Delores Fossen - Christmas Rescue at Mustang Ridge

“My fight’s not with them,” Jake mumbled back.

Maggie would have had to be deaf or unconscious not to react to that. Or to Jake himself. Her former brother-in-law was a formidable man and had a way of taking over a room just by stepping into it. Tall, dark and intimidating.

Once, she’d been crazy in love with him.

Well, maybe not in love exactly.

In lust with him for sure, as every Mustang Ridge female over the age of thirteen had been. Her sister had once said that Jake could stop a man’s heart in midbeat. Or send a woman’s heart racing.

Maggie had experienced both at one time or another.

She remembered their one and only kiss. She could still taste him, could still feel his rough cowboy hands and mouth on her.

Something Jake had warned her to forget.

Right.

She hadn’t had much luck with that.

And he’d dismissed the kiss and the body contact against the barn wall as part of the grief of recently losing his wife. Maggie had dismissed it, too. Then, they’d learned Anna’s death was Maggie’s fault, in part anyway, and the dismissing turned to rage for Jake.

The rage was still there.

She could feel it as strongly as she could feel the kiss that she was supposed to forget.

“How’d you find me?” she asked.

His arm tensed, and he slung off her grip as if she’d scalded him. Or maybe he just remembered how much it disgusted him to touch her.

Or answer her.

Because Jake ignored her question.

He reached in his pocket and used his keypad to unlock the doors of a dark blue F-150 truck. He put her in first, practically shoving her into the passenger’s seat. Jake didn’t even glance at her as he walked in front of the truck so he could climb behind the wheel. He probably figured she wasn’t going to run, especially since she’d coaxed him out of the diner.

“You’re going to shoot me in your truck?” she asked, glancing at the pristine exterior. “It’d be a heck of a mess to clean up.”

She was pleased and surprised that it sounded smart-mouthed. Better than letting him know she was so scared that she was about to lose her breakfast.

Something else that’d need cleaning.

The image of that hit Maggie the wrong way, and a short burst of air left her mouth. Definitely not a laugh. All nerves. And then the stupid tears came, burning her eyes and forcing her to choke them back.

“You couldn’t hate me any more than I hate myself,” Maggie said, and she swiped away a tear.

Now, she got him looking at her. Jake turned those lethal cop’s eyes on her. “Don’t bet on that.”

The answer was actually a relief. Old lingo kicked in. Old training, too. If she could get him talking, maybe she could...what?

Talk him out of this?

Calm him down?

Make him see it was a mistake to come here?

Maggie wasn’t sure that was the fair thing to do. Or if she could do it at all. Once upon a time she’d thought she could do anything.

She’d been stupid.

And now that stupidity was catching up with her. She could only shrug at that and concede that she was due. For two years, eight months and six days, she’d been living on borrowed time and mercy.

Maggie looked at him. Looked outside. Waited. And felt the goose bumps riffle over her entire body. Sweet heaven. Her coat wasn’t thick enough, but she pulled the sides together, hunched her shoulders.

“How’s Sunny?” she risked asking.

And she braced herself for him to reach for his gun. Right before his father, Chet, had run her out of Mustang Ridge, Jake warned her never to say his daughter’s name. That was a McCall thing. If you crossed them—Jake’s siblings or Chet—your name was mud.

Hers was something lower than mud.

Of course, Jake didn’t answer her. He wouldn’t give her that much, and if their situations had been reversed, Maggie probably wouldn’t have, either.

“So, what? We just sit here mute as monkeys and freeze to death?” she asked. Her voice was quivering now, and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep up this act of someone who wasn’t about to go nuts. “At least it wouldn’t require much cleanup.”

That deepened his scowl. “I figured you’d be working as a cop.”

“No.” And that’s all Maggie could manage for several seconds. “I gave up my badge and went with another career choice.”

He looked at the peeling painted sign on the side of the building. “Waitress at the Tip Top Diner.”

Ah, two could go in the smart-mouthed direction.

“Fewer things to screw up at a diner,” she settled for saying.

Jake’s forehead bunched up, and he nodded. Just nodded.

It hit her then. Maybe he wasn’t there to kill her after all. Maybe he’d come to warn her, though she couldn’t think of a good reason why he’d be the one to do that.

“Has my identity been compromised?” She couldn’t get the question out fast enough, and Maggie fired glances all around. The next question, however, didn’t come easily. “Does Tanner know where I am?”

Bruce Tanner. The man who’d hired someone to gun down her sister to get back at Maggie for conducting an investigation into his multiple wrongdoings. He was in jail on death row now, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a way to kill her.

Get in line.

A lot of people wanted her dead.

“Tanner doesn’t know,” Jake said. “At least I don’t think he does.” With his hands bracketed on the steering wheel, Jake turned his head and nailed his gaze to hers. “I’m here to take you back to Mustang Ridge.”

Maggie had anticipated Jake saying a lot of things, but that wasn’t one of them. “Wh-what?”

“Mustang Ridge,” Jake said as if that clarified everything. He started the engine and probably would have driven away if Maggie hadn’t latched on to his wrist.

“You can’t take me back there, Jake. It’s too dangerous.”

He looked at her as if she’d spouted a third eye. “You thought I’d come here to kill you, remember?”

“Yeah, but in hot blood. As in the emotion had taken over so that you weren’t thinking straight. Taking me back to the one place where someone will see me and tell Tanner is premeditation—”

“I don’t want to harm you.” Jake cursed. “I don’t want to harm you today,” he quickly amended.

She wasn’t sure she believed that, and Jake had good reason to want to do her harm. If Maggie could go back to three years ago, she would have never started that investigation into Bruce Tanner, the rancher who was as corrupt as he was rich and powerful. But Maggie had been eager for justice. Equally eager to make a name for herself in the Amarillo P.D. She’d wanted to bring Tanner down.

And she had succeeded in part.

Maggie had found the evidence necessary to arrest him for money laundering through real estate deals, and in retaliation, Tanner had hired someone to shoot and kill Anna in what was supposed to look like a foiled robbery attempt at a store where she’d been shopping.

Yes, eventually Maggie and her fellow officers had managed to pin the murder on Tanner and had put him on death row, but it hadn’t brought back her sister. It hadn’t eased Jake’s hatred of her.

And it hadn’t eased her hatred of herself.

“If you’re not taking me to Tanner,” she asked, “then where are you taking me?”

“To the hospital for some tests. After that, I’ll let you go.”

The hospital? “But I’m not sick.”

Maggie stopped. What the heck would make Jake McCall come all this way to take her to Mustang Ridge for some tests?

There was only one thing.

Sunny.

She reached across the seat and gripped on to his jacket, wadding up the fabric in her fists. “What’s wrong? What happened to my niece?”