Danger On The Ranch. Dana Mentink
a bottle from the cupboard, he downed a couple of aspirin, swallowing them dry. He tossed the tea bags and carried the mugs, handing one to her.
She sniffed the steam. “What kind of tea?”
“Yarrow. My dad makes it.”
She smiled. “He was kind, the one time I spoke to him on the phone. Does he live nearby?”
“Lives on a boat. He’s paid as a ranch carpenter, but he’s got a garden plot on the property.”
Jane’s smile vanished. “We have to tell him that Wade’s escaped.”
“I’ll call him as soon as I can.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Get you to the nearest US marshal.”
Her breath hitched. “They won’t be able to protect me.”
“It’s their job.”
“They couldn’t find him. Only you could. And they couldn’t keep him in prison. He escaped from them.”
“It’s the only option.”
She shook her head. “Do you figure Wade will leave you alone then? After you hand me over?”
“No. He’s gonna come for me, and I’ll send him back to prison or one of us will die. That’s how it’s gonna end, but you and the kid are not going to be in the middle of it.”
Her chin went up. “Ben. His name is Ben.”
Ben. Wade’s son. How much of his father did he inherit? Mitch wondered. Don’t go there, Mitch. You share genes with your brother, too. “Where is he?”
She remained stubbornly silent.
He let the quiet spool out for a few minutes, waiting for her to speak. Cop trick. She didn’t. “Wade said you’d been storing things for him.”
“What things?”
“My granddad’s gun, for one.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“Then how did he get the gun?”
“I have no idea.”
He drank some tea. “Before daybreak, we’ll go to the ranch and call the marshals.”
Her throat worked convulsively, and then she took a deep breath. “Wade will find me, Mitch, no matter what kind of safe house they put me in. He’ll find me, and he’ll take Ben.”
Her last words broke, and it made his gut go tight. He hardened himself against the feeling. Remember what she is, whose she is.
“Should have thought of that before you married the guy, right?” It was cruel, but what she’d let Wade do, turned a blind eye to, made her complicit. Just because her plans had backfired for some reason didn’t mean he was going to let himself be manipulated.
The lamplight picked up the glittering sparks of moisture in her hair as she stared at him, small in her oversize clothes, but the ferocity in her eyes was bigger than life. “Go ahead and think that I’m stupid, gullible and blind. Believe me, I’ve thought all of those things and more. How did I not see Wade for what he was? I’ve wrestled with that every day of my life since the police showed up on my doorstep.”
He shifted, not wanting to hear anything more, but she went on.
“Maybe I had a desperate need to be loved, or maybe it was low self-esteem or just plain insanity, but in the beginning I believed Wade was a good man, and I thought he loved me.” She tipped her chin up to look at him. “Wasn’t there a time when you believed your brother? When he fooled you?”
Fooled you. More times than Mitch could remember in their younger years. Wade was a master manipulator, and he’d bamboozled his own kin, misled their parents for decades, skated away from consequences by deceiving, charming, lying to teachers, cops and, yes, to Mitch also. Finally, he allowed one curt nod.
She sighed, shoulders slumping. “I would give anything to do it over again, to ask questions about where Wade went all those times he told me he was away on business trips. If I’d walked those acres he’d insisted were infested with rattlesnakes, I might have heard those women call for help. Instead I was asleep in my cozy little house, in my make-believe world.” Her voice squeezed off, the barest glimmer of tears pooling, fingers clenched into white fists. “How do you think it feels to know I could have saved those women and didn’t?”
The tears began to trickle down her face, paralyzing him, confusing him. Jane was his enemy just like Wade.
But the anguish she spoke of was one he’d experienced, too.
When he’d left for the police academy, he had intentionally walled his brother out of his life, leaving him loose to destroy, as Mitch knew deep down he would. He’d left it to other jurisdictions, other cops, until the damage was done, until lives had been lost.
How do you think it feels to know I could have saved those women and didn’t? It was the same accusation he’d leveled at himself, too.
He could not order the mess of confusion in his thoughts, so he set down his mug and took the other from her trembling hand, putting them on the crate that served as a coffee table. “Lie down on the bed and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch. We’ll leave at oh four hundred. That’s...”
“Four a.m. I know.” She followed him to the bedroom. He took the old quilt down from the closet and laid it on the bed.
“It’s cold back here. I’ll move the heater in.”
“Thank you,” she said in a very small voice. She stood there for a moment, scanning the tiny room. “I’m sorry for the pain I know I’ve caused you by running here. Wade hurt you, too, probably more than me.” Her chin went up then. “But I’m not sorry I came. I would do anything to save my son. He’s all that matters, and, God willing, I’m going to protect Ben.”
There it was again in her voice, the twined strands of pain and strength, hints of anguish, an echo of a strange kind of certainty she had no right to. If she was telling the truth...
He brushed the thought away. He had no energy left to consider anything but the most pressing matters—keeping them both alive and getting her delivered safely to the US marshals. Then he would be free to go to war with his brother until they’d decided the winner once and for all.
* * *
She approached Mitch cautiously, shortly after midnight. He was sitting in the dark living room, the rocking chair pulled near the window, the rifle lying over his knees, so still she was not sure whether he was awake or asleep. The temperature had dropped, and she clutched the blanket around herself.
“Jane?” he said, making her jump.
“I came to take my turn at watch.”
“No need. Go back to sleep.”
“There is a need. You can’t stay up all night. I’ll watch for a couple of hours. I’ll wake you if I see anything.”
“No, you...”
“What? You think I can’t use my two eyes as well as you use yours? Believe me, I’ve been looking over my shoulder for two years now. I’m pretty good at it.”
He didn’t answer.
She heaved out a breath. “Oh, right. You still think I’m somehow in league with Wade.”
The room was dead quiet, save for the moan of the wind that skimmed the roof.
“Mitch, I risked my life to drag you into that boat. I could much more easily have let him kill you or never shown up here at all. No offense, but this isn’t exactly the Ritz-Carlton.” Her attempt at humor fell flat. He sat there, cradling the rifle like some monolithic statue. A sigh escaped her, and she turned to go.