Authors: RJ Scott
Tags: #murder, #secret, #amnesia, #gay romance, #ranch, #mm romance, #cowboys, #crooked tree ranch
A Cowboy's Home
A Cowboy’s Home, Montana 3
Copyright ©2016 RJ Scott
First Edition
Smashwords Edition
Cover design by Meredith Russell
Edited by Sue Adams
Published by Love Lane Books Limited
ISBN 978-1-78564-050-6
This literary work may not be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or
photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express
written permission. This book cannot
be
copied
in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from
your computer to another through upload to a file sharing
peer-to-peer program, for free or for a fee. Such action is illegal
and in violation of Copyright Law.
All characters and events in this book are
fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is
strictly coincidental.
All trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
Because you asked for it, here is book 3,
three months earlier than planned. See… I do listen. To everyone
who emailed me, or messaged me, to tell me they didn’t want to wait
until October… I love you all and I hope you enjoy Justin’s story.
And, yes, there will probably be another story in this series, just
saying.
RJ, 3 July 2016.
* * * * *
To my beta Elin Gregory, my editor Sue Adams,
and to my army of proofers, Dawn Mayhew, Susan Kadlec, Sue Brown,
Catherine Lievens, Tyra Berger, Christina Manole, Rick Mulholland,
Hanne Lie, AnnMarie O'Callaghan, BJ Williams & Laura McNellis.
You all rock.
To Laurie Goudge who won a competition to
name a bad guy in the third Montana book. She chose
Jamie Crane.
Laurie, I hope I did your character
justice
. Thank
you.
And always for my family.
Justin’s vision blurred as his head smacked
against the wall, but he used the force of the blow, caught his
attacker off balance, and pivoted to avoid the gun against his
side.
They grappled for dominance, and Justin knew
from sparring that he would have to push beyond his skill set to
take Saunders down. Fucker wasn’t new to this, and he was a scrappy
fighter with nothing to lose.
“No one leaves the team, you know that!”
Saunders snapped. “You’ll fuck us all up.”
“You lied to me,” Justin shouted.
In answer, Saunders shoved him, but Justin
sidestepped and pressed forward. He wanted Saunders
to answer questions
. Adam was alive, and
Saunders had stolen Justin’s life. He wanted him unconscious on the
floor, and then he could think.
Saunders grunted as Justin went limp, and
Justin waited for the exact moment when Saunders’s center was
extended, and then with the flat of his hand, he jabbed his boss
right in the throat. Saunders didn’t go down, he didn’t make a
fucking sound, but his focus
was knocked
for a second
. Justin slammed him into the wall, kicking hard
at Saunders’s wrist; the gun Saunders had pulled on him to “clean
up the Adam mess” fell to the floor.
Saunders didn’t wait to be killed—he was
fighting for his life, just as Justin was—but Justin had years of
bottled up aggression, and he let it rip with a snarl. Saunders
scrambled to get the gun, but as he bent over, Justin kneed him in
the face. Dazed, Saunders stumbled back. Then, having control for a
moment, Justin shoved him hard, pushed the heavyset man against the
wall, and held him tight with his feet off the floor.
“You told me my family was in danger!” Justin
shouted right in Saunders’s face.
“They could have been.”
“I was a kid.”
Saunders pushed him, but Justin ignored the
frantic scrabbling of Saunders’s nails on his skin. Justin had
strength borne from the temper and horror clawing inside him.
Saunders gouged at Justin’s face, snapping
free with a slick move. Their foreheads connected and Saunders
stumbled; Justin’s hold loosened enough for Saunders to use his
weight advantage and slam Justin into the wall, his head taking the
brunt of the assault.
Justin shook off the pain, and was up on his
toes, forcing Saunders away, then crouched a little and swept out a
leg to catch Saunders at the back of the knee. He shouted in pain
and fell to one side,
giving
Justin a better advantage, pushing his knee to Saunders’s throat
and
levering
his body to exert
more pressure. For the second time Saunders
scrabbled
to get free, but Justin wasn’t shifting.
“Stop it, Justin!” Webb shouted over the
confusion. The other operative had stayed out of the fight up till
then, but he was
stepping in
as
soon as Justin got the upper hand.
Webb’s gun was trained on him, and even as
Justin pressed harder on Saunders’s throat, he calculated how he
could get the weapon away from Webb.
“You gonna kill me?” Justin snapped at Webb.
“What lies did he tell you to get you to do that?”
Saunders was nothing but red tape and rules,
even in a unit with allegedly zero accountability. Webb, on the
other hand, was another enforcer, the one who’d trained Justin,
shown him how easy it was to kill.
Justin pressed harder, and Saunders’s
scratching and pawing grew less intense with each passing second.
Webb wasn’t shooting, wasn’t pulling Justin off. What did he
care?
The scrabbling stopped. Saunders was finally
unconscious, and Justin had a split second of knowing that Saunders
wasn’t dead, just passed out, but hell, he didn’t want to kill the
guy.
A bullet burned its way by his body and
thudded into the wall. Webb wasn’t letting him leave the warehouse
alive. With no time to assess, and acting on pure instinct, Justin
swung round. A second bullet caught him in the thigh even as he
tripped Webb and made a calculated grab for the gun.
Saunders jumped him—freaking asshole hadn’t
stayed unconscious, but Justin pushed back against him, twisting so
Webb’s gun was at chest height. Saunders reflexively pressed the
trigger, pumping a bullet into Webb. The O of surprise on Webb’s
face was the last expression he made as he fell to the floor with a
neat hole in his forehead.
Justin fought for control of the gun. He was
next—and that was not how he was going to die. He still had a list
to complete.
Saunders tried every trick he knew to take
Justin down, but Justin wasn’t playing by the rules. He used every
ounce of his killing side to fight dirty until he finally took the
gun from the man he’d called the
boss
.
And then he turned it on Saunders.
“Justin, back off.” Saunders dropped to a
crouch, his hands on his knees, his breathing labored.
“You lied to me,” Justin said.
“We had to, Justin, we needed you hungry.
Needed men who were willing to die, who didn’t care about
themselves.”
Justin didn’t even flinch, that was him in
one sentence. But if he’d known Adam was okay, would it have been
different? “You should have told me Adam was alive.”
Saunders held up a hand. “Justin, you were in
so much pain you were giving up. You wanted to die, and Adam was in
witness protection with a head wound and amnesia. Hell, kid, I
saved you both.”
Justin couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
That was some fucked-up thinking right there. If he’d had known
that Adam had survived, maybe that would have just left guilt he
could live with. He may not have even started on this journey; not
killed his first man in this all-consuming need to pay for his
sins, not caring if he lived or died. “The first thing you told me
was that Adam was dead. You never even had to think about what to
tell
me.”
“
There was so much
confusion at the scene—”
“Bull. Shit.”
“We had to put Adam in WITSEC. The DOJ said
they’d keep him safe—”
“And me?”
“I saw something in you when you woke up. You
had a
fire
in your eyes. I gave
you purpose, trained you—”
“Turned me into a killer.”
“We gave you purpose when you were ready to
give up.”
Justin tapped the gun on his knee. “Fuck
you,” he said.
“Think of the lives you saved working on this
team.” Saunders near screamed at him. He was losing control, and
likewise Justin had to rein back his instinctive need to shoot the
son of a bitch.
The team had stolen all those years from him,
and whatever good he might have done couldn’t weigh up against
losing his family. “We’re going to the ranch, and we’re explaining
it all to Adam, to my family.”
“You know that won’t happen. You did this for
your country. You tell anyone, and they’ll hunt us all down. You
think any of this was sanctioned? Rob will have no option—protocols
will kick in. You know they’ll get Rob to kill you, and then he’ll
be gone as well.”
Justin didn’t care about any of that. Rob was
just another hired assassin, same as him; there was nothing Justin
feared from Rob. He crouched next to Saunders, the gun tight in his
hand and resolve in his heart. “Do you know how many people I
killed for this team?”
“For
you
, Justin. What about the
extra
list, huh? The ones you
killed for yourself?”
Justin reared back. “They’re not part of
this. I’m talking about the unsanctioned ops, the situations we
were ordered into.”
“Fuck you, Allens; you were happy to do it.
Your fucked-up brain—”
“Let me think,” Justin snapped. He’d seen
Adam in Chicago, seen him at Crooked Tree through the trees.
Seen with his own eyes that he was
alive.
There could have been
hope
for Justin with Adam by his side, maybe he could
have pulled himself back from the brink—
Saunders interrupted his thoughts. “For God’s
sake, you know what we do. You signed up for the
ops
, killed to keep your country safe. You knew
if we were compromised, we’d be removed. You shot Webb.”
Justin gestured with his gun. “Technically
you
shot Webb.”
“You think that’s going to go unnoticed?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Justin spat. “I’m out.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Watch me.”
“You’ll have a target painted on your back?
You need to come in, and we’ll deal with this
appropriately
. There are procedures, rules to
follow—”