Gunfire on the Ranch Read online

  Her attention slashed toward the house. “Gabriel will need to hear this.” And now there was some urgency in her voice.

  Yes, he would. Jameson, too. And Jodi. “But not inside. Remember, there could be listening devices. If the killer knows we’re onto him, it could send him back underground where he could prepare for another attack. And next time, we might not get a heads-up from a CI.”

  He could see the debate going on inside her, and with each passing second, Theo’s unease escalated. It really wasn’t a smart idea for them to be outside.

  “Your brothers don’t trust me,” he added. “I get that.”

  Man, did he. Because for a short period of time after the Becketts were murdered, Theo had been a suspect.

  His father wasn’t the only one who’d had bad blood with Ivy’s parents.

  Just hours before their murder, Theo had had a run-in with Ivy’s father, Sherman, and Sherman had told him in no uncertain terms that he was to stop seeing Ivy, that she didn’t need a bad boy in her life. Theo had been furious, even though Sherman had been right—Ivy had deserved something better.

  “Yes,” Ivy whispered as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. “But let’s not allow old water and old bridges to play into this. Gabriel needs to hear this recording and decide if it’s something we should be worried about.”

  Yes, and her brother would be worried once he heard what the CI had to say.

  Ivy motioned for him to follow her. Not to his truck but rather to the back of the house. She hurried, thank God, which meant it had finally sunk in that she was in danger. But since she was clearly taking him inside, Theo had to speak up.

  “Remember the part about a possible bug. When we’re inside, whisper.” That might not be enough if the listening device was sensitive and had a wide range, but at this point he just wanted her out of the line of possible fire.

  She led him onto the porch and through the back door, but Ivy stopped in a mudroom, where there were raincoats on wall pegs and cowboy boots stashed beside a wooden bench. A reminder that this was indeed a working ranch. Gabriel wasn’t just a sheriff, but also raised cattle and horses. There were cans of paint and what appeared to be scaffolding, as well.

  “There was a fire last month,” Ivy said, following his gaze. “An attack. That’s why I want to make sure another one doesn’t happen.”

  He wanted the same thing, especially since Theo had read about that attack. His sister had been the target, and even though the guy was now dead, he’d clearly left his mark.

  “I’ll have Gabriel come back here.” Ivy put the rifle on the top shelf of the storage closet, took out her phone from her jeans pocket and sent off a text.

  Theo had another look around, shut the back door and then glanced out the single window that was in the small room. Ivy reached for the light switch to turn it on, but he stopped her. Of course, that meant touching her, and he got another sucker punch of the old heat.

  A third sucker punch when their gazes met.

  She didn’t say anything, but Theo thought maybe she had felt it, too. He also thought maybe she was fighting to push it away as hard as he was. Yes, she was a widow, but after everything they’d gone through, she probably didn’t want to have another round with him any more than he did with her.

  “It’s not a good idea to be this close to a window,” Theo insisted. And yes, he whispered. “We should at least get down.”

  She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip for a couple of seconds. A gesture he’d seen her do so many times. Nerves. But she finally ducked down so that her head wouldn’t be anywhere near the glass. Theo ducked, too, but he stayed high enough so he could continue to glance out and make sure the killer wasn’t sneaking up on them.

  The moments crawled by, and with each one of them Theo became well aware of the close contact between them. It was hard to fight the attraction and the old memories when they were this close. And when he caught her scent.

  Hell.

  For just a split second, the image of her naked body flashed into his head.

  Thankfully, the image didn’t stay. It vanished when he heard the voice and the sound of footsteps. It was yet another voice he recognized. Gabriel’s.

  Theo braced himself for whatever Gabriel might dole out. He could just order Theo out of there, but Gabriel barely spared him a glance when he stepped into the doorway. That’s because he was on his phone, and he took his sister by the arm and moved her out of the mudroom and into the adjacent kitchen.

  Once Gabriel had done that, he finished his call, slipped his phone back into his jeans pocket and finally looked at Theo. This time, it was more than a glance.

  “What the hell did you do? Who did you bring with you?” Gabriel demanded. But he didn’t give Theo a chance to answer. “One of the ranch hands just called. He spotted an armed man crawling over the back fence, and the man’s making his way to the house right now.”

  Chapter Two

  Ivy’s heart slammed against her chest. She had already been feeling so many emotions, including dread and fear, but this was a different kind of fear.

  There’s a killer coming here to the ranch tonight.

  She hadn’t exactly dismissed Theo’s warning, but Ivy had prayed he was wrong. Apparently not, though. Because she doubted an armed intruder had good intentions. And according to Gabriel, he was on his way to the house. Ivy would have bolted toward the front stairs if Gabriel hadn’t taken hold of her arm again.

  “I’ve already told the others to lock up and get down,” her brother said. “They’re fine.” He slapped off the kitchen lights and tipped his head to the back door where Theo and she had entered. “Lock that,” he added to Theo. Theo did, and Gabriel used his phone to arm the security system.

  “There could be listening devices planted in the house and at your office.” Theo hurried into the kitchen with them. “Who else is here?” Theo asked at the same moment that Gabriel threw out a question of his own.

  “What do you have to do with the armed guy?”

  Judging from the glare Gabriel aimed at Theo, her brother felt his question had priority over Theo’s. Theo must have felt the same way, because he started talking.

  “I don’t know who he is, but I have a recording of a CI who says that a killer is on the way to the ranch. I didn’t call because supposedly this killer had managed to plant bugs in the house and the sheriff’s office, and I didn’t want to tip him off that we were onto him. But obviously we’re past the point of being worried about tipping him off.”

  “Yeah.” A muscle flickered in Gabriel’s jaw. “How long had Theo been here before you texted me?” he asked her.

  “Just a few seconds.” That was possibly true. Ivy honestly had no idea how long it’d been. Time had sort of frozen when she’d come face-to-face with the man she’d never expected to see again.

  Gabriel stared at her as if he might challenge that, but then he growled out, “Follow me.”

  Ivy was certain that put some renewed panic in her eyes, certain that her brother saw it as well, but Gabriel kept moving, anyway. “We’ll go into my office.”

  Not upstairs. Though that’s where Ivy wanted to go. “Nathan,” she said.

  “He’s in the guest room with Jameson and Jodi,” Gabriel quickly answered. “They moved him into the bathroom and will make sure he’s all right.”

  That steadied Ivy a little. Jameson was a lawman, and Jodi had been trained as a private security specialist. Still, Ivy didn’t want a gunman anywhere near the house or anyone in her family.

  “Nathan?” Theo asked.

  “Ivy’s son,” Gabriel said before she could answer. “If this gunman makes it to the house, he’ll be seriously outnumbered. But it might not even come to that, because I have three armed ranch hands headed out to stop him.”

  Gabriel must have made those arrangements shortly befo
re he’d come to the mudroom. Good. Ivy wanted every precaution taken. Correction: she needed it, because she had to keep Nathan safe.

  “You have a son?” Theo asked, his voice practically a whisper now.

  “Yes.” She didn’t give any other details. No time. Because Gabriel spoke again.

  “I want to know everything about the recording,” Gabriel insisted, glancing at Theo again. “I want to hear what this CI has to say.”

  Theo nodded and followed Gabriel into his office, which was just off the family room on the bottom floor. There were plenty of windows here, but Gabriel had already shut the blinds and drapes. He also didn’t turn on the lights. No doubt because it would alert anyone close enough to the house that there was someone in that particular room.

  However, her brother did go to one of the windows that faced the back of the house, and he opened the blinds just enough so he could keep watch. Theo did the same to the window across from Gabriel. That one would give him a view of the side of the house. While the inside of the house was practically dark, there were security lights on the grounds, so maybe they’d be able to see this monster coming.

  “Is there an extra gun in here?” Ivy asked.

  “Bottom right drawer,” Gabriel quickly provided. It was locked, but he rattled off the combination, and she took out a Glock he had stashed there. She wasn’t an expert marksman, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she would use it to defend her son if necessary.

  “The CI is someone who regularly gives me intel,” Theo started. “I’ll write down his name for you later. In case the place really is bugged, I don’t want to compromise his identity. The other person you’ll hear on the recording is a federal agent. He’s the one who sent me this, and the voices have been altered—again so that no one will be compromised.”

  While still keeping a grip on his gun, Theo took out his phone and hit the play button. He held it up so that Gabriel would be able to hear it, and it didn’t take long before the man’s voice began to pour through the room.

  “I heard some stuff,” the man said. “Stuff about them Becketts. I figured I oughta tell you because that family’s been through enough.”

  Yes, they had been. The murder of their parents. Also the near murder of Gabriel’s bride-to-be, Jodi. It had changed their lives forever.

  It was still changing them.

  “There’s a killer coming after them,” the man went on. “I don’t know the fella’s name, but I heard him talking at the Silver Moon Bar over on St. Mary’s Street. He said he’d been hired—and these are his words, not mine—to put some more Becketts in the ground. He said he was going to the Blue River Ranch tonight to finish off as many of them as he could.”

  A chill slid through Ivy, head to toe, and she felt her stomach clench into a tight knot. “God, will this never end?” she said under her breath.

  Ivy clearly hadn’t said that softly enough, because it caused both Theo and her brother to look back at her. Theo hit Pause. He stared at her as if he might need to intervene in some way. Definitely not something she wanted. Nor did she want to give in to the fear. So she went to the window next to Theo in order to help him keep watch.

  Theo continued to look at her while he volleyed glances out the window, but he finally hit the play button again.

  “Describe the man who said that.” It was a second person on the recording. Theo’s fellow agent, no doubt. “And did he say who hired him?”

  “Didn’t mention a word about that,” the CI answered. “Of course, it wouldn’t have been too smart if he had. And I couldn’t exactly ask him without maybe gettin’ my own self killed. But he was tall, bulky. Built like one of those navy SEALs or something.”

  Theo looked at Gabriel then, and her brother nodded. “That matches the description of the man the ranch hand saw.”

  “How do you know this hired gun is for real?” the agent asked the CI.

  “’Cause he knew things, that’s why. Things about Sheriff Sherman Beckett and his wife, Millie, who got killed ten years ago. It was all over the news, but this fella told me there was something the news didn’t mention. Something that the cops kept out of the papers. He said the killer took Sherman Beckett’s watch. Pulled it right off his dead wrist. And that he took Millie’s necklace. It was a heart-shaped locket and had pictures of her kids in it.”

  It was true. All true. Those items had indeed been missing, though they hadn’t been found on the killer, Theo’s father, Travis. Ivy had always assumed that Travis had dropped them or hidden them somewhere, but how would this man have known that?

  That didn’t help the knot in her stomach, and Ivy had to fight to hang on to what little composure she had left. She had prayed this was all some kind of misunderstanding, that the CI had been wrong, but apparently no such luck. There really was a killer headed to the house who had plans to finish them all off.

  “Did this hired gun say anything else?” the agent pressed. “Anything that would help us figure out who’s paying him to do this?”

  “Nope, but I figure it’s gotta be Travis Canton. Yeah, I know he’s in jail, but something like this could get him out from behind bars.”

  Theo didn’t say anything, but even in the near darkness, she saw his jaw tighten. “I’ve already checked with the prison,” Theo volunteered, “and other than his lawyer, my father hasn’t had any visitors in the past week. Plus, he doesn’t have the funds to hire a hit man.”

  So maybe this was the work of some kind of psycho groupie. There’d been so much interest in the murders, partly because Jodi had also been attacked and left for dead in a shallow grave. And all that interest had attracted some very sick people.

  “I know you gotta tell this to the Becketts,” the CI went on a moment later, “but you oughta be careful when you do it. The fella at the bar said he’d put bugs in the sheriff’s place and his house. So if you say anything to them, sure as hell don’t mention my name. I don’t want that SOB comin’ after me.”

  “That’s the end of the conversation,” Theo told them. “But you can see why I had to come.”

  Yes, she could. Since the CI had been right about the hired killer, maybe he was right about that bug, too. It sickened her to think that someone had been spying on them, listening to their every word. Someone who now wanted to kill them.

  Her brother must have realized that, too, because he cursed and fired off a text. Several seconds later, his phone buzzed. He set it aside and put it on speaker, no doubt to keep his hands free for his gun.

  “Sorry, Gabriel,” the caller immediately said. It was Aiken Colley, one of Gabriel’s ranch hands. “But we lost sight of the guy.”

  That was not what Ivy wanted to hear, and she made a frantic search of every part of the grounds that she could see. No signs of a gunman. No signs of anyone.

  Gabriel cursed. “Where was he when you last saw him?”

  “By the south barn.”

  That wasn’t that far from the house. Worse, there were other outbuildings and fences between the house and that particular barn, and this man could use those to conceal himself so he could get closer.

  “I never had a clean shot of him,” Aiken went on. “The guy was running, and every few seconds, he would duck behind cover. Jake and Teddy are out here with me, and I’ve alerted the other hands.”

  Jake and Teddy were two other hands, and while none of the hands were in law enforcement, they all knew how to handle guns. But apparently this hired killer knew how to dodge those guns.

  “If possible, I want this guy alive,” Theo said.

  Gabriel didn’t disagree with that. Probably because a dead man couldn’t give them answers, but at the moment Ivy cared only about keeping this monster away from Nathan and everyone else in the house.

  “Kill him only if necessary. And be careful,” Gabriel warned the ranch hand.

  “We will. We’ll keep
looking for him until we find him,” Aiken added before he ended the call.

  Ivy got back to keeping watch. Not that she hadn’t been doing that, but she adjusted her position just enough so that she could try to take in more of the yard and the pastures. Still no sign of him, but she could almost feel him closing in on them.

  Who the heck was putting this monster up to this?

  The CI had said it was Travis, and perhaps it was. Maybe he’d somehow gotten the money. But there was also another possibility. One that had been a thorn in her family’s side since Travis had first been arrested.

  “Could your uncle August be behind this?” Ivy asked Theo. “Because August has been adamant that Travis is innocent.”

  August was Travis’s half brother. A hothead. In the past ten years, he’d never turned to violence to free his brother, but August could be getting desperate since Travis had exhausted all his appeals.

  “I haven’t spoken to August since I left Blue River,” Theo answered. “I tried to call him, but he didn’t answer. If he had anything to do with this, I’ll deal with him.”

  Judging from Theo’s tone, that would not be pleasant. Not a surprise. There was no love lost between Jodi and their uncle, and it appeared to be the same for Theo. Of course, that was probably because August was not an easy man to like, and he was always saying that Travis’s “ungrateful kids” weren’t doing enough to help their father.

  Theo’s phone buzzed. “It’s the agent who recorded the conversation with the CI,” Theo relayed to them, but he didn’t mention the guy by name. However, as Gabriel had done, he put the call on speaker. “The gunman’s here,” Theo told the agent right off. “Not in the house, but it appears this is where he’s headed.”

  The agent didn’t jump to answer. It seemed as if he took a moment to process that. “You want me out there?”

  “Not yet. This goon could fire shots at you as you drive up. Plus, I don’t want to send him running.”

  Part of Ivy wanted him to run. To get as far away from Nathan as possible. But Theo was right. If the guy ran, he could possibly just regroup and come back for a second attempt.