Rita Herron - Cowboy to the Max

Carter narrowed his eyes. “We did?”

“You don’t remember?” She sighed. “You and he were both drinking, playing pool. It was nothing, just a bar brawl, but I guess the incident made you a patsy.”

Carter scrubbed his hand over his beard stubble. “Who were you working with?” Carter asked gruffly.

Sadie’s heart thumped with shock. “You have it all wrong,” she said, suddenly realizing that Carter thought she had conspired in the murder he’d been arrested for. “I didn’t kill that man or have anything to do with it.”

Disbelief slashed fierce lines around his chiseled mouth. “You expect me to buy that story? You seduced me, drugged me, then set me up.”

“No,” Sadie protested, although her protests sounded weak, even to her own ears. The truth was, she had helped set him up, even though she hadn’t realized it at the time.

He stalked toward her, then jammed the gun in her face again. He was so close she smelled his anger, felt his breath brush her cheek. “Don’t lie to me. You owe me the truth, so spill it or you’re dead.”

Sadie shook her head, her stomach churning. “You’re not a killer, Carter. You won’t—”

He cocked the trigger. “If you don’t think I’m a killer, why the hell didn’t you stand up for me in court and say that? Why did you let them lock me up?”

“Because I was scared.” Sadie’s hand rose to her neck, then unconsciously to the scar on her chest. It ached, the burning sensation triggered by the memory of the man digging a knife in her chest.

Carter’s look flattened. “Scared? Scared of what?”

Sadie closed her eyes, willing the memories away, but they consumed her anyway. The big man’s beefy hands around her neck, choking her. His rancid breath on her face. His gruff, steely voice rasping threats in her ear.

Suddenly Carter jerked her head back, and her eyes flew open. “Tell me what happened,” he growled. “Who set me up?”

Sadie wheezed a breath. “I don’t know his name,” she whispered. “Just that he broke into my house after you left me in bed that first night we made love.”

“The night before the murder?”

She nodded. “He had a knife, he…”

Carter’s eyes flickered over her, cold, icy pits of hell. “He what?”

“He put it to my throat. He almost strangled me, then he threatened to kill my mother and me if I didn’t do what he said.” Her breathing grew ragged. “He knew where I lived, that my mother was sick, and he was going to make her suffer....”

Carter’s eyes narrowed to slits as her voice broke, then he swallowed hard, making the vein in his neck bulge. “What exactly did he tell you to do?”

Sadie’s heart wrenched. “To slip you a roofie when you came in again.” Her voice cracked, tears clogging her throat. “I didn’t want to do it, Carter, but I was terrified.”

A heartbeat of silence stretched between them, the tension palpable. “Did he tell you why he wanted me drugged?”

“No.” Sadie shook her head in denial. “I swear, I had no idea what he was up to. I…thought he planned to rob you or something. It never occurred to me that he was planning a murder.”

Carter made a guttural sound in his throat, then stood, moving away as if he could no longer stand the sight of her. Although his gaze remained pinned on her, his look teeming with disbelief, hate and bitterness. “If that’s true, then why didn’t you come forward once I was arrested?”

The scalding sensation intensified in Sadie’s chest, and she rubbed it again. “I told you…I was afraid.”

“The police could have protected you,” Carter bit out. “And you could have saved me.”

The memories flooded her again, trapping her, choking her. “I did try to go to the police,” Sadie said, gasping for a breath. “But…but he found me.”

Carter gripped her by the arms. “I don’t believe you.”

Sadie shivered. “It’s true.”

For a long, silent moment, his eyes bore into hers, then his fingers loosened slightly. “What happened?”

Fury and fear and her own sense of injustice bubbled over, and she unleashed on him. “Because he cornered me in the alley when I was walking to my car. Then he did this.”

Her hands shook as she ripped open the top two buttons of her shirt, revealing the hideous scar the man had left between her breasts.

“He held me down…then he carved me up so I wouldn’t forget.” Tears flowed freely down her face. The cloying smell of her attacker’s cheap cologne and sweat haunted her. The sound of his low, wheezy voice echoed in her ears. “He told me the next time he’d kill my mother and make me watch, then he’d finish me off.”

CARTER SANK DOWN onto the club chair, his mind struggling to register Sadie’s story.

Part of him wanted to deny her claims. Accuse her of lying. Demand she go to the cops, tell the truth and exonerate him.

But her story…her tone sounded so sincere. Riddled with pain and guilt.

And that scar…on her chest. It hadn’t been there when he’d slept with her the first time. And he barely remembered crawling in bed with her the second. It was deep and puckered and was only inches from her heart. He’d been in enough knife fights himself to know it had been a serious injury.

All because of him.

His hands shook in front of him as he stared at the gun he’d held on her, and shame filled him. Of all the explanations he’d expected to hear, the excuses, the lies, the cunning act he’d thought she’d put on to save her own life, nothing had prepared him for this.

On the heels of shock, rage choked him. Who in the hell had framed him and terrorized Sadie?

He slowly lifted his head and looked up at her. The anguish in her expression robbed his breath. The instinct to go to her and hold her, to protect her, surged through him. But he needed answers, so he remained rooted to the spot. Still, he couldn’t drag his eyes off that X carved on her chest between her breasts.

An X to remind her that the sick bastard was watching and could easily kill her.

Sadie averted her eyes as if she was ashamed, her fingers fumbling clumsily to rebutton her blouse.

Fury that some man had assaulted her and scarred her like that ate at him. The man had obviously wanted to destroy her beauty as well as terrorize her with his threats.

The SOB would not get away with it. If—no, when Carter found him, he’d carve him up just as he had done Sadie.

“Who was he?” Carter asked in a thick voice.

Sadie wiped at the tears trickling down her cheeks. “I told you, I don’t know.”

His gaze shot to hers. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You saw his face, didn’t you?”

Sadie made a pained sound in her throat. “I…yes, but it was dark. So dark, I’m not sure I would recognize him.”

Or maybe she’d blocked it out because of the trauma. “Had you ever seen him before? Maybe in the bar?”

Her small shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I…don’t know. Maybe. But there were men like him in the bar every night. Men pawing at me and watching me. I…tried to ignore them.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What do you remember?”

She sighed, another sound of pain rumbling from her. Then her eyes glazed over, taking on a distant look, as if she was reliving the nightmare. “He was big, almost as tall as you but heavier. And his head was shaved.” She bunched her skirt in between her fingers. “He smelled like cheap cologne and sweat and beer.”

She was right. That description could fit half the men in Texas, especially at that low-rent bar where she’d been working.

He cleared his throat. “Go on.”

She scrubbed at her cheeks as if annoyed with herself for crying. “At first, I was in shock. I…didn’t know where to go.”