Page 30 of Reckoning with the Cowboy
“Don’t tell me,” Josie said, not wanting to hear what he’d done to them. She couldn’t imagine how bad their lives had been with this man.
“How about what they did to me? Didn’t tell you that, did they?” He was smiling at her, his smile more disturbing than his words. “I was teaching Cordell what happens when he talks to the cops about me when his brother jumped me. Both of them jumped me, grabbed my baseball bat and knocked me clean out. Which explains why they’re still alive. If they’d done a better job of dumping my body after they thought they’d killed me…” He laughed. “Well, then we wouldn’t be here right now, and you wouldn’t have to pay the price for what them boys did.”
She watched him rise to look out the window before checking his watch. She could see storm clouds gathering, smell the coming rain. She had no doubt that Cordell and Max were on their way. Her heart broke at the thought that they would come, and this man would hurt them before he killed all of them.
Shifting a little, she felt the reassuring pinch of the gun.Bide your time,she warned herself.You’re going to get your chance.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Suddenly, Grimes turned to look at them. His eyes had grown darker, she noticed, as he said, “Change of plans.” He grabbed his phone and stepped away to bark out an order.
Heart dropping, Josie realized there were two of them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The wind howled, pelting Max with dirt as he cut a swath through the sagebrush, winding his way toward the back of the house. He could feel a storm rolling in, the sky already blackening to the east. He could smell the approaching rain as the day darkened around him.
He kept low, keeping an eye on the house. A threadbare ragged curtain blew out one of the windows, snapping in the wind. Jagged glass edged all but one window that seemed to have miraculously remained. It was that window that worried him because there was darkness behind it, making him unable to see if Grimes was standing there watching him approach.
Max told himself that the man wasn’t expecting them until after dark. But that didn’t make him any less anxious. Out here in the sage, he was too visible even with the change in light from the storm. Once he got to the house—
He ran the last few yards and pressed his back against the house, listening. But it was impossible to hear anything inside with the wind and the storm coming in. Stepping to one side, he reached over and turned the knob. The back door swung in with a groan, and a rancid smell wafted out, but nothing else happened.
Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe Grimes had lost his touch. Or maybe the man hadn’t arrived yet. He stepped in, moving quickly through the long narrow house, a shotgun house, as they used to call it.
While there was no sign of Grimes or the women he’d taken captive, memories ambushed him at every turn, making his stomach roil. He’d reached the living room and just seen the cut zip ties lying on the floor next to the old radiators when he heard the sound of a vehicle.
As first he thought it was Grimes leaving with Goldie and Josie. But as the roaring grew louder, he realized it was someone coming up the road. Not Cordell, surely he wouldn’t—
He had only a second to make the decision. He ran for the back door as automatic-weapon fire burst across the front of the house. He heard the path of gunfire tear through the house, splintering the old, dried wood and burying itself in the walls.
Max threw himself toward the back door and almost made it. He felt the bullet rip through his side in searing pain. He was hit! He crashed out the back door and started to turn toward where he’d left Cordell.
But as the gunfire continued to ravage the house, all he could do was throw himself down on the ground next to the foundation. As the gunfire continued, decimating every inch of the house, he lay bleeding in the dirt, terrified that he was going to get them all killed.
* * *
Cordell had triedto stay behind as his brother asked—until he heard the roar of the vehicle barreling up the road out of the darkness of the storm.
He’d grabbed the handgun he’d loaded and picked up the rifle before slipping out of the truck. The van sped by so fast, he doubted the driver had even seen the truck parked back in the gully where his brother had left it.
When he heard the gunfire only moments later, he’d taken off at a run after the van. He could still hear it. What he hadn’t heard, though, was any return fire.
His first instinct was to get to find Max, but he knew he stood no chance of getting near the house, not with the van idling outside and Grimes still firing.
His only hope was getting behind the vehicle without being noticed. The sky darkened around him, the wind growing stronger. Running crouched down, he raced toward the back of the van and realized that the shooting had stopped. He half expected the van to take off before he could reach it.
All he could see of the driver was a large dark shape behind the wheel and the black of the AK sticking out the driver’s side window facing the bullet-riddled house.
* * *
When the bombardmentof gunfire ended, Max lay still, his weapon drawn. He wasn’t sure how badly he’d been shot. His side felt on fire, and he was bleeding badly, that much he knew. He waited to hear the sound of a van door opening and whoever had been behind the wheel to come make sure he was dead. Instead, all he could hear was the idling engine.
Sliding over to the edge of the house’s foundation wall, he could see the swath of light from the van’s headlights. Nothing moved through it.
Where was Cordell? He knew his brother. There was no way he had stayed put in the pickup. Max just hoped he didn’t put himself in Grimes’s line of fire. Even as he thought it, he knew Cordell was probably doing just that.
With a curse, he lay back in pain and did what he could to stop the bleeding. He was trapped here. If he tried to run in either direction away from the house, he would be seen by whoever was sitting in that idling van. He figured it was Grimes patiently waiting for him to show his face.
But Max couldn’t stay hidden knowing his brother was out there about to do something. He just didn’t know what.
