Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

The sound of her voice stripped him raw. Hell, everything about Rachel stripped him raw, but this was different. Something was seriously wrong, and it wasn’t only her gravely spoken words that told the story. He heard the agony and fury in her tone, but despite all that, he refused to believe she’d kill anyone. She wasn’t made like that.

Still, he radioed for an ambulance and called Wesley Stratis off his patrol to follow him over the twisted dirt road that dipped near the now-dry Catcher Creek before disappearing into the rolling hills and canyons of Sorentino Farm.

He knew these roads better than he’d ever admit aloud. Parillas Valley in particular was scarred into his consciousness. So much so that the land came to him in dreams, the canyons sculpted by flash floods in the spring, the sheer vertical face of the mesa exploding from the valley, the single shade tree at the base of the mesa.

His eyes flashed to his glove compartment, but instead of reaching for the cigarettes he craved, he wrung the steering wheel and shoved the gas pedal to the floor. Behind him, Stratis’s patrol car and the ambulance worked to stay close, kicking up enough dust to block the sky from sight in his rearview mirror.

Rachel hadn’t ended the call, so Vaughn set his phone on speaker and tossed it on the passenger seat, but he heard nothing except faint rumbles that could’ve been anything from a car starting to a low-flying airplane. Then, for the last twenty minutes it took to make the drive deep into the heart of the desert, miles from any vestiges of civilization, the phone was completely silent.

The first thing he saw when he made a left turn around a foothill that opened into Parillas Valley was the body of a man laying facedown in the dirt. He muttered a curse and scanned the desolate countryside for Rachel. He didn’t see her, but identified a second man sitting against the mesa, using the wall of dirt as a backrest.

“Where are you, Rachel?” He ducked his head, squinting into the glare of the sun on his windshield.

At last he spotted her under the shade tree, approximately ten yards from the body in the dirt. She was upright, which most likely meant she was alive, but he couldn’t tell if she was injured. All he knew was, she didn’t rise or move in any obvious way, despite his convoy’s dusty, noisy approach. That alone would’ve been enough to scare him shitless if he hadn’t been at that breaking point already.

He picked up his radio and requested a second ambulance, then called Deputy Reyes to meet them at the scene.

What he needed to do was lapse into cop mode, to get into that zone of calm detachment that allowed him to do his job right and keep himself, his deputy, and the paramedics safe. He needed to unplug the wire that connected his brain to his heart. But this was Rachel he was dealing with, and he’d already proven over and over that with her, such a disconnect was impossible.

Still, the cop inside him never completely turned off. The minute he hit the brakes, he drew his firearm. He stood behind his open car door, assessing, as the odor of gunpowder smacked him in the face. Whatever happened here hadn’t been fast or clean. Whatever happened had been warfare.

He scanned the surroundings for danger—the glint of metal from a concealed firearm, a lurking perpetrator, any reason he or his crew shouldn’t rush forward to aid the victims. Today, though, the only firearm at the scene that he could see besides his and his deputy’s belonged to Rachel.

She stared straight ahead without acknowledging him, her arms wrapped around her knees, her right hand curled around a revolver. Her hair was a disheveled mess, her face a smear of browns. Tears snaked a path down her cheeks through the grime. Blood soaked her left shirt sleeve and chest.

It was her blood that got Vaughn’s legs working.

“Damn it, your arm! Were you shot?” He dropped to his knees at her side. When he eased the gun from her fingers, she turned her bloodshot, dirt-rimmed eyes on him. He flipped the revolver’s cylinder open and found six empty casings. A rush of acid pooled in his mouth. Dear God, what has she done?

“They hurt Lincoln.” Her voice was weak, hoarse as though from screaming.

Looking at the dull hopelessness on her face, he was overcome by the impulse to snatch her up in his arms and run away to some hidden place where he could lose his cool like he wanted to, without anyone witnessing the spectacle.

Biting his lip, he looked over his shoulder. The man in the dirt lay unmoving as the paramedics worked on him, his shirt crusted with drying blood. Stratis stood over the man leaning against the mesa, who looked to be in his early twenties. He whimpered, and Vaughn couldn’t fault him for it—his right thigh was a bloody mess.

Vaughn wrapped Rachel’s revolver in the handkerchief he kept in his pocket for such a use and set it on the ground. “These men, they shot Lincoln?”

His fingers flew to her injured arm. She started to answer, but when he pushed her sleeve up, it stuck to the drying blood and she hissed through her teeth. Despite her obvious pain, she held still and allowed him to evaluate the damage. A bullet had grazed her arm near her shoulder, cutting an angry path through her skin and muscle. Dirt and pebbles compromised the area. She needed the wound cleaned and her shock symptoms and dehydration addressed immediately.

Another look over his shoulder told him the paramedics were too busy to see to her relatively minor injuries. They had the man on the ground rolled over and fitted with an oxygen mask, and were in the process of transferring him to a stretcher. The second ambulance probably wouldn’t arrive for another half hour. Time Rachel couldn’t afford, if there was any alternative.

Vaughn could have her to the hospital in Tucumcari in forty-five minutes if they left right now. But he was the sheriff, the boss; this was his game. He should direct Stratis to take her. Any other case, he would’ve had no uncertainty over his need to stay on the scene. But there was a huge part of him that still burned with the need to be Rachel’s protector, and he knew it would kill him to stuff her in another man’s car and watch them drive away.

Then again, if Rachel shot those men, there would be an investigation. Legally, ethically, he’d need to recuse himself should it come to that. In that case, he should probably appoint Stratis to run lead on the case right off the bat.

Fuck.

Take a breath, Vaughn.

What was happening now, his hesitation, that was the crux of his problem—Rachel short-circuited his intuition. Every time he got inside her orbit, he started second-guessing himself. More than anything, he hated that about their relationship. Or lack of relationship, as it was.

He peeled a sticky strand of hair from her wound. “Where’s Lincoln now?”

She shuddered. “In the canyon. Dead.”

His heart constricted. She loved that horse. “They killed him?”

Her tongue moved over the roof of her open mouth. “I’m thirsty.”

Damn, she needed medical attention in a bad way. “I know. I’m going to get you water in a sec. Did those two men kill Lincoln?”

“Four men.”

Vaughn reeled. Four?

Rachel continued. “But it wasn’t them who killed Lincoln. It was me.”

Vaughn got his face near hers, set his eyes right in front of her, and took her shoulders in his hands, careful to steer clear of her injury. “Rachel, listen to me. We only found two men. Where are the other two?”

Her gaze drifted past him. “They left. In the truck.”

He followed her line of sight to the top of the mesa. When he saw what she was looking at, he rose to his feet, his jaw so tight his teeth ached.

Fourteen years in law enforcement had trained him not to rush forward, but to listen and watch, to pause and take in a crime scene all at once. Like a photograph that captured body positions and facial expressions, evidence scattered around the scene, the nuances a civilian’s eye would miss. Today, though, he’d missed the writing on the boulder. Another testament to how Rachel messed with his self-control.