Three Cowboys Page 8

  “How hard is it to find?” Wyatt asked.

  “It’s in the middle of nowhere,” Bull answered. “There are no alpacas grazing, and no coca plants that I can see. It’s like a weigh station. Julio Rivas said Calderón has a bunch of these hidey-holes around the area. It’s situated on high ground. Everything’s beige and dusty. But he must have an underground sprinkler system here. If you’re in the air, there’s no way you’d miss the green grass.” With a nod to Julio, who was watering the horses at a shade-covered trough just outside the fence, Bull turned and strode back toward the house. “Use GPS to mark this spot. It may be a wild goose chase to misdirect us, but if you can get the authorities to cooperate, there’s got to be some evidence you can process here.”

  “Bull?” Tracy called to him from the front door and waved him inside. “She was here.”

  “Hold on, Wyatt. I think Tracy found something.” The temperature dropped a good twenty degrees as he hopped onto the porch and stepped inside the hacienda’s thick clay walls. His eyes immediately went to the lime-green-flowered backpack Tracy was sorting through.

  “I found this in that little building out back—probably the old summer kitchen from when this place was first built.” She pulled out a crumpled spiral notebook with green and purple ink doodles all over the cover. “This is her class journal. She always has it with her.”

  “Show me.” Bull followed her through the house and out the back door to the crumbling summer kitchen. Inside, he found an empty roll of duct tape and the stinky odor of dried vomit. Glancing at the rope bed with its straw mattress and evidence of it being used, Bull muttered a curse and turned his attention back to his brother. “She was definitely being held here. I’m not sure for how long.” He touched the sticky, splintered spot on one of the bedposts where some of that duct tape had anchored something, or someone. “But they’ve moved her.”

  “Got any idea where they went?”

  “I’ll look around. But the horses—and Julio, too—are going to need to get back and get some rest.”

  Off in the distance, Bull heard the horses whinnying and shuffling about. Something had Jericho and Lila agitated. Julio shouted something in Spanish.

  Bull pulled the phone from his ear. “What did he say?”

  Tracy handed him the notebook and backed out the door. “I couldn’t make it out, either. Finish your conversation. I want help here as soon as we can get it. I’ll check it out.” She spun around and broke into a jog. “I have no idea how experienced he is with horses.”

  Wyatt was still talking when Bull put the phone back to his ear and followed. “...worry about preserving any of the evidence. I’ll see about getting a task force helicopter there ASAP. Can you make it back to J-Bar-J land all right?”

  “Yup. I’ll get everybody home.”

  He heard a gunshot and a scream and a galloping horse. Bull’s heart sank and his entire body tensed. Tracy. “Get your backup here now! I’ve got company.”

  He snapped the phone shut, exchanging it for his Smith & Wesson as he approached the front door. Pressing his back against the wall, he angled his head to get a visual on whatever was happening out front. A plume of dust masked most of what he needed to see, but he could make out Jericho, ears pricked and tail nervously erect, trotting down the road after the bolting mare.

  “Señor McCabe!” Bull’s blood turned to ice in his veins at the familiar thick Latin accent. “You come out, detective. I have your woman and the boy.”

  “Bull?” Tracy called out. “They shot Julio.”

  “Silencio!”

  “Tracy!” That bastard had hit her again. But she was alive. He could work with that. Bull put his hands in the air and moved to the open doorway. “I’m coming out.”

  Cautiously, he stepped onto the porch, making a big, bad target of himself and hopefully taking Sol Garcia’s focus off Tracy. But his patience stuck in his throat when he saw Garcia standing in the middle of the gravel road beyond the adobe fence. Tracy knelt beside Julio, who lay in the dust. Garcia had a handful of Tracy’s hair clenched in his fist, pulling her head back so he could press his Glock 9 mil into her temple.

  “Out here,” Garcia ordered. “Put down your weapon.”

  Holding his hands high in the air, Bull stepped down to the grass. His gaze darted from Tracy to Garcia and back again—reassuring, condemning, reassuring again. Tracy was breathing hard, her eyes were afraid, but she wasn’t hurt. Julio, on the other hand was bleeding between the fingers he clutched over his upper arm. And the horses had charged off to who knew where?

  Everything inside Bull twisted up with the need to go to Tracy. But she needed him to harness his impulsiveness and be patient. For her. “You hurt her, you son of a bitch, and I will kill you.”

  “My employer, Señor Calderón, said to kill the boy before he talks. But I see he has nine lives, and that he already has told the authorities about the girl. Calderón is tired of your interference. And so am I.”

  “Where’s Brittany?” Bull demanded. “Where’s my sister?”

  “Your sister? Ah, no wonder you are so relentless in pursuing us.” Garcia’s teeth shone white against his tanned skin as he laughed. “She is someplace safe with Calderón himself. He will convince your father to grant him the land he needs. You cannot stop him.” The sick white smile vanished. “You should be worried about the problem here, señor. Now put down your gun, before I shoot your woman.”

  His woman. Damn straight, Tracy Cobb was his. Always had been but he’d been too caught up in the idea that nothing ever changed with Justice, the J-Bar-J or Serpentine. But he’d changed. Tracy had changed. Their relationship had changed. And no smiling son of a bitch with a gun and a knife was going to take Tracy from him before he could tell her just how much being with her these past couple of days had changed him—and how he was willing to put up with Justice and wrestle with the demons from his past if she’d give them the chance to be together.

  He flashed his gaze over Tracy, hoping they were still in tune enough for her to read how much he loved her.

  Then he set down his gun in the grass, never taking his eyes off Garcia’s. This standoff was a little unbalanced. Bull against one man? Even if he was unarmed, men like Sol Garcia liked to have a little insurance. “Where’s the big guy?”

  Tracy’s blue eyes darted to his right. At her warning glance, Bull turned to see Manuel Ortiz charging from the corner of the house. Why the big man didn’t use the gun in his hand to shoot him instead, Bull would never know. When the gun came swinging at his head, Bull ducked and rammed his shoulder into Ortiz’s gut. They hit the ground hard and rolled. The gun got kicked underneath the porch as the two men traded blows.

  Bull took a punch to the gut and a crueler blow to his injured forearm. But his attacker lacked Bull’s motivation to end the fight sooner rather than later. Howling with pain and the adrenaline pouring through his system, Bull planted his fist in the middle of Ortiz’s broken face, knocking the man out cold. Then, breathing hard, not wanting to risk any more surprise attacks, Bull pulled his handcuffs off his belt and slapped them around Ortiz’s wrists. “You’re next, Garcia.”

  “Enough, detective!” Bull pushed himself up onto his knees and froze. He’d forgotten about patience. “Calderón said someone would be coming. That we should stop them and send a message back to Justice McCabe.” Garcia had tucked the gun into his belt, yanked Tracy to her feet and now held that damned stiletto to her throat. A tiny drip of blood trickled down Tracy’s smooth throat from where the blade pricked her skin. “I know how to get your attention, don’t I, detective?”

  “Virgil?” She clawed at Garcia’s wrist.

  “Here’s your message.”

  The seconds ticked off like eons frozen in time. Bull dove for his gun. He came up with the weapon in his hands. The knife moved. He planted his knee. Aimed.

  Bang.

  Garcia’s head jerked back. Forget negotiating with the bastard. Garcia crumpled to the ground, taking
Tracy with him.

  “Tracy!” Bull ran to pry her from the dead man’s grasp. “Are you hurt? How bad is it?”

  She scrambled to her knees and flung her arms around his neck, clinging to him like a life preserver. Bull lifted her with one arm behind her back, turning her face away from the blood pooling beneath Garcia’s head. He kicked away the knife and stepped over the body to check on Julio. “You okay, kid?”

  The boy still clutched his arm, but nodded. “Miss Cobb?”

  Bull set her feet on the ground, okayed the color in her cheeks and the beautiful clarity of her eyes before planting a kiss on her mouth. “She’ll be okay.”

  Tracy’s hands were moving over him, touching the abrasion on his chin, muttering a sweet little curse as she pulled his arms between them. “You’re bleeding again.”

  “I’ll live.”

  She wrapped her hand around his neck and stretched up on tiptoe to return the same quick, needy kiss he’d given her. “You’d better.”

  And then she was on the ground, rolling Julio onto his back and checking the bullet graze on his arm. “I came out and saw Sol Garcia had dragged him into the road. I spooked the horses. They knocked Garcia out of the way so I could get to him.”

  Bull holstered his gun and knelt down to give Julio’s good arm a reassuring squeeze. Thank God the kid was still breathing. There was something tough and tenacious about this young man that Bull was learning to admire.

  “Garcia shot him. I never saw Ortiz. They must have parked away from here and walked up.”

  “The shot just winged him. He’ll be fine.”

  “But he’s been through so much. Too much. He’s just a boy.”

  Bull reached over and brushed that sexy little twist of hair off her forehead, calming her the way she always did him. “He’s gonna be okay. Get some water from the house and anything you can tear up to use as a bandage.”

  “I’ll find one for your arm, too.”

  Stubborn woman. He allowed himself a brief moment of indulgence to watch her run back into the house before pulling out his phone and punching in Wyatt’s number. “Put a paramedic on that chopper,” he advised his brother after giving a concise report on the two Los Jaguares he’d put out of commission. “Better send a horse trailer, too.”

  Bull spotted Jericho, grazing off some of that pristine grass Calderón had planted. The big horse let Bull tether him up. Hopefully, Tracy’s mount would calm down and rejoin them, too, before she ran herself all the way home.

  “Señor McCabe...” Julio had managed to get himself up to a sitting position, and was leaning back against the low adobe wall by the time Bull came back. “Are they dead?”

  “Garcia is. Neither one is coming after you again.”

  “But others will?”

  “I think so. As long as Calderón thinks you can tell the authorities about his organization, you’re a threat to him.”

  “If I tell the authorities what I know, will they still arrest me?”

  Bull knelt down to the teenager’s level. “I can’t say for sure. But I do know that telling us everything you know will help us learn more about Calderón and his operation. And that kind of knowledge may be what helps us bring Brittany home before Christmas.”

  The boy nodded resolutely, despite a grimace of pain. “Then I will tell all I know. For Brittany.”

  “I think you’d better start calling me Bull. I have a feeling you and I are going to be spending a lot of time together.”

  “What about Miss Cobb?”

  “Oh, I intend to spend a lot of time with her, too.”

  Chapter Six

  “He’ll be safe here.” Justice crossed his office to the wet bar in the corner and uncorked the bottle of whiskey.

  Bull rose from the wing chair where he’d been sitting. “Dakota and Cody are helping Julio get settled in the studio apartment on the second floor of their cabin. Now that he’s all stitched up and shot full of antibiotics, the main thing he needs is a good night’s sleep.”

  Nearly every light in the main house was blazing, from the decorations on the tree at the front window to the security lanterns on the front porch. Justice lifted the bottle from which he’d just poured himself a second shot, but Bull shook his head at the offer of a refill. He needed to keep his senses clear if he was going to run the security here on the J-Bar-J.

  Looking more like a weary father, and less like the tyrant Bull remembered, Justice downed the shot and set the glass in the sink before coming back to sit at the corner of the desk, facing his middle son. “Wyatt promised to come by as often as he can. And as long as you’re here, that’ll put a guardian on the ranch 24/7.”

  “We need to keep it hushed up that he’s here, too. Shouldn’t be a problem as long as school is on break.” Bull scrubbed his hand over the late-night stubble shading his jaw. Even by helicopter, it had been a long trip back from the hacienda. And Bull had a feeling the days were going to be a hell of a lot longer in the week between now and Christmas—until they brought Brittany home. “Calderón seems to have a way of getting wind of things he shouldn’t, so we need to be careful.”

  “Maria and Dakota know, of course, but I’ll try to keep the ranch hands in the dark about our guest for as long as possible, too.” With a firm nod, Justice rose and headed out to the main room. “I’d better go check on Mr. Rivas. I’m not too sure I like having a kidnapper under my roof. But I understand that he may still have information we need. And that we have to protect him until we get it.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him, Justice.” Bull followed him out, stopping when they reached the hallway. “He’s full of regret, and pretty beat-up besides. He was just trying to help his family.”

  “By putting my daughter in danger?”

  “Calderón doesn’t discriminate when it comes to using or hurting anyone.” Bull shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The last time he’d tried to give his father advice, the conversation had ended with Bull running off to college and never looking back. He was done running from this man. “Try talking to him, Justice. Ask him to tell you about Brittany. You might learn something by doing a little bit of listening.”

  “Listening isn’t my best thing.”

  “I know.” He glanced up the stairs where he could hear the shower running. Tracy was up there, washing up after their overnight ride down to Mexico. After their run-ins with the Los Jaguares, he didn’t trust that she’d be safe alone in her apartment. “It’s a skill I’m learning to get better at myself.”

  “I’ll try,” Justice conceded. “It’s not easy for an old dog to learn a new trick, but I’ll try.”

  Bull saw the opening to say something to his father. Maybe he was getting some age himself. Or maybe Tracy’s and Wyatt’s insistence that their father was a changed man was starting to make sense. After nearly losing Tracy to the Los Jaguares, he had an idea of just how bad a man’s heart could break if he lost the woman he loved—giving him a tad of insight into his father going off the deep end after his mother’s death.

  Still, the idea of sharing a civil, meaningful conversation with his father felt about as comfortable as breaking in a new pair of boots. But after ten years, maybe it was time one of them tried. “Wyatt’s got a lead on Morgan. He’s flying in from wherever he is. Rusty rounded up Jericho and Lila, and is driving them back from Calderón’s hacienda. In the meantime, I’m locking down this ranch. No one is going to hurt this family or the people we care about again.”

  “No, son. They’re not. I’m glad you’re home to help me.” Justice raised his silvering head. His mouth curved into an unfamiliar smile. “I’ll see to the boy, and...I promise just to talk.” Bull was halfway to the second floor when Justice came back to stand beside the newel post at the foot of the stairs. “You are staying, aren’t you? At least until we get your sister back home?”

  An uneasy alliance had been formed. Circumstances were forcing Bull to team up with his father to protect their family. And, possibly, the be
ginnings of trust between them was being rekindled. “Yes, sir.” But they weren’t going to hug and say Merry Christmas just yet. Bull tilted his head up the stairs. The running water had stopped. “If you don’t mind, I’m a little beat-up myself. I’m heading upstairs.”

  “Good night, son.”

  “Good night.”

  Bull opened the door of his bedroom in time to see Tracy pulling one of his old T-shirts on over the panties she wore.

  She turned around, reprimanding him with those beautiful eyes as she pulled her damp hair out from beneath the collar and shook it loose down her back. Yep, he had it bad for this one. “Don’t you knock?”

  “My bedroom,” he reminded her, shrugging out of his holster and laying his gun out of the way on the dresser. He set his badge down next to it and untucked the tails of his shirt.

  “Oh.” She gathered up her wet towel and dirty clothes. “Justice sent me up to this room to change. I guess he thought we...” Her skin blushed pink around the bruise on her cheek and the bandage on her neck. “I remember where the guest room is. End of the hall, right?”

  Bull caught her with one arm as she made a beeline for the door. “You’re bunking here tonight.”

  Without further discussion, he scooped her up and carried her to the bed, dumping the laundry on the floor and sitting beside her to pull his boots off his feet. One hit the floor, then the other. He stood to unbutton his shirt and peel it off over his rebandaged arm.

  “Virgil?” She curled her knees beneath her and sat up. “What are you doing?”

  The shirt joined his boots and he crawled into bed beside her. He wrapped her in his arms and pulled her soft warmth close to his chest. “Even if all we do is sleep, blue eyes, I’m going to hold you in my arms tonight.”