breathlessly. “I checked. Then I ran to get you.”
Oh, hell. This wasn’t some kid making a desperate bid for attention. This was real. “You and the kid get into the house and lock yourselves in,” he ordered even as he mentally cursed. As if that would do a lot of good if Jackson Kincaid was on the ranch. He was her brother, for God’s sake. It wasn’t as if she’d view him as a threat to her or her son. And truth be told, Dylan had no reason to think Jackson would hurt them. Still, the man had proven himself to be violent and if he’d killed Josiah...
Rachel started, staring at him with wide brown eyes, pupils dilating. “What— Why?”
“Just to be safe. Call 911. Use the landline. Tell them to get an ambulance here immediately.”
Rachel looked from Dylan to her son, then raised her chin. “Peter, do as he says. Lock all the doors and wait for the ambulance, okay? I’m going to check on Josiah.”
“I can do that—” Dylan began, but Peter was already running into the house.
“Not without me,” she said. She watched the house until Peter had slammed the door behind him, then strode toward Ginger. She put a bare foot into the stirrup and easily swung herself up onto Dylan’s horse, then kicked her feet out of the stirrups. “You coming?” she asked. “Because I’m not leaving you here alone with my kid.”
Dylan struggled with indecision. He wanted to insist he check on the ranch hand by himself, but this was her private property and what reason could he possibly give for thinking there might be something or someone dangerous out there? Not the truth, certainly. Not yet. Not when the most likely explanation was that her ranch hand had had some kind of accident.
When Rachel raised her eyebrows impatiently and leaned forward, he slid his booted foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up behind her. Ginger danced for a few seconds, then settled as he used his knees to nudge her forward. He wrapped an arm around Rachel’s waist and pulled her in tight to his chest. She was stiff but didn’t resist. The quarter horse, her hooves steady despite the added weight, settled into an easy lope.
“So, are you a friend of Aaron’s?” Rachel asked over her shoulder. “Did he send you out to spy on us? Did he tell you about the crazy widow and her bratty kid?” Bitterness edged her words, which came out jumpy and breathless as Ginger continued to cover the uneven terrain.
Not exactly, Dylan thought. The Department of Corrections had told him about her brother and his brazen escape, and research had informed his team about Rachel, the sister whom Jackson Kincaid thought of as his mother, and Rachel’s son. Of course, Dylan didn’t tell Rachel that. Lying to her wasn’t his first choice, but he also didn’t want her clamming up and getting irrational when there was a potential crisis to deal with.
“He just loaned me a horse. We’re not friends. Does Josiah have a history of any sort of heart condition? Stroke?”
“No health issues. He’s older, but healthy. He’s repaired the fence line time after time. I don’t know what could have harmed him.”
Dylan immediately thought of her brother again. “Maybe your son is wrong about him being dead.” In his arms her body loosened fractionally, and she twisted her torso to face forward again. Whether she completely believed him or not didn’t matter—she trusted him enough to help her ranch hand.
“I’m not holding out hope. Peter’s been raised on a ranch. We raise alpacas for wool, so we don’t do a lot of butchering, but he’s seen dead animals. He knows what lifeless eyes look like.”
So did Dylan. Personally and professionally.
Professionally? The duty of a marshal was to bring in fugitives whether they claimed to be innocent or not. It wasn’t his job to investigate their crimes, nor to believe them or not believe them—that was for the cops, the courts and the jury system to decide. Fugitives didn’t see it that way. They wanted their freedom. Sometimes they fought to keep it
Sometimes they died.
Personally...
He fought to erase the dead eyes staring dully at him in his mind’s eye, but he couldn’t.
Dead eyes all looked the same: unblinking and missing life’s sheen. But the first set of dead eyes he’d ever seen—his mother’s—haunted him every day of his life, reminding him of what could happen to a person who refused to accept the bad in others before it was too late.
“So your son’s name is Peter. And you are?”
“Rachel. We’re almost there,” she said. “Down the gulley to the right. Then the spring’s a few hundred yards south.”
He knew how to get to the spring already but kept silent, and instead neck-reined Ginger in the direction Rachel had given. The horse headed downhill and Rachel leaned back to compensate for her weight on the horse’s shoulders. Her still-wet hair brushed his face and he breathed in the scent. Soft and floral, with a hint of freshness. Ginger stumbled and Dylan tightened his grip on Rachel, appreciating the soft weight of her breasts on his forearm. Get a grip, he mentally chided himself. Yeah, Rachel was one hot woman, but she was also the sister of the fugitive he was hunting, and they were on the way to find out if her ranch hand still lived. Appreciating her sweet smell or the luscious weight of her breasts was the last thing he should be doing.
He reminded himself it had been three long months since he’d bedded a woman. Before that, he’d been in a long-term relationship with Ashley, a deputy D.A. back in San Francisco. They’d dated for several years and she’d been pressuring him for more. She’d wanted to move in together. Wanted to move toward marriage. He hadn’t been able to commit. He’d cared about her. Appreciated her in bed and out. But he’d known she wasn’t the one, just as the handful of women he’d dated before her hadn’t been the one. The ones he’d dated after her?
They’d been beautiful. Smart. Urban chic. But they’d bored him. Body, mind and soul. It had been far easier to immerse himself in work. Now there was Rachel Kincaid. Stimulating him in so many different ways and distracting him from his duty. It not only surprised him. It was beginning to piss him off.
Dylan grabbed his binoculars and scanned the surrounding area. It looked clear, but he was still conscious of the presence of his firearm inside his boot. Knew it would take mere seconds to draw his weapon if he needed it.
“There!” Rachel exclaimed, pointing to a spot of blue, deep down among the green rushes that surrounded a bubbling spring. She grabbed the reins herself and pulled Ginger to a halt.
Dylan swung himself off the horse, then helped Rachel to her feet. She stumbled and he caught her—their faces inches from each other. Her eyebrows swung together in a V before she pulled away.
“Josiah?” she called out, pushing through the rushes, gray mud sucking at her bare feet.
She came to a halt next to the bright spot of blue they’d seen, and Dylan came up behind her. When she sank to her knees in front of the crumpled figure, Dylan knew Peter had been right.
The man was dead.
* * *
On her knees, Rachel swallowed against the heave in her stomach. Josiah lay at an odd angle, a few yards from where the spring water bubbled to the surface. Coagulated blood stained his face, no doubt from the severe wound on the side of his forehead. Next to his head, a large jagged rock protruded from the ground. He must have slipped. Hit his head.
She hated that Peter had seen Josiah’s open eyes, so devoid of life. Was that what Jax saw when the school bus had dropped him off and he’d come home to find their parents, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning? She reached a hand out to close his eyes but was stopped by a firm grip on her elbow.
“Don’t touch him,” Dylan growled.
For a second, the timbre of his voice and the weight of his touch made fear shoot through her. This was a stranger, a stranger who’d appeared as suddenly as Josiah had been hurt. Killed. Dylan Rooney claimed he’d