Cowboy Justice

Book 2: Catcher Creek

by Melissa Cutler

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Western Romance

Synopsis

"Melissa Cutler is a bright new voice in contemporary romance." -- New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde Transforming their parents' rundown ranch in Catcher Creek, New Mexico, into a tourist destination is the toughest challenge the three Sorentino sisters ever faced. But now one of them has another fight on her hands--to keep from falling for the sexy town sheriff--again. . . Rachel Sorentino has spent her whole life protecting her siblings from trouble--only to run headlong into it herself. Her first regret about shooting at the vandals targeting her family ranch is that her aim wasn't better. Her second is that when bullets started flying, it was Sheriff Vaughn Cooper's number she dialed. Vaughn is the mistake she keeps on making, a cowboy lawman who cuts through Rachel's surface bravado to the vulnerability no one else sees. And no matter how inconvenient their attraction--for his career, her tangled case, and his already battered heart--there's no denying what feels so irresistibly right. . . ... COWBOY JUSTICE is Book 2 in the Catcher Creek Cowboys series Book 1 - The Trouble with Cowboys (October 2012) Book 2 - Cowboy Justice (October 2013) Book 3 - How to Rope a Real Man (May 2014) Praise for Melissa Cutler's The Trouble With Cowboys "One hot romance from start to finish." --Carolyn Brown"Cutler grabs readers from the first page. . .one fun, passionate romp." -- RT Book Reviews, 4 Stars"Sexy, savvy stuff!" -Susan Andersen

Release date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

The vandals brought beer. A bold move for trespassers. Then again, it was one in the afternoon, so either these punks carried the delusion they were above the law, or they set a new standard of stupidity from the other idiots who’d felt the call of duty to send a message to Rachel Sorentino.

Rachel watched through the zoom lens of her camera from the narrow canyon floor, hidden from view by a smoke tree, as one of four young men shook a can of spray paint. Not too difficult to imagine what he’d write on the boulder he and his buddies were grouped around. Catcher Creek’s small, but zealous, group protesting her family’s new business weren’t all that creative, she’d discovered. Probably involved the word bitch and maybe the classic LEAVE TOWN OR ELSE. She wondered if these guys were better spellers than the rest.

Lincoln, her horse, sidestepped restlessly. She understood his discomfort. Even in the shade as she and Lincoln were, there was no escape from the weather. The surrounding walls of soil radiated the kind of dry, baking heat that pricked at the skin like needles and dried noses to the point of bleeding. Didn’t help that this particular May was setting heat records all across New Mexico.

Not for the first time, she considered calling the sheriff’s department, but that presented its own mess of trouble. Besides, this far off the beaten path there was no way a deputy would arrive in time to do any good. And she refused to consider the ramifications of Vaughn answering the dispatch call. Heaven help her if it came to that.

Like always, Rachel had no one to rely on but herself. Well, not exactly. She had Lincoln, her closest companion for over a decade. And she could always rely on the interminability of the ranch’s problems, which hadn’t given her a day of peace in all her thirty-two years of life. Yeah, she could definitely count on the presence of problems pulling at her—livestock problems, sister problems, money problems. The list went on forever.

She wiggled her hand into her jeans pocket and grabbed an antacid from the roll. As it dissolved on her tongue, she lifted the camera from where it hung around her neck and snapped a string of photographs, zooming in on the face of the vandal holding the paint. He’d written the B and the I in straight block letters on the boulder’s flat face. She swung the camera right and snapped pictures of the truck. It was angled so she didn’t have a clear visual of the license plate, but she could wait to capture that image while they were fleeing the sound of her gunshot.

The revolver in her saddlebag took .38s. She flipped the cylinder open and loaded ammo into two chambers.

Lincoln’s restless sidestep grew anxious. He wasn’t a fan of the gun, not the noise or the recoil or the bitter odor of gunpowder. But he was getting more accustomed to it since the grand opening of Heritage Farm, with its influx of tourists and media attention, had unleashed Catcher Creek residents’ underlying hostility toward her family and turned the farm into a vandal magnet.

Rachel’s first tip-off about the controversy was a low-key grumbling and grousing overheard in the shops and churches on Main Street, as reported by her youngest sister, Jenna, whose number-one hobby in life was keeping her finger on the pulse of the town’s rampant gossip. The low grumblings evolved into a petition to add “anti dude-ranch legislation,” as the petition authors dubbed it, to the next county ballot. It wasn’t long after the petition took to circulating that the first graffiti appeared on the ranch, scrawled on the side of one of Heritage Farm’s brand-new oil derricks.

Four months later, the protestors were still at it, and Rachel and her sisters were as determined as ever to make Heritage Farm a success.

She snapped the cylinder of her revolver in place, then spent a few minutes stroking Lincoln’s neck and whispering words of reassurance into his ear. She offered him a Fig Newton, his favorite treat. He snatched it from her hand, his tension easing as he chewed.

After a few more words of praise and affection into Lincoln’s ear, she straightened in the saddle and winced. The ulcer was bad today. She could actually feel it blazing a hole through her gut. She took the time to land another antacid on her tongue before raising the gun toward the sky, careful to aim to the left of the mesa so there’d be no chance of the vandals being hit by a stray bullet. She was a good shot, and the men probably stood at too great a distance for her to hit, but she respected the firearm enough to understand its inherent unpredictability.

The word BITCH had been neatly scrawled on the boulder, spelled right and everything. Impressive. She squeezed the trigger and braced for the deafening echo through the canyon.

Boom.

Her ears throbbed. The world went mute. All she could hear was the thud of her pulse in her ears and a high-pitched ringing. One of these times, she’d have to remember ear plugs. She kept her gaze on the vandals, who’d stopped painting and joking to scan the valley, searching for the source. They were too far away for her to gauge their facial expressions, but they weren’t running scared, that was for sure.

She fired again.

This time, she kept her eyes closed for a beat as the recoil swept through her system. The violence in the sound and energy of the gun hurt her whole body, from her teeth to her toes. Lincoln reared. She tugged the reins, asserting her control, and lowered the revolver. The vandals were running to the truck now. Excellent.

Setting the gun in her lap, she lifted the camera. Time for the money shot.

But as fast as they leapt into the truck cab and bed, they were out again, their hands filled with rifles.

“Oh, shit.” Damaged as her hearing was, her words were muffled and far away.

She dropped the camera to swing around her neck and took up the revolver again. The sweat on her palms interfered with her grip. She held it tight against her thigh as she dug for more rounds.

The turn of events had her reeling. Why was she loading rounds instead of watching the criminals’ truck haul ass off her property in a cloud of smoke, like the other trespassers she’d caught had done? Who the hell were these guys?

She had no idea, but whoever they were, they weren’t scared of her. Shooing them away with two wide shots hadn’t worked. Grazing one in the leg might, but she’d have to inch closer to stand a chance of making a hit. The revolver wasn’t designed for distance shots, nor did she have much practice with target shooting. Anyhow, inching closer would leave Lincoln vulnerable and alone. He might get scared and hurt himself trying to flee, even if she tied him up.

So she stayed put as the men lined up along the edge of the mesa, scanning the valley below. Bits of red earth crumbled at their feet, rolling down the steep slope like a mini-avalanche.

Rachel held her breath.

With a whoop, the lanky man with the short, dark hair fired in her general direction.

The sound rattled her to the bone. Lincoln tried to spin around. He wanted to run away. That made two of them. But if they turned and made a break for it, she’d give the shooters a clear shot once they’d climbed out of the canyon. Shrouded by shade and the smoke tree, her best bet was to stay still and convince Lincoln to do the same.

She tucked the revolver under her arm and offered him another Fig Newton. He refused to be pacified. She tossed the treat on the ground, grabbed her camera, and took a quick series of photographs of the men. She watched through the lens as one of them shouted something she couldn’t hear over the ringing in her ears. Whatever he said, all four rifles swung toward the canyon she hid in.

She dropped the camera and grabbed the revolver, for all the good that would do. If she fired a round now, they’d know exactly where she was.

All she could think was that this couldn’t be happening. She was on her own property, for shit’s sake. Right now, though, she wondered if she’d make it out of the valley alive.

One of the men let out a whooping cry.

Gunfire rained over her. Shot after shot. Puffs of dirt exploded off the canyon walls. She ducked, holding her torso flush against Lincoln’s mane. Time to take the chance and run. The idea scared her out of her mind, but she had to get Lincoln out of the line of fire. She had to save them both.

She stuffed the revolver in her waistband and gripped the reins with both hands. A bullet whizzed into the smoke tree, cracking a limb and sending splinters flying at Lincoln and Rachel.

Lincoln reared all the way up, his hooves clawing the air. Even over her muffled hearing, she registered his shriek of pain. Another shot sounded, too fast for Rachel to react, and Lincoln fell sideways. She vaulted from the saddle and face-planted in the sand.

The gunfire stopped.

A searing pain spread from her upper arm into her shoulder, but she didn’t have time to wonder about it. She scrambled to her knees, spitting sand, and scanned the mesa for the shooters. They’d left the edge and were standing at their truck, leaning against the side of the bed, cool as could be. Two of them were laughing. Another was reloading his rifle’s clip. The lanky, dark-haired man took a match to the glass pipe hanging from his lips. He took a couple puffs and passed it on.

Assured that she wasn’t in immediate danger, she dropped to her knees. Lincoln lay on his side, his front legs pawing the ground. His breath came in shallow gasps. A bullet had pierced his chest. His hair was stained a slick, shiny red.

“No, no, no,” she breathed, smoothing her hands over his neck and cheek. Her mind whirred so loud it felt like a silent scream on the inside of her skull. “Oh, Lincoln, what have they done to you?”

His saucer eyes watched her check his limbs for other injuries. His left hind leg jutted from under his body at an odd angle. Broken. The moment was too unreal to process. Her horse, her best friend, lay before her, dying.

A dry, angry sob broke free from her throat.

She’d put animals down before—it came with the job—but never her own steed. Never a friend. But she couldn’t let him suffer, and no matter how the next few minutes unfolded, Lincoln had no hope for survival. Not here, tucked into a deep canyon, miles away from anything, bleeding from the chest, and with a broken leg.

She pressed her forehead to Lincoln’s cheek and cried. Wails of longing and pain. Sounds so tortured, they shocked even her. Then Lincoln made a noise that reminded her that whatever misery she felt, his pain was worse by far.

Sniffing, she rose to her knees. Her spine was weak, barely able to hold her body upright. A glance at the mesa told her the men hadn’t left. They were all taking hits of the pipe now. Even so, they kept their rifles close at hand, either slung across their shoulders or tucked under their arms.

Her focus returned to Lincoln. At the sight of his prone body and pained expression, her face crumpled into another silent sob as she prepared to do the unthinkable. The men on the mesa would hear her shot. Odds were they’d open fire at her again, but it was a risk she’d willingly assume. Lincoln had suffered too much already.

With her hands shaking so hard the cylinder rattled against the gun frame, she brought the revolver to Lincoln’s ear. Bile rose in her throat. She pushed her tongue to the back of her mouth like a cork and locked her jaw closed. Then she pulled the trigger and let the recoil push her. The gun fell away as she heaved the contents of her stomach into the sand.

Another explosion of gunfire sounded from the mesa, but the only sound in Rachel’s head was a howl of unconditional rage. It burned in her chest worse than the ulcer, worse than grief. How dare some group of young punks trespass on her property, defile her land, and shoot her horse? How dare they laugh and smoke dope like they weren’t the cause of one of the worst moments of Rachel’s life? Standing on a mesa in plain view like they were above retribution. They didn’t care that somewhere in the valley, someone with a gun was seeing red. Maybe they planned to kill her too. Maybe they’d go after her sisters next.

The edges of her vision dimmed as a spike of adrenaline sent her up to her knees.

She pushed against the ground with her hands. A slice of pain rocketed from her left arm, straight to her spine, but she was hard-pressed to care. Whatever the damage, her arm was still functional, which was all that mattered.

With her gaze averted from Lincoln’s face, she reached for her saddlebag. Into her pocket, she stuffed a handful of rounds. Next out of the bag was her cell phone. She got service in this valley, but it was sketchy at best. Nevertheless, she got a dial tone this time, and punched Vaughn’s number from memory, having deleted it from the phone’s address book more than a year ago. He picked up on the second ring.

“Rachel?”

She flinched at the sound of her name on his lips. That was a whole other kind of pain she didn’t have time for now.

“I’m about to kill some men, Vaughn. You better get to Parillas Valley fast, and bring an ambulance.”

Vaughn’s heart had dropped to his knees when he saw the number of the incoming call. Rachel. This marked the first time he’d seen her number on his phone in sixteen months and twelve days. They’d crashed into each other’s worlds since then, but it was never planned, and never involved much talking.

He answered with his eyes closed, his mind racing to come up with a possible reason for her call, but he couldn’t think of a single one.

The sound of her voice stripped him raw. Hell, everything about Rachel stripped him raw, but this was different. Something was seriously wrong, and it wasn’t only her gravely spoken words that told the story. He heard the agony and fury in her tone, but despite all that, he refused to believe she’d kill anyone. She wasn’t made like that.

Still, he radioed for an ambulance and called Wesley Stratis off his patrol to follow him over the twisted dirt road that dipped near the now-dry Catcher Creek before disappearing into the rolling hills and canyons of Sorentino Farm.

He knew these roads better than he’d ever admit aloud. Parillas Valley in particular was scarred into his consciousness. So much so that the land came to him in dreams, the canyons sculpted by flash floods in the spring, the sheer vertical face of the mesa exploding from the valley, the single shade tree at the base of the mesa.

His eyes flashed to his glove compartment, but instead of reaching for the cigarettes he craved, he wrung the steering wheel and shoved the gas pedal to the floor. Behind him, Stratis’s patrol car and the ambulance worked to stay close, kicking up enough dust to block the sky from sight in his rearview mirror.

Rachel hadn’t ended the call, so Vaughn set his phone on speaker and tossed it on the passenger seat, but he heard nothing except faint rumbles that could’ve been anything from a car starting to a low-flying airplane. Then, for the last twenty minutes it took to make the drive deep into the heart of the desert, miles from any vestiges of civilization, the phone was completely silent.

The first thing he saw when he made a left turn around a foothill that opened into Parillas Valley was the body of a man laying facedown in the dirt. He muttered a curse and scanned the desolate countryside for Rachel. He didn’t see her, but identified a second man sitting against the mesa, using the wall of dirt as a backrest.

“Where are you, Rachel?” He ducked his head, squinting into the glare of the sun on his windshield.

At last he spotted her under the shade tree, approximately ten yards from the body in the dirt. She was upright, which most likely meant she was alive, but he couldn’t tell if she was injured. All he knew was, she didn’t rise or move in any obvious way, despite his convoy’s dusty, noisy approach. That alone would’ve been enough to scare him shitless if he hadn’t been at that breaking point already.

He picked up his radio and requested a second ambulance, then called Deputy Reyes to meet them at the scene.

What he needed to do was lapse into cop mode, to get into that zone of calm detachment that allowed him to do his job right and keep himself, his deputy, and the paramedics safe. He needed to unplug the wire that connected his brain to his heart. But this was Rachel he was dealing with, and he’d already proven over and over that with her, such a disconnect was impossible.

Still, the cop inside him never completely turned off. The minute he hit the brakes, he drew his firearm. He stood behind his open car door, assessing, as the odor of gunpowder smacked him in the face. Whatever happened here hadn’t been fast or clean. Whatever happened had been warfare.

He scanned the surroundings for danger—the glint of metal from a concealed firearm, a lurking perpetrator, any reason he or his crew shouldn’t rush forward to aid the victims. Today, though, the only firearm at the scene that he could see besides his and his deputy’s belonged to Rachel.

She stared straight ahead without acknowledging him, her arms wrapped around her knees, her right hand curled around a revolver. Her hair was a disheveled mess, her face a smear of browns. Tears snaked a path down her cheeks through the grime. Blood soaked her left shirt sleeve and chest.

It was her blood that got Vaughn’s legs working.

“Damn it, your arm! Were you shot?” He dropped to his knees at her side. When he eased the gun from her fingers, she turned her bloodshot, dirt-rimmed eyes on him. He flipped the revolver’s cylinder open and found six empty casings. A rush of acid pooled in his mouth. Dear God, what has she done?

“They hurt Lincoln.” Her voice was weak, hoarse as though from screaming.

Looking at the dull hopelessness on her face, he was overcome by the impulse to snatch her up in his arms and run away to some hidden place where he could lose his cool like he wanted to, without anyone witnessing the spectacle.

Biting his lip, he looked over his shoulder. The man in the dirt lay unmoving as the paramedics worked on him, his shirt crusted with drying blood. Stratis stood over the man leaning against the mesa, who looked to be in his early twenties. He whimpered, and Vaughn couldn’t fault him for it—his right thigh was a bloody mess.

Vaughn wrapped Rachel’s revolver in the handkerchief he kept in his pocket for such a use and set it on the ground. “These men, they shot Lincoln?”

His fingers flew to her injured arm. She started to answer, but when he pushed her sleeve up, it stuck to the drying blood and she hissed through her teeth. Despite her obvious pain, she held still and allowed him to evaluate the damage. A bullet had grazed her arm near her shoulder, cutting an angry path through her skin and muscle. Dirt and pebbles compromised the area. She needed the wound cleaned and her shock symptoms and dehydration addressed immediately.

Another look over his shoulder told him the paramedics were too busy to see to her relatively minor injuries. They had the man on the ground rolled over and fitted with an oxygen mask, and were in the process of transferring him to a stretcher. The second ambulance probably wouldn’t arrive for another half hour. Time Rachel couldn’t afford, if there was any alternative.

Vaughn could have her to the hospital in Tucumcari in forty-five minutes if they left right now. But he was the sheriff, the boss; this was his game. He should direct Stratis to take her. Any other case, he would’ve had no uncertainty over his need to stay on the scene. But there was a huge part of him that still burned with the need to be Rachel’s protector, and he knew it would kill him to stuff her in another man’s car and watch them drive away.

Then again, if Rachel shot those men, there would be an investigation. Legally, ethically, he’d need to recuse himself should it come to that. In that case, he should probably appoint Stratis to run lead on the case right off the bat.

Fuck.

Take a breath, Vaughn.

What was happening now, his hesitation, that was the crux of his problem—Rachel short-circuited his intuition. Every time he got inside her orbit, he started second-guessing himself. More than anything, he hated that about their relationship. Or lack of relationship, as it was.

He peeled a sticky strand of hair from her wound. “Where’s Lincoln now?”

She shuddered. “In the canyon. Dead.”

His heart constricted. She loved that horse. “They killed him?”

Her tongue moved over the roof of her open mouth. “I’m thirsty.”

Damn, she needed medical attention in a bad way. “I know. I’m going to get you water in a sec. Did those two men kill Lincoln?”

“Four men.”

Vaughn reeled. Four?

Rachel continued. “But it wasn’t them who killed Lincoln. It was me.”

Vaughn got his face near hers, set his eyes right in front of her, and took her shoulders in his hands, careful to steer clear of her injury. “Rachel, listen to me. We only found two men. Where are the other two?”

Her gaze drifted past him. “They left. In the truck.”

He followed her line of sight to the top of the mesa. When he saw what she was looking at, he rose to his feet, his jaw so tight his teeth ached.

Fourteen years in law enforcement had trained him not to rush forward, but to listen and watch, to pause and take in a crime scene all at once. Like a photograph that captured body positions and facial expressions, evidence scattered around the scene, the nuances a civilian’s eye would miss. Today, though, he’d missed the writing on the boulder. Another testament to how Rachel messed with his self-control.

In block letters was a message that left him stone-cold. BITCH WE WARNED YOU—NOW YOU DIE.

So much for his job as sheriff. The need to protect Rachel blazed inside him, hot and dangerous, leaving no room for logic. “I’m getting you out of here.” He squatted and draped her right arm across his shoulders. “Hold tight.”

Her fingers squeezed him, but her grip was negligible at best. Not a good sign. He straightened his legs gradually, giving her body time to adjust to the movement. As soon as they were both standing, he shifted his hold and lifted her into his arms. She buried her face in his neck as he walked, and it should’ve felt perfect, being so close to her, but he was too disturbed by the message on the boulder to think past his wild, illogical need to flee with her. Whoever shot her and hurt her horse, they were going to pay. Every last one of them.

When they reached his car, he set her on her feet, opened the door, and helped her in. He unscrewed the lid from a fresh bottle of water and handed it to her. It slipped through her fingers. Gnashing his teeth, he held the bottle to her lips and dribbled water onto her tongue. He stroked her hair away from her face as she drank, then set the bottle in her lap and jogged toward the mesa to touch base with Stratis.

“Talk to me,” he prompted his undersheriff of three years.

Stratis pushed the brim of his hat up with his finger. “We got a problem.”

“Got that right. What’s the status of the injured men?”

“Nonfatal gunshot wounds, both of them. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Vaughn scanned the ground. “Did you locate their firearms?”

“No, not yet, but—”

“Rachel said there were four men, and two of them took off in a truck. Probably took the firearms with them. I radioed Reyes. He should be here soon, along with another ambulance for the second man. Have you gotten names out of them yet?”

Stratis leveled his gaze at Vaughn. “That’s the problem I’m talking about. Man with the leg wound is Jimmy de Luca.”

Name didn’t ring a bell. “And the other?”

Stratis swallowed. “He’s still unconscious, but I recognized him. Pulled his wallet to confirm. Looks like Rachel shot Wallace Meyer Jr.”

All Vaughn could do was blink. The tingling in his throat kicked up, making him jones for a cigarette. He looked past Stratis to the stretcher being loaded into the ambulance and swabbed his forehead with his hand. The tingling grew unbearable. Wallace Fucking Meyer.

“Don’t talk to anybody, understand?”

Stratis’s jaw rippled. “Understood.”

“Not until we get the details,” Vaughn amended. “If he’s stable, stall the ambulance. We don’t want Junior expiring on us—Jesus, I can only imagine the shit storm we’d be in if he died—but if we can wait until Reyes gets here, he can keep an eye on the scene and this de Luca guy while you ride in the ambulance. If Wallace Jr. comes to, press him for everything he’s worth, because once he gets to the hospital, we’ll lose access to him.”

“Got it.”

“Tell Reyes to look in the canyon. He’ll find Rachel’s dead horse. Her camera won’t be far away either. I’ll call Kirby, Molina, and Binderman. Their day off just got cancelled.”

He swung by the tree, grabbed the revolver, and locked it in the evidence bin in his trunk. He snagged his first-aid kit and got into the car. Rachel didn’t turn to regard him. She was staring at the message on the boulder. Her wound gaped at him, a stew of blood, flesh, and dirt. He ripped open a pack of pre-medicated gauze and pressed it to her arm, securing it with a length of medical tape. She didn’t seem to notice.

He turned the engine over and cranked the wheel, anxious to remove the graffiti from her line of sight. Once they were on the road toward the highway, he set his hand on her knee. “Do you know who those men were?”

She rubbed the elbow of her injured arm. “No.”

Good. Because when she found out, she’d understand how screwed they both were.

“I’m sorry,” she added in a whisper.

He squeezed her knee, hoping she didn’t sense his agitation. “Don’t say that. We’re going to get you patched up, and then we’ll talk. For now, rest. I’ve got to make some calls.”

She closed her eyes. “Amy,” she breathed.

“Yeah, I’m calling your sisters. They’ll meet us at the hospital.”

First things first, though. Time to alert his deputies that the Quay County Sheriff’s Department just went into crisis mode. He dialed Torin Kirby’s number, but his mind was on Wallace Meyer Jr.

The younger Meyer’s delinquency was a sore topic in his department, muttered about for years. But under the protective watch of his father, the boy was exempt from the arm of the law—or, at least, that was what the good ole boy club believed. Still, what was the son of a bitch thinking, trespassing in the middle of the day to scrawl threatening messages on the property of a family already steeped in controversy? Did he ever consider he might get caught?

Then again, Wallace Meyer Jr. had the luxury not to think of consequences at all. It was a fact of life Vaughn became aware of as a teenager—thanks in large part to the Meyer family—that the people with the power called the shots. Wallace Meyer Sr., Tucumcari’s police chief for the past twenty-eight years, had more power and political influence than any other law-enforcement authority in eastern New Mexico.

He glanced at Rachel. She’d op. . .