A Knight In Cowboy Boots (36 page)

“Deborah, call the fire department,” Ruth instructed. “Hannah, you get your tail back upstairs. I ain’t got time to worry about you. Maddie, you don’t know where nothing is. You stay here and make sure Hannah stays outta trouble. Don’t let her downstairs or she’ll slip out on you.”

Maddie stepped onto the porch.

“Thank God the stock’s all out in the pasture or the corrals,” Sol muttered as he shoved a boot onto his foot.

“The dogs!” Maddie said, realizing they must still be penned up in the barn.

Sol looked up at her with alarmed features. “Shit!” He stomped the second boot on without a sock.

Zach was the first one out to the barn with Sol close behind. Maddie watched from the top of the porch step. “Get the dogs,” she pleaded in a whisper as one of the boys pulled the large gate-door open, then both of them disappeared inside.

“Get the dogs,” she whispered again.

A minute later, the dogs came bouncing out. Other McKnights disappeared inside. Through the door, Maddie could see flames licking up the back wall.

The fire already had too strong a hold on the barn timbers for them to try fighting it. The flames threw eerie shadows as the McKnights started dragging everything they could out of the already lost structure.

The fire roared as it ate through the barn, fueled by the straw and other combustibles inside. Maddie prayed they’d know when to stop salvaging and stand clear.

“Hello, Maddie.”

Both her heart and brain froze. She turned her gaze from the flaming barn to search the shadows by the house. Only when he moved did she see him. Her heart leaped in her chest, picking up a rapid beat she felt in her throat.

“I want my son.”

Of course, he did. And the gun in Derek’s hand said he’d have him, too. Maddie swallowed.

She stood frozen as he mounted the steps and let himself onto the porch. He closed the distance between them in just two steps to stand as close as a lover. “You’re going to get him for me, aren’t you?” The barrel of the gun nudged her ribs, and her paralysis broke. She had no choice but to hope fate gave her a chance before he got away with Jesse. He followed her in.

“You’ve got a sweet little set-up here, haven’t you?”

Maddie didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. The air in her lungs felt like it was locked in.

“Does you new boyfriend know your last one died because he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong?” Derek shoved her to get her moving. She stumbled as she turned. A hand on the door jamb steadied her.

She’d vowed to die before she let Derek have Jesse, but she knew now how little meaning that promise held. If she refused, Derek would just shoot her, step over her bleeding body, and go in after Jesse. Every step she took as she led him toward Jeb and Ruth’s door felt like she was treading through thick, chest-deep oil.

“Is this one smart enough to just lay back or do I need to kill him, too, before I leave?”

The question was rhetorical; he was letting her know he wouldn’t hesitate to do as he threatened if Zach tried to stop him or came after him. He followed close behind her as she crossed to the crib.

“Maybe I should do him a favor and do it anyway. You’ve probably convinced the poor dumb sucker that your pussy’s golden, just like your skanky sister tried with me.”

Maddie was too numb for the hateful words he spewed to hurt her. Undoubtedly he’d rehearsed them in his head a million times since she’d left with Jesse. It was irrelevant; the gun never wavered.

“If your sister had been as smart as she pretended, she would have known not to come between a man and his son.”

Maddie resisted telling him that he wasn’t a real man; he was too unpredictable to goad. She thought about the gun in her bag upstairs. The gun she’d carried for so long. The gun that was out of reach when she finally needed it. If she’d taken Jesse upstairs earlier, she’d have a chance to grab it now. She thought about leading him upstairs, about picking up the gun and shooting him with it. Maddie thought shooting him would actually feel good and what that said about how far she’d descended.

She almost turned toward the stairs, but Hannah was up there. If things went wrong, he might hurt her, so Maddie led Derek to Jeb and Ruth’s room.

As she bent over the crib, Derek said, “A boy belongs with his father.”

The second she touched the form under the blanket, Maddie’s mind and body froze.

Where was Jesse?

Her heart slammed painfully against her ribs. A second later, her mind started functioning again.

Of course. Hannah.

She’d taken Jesse and left the doll her aunt had sent.

Maddie’s heart started galloping as a plan formed in her head. Careful to keep the face hidden, she gathered up the doll, taking the blanket with it to provide cover. Derek crowded close behind her.

“Give him to me,” Derek demanded.

Maddie turned, hugging the bundled doll against her shoulder. If the gun went off, the bullet would hit her point-blank, but it wavered, pointing at the ceiling as Derek reached for his son.

With the strength of her terror, Maddie drove her knee into his crotch. Derek seemed to sense it was coming. At the last second, he twisted to protect himself, doubling up more in anticipation than because she’d made any kind of solid contact.

Clutching the doll, Maddie shoved Derek away, pushing him into the wall, and ran for the door. Behind her, a bullet splintered the door frame. She zagged toward the living room to get out of his line of fire. The front door slowed her since Zach had latched the screen. When it didn’t give under her initial push, Maddie dropped her shoulder against the frame and bulldozed her way through. The metal of the latch screeched as it pulled from the wood.

Then she was out and running. She yelled for help, but they were all too far away to hear her over the roar of the fire.

As Derek burst out the back door, Maddie realized the screen door had cost her the lead she needed. If she cut across to the barn, Derek would be on her before she covered half the distance. She veered toward the corrals. If she could make them, she could circle around and come up on the backside of the barn ahead of Derek.

Her grip was so tight that, if Jesse had been in her arms instead of the doll, she’d have squeezed him to death as she ran.

Halfway across the ranch drive, she knew she wouldn’t make it. Derek was too fast. She had to keep angling away to stay ahead of him.

At least he wasn’t shooting at her. She probably didn’t need to worry about that until he figured out she wasn’t carrying his son.

*

Jeb grabbed Zach’s arm as he started heading for the barn again.

“This ain’t right,” Jeb yelled.

“What?” Zach leaned in to hear his father over the crackling of the fire.

“It ain’t right. This fire didn’t start in one place and spread. It started there.” Over the spot where Jeb pointed, the fire was already burning the roof. “And there.” Another place where the fire was burning tall. “And there. It ain’t one fire spreading; it’s several that done growed together.”

Under the grime of soot and ash, and sweat from the heat, Zach was suddenly cold.

“Maddie,” he muttered through lips numb with fear, even as he turned and ran for the house.

As he’d dragged equipment from the barn, he’d seen her silhouette on the porch, but the porch was empty now. It was only fifty feet to the house, but his heart pounded like he’d already run ten miles.

He nearly tripped over the dog that darted in front of him. Catching his balance twisted him sideways for a couple of steps, otherwise he never would have seen the movement near the corrals.

It took a moment for his brain to resolve what his eyes saw, then he recognized the pale streak as Maddie’s white night shirt.

When he realized she was headed toward Old Smokey’s corral, Zach ran after the dog like hell’s hounds breathed fire at his heels.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Derek would pull her back the second she tried to climb over the corral fence, but there was no place else to go. At the last minute, Maddie threw herself to the ground. Hugging the doll close, she rolled under the bottom railing. The cold slime of manure clung to her sweats as she slipped in the struggle to regain her feet. The pungent scent hit her nose even as Derek’s boot hit the railing behind her. She came to her feet, looking back in time to see him vault the top rail.

Near the fence that separated the two corrals, Old Smokey rose and snorted.

Maddie didn’t have another ounce of speed in her, but the fear of the hunted drove her on.

She found her feet and ran.

*

Zach saw her rise from the ground, then his view was blocked as the dark form he hadn’t seen but knew had to be there vaulted the fence.

Dogs flowed past him, slithering under the bottom corral railing, to come up barking on the other side.

Old Smokey didn’t like having his territory invaded at the best of times. He pawed the ground twice, trotted a couple of steps forward, then broke into a lope. He was halfway to the running forms and closing the distance rapidly by the time Zach reached the corral.

*

Maddie stumbled when one of the dogs cut in front of her. A second later, she felt Derek’s fist close on her night shirt, right between her shoulder blades. She strained to keep going. The shoulder seam started to give. She’d have run on naked if she had to, but Derek spun her around and grabbed at the doll in her arms. With adrenaline flooding her system, the chaos of barking, leaping dogs surrounding them, and the flame-cast shadows dancing crazily, instinct overrode sense, and Maddie struggled with Derek until an arm separated from the doll. Derek fell back a step, his mouth and eyes wide with shock. Belatedly, Maddie turned to run, but Derek’s fist in her hair jerked her back.

She went to one knee as he pulled her against him. Her back met his thigh. His hand in her hair held her there, helpless. He leaned over her until Maddie saw nothing but his face contorted with anger. “What the hell’s this?” Fury distorted his voice. The doll’s remaining arm slapped her cheek. “What are you trying to pull on me, you bitch?” He tossed the doll aside then pulled her up, twisting her around. She barely got her feet under her when he backhanded her. Her head snapped around and a sharp pain shot from the base of her skull to the back of her eyes. Her vision faded, but she didn’t pass out, and somehow she kept from falling. Derek caught her arm and dragged her back to him.

“Where’s my son?” he yelled, but he didn’t give her a chance to answer before his fingers closed around her throat.

She didn’t have any coherent thoughts left. No worry about dying or regret that he had beaten her. As her knees buckled, reflex alone lifted her hands to dig at the vice locked on her throat.

Derek’s nails gouged the delicate flesh as his hands suddenly scraped away just a moment before something heavy and as solid as a brick building knocked her to the ground. Pain screamed up her arm.

*

Halfway over the corral fence, Zach froze. He seemed to have suddenly gone deaf. Not even the blood thumping in his ears made a sound, though he could feel it throbbing in his throat.

Derek loomed over Maddie’s kneeling form. He looked as though he was forcing her to the ground. Inexplicably, Jesse lay several feet from them, face down in the dirt. Neither of them saw Old Smokey, who had finally decided he didn’t like his uninvited guests. The dogs scattered as the bull charged. Head lowered, Smokey caught Derek with the hard bone between his horns, shoving him forward like a cow on a cow catcher in front of a full-speed locomotive.

Maddie went down amid Smokey’s hard hooves. Zach couldn’t find any air to draw into his lungs. He’d seen bull riders trampled often enough to know how quickly those hooves could kill. The barrier of unnatural silence that had wrapped itself around him shattered with Maddie’s shrill scream.

The paralysis broke with it and Zach jumped into the corral, running even as his feet hit the hard ground.

He slid to the ground next to Maddie. She lay on her side, one arm outstretched and twisted at an unnatural angle. Her nightshirt was ripped down the back. A filthy hoof print marked one torn edge where it lay in the dirt. Zach’s breath came in winded gasps that had nothing to do with sprinting across the corral. For a moment, he thought he would throw up. Then he saw she was still breathing.

He thought nothing could pull his attention from her crumpled form, but his gaze snapped up when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Old Smokey’s neck twist. The tip of his horn caught Derek low, just above the groin. The bull tossed his head. Derek rose up on his toes as the horn ripped straight up, opening him to his solar plexus as though his torso came equipped with a zipper.

A shrill whistle froze the scattered dogs. Zach looked back to see Jake atop the corral fence. He barely caught the beginning of the hand signal Jake gave the dogs before Sol skidded to his side.

“Don’t move her!” Sol commanded.

“I know! I know!” Only an immediate threat from Old Smokey would make Zach risk inflicting more damage.

His stomach tightened in a sick ball as he pointed. “Jesse …”

Sol glanced at Smokey before he moved away. The old bull wasn’t an animal to be herded, but the dogs didn’t know when to quit either. Not fifteen feet away, the barking dogs circled him. The bull pawed the ground then took a few menacing steps forward. The dogs in front of him spun away as one behind the old bull darted in to nip at his heels, making the bull turn to face his new tormentor.

Zach’s chest ached as his brother reached Jesse.

“Zach …”

His name on her lips pulled his attention back to Maddie. “I’m here, Maddie. I’m here.” At least they weren’t both dead. “Can you move at all?”

She struggled to push herself onto her back. Zach helped, desperately hoping they weren’t doing more damage. She drew a sharp breath and clutched the arm that now lay awkwardly against her body. Through her grimace she asked. “What hit me?”

“Smokey.”

“The bull?” Maddie asked, incredulity in her voice.

Sol scooted back to them. “It’s not Jesse.”

Maddie said something but Zach couldn’t hear her over a fresh spate of barking.

“What?”

“… doll … ” Maddie repeated.

Zach spared a glance at the broken form in Sol’s hand.

“Yeah,” Sol confirmed. “Smart move.”

“Not me,” Maddie said. “Hannah.”

Zach wasn’t sure he understood, but it didn’t matter. Jesse was somewhere safe, and Maddie was still alive. “We’ve got to get you out of here. Can you sit up? Careful now. I think your arm’s broke.”

Zach got Maddie to her feet.

“Derek?” she asked. He didn’t know if the look in her eyes was fear or pain.

Zach eyed Derek where he lay in the dirt behind the circle of dogs, then cast a questioning glance at Sol.

Sol was careful to speak low enough that Maddie wouldn’t hear. “If he’s not already dead, he’ll be bled out before we could stop it anyway.”

Zach knew Sol wouldn’t do anything to stop it even if he could. He wasn’t sure he would either, and he refused to let the question haunt him. He turned back to Maddie. “Don’t worry about Derek. He won’t be bothering you again.”