Lone Rider (15 page)

Buck's new wife had come to see her before Russell had moved her to the cabin. No surprise that Sarah had taken an instant dislike to the woman. What had scared her wasn't the other woman, but the violent impulse she'd had in Angelina Broadwater Hamilton's presence. She'd realized then that she was the one who might be dangerous.

Russell sat down at his computer, plugged in the phone and loaded the two photos he'd taken. The tattoo came up on the screen. The hand mirror or the cell phone screen hadn't done the design justice.

“Does it look like anything you've ever seen before?” Russell asked.

She shook her head, but with a heated rush her skin remembered the bite of the needle into her tender flesh and a feeling of both pain—and pleasure.

“Can you make me a copy?” Sarah asked, her voice cracking.

He didn't move to print the image on the screen. She looked over at him. His gaze was both sad and disappointed.

“You remember getting it, don't you?” He sounded accusing.

She shook her head, but she could tell he didn't believe her.

“When I was a boy, a friend and I took a knife and cut a slice in our palms becoming blood brothers. Sarah, is there a chance this tattoo connects you to whoever flew you back here?”

* * *

R
AY
FROZE
TO
LISTEN
. He'd developed a sixth sense when it came to trouble. It was as if he could feel it bone deep.

He'd been feeling it since he'd taken the woman. Why hadn't he thought this out? Like his old man always said, sometimes he was dumber than a tree stump. Of course someone would come looking for her. He stared at her for a long moment as he listened, regretting that he hadn't just had his way with her and killed her. Someone would still have come looking for her, but at least he would have had the satisfaction no matter how fleeting. Now...

He hurriedly finished wrapping her wrists, taping them tighter than he probably should have in his anger and frustration. This was all her fault. If he was right and someone was coming after her...

Too late to change anything now. He had her, and damned if he wasn't going to keep her. If he was right and there was someone out there... Well, they'd never have her. He'd kill her before he'd let anyone take her.

But he told himself it wouldn't come to that. Whoever was looking for her wouldn't know about him. Surprise! He'd kill the person. Once his old man got here, if he still had the woman, then he would take her with him deeper into the mountains. He wasn't giving her up. She would learn to love him. Or wish she had.

He stopped again to listen. And if he didn't still have the woman? Then he'd take the horses his father was bringing and get out of these mountains. He'd go to Mexico and start over.

But it hurt to think that he would be going alone since his father hated Mexico—and would be so angry with him that he wouldn't go with him anyway. Ray had it in his head that this woman was his. He wasn't sure he cared what happened to him if he didn't have her at least once before he had to kill her.

* * *

B
O
HADN
'
T
HEARD
ANYTHING
. But Ray seemed to think someone was out there. Or some
thing
? Given the large number of grizzlies that lived in the Crazies...

“Is it a bear?” she whispered.

In answer, he tore off a piece of the tape and plastered it over her mouth as he shoved her to her knees on the ground.

“No.” Her cry was muffled by the tape. “No!” she cried again, terrified that all this had been a ruse so he could bind her and finally take what he wanted roughly, the way she suspected he liked it.

“Shut up!” he whispered hoarsely against her ear as he threw her facedown in the dirt so hard that she had trouble catching her breath.

She was screaming inside as she saw him grab the rope from where he'd dropped it earlier. Pulling her to her feet, he forced her to turn against the trunk of the pine tree and then began to wrap the rope tightly around her and the tree.

He stopped twice, both times freezing for a moment as if listening again to the night, before he continued tying her.

Her face against the rough bark, she, too, listened for any sound coming from the trees or mountains around them. She heard nothing. Was it possible Ray Spencer was losing his mind? She almost laughed at the thought. The man was a psychopath. He'd been locked up before he escaped. Ideally, he would be locked up again and soon.

But she didn't dare hope there was someone out in the darkness who could make that happen. Hope would make her cry, and if she cried, Ray would give her something more to cry about. It was better to believe he was having a psychotic incident.

What happened, though, when he realized his mistake? She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling hot tears leak from her lashes and run down her cheeks. She would be lucky to live through this night, she thought as she heard Ray douse the campfire. The acrid smell of smoke wafted over her. She tried not to cough.

She turned her head to the side as far as she could. She saw him through the smoke. He was standing a few yards from her out of the moonlight, his face twisted in an expression she hadn't seen before. He looked like a trapped animal. He was scared. He'd looked this same way when he'd heard the horn and realized that his father would be arriving soon.

What if it was a grizzly? She knew that if it came to a choice between saving her and saving himself, Ray would leave her as bear bait.

Her chest hurt from trying to hold in the tears and the frantic pounding of her heart. What was out there? Ray wasn't stupid enough to try to kill a grizzly with a pistol, was he? But he didn't have his pistol, she saw with a start. The barrel of his rifle glistened in the moonlight at the corner of his open pack. His pistol was in there, as well. She had the feeling he much preferred a knife, and that's why he didn't carry the guns.

But if it was bear, did he plan on killing it with his knife? No, whatever he thought he heard, he believed it to be human.

With a start, she realized that was why he was keeping to the darkness of the pines—so he couldn't be seen. Which meant he was afraid to get his guns out of the pack because it was a good distance away and in the moonlight.

A twig snapped, sounding like a gunshot somewhere out in the forest. Ray heard it, too. He glanced toward his pack, clearly debating whether to race across the camp in the moonlight for the guns, but he didn't move. She listened hard, thought she heard the sound of a boot heel on the dried forest floor. Was someone really out there?

Not his father, since Ray had said he was hours away. Could it be someone looking for
her
? Hope filled her like helium. She tried to call out, the sound muffled against the tape. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ray, the knife gripped in his fist, motioning for her to shut up. But he didn't move toward her—that would have meant crossing a stretch of moonlit ground, making him a target.

Closer, she heard the sound of something brush against a pine bough. There
was
someone out there! She saw Ray slip deeper into the darkness of the pines.

She pressed her face into the rough bark of the tree as she worked to get the tape free from her mouth. If searchers had come to save her, she had to warn them about Ray.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“R
USSELL
,
WHAT
IS
all this?” Sarah asked as she looked at the stack of papers he placed on the kitchen table. He'd made them dinner, and they hadn't talked about the damn tattoo, something she was glad of.

“I've been doing some research. I mentioned it before, but I thought you'd like to check it out yourself.”

So that's what he'd been doing when he wasn't visiting her. She picked up the top article. Last time he'd brought up the subject, it had scared her. It scared her even more now that he wasn't letting it drop.

“Brain wiping,” she said and sighed. “I appreciate what you're trying to do, but the neurologist—”

“I know, he said there are all kinds of reasons for your amnesia.” She hadn't told him that the neurologist had suggested her memory loss was psychological. She hadn't wanted to admit that even to herself.

“He also said it might be permanent. I may never get my memory back.” She could tell that Russell didn't want to believe that any more than Buck did. Russell had asked her about what she was remembering, though, making it clear that he was aware some memories seemed to be coming back.

She'd told him they were just flashes. True enough. But she feared they
were
memories and that one day they would all come flooding back. It terrified her given the strange, distorted images she'd seen.

“I should have told you but I've been searching for articles on brain wiping from back more than twenty-two years ago. I knew someone had to be doing research then. I figured once I found the scientist, all I had to do was locate a facility that would have been easy for him to get you to without calling attention to either you or himself. Remember, everyone believed you were dead. So it had to be one he could drive you to and get back from before he was missed.”

She was amazed at the lengths he would go to to prove this theory. Russell really believed Buck had her locked up all those years ago after her botched suicide attempt.

“I found an article published in a medical journal twenty-three years ago—a year before you disappeared.”

Sarah stared at him. Even when he'd shared his theory, she hadn't considered it was a real possibility. “What are you saying?”

“A doctor by the name Ralph Venable was doing brain wiping research long before anyone thought it possible.”

She'd read one of the articles Russell had given her on brain wiping. “But I thought the experiments have only been on
rats
!”

“So you
did
look at the other information I brought you.” He sounded pleased by that, and encouraged. “Yes, recent experiments have been done on rats. But Venable was sure it would work on humans. I know it all sounds like science fiction. Targeting certain parts of the brain where a memory is stored while leaving the rest entirely intact. If modern science was now able to do this, then why not a doctor ahead of his time twenty-two years ago?”

“Because it's so...diabolical.”

“Diabolical if I'm right and your husband was the one who picked you up that night. If he had heard about this doctor, he would have known where to take you.”

“That's a lot of ifs.”

“You've been looking for answers? Well, here's one right under your nose.”

She rose from her chair to move around the kitchen. “So Buck somehow found out about this man's research and took me to what? Some hospital?”

“I doubt it was a hospital. Probably more like a private clinic. You'd just tried to kill yourself. Taking you to a doctor made sense, right? If word should get out, well, he would look like a caring husband trying to protect you.”

Sarah hugged herself, chilled at the thought as she turned to look at him. “But Buck's true reason was so this mad scientist could wipe out whatever horrible thing I knew about my husband that made me drive into the river.”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn't Buck bring me back home after my memory was erased?”

Russell shook his head. “Maybe he didn't trust that you wouldn't remember.”

“So instead, he kept me a prisoner for the next twenty-two years?”

“I'm not sure where he kept you.”

“And the good doctor?”

“I'm still trying to track him down. But I suspect you saw him again—right before I found you coming out of the woods a few months ago.”

“Saw him again? You mean Buck had him wipe out the past twenty-two years so I thought I'd just given birth to the twins. You do know how crazy this all sounds, don't you?” He was making her head ache with this off-the-wall theory.

She'd told Buck she would meet him in thirty minutes. She had to get going and yet... “You say this doctor was years ahead of his time in this type of research? Why take a chance experimenting on humans when I would assume if he were caught he'd lose his license to practice medicine, maybe even be imprisoned?”

“The story was that Venable's wife was brutally raped by some drunken soldiers on leave. The men were never caught. Apparently, his life's work was to make her horrible memories go away.”

She had to ask. “Did he succeed?”

Russell sighed and shook his head. “She killed herself.”

“So his brain wiping failed.”

“Not necessarily. According to what I've read, emotional memories are very powerful and can have strong physiological effects on a person—so much so that they can't be entirely wiped away. Which could explain the flashes of memory you're having.”

The thought sent a chill through her. Was it possible the man she'd married was capable of the things Russell suggested?

“If scientists are now able to wipe out some memories without affecting other memories,” Russell continued, “why isn't it possible Venable could do it twenty-two years ago?”

“But you weren't able to find a facility where he'd worked near here?”

Russell shook his head.

“And he wasn't able to save his own wife.”

“No. But if I'm right, Venable succeeded beyond his wildest dreams with at least one patient.”

She met his gaze. “Me.”

* * *

R
AY
FROZE
AT
the sound of a twig snapping some distance away. He'd already crossed paths with one grizzly on his way back into the mountains. Fortunately it hadn't been a mama grizzly with a couple of cubs. He'd heard too many stories about hunters getting mauled to death.

But tonight this was no bear out there, he thought as he listened from the dark shadows under the pines. Nor was it his father. So who had stumbled onto their camp?

The full moon was so bright that it looked like daylight out of the darkness of the pines. Ray glanced toward his pack by the still smoking fire. With a curse, he realized two mistakes he'd made. The fire. He should never have built it after seeing the plane earlier. Of course the pilot wasn't the only person looking for Bo-Peep. Worse, he'd been so busy putting out the fire and taking care of the woman that he'd left both his rifle and his handgun inside the open pack in the middle of camp. But to get to the weapons, he would have to cross a dozen yards of moonlit ground.

He listened, heard nothing. Maybe that's all it had been, nothing. Maybe he was just jumpy because his old man would be here by daybreak. Ray had spent his life being afraid of his father—and at the same time knowing the old man was all he had.

All his instincts told him to stay where he was. Whatever was out there was dangerous, and it was coming for him.

* * *

T
HE
SMELL
OF
SMOKE
was so strong, Jace knew the camp was just on the other side of a thick stand of trees. He slowed. He didn't dare go stumbling into camp, and it would have been easy in the dark of the pines.

He'd purposely stayed in the deep shadow of the trees as he'd moved. The moon was bright as day, almost blinding when he stepped out into it. He could be spotted too easily in its light spearing down through the pine branches—and get himself shot. After following Bo's tracks and the man's, he had a bad feeling about what he was going to find now that he'd caught up with them.

Ahead, he saw a break in the stand of pines and moved toward it. He tried to be careful where he stepped. It was hard enough to be quiet in the forest in broad daylight, let alone in the darkness of the pines. He'd already stepped on a twig. The snap as it broke had sounded like a cannon going off to him. Had they heard it in camp? He had to assume so.

He'd reach the edge of the dense stand of pines when through the narrow opening, he saw the source of the smoke. A small, dying campfire billowed the smell of wet coals into the night sky. The fire had only recently been doused with water. That meant they had heard him coming.

Probably also the reason there was no one near the fire. Had they left? Or were they only lying in wait?

A horse whinnied some distance away. He heard the scuffle of boots in the dried needles of the pines and then nothing.

He had to get closer. This was Bo's camp, he was sure of it. And that horse he'd just heard would be hers if he was right.

So where were they?

Cautiously and as quietly as he could, he worked his way through the pine trees closer to the camp. He hadn't gone far when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He swung his rifle but came up short, thinking he must be seeing things.

Bo Hamilton was bound with rope to a tree.

What the hell?

He could hear her muffled pleas from behind her duct-taped mouth but couldn't make out what she was saying. She seemed to be struggling to get the tape off her mouth by rubbing her face against the bark of the three.

Jace felt his heart drop. What had he stumbled into? He wanted to call out to her, but something told him the last thing he should do was let whoever had done that to her know where he was.

“Help!” Bo cried as she got most of the tape from her mouth. Her voice was still muffled and hoarse, but he got the message. “He's in the trees. He has a knife!”

* * *

R
AGE
FILLED
R
AY
. He'd had such high hopes for his future with his little Bo-Peep. It would have worked, too. If they could have reached a spot deep in the mountains, he would have built them a cabin. They would have been happy. He would have done anything to make her happy.

A bloodred film blurred his vision. He thought he might explode with fury as he clinched the knife harder in his hands until he thought he might crush the handle. He couldn't let it end like this. If he could reach his pack, get his rifle, he'd kill whoever had come for her. He had no idea who was out there in the darkness. Or even how many of them there might be. He'd heard only one. But what if there were more? What if he moved and they gunned him down? He could feel death knocking at his door.

Don't do nothing stupid.
It was his father's voice.
Too late, Daddy.
He'd already done something stupid. He'd taken the woman, and now he would rather die than give her up.

Don't do it. Run! You don't want to die tonight in the dirt up on this mountain.
His own voice this time. Raging at the thought that all he could do was run away, he cursed under his breath. Bo was
his
.

He heard Bo call out again, pleading for help. She'd managed to get the tape off her mouth. For just a moment, he'd actually thought she was calling to him to help her until he heard her say “He has a knife.”

His heart had seemed to detonate in his chest, the pain worse than any beating he'd ever had—even his father's beatings. Just like that, she'd turned against him. Every woman he'd ever known had turned against him. But none of their betrayals hurt as much as this one.

She thought she was saved by whoever had come looking for her? He wanted to laugh out loud. She was dead wrong. Nothing could save her from him. No matter how many of them had come for her.

Ray knew it was suicidal, but he shoved to his feet from behind the tree where he'd been hunkering and sprinted toward his pack. He told himself that if he could reach his gun and get off only one shot, he'd kill the bitch.

How had he thought she would ever be his willingly? He should have taken her the moment he'd pulled her off her horse. She'd played him for a fool, and now she was going to pay for her betrayal.

With a tortured cry, he sprinted toward the open pack next to the campfire. Even as he ran, he wished there was another way. He still wanted her, still hoped in some destroyed part of his heart that she could be his.

A bullet whizzed past his ear. He changed course, realizing there was only one way to end this now. With the knife gripped in his fist, he raced toward the woman, the blade raised. He saw her eyes widen as she realized what he was about to do. She didn't know how lucky she was that this was the worst he could do.

* * *

J
ACE
HAD
HEARD
what sounded like a war cry an instant before a huge man came charging out of the woods. Jace swung his rifle, taking aim, expecting the man to charge him. The moonlight caught the glint of the knife clutched in the man's hand.

But to Jace's surprise, the man had run toward his open pack next to the extinguished campfire.

“He's going for his gun!” Bo yelled.

Jace took aim, pulled the trigger—and missed.

The man abruptly changed directions, this time heading for Bo, the knife raised in the air, a horrible sound coming from the man's mouth.

With the jump of his pulse, Jace saw what the man intended to do and fought to steady the rifle. He couldn't miss this time. If he did...

He pulled the trigger and heard the
thwunk
as the bullet hit the man's body.