Her Cowboy Avenger (22 page)

Closing the door, she slowly stuck the key in the ignition and started the engine. “Where are we going?” Elena asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

“I’ll let you know. Just head straight.”

She did as he said, shifting the vehicle into Drive and pressing down on the gas, sending the truck straight on into the night.

They drove across the back pasture, out into the heart of the spread. Elena might not know exactly where he was taking them, but she could imagine too well. The back acreage offered access to a vast number of isolated spots—both on the property and beyond—where no one would notice them heading, and where Matt could disappear with little hope of being discovered for a very long time, if ever. And then Walt would have her all to himself.

She continued to go through every available option. There had to be something, anything, she could do.

If she slammed on the brakes, Walt could be startled into pulling the trigger. All that would result in was Matt being shot. She wouldn’t be able to do anything, not for him, not to Walt with an injured Matt between them.

If she suddenly swerved in either direction, same result. Walt startled into firing, Matt shot, her helpless. No good.

What if—

Matt bumped his knee into hers twice, the action deliberate enough to let her know it was no accident.

She tried not to betray a single reaction, giving no indication she’d noticed the gesture.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him tilt his head slightly to the left. A few seconds later he repeated the motion, again leaving her no doubt it was no accident.

She glanced down. He made a tiny, downward motion with his hand.

Nothing else immediately followed, leaving her pondering the meaning behind his cues.

Something...left and down. What could that mean? Obviously he wanted her to do something.

He bumped her with his elbow, nudging her toward the door.

Left. Down. Door.

No.

She couldn’t be reading him correctly. He couldn’t possibly want her to do what she thought he did.

Because if she was correct, he wanted her to jump out of the truck.

Under different circumstances, she might have gawked at him. If that was what he wanted her to do, then he was out of his mind. What good could that do? She wasn’t concerned about her own safety. Falling out of a moving vehicle would hurt, but at this speed, she would be fine. And if it would save him, she would do it. But if she threw the door open and suddenly fell out, he would immediately shoot Matt.

Or would he?

Jumping out of the truck wouldn’t jostle him the way hitting the brakes or swerving would. It would surprise him, but not in the same way. It would take him a second to understand what was happening, to react to it. Which meant he likely wouldn’t pull the trigger right away. No, there would be that split-second delay, which Matt might be able to use to his advantage to do...something.

Maybe. He still had his hands fastened behind his back after all.

It was a big hurdle, possibly an insurmountable one. Frankly, she couldn’t see how he’d overcome it—

Matt nudged her again with his elbow. Harder this time. Insistent.

She wanted to nudge him back—hard—but was afraid Walt would notice. They were lucky he hadn’t called them on any of these signals yet.

She had to trust he was right on this. And she did, to a degree. She trusted he believed this would save her. She just didn’t trust he intended for it to do the same for him.

It couldn’t happen. She couldn’t lose him. They hadn’t come this far, found each other again after so long, only for her to lose him now.

Still, she couldn’t delay forever. They had every reason to believe that Matt was already living on borrowed time. Walt could very well intend their destination, wherever it was, to serve as Matt’s final resting place. She saw the way Walt kept leaning forward slightly and glancing over at her. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. How had she never noticed how creepy the way he looked at her was? Whether he’d managed to hide it better before, he wasn’t now. He wanted her alone, to have her all to himself. Which meant Matt’s time was running out.

No, wherever they were going, she had to act before they got there.

She had to do this.

She quickly went through everything she had to do. It was simple really. Grab the doorknob. Open the door. Fall out. Whatever Matt had planned, that would be the tricky part.

She could do this. She
had
to do this.

She braced herself against the door.

It happened in seconds, faster than she’d imagined.

She grabbed the handle.

The door popped open.

She tumbled out, her leg slamming against the door as she went.

She barely noticed it, because it seemed that almost instantly she hit the ground, the landing jarring every bone in her body. Weeds and shrubs hit her, scratched her, as she rolled over and over, dirt filling her nose and eyes.

She finally managed to slow her momentum, until she flopped over onto her back and landed. Coughing, blinking to clear her vision, she immediately pushed herself up, ignoring the aches and pains in her bones and hand, seeking out the truck.

Then she saw it, still rumbling along, but gradually slowing, the driver’s-side door hanging open. It was too far away for her to make out what was happening in the cab.

Elena pushed herself all the way to her feet, preparing to break into a run. She had to try to help Matt. She couldn’t let Walt hurt him.

A gunshot rang out.

She’d just begun moving. Instead, she stumbled to a stop, her whole body tensing in horror.

No.

It couldn’t be. Matt had somehow managed to get the gun away. Nothing else was possible. He couldn’t have been shot. He couldn’t be hurt or bleeding or gone….

Her legs nearly gave way and she almost fell to her knees.

Her vision began to burn again, harder this time, no longer from the dust, but from the sheer agony gripping her body, squeezing her heart, compressing her lungs.

She remembered this feeling. It felt as if she was dying.

The way she’d felt the first time she’d lost him.

The seconds ticked by. She needed to move. She needed to go and see.

But somehow, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t compel her body to move. Because if something had happened to him, she couldn’t face it, not losing him, not forever.

Once again she wouldn’t have gotten to say goodbye.

The truck continued to roll forward, still slowing gradually, its progress across the flat earth eerie in the moonlight.

Suddenly, as though hitting an invisible wall, it slammed to a halt.

She waited. If Walt stepped out of the truck, she would need to run. Even if she hardly felt the need to fight anymore.

Then she heard it.

“Elena!”

She recognized the voice immediately.

Matt. It was Matt.

The air wheezed from her lungs.

He didn’t sound hurt. He sounded fine. He sounded safe.

She lunged into motion, running the rest of the way to the truck as fast and as hard as her legs could carry her, stumbling and lurching the whole way.

Then she was there, at the still-open driver’s-side door.

And found herself staring at Matt’s back and cuffed wrists.

She gaped in disbelief, not understanding what she was seeing.

He sat in the driver’s seat, his back to the open doorway. She peered over his shoulder. Walt was slumped in his seat, his chin to his chest, clearly unconscious.

“How did you—”

Matt glanced back at her, meeting her eyes. “Go around the other side and get the keys to the cuffs,” he said. “I need you to unfasten mine and get a pair on this bastard before he wakes up.”

She wasted no time doing exactly that, hurrying around the front of the truck to the passenger side. Walt’s arm and shoulder were against the door, so she opened it slowly, careful not to jar him or let him fall out. When she had the door open, she leaned in and over him. She spotted the keys looped to Walt’s belt, along with another pair of cuffs, maybe the ones she’d taken off. Grabbing the cuffs, she fastened them on Walt’s wrists—extra tight, just the way he liked them. Without bothering to close the door, she took the keys and raced back to the other side.

As soon as she was there, Matt shifted to allow her easy access to the cuffs. She had them open in ten seconds flat.

Then he was shifting in the seat, sliding out of the cab, stepping onto the ground and forward to catch her in his arms.

Elena threw her arms around him, sagging against him.

“I don’t understand. How did you do it?”

“My hands were bound, so I had to use my feet. As soon as you opened the door and I saw his head turn, I twisted and slid over onto the driver’s side and started kicking, going for the gun first, then his head.”

She gaped at him in horror. “He could have shot you.”

“But he didn’t.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“You’re lucky it did.”

“I was thinking earlier we were due a little luck, weren’t we?”

As she looked into the humor laughing in his eyes, she couldn’t help it. A laugh escaped her lips, too. “I guess you’re right.”

Yes, she thought, after everything they’d been through in the past few days, it had been time for something to go their way. And it had. It hardly seemed possible, but they’d made it. They’d won. They were still standing.

Together.

Chapter Sixteen

Elena stood on the back porch and stared out into the night. It was a clear, warm evening. A multitude of stars glittered in the inky-black sky, and the moon cast its glow upon the land that stretched before her as far as the eye could see. Weston land. Her land now, though not for long. She’d wanted to leave here for so long. The ranch had been connected with so much unhappiness for her—more than she’d even known—but she couldn’t deny the beauty of the land.

It was a lovely night. Peaceful. So peaceful that it was almost impossible to believe the ranch had been the scene of so much activity and turmoil in the past few days.

In the wake of Walt’s attack, Matt had wasted no time contacting his friend Pam with the FBI, wanting someone on their side as they dealt with the aftermath. With a deputy dead and the sheriff responsible, they knew they were going to need all the help they could find to get anyone to believe their story and take their word over his. Pam had made the initial contact with the state authorities, who had quickly descended on the scene. Pam had arrived soon afterward with several of her own colleagues, the Bureau’s standing investigation into the missing women and possible serial killer giving them some claim for jurisdiction in the case.

As expected, the state authorities had initially been hesitant to believe Matt and Elena over Walt, with his long history in law enforcement. But there was too much about the circumstances of that night that didn’t line up with his version of events, like why Matt and Elena would have driven off with him instead of killing him like Travis if they were the killers. A search of his home turned up additional evidence that Walt had been involved in Big Jim’s murderous activities—and had continued on his own in the years since. It seemed Big Jim wasn’t the only one who liked to keep souvenirs close at hand.

It hadn’t taken the crime scene investigators long to find where Big Jim had buried the bodies of his and Walt’s victims on the ranch property. Elena had been there when the remaining bones had started to be uncovered. It would be some time before the bodies were accurately identified, if they ever could be, and there was no way of knowing yet whether Teresa Reyes was among them. Elena was aware of that. She hadn’t cared. After all the times she’d hated her mother for leaving them, blamed her for what her father had become, wondered how she could have abandoned her child, she’d needed to be there. So when the first bones began to emerge, she’d been there to witness it, tears in her eyes, trying to hold back the sobs, until they’d finally broken free and Matt had taken her in his arms and held her while she wept.

He’d been by her side that day, and every day since that night, her only constant in a world that seemed to have turned upside down on her. She didn’t know what she would have done without him. She hoped to never have to experience that again.

Even as she thought it, she heard the screen door behind her squeal softly as it was opened. She didn’t have to look to see who it was. Even if there was anyone else it could have been, she had no trouble recognizing him, her body instantly responding to his nearness, attuned to his presence on a molecular level that was undeniable.

He didn’t say anything as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She leaned back against him, resting her head on his shoulder, sinking into the sensations of his body and his touch as her eyes drifted shut.

“Hey,” he murmured against her hair. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she whispered back. “Just thinking.”

“Having second thoughts?”

“No.” The land might be beautiful, but more than ever she knew she couldn’t stay here. Selling was the right thing to do.

In the midst of everything that had happened, she hadn’t had a chance to contact Glen until tonight to see if his offer still stood. He’d admitted that he hadn’t been certain he still wanted to buy the ranch, now that he knew the truth about Big Jim. Elena had guessed as much when he hadn’t tried to contact her himself sooner. She wouldn’t have blamed him for taking back his offer, though she would have been disappointed. It was only natural that the property would be tainted in a lot of people’s minds due to what had happened here. If Glen no longer wanted it, it could take her a long time to find another buyer.

Fortunately, Glen had decided to continue with the sale. Big Jim may not have been the man he’d believed him to be, but that didn’t change the work generations of Westons had put into the land. Junior and Bobby had still been his friends, practically his sons, and for their sake, he would go forth with his original plan to try to maintain the property, the way they would have wanted.