Heart of a Lawman

by Patricia Rosemoor

  It took less than ten minutes to gather her things together. Bag in one hand, cat carrier in the other, Josie regretfully left the room she’d been glad to call home for a little while.

  When she got outside, Tim was already waiting for her at his shiny red pickup. “That was fast,” he said.

  “I travel light.”

  Josie handed him her bag, which he threw into the back. But because Miss Kitty was getting agitated, scrunching against the rear of the carrier and growling, Josie figured she’d better take care of the frightened cat herself.

  “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart,” she promised. “You’ll see. I’m not going to dump you off anywhere like your last owner did.” Carefully, she set the carrier next to her bag. “You’re coming with me, wherever I go.”

  “Where is it you want to go?” Tim asked.

  Josie hadn’t even considered where. “What direction have you been heading in?”

  “North.”

  “Then north is fine with me.”

  But first they needed to stop for gas.

  Josie remained inside the truck, where she had time to think about what she was doing. Playing hero…leaving Bart out of the loop to protect him…just as Sara Quarrels had done.

  Bart’s late wife hadn’t trusted him enough to help her handle that abusive father. Maybe Sara had been protecting that teenage girl, or maybe she’d been protecting Bart, but, according to Bart, Sara hadn’t given him her trust.

  Now Sara was dead, and Josie was about to repeat the same mistake.

  A mistake.

  The thought grew in her until she had to face it. She couldn’t go off and leave Bart out. She couldn’t do that to him, make him go through that hell a second time. He’d said he loved her, and even if she hadn’t admitted as much, she loved him, too. And he was a lawman, after all, no matter that he wasn’t wearing a badge. She had to stop running. She had to take her stand and fight. And she had to do it by Bart’s side.

  Meaning to tell Tim that she’d changed her mind, she left the truck.

  “Hey, this is great, isn’t it?” Tim said, still pumping gas. “You and me setting out on an adventure together.”

  Josie could hardly stand to look at him, he was so jazzed—kind of like a guy whose proposal had just been accepted. And when he unexpectedly hugged her, she shuddered inside, though she tried not to show it.

  “Tim, please.”

  “What’s wrong?” His face was mere inches from hers, his mouth pulled in a grin. “We’re together now, just like it should be.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “Together?”

  “Right. You and me.”

  Oh, no! Josie shook her head. “I think I must have given you the wrong impression,” she said gently, placing the blame on herself. “I consider you a friend. I’m not romantically interested in you.”

  His expression darkened. “After everything I’ve done for you…?”

  Josie’s pulse skittered, and, impulsively, she pulled away from him and reached for the cat carrier.

  “What are you doing?” Before she could get her fingers around the handle, Tim grabbed her and twirled her around. She flew back against the side of the pickup.

  A burst of pain in her abused side made her see stars.

  And something else…

  Open hand swung toward her. Contact! Her head snapped back. Frightened and confused, she stared at his face, red with fury….

  Chapter Fourteen

  The memories came flooding back in a rush. Stunned, Josie blinked and forced herself through the fog of the past back to the very dangerous present. She needed her wits about her.

  “I just wanted to make sure the cat was okay,” Josie lied, her voice trembling over the sound of the animal’s low growl. Heart pounding, grateful she hadn’t announced her change in plans, she added, “You know, so the carrier doesn’t slide around the back when we drive.”

  But her pretense didn’t relieve his very real scowl. “The cat’ll be fine just as she is. Get inside.”

  “Right,” she said, forcing a smile and immediately hopping into the passenger seat.

  Josie waited only until his back was turned. When he went to replace the nozzle, she hit the door lock, slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  “Hey, Joanne, stop!” she heard him yell, even as she gunned the accelerator.

  A fast check told her the street was clear. Josie turned toward the Curly-Q, glancing over her shoulder just long enough to see him trying to shove a grizzled old cowboy away from the door of an ancient pickup. She stepped on the gas and shot through town, checking her rearview mirror every few seconds, but she didn’t see him following.

  By the time she hit the washboard road, however, a tiny speck in the distance had appeared in her mirror. The old cowboy must have put up a heck of a fight, she thought, but he’d been no match for a younger and angry man who had no compunctions about pushing anyone around.

  That shove had jogged her sleeping mind. Even now the memories flowed.

  She turned the sorrel tight around the last barrel and raced for home….

  “Congratulations!” Randy said later, when she was getting ready to leave. “That was the prettiest ride I ever did see.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. That win meant a lot to me. I dedicated the ride to my mom.”

  “I’d like to hear more about that. Over a beer, maybe?”

  Bereft at her recent loss, she decided to tell him…

  Her mom had died only weeks before, leaving Josie the ranch where she’d raised and trained quarter horses, including a certain flaxen-maned sorrel she’d given to Josie for her twenty-seventh birthday.

  She’d ridden Dreamsickle on the barrel-racing circuit for nearly five years now. Modest winnings the first year had doubled the second, and had grown from there. The year before, Josie remembered, she’d made enough winnings to qualify for the National Rodeo Finals…undoubtedly the reason Randy had come after her.

  On the Curly-Q property now, she glanced up into the mirror, praying she’d see nothing. But the truck was still there behind her. Heart racing, she gave the pickup more gas, speeding it over the washboard surface to put more distance between them. The vehicle vibrated violently, and she was aware of the cat carrier jouncing behind her.

  “Sorry, Peaches,” she muttered. Peaches? “Oh, my God!”

  Miss Kitty was her cat, one she’d owned for years. How could she have missed that or the way the cat had reacted when “Tim” was around. Peaches had hated Randy from the first, but Josie had figured it to be nothing more than jealousy. But Miss Kitty had taken to Bart Quarrels. Obviously the cat had better instincts than she did when it came to men.

  How could she have been so stupid? Josie wondered. So vulnerable?

  Randy had played on her loneliness, and she’d let him. She’d needed someone after losing her only relative and had convinced herself that she cared for him enough to marry him. She’d let him take over the business side of their relationship, never suspecting that he’d paid off a bunch of gambling debts with her winnings.

  But she’d found out.

  When she wouldn’t agree to sell her mother’s ranch and horses to fund some money-making scheme of his, their argument had turned ugly and he’d hit her. Stunned, she’d been disbelieving. And then he’d apologized and begged her forgiveness, and she had been fool enough, needy enough, to believe him yet again.

  Until he’d hit her a second time a few weeks later.

  Josie shivered when she remembered the ugliness that had followed.

  One last look before descending to the canyon floor assured her that he was still hot on her trail, that he still saw her as his meal ticket—alive or dead.

  She took the hairpin curve too fast. Her stomach winged off in the opposite direction, scaring her into slowing before she had another accident.

  Almost there, she told herself. Almost.

  But when the house below came into view, she didn’t see Bart’s tr
uck. He wasn’t back from taking the kids to school yet. And no one was in sight but her equine escorts.

  Juniper in the lead, the horses surrounded her as she hit the canyon floor. They stayed with her all the way to the house. Without even cutting the engine, she flew out of the truck and banged at the door.

  “C’mon, c’mon!”

  Then she remembered Felice mentioning a doctor’s appointment. No one was home.

  “Moon-Eye…Frank…Will! Anyone here?” she yelled at the top of her lungs as she raced back to the truck.

  She glanced toward the rim. The pickup was already on its way down. Thinking to leave him his precious vehicle—perhaps he’d take it and leave—she grabbed her bag and cat carrier and ran for the barn.

  Randy had been entitled to no more than a small settlement after such a short marriage. But the expensive new pickup hadn’t been enough for him, and he’d tried to convince her to sign an agreement that would give him a share in her future assets, including the ranch and the now-valuable Dreamsickle. When she’d refused, he’d gone into a blind fury, had told her he’d kill the horse….

  The very thought churned her stomach. She had no idea of whether or not he’d carried through with that threat. And what if he realized that she was alone now? Somehow, she was going to have to evade him.

  “Peaches, you be quiet,” she said, setting the bag and carrier behind the tack shed. “Don’t let him know where you are!”

  Tearing into the shed, she grabbed a halter and bridle, meaning to tack up the nearest horse and go where a vehicle couldn’t follow. She was going to buy herself some time.

  When the nearest horse proved to be none other than Juniper, hanging around, looking for a treat, she fought panic.

  “I’ll give you all the cake you can eat,” she promised, seducing the green-broke mare with voice and hands. “If only you’ll let me ride you.”

  Juniper neighed nervously and danced in place, but made no attempt to evade Josie, who slipped the bridle over the horse’s head not a moment too soon.

  The truck Randy had coerced the old cowboy into giving him was rolling to a stop near the pickup.

  BART COULDN’T RID HIMSELF of the bad feeling he got when he stopped at Alcina’s and found no Josie, no bag or clothes, no cat.

  And then Alcina herself had come rushing in with a breathless tale of a stolen truck. Her boarder Tim Harrigan had coerced some hired ranch hand into giving it up so he could go after his own pickup, which had been headed in the general direction of the Curly-Q.

  It hadn’t taken a genius to figure Josie had been at the wheel…or that Tim Harrigan was, in fact, her husband Randy Walker and the man who’d been stalking her.

  With a promise that he’d tell Alcina everything, Bart had flown out of the place and toward the ranch.

  Good thing he’d caught up to the school bus and put his kids on board. Good thing he’d decided that talk with Josie couldn’t wait.

  She wasn’t running away this time, he realized. She was running to him, giving him her full trust.

  Now, if only he wasn’t too late to prove that trust was well-placed….

  JOSIE KNEW SHE HAD NO time to saddle up. Running her hands over Juniper to quiet the mare, she softly said, “I sure hope you trust me, girl.”

  Randy was lunging out of the old vehicle, yelling, “Joanne, you’d better show yourself now!” All traces of the charming, boyish, slightly shy man she’d thought to be Alcina’s boarder had vanished.

  Quietly, Josie threw a looped rope over her shoulder and sneaked Juniper toward an old tractor tire. She lined the mare up next to it.

  “Joanne!” Randy yelled again even as Josie climbed up on the tire and used it as a mounting block.

  The rubber sprang a little as she carefully threw a leg over the horse. And as her weight settled on Juniper’s back, the mare snorted and feinted to the right and Randy turned and spotted them both.

  “Joanne, don’t be stupid! I don’t want to hurt you.”

  As if she could ever believe his intentions again. “What did you do to Dreamsickle?”

  “Your damn mare is fine! But we need to make a deal,” he said, his tone desperate.

  Praying that he wasn’t lying about her horse, she asked, “How big are these gambling debts?”

  If that was his excuse. Keeping him talking would buy her some time. Maybe the men would come back from whatever pasture they were working in. Besides, she needed to figure out how to get past him and down to the creek.

  “I owe enough that they’ll hurt me bad if I don’t pay up,” he wheedled. “Please, Joanne, get me out of this jam and I won’t ever ask you for anything more, I promise.”

  He was doing his best to con her again. But Josie remained untouched.

  “Randy, I’ll never give you another thing. Not trust or pity or money. And I’m not alone anymore. Bart Quarrels is a lawman, you know, and he has your number. So why don’t you just get out of here while you still can?”

  “Bitch!” he screamed. “You keep underestimating me! I want that money because I earned it, not because there’s someone after me. And there’s no one here to save you this time!”

  “Why, Randy? What did I ever do to you that you would see me dead?”

  “Killing you wasn’t my first option,” he admitted. “I fell for you, Joanne, I really did. I wanted your money and you. That’s why I followed you to Silver Springs when you ditched the hospital. Your having amnesia gave me another chance at making us work. I figured even if your memory came back, I could convince you that you got some things wrong.”

  He was delusional, but she wanted to hear it all. “What about setting up Peaches in that abandoned building? I remember now…you came and took her so I would agree to meet you to get her back…”

  But when he’d turned on her and had taken her keys, she’d run from him in fear for her life.

  “I was only trying to scare you—same with my shooting at you on that big bay. I thought you would turn to me, but you went to another man instead and left me no choice.”

  Sensing she’d stalled him about all she could, Josie collected the mare with steady hands and firm legs and mentally prepared herself for the coming physical confrontation.

  “So you tried to get me, but you killed Peter Dagget instead.”

  “Who? What are you babbling about?”

  “The kid riding this horse yesterday morning.”

  “You’re hallucinating, Joanne. I meant the bridge.”

  Figuring he was trying to exonerate himself, she said, “Killing me won’t get you what you want.”

  ‘I want your money, Joanne, with or without you. You seem to have forgotten that if you accidentally die, I get everything, including the insurance.”

  “I changed my will,” she bluffed.

  “You never did learn to lie well.”

  Even as he reached into the back of the pickup, his threat hit home. Furious, Josie rode straight for him, letting the looped rope drop down her arm. Noticeably startled by her sudden rush, Randy jumped away from the vehicle, holding the rifle he’d snagged.

  Praying Juniper wouldn’t rear up, Josie went straight for him even as he raised the weapon. She grasped the loops of rope and swung the bundle with all her might. The rope splayed open and caught him hard in the face and chest and he went flying all in a tangle, giving her precious seconds for a getaway.

  As she turned the horse tight around the pickup, she heard him yell after her, “You just sealed your own fate!”

  BART COULDN’T BELIEVE his eyes. Starting his descent to the canyon, he saw Josie temporarily disarm her husband and ride off bareback on Juniper. But Randy Walker wasn’t down for the count. He regrouped, freed himself of the rope, grabbed his rifle and slid into the red pickup. Within moments, Walker was after Josie.

  And he was after Walker, Bart thought grimly, thankful he’d brought his rifle.

  What was going on? Why did Walker want to kill his own wife?

  Knowing Josie
was married had stalled him temporarily, but Bart had recovered from the shock. He’d seen her heart, even if she hadn’t yet given it to him fully. Besides, he trusted her and instinct told him she was an innocent in this dangerous game of Walker’s. And the lawman in him was determined to bring the bastard to justice.

  JOSIE KNEW RANDY was behind her—she could hear his pickup’s powerful engine. But as long as he was driving, he couldn’t shoot at her, and as long as she kept riding through areas that wouldn’t make her a target, he would keep driving.

  She meant to get to the creek near the bridge and cross it where it was too deep for a motorized vehicle of any kind to venture.

  Since Randy had put the bridge itself out of commission, that would leave him on the wrong side of the creek. She then would have options—like crossing through the pasture that would take her over the old mine field to the road back to Silver Springs.

  If she did that, though, she would worry about what Randy might be up to—whom he might fool and then hurt in his effort to get away. Randy Walker was her problem, Josie decided. She couldn’t let him loose on unsuspecting people.

  The bridge didn’t come too soon for her. It lay ahead, looking every bit a child’s broken and abandoned toy. Amazingly, the pickup still clung to its precarious perch over the creek.

  Time to get across where Randy couldn’t get to her.

  Slowing, she found a path down to the water, but the mare shied from the challenge.

  “C’mon, Juniper, you can do this.”

  She sweet-talked the roan for all she was worth, rubbing one hand over the damp neck to calm her. She tried again. Juniper balked. Josie was getting nervous—that engine was closing in on them.

  Calling on a little trickery, she reined the mare in a full circle and goosed her at the path. Juniper moved out and down, but she threw her head and snorted indignantly, as if telling Josie she knew exactly what her rider had just done.

  The creek itself was even more threatening to the mare, who backed away from the water’s edge and squealed. Josie approached it again and again, but ready for her tricks this time, Juniper was getting more and more agitated, even bucked her a few times.