Wyoming Tough - Diana Palmer [74]
She grimaced. “If you gave yourself up, maybe they could get a psychologist who could help you….”
“I killed a man,” he reminded her. “And kidnapped another one. That means feds will come in. They’ll track me all the way to hell. I can get away for a while. But in the end, the feds will hunt me down. I knew one, once. He was like a bulldog. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, just hunted until he found the man he was looking for. A lot of them are like that.” He took the other biscuit and the thermos of coffee. “Thanks,” he said. “For the food and coffee. For the money.” He hesitated. “For listening. Nobody ever really listened to me except my wife. I beat her….” He groaned. “God knows why she didn’t leave me. I never deserved her. She got cancer. They said she knew she had it and she wouldn’t get treatment. I knew why. She loved me but she couldn’t go on living with me, and she couldn’t leave me. Damn me! I don’t deserve to live!”
“That’s not for you to say,” she told him. “Life is a gift.”
He swallowed, hard. He looked at her with eyes that were already dead. “My mama knew there was something wrong with me when I was little. She said so. But she had too much pride to tell anybody. Thought it was like saying there was something wrong with her. I could never learn nothing, you know? I quit school because they made fun of me. I saw words backward.”
She went closer, totally unafraid. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He ground his teeth together. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this. Wasn’t your problem. Mallory’s a half mile down the trail,” he said after a minute, “off to the right, in some bushes. He’ll be hard to find, because I didn’t want him found.”
“I’ll find him,” she said with certainty.
He started to the door, hesitated, looked back at her. “Damn, he’s a lucky man!” he said through his teeth. He closed the door and melted into the night.
MORIE DIDN’T WASTE a minute. She rushed out, mounted the horse and turned him down the narrow trail that she knew from weeks of riding fence. Mallory was out there somewhere, getting soaked in this cold rain. God knew how long he’d been tied up. He would certainly need some sort of medical attention. It was almost freezing, unseasonably cold. She felt her heartbeat shaking her as she worried about not being able to find him. She could call for help, but if Joe was still around and watching, he might think she’d sold him out and he might try to kill Mallory and her in revenge. She didn’t dare take the risk.
She rode down the path for what she judged was a half mile, and she dismounted, tied her horse to a tree and started beating through the underbrush. But she found nothing. What if Joe had lied? What if he’d really killed Mallory, and she was going to stumble over his body instead of the living, breathing man? She felt terror rise in her throat like bile.
Maybe she’d misjudged the distance. Maybe it was farther away!
She mounted again and rode a little ways. Somewhere there was a sound, an odd sound, like a crack of thunder. But it was just drizzle. There was no storm. She shrugged it off. She was upset and hearing things. She dismounted and started searching off the path again. It was slow going. She could hardly see her hand in front of her face, and the flashlight was acting funny. She searched again and again, but she found nothing. There were trees, all around, but none with a man tied to it.
“Damn,” she muttered, frantic to find Mallory. What if Bascomb had lied? What if he’d killed Mallory and dumped his body someplace else? If a man could kill, couldn’t he lie, too?
She swallowed, hard, and fought tears. She had to think positively. Joe wasn’t lying. Mallory was alive. He was