Sandra Marton - Wild Revenge

And at twenty, he’d walked away from college and football to enlist in the army, where he’d flown into the heart of battle.

As for his looks …

It was that DNA thing again.

He was tall. Lean. Muscular. His nose had a bump in it, courtesy of a burly defensive lineman, but that didn’t work against him at all.

Women went for the entire package.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel.

He still had the money. The status. The looks …?

He didn’t much care.

He knew his wounds made people uncomfortable. Like tonight. People looked at him, they flinched, they averted their eyes, they showed pity.

Pity was the worst of all.

As for seeing his own face in the mirror every morning—it was still a shock, but not because of vanity. It was a shock because it was a constant reminder of his failure.

“You need to give that up, Captain,” one of the shrinks had told him. “Get a prosthetic eye. Let people—let yourself- —see the real you.”

What reality had to do with popping an artificial eyeball into what was, basically, a hole in his head didn’t make sense even if the shrinks thought it did.

“Have you ever considered that it counteracts the medal you were awarded?” one had said, and Jake had ignored that for the stupid comment it was.

And all of this was pointless to think about, especially—

“Holy hell,” Jake said, and stood on the brakes.

A deer and her yearling stood twenty feet ahead of him, big eyes filled with innocence as they stared at his truck.

He dragged in a breath.

“Go on,” he said. “Get out of the way.”

The animals remained motionless. Then mama flicked her tail and she and the baby ran into the scrub.

Jake started the truck again.

He’d been lucky not to have hit the deer. His fault, entirely. Antelope, deer, coyotes all used the road, especially at night.

His head had been everywhere except where it should have been….

And the glow of Addison McDowell’s taillights was history.

No problem.

She was heading for the Chambers ranch and so was he.

A few minutes later, he bounced over the familiar pothole that signaled the start of Chambers land.

He slowed, took a good look at the gate and saw what he hadn’t seen the first time. It wasn’t locked. Truth was, the thing was barely a gate. Crossbars, posts, a couple of broken hinges. The gate hung open, swaying drunkenly in the breeze, looking more like kindling than anything else.

Jake eased the truck forward, nosed it through the opening, then started up the long gravel drive to the house.

Still no taillights.

If the McDowell woman had already reached the house, what did he do?

Park? Go to the door and knock? Or did he sit in the truck and tap on his horn? He had the feeling turning up, unannounced on her doorstep, might not be the best—

Light blazed through the windshield, blinding him. Jake cursed, flung his arm in front of his face, and for the second time in minutes, stood on the brakes.

The truck came to a hard stop.

What was he looking at? Headlights? The light from a big flashlight? No way could he see past it.

Cautiously, he opened his door.

“Ms. McDowell?”

Nothing. Just the darkness, the silence and the light.

“Addison? Are those your headlights? Turn them off.”

Still nothing. Jake squinted hard. He took a step to the left. The brightest light remained focused on the Tundra but another light followed him.

Headlights and a flashlight. Addison—it had to be her—was using both.

He couldn’t see a thing.

“Hey,” he shouted. “Didn’t you hear me? Turn off those lights.”

Still no response. Jake grunted, moved another few steps from the truck….

The flashlight beam settled on him and held.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He’d had enough of being a living target to last him a lifetime.

“Turn that thing away from me,” he said coldly. “Do it now.”

Survival instinct, honed in a place thousands of miles and many centuries away, kicked in.

This wasn’t Texas anymore.

Jake dropped to the ground and rolled, not toward the truck as the enemy might predict, but away from it, into scrub and darkness.

Everything in him focused on that beam of light.

His heart rate slowed. The sounds of the night faded; he could hear his opponent’s breaths.

The beam of light moved. Swept over the truck. Over the ground. It was searching for him.

Jake rolled again. Pressed himself to the earth ten or twelve feet from the road.

Wait, he told himself. Wait for the right instant, for the opportunity that always presented itself if you were ready….

“Show yourself,” a voice called.

Addison McDowell’s voice.

It shot him back to reality. This wasn’t some hell-begotten dirt track in Afghanistan, it was Texas. And the person with the flashlight wasn’t the enemy, it was simply a woman who’d been frightened by the headlights following her home.

He let out a long breath.

“Addison. Hey. It’s Jake Wilde. You don’t have to—”

The beam of light swept over the road, the truck, the scrub. It would find him soon. Jake started to rise.

“Addison? Listen, I understand why you’re upset—”

“All you need to understand is that I have a gun. And I damn well know how to use it.”

Jake dropped to his belly, fast. A gun? Impossible. Where would she get a …

From the Chambers house, of course. The old man had kept a dozen guns, rifles, shotguns, automatics. He’d been the worst kind of hunter, shooting anything that moved.

Hell.

This wasn’t good.

Jake cleared his throat.

“Addison. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“I’m going to start counting, Captain. By the time I get to five, you’d better be on your feet with your hands in the air.”

“Did you hear me? You don’t want to have an accident with that thing—”

“Shooting you won’t be an accident.”

“Goddammit, woman—”

The light swept past him.

“One,” she said. “Two.”

It came to a stop, inches from his head.

“Wait. Listen to me. All I want is—”

“I know exactly what you want.”

He blinked.

There was no mistaking what she meant. The only response he could think of was “uh-oh,” but he had the feeling that wasn’t going to do it.

“You’re wrong,” he said quickly. “I don’t—”

“Three,” she said, no hesitancy in her voice at all.

Jake took a breath, shot to his feet, focused his sight to the left of the light in hopes it wouldn’t blind him and ran to where he figured she was standing.

He hit her, hard, just as he’d planned, his shoulder driving into her with enough force to take them both to the ground.

The flashlight flew from her hand.

Then she was under him, legs spread, arms raised, fingers clawing for his face. He grunted, grabbed for her wrists and struggled to immobilize her.

Her knee came up. She didn’t have a lot of leverage but she jammed it into his groin anyway, hard enough to make him gasp.

He flung himself against her, pinned her with his body, his hands clasping hers, holding them out to the sides.

“Listen to me,” he said roughly. “I’m not here to hurt—”

She struck like a snake, head coming up, teeth sharp as tiny knives sinking into his throat.

He jerked back.

“For God’s sake, woman, will you listen?”

“I’ll kill you,” she gasped. “So help me, I’ll—”

“I came to apologize.”

“You do this to me, I swear—”

“I came here to apologize, dammit!”

She grunted. Wriggled. It was like wrestling with a wildcat….