Her little cottage was nestled into the back corner of Sullivan’s Point, which was a horse ranch and farm, one of the four parcels of land that made up the larger ranch. Many of the cabins on the property were rustic, but her place was a cute little cottage with flower boxes on the windows and yellow shutters and she loved it.
And if a tree branch landed in her flowers she would...
Well, she’d be mad.
She stood up and she heard the thump again. She really needed to stop watching murder mysteries this late.
But too bad, she already had.
It was the wind, which could get crazy during storms, and that was all it was.
Except then the next thump was accompanied by a groan.
She looked across the space at her bright blue front door and saw she hadn’t turned the lock. She stood there frozen. Should she jump for the dead bolt?
She would if her feet worked.
But the ranch was full of people who lived and worked here and it was possible someone had gotten displaced during the storm and...
The front door swung wide-open and there was a man standing there. A tall, broad man with a long black coat and black cowboy hat. Hs eyes were dark, glittering in the light, and his jaw was unshaven with dark stubble covering it.
An outlaw.
The man took two steps into the room, then stumbled down onto the floor.
CHAPTER TWO
WELL, HE WAS in the shit now.
He really was.
He’d thought he’d left Jake and all his bullshit behind years earlier, but he supposed his brother was right. In the end you couldn’t escape family. They were blood. And they’d think nothing of spilling that blood in an aim to protect themselves.
Clayton added that last part himself. As he bled onto a stranger’s carpet.
He’d managed to shake Jake about a mile or so down the road, and he’d ditched his car in a secluded overhang of foliage and gone it on foot, into the woods.
He had reason to be in these woods anyway.
He and his brother had grown up over in Copper Ridge, but Jake had left a long time ago and moved to a ranch farther east. But Clayton had made a hideaway here, and he’d been careful to make sure there was no paper trail and that his brother didn’t have any idea.
But it had been a mistake. The bullet had only grazed his side, but he was bleeding like hell and he was starting to feel light-headed. He was disoriented, and he had not found his way to the place he’d needed to get. He’d had no idea where in hell he was at all. Every step he took, he bled more. He needed to sit and put pressure on the damn thing, but with his brother actively trying to kill him...
Yeah, that made it hard.
He hoped Jake would think he’d kept on driving. In the end, Clayton had known he was running out of time, and continuing to run wouldn’t work.
So he’d figured he’d hunker down, and hope Jake wouldn’t expect that. Hope Jake figured Clayton was too scared to do anything but run.
Sadly for Jake, Clayton wasn’t a six-year-old boy anymore who could be bullied into running drugs or guns in his backpack.
He wasn’t afraid.
Well, not in the general sense, but this whole bleeding-out thing was an experience he wasn’t looking to repeat. Then, it may not be an issue if he succeeded in bleeding all the way out.
“What are you doing in my house?”
The question was shrill and it pierced through the fog in his brain, the weird slowing of time.
“Bleeding,” he said.
“Oh.”
He looked up as best he could and saw a woman in a nightgown.
She was frilly.
Her dark hair was in a braid, and she was holding a teakettle like it might be a weapon. If it weren’t for the electric lights behind her, he’d have thought he’d gone back in time.
“I don’t want to hurt you, ma’am,” he said.
Ma’am.
He didn’t know where the hell that had come from, except some long-ago memory of his mother telling him to be polite and hold the door. Which was some weird past life stuff.
“I’m going to call...”
He shot up off the floor, adrenaline pumping through his veins. “No. Don’t call anyone.” He stumbled again and looked around the room.
Couch. There was a couch.
He pressed his hand against his side and walked to the couch, where he sank heavily onto the cushions and leaned to the side.
“Oh my gosh!” Gosh. Like she was a cartoon character.
“You got blood on my homework!”
He looked back at her. Well, she was fresh-faced, but he hadn’t thought fresh-faced enough she’d be in here doing homework.
“That’s a new one,” he said. “I always told the teacher the dog ate it.”
“I am the teacher,” she said, in a tone that was terse enough he believed it. “I have to call someone.”
“No,” he said, his tone fierce. “You call the cops, they’re going to arrest me. Or worse, take me to a hospital first, and if that happens I’m dead.”
“You are an outlaw.”
Well, she wasn’t far off. He had been. He hadn’t known better, not for most of his life. Then when he was twenty, his brother had taken over entirely for his father and things had... Taken a turn. It didn’t matter he’d been raised to look the other way over smuggling illegal goods, he couldn’t overlook violence. He knew that was wrong. There was no level of indoctrination about the Everett family and their long history of rebellion against the government to do business as they saw fit that would cover violence.
He’d gotten out. Gone into the rodeo. Made his own way.
Now, some twelve years later, Jake had crashed back into his life, bringing guns, violence and the law to his doorstep, culminating in tonight’s rain of bullshit.
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “My brother shot me.”
“He shot you.” Her brown eyes had gone round.
“Yes, and it’s starting to sting. And I’m losing a lot of blood. And you have to understand that my brother is a dangerous man.”
She looked over her shoulder. “I should close the door.”
He hadn’t realized it was still open.
She went over to it and closed it, locking it tight.
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Clayton said.
“How do you know?”