WANTED (A Transported Through Time book) (20 page)

When Samantha grasped the lead, her sigh was loud but not loud enough to spook the horse. Samantha stood a bit straighter and patted the mare’s neck. “Good girl,” she said and gave in, kissing the furry face.

The mare tugged up her head and nickered.

Now, if Samantha could get on her ... She did. Barely. Miraculously, and not at all gracefully, she did.

She rode over the slope of the hill and up the next, the one she swore looked familiar. Each hoofbeat matched her heart’s hope in a chant.
Be alive, Jesse. I’m coming. Stay alive.

She didn’t take time to pause and search for anyone following her. She looked only ahead. The roof of his home came into view. A string of smoke leaked out of the chimney.

Smiling, Samantha nudged the mare’s ribs and held tighter onto the saddle horn. Only a few more yards and she could ... What exactly? Walk in and say hello?

No.

Pulling on the reins, Samantha slowed the mare and traversed toward the rear of the log home. He was in there. She knew it. He was probably not alone.

He was probably tied to a chair, getting the piss beaten out of him because he refused to give in. Bloody-lipped, black-eyed; she could almost see him.

She should have brought a gun instead of the silly travel mug. Then again, she wouldn’t know how to use one. If she could only get to him, get him to drink, take one herself—

Samantha went still. She glanced around, steering the horse this way and that. She’d heard something. A branch snapping, a movement of some sort. She couldn’t find its source.

Forget it. Panic crawled up her insides. As she scanned, turned, scanned again, something moved, and she blinked. Someone was watching her from the shadows of trees. Probably with a gun trained on her.

She looked at the cabin. What if Jesse was in that cabin?

She had to get to him. She had to try.

Samantha did the most reckless thing she could think of—the only thing she could think of. She provided a distraction. Hard and fast, she dug her heels into the mare’s sides. The horse almost jumped into the gallop down the hill. Riding down the slope at full speed.

“Jesse!” she screamed with every ounce of power her lungs and voice would give up. Racing down the hill. “Jesse!”

A gunshot coughed from the trees behind her. Something hot whizzed past her ear. Samantha crouched low over the saddle and steered the horse right for Jesse Kincaid’s front door.

*

Jesse heard his name. Without a doubt, he recognized the voice. Of all the harebrained, asinine things for Samantha to do. He cursed silently. She’d returned, and now she was no longer safe. As hoofbeats drew near, her voice grew louder.

Mick chuckled and peered out the window. “Just when I was beginning to think we were at the end of your rope,” he said. “Good ol’ Irish luck has come to my aid again.”

As Jesse’s body swung, the rope Mick had referred to quite literally, creaked. He needed air. The world was getting black, and suddenly, he fell to the floor.

Pain tore his throat inside and out, and he pulled air into his burning lungs. With each breath, he tried to speak, to scream a warning to Samantha.

He was too late.

The first shot rang out loud and clear. Mick opened the door, his rifle perched and aiming at the horse and rider galloping up the porch steps, straight at the barrel.

Jesse reached within himself for new strength, drew on a raging fear of her coming to harm, and rolled toward Mick’s feet.

The boards of the porch thumped under the hooves. Mick cocked the gun. Samantha called Jesse’s name as loudly as a banshee.

Jesse clamped both hands around Mick’s right ankle, bit his mouth around it, and pulled all his weight against it.

All at once.

All.

At once.

Time slipped into slowness. Mick screamed. The gun fired. The old mare pitched up, whinnying. From five yards behind her, Joe aimed his gun.

The spark and smoke of the gunshot came before the sound. Mick fell back, tripping over Jesse’s body. The gun fell from his hands.

The mare’s two front legs came down in a blast, and Samantha’s body slid from the saddle, falling.

Jesse rolled over, grabbed the gun, and cocked it. He aimed for Joe’s head.

Blood pooled on the porch.

Jesse fired.

Struck, Joe’s body hurtled back.

Time clicked back into rhythm. Into silence.

“Sammie,” Jesse grunted, fighting to sit up, to get up. Mick’s body rolled off him. “Sammie.” His voice sounded alien, out of body.

The mare stood over Samantha. The pool of blood seeped outward from under her. Within seconds, he glanced at both men to see if they moved. Mick’s eyes bulged heavenward, a red hole centered above them.

Joe was too far away to see as well as Mick, but he wasn’t moving either. Sammie. Jesse moved to her side, against the pain ripping through his beaten body.

“Sammie.”

No, Lord. Not her. Take him, his worthless soul
. Don’t take hers. The mare nickered painfully, dropped her head onto Jesse’s shoulder as he reached out to Sammie.

“Sammie.” Whispering her name again and again, willing her to open her eyes and smile like nothing amiss had happened, he gathered her limp form to him as gently as he would a babe. He kissed her brow and searched for her wound. Sticky wetness covered her back.

Behind him, the mare groaned. Jesse couldn’t find Samantha’s wound, where the blood was coming from. Softly, he shook her. “Sammie. Open your eyes. Stay with me, Sammie.”

He rested his head on hers, rocking her, feeling for open holes in her back, for a place he could stanch the bleeding.

The mare nosed him, dripping snot on his neck. Tears burned in his eyes, but he refused to cry. “Sammie,” he said more forcibly. “Wake up. Do you hear me? Wake up!”

The mare’s muzzle rubbed his neck, leaving wet behind. So much that Jesse wiped it off, despite being so distraught and distracted.

He saw blood, felt the sticky warmth of it, and understood why he couldn’t find a hole in Sammie. He turned to the mare. The growing puddle was hers. The mare had lost a good bit of the red stuff, but it looked like a flesh wound to her neck. She’d be all right.

He patted the horse’s muzzle and returned his attention to Sammie. If she hadn’t been shot, she must have hit her head on the way down from the mare. Unless she broke her neck.

No. She was breathing, and though he was no doctor, he figured she wouldn’t be breathing with a broken neck. Surely, she would have died.

A breath shuddered out of his lungs. Relief. Sweet, pure, and delicious. Even though she might still be seriously injured, relief washed out of him.

His Sammie was alive.

Wait a minute.
His
Sammie? When had that happened?

Oh, hell. Probably the first night he laid eyes on her whimpering asleep in the grass under the moonlight. More than gently, he picked her up and carried her to his bedroom, stepping over Mick’s corpse and glancing back once at Joe, to make sure he hadn’t moved.

He hadn’t, and from Jesse’s perspective, he felt certain the man was also dead. From the looks of things, his own shot took out Joe, but not before Joe had managed to shoot his brother in the head while trying to kill Sammie. The bullet must have grazed the mare and went on to penetrate Mick’s thick skull.

Justice. Pure and simple.

As he laid her down, Sammie sighed. Finding no obvious lump anywhere on her head, he decided the best course of action was to wait and tend to her as best he could.

He wished for Ginny, but he couldn’t risk leaving Samantha alone. Ginny would probably be gone, anyway. As far as Jesse knew, Tommy hadn’t returned the night Mick and Joe came upon them. And Jesse had kept the duo away from Ginny’s house for a full day.

He wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

When Sammie had shown up, Mick had already beat the living shit out of him and was ready for round two. He could still hardly believe her luck in returning from wherever she’d gone, saving him in the nick of time and with such a display of courage.

This was an unusual position for him, feeling indebted to someone. All his life, he’d seen to himself and his sister, never letting anyone in and never, ever counting on another living soul for anything.

No charity.

No favors.

It felt awkward and fulfilling at the same time. He owed her his life. Man, had he gotten it all wrong. She cared for him. That meant that she must have told him the truth. Sure, he’d already mulled the matter, the conversation, over in his head. As he led Mick and Joe through the El Dorado forest on a false trail to a nonexistent treasure, his thoughts had kept him focused.

Jesse smoothed back the hair from Sammie’s brow. He bent his head and listened to her heart. It beat steady and strong against his ear. He couldn’t help but wonder who this woman was and marvel at what she had gone and done for him ... and to him.

She was inside him. More than under his skin. Deeper. In his bones. Like he’d known her all his life, but then, that didn’t make sense.

Worst of all, she couldn’t seem to wake up.

She might leave again—vanish like she had before—in the blink of an eye. What would he do then, left behind, as it were, without her?

His chest ached. “Sammie,” he whispered again and kissed her forehead. “Sammie, you’ve got to wake up. I’ve got things to say to you, words to tell you, and if you don’t wake up and hear them, you may never get to.” He wiped the sting from his eyes. “Do you hear me? You’ve got to wake up.”

He cupped her face in his hands, shook her head gently but firmly. Again, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. Her mouth.

She sighed against his lips. The response sent a rush of new hope through him.

“Sammie?”

“Jesse,” she said, her voice raspy. “What happened?” Her eyes fluttered open. Abruptly, she moved to sit up. “Jesse! Are you all right?” With a thud, her head collided with his.

“Ouch. Yes, I’m all right. Lie back down before you knock yourself out again.”

“What do you mean again? Where are we? Oh, God, look at you. What did they do to you?” She reached up and touched his face.

He likely looked a mess. Both eyes swollen, and his jaw probably broken. Worse, his ribs felt like a mule trampled them. Make that three mules.

“Shhh. They’re dead. You’re safe. We’re safe,” he said, and despite all his bodily pain, his soul lifted up. He felt buoyant, and for the first time, really understood what safe meant.

Jesse kissed her brow again. “Before you up and disappear on me again, there are some things that need saying.”

*

Samantha’s stomach tightened uncomfortably. She began to shake her head. Wasn’t it enough he was alive, that she was here with him? She didn’t want to face the rest of it yet. Because the rest resembled a science fiction movie she still hardly believed.

She didn’t want the fiction to come to an end. Not yet.

“I can explain,” she said but really was trying to stall. She wasn’t sure what he planned to say, but if was anything like before, she wasn’t sure she could hear it. “Let me explain.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I don’t?” She frowned.

“I won’t understand it even if you do. I know you won’t be here long, and I have to tell you something.”

Samantha’s belly went from tight to fluttery. “What?” She wasn’t sure she was ready to hear the words shining in his eyes.

“First, thank you. You saved my life in what may have been the stupidest, most reckless way. But you did. You saved me, and in saving me, you saved my family.”

She watched his face. It wasn’t easy for him, telling her as much. She could see he had more to say. Much more. The fluttering grew.

“You’ll be leaving here, and truth to tell, I have to leave, too. The law will be coming. I’m no friend of the law. Funny being on the right side of it for once in a very long time.”

Samantha kept silent, waiting to hear the words she hoped he would say. As he stroked her cheek, his hands spoke them, his smile showed them. Until he said them, she would stay quiet.

When she heard the words, maybe saying them herself, even thinking them, would feel less fantastic and more real. True and tangible.

Jesse paused a moment, seeming to search her face, maybe memorize it. “What I’m about to say may not seem like good manners after what you’ve done for me, what you risked, and who knows how you risked it.”

She swallowed. A lump formed in her throat, and it didn’t belong there. This was the moment, the happiness, the ride into the sunset of her life. If not her life, then at least this story.

However, his words didn’t sound like the script she’d envisioned.

He let out a shaky breath and scratched his nose. He glanced up at the ceiling and blinked. “This is harder than I thought it would be, but then, I’ve never had to do this, not since my daddy died.”