Redemption (30 page)

“No, Jack—” She threw her arms around his neck. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me or my father.” She pulled him down into a kiss.

He gently disengaged himself from her hold. “Don’t come back here.” He started to step back from the door when he saw Kate at the edge of the clearing.

* * *

K
ATE HAD AWAKENED
before the sun rose after a night of restless sleep. She’d tried to talk herself out of going up to Jack’s cabin before work. The best thing she could do was leave things as they were. Let Jack think all she cared about was the gold. It was the safest thing for him not to be involved with her. He’d made his ultimatum. Him or the gold. Was he afraid that looking for the gold would get her killed? Or more afraid of what could happen once she found it?

As the sheriff had warned her, there were still two Ackermanns hanging around the area. Why involve Jack further in this mess? She had been wrong to do it in the first place.

But all that good advice hadn’t made her heart ache any less. She kept remembering the hurt she’d seen in his eyes. She couldn’t leave things like this.

As the sun rose along the eastern horizon, she’d decided to walk up to his cabin. The day was already warm. A part of her thought she might come to her senses before she reached his door.

She’d just topped the hill when she saw Chantell back out of the cabin. Kate was too far away to hear what was being said, but there was no mistaking the way the woman wrapped her arms around Jack and pulled him down for a kiss before leaving.

Kate turned and fled back down the path toward the café. Her heart ached worse than it had before, and she cursed herself. It sure hadn’t taken Jack long, had it? Or maybe he’d never stopped seeing Chantell, just as Hitch McCray had warned her.

She thought she heard him call her name, but she kept running. She’d wanted desperately for Jack to be different from other men she’d known, even though she’d known from the get-go what he was like.

Fool. At her pickup, she looked back. The highway was empty. Had she thought Jack would follow her? She’d seen him standing in the doorway as Chantell was leaving, his chest as bare as his feet and looking as if he’d just woken up—or had never been to sleep.

Furious with herself, she unlocked her pickup and slid behind the wheel. An instant later, the engine turned over and she took off in a hail of dirt and gravel.

She wanted to just keep going and never look back. Let the Ackermann boys find the gold—and her, if they were so determined. She didn’t care anymore.

But even as she thought it, she knew she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life waiting for one of them to suddenly appear when she least expected it. Nor did she have the funds to disappear the way she wanted.

No, it had to end here—just as Claude had said. On her terms. She had to find the gold, then she was out of here. No looking back. No regrets.

The thought brought a sob to the surface. She wiped angrily at her eyes as they filled with tears. This was why she hadn’t wanted Jack’s help, hadn’t wanted to fall for his cowboy charm—because she’d known he would break her heart.

With everything she needed locked in the pickup overnight, she called Lou, told him that he and Bethany would have to handle the café today. Then she headed down the road toward Ackermann Hollow.

* * *

J
ACK SWORE WHEN
he reached the café and saw that Kate’s pickup was gone. He walked back up the trail, furious with himself, with Chantell and maybe especially with Kate.

She hadn’t even given him a chance to explain. Hot-headed damned woman. If she had just given him a chance to pull on his boots and come after her...

At a sound, he looked up to find Chantell still standing on his cabin porch. “Haven’t you done enough this morning?”

“It’s not my fault if Kate got the wrong impression,” she said, satisfaction written all over her face. “Jack, she’s not like you and me. She’ll want to get her lasso around your neck.”

“While you just want to get your spurs into me.”

“You always liked it before,” she said, being coy.

“I told you. You’re wasting your time,” he said, moving past her. “I can’t unring that bell. Just as your father can’t, either.”

“You’re wrong about him. He swore to me—”

“Chantell, he lied to you. It’s going to come out, and soon. You best be ready.”

She looked at him as if confused. She was so used to getting her way on everything, apparently she’d never had to deal with
no
before. “Admit it, you miss me. After you fix this—”

“Chantell, find another challenge, okay?” He shook his head as she followed him into the cabin. “You had no interest in me until you thought I was interested in someone else, and throwing yourself at me won’t save your father. Nothing you can do will.”

“That’s not true, Jack,” she said, reaching for him as he grabbed his pickup keys.

“I can’t make this any clearer. You and I were over a long time ago.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it.” He pushed past her.

“You aren’t going after her.”

“The hell I’m not.”

* * *

K
ATE HADN’T GONE FAR
when she realized she had taken the wrong turn. When she tried to turn around, she got stuck in a mud hole and couldn’t get the pickup out.

Tired and heartsick, she sat down in the shade of a tree and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore, then she fell asleep. It was late afternoon by the time she woke. She found a couple of old candy bars in the pickup’s glove box, ate those and noticed that while she was sleeping the sun and wind had dried the mud hole she’d gotten stuck in.

The pickup came right out of it this time. Feeling as if her luck had changed and seeing that there was still a lot of light left in the day, she drove to Ackermann Hollow and hiked in, stopping near the house to look at the map. The paper had thinned and yellowed, quietly disintegrating before her eyes. She studied it as she had so many times before.

In her mother’s haste, she hadn’t marked north and south. Maybe she hadn’t known which direction was north. With few or no unusual landmarks, the map was as Jack had said: worthless.

“The gold is here,” Kate said to herself. Until she found it she wouldn’t be free. Why couldn’t Jack understand that?

What will you do with it if you find it?

She told herself she hadn’t thought that far ahead. But in truth, she realized Jack might be right. Isn’t that why he thought she’d chosen gold over him already?

Shoving those thoughts away, she looked toward the mountains.

The lower part of the hollow lay in the foothills, but quickly rose in a deep, fairly wide canyon with rock cliffs, towering pines and a meandering creek that any other time of the year ran slow and clear. Now the creek raged, and snow still melted slowly in the shade along the north side of the cliffs.

Her mother’s drawing showed the creek, several objects that could have been buildings or rocks or even stands of trees. As Kate looked up the hollow, she saw dozens of places where the gold could have been buried.

The first time she’d come up here, she’d tried to imagine her mother living here. Claude had only one photograph of Katherina “Teeny” LaFond.

Kate had seen the resemblance at once—just as Loralee Clark had seen it from the photograph she’d taken of Teeny.

“Cullen must have been charming to talk my mother into coming here,” she said to the breeze as she stared down the mountainside at what had been the heart of Ackermann’s compound.

“Or he lied through his teeth,” she said. Feeling her anger fuel her, she continued toward the house. As it had been the first time she’d come up here, the day was eerily still. No breeze stirred the pine boughs or whispered in the new aspen leaves. A stark, blazing sun fingered its way down through the trees. As she walked through the shafts of heat toward the house, Kate cursed herself for falling for Jack.

The image of Chantell standing in his cabin doorway came back with a stab of pain that she tried to mask with anger. The pain won as she walked along the side of the house. She would go up into the mountains today, hoping it would be cooler at the higher altitude, to a spot she hadn’t checked yet.

She stopped in the shade of the house to wipe perspiration from her brow and shifted the metal detector to her other hand. It was too late to have much time to dig, so she hadn’t toted along the shovel. If she found something, she’d dig with the smaller tool strapped on her belt, marking the site for when she would come back later.

Looking up the mountainside, she almost changed her mind. Her disappointment in Jack had taken all the fight out of her. Even after sleeping a good portion of the day, she was suddenly tired and just wanted to go home, curl up in a ball and sleep for the rest of the week.

The café was hard enough work without spending all her free time climbing mountains and digging for treasure. The weight of it all lay heavy on her shoulders.

She took a step back toward her truck when the man came out of the shade beside the house.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

K
ATE HAD BEEN SO LOST
in thought that she hadn’t sensed him waiting there for her. The moment he moved, she realized her mistake.

As he lunged for her, she swung the metal detector. It landed with only a glancing blow, which didn’t slow him in the least.

He was good-sized and had the element of surprise on his side. He tackled her, driving her to the hard ground, knocking the breath out of her.

She hadn’t had a chance to replace the gun that had been stolen from her apartment. But it wouldn’t have done her any good if she had.

He was on top of her so quickly, she wouldn’t have had time to use it. By now he would have taken it from her and used it on her instead.

“Shit. You look just like her.”

She used his surprise to try to get him off her and almost succeeded, slamming him into the side of the house.

He let out a cry as his shoulder connected with the rock foundation of the house.

“Bitch.” He spat the word at her as he grabbed her wrists and straddled her in the dirt. His face was narrow, dark eyes close together, cheeks pockmarked.

“Get off me.” She tried to buck him off with less success than the time before.

He let go of one of her wrists long enough to slap her, hard.

She went for his face with her free hand, only to have him crush her to the ground with his body as he grappled to get hold of her again.

She could smell his sour breath, feel it against her face. They were both breathing hard from the struggle.

“It’s your fault I’m up here livin’ like this,” he said, spittle spraying her as he succeeded in securing her wrists again. “Cecil said we had to bide our time. Wait.” He swore. “If she can’t find it, then how the hell do you think we are goin’ to find it?” The last was said in a way that she assumed mimicked the way Cecil spoke. “I told him you were probably just screwing with us.”

She saw something change in his expression. Suddenly she feared even more for her life than she had before. “Gallen, right? I haven’t been screwing with you,” she said.

“I told him even if she really is looking for it, bet we could find it faster. We know this land. She don’t.”

Kate could tell he was trying to work this out in his own mind, since clearly his older brother must have told him not to mess with her and now he had.

“Cecil said he saw your mother making a map. That what she did, ain’t it?”

Kate swallowed, her throat dry as sand.

“You got it on you, don’t you? Course you do.” He glanced at her backpack. She’d had the strap looped over one shoulder when he’d hit her. It had come off and landed a few feet from them.

She knew then that he was going to kill her. But first he had to be sure she had the map on her. If he killed her and he didn’t find it, he would really be in serious trouble with his brother and he knew it.

He moved her hands until they were high over her head and grasped hold of both wrists with one hand, waiting to see if it held her.

She didn’t fight, but bided her time as he reached for her backpack, pulling it over so he could unzip it.

The backpack contained a large bottle of water, gloves, a towel to clean herself up in the creek before she headed back into town, a small pocketknife, the county maps she’d collected, a small global positioning system and the infrared camera she’d purchased.

She tried not to think about what he would do to her when he realized that the map wasn’t there.

She let him draw everything out of the backpack and sort through the other maps as she came up with a plan. She knew she would only get one chance so she couldn’t blow it.

When his body weight had shifted to reach for the backpack, she’d felt the digging tool strapped on her belt. The handle dug into her side where it had shifted when he’d taken her down.

He started to clumsily unzip the side pocket on the backpack—the last place left to look. His weight shifted as he struggled with the zipper.

Kate knew it was now or never. She bucked with her hips, throwing him in the direction of the backpack as she wrestled her wrists free of his hold.

The move took him by surprise and with him already leaning in that direction, he fell sideways and had to catch himself.

The moment a hand was free, she went for the weapon at her waist. The hook-and-loop strap came open easily.

She pulled the small, sharp digging tool from its sheath as she rolled onto her side and scrambled to get her feet under her.

He took a swing at her, clipping her temple. She felt a gash open in the skin as blood began to run down in her eye. Before that moment, she hadn’t realized that he’d grabbed the knife she carried from her backpack.

He came at her, brandishing the knife as he grabbed for her with his free hand. Instinctively, she lunged at him the moment the knife had passed by her, striking out at him with the wide, knifelike weapon.

The sound of the blade striking bone was followed by his horrible scream. The digger lodged in muscle on his arm and was jerked from her hand. He screamed again and wrenched the blade free, murder in his eyes.