Читать книгу Gunslinger - Angi Morgan - Страница 11

Chapter Four

Bryce mentioned he needed a break. Everyone was exhausted so Fred called out quitting time. They all walked up the incline while Fred and Richard rode in the ATV.

He had a very bad feeling why Kylie had been gone so long. His gut told him she’d left, along with his service weapon and his phone.

“Dammit.”

“Something wrong?” Martin asked.

“Just slipped. These boots weren’t made for climbing.”

“Yeah, we noticed. But thanks for coming. You did a lot. You Kylie’s boyfriend now or something?”

“No. I live across the street. I’m helping Mrs. Mackey out for a while.” Might be longer if he’d lost his Sig to a runaway witness.

The kids gave each other fist bumps when they saw Mrs. Childers arrive with pizza boxes. It was a familiar scene. He’d grown up in a small community. There was just one thing notably wrong... Kylie wasn’t anywhere in sight.

For some reason, no one was overly concerned with her disappearance. That bugged him. Was he the only one not in on her planned escape? Did they already consider him the enemy?

The kids were sprawled across the porch cooling off. Proud of their work today, they were inhaling the pizza and soda. Richard and Fred were tallying the stacks of wood to determine which team won. Mrs. Childers and her granddaughters were bringing out cupcakes they’d made for the young people.

And Kylie was nowhere. Not in the house. Not waiting in the truck. Mrs. Childers shrugged and searched a little herself when he asked. Everywhere except the barn.

Still shirtless, because Kylie had taken that along with everything else, he cautiously walked through the barn’s double doors. Open, clean, neat. If he hadn’t been looking for something out of place, he’d never have caught the shirttail in the hayloft.

Wedged between a hay bale and the rafters, he pulled the shirt free and found his cell, badge and gun. Relief a hundred times over. No words could describe.

Since the gun was hidden, it meant that Kylie wasn’t missing...just trying to disappear. Everything in place and with his shirt on his back, he sought out Mrs. Childers for answers.

“Did you happen to drop Kylie off back in town?” He didn’t want to seem overanxious, but his insides started to grind like coffee beans.

“Well, if I had, I would have told you when you were looking for her earlier.” Lisa immediately turned her back to him but didn’t walk away.

“Funny thing about honest folks trying to lie. They don’t do it often enough to be good at it.” He stood next to her and took the empty pizza boxes from her grip, setting them on the porch swing. “You may not have taken her back to town, but you know what’s going on.”

“No.”

The worry in her eyes clued him in. She’d helped but had no details. “Mrs. Childers, I realize you’re friends with Kylie and you have no reason to trust me. I need to show you something.” He removed his badge and let her take a long look. “It’s important that everyone in town not know who I work for.”

“Then why tell me? Are you here to arrest Kylie? Because I won’t help you.”

“No, ma’am. It’s worse. I’m here to protect her.” Bryce put his badge away and leaned against the wall. He tried to be as casual as possible, attempting to gain any trust he could.

“If that’s true, then why would she leave?” She shook her head, one hand knotting in her apron still dusted with flour.

“She seems to be a very independent woman. Did you give her a ride?”

“No. And that’s the truth. She’s spending the night with Jan Turner and said she wanted to get to the northeast gate. The only way is on horseback. She said she’d leave the gear there and set Little Bit free. She wouldn’t tell me anything else except that it was important for her to leave without anyone knowing. Is she in danger?”

“Thanks. You’ve helped tremendously.” He took the porch steps two at a time.

“How are you going to find her?” Lisa asked behind him.

“With a lot of luck and crossed fingers.”

No local PD involvement. At least not yet. He had to try to locate her on his own. Oh, yeah. He could follow tracks. He was a Texas Ranger who had a knack for computers. But at his roots, he was a simple country boy who’d grown up hunting with his dad.

“Richard?” Lisa shouted from the porch. “Will the four-wheeler get back to the northeast quarter of the property?”

“There’s still too many downed trees,” Richard replied.

“Well, then help Bryce saddle up Tinkerbell. He needs to save Kylie.” Lisa’s voice held a slight tremor of worry.

“Save Kylie?” Richard asked, but got an elbow in his ribs from Fred. “Whatever you say, dear.”

Both men stopped what they were doing and moved to the barn. The one horse in the stall Bryce had seen earlier must be Tinkerbell.

He could approximate how long ago Kylie had left, but not how fast she could push the horse. There was also no way to know exactly how long it would take to catch up with her. The trees were thick in some parts and would make it hard to follow a trail.

“I can saddle her if you show me the tack,” he told the men as they entered the barn. He wanted both of these guys to know he wasn’t a novice.

“Doesn’t make me no never mind.” Richard mumbled and unlocked the storage room. “I’ve stayed married all these years by listening to Lisa. Doesn’t make any sense riding a horse where you can drive. I just do what I’m told.”

Fred snickered, clearly knowing something Bryce didn’t. Then again...

“I appreciate the help, but aren’t you guys curious as to why I need the horse?”

And there it was as plain as day turning to night. These honest men compressed their lips and dug the toes of their boots in the dirt.

“Did Mrs. Mackey tell you something about me?”

“Tell us what, son?” Fred asked as innocent as a five-year-old with his hand in a cookie jar.

“You know. And you want me on this horse pretty badly. In fact, I’d say you’re practically throwing me on it.” Bryce looked at the mare and had a bad feeling. “Give me your keys, Fred.”

“What’s that you’re saying?” Fred held his hand, cupping his ear.

“Go ahead, Fred. He won’t find her in the dark on his own and we’re certainly not going to help him.”

“I will not.” The older man took a step back.

Richard looped the lead rope over the stall’s gate and crossed his arms in defiance. “If we’re lucky, he might be stuck out there all night and she’ll get clean away.”

Bryce opened his palm, taking a step closer.

Fred dug deep in his jeans pocket for the set of keys. He held them in a tight fist, not forking them over. “Maybe I should drive? That old motor gets kind of cranky.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll get there faster on my own.” Wherever there happened to be. “Pick it up at my place tomorrow.”

Fred tossed. Bryce caught and hit the dirt running. Already tired, he should have been drinking a gallon of water to rehydrate. A slight headache had begun. Not to mention the idiot burn he had thanks to Jesse’s suggestion of taking his shirt off.

He shifted the truck into High and skidded to a halt at the end of the long private driveway.

“Which way?”

His cell had no reception. No GPS. They might have counted on that. But he had the map he’d downloaded of the area. With details. Lots of details.

Kylie was headed to the northeast portion of Richard’s property. Why would she go there? He enlarged the map and knew...there was no road that passed from US 281 on the west side of the Richard’s place to County Road 238 on the east.

It would delay him to double back toward Hico and try to cut her off.

“Where will I find her?”

Had she made arrangements to be picked up on the country road? Was she just going to hoof it to the next town? It wasn’t an impossible idea. But a faster way to disappear would be to hitch a ride. And if she walked the county roads northwest, she’d hit Highway 67 with plenty of traffic.

Everything rested with him making a logical guess.

He turned right instead of left back to town and pushed the truck harder than it had been pushed in a while. It sputtered a bit, but got the job done. The cooler air of twilight passed through the open windows. When he turned again, he could smell hay and cattle.

Working around Mrs. Mackey’s house for the past couple of weeks had brought back a lot of memories. The third time he’d called his mom, she’d asked him what was wrong and had kidded him about being homesick.

Homesick? He couldn’t wait to leave his family’s acreage and pass on his riding lawn mower duties to his younger brothers. They’d all left the house and were spread out across the country now, settled with families or kids on the way. He rested his elbow on the door and tapped a drum solo on the old-fashioned vent window.

Darkness was slowly growing. The moon wouldn’t rise for quite a while so it might be harder to see someone walking in the fields. He’d taken the most direct route to the next county road Kylie might be on. He turned right again and kept the truck in second gear.

Reminiscing was fine, but his job was to find Kylie Scott. After he got her back to headquarters in Waco, he’d find out how Fred and Richard had known about his cover. The only person who supposedly knew was Mrs. Mackey. Why would she tell anyone?

It was dark enough that unless Kylie had a flashlight, he wouldn’t be able to see her. He continued along the road at a normal pace for the truck. How would he explain this wild situation to Major Parker?

If she disappeared again on his watch, he might not have to explain anything to anyone.

* * *

THE DAY HAD already been long and exhausting before Kylie had started traipsing through uneven fields in her tennis shoes. She couldn’t rush. There was no flashlight or even a penlight in her bag. And it was just her luck that tonight there wasn’t even a moon.

Hours after leaving the horse, her legs were cramping and she was thirstier than she’d ever been. And hot. There was no breeze to cool the sweat that dripped in buckets down her back. She’d pulled her color contacts and stowed them in her bag.

She’d avoided the roads, but kept them just to her left. No one had driven past her. Or at least she hadn’t heard any vehicles. The birds she’d come across had practically scared her senseless.

Each time she’d carefully squeezed between the strands of wire fence from one field to the other, her fingers were crossed that there wouldn’t be a bull or something more dangerous in her path. She pulled herself through the last pieces of barbed wire fencing and picked up her bag, straightening and stretching her back.

The hardest part of the hike was done. She could follow this road to the closest thing this area had to a highway—a two-lane blacktop. Then all she had to do was hitch a ride and she was...

She was what?

The word free kept trying to finish the sentence. But she wasn’t free. If she was free to choose where she wanted to live, it would be Hico. She’d never felt more at home in a community. They accepted that she didn’t talk about her time before living there. They really didn’t know anything about her.

At least not the previous her. The Sissy Jorgenson her. Such a fake. It had taken a while, but Sissy had been laid to rest with all the cool kids she’d hung out with.

Unfortunately, Sissy wouldn’t have had anything to do with Kylie Scott. And she wouldn’t have waited two weeks to have a fling with the guy across the street. One look at his body and Sissy would have been all over him.

Bryce was nice looking. He was also a Texas Ranger ready to take her back to Austin whether she liked it or not. It didn’t matter if she knew about the Tenoreno family business. The attorneys five years ago had offered her protection in exchange for information.

Did they really think she would have walked away so quickly if she’d known enough to put those men behind bars?

Blinding headlights popped on in front of her.

“I was just coming to look for you.” Bryce’s voice came from next to Fred’s truck. “You going to run again?”

“Mind shutting off the floodlights?” Kylie saw his silhouette lean through the window and everything got dark again.

With no place to go and no energy to run, she accepted the setback, but not defeat. Somehow, she’d get away from Bryce Johnson and get on with another new start.

“Want a ride?” he asked with an air of innocence.

“Yes, if you’re heading back to Hico.”

“It’s on the way to Waco.” He casually leaned against Fred’s pickup.

“How long have you been waiting?”

“At least an hour.” Bryce tapped the old green truck. “Did the horse throw you or something during your evening ride? Get turned around finding your friend’s house or the way back? I know you weren’t attempting to run away. Right?”

She didn’t need to answer. He was making fun of her so she glared at him, even though he couldn’t see the glare in the dark. She wrapped her arms around her bag, almost afraid he might arrest her on the spot.

“Are you as starved as me? Or did Lisa give you something before you left?” Bryce continued, fingers tapping out an unknown rhythm against the old metal truck.

“I’m actually starved. And parched. Any chance there’s a water bottle in there?” She leaned on the warm hood.

“Nope. But it’s not far to Hico.” He threw his thumb toward the cab. “We can get something to go.”

“Nothing is open at this time of night in our little town.” The sun had been down a long time. Too long for the hood to still be as warm as it was. “You must be a really lucky son of a gun to choose the exact road I was heading to.”

“I like to think of myself as a highly skilled Texas Ranger. Come on, get in.”

“Who had his gun and ID lifted by little ol’ me,” she mumbled.

“There’s no reason to get nasty.”

“I’ll admit defeat when you confess how you found me.”

“I had a map. Calculated your foot speed—they teach us things like that.”

“And how long have you really been here?”

“All right. I tried several roads before deciding on this one. Satisfied? I got lucky and saw something moving from the road over there. Been waiting about fifteen minutes.”

“So you guessed.”

“Pretty much.” He grinned.

The dark wasn’t pitch-black, even with no moon hanging overhead. She could see that he’d found his shirt from where she’d hidden it in the barn. That meant he’d found his gun, too. Bryce could force her to go with him. If he was a dirty cop he could make her disappear. Especially now that she’d told Lisa she had to leave town.

No one would be looking for her.

There was nothing she could do to prevent it. Not here. She had to get back to town, maybe show her face at the Stop-N-Get It. But her instincts told her that Bryce was legit. A good person who believed he was following the law and had her best interests at heart.

Right. That’s what they all say.

“If I keep walking down this road...” She threw her chin in the direction behind the truck. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“Don’t make me, Kylie.”

Her fingers were already wrapped around the handle. She was getting into the truck, she had little choice. But she didn’t have to like it. They both got inside and slammed their doors.

“You need someone to look out for your safety,” he said softly, reaching for the ignition key.

“No offense, but I think I was doing pretty good without you.”

Exhaustion like she hadn’t felt in five years hit her like a slow wave as soon as she sat down. It started in her shoulders and crept up her neck, then down her back. She hadn’t stopped and had barely slowed, holding a steady pace across those fields. And yet, Texas Ranger Bryce Johnson had been waiting on her.

Just dumb luck? Or was he really that skilled?