Brody (3 page)

Her gaze widened but she got to her feet. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know yet. I was going to find out when you decided to try to kill yourself by coming up behind me.” He sounded annoyed and maybe a tiny bit petulant. What was she turning him into?

“I didn’t want to kill myself. I just wanted to show you I was serious about finding my brother.”

To his surprise, she stepped toward the burlap. He almost stopped her but decided to see exactly what Miss Graham would do.

“Whoever it is, it’s small, either a woman”—she paused to swallow—“or a child.” She glanced at him. “Did you check the pile of clothes too?”

She was smart and observant. He scowled at her. “Not yet. You interrupted me.”

“Of course I did.” Olivia leaned down and pulled at the corner of the sack. He watched her face, waiting for the horrified screech, for the quick exit from the shack, but she did neither. “Oh, Margaret.”

It appeared they had found the missing Stinson daughter. The rich beautiful girl who had had everything to live for and a brother who must’ve wanted it all for himself. What was left of her was nearly unrecognizable except for her bright red hair. The decomposing body had stained the bright blue dress she’d been wearing. Olivia had been her friend and now had found her dead body. Any other woman would have been a blubbering mess.

But not Olivia Graham.

“Frederick will be heartbroken again.” She glanced up at him, her eyes wide but dry. “I think they must have strangled her because there don’t seem to be any bullet or knife marks on her dress.”

Damned if the woman wasn’t right. If she’d been a man, she would’ve made a good Texas Ranger.

He banished that thought before it went any further.

Brody knelt beside her and examined the body. The remnants of a rope were still tied around her wrists, attesting to the fact she’d been taken forcibly, likely by her own brother. Olivia was right about the strangling though. There were no other marks on the body that he could see. And if she’d just been tied up, she would have left the shack and crawled for help.

“She must have been here the whole time we were looking for her.” Olivia shook her head. “I hope she didn’t suffer too long.”

Brody didn’t tell her he thought perhaps the young Miss Stinson had suffered plenty before she passed. The men who worked for Jeb were not human—they were animals.

Olivia pulled back the burlap completely and sighed when she spotted the other woman’s underthings bunched around her ankles. Oh, yes, she had suffered plenty.

“Can we bring her back to her father?” She replaced the burlap and got to her feet.

“I can’t. I’ve got a man to chase, remember? You can stay here and do what you want.” He didn’t think she would be willing to transport the rotting corpse alone.

“I would but I don’t want to lose sight of you.” She walked over to the pile of clothing. “Now let’s finish searching in here so we can find your man’s trail.”

“He’s not my man and you are not coming with me.” To his annoyance, she ignored him and focused on sorting through the clothes.

He watched her as she picked each piece up and held it at arm’s length, turning it this way and that, before folding it neatly beside the pile. What in the hell was she doing?

“I recognize at least three of these as belonging to folks I’ve seen in town. I’ve got an eye for detail, and for clothes, so I usually pay attention to what people wear.” She kept on examining the clothes while he stood back, plumb amazed by the way she approached such a gruesome task. “Oh, Brody, this is Benjy’s.”

Olivia held up a small brown coat. She carried it to the door and held it up in the sunlight. “I don’t see any bloodstains. Thank God.”

He expected her to fall down and start sobbing. Yet the woman proved him wrong at every turn.

She set her jaw and narrowed her gaze. “We’re on the right trail.”

“You are not coming with me.”

“Yes, I am.” She set the coat down by the door and returned to the pile of clothes. “If you had a lick of sense, you’d realize having a partner will only help your investigation.”

“Partner?” He chuckled hoarsely. “You’re nothing but a pain in the ass spoiled little girl. You wouldn’t be worth spit on the trail.”

She was silent for a few minutes, and he thought perhaps she was done with her crazy talk. After all, who ever heard of a woman partner? Nobody. Texas Rangers worked alone, only pairing up when they needed to. And he sure as hell didn’t need her.

He took the opportunity to finish searching the shack, but found nothing but raccoon shit, rabbit shit and some spent casings.

When he turned around, he found Olivia had finished sorting the clothing and was going through the broken crates. She pulled out all the broken pieces and set them aside. There were seven unbroken jars that she put next to the coat by the door. He had to admit the woman was meticulous; no doubt the books at the Graham ranch were just the same.

She peered at the crates, looking at each broken piece. Brody wanted to get on his horse and get the hell out of there, but his curiosity over what she was doing kept him rooted in place. The woman was a natural investigator.

“These are a mixture of homemade crates and ones from mercantiles.” She pointed at the pieces she’d laid out on the floor. “This is marked Brown’s, this one Barnaby’s, this one O’Hara’s and this one.” Her finger traced the lettering. “This one is from La Tienda.” Her gaze met his. “It’s Mexican.”

Brody had seen Brown’s and O’Hara’s in his travels, both within fifty miles of there. Barnaby’s was unfamiliar, as was La Tienda, but she was right. The crates had come from various mercantiles, all gathered together in this small shitty shack in the middle of nowhere Texas. What had Stinson been up to? Why was he stealing supplies and clothes, only to stash them here? Olivia had found a lot of information but no answers; her observations brought more questions to an already cloudy investigation.

He should have been the one to look at the evidence, but instead she had. Brody could not say whether he would have examined everything so carefully, or recognized what he had found. He wasn’t about to admit it to her but he was impressed.

“Did you find anything?” She got to her feet and wiped her hands on her riding skirt.

“I found shit.” He left the building and walked straight into the barrel of a shotgun sticking into his gut.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

O
livia stood in the shadows, her heart thumping like mad. She heard the other man’s voice and Brody’s deep response. He was in trouble.

She had not come unarmed out into the wild; even now the pistol pressed against the small of her back. She’d shot it a few times, at coyotes and such, but never at a human being. However, she would protect the ranger, even if he was an ass; the man didn’t deserve to be murdered like poor Margaret.

She was glad she’d worn her cowhide riding boots with the soft soles. One of the hands had made them for her as a birthday surprise; Lorenzo had nursed a crush on her for years unfortunately. But lucky for her, he was a wizard with cowhide and a needle. The boots were sturdy and quiet as a mouse when she walked. She crept toward the door, keeping to the gloom, and pulled the pistol out. The weight of the weapon was unfamiliar, but she gripped it firmly. Her father had taught every one of his children how to shoot every weapon they had. Texas was no place to live without knowing how to take care of yourself.

She reached the edge of the door and peered through the crack. The ranger was on his knees in the tall grass, his hands on his head. Two men stood in front of him; one had a rifle, the other a shotgun, both pointed at Brody’s head. She could squeeze off one shot before they reacted, but which one should she aim for?

“You’re snooping around where you don’t belong, Armstrong. Some people don’t like that and they send people like me to stop you.” The greasy-haired one was skinny, with dirty brown trousers and a gray shirt. His hat was even dirtier than his hair, which seemed impossible.

The other stranger was bigger, a barrel-chested man who would be harder to take down with one shot.

She stuck the barrel through the crack in the door and closed one eye. They were at least fifteen feet away, but if she aimed carefully, she could hit the skinny one holding the shotgun. She sucked in a shaky breath and cocked the pistol.

“I’ll stick you in there with her and you can rot in hell together.” The man raised the shotgun.

Olivia fired.

She fell back, right onto the broken crates. The boom was so loud she couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in her ears. She scrambled to her feet and looked outside in time to see Brody fighting with the bigger man. The skinny one was on the ground and she knew her shot had been true.

She loaded another bullet in the gun as quickly as she could, then stepped out of the shack. Without being closer, she couldn’t hit the other man without risk of hitting the ranger. The skinny man screeched when he saw her, blood covering his chest. He spat a bloody gob at her, but she jumped back, her eyes wide and her heart in her throat. She had done that, shot the man in the chest and now he would die because of her. But there was no turning back.

No matter what, she could not go back to who she had been two minutes before.

Olivia walked closer to the two men wrestling on the ground. The big man had Brody beneath him and was beating his face with meaty fists. She picked up Brody’s gun and pressed it to the back of his head.

“Let him up or he’ll be picking pieces of your brain out of his hair for a week.” She hardly recognized her own voice. It was full of grit and rage.

“You best back up missy or I’ll fuck your eye sockets after I kill him.” The man’s voice was colder than anything she’d heard before. He kept right on punching Brody, whose face was a bloody mess.

“One more chance, mister. Let him go or I’ll kill you.” Her palm was wet with fear, but she kept her hand steady, the trigger cocked.

“Fuck you.” The man swung around to grab her leg, but she jumped back and fired.

The man’s head exploded in front of her. Blood, brains and bone sprayed in a gruesome cloud all over the grass, and Brody.

“Oh, you kilt us both, you bitch.” The skinny one had crawled to his shotgun. As he fumbled to aim it at her, Olivia crouched down and fired off another round, stopping him cold.

She dropped to her knees, then to her elbows until she pressed her forehead to the ground. The smell of dirt and grass filled her nose, temporarily blocking out the iron stench of blood and gunpowder. Brody put his hand on her back.

“Hell, Liv, you just saved my ass. I never thought you would be armed or could kill two men.” He sounded impressed, which at any other time might have pleased her. For now she just kept her eyes closed and focused on not vomiting.

“Let me have that.” He pried the gun from her hand and disappeared for a few moments. The sound of water hitting the ground reached her and she realized he was wiping the gore off his face. In another minute, he pressed a wet cloth to her face. “Here, just try to relax.”

Relax? She’d just killed two men.
Killed them
. Olivia had never thought she would have to kill one person in her life, much less two men in two minutes. The wet cloth felt good against her face and thank God, it didn’t smell like blood.

When she finally got control of herself, and was sure she wouldn’t cry in front of him, she sat up. He crouched beside her, his cold blue eyes assessing her.

“I guess I’ve got a partner now.”

She stared at him, wondering exactly what she had gotten herself into. Eva knew Olivia had left to follow Armstrong, but no one else knew where she was or what she was doing. The impulse to follow the ranger had now turned into something else altogether. She had killed for him and their lives had become inexorably linked. There would not be a time in either of their futures when they would not have this moment embedded in their memories.

Olivia shivered in the slight breeze that brushed against her damp cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

Brody’s grin would have knocked her to her knees if she hadn’t already been there. The man was stunning without smiling, but with it, he was lethal to her equilibrium.

Perhaps it was due to her brush with death, or her growing infatuation with him, but she impulsively grabbed him and pressed her mouth to his. His lips were softer than she expected and they stayed that way as she put her heart into convincing him to kiss her back. Her tongue lapped against the seam of his mouth, needing, wanting more. He groaned low and deep in his throat before he pulled her flush against him and his tongue plundered her mouth.

Sweet heat spread through her body, making her nipples pop and her pussy throb.

To her consternation he pulled back, breathing hard, his lips wet from the kisses. “Shit, woman, do you want me to take you in a field full of blood?”

Olivia put her hand over her mouth, horrified by her actions. What had she been thinking? Death had turned her into an idiot, making her do things that made absolutely no sense to a normal person.

“I-I’m sorry. I just ... I don’t know.” Her mouth felt strange, adrift without his.

He ran his hand through his hair. “Killing makes a man think of living. I guess the same is true of a woman. Sometimes folks just need to feel alive.”

Oh, she felt alive all right. More than alive; she was pulsing with the need to join with him. Embarrassed by her desires, she simply nodded and got to her feet before he realized just how close she’d come to losing all her inhibitions.

The words he’d spoken just before their kiss finally sank in and she realized what he’d said.

“Partner?”

“That was before you made all the blood leave my head.” He took another minute before he rose. She realized he was fighting to tame an erection, one she’d been responsible for.

“Oh, well, I’m sorry about that.” She shrugged unrepentantly.

“I did say you’d be my partner.” He peered at her, the cold stare of the ranger firmly back on his face. “But you’ve got to keep it to business only. We can’t be jumping into each other’s britches. That kind of distraction could get us killed.”