Carter Read online

  Grace hurried back to Faith. “Help me look for your dad’s phone.” Faith, who had held it together well when Lizzie had walked into her birthday party, now looked has though she’d crumple into a dead faint. The emotional bond she had with her father was far stronger than any tenuous connection she could have yet formed with Lizzie.

  “We’ll find him,” Grace said with a conviction she didn’t feel. She sank down to her heels in the dirt, similarly to what Lizzie had done, and took Faith’s hands. “Your dad is smart, and very strong. We’ll find him.”

  “Please don’t lie to me to make me feel better,” Faith said. “Promise you’ll never lie to me.”

  “I do promise. I’m not lying now. If anyone is good at surviving, it’s Carter. You know that.”

  “But this Joss is a really bad guy.”

  “Yeah, but Carter knows him very well. That’s his advantage.” Grace squeezed Faith’s hands. “I love your dad. A lot—more than a lot. I love you too. You, me, and his brothers—we won’t let anything happen to him.”

  Faith didn’t quite share her optimism, but she gave Grace a nod, then slid her hand from Grace’s and patted Buster’s neck.

  “Can you find anything, big guy?” she asked Buster. “Show me where my dad was.”

  Grant heard her. “He’s not a dog. Though I’ll never yell at him for running off or kicking again.”

  Faith, with the reins already folded in her hands, started to lead Buster forward. Buster, who hadn’t budged an inch since he’d stopped, now quietly followed her.

  “I don’t know how she does that,” Grant said, watching, sun catching on his blue eyes.

  Grace wasn’t sure either what assistance Buster could be, but Faith led him around the edges of the churned-up dirt where the car and fighting had been, Grace following. Grace glimpsed dark, dried blood in the dust and her heart throbbed in dread.

  Buster pulled Faith to the right, his ears pricking. White showed around the brown of his eyes. Fear.

  Grace traced the source of Buster’s wide-eyed stare, noted how he pulled his head back as he scanned one section of weeds alongside the narrow dirt road.

  Something glinted in the grasses. Grace pounced on it, parting the tall, drying weeds with her bare hands. She got scratched, and bit by whatever bugs were living there, but she pulled out a few broken pieces of black and silver plastic.

  “That’s my dad’s,” Faith said. “I bought him that case.”

  Grace carried the pieces in her cupped hands back to Ross. Buster, relieved, let Faith lead him after her.

  Ross emerged from his SUV to take the wrecked phone. “Nothing on the numbers so far. Nothing that connects to Joss, anyway. This is scrap.” He turned the fragments over in his hand.

  “But phones back up now,” Grace said. “Can you get into Carter’s storage? Or a list of his recent calls or contacts? He might have Joss’s number—could you use that to trace Joss’s phone?”

  Ross didn’t look hopeful. “I need a warrant to get phone records—that takes time. I could hack into his storage, if I can think enough like Carter to know his passwords.”

  “I know them,” Faith said from where she stood with Buster. “He told me. In case something ever happened to him.” Her voice wavered.

  “Can you remember?” Ross asked, uncertain. “Or does he have them written down somewhere?”

  “Oh, no, I remember them.” Faith sounded surprised he’d think she wouldn’t. “But someone needs to hold Buster.”

  Grace caught the reins. Faith trotted after Ross, following him to his SUV, where he pulled out a tablet computer and started tapping on it. Faith bent her head over it, her braids swinging.

  Grace’s heart was cold as she turned her gaze to the wide plains and the arch of blue sky. A beautiful day, one of the nicest of the season. Grace saw only emptiness, a stretch of land that could prove deadly to the only man she’d ever loved.

  ***

  Joss circled the oil pump jack, Carter moving with him to keep the revolving counterweights or other pieces of the large machine between him and Joss’s aim at all times.

  Joss’s main sidekick circled the other way. They’d catch Carter between them sooner or later.

  The uncaring pump chugged its way up and down, reaching into the ground for crude oil to make whoever owned this patch of land some money.

  The pump jack was a gigantic one, with a long ladder reaching high through safety rings for maintenance. The walking arm soared, the head coming down, down, down as the rounded triangles of the counterweights rose above Carter’s head.

  A bullet dinged off metal, and Carter ducked instinctively. Ricochets could be as damaging as a straight shot. Sparks from a ricochet could also ignite any flammable gasses that floated around the well.

  Joss knew that too. “Fuck. Don’t shoot unless you got him, you idiot.”

  “We can dance all day,” Carter called to Joss. “It’s getting hot. Why don’t you go?”

  “Not after you wrecked my bike, dickhead. Your money is going to replace it.”

  “You can’t get my money if you shoot me,” Carter pointed out.

  “Oh, I bet your so-called mom or your pretty little daughter can help me out. Or that sweetie you think you’re going to marry.”

  Carter had to kill him. It was the only way. They were in the middle of nowhere, no help in sight, no connection to civilization but an old Impala and Joss’s cell phone Carter had kicked out of the way. He would lure Joss in here, take away his gun, and make sure he didn’t get up.

  He stepped out from behind the counterweights as they soared up, exposing himself to the gunmen.

  Joss fired. The boom echoed as Carter dropped, rolling out of the way as the counterweights, which could weigh thousands of pounds, came down at him. Carter had known exactly when Joss would shoot—his face always tightened a little before he pulled a trigger. He had a tell.

  Joss’s main thug grunted, then stared down at the hole in his shirt, and the spat of blood there. He’d rushed behind Carter to shoot at him at the same time Joss did, and Joss’s bullet had caught him right in the chest.

  The man looked at Joss in bewilderment, then his legs buckled, and he folded up in the dirt and weeds.

  Joss roared. He shot at Carter again and again, only succeeding in pinging bullets off the solid sides of the pump jack and weights.

  “You stupid fuck!” Joss screamed.

  His words were drowned out not only by the sound of the pump’s motor, but by a car throbbing to life. Both Joss and Carter looked around to see the gold sedan speeding off down the dirt road, dust boiling from behind it.

  The remaining men must have figured that there had to be better men to work for than Joss. The one guy Joss had winged at the bike was gone too, either well enough to run or else the others had dragged him with them. Carter guessed that a nearby bar would soon see whichever men were left unhurt wetting their throats with cold beer.

  Joss let out another wordless yell, and started climbing the fence. The padlock to the gate was a long way up—maintenance people probably brought ladders.

  Joss dropped down over the fence to Carter, which gave Carter plenty of time to be ready for him.

  Joss took Carter’s elbow to the face, but rolled with the punch, across the dirt under the pump’s lowering arm.

  Carter chased him, ducking low. He grabbed Joss from behind, trying to crush his wrist to release the gun. However, Joss had been the first to teach Carter dirty fighting, and knew many of his tricks. He jerked himself backward into Carter, using his weight to send Carter off-balance. Carter’s knees bent, and he ended up on the dirt, pulling Joss with him.

  Carter wrapped an arm around Joss’s neck, choking off his breath. Joss wheezed but got his gun hand free, shoved the pistol against Carter’s lower leg, and pulled the trigger.

  Carter grunted as pain ripped through him. Bone, he thought as agony stole his breath. His vision darkened. Would be a bitch to fix.

  Joss w
renched and kicked his way from Carter. He still had the gun, but Carter had learned plenty more long after he’d finished his life with Joss.

  Carter spun on his back, kicking with his good leg right into Joss’s crotch. Joss doubled over and danced backward, and Carter came up under his reach and crushed open his gun hand.

  The pistol dropped and spun away, coming to rest at the base of the fence. Carter fought hard as Joss gave up on the gun and simply went for Carter, the two of them punching, thumping, jabbing, falling to the ground to beat on each other there.

  This was the kind of fighting Carter had learned on the streets, the shit a kid mastered to stay alive. He’d taken a while to learn that sparring with brothers was different—fighting with the Campbells was to prove prowess, but not to reinforce it with pain and terror.

  Joss got his fists in the back of Carter’s shirt, trying to pull him over to flatten him on the ground. He got a kick into Carter’s injured leg, making Carter snarl.

  Carter had finished stunts with a broken leg before. Tyler had once done it with a spectacular set of broken ribs and a broken foot.

  The key was to focus on the exact moves of the stunt, ignoring the body telling you to stop and sit the hell down. Carter and his brothers had honed the art of shutting out everything but the task in front of them, and that included pain.

  Carter needed to get to his feet, knock Joss senseless, and climb back over the fence to Joss’s phone. Joss had said there was a cell signal, and Carter believed him. Carter would use it to call Ross and tell him to come pick up his totally screwed big brother.

  Joss might be older and less trained than Carter, but he was mean and ruthless and had survived twenty years longer in his brutal world than Carter had. Fighting him wasn’t easy, and Joss was obviously determined to kill Carter.

  As they grappled on the ground, Joss bashed both fists to Carter’s temple, the one already throbbing from the blow from the tire iron. A cruel spark lit Joss’s eyes, and he started rolling Carter toward the counterweights that rushed down at them with awful speed.

  Owners of big pump jacks like this one usually put fences around the clearance area for the twin counterweights, which came down like the swinging arms of a wild ride at the county fair. The company that owned this pump must have thought the fence around the entire thing would keep people and animals out of the dangerous area.

  Jack rolled Carter toward the counterweights as they came down in their ponderous circle. The weights cleared the ground with less than a foot to spare, engineered perfectly for the space.

  Carter punched and fought, kicked and struck. Joss crashed his fist into Carter’s ribs, his boot connecting with Carter’s hurt leg again.

  Carter heaved himself out from under Joss and rolled in the opposite direction.

  Joss grabbed Carter around the shoulders, dragged him across his supine body, and sent Carter directly into the path of the weights. In two seconds, they’d be back from their upswing, crushing Carter, tumbling him over into a bloody pulp.

  Carter frantically shot out from under their shadow, never feeling his bad leg taking his weight. He kept rolling, barely making it out of the way as the counterweights swept down and then rose again.

  He managed to scramble to his feet, but Joss had made it up as well, and was in front of him again, giving Carter a hard shove with both hands. Carter slammed his weight to his good leg and dodged aside, and Joss came swiftly at him once more, both fists raised.

  Carter caught Joss’s arms and used the man’s momentum and moving body weight as a solid place from which to vault, just as he did a running horse, or a speeding car, a moving train, or one of his brothers. He and Tyler could run at each other and push off, sending each other flying.

  Carter’s jump got himself across the open space between pump and fence, and crashed him into the chain-link. Carter stopped his momentum with hand and shoulder, the slight give of the fence helping him land on his feet.

  Joss had fallen as Carter pushed hard off him, and now was flat on his back, right where the counterweights would come down.

  He screamed as the giant weights came toward him on their endless journey. Carter leapt for him, his leg numb, and grabbed Joss’s shoulders to try to pull him to safety.

  In the next second, Carter had to roll out of the way as the weights reached their downswing. They plowed right over Joss, catching his head and torso, shoving him out of their way.

  Joss’s cries cut off, and his body flopped over once, as the unceasing weights rose, continuing their uncaring motion.

  Carter grabbed Joss under the arms and dragged him away before the weights could come down again. He fell against the fence, Joss in his arms, the man bloody and crushed. Alive or dead, Carter couldn’t tell.

  Carter tried to get his leg under him to rise, to climb the fence, but his bones and muscles had decided to cease working. Willpower could only take him so far. Carter sank back down, breathing hard, promising himself he’d rest for a while and try again.

  He sagged against the chain-link, the sun beating down on him, nothing between himself and the rest of the world but miles of Texas flatland.

  His leg was killing him, and that might be literally. A shattered bone could contaminate his blood, or Carter could simply lie here and die of thirst and heatstroke.

  He’d never told Grace he loved her. Carter thought of her little smile that wrinkled her nose, the way she always had flour smudged on her face.

  He’d noticed that smile long, long ago, on his first day of school in Riverbend, when the sweetest little girl he’d ever seen had come up to him and said hello, as though Carter had been a regular human being. She’d been small and scrappy, all green eyes and wide mouth, her nose wrinkling in the cutest way. Carter had been tongue-tied, which had pretty much been his state of being around Grace all the way up until yesterday.

  That little girl had grown into a beautiful, wonderful woman. Grace’s green eyes now lit up when she smiled, so sexy. She had a wicked body too. Carter thought of her riding him in the dark, moonlight touching her breasts, picking out the curve of her face, her dusky nipples. She’d loved him without shame, without fear.

  “I love you, Grace,” Carter said, his strength leaving him. “Love you always.”

  The pump jack clanked on five feet away from him, the engine grinding, drowning out the sound of sirens coming at him across the open plain.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Daddy!” Faith shouted as soon as she was out of Ross’s SUV.

  Two figures lay on the other side of the fence that surrounded the big oil pump, neither moving. A third man was heaped several yards beyond the pump jack, also still.

  Heart pounding, Grace put Faith behind her but ran after Ross, who had gone toward the pump, his weapon drawn.

  “Stay back,” Ross snapped at them over his shoulder.

  Grace didn’t want to, but she obeyed the authority in his voice. “Stand here with me, honey,” she said quickly to Faith.

  More cars and SUVs pulled up around Ross’s. A little way from them was a motorcycle, standing forlornly. The gold car Grace had spied at the diner had sped toward them on the back road, and now was pulled off it, surrounded by police. The men inside the car had confirmed that Carter was here.

  Ross reached the fence, his weapon trained on the two men inside. Grace couldn’t hear anything over the noise of the pump, but she suddenly saw Ross relax his arms and lower the gun.

  Grace couldn’t stay away. She ran forward, letting Grant stand with Faith.

  Grace reached the fence in time to hear Carter’s voice, tired and weak, “Don’t shoot me, baby bro. I’m not in the mood.”

  Ross had his radio out. “We need paramedics,” he shouted into it. “And bolt cutters.”

  Grace sucked in a breath. Carter lay on his side, his leg at an awkward angle, his jeans full of blood. His long-sleeved riding shirt was torn and bloody. The man on his back next to him must be dead. Dried blood crusted his shirt, je
ans, and face, which was a bashed-up pulp.

  Carter saw Grace. “What the holy fuck is she doing here? Ross, damn it …”

  “You think I could stop her?” Ross gave his brother a wide-eyed stare. “I don’t have those kinds of superpowers.”

  “Grace, sweetheart.” Carter’s eyes were full of fear. “Faith …”

  Grace knelt next to the fence, reaching through it to touch his shoulder. “Is fine. She’s here. She’s with me.”

  “Thank you.” Carter put a bloodstained hand on hers, squeezed, his fingers shaking, losing strength. Some of the haunted look left him as he met Grace’s eyes. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

  “Anytime.” Grace touched his cheek where it pressed the fence.

  Carter gave her a tired smile, then he grimaced. “Shit. I am in some serious pain here.”

  Ross sank down next to Grace, also reaching for Carter. “We’ve got you.”

  Other men hurried up to join them, one with bolt cutters, which he used to quickly begin snipping the links of the fence.

  “You should be madly in love with this woman,” Ross said as the fence loosened. “She saw your kidnappers, figured out what car they drove, which helped me put names to faces and a plate number to the car. It was Grace’s idea to trace Joss’s phone when we found yours in pieces.”

  “That’s because Grace is smarter than you,” Carter said, a note of pride in his voice. “I always knew that.”

  Grace broke in, while Ross grinned. “It was Faith who figured out something was wrong at all—she read Buster’s mind when he came running back home. Realized he wouldn’t have come home at all without you, unless you were in trouble.”

  Carter’s expression took on even more pride, but he kept his words light. “You mean I owe my life to Buster? Aw, damn, he’s never gonna let me live this down.”

  The fence parted. Ross went through, the other deputies holding the edges back so they wouldn’t cut him. Paramedics had arrived, and they ducked inside after Ross.

  Carter glanced behind Grace at Faith, who was being physically restrained by a worried-looking Grant.