Dropping the Hammer Read online

  “She understood, all right. We both understand. You’ve already decided I’m guilty.” He placed his briefcase on the kitchen table, unlatching but not opening it.

  Rachel met his gaze and was instantly struck with that same aura of evil she’d first felt at the law firm. Anxiety dried her lips and made her hands clammy.

  “I decided to do some explaining myself,” Hayden said.

  “What do you want to explain?”

  “How it was with me and Louann. Louann was no innocent young coed. She liked sex and she liked it dirty. Handcuffs, whips, hot candle wax. You know what I’m talking about.?”

  Cold sweat broke out on Rachel’s forehead and between her breasts. Her stomach churned.

  “I’m not complaining,” Hayden said. “I gave her all the pain she wanted, but that wasn’t good enough. She found someone else, a nice guy, she said, who treated her like a lady. She didn’t want to see me anymore.”

  She forced a semi-calm to her voice. “That must have upset you.”

  “Not much. Louann wasn’t that great in bed. Wasn’t that pretty, either. What pissed me off was the way she started spreading all kinds of lies about me around campus. Saying I was a control freak, that I was a psycho with a temper.”

  “If those were lies, I can see why they made you angry.” She was playing along with him now. If he kept this up, he just might confess.

  “I don’t need that trash talk about me. I’m the star of the football team. I’m pro football material.”

  Rachel eased backward, closer to the counter that held the knife block—just in case this turned really ugly. “Is that why you killed her?”

  “I warned her. She didn’t listen. But you should have heard how she screamed when I made that first slash with the jagged-edged hunting knife. Guess she didn’t want to be gutted.”

  Rachel reached for the longest, sharpest knife. She yanked it from the block and pointed it at Hayden. “Get out. Get out now.”

  “Or you’ll do what, kill me? I don’t think so.”

  But he turned and started walking away. Her heart was in her throat. Her insides were tied into knots. Despite the fear, she knew she’d kill him if she had to, but she didn’t want to.

  In a split second, he turned back toward her, grabbed something from his briefcase and tackled her to the floor.

  He straddled her, pinning her wrists to the floor, rendering her knife useless. She tried to force him off her, but he was incredibly strong. She screamed, praying one of the hands would be near enough to hear her.

  No one came.

  Hayden released one wrist. She slammed a fist into his face and then tried to jam her fingers into his eyes. She was fighting for her life. For her future. For the chance to be with Luke Dawkins.

  That was when she saw the ropes dangling from Hayden’s hand. The briefcase was open. Apparently he’d stored his ropes and who knew what else in there.

  He slammed a fist into her stomach. She doubled over in pain. He rolled her to her stomach like a rag doll while she was struggling to breathe.

  She felt a yank and her wrists being bound behind her back. Her skin burned as the rope tightened.

  “You’ll never get away with this, Hayden Covey. Attacking me is like hammering another nail in your own coffin. You’ll never escape jail now.”

  “That’s not exactly true. They can’t tie me to this. I have an alibi. I’m with my football friends. They’ll back me, same as always. Besides, you have a madman after you. It will just look like he found you.”

  “Roy Sales is dead.”

  “Shut up, you lying bitch.”

  “I’m not lying. He was killed a few hours ago by the sheriff.”

  “I don’t believe you. I did my homework. I’m setting you on fire, just the way he would have. You could say I’m just helping him out.”

  Rachel rolled and twisted, fighting to break free as he tied the rough-hewn rope around her ankles. After that he tied the rope to the leg of the heavy wooden table with her fighting him all the way.

  He flipped her over, forcing her to watch as he slowly and methodically took a jar from his briefcase. He opened it and poured a ring of gasoline around her. “Are you ready for some fun, lawyer babe?”

  Fear engulfed her. He hadn’t even lit a match, but she could already smell the smoke and feel the flames.

  She was in hell all over again, but this time Roy Sales was not the ruling demon.

  * * *

  LUKE WAS FIVE miles down the road but still bothered by the fact that his gate had been left open. Cowboys always closed the gate behind them. It was drilled into their minds from the time they were big enough to hop out of the truck and open the gate.

  His hired hands had all arrived after the security team left. Who else was on his ranch and why?

  He called Rachel. No answer.

  Roy Sales was dead. There was no reason to expect that someone else would cause trouble. It likely had something to do with Roy Sales and the evil embedded in him, but Luke couldn’t just blow off the open gate.

  He had this unwavering hunch that something might be wrong.

  He made a U-turn on the narrow road and headed back toward the ranch.

  He tried calling Rachel again.

  Still no answer. He put the pedal to the metal and practically flew the rest of the way home.

  The house looked just as he’d left it. He jumped from his truck and raced up the steps. The front door was ajar even though the temperature was still in the low forties this morning.

  The front of the house was empty. He walked back to the kitchen and into hell.

  Hayden Covey was standing over Rachel, taunting her with a large, unlit fireplace match, so absorbed in what he was doing that he apparently hadn’t heard Luke come in.

  Luke pulled his pistol. “Drop that match or I will splatter your brains all over the wall.”

  Hayden turned toward Luke and went white. The hand that was holding the match began to shake.

  Luke expected Hayden to beg for his life. Instead he lit the match. His whole body began to tremble. He was running scared, but he held Rachel’s life in his hands.

  Luke had been on more dangerous missions in the marines than he could bear to remember. He’d never been truly afraid, never been this scared in all his life.

  If Hayden pulled the trigger, the match would still fall into the gasoline. Luke would have seconds to save her from the burst of flames.

  He could do it. He’d have to do it.

  He cocked his gun.

  Hayden heard it and turned. He jumped up and made a run for the back door, tossing the lit match behind him.

  Luke dived into the gasoline in a split second, extinguishing the match before it ignited the fuel and set them all on fire.

  Hayden slipped in the liquid. He fell forward, his head bouncing off the edge of the table, knocking him out cold.

  Wary, Luke held the gun on him with one hand and pulled a knife from his pocket with the other. He cut the ropes from Rachel’s wrists and ankles and the one that bound her to the kitchen table.

  “Are you hurt?” Luke asked.

  “No. I don’t think so unless my heart beats itself out of my chest.”

  Luke wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, the gun in his right hand still pointed at Hayden.

  Luke tried to speak. There were so many things he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get them out. So he did the next best thing. He held Rachel like he’d never let her go.

  She lifted her head from Luke’s shoulder. “Is Hayden dead?”

  “Nope,” Luke said. “He’s breathing, but he hadn’t intended for you to be.”

  “He definitely meant to kill me. He confessed to murdering Louann before he spread the gasoline.”

  “Thank God. He left the gate open.”
<
br />   “What?”

  “I’ll fill you in later,” he said. “I think we should call the sheriff now. Our patient is starting to squirm.”

  “I’ll make the call,” she said.

  Reluctantly, Luke finally let her go. He’d almost lost her. He couldn’t imagine a horror worse than that.

  The sheriff and two deputies were there in under fifteen minutes. One of the deputies left in an ambulance with Hayden.

  By the time the sheriff and his other deputy had done their bit and left, Luke had finally decided what he had to do before he lost his courage.

  His dad had never found the right words and he’d admittedly regretted that all his life. Luke wasn’t taking that chance, but he didn’t know what he’d do if Rachel’s answer was no.

  He opened his arms and Rachel stepped inside them. “I love you, Rachel. It’s probably not the right time or place, but I gotta ask or go crazy. Would you ever consider marrying a cowboy?”

  “Absolutely not. Unless that cowboy is you.”

  “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “The answer is yes. I’ll marry you, Luke Dawkins. I love you with all my heart. I don’t know how it happened so fast. I only know that it did.”

  He kissed her, and the promise of forever didn’t frighten her at all.

  She’d best go shopping for some Western boots. She was home to stay.

  * * * * *

  SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM

  Tucker Cahill returns to Gilt Edge, Montana, with no choice but to face down his haunted past when a woman’s skeletal remains are found near his family’s ranch—but he couldn’t have prepared for a young woman seeking vengeance and finding much more.

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  HERO’S RETURN,

  A CAHILL RANCH NOVEL

  from New York Times bestselling author

  B.J. Daniels!

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  Hero’s Return

  by B.J. Daniels

  Skeletal Remains Found in Creek

  The skeletal remains of a woman believed to be in her late teens or early twenties were discovered in Miner’s Creek outside of Gilt Edge, Montana, yesterday. Local coroner Sonny Bates estimated that the remains had been in the creek for somewhere around twenty years.

  Sheriff Flint Cahill is looking into missing-persons cases from that time in the hopes of identifying the victim. If anyone has any information, they are encouraged to call the Gilt Edge Sheriff’s Department.

  “NO, MRS. KERN, I can assure you that the bones that were found in the creek are not those of your nephew Billy,” Sheriff Flint Cahill said into the phone at his desk. “I saw Billy last week at the casino. He was alive and well... No, it takes longer than a week for a body to decompose to nothing but bones. Also, the skeletal remains that were found were a young woman’s... Yes, Coroner Sonny Bates can tell the difference.”

  He looked up as the door opened and his sister, Lillie, stepped into his office. From the scowl on her face, he didn’t have to ask what kind of mood she was in. He’d been expecting her, given that he had their father locked up in one of the cells.

  “Mrs. Kern, I have to go. I’m sorry Billy hasn’t called you, but I’m sure he’s fine.” He hung up with a sigh. “Dad’s in the back sleeping it off. Before he passed out, he mumbled about getting back to the mountains.”

  A very pregnant Lillie nodded but said nothing. Pregnancy had made his sister even prettier. Her long dark hair framed a face that could only be called adorable. This morning, though, he saw something in her gray eyes that worried him.

  He waited for her to tie into him, knowing how she felt about him arresting their father for being drunk and disorderly. This wasn’t their first rodeo. And like always, it was Lillie who came to bail Ely out—not his bachelor brothers Hawk and Cyrus, who wanted to avoid one of Flint’s lectures.

  He’d been telling his siblings that they needed to do something about their father. But no one wanted to face the day when their aging dad couldn’t continue to spend most of his life in the mountains gold panning and trapping—let alone get a snoot full of booze every time he finally hit town again.

  “I’ll go get him,” Flint said, lumbering to his feet. Since he’d gotten the call about the bones being found at the creek, he hadn’t had but a few hours’ sleep. All morning, the phone had been ringing off the hook. Not with leads on the identity of the skeletal remains—just residents either being nosy or worried there was a killer on the loose.

  “Before you get Dad...” Lillie seemed to hesitate, which wasn’t like her. She normally spoke her mind without any encouragement at all.

  He braced himself.

  “A package came for Tuck.”

  That was the last thing Flint had expected out of her mouth. “To the saloon?”

  “To the ranch. No return address.”

  Flint felt his heart begin to pound harder. It was the first news of their older brother Tucker since he’d left home right after high school. Being the second oldest, Flint had been closer to Tucker than with his younger brothers. For years, he’d feared him dead. When Tuck had left like that, Flint had suspected his brother was in some kind of trouble. He’d been sure of it. But had it been something bad enough that Tucker hadn’t felt he could come to Flint for help?

  “Did you open the package?” he asked.

  Lillie shook her head. “Hawk and Cyrus thought about it but then called me.”

  He tried to hide his irritation that one of them had called their sister instead of him, the darned sheriff. His brothers had taken over the family ranch and were the only ones still living on the property, so it wasn’t a surprise that they would have received the package. Which meant that whoever had sent it either didn’t know that Tucker no longer lived there or they thought he was coming back for some reason.

  Because Tucker was on his way home? Maybe he’d sent the package and there was nothing to worry about.

  Unfortunately, a package after all this time didn’t necessarily bode well. At least not to Flint, who came by his suspicious nature naturally as a lawman. He feared it might be Tucker’s last effects.

  “I hope you didn’t open it.”

  Lillie shook her head. “You think this means he’s coming home?” She sounded so hopeful it made his heart ache. He and Tucker had been close in more ways than age. Or at least he’d thought so. But something had been going on with his brother his senior year in high school and Flint had no idea what it was
. Or if trouble was still dogging his brother.

  For months after Tucker left, Flint had waited for him to return. He’d been so sure that whatever the trouble was, it was temporary. But after all these years, he’d given up any hope. He’d feared he would never see his brother again.

  “Tell them not to open it. I’ll stop by the ranch and check it out.”

  Lillie met his gaze. “It’s out in my SUV. I brought it with me.”

  Flint swore under his breath. What if it had a bomb in it? He knew that was overly dramatic, but still, knowing his sister... There wasn’t a birthday or Christmas present that she hadn’t shaken the life out of as she’d tried to figure out what was inside it. “Is your truck open?” She nodded. “Wait here.”

  He stepped out into the bright spring day. Gilt Edge sat in a saddle surrounded by four mountain ranges still tipped with snow. Picturesque, tourists came here to fish its blue-ribbon trout stream. But winters were long and a town of any size was a long way off.

  Sitting in the middle of Montana, Gilt Edge also had something that most tourists didn’t see. It was surrounded by underground missile silos. The one on the Cahill Ranch was renown because that was where their father swore he’d seen a UFO not only land, but also that he’d been forced on board back in 1967. Which had made their father the local crackpot.

  Flint took a deep breath, telling himself to relax. His life was going well. He was married to the love of his life. But still, he felt a foreboding that he couldn’t shake off. A package for Tucker after all these years?

  The air this early in the morning was still cold, but there was a scent to it that promised spring wasn’t that far off. He loved spring and summers here and had been looking forward to picnics, trail rides and finishing the yard around the house he and Maggie were building.

  He realized that he’d been on edge since he’d gotten the call about the human bones found in the creek. Now he could admit it. He’d felt as if he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. And now this, he thought as he stepped to his sister’s SUV.