Bridal Falls Ranch Ransom (9 page)

“Nah. My cow dog, Hank, took off from the porch an hour ago and hasn’t been back. I’m hoping the wolves didn’t get him.”

“Maybe all the action around here earlier scared him off.”

“It’s possible,” Tyler speculated. “He’d be hiding out in the garage. He’s got a favorite spot in there. I’m gonna have a look before I turn in. Night, J.P.”

“Good night.” J.P. watched the newly appointed foreman of the Bridal Falls Ranch, at least until Devon Hall’s return, stride off into the darkness toward a bank of vehicle garages.

Caution jumped in his system as he calculated the odds the shooter might be wandering in close proximity.

It was unlikely, and he was beat. He needed to turn in. He took several steps forward and came to a stop. “Dang,” he muttered, then turned around to help Tyler Spangler find his missing dog.

* * *

“Y
ou look exhausted
,” Eve said as she climbed into the SUV the next morning.

“Spent a good hour after we talked last night searching for Spangler’s dog, Hank.”

“Did you find him?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“He’s old. Maybe he wandered off to die? Animals do that.”

“Could be.” He slid her a sideways glance, noting the way she’d expertly used a sheer scarf to conceal the flesh-tone bandages on the left side of her face. She wore large-rimmed sunglasses, putting him in the mind of Jackie O. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she could pass for a movie star.

Looking away, he shifted the rig into drive, maneuvered out of the garage and into the driveway.

“How far to town?”

“Just over that mountain.” She pointed to a sizable peak and smiled. “Thirty miles as the crow flies, sixty miles on this road if you take a right.”

“Now I see why you employ a helicopter pilot.” Grinning back, he pulled out onto the main road and stepped down on the accelerator for the uphill climb away from the ranch.

“Is your room satisfactory?”

He mentally considered the new accommodations he’d moved into this morning inside the lodge. “One hundred and ten percent.”

“Good. I also had Edith order you a new laptop.”

“That wasn’t necessary, but thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Besides, you can’t be expected to sleuth without an internet connection.”

She had a point. She’d offered him the use of the computer in her studio, but he had no intention of disrupting her every time he needed to work. Especially when he started digging around in the background of people she loved.

Looking into the rearview mirror, he watched a beat-up red Ford pickup pull out of a gated driveway and roll up behind them.

“Tell me about Thomas Avery’s position at EBBC?”

“He’s chief of operations and my chief financial officer. I gave him contractual control over a large share of the company when we got engaged, but I still hold the power to dissolve the partnership.”

“Ever considered going back?” Glancing at her, he tried to get a read on her expression but came up short. Grieving for what once was usually accompanied tragedy.

“I’ll eventually have to. I’m the CEO and lone designer.”

“Any regrets?” It was none of his business, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop the barrage of questions circulating in his mind this morning.

“Plenty.” She turned away to stare out the window of the moving vehicle, presumably to gather her thoughts.

J.P. gritted his teeth. Thomas Avery didn’t have a clue what an incredible woman he’d shunned. Anger kindled inside him against the man who’d so callously trampled her fragile persona. If he ever came face-to-face with the bastard, he planned to let him know how far over the line he’d stepped.

He eased off the gas pedal and steered the vehicle around a sharp turn. Slotting the SUV through a narrow pass, he drove over the summit of the mountain Eve had pointed out and off into heaven.

“Would you look at that,” he whispered, staring at the rugged peaks of a range that stretched for eternity.

“You don’t see that in L.A.” Slipping a quick glance in Eve’s direction, he watched her smile.

“I love it here. It’s so beautiful, it’s easy to forget there’s a whole other world out there.”

“I can see why.” Awestruck by the spectacular vista, he angled for a wide pullout on the left side of the highway and stepped on the brake.

It went to the floor under his booted foot like a squashed grape.

Concern zipped over his nerves. He hit the pedal again. Nothing.

Eyeing the speedometer, he watched it tick up and pumped the pedal a couple of times, hoping it might bring the fluid level up in the brake line. Still nothing.

“Dammit!” Reaching down, he grasped the gearshift lever and pulled the transmission into low. The motor over-revved. The RPM needle shot up into the redline, where it stayed.

“J.P., what’s going on?” Eve asked, caught off guard by his series of quick moves and the unnatural scream of the SUV’s engine. Reaching up, she took off her dark glasses, folded the earpieces and squeezed them in her hand.

“We’ve got no brakes.”

Terror cut through her nerves, but she held them together. “Try the emergency brake!”

J.P. pulled up on the lever situated in the console between them, but the SUV didn’t slow.

“It’s been disabled! Hang on. We’re in for a wild ride to the bottom.”

She choked back a gasp, focused on the series of S turns in front of them. She knew this stretch of highway and visualized the rest of it in her mind, until she hit an insurmountable obstacle that rocked her forward in her seat.

“You have to ditch!”

“What?”

“A mile ahead there’s a series of switchbacks. Jackknife corners. We won’t make them.” She stared at the speedometer. “Not at this speed.” She didn’t have the heart to tell him there were half a dozen more just like them midmountain.

Sweat formed across J.P.’s forehead, tiny biting beads of concentration as he fought to maintain control of the runaway vehicle carrying them toward certain death.

Eve was right. Their only chance of survival was to ditch before they reached the switchback.

He took the next sweeping right turn, cutting it wide as he feathered the gas pedal, giving the SUV just enough acceleration to shift its center of gravity and nail them to the corner.

“How many more sweepers before a jackknife?”

“One.”

He flashed her a quick glance. Their gazes locked. Fear clouded the normal pristine blue of her eyes and made him want to touch her. “Hang on, sweetheart.”

Turning his focus on the road ahead, he made his calculations and roared into the last turn before doom. Reaching for the gearshift, he rammed the transmission into Park.

The wheels locked up, grinding tread on asphalt, slowing them a fraction as the transmission disintegrated underneath them. Cranking the steering wheel hard to the left, he put the rig into a controlled skid and drove it nose first toward the embankment. J.P. shut his eyes at the last second before impact and heard Eve scream.

The high-end SUV slammed into the mountainside. The air bags deployed around them.

Chapter Nine

Eve recoiled back into her seat and dared to open her eyes in the chaos. A wall of white surrounded her. Struggling to get her bearings, she mentally searched for injuries to her body and found none.

No blood, no guts, no gore.

“J.P.?” Worry worked through her thoughts, conjuring one horrible image after another until she thought her heart would explode in her chest. “J.P.!”

“I’m right here. Are you okay?”

Reaching out with her hands, she pushed them against the partially deflated air bag in front of her and shoved it back.

“Nothing hurts, nothing broken.”

“Good.”

She watched J.P. grab the door latch on his side and pull.

“Jammed shut. Try yours.”

Yanking on the handle, she felt the latch give. “Mine works.” She pushed the door panel open, popped her seat belt and climbed out, thankful for the feel of terra firma under her feet.

Three steps forward and her knees buckled. Going with it, she sank to the ground next to the crashed vehicle and started to shake.

J.P. unfastened his seat belt and clawed his way over the console into the passenger seat. Spotting Eve on the ground, he slid out of the SUV, took a couple of steps and went to his knees beside her.

“Remind me to get one of these someday. It’s built like a tank.”

Turning a watery blue gaze on him, minus any amusement at his joke, she burst into tears.

“Ah, sweetheart.” J.P. pulled her into his arms and felt her tremble. She’d been through hell and back once before. This incident had no doubt stirred up those memories.

“We’re both okay.”

“Emm,” she squeaked.

Holding her back, he fingered her chin and gently raised her face so he could look at her. With the flick of a finger, he brushed her tears away, wishing she’d smile.

“We made it. There’s nothing to cry about.”

Eve swallowed the lump in her throat and trained her focus on him. He was right. They were safe and the SUV could be replaced. Working to pull herself together, she used those two facts like glue and cemented it with the feel of his fingers on her skin. Heat arced through her body in a blaze so hot it incinerated any concerns she had left.

“I know,” she whispered, staring into his half-lidded gaze.

In slow motion his mouth found hers. She melted against him, savoring the salty flavor of his kiss. With her tongue, she teased open his lips.

She was starving to feel his hands on her body, crazy for his touch in dark, secret, emotional places no man had reached before.

Toot...toot! The blast of a horn severed the forbidden kiss and brought J.P.’s head up.

He barely made it onto his feet before Eve had the scarf once again secured over the left side of her face. Reaching down, he pulled her to her feet and turned to where a man in a red pickup pulled to the shoulder of the highway. It was the same beat-up red Ford he’d seen behind them shortly after they’d left the ranch.

A man in his early fifties climbed out of the pickup and hurried toward them. “I’ll be damned. Are you both okay?”

“We’re fine. Air bags and seat belts.” J.P. studied the good Samaritan, noting he wore a pair of leather gloves, a jacket and cowboy boots. He looked like a rancher.

“J.P. Ryker.” He extended his hand and they shook. “This is Eve Brooks.”

The man tipped his hat. “Howdy, Miss Brooks. Glad to finally meet you in person. We’re neighbors. My spread, the Clayton Ranch, sits against the southwest corner of the Bridal Falls.”

“Oh. You must be Roger Grimes, Edith’s nephew. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“All good, I hope.” Grimes looked her over, a slow sweep of a stare that riled the hairs on the back of J.P.’s neck and put him in defense mode.

“I’m headed into town for supplies. I can drop you there if you’d like, give you a chance to call a tow truck.”

J.P. considered the offer. The SUV wasn’t going anywhere. He was pretty sure the fan had perforated the radiator, not to mention the transmission he’d sacrificed in his effort to slow the beast down and minimize the crash. They were at least twenty miles from the ranch. Too far to walk.

“We’d appreciate that.” Once the SUV was in a garage, he planned to have a mechanic take a look at the braking system. This was no accident.

An odd look of anticipation passed across the man’s weathered features, as if he’d just won a prize he’d yet to collect.

Yeah, Eve Brooks could do that to a man
.
He was living proof
.

“Let me clear off the passenger seat for you, then we’ll get going.” Grimes turned and hurried to his pickup.

J.P. watched him go and instinctively reached for Eve. Drawing her close to him, he put his arm around her shoulders. “How well do you know him?”

“I don’t know him personally. Just the things Edith has told me about him. I know his wife died three years ago from cancer. The medical bills involved in her treatment were extensive. He was forced to sell off a good portion of his ranch. My father bought it just before he died.”

“Does he ever come around the lodge?”

“Yeah, every once in a while, but Edith always goes outside to speak with him. Why all the questions? Do you want to walk home?”

He stared down into her upturned face, trying to decide exactly what was precipitating the hesitation roughing up his nerves. Could be the fact that Grimes was wearing thick leather gloves and a jacket. It had to be seventy degrees standing here in the sun. Or maybe it was the once-over he’d given her.

“Stay here. Something’s not right,” he whispered before he released her and walked to the pickup, catching sight of Roger Grimes’s wide-eyed glare through the driver’s side window, as he quickly maneuvered something in behind the bench seat and pushed it back in place.

“Mr. Grimes.” J.P. worked his way along the driver’s side of the rusted-out pickup, staying close to the bed of the truck. “We’ve decided to stay put here on scene. Will you call us a tow truck when you get to town?”

Grimes looked up at him as he hoisted a toolbox over the side panel into the bed of the truck. A box full of fencing tools and loose coils of barbed wire. Gone was the friendly vibe from moments earlier. His features were stone-cold as he stared at J.P. across the span.

“It’ll be ’bout three hours. Can Miss Brooks make it?”

“She’s tougher than she looks.”

Grimes nodded, his expression never changing as he backed away and shut the passenger side door of the beat-up Ford.

The air was charged with palpable hostility. J.P. breathed it in, felt its sharp spines darting off Roger Grimes like porcupine quills. Resentment toward Eve Brooks? He wasn’t certain, but being forced to sell most of his land to the Bridal Falls Ranch out of desperation could make a man angry. But how angry?

The sound of an approaching vehicle brought J.P.’s head around. He focused on the road as a black flatbed truck appeared, then slowed and pulled in behind the Ford.

He didn’t recognize the rig, but he did recognize the man behind the wheel and the Bridal Falls Ranch logo on the door panel.

Tyler Spangler hopped out of the truck, his face contorted with concern. “Ryker, what the hell happened? Are you and Miss Brooks okay?”

“We lost our brakes and had to ditch, but we’re both fine.”

Glancing at Roger Grimes, he watched him slink around the nose of his pickup.

J.P. stepped back from where he stood next to the driver’s side door.

“Thanks for stopping, Roger. We’ll catch a ride with Spangler and call a tow truck.”

Grimes nodded but didn’t look up. He grabbed the handle and opened the driver’s side door a fraction. Just wide enough to slip inside.

For a brief second, J.P. focused on the junction where the back met the flat of the bench seat and the tip of a rifle barrel winked just before Grimes pushed it out of sight with his gloved hand and crawled inside.

Grimes fired up the Ford, flipped a U-turn on the highway and drove back up the hill. The opposite direction he’d claimed to be heading.

J.P. focused on Grimes’s pickup until it was out of sight, then let out the breath trapped in his lungs. Had Grimes been stowing the rifle, or retrieving it?

Agitated, he headed for where Eve stood next to the SUV, with Tyler right behind him. “What gets you this direction, Spangler?”

“My dog, Hank. I found him this morning in the weeds behind the garage. Someone wrapped a piece of barbed wire around his snout and tied his paws together with another one. He’s cut up pretty bad. I’m headed for the vet in town to get him patched up.”

“That’s horrible! Who would do such a cruel thing to an innocent animal?” Eve asked as she walked toward them, her brows drawn together in disbelief.

“Someone who didn’t want the dog to alert anyone to his presence. Someone who needed time to tamper with the brakes on your SUV in the garage last night.” J.P.’s deduction was focused on the fencing tools in the back of Roger Grimes’s pickup, and something else that had been bothering him. Grimes never asked what had caused them to wreck.

Maybe because he already knew.

“You think someone intentionally wanted to run you off the side of this mountain?”

“Yeah, but they had to get through Hank first.” His muscles went taut as he considered the implications and the rifle on the front seat of Grimes’s pickup.

“Hank is a friendly cuss. He’d let anyone give him a pat.”

“Including Roger Grimes?”

“Especially Grimes. He gave Hank to me three years ago, after his wife died and he thinned his herd. One less mouth to feed, he said.”

J.P. sobered and sucked in a deep breath. The pieces were beginning to fall into place, but there was a problem. How did he take Grimes from disgruntled neighbor to sniper to kidnapper? There was a lot of territory to cover among the three extremes.

* * *

J.P.
picked up the bagged
.308 shell casing off the corner of Sheriff Adams’s desk and held it up.

“I found this a hundred yards up the ridge from Bridal Falls an hour before Devon Hall was assaulted.”

“I’ve read the statement my deputy took from you last night and the one Miss Brooks submitted this morning.” The sheriff rocked back in his chair and clasped his fingers together on top of his head. “You say someone fired on you and Eve Brooks, she then returned fire with your pistol, possibly hitting the shooter, who was wearing a blue shirt?”

“I’m positive she winged him. There was a smudge of blood on her sketch pad where he’d stabbed the hunting knife through it.”

“The one that went missing from your saddlebag?”

“Yes.” Frustration sizzled across his nerves, but he held his professional expression intact.

“Your claim is substantiated in Miss Brooks’s written statement. Any idea who’d want to hurt either one of you?”

“I’ve got my share of enemies, but they’re not from these parts. Miss Brooks, however, has received numerous phone calls from the kidnapper who nabbed her business partner in L.A. just over eight months ago. He wasn’t able to collect on the ransom, and he’s threatening to cut her up if she doesn’t pay now. He went as far as to send her a dissected rat.”

“Where’s the carcass now?”

“I sent it out to a private lab for analysis. Should have results back anytime.”

“You think he’s here?”

“That shell casing and our lack of brakes this morning on the backside of that mountain pass certainly indicate he could be. The mechanic at Boulder Creek Garage half an hour ago found the emergency brake cable cut clean through and a nail-sized hole punched in the brake line on Miss Brooks’s SUV.”

Frustration glided over J.P.’s nerves. Involving the locals came with risk. They either believed you and got behind you, or puffed out their bulletproof vests and undermined your investigation. He wasn’t sure on which side of the line Adams would drop.

“I’ll get this brass to my ballistics people, but we’ve got nothing to compare the shell casing to. Devon Hall did indicate in his interview someone hit him with the butt of a rifle. If his wound pattern matches up with a comparable .308, we’ll be searching for that gun.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“As far as the telephone kidnapping threats and the dead rat are concerned, it’s a federal case. Outside my jurisdiction. Best contact the FBI.”

He nodded, satisfied with Sheriff Adams’s deferment. Small departments rarely had the manpower or the expertise to pursue a kidnapping case. Better to leave every aspect to the feds.

J.P. pushed up out of his chair and centered his hat on his head. “One more thing. Eve Brooks’s neighbor, Roger Grimes. There could be some bad blood between him and the Bridal Falls Ranch over a land purchase some years ago. He wears cowboy boots, about a size ten, comparable to the track I found near the shell casing.”

“This is cowboy country. Everyone wears boots.”

“He carries a rifle in his pickup. I saw it this morning.”

“Half the ranchers between here and the state line carry a rifle, Mr. Ryker. But I’ll have one of my deputies check it out.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“No need to thank me. Just make sure you keep Miss Brooks safe.”

“I will.” Reaching out, he shook the sheriff’s hand and left the office, headed for the pickup, where Eve was waiting. Climbing into the driver’s seat, he fired the engine then turned to look at her, unable to see her exquisite eyes behind the dark sunglasses she’d donned.

“Adams is going to take a look at Grimes. His body language up on the mountain this morning was suspicious.”

“I hope you’re wrong about him, J.P. It’s going to get really awkward between Edith and I the moment she realizes we gave the police her nephew’s name.”

He put the truck in Reverse, backed out of the parking space and rolled to the edge of the lot. “I’ll be there to look out for you.”

“Can you take dictation?” A note of amusement intertwined with her question.

“If I have to.” Shooting her a sly grin, he pulled out onto the street in the ranch truck and headed for the hospital where they planned to pick up Tyler from his visit with Devon Hall on ranch business. Branding was set to start tomorrow, about the time Devon could be sprung from the hospital and Hank could be picked up from his night at the veterinarian’s office.