Killer's Prey (23 page)

Ego? She wasn’t sure she knew exactly what made him preen. He didn’t like defiance, so she squashed any thought of arguing. No, she had to find a better way.

Her heart fluttered like a bird that desperately wanted to escape, and her thoughts still remained fractured, only fragments of sense making their way through the din of terror.
Think!

Finally she hesitantly spoke the only thing she could think of, hoping to sound out what would get to him.

“You’re very strong.”

That was it. She saw it on his face. Somehow that was the key. Now she had to figure out how to use it.

* * *

The circles Nora had made riding Daisy around were clear enough still that Jake barely had to follow them. Then she had ridden along the tree line. He followed her path, listening with every ounce of hearing he possessed. Right now there was nothing but the sound of the horse’s deep breath and snorts, the jingle of the harness. Not another sound.

Then he found it, the spot where Nora had been thrown. Daisy’s footprints all of sudden became deeper, as if she had reared, and there was no mistaking the imprint of Nora’s body on the thin layer of snow, nor the broadening of Daisy’s stride as she suddenly turned back toward the corral.

It had happened here. He looked into the woods and felt his heart sink. No snow to speak of under those trees, and frozen ground didn’t yield to feet. Tracking would be difficult, if not impossible.

But he had to try.

He dismounted and dropped the reins, knowing his mount would stay put unless frightened, and if frightened he wanted the gelding to get away.

He pulled the shotgun from his holster and the flare gun from one saddlebag, stuffing it into one of his pockets. Into another he shoved a couple of handfuls of shells.

In the distance Jake saw the first patrol vehicle arriving, lights flashing, no siren.

Help was coming. The only question was whether they’d find Nora in time.

* * *

“Yes,” the beast said, “I’m very strong. And you’re going to make me even more powerful.”

Nora felt a moment of confusion. What did he mean? It made no sense. “How do I do that?”

“You give me strength with each of your cries. With your pain. With your death. If you had just died the first time, I would have had power beyond imagining.”

Oh, God, she had fallen in with someone who was not only cruel and evil, but crazy, as well. She forced herself to drag in a couple of deep breaths. What had one of her professors said? The crazy aren’t illogical at all. Their logic is just based on a different reality.

Well, this was one reality she couldn’t imagine, and fear wasn’t helping her clarity of thought. Or maybe the blow to her head had dazed her. Fighting against every desire to just give in to a primal scream of terror, she ransacked her memory, trying to find a clue. Gain strength from her suffering and death?

She had heard or read that somewhere. Some kind of magical belief. Maybe even a ritual one in some cultures. But how exactly was it supposed to work?

How did
this
guy think it worked?

Not knowing, she finally just asked, her voice cracking. “How does that work?”

He settled back a bit, still fingering the knife, as if deciding how much he wanted to say. How much he wanted to brag. She hoped he wanted to brag a whole lot.

Behind the tree, she was working her wrists, seeking to free them from what felt like nylon rope. Her hands were growing numb from the cold. Soon they’d be useless.

Time. She had to buy time.

“Your essence,” he said, “combines with mine.”

“My essence?”

“Energy.” He said the word as if speaking to a child who couldn’t understand. “But mostly, the power of life and death I have over you enhances my strength. Soon no one will be able to stop me.”

Her head had begun to pound, not helping her think at all. So somehow the power he held to kill her empowered him? The thinking was so foreign to her that she had trouble understanding how he could believe that. Then another thought popped out.

“It makes you godlike.”

He smiled. She didn’t like that smile at all. “Exactly.”

Elaborate, she thought desperately. “Tell me more. I’d like to understand why this is happening to me.”

“You don’t need to understand.”

Panic speared her once again. Any moment... She had to delay him again. It felt as if the binding on one of her wrists was stretching. Time had become everything. Seconds, minutes, whatever she had left, she had to draw them out.

“But...” She hesitated. “Maybe if I understand how this...strengthens you, you’ll get even stronger.”

He almost froze, struck by the thought. “Stronger because you understand? I don’t...” He trailed off, then began fingering the knife again. “Perhaps,” he said finally.

She pulled hard with one arm. Was the rope slipping farther down her hand? “Think of it as a ritual,” she said desperately. “Rituals make more energy because they have meaning. There’s meaning in my death only if I understand it.”

He lowered his head a moment, studying the knife.

She waited, holding her breath, tugging at her bonds. Let him bite. Please, God, let him believe me.

* * *

Jake was as close to losing his mind as he’d ever gotten. Terror for Nora filled him, and he struggled to keep it in check so he wouldn’t miss any important clues as he ventured into the woods. He prayed they were still here, that she hadn’t been carried away in a vehicle. He prayed he’d find her, because it suddenly seemed that without her life would be meaningless. Pointless. He didn’t even care about his herd anymore. All he cared about was Nora.

The forest was quiet and it muffled sound, making it harder to hear if someone was around, but also covering his own movement. Blessing or curse, he didn’t know at that point.

He could see where Nora had been dragged across the ground for a short distance by the disturbed needles and occasional leaves, but then the guy must have picked her up. The drag marks disappeared.

So he looked higher, for bent and broken branches, for trampled undergrowth. The trail grew fainter, it seemed, but he kept looking, moving slowly when he wanted to run, because running would do absolutely no good. None.

This creep, he thought, holding the shotgun, wasn’t going to get another chance to hurt anyone. Ever. Today was going to be his last day, if Jake had anything to say about it. The blackness filling his heart would have frightened him under other circumstances.

But right now all he could feel in his heart were terror and rage. And murder.

Then he heard it: a voice.

* * *

“A ritual would be good,” the beast said. He apparently liked the idea. “I should plan one.”

“Yes,” Nora agreed. “From everything I’ve read, there has to be an order, a meaning. And to work it has to be done just right.” God, it was hard to squeeze out words when she was breathless with a galloping heart. She managed anyway and tugged harder at the bonds.

If she could just get her hands free, get to her feet fast enough... The thought of being able to move faster than he could, fast enough to evade that knife, caused a wave of despair to wash over her. This was it. She could do nothing to prevent a rerun of the nightmare.

But then she forced her spine to stiffen. No matter what, she would not go meekly. Meekness was, for now, keeping him in check, but when the time came he was going to get the fight of his life.

Then she realized her hand was nearly free.

* * *

Making as little noise as possible, Jake moved toward the voice. A man, but he thought he could hear a woman, too. Nora.

His step quickened, and he lifted the shotgun, already cocked, to the ready. God, he hoped she wouldn’t be in the way.

He hoped she was still okay. He couldn’t bear the thought of another scar on her, another wound, or the pain it would cause her.

Not now. Focus on getting the guy, whatever it took. Nothing else. Just get him.

An eternity seemed to pass before he caught sight of them through the trees. She was seated at the base of a lodgepole pine, appeared to be tied up. The guy was sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing her, holding a wicked-looking hunting knife.

Too close. He might catch Nora with the spray from his load. He edged around, trying to get a better angle, allowing himself a moment of relief when he saw that Nora had not yet been attacked. In fact, she was talking to the guy.

God, she was brave.

Then, in an instant, the entire picture changed.

Nora leaped to her feet with amazing speed and jumped toward the man. The guy sitting on the ground tried to scramble up. Jake stepped out, yelling, “Nora, run!”

Thank God, she reacted fast and switched directions on a dime.

Langdon got to his feet just before Nora escaped the line of fire. Instinctively he turned toward Jake, and just as instinctively, Jake shot him, getting him in the chest.

But that was not the end. It seldom was, despite the movies. The guy grinned and stepped toward him. “You can’t kill me.” He started coming toward Jake, knife ready. Jake shot again. The guy didn’t fall.

Being a rancher and not on duty, he wasn’t carrying a riot gun, but a double barrel that needed reloading. His mind raced as he tried to decide whether to move in on the guy, or if he had time to reload.

Then, astonishingly, Nora leaped into the fray, jumping at the guy from behind. She mounted his back, wrapping her arms tightly around his throat.

He swung around wildly with the knife but couldn’t reach her. And now it didn’t matter if Jake could reload or not. He’d shoot Nora. No choice but to move in.

And move in he did. He ran forward, keeping the knife in his peripheral vision, watching the guy’s eyes.

Langdon might have thought he was invincible, but he was beginning to look panicked. Nora was not only strangling him, but she was also kicking the backs of his legs with her pointed-toe cowboy boots.

Moving in on the side away from the knife, Jake managed to take a swing at the guy’s head. He was bleeding badly and couldn’t keep this up much longer. Or so Jake hoped.

A shout of rage escaped Langdon, but it was followed by a gurgle. Jake pounded him again, this time right on the chest wound.

The knife fell. A second later it was followed by Langdon as he collapsed to his knees.

“Get off him,” Jake shouted, and shoved two more shells into his shotgun as fast as he could. Nora pushed away, but as she did so, Langdon fell face-first.

“Stay away, Nora,” Jake ordered.

She backed up.

Walking over, Jake prodded the guy with the barrel of his gun, rolling him over. He could see the man’s gaze dimming at last.

Then Nora did the most surprising thing. She leaned over the guy and said loudly, “
Now
who has the power?”

That was probably the last thing Langdon ever heard.

* * *

There were cops everywhere. EMTs treated the rope burns on Nora’s wrists, declared that her concussion should be checked out if she developed any symptoms, but judged her to be okay for now.

At last Jake squatted in front of her, taking her hands gently. “I have to go out for a while. Two of my cattle were poisoned with something really bad. The sheriff and I have to take care of it before it spreads.”

“Spreading poison?”

“If it’s what I suspect it is, yeah. If an animal eats the flesh of a poisoned animal, it gets poisoned, too. The decaying flesh can let poison seep into the groundwater. We have to deal with it now. I’m sorry.”

“Could that creep have done it?”

He shook his head. “Why would he? Anyone with half a brain would realize that the instant I found the animal I’d call the cops. How would that help him? Besides, the stuff was banned back in 1989. These days it has to be sold in sealed collars by USDA-approved vendors. Even if Langdon had known about the collars, he likely would have killed
himself
by puncturing one. It’s that toxic. No, most likely some coyote moved in for a kill and got a mouthful of collar instead of ewe or cow.”

She freed one hand and touched his cheek. “I haven’t thanked you. But go. I understand. I’ll thank you later.”

“Keep a close eye on her,” he told Rosa, then he and most of the deputies departed, leaving only one who wanted to ask her questions about what had happened.

Unlike last time, this time she
wanted
to tell the whole story.

But it seemed like forever until Jake returned.

* * *

Gage and Jake stood over the wrapped bait and the two dead cows.

“This is bad,” Gage said. “Nobody’s supposed to be using that stuff anymore.”

“Well, it’s allowed in a few states in livestock collars. I locked my dogs in the barn. They seem fine right now, but I have no idea if they ate any of that carcass.”

Gage swore. “The cows wouldn’t eat that bait, so it must be in the water now.”

“At least the meltwater from the snow.”

“This could kill the whole county and beyond, and no way to tell where that dead animal came from.”

“None.”

Gage swore again. The vet was on his way, and a flatbed was coming to take the carcasses. They touched everything with thick rubber gloves now. If it was the poison they were both thinking of, it could kill them, too. “The vet needs to take the dogs, too. To check them out.”

“Dr. Windwalker will find out what it is,” Gage said finally.

“I hope I’m wrong.”

“Me, too. More than I can say.” Then he turned to give Jake a half smile. “Get back to your woman, Jake. We’ll handle this. There’s going to be a hell of an investigation, but right now, the important thing is that Nora is all right.”

“Amen,” was all that Jake said. Even now, getting back to Nora seemed more important than the poisoning. That would change, but right now he was more concerned with the woman who had brought so much joy into his life.

Chapter 15

W
hen he got back to the house, not all was what he’d hoped to find. Fred Loftis had called and Nora was livid.

“He told that creep where I was! My own father! Said he thought it was a cop from Minneapolis. How stupid can you get? Claimed the guy had come all this way to tell me they’d caught Langdon.”

Jake wrapped her in his arms and held her close. “He called?”

“Yeah. He wanted to know if I felt better now.
Better?
”

Jake continued to hold her. The deputies were gone now, at least from his house. He heard Rosa say dinner was in the oven, then heard her go out the back door and head home.

And still he continued to hold Nora. Through her anger, through the reaction that left her shaking like a leaf, holding her until she at last became quiet against him.

“I’m proud of you,” he said finally. “The way you took that creep on... God, Nora, my heart is bursting with pride. You’re so damn brave.”

“I was terrified out of my mind,” she admitted in a small voice.

“So was I,” he answered truthfully. “All I wanted was to get to you and kill him.”

At last she hugged him back. He felt her sag a little, so he settled in the armchair, swinging her onto his lap.

For a long, long time, as the events of the day rolled through them both, they didn’t say much. But at last the emotional storm began to recede as night settled over the world outside.

“I’m free,” Nora said finally. “Free of him forever.”

“I can testify to that.”

She lifted her head and gave him the first smile since that morning. “I’m just starting to believe it. I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“I think you did a damn good job of getting past it these past few weeks. It didn’t just happen in an instant.”

“Maybe not.” She kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“I didn’t do that much.”

“You gave me a haven, a place to get my strength back and reason to believe in myself again. Confidence.”

“I think you always had that. You just had to rediscover it.”

Then he gave her the kiss he’d been wanting to give her for hours: deep, hungry and possessive. Even though he didn’t have the right to claim her, the claim already existed in his heart.

“What will you do now?” he asked her.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

She lifted her head and looked straight at him. “On you, Jake. On you.”

His heart leaped. His head whirled. God, she had come so far from the woman who had arrived here. “On me? You really want to know what I want?”

“Yes.” She faced him unflinchingly.

“I want you. Forever. As my wife. Mother to my kids. In my bed and at my side. But Beth couldn’t stand it here.”

“I love it here. I love you. I love everything about this place.”

“But your career...”

“I’ll find one here. I know I can. If not, well, I do love taking care of the horses.”

“You won’t get bored?”

“I think I’d like to get bored once in a while, but around you, I never do.”

He squeezed her so tight, she squeaked. “I love you, Nora Loftis. I love you beyond words. But don’t say yes unless you’re sure. It hurt when Beth left, but if I lost you... Well, I figured out today that losing you would leave my life empty forever. There’d be nothing left worth living for.”

She cupped his cheek. “I feel the same way about you. Part of me always has.”

He frowned, but she touched his lips. “It’s in the past, Jake. I needed it, and you did what you had to do, given your promise to Beth.”

“There’s no excusing my cruelty.”

“Youth,” she said finally. “What I did was pretty stupid, too. I was embarrassed for years that I’d try to pay you with my body to take me to the prom.”

“Oh, no. No, don’t feel that way.”

“Then stop feeling the way you do. We’re older and wiser now, I hope. And I’ve found heaven with you.”

He kissed her hard and long, never wanting to let go. “I’ve found heaven with you, too. You’re in nearly every thought I have. I can’t want to set eyes on you again when you’re away. I even hate your damn job at the library.”

She gave a little laugh. “It hasn’t been as much fun lately because I’m away from you.”

“Marry me, Nora,” he said, catching her face and turning it toward him. “A big fancy church wedding. All the trimmings.”

“Not at my dad’s church.”

He laughed, feeling his heart grow lighter than it had in years. “Not at your dad’s church,” he agreed. “So, will you?”

“Of course I will.” She sighed, lifting her arms, wrapping them around his neck and burrowing into the only place that she had ever felt was home: his arms. “I love you, Jake Madison.”

“And I love you. Wedding tomorrow?”

She tipped her head, laughing joyously for the first time in forever. “What about the trimmings?”

“Okay, I’ll wait a few months,” he agreed.

Then, without another word, he rose with her still in his arms and carried her up the stairs. They were going to begin their new life in the best way possible: wrapped in each other.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from THE COLTON BRIDE by Carla Cassidy.