But all he really cared about was Eden. Was she hurt, or hiding? Zach risked another few inches, peering underneath the desk and praying that the child had been spared.
A small head cocked as it caught his eye, and before he could warn her to stay quiet, Eden cried out, “Uncle Zach! You came for me!” and scrambled out from beneath the desk.
“Noooo!” howled Haley as Zach reached in to grab the girl...
Just before another gunshot broke the silence.
* * *
Waiting had never been Jessie Layton’s strong suit, and Vivian Carlisle was only the most recent in a long line of bosses who could attest to her bullheaded failure to heed orders. And the longer she sat inside the truck’s cab, the deeper her foreboding grew—and the more horrified she became at the thought that she’d become the kind of woman who would cower while Zach went inside to save her family.
And while he went inside to face what Jessie finally admitted to herself might be her own twin. A twin who’d long ago passed beyond the point of no return, who might be capable of anything.
She took off for the building at a dead run, telling herself she wasn’t going to let it happen. Was going to at least try to talk her sister out of whatever brand of lunacy had swallowed her alive.
Maybe seeing her own face in Jessie’s would shock Haley out of this insanity. Maybe hearing that their mother had still loved her to her last breath would remind her of better days.
Jessie went first to the saloon’s front door, thinking that it might be wise to try a different route than she’d seen Zach take. But when she found it locked, she changed tacks, hurrying around the corner toward the back.
Her heart spasmed at a muffled boom—a gunshot from inside the saloon. “No, Haley. No, please!”
More afraid for Zach and Eden than worried about her own safety, Jessie peered into the shadows, looking for a back door. And shrieking when one narrow slice of darkness separated itself from the rest with a metallic clicking that instinct warned her was a gun.
“Don’t move.” The thin voice was cold as dry ice. “Don’t breathe, or I will use this, Haley. I swear, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Not moving,” Jessie said, her hands rising slowly. “Not breathing. And also, just for the record, I’m not Haley.”
“I—I knew I’d find you here. Knew you were all in this together,” the woman slurred, her words sending a shock of recognition straight up Jessie’s spine. “Playing me for some old fool, and using that poor child to—”
“Didn’t you hear that bang, Mrs. Rayford? It was a gun, inside the building.” Jessie’s teeth were chattering so hard that she could barely speak. Because it was clear to her that Zach’s mother must have somehow driven herself here, in Jessie’s own vehicle, mostly likely. As addled as Zach’s mother sounded, it was a miracle she’d made it this far. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t pull the trigger if anyone startled or provoked her. “Let me go, please, so I can check on Zach and— Uhhh!”
Something slammed against the left side of her head hard enough to send her crashing to her knees. The gun, she realized, her jaw throbbing madly. That crazy old woman had actually hit her.
“Where is she? Where’s Eden?” Zach’s mother demanded. “Tell me, and I’ll give you the five thousand I brought—but only if I never have to see your face again.”
“Eden’s inside,” Jessie insisted, raising her hand to cup her aching face. “Let me—let me get her for you.”
“We’ll go in together. You first, Haley, with your hands up.”
“All right. Whatever you say.” Jessie’s mind was whirling, her every instinct warning against taking Zach’s mother, in her current state, into an already volatile situation.
Thinking quickly, Jessie exaggerated her discomfort, hobbling forward with her head bowed, then moaning and leaning over as she reached for the door pull.
“Here, let me,” said the older woman, reflexively reverting to the genteel manners that ruled her saner hours. But as she moved to help, Jessie exploded into action, shoving the older woman backward toward the step before turning and racing into the dark hallway—and slamming into a wall of what felt like solid muscle.
A wall that instantly engulfed her in a grip as strong as steel.
Chapter 19
Zach took Jessie to her sister first, insisting that there wasn’t much time. Considering where Danny’s second shot—possibly meant to offer Zach and Eden cover—had struck her, Zach couldn’t imagine she’d make it to the hospital alive.
“B-but your mother,” Jessie said. “She’s outside.”
“My mother?” he asked. “What’s she doing here? How’d she—?”
“Haley!” Jessie cried, spotting her sister’s crumpled form inside the office. Pulling away, she bolted through the office doorway, nearly tripping over Hellfire’s groaning bulk. Dropping to her knees amid a scattering of bullets that Zach had emptied from both handguns, Jessie threw her arms around her twin, both of them weeping, overcome by the reunion.
“You can’t go,” Jessie pleaded, kneeling in a bloody puddle at her sister’s chest. “You can’t die, too, not now that I’ve finally found you.”
Outside the room, Eden’s small hand found Zach’s again, shaking so hard that her small jaw chattered. “Want to go find Grandma. Want to go back home.”
Lifting her into his arms, he said, “I’ll take you out to Grandma. It’s going to be all right.”
But to his marrow, he knew that he was lying. That neither his loving mother’s brand of magic—nor every penny of the Rayford millions—could ever make this situation right again.
Five Months Later...
Standing amid stacks of boxes in her mother’s kitchen, Jessie pulled at the end of the packing tape, then said a choice word when it came off the empty roll. Wincing, she looked around, waiting for Eden, as her niece still insisted on being called, to put her little hands on her hips and demand an offering for the Naughty Jar, where the two of them were saving for a trip to see Shamu in San Antonio.
Since it was a five-dollar word—one that Jessie didn’t want her innocent niece repeating—she sighed in relief, remembering Eden was on a playdate at the neighbor’s, with the world’s best babysitter—the now-recovered Gretel—helping to supervise.
With no more tape and at least a dozen more boxes to pack before the movers arrived first thing tomorrow morning, she did a hair and face check and winced at the sight of her bare face, broken nails and messy ponytail, wondering how she’d ever get herself camera-ready for her interview with the nationally broadcast Sunday Morning News Hour, which was scheduled to coincide with the release of her article in the Lone Star Monthly. For the moving supply store, however, a few swipes of a hairbrush and a dab of lip gloss would do. Along with her big sunglasses, her casual look would also serve to keep her from being recognized by any of her former viewers, wanting to know when they would see her back on the air.
When Hell freezes over, she thought, now that the book was being rushed into production. The deadlines for both the article and the more in-depth manuscript had been grueling, but her work had also kept her sane as she grappled with her losses, along with the new challenges of single parenthood.
Along the way, she’d found she liked writing better, anyway, liked having the freedom to dig beneath the surface, informing and encouraging people to think beyond sound bites meant to shock or titillate. She didn’t at all miss the viewer emails, either, from the disgusting propositions to the even stranger marriage proposals to the constant commentary on her clothes, her hair, even her breast size: everything but the substance of her work. Though there would probably still be a little of that when she did appear on the national news program, she hoped those viewers would be far less interested in her personal appearance than in the secrets she was due to expose, including her discovery
of H. Lee Simmons’s close ties to hate groups advocating for a shockingly extreme national agenda.
Though she feared there might be blowback when the news broke, she was committed to get the word out before any of these groups—and the billionaire wildcatter funding them—moved forward in an all-out assault on the Bill of Rights. It was important enough to her that she planned to use a large chunk of her inheritance to move herself and Eden to a secure gated community in another part of the country—and buy a Hansel for her Gretel for added insurance.
Grabbing her purse, she headed out to the car and immediately wished she had checked the windows before leaving. Or had her dog with her—not that the Rottweiler could be trusted to ward off this particular evil, since he’d been plying her with steak bits every time he “happened” by.
Zach Rayford waved a greeting from the driveway, where he’d leaned against the bumper of her pickup, his long legs stretched out ahead of him and crossed at the ankles. He looked perfectly at ease there, content to wait forever, and so striking in the warm spring sunlight that he took her breath away.
“I thought we agreed that next time, you would call first,” she said coolly.
Taking off his white straw hat, he tipped it toward her, his eyes as blue and clear as the sky above him. “I was just in the neighborhood,” he said as if it was nothing for him to jump into his pickup and drive six hours to get to Dallas, “so I thought I’d come by and see if I could say hello.”
“Every time you happen by, Eden cries herself to sleep nights, wanting to see you and ‘Grandma,’” Jessie said, sketching air quotes with her fingers, “and visit Mr. Butters and the puppies. Thank goodness she’s not here now, so she won’t have to go through all—”
“You know she’s always more than welcome to come up and see us for a visit. We really miss her up there.”
Jessie marked the longing in his handsome face, the yearning to reconnect with the little girl who still drew pictures of him, pictures of the ranch and her animals and Miss Althea and Mr. Virgil nearly every day. An entire glitter-bedazzled family that adored her, stacked up against her relationship with an aunt it had taken her months to warm up to. An aunt who all too closely resembled the mother she had never been able to depend on.
Concerned about her niece’s well-being, Jessie had dragged the traumatized girl to session after session with a child psychologist to help her cope with the horrors she had witnessed. Jessie, too, had squeezed in a few counseling sessions, wanting to be certain that her own sadness, guilt and even anger wouldn’t end up hurting the child she’d so quickly grown to love.
But that didn’t keep fury from flaring every time she thought about what had taken place in Rusted Spur.
“I know Haley gave Eden to your mother after she shot Frankie, but your mother killed my sister as sure as if she’d pulled the trigger. And my cameraman, too, even if Danny McFarland won’t admit to shooting Henry that day at the bunkhouse.” She flexed her scarred right hand, the fingers that still ached when she spent too long at the keyboard, though she’d recovered more function than the surgeon had initially predicted.
He looked into her eyes, his own wells of regret. “Whatever he’s admitted to, Danny’s being prosecuted for Haley’s and Henry’s murders. And he’s already lost the Prairie Rose. He’s lost everything.”
“While Sheriff Canter gets off scot-free for knowingly covering up a faked adoption and your mama’s still living like a queen inside her palace.”
“I can’t do anything about Canter, since there’s no proof he intentionally razed that bunkhouse or knew any of the particulars about how Eden came to be with my mama.”
“Of course he knew,” Jessie murmured, though much as she hated to admit it, it was possible Canter had believed he was acting in Eden’s best interest.
“And as for my mother,” Zach continued, “I wouldn’t go so far as saying she’s living like a queen, but she’s certainly living a more comfortable life than Hellfire, thanks to your not pressing charges. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that, Jessie.”
“It’s not like any Trencher County jury was going to convict her,” she said bitterly. Or that I’d ever do a thing like that to you. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m ready to reward her for what she’s done—or risk letting her screw up Eden’s head with any more of her brainwashing.”
“I won’t defend what she did, but I will tell you, that’s all over. My mother’s changed, Jessie. Changed drastically since she came home from the rehabilitation center. She’s not only better than she was before, she’s better than I can ever remember—no pills and no sick headaches, since the doctors finally helped her get those migraines under control. And she talks about her mistakes, not only with Eden but with my brother and me, when we were younger. When she couldn’t find the strength to keep us safe from our father.”
Jessie crossed her arms in front of her. As sorry as she felt for Zach’s impossible situation, she still wasn’t certain if she bought his mother’s whole “drug psychosis” defense, though she’d been assured by a pharmacist she’d checked with that drug interactions combined with extreme stress had indeed been known to alter patients’ perceptions of reality. “Of course you would defend her.”
“Not to you, I wouldn’t,” he swore, “not after what you’ve suffered. But if it makes you feel any better, I can assure you, my mother’s suffered, too.”
“I know she has. I know it,” said Jessie, pressing her knuckles to her forehead as she allowed herself to imagine what it must have cost the woman to lose a child she had loved beyond the point of reason. Jessie allowed herself to see, too, the price that Zach was paying, that both of them were paying, stuck on opposite sides of a line that she couldn’t imagine a way across.
Pushing back the sunglasses, she wiped her burning eyes. “I just can’t get past— Haley was my twin. My sister. You’ve lost a brother recently, so tell me. Could you forgive the people who had a hand in his death?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. But let me ask you something. How did not forgiving Haley work out for either of you in the long run?”
Fresh grief stabbed through her center, pain she would carry with her all her life. How dare he use it against her? Use it to try to gain her sympathy for a woman who didn’t deserve it? A woman who’d marched her at gunpoint to the building where her sister lay already dying? “I think you’d better leave.”
“C’mon, Jessie. Don’t be like that. Let me take you to lunch.”
“I don’t have time for lunch, Zach, even if I had the inclination. I was on my way to run an errand. Then I need to finish getting this house packed up for the movers.”
“You haven’t told me yet. Where is it you’re going?”
“Why, so you can ‘just happen by’ there, too, after I’ve asked you not to show up without calling?” Colorado wasn’t far enough to keep a man as determined as Zach from driving there, too. “Or maybe your mama will send someone to snatch Eden the first time I take my eyes off—”
“That’s not going to happen, Jessie. I swear to you, it won’t. Well, the last thing, anyway. The part about me coming by—I’m afraid that I can’t guarantee it. Because Eden’s not the only one I’ve been coming here to see.”
“Which reminds me, Gretel sends her regards,” Jessie said, feeling one corner of her mouth quirk upward.
“I wasn’t talking about your dog, and you know it.”
“Well, I’m not talking about you and me, regardless of how well it would fit into your mother’s schemes—”
“I’m not doing this for my mama,” he said, “and I’m not doing it for Eden, either, as much as I care about them both. I’m doing it for myself, because you’re what I need in this life to make me happy. Because I love you, Jessie Layton. Love the way you’re clawing your way through circumstances that would’ve killed a weaker woman. Love the w
ay you’re fighting like a hellcat to do what’s best for a little girl who was a total stranger to you. When I get up every morning, it’s all I can do not to jump into my truck and drive three-hundred-plus miles for the chance of getting a single glimpse of you. For a chance for a single word, I’d drive to hell itself—and back.”
“Here’s a word for you—restraining order. Because you’re sounding more like a stalker than a rancher right now.”
He tipped his hat back, pointing out, “That’s two words, Jessie, and I’m no stalker. I’m just obsessed with you.”
She rolled her eyes, trying to pretend he hadn’t become a fixture in her own dreams, coaxing and caressing until he took her to the very edge, where she was invariably left hanging. “Tell it to the judge, cowboy. Now, I need to get to the store. Want to move your truck, or do I have to—”
“Please, Jessie,” he said. “Just lunch. That’s all I ask.”
She looked up into his face, wanting so badly to invite him inside, wanting to press her lips to his again, to pull him closer—so close. But the wave of need that struck churned her feelings over, leaving her so guilty and conflicted she couldn’t allow herself to give in.
Instead, she shook her head, not trusting herself to speak for the painful lump in her throat.
He set his jaw and nodded, regret etching deep lines in his forehead. “I see it in your eyes. I’m hurting you, too, coming here. Hurting all of us. So I’ll tell you what. I won’t be back again. I won’t try to follow you to your new place, either, or even call or email. Just know that I’ll be waiting for you, waiting for the family of my heart to join me back in Rusted Spur.”
Don’t waste your life waiting, she wanted desperately to tell him, but the best that she could do was nod.
Lone Star Redemption Page 23
