The Sheriff Catches a Bride (27 page)

He stopped there to catch his breath and get his bearings. With the mansion’s floodlights behind him, the woods in front of him seemed impenetrable. He eased his way between the trees, much slower now, afraid to bump into any lookout they might have left behind.

He’d only made it a few yards in when a stick snapped behind Cab and he whipped around, gun drawn and finger on the trigger.

“Don’t shoot—it’s us!”

He recognized the whisper and lowered the pistol with a breath of relief. Ethan moved through the shadows to join him, a shotgun in his hands. “I’ve got Jamie with me. Rob and his brothers will be here in a minute. What’s going on?”

Cab gestured him on. He didn’t want to give the men that much of a head start. He caught just a glimpse of Jamie slinking through the trees to their right before he turned his attention back to Ethan. “Far as I can tell Rose and this woman she’s got with her—Fila—are sleeping in a tree house Rose built somewhere in these woods.”

“You don’t know where?”

“No. I’ve hardly been in here. But we’ve got to find them before those terrorists do,” he said. “I figure she’d have picked a place back from the road, but not too far.”

“How many men are there?”

“Four.”

Ethan made a face. “At least Rob and the boys will be here soon. That oughta help things.” Jamie, seeing them huddled together, came to join them. He, too, carried a shotgun. Cab hurriedly filled them in on what he’d seen at the house.

“There’s a stocky one, looks like a bulldog. He’s in charge. Three others. I saw three sub-machine guns. I’m not sure what the other one’s carrying.”

“Well, shit,” Jamie said. “What’s the plan?”

“We’ve got to spread out,” Ethan said.

Cab agreed, but he didn’t like it. “They don’t know about the tree house and I don’t think they know about Rose. They’ll be looking for their girl to be hiding in here somewhere. They headed this way.” He pointed to the section of woods closest to the road. “Jamie, you head farther back into the woods and see if you can find the tree house. If you do, get Rose and Fila back to Carl’s.”

Jamie nodded and slipped away.

“We’ll trail these assholes and hope like hell the tree house isn’t this way,” Cab told Ethan.

Rose stumbled after Hannah
in the dark, cursing at her friend’s tender heart. As they walked, Hannah explained how Cody had dragged her to the ranch where he planned to go bison hunting and she’d been appalled to find there was only one animal there. Kept in a small, heavily fenced pen, the bison was obviously in distress. While Cody finalized his plans with the owner of the ranch, she’d slipped off to talk to some of the hands and was lucky enough to find one as disgusted as she was with the whole matter.

“Gladys was hand-raised,” she sputtered to Rose. “Bottle-fed and everything. Her original owner dreamed of raising a herd, but didn’t have enough land. In the end, he had to get rid of her. The way her new owner kept her was cruel, and to die by being hunted in a corral? That’s just sick!”

Rose trailed after her, understanding her anger, but still not convinced it was realistic to think the two of them could round it up. They’d left Fila huddled in the tree house. Rose gave Hannah a quick rundown of the young woman’s history and Hannah promised not to tell anyone her whereabouts.

“I still think we should at least wait until daylight,” Rose said.

“We can’t,” Hannah said. “Can you imagine if she wanders out on the road? Someone could come around a turn and crash into her. They could be killed.” She looked back at Rose. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to do this. Gladys is practically tame, but she’s still a bison. It could get pretty dicey.”

That was an understatement if Rose had ever heard one. “I don’t know anything about herding bison.”

“We won’t herd her,” Hannah said. “We’ll lure her.” She shook the bag of corn cobs. “She adores them. That’s how I got her into the trailer. Hold on, I think I heard something.”

Rose heard it, too. A snuff of breath, like a horse would make. “Is that her?”

Hannah peered into the darkness. “I think so. I don’t think she likes all these trees.” She quickly undid the ties on her bag of corncobs, reached in and held one out. “Here, Gladys, come and get it. I’ve got some tasty corn for you.”

The beast snuffled again and Rose thought it came a little closer, although she couldn’t make out anything in the murky light. Hannah was deliberately pointing her flashlight away from the direction of the beast. Rose moved nearer to Hannah. This seemed like a very bad idea.

“That’s right,” Hannah crooned to the animal. “Come to Mama. You love corn, don’t you?”

Had Hannah lost her mind? Crooning to a fifteen hundred pound animal like it was a baby? The bison walked a few more steps their way. Hannah’s flashlight picked out the shaggy fur on the animal’s muscular back, but she kept the beam out of the animal’s eyes.

This was insane.

Rose fought the urge to hold Hannah in front of her like a human shield, and prepared to jump away if the animal charged them. Instead, it walked up slowly to Hannah, a couple of lumbering steps at a time. Hannah put the corncob down on the ground and the bison bent its head to nibble it.

A man’s shout startled all of them. Rose and Hannah whipped around toward the direction it came from. Gladys shied away, backstepped, then wheeled around and galloped off.

“Damn it!” Hannah said. “Who the hell is that?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said, a chill shimmering up her spine. “It sounded close to the tree house, though.”

“Is it Cab?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said again. “I’ve got to go make sure Fila is all right. She’ll bolt if he scares her.” And what if it wasn’t Cab at all? What if it was someone else?

Hannah looked the other way. “I’ve got to go after Gladys. I can’t let her get away.”

Rose nodded. “Once I figure out what’s going on I’ll come back to help.” She dashed away through the woods toward the tree house as fast as she could, which wasn’t fast at all given that Hannah had her flashlight. When she finally reached it some minutes later she paused, listening for the man’s voice. She heard nothing.

Up above her the tree house was perfectly still.

“Fila,” she hissed. “It’s just me. I’m coming up.”

She climbed the ladder, still craning her head to try to spot the man she’d heard. Was he hiding somewhere in the thick shadows? Why had he cried out? At the top of the ladder, she eased open the door and squinted at the darkness. “Fila? Are you in here?”

A slight rustle in the corner told her she was. Rose climbed into the house and shut the door quietly behind her. She felt in front of her as she crawled across the floor, her fingers encountering sleeping bags and blankets, a pillow, and finally a more solid form.

“Are you all right?”

“Who is out there?” Rose saw Fila’s eyes reflecting starlight, huge and afraid.

“I’m not sure. Hannah’s still going after her bison. I don’t know who shouted.”

“Wahid,” Fila breathed. “It’s Wahid. He’s found me.”

Another chill traced up Rose’s spine. “One of the men who’s after you?” Fila nodded. Rose thought fast. Could a foreigner really trace her all the way here? It seemed unlikely. On the other hand, it had seemed unlikely that anyone could steal a plane and crash it into a skyscraper, either. “If that’s true, we’re not safe here.”

“No,” Fila said.

A number of plans sped through Rose’s mind. They could stay where they were, but if this Wahid and his men found them, they’d be cornered. They could make a break for Carl’s house, but they’d have to cover a lot of open ground between the woods and the mansion—they could easily be spotted. They could run for the road and Rose’s truck, but Rose’s intuition told her the man—whoever he was—lay between it and them. Or they could move deeper into the woods. Hannah was back there, anyhow.

So was the bison.

“We’d better find Hannah,” she said.

Fila nodded, looking grim.

The two women slipped down the ladder as silently as they could, took a moment to listen to the quiet forest, and then Rose led the way back toward where she’d left Hannah. This time the journey seemed to take forever, and shivers crept up and down her spine as she thought about the presence of a man in the forest with them. Not to mention the bison.

Had Hannah caught up to Gladys again? She pressed on, straining to hear Hannah’s voice or the heavy footsteps of the beast. She was terrified she might walk right into the bison in this thick darkness.

There
. Starlight revealed something man-made among the trees. A part of the corral Hannah had built for Gladys. She raced to it, hearing Fila’s light footsteps behind her, and began to follow its perimeter. “Hannah?” she whispered, hoping she was near. “Hannah?”

Behind them gunfire rang out through the woods. Several shots in close succession.

Rose dropped to the ground instinctively, the air in her lungs whooshing out on impact. Fila dropped beside her. The gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had started. She exchanged a shocked look with the other woman. She’d never heard a sound like that. Not in person. Growing up in a Montana ranch town meant Rose had heard a shotgun blast or two, and knew a rifle shot when she heard one. This was different. This was… automatic.

“It’s Wahid,” Fila confirmed in a whisper. “He’s here. For me.”

“We’ve got to get out of here.” But as soon as she said it, Rose knew she couldn’t leave until she knew Hannah was safe, too. She gripped Fila’s hand. “We find Hannah and then we leave.”

Fila nodded again.

Rose scrambled to her knees and ducked under the split rail fence, then held a hand out to Fila to join her. Once they were both inside the corral, she straightened and followed the fence around. It made sense to search the corral first to see if Hannah was here.

Or did it? She stopped short and Fila bumped into her. What would Hannah’s reaction to the gunfire be? Would she think the same thing Rose had—that first she had to find her friends before she could flee?

If so, she would turn around and head back to the tree house. Rose frowned.

“Hannah,” she hissed again, moving more quickly now, determined to finish her circuit of the corral.

As she took another step forward, however, Rose had the uncanny sensation she and Fila weren’t alone here. Prickles of fear traced up and down her spine and she stiffened, holding her breath. A snort of air some twenty feet in front of her alerted her to the beast’s presence.

Hannah’s bison.

In the corral with them. Eating something. Hannah’s corn on the cob?

She put a hand out behind her and clutched the fabric of Fila’s sleeve. She could dimly make out its shape now, a black hulking bulk by the far fence. Rose took a step back, trying to remember how far she’d ventured into the pen. Fila moved back too, guided by her. The beast snorted again. She saw motion dimly, heard a sound like a hoof scraping the ground.

“Fila, the bison’s in here with us,” she said in a voice just barely louder than a breath. “Stay behind me and back slowly to the fence. Once you’re there, either go under it or over it.” She took another step back. Another. Struggled to keep from turning tail and dashing away. Fila moved in tandem with her, silently gliding over the ground behind her. Another snort. Was the bison closer to them? She squinted at it, unable to tell.

Sliding her foot over the ground, she moved back farther. Another few steps should do it, but if she wasn’t mistaken, the bison was moving, too. In fact, that scraping sound and the snort of its breath told her…

An enormous shape charged toward her. Rose shrieked and ran for it. Fila flitted before her, reached the fence, dropped down and rolled under the bottom rung. She was on her feet in an instant and disappeared into the gloom before Rose even made it to the split rails. Running full tilt, she crashed into them, grabbed the highest railing reflexively and scrambled to climb it.

Just as she reached the top, the bison’s head hit the fence just to the left of her. The impact pitched her forward and she spilled to the ground on the other side. As soon as she hit the dirt she scrambled to regain her footing and dash away.

She lit out after Fila, back toward the tree house. With any luck the bison wouldn’t find the gate and come after them.

Wishful thinking.

Where was Hannah? Had the animal found the corncobs by itself, or had Hannah herded it in there, then run away, startled by the gunfire, before she could latch the gate?

Rose careened to a stop. She still hadn’t seen Fila. Where had the girl gone? Back to the tree house? Over toward Carl’s? And what about Hannah? Should she wait for her? Or keep going?

After a moment’s agonized deliberation, she turned and ran toward the tree house again.

Cab hoped like hell
Jamie had found the women and gotten them to safety by now. He crouched behind a cross-section of two pine trees, one still standing, the other half-fallen to a forty-five degree angle. They’d lost the element of surprise when he’d slipped on a particularly wet patch of leaves and gone down hard on his knee. The closest terrorist had heard him, spun on his heel, shouted and alerted the others. Everyone had gone to ground.

Still, he knew that the men were still searching for Fila, and he and Ethan had continued to creep after them. This time the men had left a sentry behind them and when Cab and Ethan got to close, he opened fire.

That rat-a-tat of automatic weapon fire set every nerve in Cab on high alert. That wasn’t a sound that belonged in Chance Creek. He and Ethan had holed up and decided to wait for reinforcements. Cab didn’t like it, though. Rose was out there, and if she hadn’t known the men were there before, she’d know now. How would she and Fila react? Would she stay put or would she make a run for it?

“Never thought I’d be in this situation,” Rob said, appearing by his side. He passed Cab a shotgun, shoved a Glock in his own belt and checked the chamber of a Smith & Wesson.

“Neither did I,” Cab said. “If I wanted this kind of action, I’d have joined the army.” In his peripheral vision he saw three more men sift their way through the trees toward them. Rob’s brothers—Jake, Ned and Luke.