Heartland (22 page)

Her legs were unable to hold her upright, and she crumbled to the floor where she fumbled with the phone. The thump of her heart nearly drowned out EJ’s frantic voice calling her name. Holding the cell in both hands, she put it to her ear. Before she could get her mouth to form words, the kitchen door crashed open, and in the opening, silhouetted by the bright sunlight, stood Mike Ritter.

The gash of his malicious grin showed absurdly white in his dark beard. “Hello,
daughter
.”

“Mike,” she squeaked before dropping the phone again. This time she didn’t get the chance to pick it up.

Dressed in dirty jeans and a ripped flannel shirt over a filthy undershirt, Mike moved toward her. She made a grab for the phone as it emitted EJ yelling for her to tell him what was happening. The terror in his voice was as tangible as her own fear. Mike set his boot heel on the fragile glass front of the iPhone and smashed it, effectively shutting off EJ and her link to the only man she trusted to keep her safe.

Mike grunted and looked down at her. His hair was longer than she’d ever seen it and his eyes held the gleam of a fanatic. The malice of the grin slashing through the unkempt beard added to his appearance of complete madness. “I don’t think we’re going to bother the sheriff with this little reunion.”

With a clarity at odds with the numbing tingling of her rubbery limbs, she watched as Mike shifted the rifle to hit her with the butt. As pain exploded in her head she thought of EJ and her baby girl, then the world slipped into utter blackness.

Chapter 18

EJ had experienced bone-melting terror a few times in his life. The kind of fear that turned his guts to icy water, and had him shivering from the frozen knowledge of impotence. Yet beads of prickly sweat broke out over his skin, as if the ice was pushing all the heat from his body.

When Emily’s phone went dead, he thought he’d die from the knowledge he’d been played like the fucking fool he was.

Mike had known EJ would have to leave Emily to conduct an investigation of the dead body he’d placed well away from where she was.

“Emily!” he yelled into his phone, knowing she was gone. “Fuck!” He balled his fist and hit the hood of the dead woman’s car hard enough to put a satisfying dent in the dirty blue hood. Too damned bad it wasn’t Mike Ritter’s face. He inhaled a painful breath and turned to the startled gazes of his deputies, two FBI agents, and the Texas Ranger. Fighting for air to fill his constricted lungs, he grabbed his hat off his head and ran his throbbing hand through his hair.

Clint Grier stepped away from the coroner and rounded the Toyota Camry. “What happened?”

EJ jammed his hat back on his head and headed toward his Tahoe. “Mike Ritter has Emily.”

“Holly shit.” Clint didn’t try to stop him as EJ pushed past him.

“EJ? You can’t leave the scene yet,” Coroner Scott Lewis said as he passed the body of Brooklyn Jensen.

As he opened the door of his SUV, EJ glared at his old high school classmate. Scott had always been a stickler for rules even back in school. “I don’t fucking care. This woman is dead. I would bet my ranch Mike Ritter murdered her. I don’t need any more evidence.” He got behind the wheel. “But I do need to find him.”
Before he kills the woman I love and our baby.

Slamming the door, he turned the ignition. At the same time, the passenger door opened and Clint Grier climbed in.

“What do you think you’re doing?” EJ scowled at his lieutenant. “You need to stay here.”

“Like hell. You need someone to watch your back and to make sure you don’t do anything stupid. I know you have a personal stake in going after Mike.” Clint buckled his seatbelt before looking at EJ with a hard line to his jaw and a dark hatred in his eyes. “I do too. I may not have the woman I care about at stake, but he made a fool out of me. I should have put a bullet in Mike Ritter’s head eight years ago.” His voice pitched low with a dangerous edge. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

EJ would feel the same if he’d worked with Mike Ritter and had been his lieutenant for over ten years but had no idea of his illegal activities.

“You may have to wait your turn.” EJ shoved the rig into gear with a hard shove and hit the siren. “That bastard is mine.”

A few moments later, Clint asked, “What happened?”

EJ shook his head as he watched the miles of flat ranchland crawl by. He was pushing the Tahoe as fast as he dared on the two-lane county road. Nothing would be gained if he wrapped them around a telephone pole in his recklessness. But damn, the miles seemed to take forever to cross. “Emily called, but I never actually spoke with her. She must have dropped the phone a few times, and what I did hear…” He trailed off and shook his head. “Mike has her.”

“Damn.” Clint’s tone told EJ he knew as well as him what they might find back at the ranch. “Where are her bodyguards?”

“I don’t know.” EJ glanced at his partner. Clint’s face had gone completely white. “If Mike has a gun, then they’re probably dead.”

Clint took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The bastard set us up.”

EJ nodded and looked out the side window at the endless flatness of pasture dotted with cattle and horses. A few trees broke up the landscape here and there. At the intersection, he turned right onto River Road, which led to his ranch. “Yes. He made sure the sheriff’s department would be occupied chasing its tail.”

Although he was glad for the older man’s help in a fight, he didn’t want to talk. As if sensing his mood, Clint kept his thoughts to himself. EJ turned into his driveway with a growing ball of ice in his gut.

“Look.” Clint pointed out the window. “Is that one of Emily’s guards?”

EJ slammed on the breaks and threw the SUV into park. “Yeah.”

Without another word EJ got out of the Tahoe, pulling his Glock and looked at Clint. The older man had the radio in his hand and called the county dispatch. He should have called for backup long before now, but he’d been holding onto the fragile strand of hope that Oliver and Jason could handle Mike.

He crouched and hurried to the still form of the big man. With a silent prayer, he felt for a pulse at his thick neck. The beat was slow, but surprisingly strong. He might live if given the proper medical care. The sight of the wound wasn’t readily visible amid Oliver’s black t-shirt and jeans, but he smelled the pungent odor of copper and searched for some sign. He found the sticky blood at the man’s side. A small hole in his shirt cued him in where the bullet entered.

“He’s alive,” he called over his shoulder toward the SUV and Clint. “Call for an ambulance.”

He didn’t wait for Clint to respond, but brought his gun up in the ready position, and ran toward the house. At the sight of Jason Harmon lying face down at the back door, EJ’s heart thudded harder in this chest. Blood stained dark on the back of his t-shirt. EJ leaned down and searched for a pulse at his neck and let out his breath when he found one. It was slow and skipped beats, but it was there. He looked over his shoulder at Clint by the SUV where he was talking on the radio. “Clint, have two ambulances sent. Jason’s alive too, but barely.”

EJ shook from the fear of what might lay behind the closed door. The sweat trickling down his face and backbone had nothing to do with the heat as a chill sent a shiver through him. Was Emily lying in a pool of her own blood behind the door? He took a deep breath that seemed to get stuck in his throat and opened the door, his finger on the trigger of the Glock as he forced himself to take a cautious step into the dark interior.

When he found nothing amiss in the kitchen except for a tumbled chair and Emily’s crushed cellphone. He rushed through the house, looking in every room and closet. He met Clint in the living room. The fear crippling him on the porch at what he’d find before he entered the house turned into choking panic as he looked at Clint. “She’s not here. Oh, Jesus, he’s taken her.”

* * * *

Awareness came back to Emily with a sickening ache in her right temple and a swift kick to her bladder from the inside. She lifted her hand to touch the throbbing spot on her head, but couldn’t move her arm. Stinging pain banded her wrist. She must be bound. When she tried to move her legs, they also found the resistance of biting, rough rope. She swallowed against the bile the movement caused to rush up and slowly opened her eyes. The right one was glued shut, like the time she had conjunctivitis as a kid. After a moment of panic, she determined when Mike hit her with the gun stock he broke the skin and blood had run into her eye and dried. This idea didn’t make the situation any less frightening, but at least she was able to think clearly, despite the obvious concussion.

A spurt of static sounded from the far corner. Some kind of radio? When an authoritative woman’s voice came from the corner, she narrowed her eye and concentrated on her words, soon discerning the radio was a police scanner. No wonder Mike had been able to stay one step ahead of the cops.

Her left eye focused, and she looked around the best she could with that side of her face smashed against the rough wood plank floor and the dimness of the room. She didn’t lift her head out of fear of drawing attention to herself and because even the thought of moving made her head throb.

The stink of mustiness and age from the dark, dirty floor she lay on filled her nostrils and choked her until she switched to breathing through her mouth. A rough-made wood table and two benches stood directly in front of her. To her left was a window covered with what looked like half a holey feed sack. Next to the window sat a small, old-fashioned potbelly stove; to her right against the wall was a thin mattress on a metal cot. Shifting her hands to the wall behind her, she found unfinished planks. She ventured to turn her head. The room was dim in the corners as if the feeble light couldn’t puncture the dark. From the heavy stench of kerosene, she assumed the source of light came from the ancient lantern on the table. The windows on either side of the plank door were also covered with mouse-nibbled burlap. A large ten-point buck head mounted on the wall above as if it was keeping guard with its wide, glass eyes. Her heart jumped into her throat.

She was at the cabin deep in the interior of the Double K. Accessible by horseback or ATV, the hunting cabin had been built by her great-grandfather. She’d been to the small place a few times, but its remoteness kept the cabin mostly forgotten except during deer season, and since she abhorred the thought of killing hapless animals for sport, she never had a reason to come.

How the hell had she gotten out here?

Tired of lying on the hard floor and needing to know what was going on, she closed her eye, braced against the stab of pain sure to come with the movement and twisted herself into a sitting position against the wall. A wave of dizzying nausea hit her hard enough to take her breath as a blast of pain shot through her skull. She fought the urge to throw up, took a long slow breath through her nose, then opened her eye when the dizziness subsided.

From this vantage point, she got a better look at the room making up the whole of the cabin. An old sideboard sat in the corner. On its top sat a battered enamel basin and various cans of soups and meats, along with several loaves of bread. Three full and two empty gallon jugs of water sat next to an ancient camp-style coffee pot. Food provisions? How long had Mike been holed up here?

She had no idea what time it was. Hell, she didn’t know what day it was. A fly landed on her blood-encrusted forehead. She shook the nasty thing off, ignoring the pain that knifed through her head with the motion. Over the irritated buzzing of the insect, a horse whinnied outside. Mike must have brought her here on horseback. The mechanics of which she didn’t want to think on too hard considering she was pregnant and had been unconscious. He must have left EJ’s ranch by way of the pastures, crossed his parents’ Circle R Ranch, then Tucker Cowley’s place, and finally most of the Double K to reach the cabin. That trip would have taken hours on a horse as none of the ranches were less than three hundred acres. Mike wouldn’t have wanted to be seen by anyone either.

When the door opened, she saw the sky was black. Night then. She flinched as her captor stepped into the room. He sat a bucket of water on the floor next to her. He must have gotten it from the creek running near the cabin. With the harsh shadows cast by the pale yellow glow of the lantern, Mike Ritter looked like a deranged mountain man. A hysterical giggle bubbled to the surface at this. The closest mountain--hell, the closest hill--was over a hundred miles away. McAllister County, Texas, was as flat as sheet of paper.

He rummaged in a duffle bag on the cot and pulled out a threadbare cloth. She strangled back the urge to laugh as he knelt beside her. Only his eyes were discernible. His face was in complete shadow. Wrinkling her nose at the foul odors of unwashed body and horse sweat, she turned her head to the side, as much to escape the smell as the craziness in his bloodshot eyes.

“Glad to see you’re awake. I was beginning to think I’d killed you.” He dipped the rag into the bucket and wrung out the excess water.

She about gagged on the stench of his breath, but forced herself to meet his bright brown eyes. “Isn’t that what you want to do to me?”

He shrugged, and the side of his mouth showed teeth as he grinned, then he dabbed the cold cloth on her wound. “Yes. But the timing depends on how much trouble you cause me.”