The Reluctant Rancher~Badlands (Contemporary Western Romantic Suspense) (30 page)

“
Git out!” Leon shouted from behind a torn screen door. “And bring the money.”

“Good luck
,” Breck said under his breath.

“Thanks. I’m going to need it.” E.J. hauled the duffle off of the passenger seat and opened his door. He moved in slow motion, stepping to the ground and hoisting the bag over his shoulder. He stood for a moment as the porch light came on. He felt exposed, the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention. He could imagine Leon standing inside the darkened house with a g
un pointed at his heart.

He took a couple of steps forward and stopped. “Send Jenna out,” he yelled. “You can have me, but let her go free.”

A snort from Leon. “She’s a little tied up at the moment. Come on in and you can do the honors. All I want is the money.”

Yeah, right.
He walked slowly toward the house, hoping Breck could ease out of the truck without alarming the enemy. He might have to make some noise to cover Breck’s advance.

The screen door swung wide and he saw Leon step out onto the small porch, a large caliber revolver in hand. He m
otioned for E.J. to step it up.

As E.J. entered the darke
ned house, he heard Jenna gasp.

“You came!” she said. He heard the scrape of
a chair against wooden floors.

“
Git inside and gimme my money,” Leon snarled. He leaned out and gazed around, before flipping on the light inside the house.

E.J. blinked a couple of times as his eyes became adjusted to the light. He saw Jenna and felt a swell of relief in his chest. She sat with her ankles bound to the legs of the chair and her hands tied in her lap. Her expression was hard to read. He couldn’t tell if she was happy to see him, or terrified that they might both be killed now that Leon had the money. He tried to give her a little smile, but it died on his face as Leon jerked th
e duffle bag from his shoulder.

“
Git over there by her and don’t make any trouble.” He sat down on a ratty looking couch and unzipped the bag, spilling cash out onto the floor.

E.J. quickly knelt by Jenna’s chair. He untied her ankles as fast as his nervous fingers would allow. “Go outside now.”

Her eyes widened, but he gave her a little nod and stood, shielding her with his body. “It’s all there,” he said to Leon.

Leon grinned from ear to ear, gazing at all the money spread around him. “I never knew what a million dollars looked like, but it sure is
purty.”

Jenna stood up behind E.J.’s back, her hands still bound together. He heard her take a soft breath and let it out. He gave her a little push and took another step toward Leon. “Don’t you want to count it?”

Leon stared at the cash in his hands. “Nah! It feels like a million to me.” He saw Jenna edging to the door and stood up, the cash falling all around him. “Whoa, there. Don’t you go getting any big ideas about leaving, little missy.” He groped around behind him for the gun.

“Run, Jenna!” E.J. yelled and dove at Leon. He landed one good punch, landing his right fist squarely on the side of Leon’s jaw. He turned his head to make sure she had gone out the door and Leon rebounded, catching him on h
is cheekbone, close to his eye.

E.J. fell back. He saw stars for a moment; his vision narrowing into a tunnel of darkness with Leon’s
scowling face at the other end.

“Why, you little asshole.
You thought you could take me? I’ll show you.” He turned, trying to find the gun buried under the cash on the sofa.

E.J. kicked out and caught his adversary under the chin, lifting him slightly, just as his fumbling fingers located the revolver. He scooped it up clumsily and swerved toward where E.J. stood.

E.J. dodged to the left and ran at Leon, like a tackle going for the quarterback. His shoulder landed in Leon’s soft belly and they were both on the floor grappling for the gun.

A shot rang out and Breck burst in the door, shotgun leveled at Leon’s chest. “Drop
it!” he ordered.

E.J. drew back, checking to see if he’d been hit. The sound of the gunshot still rang in his ears, but the bullet had gone wild. His shoulder been grazed, but it was hardly more than a scratch. Pressing his fingers to the wound, he let out a shaky
breath and climbed to his feet.

“I said, drop it.” Breck’s voice had
nose-dived a whole octave lower. He glared at Leon with nothing less than menace.

Leon aimed the gun at E.J. “If I’m a-gonna die, I’m gonna take this asshole with me. His daddy owes me
, and I aim to get it one way or another.”

E.J. swallowed and tried to look as tough as Breck. He hoped his frenzied heart beat wasn’t shaking his whole body. He stared down the barrel of the gun and let out a derisive snort, hoping to keep the man talking. “My daddy didn’t owe you a thing. I paid you off when I fired your worthless ass, and it was good riddance. Then I find out you’ve been ripping off my cattle.”

Leon emitted a short laugh, keeping the gun aimed at E.J.’s chest. “Eldon was in business with me. He started going down to the Rio Grande Valley and picking up a load of illegals in the cattle truck. He used that little hidden room to hide them from the border patrol. He’d give them his good ol’ boy spiel and they let him go right through. That was when he needed them to pick cotton. When he found out there were others who needed some hands, he kept making the trip a couple times a year. Then he had me make the run and I wised up and made the run a little more profitable.”

“What else?” Breck asked.
“Drugs?”

“Yeah.
Drugs and wetbacks. I started making the run every month.”

E.J. shook his head. “My dad would never have allowed you to traffic in drugs if he knew about it.”

“Your so-called daddy was mighty pissed off at me, at first. Then he just said he didn’t want to know about it, and I kept making the runs.”

“What do you mean, my so-called daddy?” E.J. widened his stance.

“You ain’t no kin of Eldon Kincaid and that’s a fact.” Leon struggled to his feet, keeping the gun trained on E.J. at all times. “Now I’m gonna take that money and this pretty boy with me and get out of here. You better not try to stop me, or I’ll kill the little bastard.” He turned to look at Breck. “Cause I got nothin’ to lose.”

“I can see that, Leon.” Breck kept the shotgun pointed at Leon.

It’s a standoff and I’m in the middle of it.

“Tell me one thing,” Breck said. “Why did you kill Nick Jessup?”

E.J. heard the sound of a helicopter approaching.
Hooray! Reinforcements have arrived. Hope it’s not too late.

Leon eyed him with skepticism. “How did you figure that out? I hired the little piss-ant
, thinking he could help as a relief driver, but when we was unloading the truck, one of them wetbacks started giving me trouble, so I shot him. That’s when Nick jumped in and I had to shoot him too.” He tilted his head to one side, grinning at E.J. slyly. “I didn’t know how to get rid of the bodies, so I called ol’ Eldon in prison. That about gave him a heart attack, but he said to hide the bodies up where he’d dumped some others a long time ago. Me an’ the boys hauled them up there to that cave. An’ while we was gone, that whole load of Meskins vamoosed. They pried the bars off a back window and climbed out. But I still had the drugs.”

Breck appeared unmoved. A twitch in his jaw was the only sign he wasn’t a statue.
“And Nick’s wife? What did you hope to gain by trying to kill her too?”

“Hell, I wasn’t trying to kill her. Just scare her enough so she’d leave and go on home to wherever she
come from. Nick swore he didn’t tell her nothin’, but I couldn’t be sure.” With that, Leon swung around, aiming his weapon at Breck who unloaded the shotgun into the man’s belly.

E.J. grabbed the gun from Leon’s hand and stepped away quickly as the man fell back ont
o the sofa, bloodying the cash.

Leon’s gaze traveled f
rom Breck to E.J. in disbelief.

“I’m going to see if Jenna’s okay. She must be wondering w
hat all the shooting is about.”

Breck nodded. “Tell the sheriff to come on in now and take his prisoner.”

E.J. went outside and quickly raised his hands when he was confronted by the sheriff, along with two shotgun-wielding deputies. “Breck wants you inside.”

The armed officers rushed inside with the sheriff bringing up the rear. “Good to see you in one piece, Kincaid.”
The sheriff gave him a firm slap on the shoulder. Unfortunately, it was the one that was bleeding.

As E.J. walked toward Breck’s truck, he saw that the
eastern sky was growing light.

Jenna climbed out of the truck and ran to him
, her hands still bound together. “Oh, E.J., I was so scared.” She looped both arms around his neck and he lifted her off the ground.

“Yeah, me too.”
A surge of joy filled his chest as he hugged her so tight he was afraid he might break her, yet he couldn’t seem to let go.

~*~

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
ears rolled down Jenna’s cheeks, even though she was grinning so wide she thought her face would break. She held on to E.J.’s neck as tight as she could, her wrists still bound with clothesline. He must have been glad to see her too, because he had a good, double-armed grip on her and didn’t show any signs of releasing her any time soon.

“Oh, E.J.
I was so frightened. I thought he would kill me for sure. I wasn’t certain I wanted you to come save me, because I was afraid he would just kill us both and disappear with the money.”

“Idiot…” he murmured into her hair. “I would never let anyone take you away from me. I happen to be in love with you, you know?” He set her gently on her feet
and ducked out from under her bound wrists. He stood gazing down at her with a tender expression that caused her already pounding heart to flutter.

“I know,” she whispered. He turned toward the house, and she got a good look at him. His shirt was drenched in blood and he had a cut high on his cheekbone. “You’re hurt.”

“Nah, not so much.” He began to untie the clothesline around her wrists. She had worked at it, but couldn’t get free. “Let’s get you out of this rope.”

When he took a folding knife out of his pocket and sawed throug
h the knot, the line fell away.

“Thanks.” She massaged her wrists, w
here they had been constricted.

E.J. put an arm around her and drew her toward the house. Her knees locked for a moment, dr
ead stopping her in her tracks.

“Come inside with me,” he said. “Leon is wounded
, but he was spewing some weird crap about my dad, and I may not get a chance to hear it later. “Please come with me.”

She heard the sound of a siren approaching and glanced behind her to see an ambulance bumping toward them on the rutted road. She nodded and tucked herself tight against E.J., slipping her arm around his waist. She hooked her thumb in his belt loop and reflected on how fast things could turn around. One minute, she thought she would die and a few minutes later, here she was, all safe and sound under E.J.’s protective wing.
I guess he proved how much he loves me.
She thought about all the money in the duffle bag.
Maybe it’s not such a big deal when you have so much…but it’s something.

~*~

When E.J. stepped back inside the squalid house, he saw one deputy wearing latex gloves picking up the cash off the floor and stuffing it into the duffle bag. He wasn’t touching the blood-spattered money on the sofa.

Breck was keeping a sharp eye on the deputy as well as the entire scene. His shotgun was broken over his arm, but he still held it. He nodded at E.J. and Jenna, giving them both something that could almost be called a smil
e.

E.J. grinned. Up until now, he had only been privy to barely-contained animosity on Breck’s part. He supposed it had to do with the feud between his dad and Breck…and the fact that he, himself, had enjoyed a couple of dates with Cami before Breck won her heart. He gave Jenna a little squeeze. Somehow things had worked out the way they should, although he couldn
’t have known that at the time.

The three-man crew from the ambulance burst through the door and immediately went to work on Leon, who
lay spread eagle on the couch. The sheriff stood nearby. Leon’s lips were moving, but E.J. couldn’t catch his words.

Jenna clung to him, press
ing her face against his chest.

“Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay,” he crooned, stroking her hair.
“Nothing to worry about.”

She nodded, but kept her eyes covered.

Funny for a woman who can castrate bull calves to be so upset by a little blood. Of course, Leon did kidnap her and threaten to kill her. Cut her some slack.

He pressed a kiss against her temple and stood rocking her i
n his arms.