Dana Mentink - Danger On The Ranch

By now Mitch was tiring, the energy seeping out of him as he struggled to tread water. He could not see what had become of the boat, and it took all his reserves to keep them from smashing against the sharp rocks.

He realized Jane had freed herself from his grasp and taken hold of his sleeve. He resisted, but she dug her fingers into his bicep.

“This way.”

Again, he was forced to make a decision—follow a woman he would not even trust with his cowboy boots, or stay put, fighting the tide until he would certainly drown?

“Where...?” he tried, but she did not allow him to utter the rest. He found himself towed along through the icy water, following the woman who’d married the monster.

* * *

Jane felt as though her limbs were carved from a block of ice. She held on to Mitch as long as she could, but he slipped out of her numb grasp at some point, though she could still see his dark head just behind. He shouted a couple of times, but she could not understand over the roar of the surf, nor did she want to. There was only one thing on her mind: getting them out of the freezing grip of the waves before they drowned.

Her knee banged into a submerged ridge, the bottom of the cliff that rose straight from the water like a shark fin. She hauled herself out, gasping as the wind robbed her of any remaining warmth.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mitch grunted behind her. “If you climb, he’s got an easy target.”

She didn’t respond, fingers clawing as the rocks tore into her flesh. It was here, had to be.

“Hey,” he said, but his words were cut off by a grunt of pain. From his injury or the rocks that surely sliced at him, too.

What if she’d been wrong? Again? What if Mitch was right and there was nothing on this cliff but certain death? No, this would not be the end. This was her only shot at life, real life, one last chance to make things right. Teeth gritted, she hauled herself along the sharp crack, praying that the fog and the police had been enough to frighten Wade away.

But Wade was never scared.

That part of him was missing; instead there was an empty void where human feeling should reside.

She was shivering uncontrollably now. Her legs felt like they were as insubstantial as the fog. Despair gripped its way into her belly. And then she saw it, the cutout that marked the cave she’d spotted on her way into the cove, high enough that the tide would not flood it, or so she hoped.

“Come on,” she ordered him and climbed as quickly as she could until she crawled through the opening. It was a harder squeeze for Mitch, as the guy was broad shouldered and a hulk at somewhere over six feet.

He hunched inside the cave, water streaming from his clothing, eyes ink dark, narrow, suspicious.

“You’re Wade’s wife.”

It was like the executioner pronouncing sentence.

“No. Divorced.”

“Why are you here?” His shirt was stained with blood, and his teeth were chattering as badly as hers.

“Sit down,” she said.

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“Okay then, stand, but when you fall over, try not to hit your head. You probably already have a concussion.”

He did not sit, but she noticed he grabbed an outcropping of rock with one massive palm.

She scanned the cave floor until she found a meager supply of semidry leaves and some driftwood. Piling it onto the driest spot she could find, she pulled the Ziploc bag from her jacket pocket. With trembling fingers, she struck the match. It fizzled as soon as she touched it to the leaves.

“We won’t have to worry that he’ll see the smoke with all this fog,” she said, more to herself than him. I hope. There wasn’t much choice, anyway. They were dangerously close to hypothermia. Cold or bullets? Which one would get them first? She ground her teeth together. Neither, if she had a teaspoon of strength left in her. Patting her pockets, she realized her cell phone was somewhere at the bottom of the cove. At least the small pouch hooked to her belt was still there, for what it was worth. Her driver’s license, ATM card and a soggy ten-dollar bill. Not much, but keeping hold of some small thing helped her feel the tiniest bit less exposed.

Mitch swabbed a sleeve over his face. “Where’d you get the matches?”

“There was a kit in the boat. I grabbed it just before I started the motor. I thought there might be some first-aid supplies.”

He was silent as she struck the second match, which was snuffed just as quickly.

“Here,” he said, dropping to one knee and taking the box of matches from her. He bent close to the debris with a wince and a groan. Slowly, patiently, he held the lit match to the barest edge of the driest clump of pine needles. It kindled orange and smoked. He blew softly, cupping his shaking hand around the needles until they were fully aflame. With more gentleness than she’d thought him capable of, he eased the pine needles back into the pile. She held her breath as the debris grudgingly took.

Fighting back tears of relief, she scooted as close as she could to that small spot of warmth. With quaking fingers, she fished out a bandage from the bag and thrust it at him. “You’re still bleeding.”

Ignoring her offering, Mitch eased to a sitting position across from her, mouth tight with pain. “Why are you here?”

“To find you. And it wasn’t easy. You have no cell phone, and your house is like some kind of remote fortress or something.”

“Not remote enough, if you found it.”

She pushed another twig into the fire and edged so close her knees were almost touching the flames. “I...came to warn you that Wade had escaped.”

“Police could tell me that. So why did you come? Not just to warn me. You don’t care about me. Why?”

She was quiet. The little flames danced and popped, painting light and darkness across his face. Was there any of Wade’s darkness in his brother, Mitch? They shared genes.

That doesn’t mean anything, she told herself savagely. DNA doesn’t determine who you are—your soul does. But what kind of soul did Mitch Whitehorse have? Didn’t matter. He was the one, the only one, who could save what mattered most.

“I came because I need you to help me put Wade back in prison.”

He blinked. “So now you’re afraid of him, too? Why? You turned a blind eye while he kidnapped and murdered three women.”

She sucked in a breath. “I know you don’t believe me, but I didn’t know what Wade was doing.”

“You didn’t know the guy you married was a serial killer?”

The judgment was there in his eyes, the same she’d seen in the courtroom, the cops, the people who drove by her house and threw rocks into her windows, flattened her tires, sent death threats.

She swallowed hard against an onslaught of bitter tears. “I was blind, stupid blind, but I did not know.”

A long moment passed between them. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

She sagged. What else had she expected? Why would Mitch be any different? “Okay. Don’t believe me, but Wade has come here to kill you, and after he does that, he’ll kill me, too.”

“Why would he want to kill you? If you’re really innocent, why would Wade want to do that?”

“Because he will eventually find out that I have something he wants, something that I won’t ever give to him while I have breath in my body.”

“What could you have that would make him care enough to come after you?”

Her head spun, and she fought for breath. Tell him? What choice did she have?

“I have his son.”

She was lying, Mitch thought. Manipulating him, just like Wade. He crawled to the cave entrance both to scan for any sign of Wade or the returning police and to give himself a moment to think. It wasn’t easy with the hammering pain inside his skull and the cold that still made every movement arduous.