License to Love Series:Trilogy (Contemporary Western Cowboy Romance)

by Rose, Amelia

  “Dear God I hope so.”

  Melinda didn’t respond but she struggled to shake off the shiver that ran along her spine. As if Cale could sense the coldness that was creeping into her thoughts, he once again enfolded her in his embrace, the weight and heat of his arm temporarily helping the chills to subside, but not the gnawing doubt that accompanied them.

  Melinda was right, there had not been a lot of people camping in the park that night and they had been able to get a slot that was removed and secluded. Just to be sure that they would not have any neighbors they had also rented all the adjacent camping spots, as well. The man running the camping area had just smiled and nodded knowingly.

  Although as much as Cale wished that they were renting out the area to not have to worry about anyone interrupting their boisterous night, that was not a scenario that was likely to happen. Instead, both of them were on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop as the threat of Charles loomed over their every move.

  Cale finished building the fire just as dusk settled over them. Melinda returned from securing the perimeter with an armload of kindling. She set it down next to the fire and sat down on the ground next to him. Their backs were against the car, which was locked.

  It felt so surreal being paranoid out here in the country but they were all necessary precautions. Cale also felt the bulge at his lower back and knew that the car being locked was not the only surreal thing. Melinda had given him a gun earlier when they had first established the camp site.

  It too was a necessary precaution but the weight of it was far heavier than the five pounds of the gun.

  After a last minute walk around of the tight perimeter they had established, Melinda sat down next to him and pulled her feet up. When she did, her stomach rumbled a little. She chuckled.

  “Yeah, in all the preparation for tonight I completely forgot about food.”

  This time it was Cale who laughed. It was a giant belly laugh that seemed to release some of the tension that had built up around them and for the first time since last night he was beginning to feel at ease again. He realized how much he enjoyed being with Melinda and even in a situation as dangerous as this one, he was beginning to relish their stolen moments together.

  Before they had locked down the car, he’d pulled everything from it that they might need. This had included half a bag of leftover potato chips, a bag of beef jerky and a few miscellaneous candy bars.

  “Every time we stopped for gas yesterday I wandered into the store and bought a few items,” Cale confessed.

  She looked over at him, her eyebrows raised in a teasing manner.

  “I noticed,” Melinda said assuredly. “I just thought you had to go to the bathroom all the time because of all the junk food.”

  He smiled back. “Mock all you want but tonight you’ll be grateful for my little road trip ritual.”

  “Oh, I’m going to be grateful, huh?” Melinda responded playfully.

  “Well, you’re going to be grateful or you’re going to starve,” he said as he pulled the bag of potato chips back just out of her reach.

  The joking tone had been a nice break from the high strung anxiety-filled day but he hadn’t been prepared when the tone shift and she leaned forward to kiss him. Even so, he took her in his arms and held her close against the invading night, afraid that if he didn’t she would pull back emotionally again. He didn’t know if he could take that. He wasn’t as good at building walls as she was.

  Chapter 17

  Melinda laughed and leaned over him, snatching the bag from his hands before holding it up in mock victory. And when she looked up at him, she felt herself once again caught in his light green gaze.

  Without pausing to think about it, she dropped the bag and leaned forward until their lips met. She might have been able to try to deny that this thing existed between them when they were riding in the car or planning their night time arrangements, but right now she couldn’t stop remembering how it had felt to be in his embrace.

  At first his kiss was hesitant, but after a moment she felt his arms grip her tight and pull her to him with such ferociousness that her breath caught in her throat. Everything else had faded into the background and when she sighed, his tongue slipped into her mouth at the same time that his hand ran down her back, running his fingers over the bare skin at her lower back where her shirt had bunched up.

  Each touch was sending shockwaves of fire spiraling out across her flesh. The kiss deepened as his hand continued its journey up under her shirt until it cupped her breast. When his thumb brushed across her nipple, she leaned back and let out a small moan of disapproval.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispered, his forehead leaning against hers as his thumb once again brushed across her delicate flesh.

  Struggling to gulp down cool air to quench the burning fire in her lungs, Melinda tried to say something, anything, in response, but her ability to think rationally diminished further and further with each movement of his hand.

  Finally, she was able to mutter a breathless reply. “No, we shouldn’t. We need to stay focused and alert...he could be out there.”

  Cale pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and twisted it just enough to elicit another low moan from her. Her voice was so deep with desire that it sounded like she was purring when she spoke.

  “If you keep that up, you’re going to end up getting attacked,” she warned him.

  He just smiled and pinched her a little harder and rolled her onto his lap. Melinda’s hair fell from her ponytail and fanned out across her shoulders. She dipped her head low to kiss him, her hands leveraged against his shoulders as her hair encapsulated them, creating a curtain between them and the outside world.

  Just as their lips met, she heard the sound of swiftly approaching footsteps. Jumping back and rolling off Cale, Melinda started to reach down for her gun from her ankle holster but she stopped when she felt a knife pressing into her neck. She didn’t want to give Charles the upper hand. If he knew she was carrying a gun on her person he would take it from her and she would be left completely defenseless.

  Before he spoke, he pressed the knife in against the tender flesh of her throat, causing a sharp pain to course through a body that moments ago had been caught in the throes of passion. She dared not move at all. This was her punishment for forgetting to be diligent, even for a moment. This was what happened to people who let emotions get in the way.

  “Really, Cale? Really?” Charles’s harsh voice cut through the otherwise silent night. “When I tracked down the person who had hacked my accounts and was hunting me I expected to find you, but I didn’t think you would have shacked up with the sheriff. Now, that’s just not brotherly of you at all. My feelings are hurt.”

  Cale’s eyes flashed in the moonlight, and Melinda could tell that the anger he had been holding back from his brother was starting to boil over.

  “I think we can drop the façade of you giving a damn about anything,” Cale said sternly. “Let her go and turn yourself in. We were trying to find you before the others do so you could turn yourself in and avoid that messy part where you get yourself killed.” Cale spoke through clenched teeth, and the vein on the side of his chin was flexing with each word.

  His control is slipping, Melinda thought to herself. She was losing ground, too. Charles had her chin twisted up at such an awkward angle that her neck muscles were starting to burn. If she moved the knife was going to cut into her even more and she didn’t want to risk him slicing her open out here in the wilderness were she would bleed out before anyone could even get out of the park.

  Just then Charles pulled the knife away from her skin at the same time that he grabbed her upper arm and dragged her to her feet. Without meaning to, Melinda let out a yelp as she found the entire weight of her body leveraged against one arm. Charles smiled for the first time since he’d emerged from the bush. Cale started to jump to his feet, but Charles took the knife and ran it down Melinda’s collarbone, lightl
y opening her skin up like a zipper.

  The pain was searing, and she felt as if her flesh had been lit on fire, but she didn’t make a sound. Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek and stifled the urge to fly into hand to hand combat. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  Charles’s grin faded a little bit, but he did not ease his grip on her and the knife was once again firmly pressed into her throat. “I’m going to take Melinda here and have a talk with her. You, dear brother, are going to just have to wait. If you try to follow us, I’ll cut her open. Each time you do anything, I’ll cut her. And that includes leaving. I still have the tracker on the car. It’ll alert me if you try to go anywhere. I would say don’t call anyone, but the cell signal here is horrific.”

  At this point, he paused his little diatribe to look at her for a moment. “You really couldn’t have picked a better spot for me to torture you.”

  Cale’s face twisted into a look of horror-filled hatred. She had no doubt now that he was seeing Charles the monster for the first time. Whilst part of her was glad that he had finally let all delusions about his stepbrother fall away, another part of her felt the pain and injury within him. She understood what it meant to be the caretaker of the family and the pain that went along with that responsibility was sometimes unbearable.

  “How could you do this?” Cale asked. “After everything your dad sacrificed to help you?”

  The knife bit in a little deeper as his arm increased the tension on its grip. Melinda shut her eyes and reminded herself to take slow easy breaths. Right now he was on a hair trigger and the slightest movement could end badly. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Cale was watching her carefully, his eyes still glowing in the moonlight.

  “What do you know about my father? That man was worthless in life. He’s been much more valuable to me in death.” That cryptic response was followed by a slow smile that spread across Charles’s face like a disease. “I enjoyed watching him die.”

  Charles didn’t wait for Cale to respond. Instead, he turned around and led Melinda toward the entrance of the cave. Melinda knew that they locked the entrance up at night and shut off the lights down in the cave, but when they approached she could see that he had broken off the lock and turned on the lights. He has already planned this out.

  The problem for him was that until now he’d only dealt with women who were weaker. They might have been frightened and afraid to fight back, but not Melinda. She was biding her time. Now that she was faced with the depth of his delusions, she had no doubt only one of them would be returning from their trip down into the rabbit hole.

  Chapter 18

  Cale waited until they had walked a good distance away from him before he stood up. He reached into the backpack and pulled out the phone. His brother was right, the signal for a regular cell was almost nonexistent. However, Cale had invested in a satellite phone before they left. Now he punched in the number for Agent Davidson. He picked up after two rings.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “This is Cale Winters, Charles Sanders’s attorney.”

  “And his brother,” Davidson responded in an agitated voice. “You forgot to mention that part…”

  “Don’t interrupt, this is important. We tracked Charles to Alabaster Caverns. It’s by some town named Alva…”

  “I know where it is. What do you mean…”

  “I don’t have time. Charles is here, he’s taken Melinda Brandt hostage. They’re down in the caves. I’m going in after them.”

  “Melinda?” Davidson answered with concern. “You mean Sheriff Brandt?!”

  “Yes,” replied Cale. “Now get here as soon as you can.”

  With that Cale disconnected the line and ran after Charles and Melinda.

  The anger that had been building up in him since he’d first learned of Charles’s attacks was now at a boiling point. The image of blood seeping out of the wound on Melinda’s collarbone had driven him nearly to breaking point. He took the gun out of the back waistband of his pants and slipped into the night, his footsteps almost soundless.

  Charles’s father, Martin, had been the only father figure that Cale had ever known. His own dad had died years before. Although Cale hated guns and violence, he had been to target practice many times with Martin over the years and the two had even gone quail hunting a few times so he knew how to handle a gun.

  The rage that he had been holding off, burst forth like water pouring from a dam when Charles had so callously mentioned Martin’s murder. Now he gripped the gun in his hand and stalked them through the night.

  The entrance to the cave had a gate over it, but the lock was broken and the gate had been wrenched open. Cale slipped in between the entrance and stood there for a few minutes, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Up ahead he saw some lights. They were low enough that the cave was not bathed in light but they slid through the dark formations at his feet.

  Moving forward one step at a time, Cale slid through the darkness and tuned his ears into the voice. The cave was a tricky thing. It echoed back voices and bounced them around the slick gypsum walls until he wasn’t sure where the sounds were coming from. Apparently the bats were listening too, because each time a sharp sound moved through the cave a fluttering of bat wings moved overhead.

  Cale was thankful that they remained out of sight in the darkness.

  It was just as likely that if he slipped up and made a sound, Charles would hear it as well. This made him even more aware of his movements. Every muscle was tensed as he moved and after a few moments his legs burned intensely. But he didn’t let his guard down and instead continued to follow the light while listening to Charles’s ramblings drift up on through the layers of darkness.

  You know where your brother is, and that means you’ll know where she is.

  Why?

  What do you mean, why? That’s a ridiculous question. Because she can’t leave me again, that’s why. I refuse. When I catch up with her I am going to let her know why it was a very bad thing that she left me there, all alone.

  What are you talking about?

  Shut up! Charles shouted at her with such ferocity that Cale momentarily forgot about trying to be silent and instead rounded the formation at the corner with lightning speed.

  Just as he looked around the corner he reminded himself not to go plunging headfirst into the scene and managed to pull back at the edge of the rock so that he was looking around it, watching Charles as he circled around Melinda, the tip of his knife going back and forth across her flesh.

  Cale remembered how, just a few minutes ago, they had been kissing under the moonlight. Time felt as if it was stretching on into infinity and that encounter felt as if it had happened in some other faraway time and place. This moment in the cave felt as if it had gone on for hours but he knew that it hadn’t even been more than a few minutes.

  He tried to move and the rocks slipped under his foot, causing a small cascade. Charles heard and grabbed Melinda from behind, holding the knife to her neck once again. They were in a low lying area of the cavern that was lit up by several different lanterns which had been planted around their area in some kind of ritualistic circular pattern. This had an odd effect. The area they were in was brightly lit but the shadows engulfed the rest of the cave just a few feet away where Charles was hiding

  “Come on out, Cale,” Charles’ voice was mocking. “I should have known that you would try to be brave and save your little policewoman whore.”

  For a moment Cale studied him as he moved his gaze back and forth along the darkness, searching. With each second that went by, however, he seemed to grow more panicked and Cale didn’t want to leave Melinda in such a violent situation.

  “This is your last chance,” Cale told him as he stepped out from behind the rock. At the last moment he also pulled the gun out from his waistband with his right hand and kept it by his side in the shadows out of sight. “Let Melinda go. This ends here and now.”

  “I know you
better than that, you’re not going to let me go, and this isn’t over until I get my hands on Clara.”

  Just then the knife in his hands dropped slightly away from Melinda’s neck as Charles leaned forward to spit out this last sentence. Cale noticed a smile spread across Melinda’s face, and he realized that she was about to act.

  Almost simultaneously she jabbed an elbow into his abdomen and picked up her foot and rammed it down on top of Charles’s. When she did this his grip on the knife loosened and she was able to twist away, falling to the ground. Charles slashed at the air, trying to cut her. The knife made contact with her forearm, and a splash of blood fanned out across the cavern. Charles started to turn back to Melinda, raising the knife once again, but stopped a moment later when he heard his brother cock the gun.

  “Don’t move, Charles, it’s over. The OSBI are on their way.”

  Charles was grinning, the lanterns throwing up haunting shadows across his blood spattered face. “Don’t play with me, brother. I know you aren’t going to shoot.”

  Melinda lay on the ground, and Cale saw that she was trying to get to her ankle holster. However, her mangled arm was of no use. When she tried to twist even further to the side to grab it with her other hand, she drew Charles’s attention, and he realized what she was trying to do.

  Bending toward her, he went to grab for the gun, and that was when Cale pulled the trigger. It had been at least three years since he’d gone to the shooting range, but handling the gun was almost instinctual and he didn’t realize he had fired until the shot rang in his ears.

  The hole in Charles’s side widened and red droplets of blood spilled out from under his shirt. For a moment it was as if he didn’t realize that he had been hit and he kept moving as if he was going after Melinda. Then, his eyes widened and rolled back into his head as he crumpled to the ground, covering Melinda’s legs. Cale rushed forward and pulled Melinda clear of Charles. She had already reached down with her good arm and taken the knife from his grasp.