Showdown in West Texas (16 page)

“Let's go,” Cage said. And as she hurried down the steps, he could see his own fear reflected in Lily's soft gray eyes.

The door was unlocked and Grace pushed it open with her toe. She drew her gun and kept it pointed downward as she eased inside. The house was cool and dim and so quiet, she could hear the thud of her own heartbeat in her ears.

Her sister's car wasn't in the driveway nor was it around back. Grace hadn't checked the barn, but she didn't think she needed to. Her sister wasn't here.

Someone had called her on her cell phone, pretending to be Lily. The call had come from inside the ranch because the number had shown up on Grace's display. But it hadn't been Lily. Grace was almost certain of that now.

Whoever was inside this house had lured Grace out here for one purpose. To trap her. She'd already called for backup, but Grace was not going to wait around and let her would-be killer get away. This was it. Time for a showdown.

She went through the bottom floor room by room, and then she climbed the stairs, pausing on the landing, just as her parents' killer had done all those years ago.
Slowly she moved down the hallway, hesitating again just outside the open door to her and Lily's old bedroom.

With her gun gripped in both hands, she quickly stepped inside and swept the weapon back and forth as her gaze darted about the room, searching every nook and corner for a shadow, a movement that didn't belong.

The gauzy curtains at the window flared, and Grace realized the window was open. Had someone climbed out to the roof?

She moved over to the window and glanced out. Someone could have easily gone out that way, crept down the sloping roof, hopped onto the top of the porch and shimmied down one of the columns. Grace had done it herself as a kid.

But why go to all the trouble of getting her out here just to play this game of cat and mouse?

She moved away from the window and stood listening to the house for a moment. It was so quiet inside…

And then she heard it. The squeak of the windmill. The sound froze her in place as dread mushroomed in her chest, and for a moment, she couldn't catch her breath. Sweat trickled down her temple as she willed herself to move. To get out of that house. She recognized the beginning symptoms of a panic attack. If she didn't leave now…

She looked down at the floor where an arm had snaked out from underneath the bed. Grace jumped back, but not before the hand clamped like a vise around her ankle.

 

L
ILY HANDED
C
AGE
the key and he managed to release himself from the cuffs while she drove like a bat out of hell down the road. “What if we don't make it in time—”

“Just drive,” he said. “Don't think.”

She reached down and pulled a .38 from her ankle holster. “Here,” she said, and tossed it to him.

 

G
RACE WAS YANKED
off her feet and she twisted as she fell, so that she landed facedown on the hardwood floor. She broke her momentum with her hands, but her gun went flying. As she scrambled for it, the assailant slid out from the bed and in one roll was on her. Grace tried to turn and fight him off, but he clipped her on the side of the head with something hard and metal. She fell back against the floor, hand to her head, so dazed that for a moment she lost all sense of where she was.

Then slowly the stars faded and she saw Ethan Brennan standing over her with a gun. No, that couldn't be right. Ethan?

“Get up,” he said. “Come on. On your feet.”

As Grace struggled to rise, he grabbed her arm and yanked her up.

“What do you think you're doing?”

“Just shut up.”

“This is crazy,” she said. “I don't understand what you're trying to pull here.”

“You don't have to understand. All you have to do is go away. Forever.”

“Why?” She used her shoulder to wipe the blood from her face. “What did I ever do to you?”

“It's simple, Grace. Lily doesn't want you here.”

“You're doing this for Lily?”

“Oh, don't make me sound like some love-starved geek. I'm doing this for me, too. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time. Ever since I can remem
ber, really. I thought it might be fitting to kill you here in the same house where your parents were murdered. Symmetry and all that.”

“You're not the one who called me earlier,” Grace said. “Who's helping you?”

“Someone who doesn't want you here, either. But you don't need to worry about that. You don't need to worry about anything. I'll try to make it quick. Not too quick, though. Where would be the fun in that?”

Through the open window, Grace heard a car coming up the drive. Her heart surged and she saw that Ethan had heard it, too. He eased over to the window, keeping her in his line of sight as he glanced out.

“It's over,” Grace said. “The police are here.”

“Shut up.” But a note of panic had crept into his voice. Grace waited until he glanced down at the drive again, and then she lunged. The momentum took them both through the window and as they rolled down the sloping roof, Grace grabbed for Ethan. Her hand closed around a silver medallion he wore around his neck, and she felt the cord snap as she tumbled over the side of the roof.

 

L
ILY SCREAMED
when she saw Grace go over the edge of the roof, and then she spotted the silhouette of a man racing back up the slope.

It looked like…Ethan.

She and Cage were both out of the car, racing toward the house. “He went back inside,” Lily said. “Go!”

When she came around the side of the house and saw Grace lying on the ground, her heart literally stopped as she dropped to her knees beside her sister.

“Grace! Can you hear me?”

Grace drew a breath and opened her eyes. “Lily?”

“Grace, are you okay? How badly are you hurt? Can you move?”

“I'm okay. I just had the wind knocked out of me.”

“When I saw you go over that roof—” Lily swallowed. “I'm so sorry…”

“It's okay.” Grace caught her sister's hand. “Everything will be okay, but right now we have to get some backup out here.”

“We are the backup,” Lily said. “Cage is inside the house with Ethan.”

Cage found the little bastard hiding upstairs under a bed, along with a backpack filled with guns, ammo, knives, nunchakus and a garrote. Everything a do-it-yourselfer could possibly need.

It had taken very little persuasion to find out that he'd hooked up with the hired gun via an online chat room for like-minded aficionados, and that when said hired gun failed to show up at their appointed rendezvous, Ethan had decided to take matters into his own hands.

As to what happened to the real Dale Walsh, that would have to be left to speculation. Since he and the hit man had been traveling the same route, it was possible that the hit man had overheard Dale mention his destination and decided stealing another man's identity would allow him to show up in Jericho Pass without arousing suspicion. He may not even have known Walsh was a police detective.

It was also possible that Walsh had recognized the guy or otherwise caught on to him, and was shot in an ensuing confrontation. Since both principles were dead,
no one would likely ever know for sure what had happened.

Cage could live with that. With the psycho geek in jail and his hired gun six feet under, a few unanswered questions was a small price to pay because Grace was safe. As safe as a sheriff in a border county could be these days.

Which brought Cage back to
his
problem. He was still a hunted man. If the bad cops weren't yet in Jericho Pass, they soon would be. It was time for him to make tracks, before they caught up with him or before Grace remembered that he was supposed to be in jail.

Still, sundown found him lingering on the steps at Miss Nelda's, waiting for Grace to show up. The fire in the sky was spectacular that evening, orange on the horizon and deep purple overhead streaked with crimson and gold.

Say what you will about the barren landscape of West Texas, Cage thought, but the sunsets couldn't be beat.

As the day melted into a soft twilight, the air cooled and the dry wind blowing off the desert was tinged with the scent of lemon verbena from the sisters' garden and the more medicinal scent of the creosote bush that grew near the stairs.

When Grace finally drove up in her truck, she must not have seen Cage sitting there on the stairs. Or else she was trying to avoid him. She went straight inside, and a few moments later, he saw a light come on in her room. He watched her silhouette moving back and forth in front of the window, counted to ten, then rose and climbed the steps to the balcony.

She looked surprised to see him when she answered his knock, and he thought—hoped—the emotion that flickered across her face was relief.

She placed a hand on the door, the other on her hip. “I thought you'd skipped town.”

“Thought about it.” He folded his arms and leaned a shoulder against the frame. “Somehow it didn't seem right leaving without saying goodbye.”

“Well, that's mighty brave of you,” she said. “Or stupid, since by all rights, I should take you back into custody.”

“I'm hoping you'll at least hear me out before you throw the cuffs on me. Grace, look, there's something—”

“Shut up, Cage.”

“What—?”

She drummed her fingers on the door facing. “I said be quiet. Every time you open your mouth, a pack of lies spills out, so maybe you just shouldn't talk for a while.”

He stood there staring down at her, grinning in spite of himself because she was just so damn likable even when she wasn't.

“Well, if you don't want me to talk,” he said softly, “how do you suggest we communicate?”

He barely had the words out of his mouth before she grabbed his shirt, hauled him inside, and before he knew it, she'd shoved him against the wall and planted the mother of all kisses on him.

When they finally broke apart, Cage didn't know what had hit him.

“Damn, Grace.”

She was struggling with the buttons on his shirt, and
he saved her the trouble by pulling it over his head and flinging it aside once he got the pesky buttoned cuffs over his hands. She was busy with her own shirt now, and Cage hopped on first one foot and then the other as he kicked off his boots. But this time, Grace was down to her underwear, and Cage felt as if someone had just flattened him with a two-by-four.

The woman had curves, he'd already known that. But to see them in all their glory…

His mouth watered to taste her beautiful breasts, and his hands itched to stroke every inch of those long, sexy legs. He was already rock hard and they were just getting started.

Grace cupped his face, pulled him down for another kiss and then when he lifted her, she wrapped her legs around his waist and they stumbled backward to the bed, sinking so deeply into the poofy featherbed that it felt a little like drowning.

Cage rolled them over too far, and they smacked the floor with a loud thud. His foot hit the desk and sent a lamp crashing against the wall, where it teetered for a moment before toppling over.

Grace, lying on her back beneath him, clapped a hand to her forehead. “There is just nothing subtle about you, is there?”

He grinned. “In about five minutes, you'll appreciate that.”

“Big talker.”

“Oh, I'll do more than talk,” he said. “First, I'm going to kiss you right here…” He bent and grazed his lips against the tips of her breasts. “Flick my tongue back and forth like this…”

Grace tunneled her fingers through his hair, pinning him to her as she sighed in pleasure.

“And then I'm going to run my hand up your leg, real…real…slow…until I get up to here…” He traced a finger along the edge of her panties, then slipped the fabric aside. “And here's where it starts to get good,” he murmured, and the movement of his fingers brought a gasp from Grace, and then a deep, sensual moan.

He brought a finger to his lips, moistened the tip, and then touched her again, in just the right place, in just the right way, and there was nothing subtle about Grace's reaction.

She exploded like a Fourth of July rocket as Cage laughed in delight.

 

A
FTER A WHILE
, they picked themselves up off the floor, showered and dressed and sat side by side in the shadowy room with the door open, allowing the night air to drift inside as they watched the stars come out.

“This is nice,” Cage said after a bit, and reached for her hand.

“It is.” Grace sighed. “But you're still leaving first thing in the morning, right? I don't want to have to throw your butt back in jail.”

Cage grinned. “Why, Grace Steele, I do believe that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.”