Man, they were good. She was nice, too. A real lady. Probably the only one I’ve ever met.” His smile faded and he motioned with the gun. “But that don’t mean I won’t kill her daughter if I have to. Get over here. And shut up.”
“But—”
Bam! The remains of a wooden post exploded beside her. She gasped and fell against what was left of the far wall.
“Next bullet goes in you,” he promised, his eyes narrowing.
“Okay, okay.”
Her heart slammed in her chest, the blood rushing in her ears. Her hands shook as she raked off chunks of wood clinging to her shirt and then stumbled over the debris back toward him.
Coughing at the sawdust in the air, she eased into the hole, facing the opposite direction to unload the money on the other leg of the L. She reached into the box and lifted a stack of bills.
“Drop the gun.”
Piper jerked toward the familiar voice. Colby stood in profile in the opening on the outside the stables not far from the truck, aiming the deputy’s gun at Shane’s head.
He’s alive, her mind screamed. But she didn’t dare move or make any sounds. She didn’t want to distract him.
