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“Putting a bullet in that hermit is gonna make all this worthwhile.”
“What about the little princess?”
The horses stomped and snorted as they mounted again.
“Ah, the little princess and me are gonna have some fun, and right before I slit her throat, I’ll give her the good news that someone in her family made all this happen. I’m sure she’ll be glad to know who’s paying us.”
There was complete silence as shock wave after shock wave washed over Miranda. Someone in her family had done this to her? Who? Who hated her that much?
“Where the hell could they be?” Spikes’s voice seeped into her nerve endings, making her want to scream—but she didn’t.
“They hidin’ real good.”
“Yeah,” Spikes agreed. “There’s only one thing left to do. You ride over to Beaver Creek and try to find Blackhawk. It’s not far from here and he’s the only one who’ll be able to track the hermit. I’ll keep searching south.”
“Blackhawk? He’s probably drunk. Why do you pay him, anyway? He never does a lick of work.”
“Who says I pay him?” Spikes laughed. “I give Blackhawk money for liquor and pocket the rest. Blackhawk doesn’t complain and Maddox doesn’t have a clue. He leaves all the ranching business to me. He’s busy trying to juggle five wives and an oil company.”
“You a smart son of a bitch.”
“I just know Maddox. The older he gets, the more interest he has in women—and the less interest in business.”
“What if Blackhawk talks?”
“No one’s gonna believe that drunk.”
The sounds receded into the distance, and the hermit slid the pistol into its holster. He turned to a paralyzed Miranda. She was trembling and shaking her head.
“No,” she whimpered. “Not someone in my family.”
His first reaction was to console her, but he couldn’t afford that luxury. Nor could she. She had to be strong to get through this, and he had to deal with Spikes.
“Snap out of it. We don’t have time for hysteria.”
His callousness pushed her over the edge. Before she knew what she was doing, she hit him with her fists, over and over, knocking his hat off. Her blows stunned him only for a second. In one swift movement, she was on her back, staring up into dark threatening eyes.
His right hand gripped her throat, holding her immobile. “I could cut off your windpipe in just a few seconds.” His dark hair fell forward, almost covering his face, giving him a wild look, but all she saw were his eyes, the warm dark eyes reaching the coldest part of her heart.
He hoped to put the fear of God into her. If she was afraid of him, then she’d forget Spikes and his words.
“But you won’t,” she said with more confidence than he liked.
He continued to hold her. Her skin was soft and the pulse in her neck burned like a steady fire against his hand. Warmth swept through his body from the contact, and he cursed himself for that weakness.
“Don’t count on it,” he replied gruffly, and waited to see fear in her eyes—the fear he’d seen the first time she’d looked at him. But there was only sadness.
“Go ahead, then,” she taunted him. “Finish me off. It’ll be better than what Spikes has in store for me. Did you hear what he said?” She closed her eyes in pain, then opened them quickly. “Promise you’ll shoot me before you let him take me.”
The thought of Spikes touching her body, raping her, was more than she could bear. She was trying to be strong, but she couldn’t handle that.
At the entreaty in her voice, he removed his hand and sagged against the wall. She scrambled to her knees to face him, pushing the hair out of her eyes.
“Please, don’t let Spikes hurt me.”
“I’ll do my best,” he answered quietly, trying to dispel the image of Spikes touching her.
“No, no,” she persisted. “If he has us cornered or something, promise that you’ll shoot me.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Please,” she begged. “I have to know he won’t be able to do those awful things to me.”
“As I said, I’ll do my best.”
“What is it?” she asked in desperation. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes held hers with a numbing force. “I’ve killed before, and it’s not something I want on my conscience again.”
“Oh,” she breathed, her own eyes enormous.
He watched the conflicting emotions skim over her pale face. Her expression wasn’t filled with fear, though, just shock and some other feeling he couldn’t identify. But it was similar enough to fear for his purposes. He leaned in and whispered, “You have reason to be wary, so if I were you, I wouldn’t be asking a man to kill you. A man you know nothing about.”
He didn’t get the reaction he wanted.
“Oh, but I do know you.” Her lips curved softly. “I don’t know your name or where you came from, but I know the man in here.” She laid her hand on his heart. “You’re strong yet gentle, stubborn but caring, and you’ll protect me, a perfect stranger, with your dying breath.”
He looked at the soft fingers pressed into his chest, and without thinking, he let his hand close over hers and hold it tight.
It was the second time he’d freely touched her and she was beginning to like it. They stared at each other, their eyes locked in a silent communication.
He wanted to deny her words, insist that he didn’t care anything about her, but in a matter of a few hours, he’d become fully involved with her. And she was right—he would die to protect her.
Miranda gazed into his eyes and experienced a moment of revelation. She’d been searching for something all her life. She didn’t know what, but her life wasn’t complete. Something had always been missing. Now, as their eyes met and she looked into the warmth of his, she felt as if she’d found whatever she had lacked.
He released her hand and broke eye contact. He raised one leg and pulled the small revolver from his boot. He gave it to her and said, “Put this in your pocket and keep it with you. In case you have to defend yourself.” As she started to protest, he added, “You can. You can do it. It’s a five-shot .22-caliber pistol. It’ll do the job. Just aim at his chest and you’ll be fine.”
She stared at the small gun in her hand. A moment ago her hand had tingled from the warmth of his; now it was frozen, trembling at the prospect of what she might have to do.
Suddenly she noticed the initials engraved on the handle. J.C. Were those his? “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
She lifted her eyes and tried to smile, but failed. He would be with her. That was all she needed to know. For now. Soon she’d ask him about those initials.
If they were going to die together, she had to know his name.
CHAPTER FIVE
SILENCE SURROUNDED THEM as they waited for darkness to fall. He knew she wanted to talk. He could feel it, but she was holding everything inside. Her tortured expression told its own story, and he wanted to help her. That shook him. Most of his life he’d helped people, put his life on the line more times than he could remember, but all that had died one fatal day five years ago. Or so he’d thought. Another inborn trait he probably wasn’t going to outrun. Or maybe it was just her. Something about her was getting to him.
Bandit lay between them. He made a mournful sound, more like a moan than a whine.
The hermit rubbed his head. “I know, boy,” he muttered.
“Go ahead,” he finally said.
She turned her head, a quizzical expression on her face. “What?”
“Talk. If you don’t, you’re going to explode.”
What a difference a day made, she thought. Yesterday he didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. Today he wanted to listen, and she wanted to tell him—everything. Every hurt, pain and bizarre event of her life.
She shrugged. “I’m in shock. I don’t know what to think. Someone in my family hired Spikes to do this to me. Who? I keep asking myself. And why?”
“Tell me about your family,” he invited, and he felt as if he was back at his old job, gathering information, clues, anything to find an answer.
She drew her knees up to her chin. “I have one brother, Tom. There’s fourteen years between us, so naturally we didn’t grow up very close, but we’ve always liked each other and gotten along well. I like his wife, Doreen, and I’m not aware of any hostility between us. I can’t say that about Doreen and Helen—that’s Tom’s mom and my dad’s first wife. Helen’s a very domineering mother, and she tries to control their lives. Doreen even went so far as to send their two children to boarding school to get them out of Helen’s clutches. But that has nothing to do with me.”
“How does Helen feel about you?” he asked.
She shrugged again. “She says Dad spoils me and lets me have my way, but then, everyone in my family says that. It doesn’t mean anything, does it?”
“I don’t know. Is she in need of money?”
“I don’t think so. My dad left her very well off, and she runs a profitable antique shop, but she’s always been extremely jealous of my dad’s wives. Five is the latest count. He went to Vegas last summer with some cronies of his and came back with number five, Brandi. She was a Las Vegas showgirl, blond, sexy—and just two years older than me. It was a shock to everyone, especially my mother, Alicia. She almost had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized for two weeks to adjust to the news. You see, since my mom, there hadn’t been any new wives, and she’s had this on-and-off-again relationship with my dad since their divorce. So Brandi was a big shock.”
“Do you get along with Brandi?”
“Brandi only gets along with men, and no, we are not fond of each other. But that’s typical, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
“I wish I could talk to Jane. She’d know what’s going on.”
“Jane?”
“She’s the housekeeper’s daughter. She’s six months older than me and we grew up together. We’ve always been very good friends, even after my mom took me away.” Miranda rested her chin on her knees, her eyes distant. “My mom is Alicia Adams, former model. You’ve probably heard of her.”
She turned her head to look at him, wanting to see if he had the same reaction all men had when she mentioned her mother, sort of a leering smirk, but she saw only vague recognition.
Alicia Adams. He recalled the name and remembered seeing her on TV or somewhere. She was very beautiful, of that he was certain. He now knew where Miranda got her stunning looks.
When he didn’t say anything, she continued, “My dad met her when she was nineteen, married her when she was twenty, and I was born that same year. Two months after my birth, she went back to modeling. She and my dad fought about it all the time, but her career was important to her, and she wasn’t going to give it up. After five years Dad gave her an ultimatum—marriage or modeling. She chose modeling, leaving me at the ranch with a nanny. Dad wouldn’t have it any other way. So I grew up with an occasional mother, but I was happy. Then one weekend Ali came home and found Jane and me playing baseball and getting dirty. She had a fit, saying her daughter wasn’t going to be a tomboy. She whisked me off to boarding school. I hated it. I missed Jane, my dad and the ranch, but my mother wouldn’t listen. She said I’d get used to it, and then she had this idea that I could be a model, too. I did several ads and commercials, but the agent told my mother I didn’t have the drive or determination to be successful. It’s a cutthroat business.”
She paused for a moment, then added, “All my life I’ve felt like a piece of taffy, pulled between my parents, back and forth. I never knew which one to please. My mother wanted me to be a model. My dad wanted me to work at Maddox Oil, like Tom. Finally I came back to Texas, enrolled at the University of Texas, got a degree in business and went to work with my dad. At least he was happy.”
“What did you want to do?”
Her head swiveled toward him. “What?”
“You. What did you want to do with your life?”
She frowned. No one had ever asked her that question before, and she didn’t know how to answer it.
As the frown deepened, he said, “There must have been something you were good at, something you enjoyed.”
She shook her head. “I’ve always been Clyde Maddox’s little princess and Alicia Adams’s baby girl. Somewhere along the way, I guess I lost the person inside me.”
“No, you haven’t,” he assured her. “You just haven’t found her yet. Stop trying to please your parents and please yourself.”
Her mouth curved in that soft way he was beginning to recognize. “With Spikes out there, do you think I’ll ever get the chance?”
“We’re going to give it our best shot,” he said, and glanced toward the entrance as the light began to fade. He reached for his rifle. “Dusk has fallen. It’s time to go.”
She buttoned her coat and stuffed the cap into a pocket. Her hand touched the small pistol in the other pocket. She was ready.
It felt good to stretch her legs once they got outside. They’d spent all day in the cave. Of course, they’d slept much of that time, and they’d eaten again. She was as prepared as she could be, under the circumstances, for the trek ahead.
The hermit nodded to the left, and she followed his gaze. Her breath caught in her throat. Several deer were eating acorns beneath an oak tree. Sensing that they were being watched, they raised their heads, then ran into the thicket with sure graceful movements. They were such beautiful creatures, and she’d never been this close to one before.
She wanted to observe them, but there wasn’t time. The air no longer seemed as cold, but the ground was wet, which made walking even harder. They kept pushing on. Miranda felt stronger and managed to keep up. Her legs were tight, but no cramps.
Suddenly the hermit stopped, pointing to a flickering glow in the distance.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Campfire,” he whispered back. “We’ve caught up with Spikes.”
“Oh, no!” she cried, chills running up her spine.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “We’ll just go around them, but we have to be quiet and quick.”
“Okay,” she answered without much enthusiasm. “But how did we catch up with them so fast?”
“Spikes probably stopped to wait for Blackhawk.”
“That’s the Indian who works on the ranch, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and he really does have eyes and ears like a hawk. So make sure you stay close to me.”
“You can count on that.”
“Let’s go,” he said, looking down at Bandit. “Hush, boy.”
The fire became brighter as they moved closer. The orange flames crackled and hissed toward the sky. Three men sat around the blaze, drinking and talking. Two horses were tethered nearby. The saddles lay on the ground by the fire. As they crept past, giving the campsite a wide berth, they could hear voices, which carried clearly through the night.
“What do you want with the hermit?” Blackhawk asked, sitting cross-legged, a bandanna tied around his forehead. He took another swig of whiskey.
“None of your damn business,” Spikes said, taking the bottle from him. “If you want whiskey, you’ll forget all about this. Especially if you know what’s good for you.”
