Dana Mentink - Danger On The Ranch

Now she was trapped here, no cell reception, Mitch shot and probably bleeding to death, and her ex-husband stalking her from a scant fifty yards away from his perch on the rock pile. There was no one to help. Again she questioned the sanity of a man who lived in a location with limited access, by horseback, boat or on foot. So lonely, so desolate.

And why had she come here to this isolated stretch of nowhere to find Mitch? Put herself in such a vulnerable position for a man who believed she was a willing participant in Wade’s sick plans?

Because Wade was her worst nightmare, evil incarnate, and he’d found the house where she rented a tiny back room from Nana Jo. It was only by God’s grace that she’d been out at the time, able to flee. Mitch Whitehorse was the only one...the only person on earth who could help her put Wade back in prison, where he could not destroy any more lives. Only now Mitch was likely dead. Icy despair licked at her.

You can’t give up.

Wade’s voice, singsong and high-pitched, carried over the wind. “Who’s that shooting at me?”

Terror coursed through her at the sound of that voice, and his courtroom promise returned to her mind.

We’ll be together again, Janey. Don’t you worry, my dove. The smile, the soulless eyes. I’ll never let you go.

She clamped her teeth closed to hold in the scream and clutched the useless flare gun. Where was he? Still at a distance, judging from the voice. Stopped to examine her boat? Circling around to her position? She could not see through the thickening fog.

A flicker of movement up and to the right riveted her. He was climbing to a higher position, a spot on top of the craggy pile from which he’d be able to pick out her hiding place. But his movement gave her time, minutes maybe, no longer, while he threaded his way along the rocks. If she could reach Mitch, the boat, and get them into the water... The little outboard motor wasn’t terribly powerful and she’d be fighting the incoming tide, but it would put some distance between them, and maybe she could make it past the cove, out of range of Wade’s gun.

One thing she knew after a year of marriage to the monster was that Wade Whitehorse could not swim. Forcing herself to breathe slowly, she counted to three, pushed off from the rotted piling and ran as quietly as she could. Every moment she expected the report of a gun, the pain of a bullet plowing into her skull.

Panting, fueled by terror, she made it to Mitch and the boat.

As frightened as she was of Wade, it scared her even more to crouch behind a pile of sand next to Mitch’s sprawled body. He lay on his back, face turned toward her, one muscled arm out-flung. Blood stained his forehead, collecting in the puckered edges of his scar, dripping down to saturate the collar of his barn jacket. With shaking fingers, she checked for a pulse. His dark lashes twitched as she touched his cold throat.

Alive.

Mitch Whitehorse was alive.

A rock bounced loose from the towering cliff and tumbled to the beach. Wade was closing in, and if she didn’t do something fast, neither one of them would live to see morning.

Mitch’s senses came back online slowly, feeding him bits of information that did not make sense. Pain, in his temple and back. Cold, the feel of wind on his face and damp sand under his body. Fear, that he was being dragged against his will to a place he did not want to go. He forced his eyes open. Someone was yanking him by the arm, trying to heave him up and into the aluminum boat he’d noticed just before Wade shot him.

Wade.

Mitch surged to his feet in an adrenaline-fueled rush, pulling free of his captor before he toppled backward into the sand. A woman with long dark hair swooped next him. It took him a few blinks to recognize her, Jane Reyes Whitehorse, his brother’s wife.

“Don’t touch me.” He tried to get up again, but his head spun. She grabbed a handful of his shirtfront with one hand and clamped icy fingers over his mouth with the other.

“Be quiet. He’ll hear you. You’ve got to get in the boat. Help me. I can’t move you by myself.”

He shook off her grasp.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do...” he grated out.

“Save your life, you big ox, and if you don’t help me right now, Wade is going to kill us both.”

Both? Kill his accomplice? Mitch shook himself to try to clear away the fuzz, but the movement made him groan. She was grabbing him again, yanking and pulling, and he moved more to get her to stop jarring his nerves into white-hot pain than to cooperate. Suddenly he found himself in the bottom of the boat that she began to drag to the water’s edge.

He clamped a palm over the gunwale and hauled himself up to his knees, but she’d managed to get the boat in the water and it was all he could do to hold on against the movement.

There was a crack, the whistling noise that he didn’t have to see to know was a bullet. She threw herself to her knees.

“Wade?” he grunted.

“Who else?”

“Why’s he shooting at you?”

Her eyes rounded in exasperation. “He’s shooting at you. I don’t think he knows it’s me yet. You didn’t know he’d escaped from the marshals?”

“Just found that out.” Before he’d formulated his next question, she yanked the outboard to life. The motor throbbed, and she guided the boat into the grip of the tide. He would rather have jumped into the waves and swum than been in the company of his former sister-in-law and the woman who’d aided Wade in his horrors, but his vision was blurred and there was a dull ringing in his ears. He forced himself to breathe through his nose, praying the dizziness would subside long enough for him to take action. Another bullet followed the first, closer this time. Wade had gotten to a better position for the kill shot.

Now he’d hauled himself to his knees just as a shot took a chunk out of the side of the boat, startling Jane. She flipped over backward into the waves, going under. Breaking the surface a moment later, she looked at him with wide eyes of a color caught between ice blue and silver. She coughed, wet hair clinging in long dark clumps to her cheeks.

Indecision clawed at him. She was his enemy, but she was also a woman, a small woman with a mouth pinched in fear. Without allowing himself to think it over, he stuck an oar over the side, and she grabbed on.

Fighting through pain and the disequilibrium of the rocking boat, he began to pull her in, until another shot furrowed the water so close she lost her grip. Hands flailing, she fought against the current, but it sucked her back toward the rocks. He tumbled out after her, a messy splash into cold that seeped right into his core.

He struck out as best he could in the direction she’d been swept. Without the protection of the boat, there would be nothing stopping Wade from shooting them except perhaps the layer of fog, which had thickened to be almost impenetrable.

His fingers felt something soft, and he grabbed at it. It turned out to be her jacket sleeve. He clung to her wrist and reeled the rest of her body close to his until he’d encircled her in his arms. She was smaller than he’d thought.

She looked up at him with those strange-colored eyes.

The lights from a boat sliced through the water, bouncing off the mist. “Driftwood Police Department,” a voice called. “This is private property, and there is no shooting allowed here.” It was a voice Mitch knew well. Danny Patron, an avid fisherman, hardworking cop and father of three, who was assigned the lonely job of watching the coastline.

“Hey,” he yelled. “Danny! Over here.” He continued to shout as loud as he could, and Jane joined him, but the thrum of the motor indicated the vessel was passing them, unaware of the two victims fighting the waves and buried in fog.