Dark Horse

“Don’t, Ledger.”

As she jerked free of his hold, he raised his gaze to meet hers again. “Abby.” The word came out a plea. “Any man who would hurt you—”

“Stay out of it, please,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “Please.” Her lowered voice cracked with emotion. “You don’t understand.”

He shook his head. He understood only too well. “A man who hurts you doesn’t love you.”

Her throat worked as she hastily brushed at her tears. “You don’t know anything about it,” she snapped before rushing toward the kitchen and away from him. “He just grabbed my wrist too hard. It’s nothing.”

He swore under his breath, realizing he didn’t know anything about it. He’d never understood what she saw in Wade Pierce. He especially didn’t understand why Abby stayed with the man.

Ledger finished what he could eat of his breakfast. Digging out the cost of his meal and tip from his jeans’ pocket, he dropped the money on the table, grabbed his hat and left.

Once outside, he stopped in the bright sunlight as he tried to control the emotions roiling inside him. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the bruises, even though Abby had done her best to hide them. The bastard was mistreating her—he was sure of it.

He wanted to kill Wade with his bare hands. It was all he could do not to drive over to the feedlot and call the man out. But he knew that the only thing that would accomplish was more pain for Abby.

When was she going to see Wade for what he really was—a bully and a blowhard and... With a curse, he realized that Abby might never come to her senses. She was convinced he couldn’t live without her.

“Ledger?”

He turned at the sound of a woman’s voice.

Marta, the other waitress and a friend of Abby’s, held out the newspaper to him. “You forgot this,” she said, sympathy in her expression.

That was the trouble with a small town. Everyone knew your business, including watching your heart break. He hadn’t looked at the newspaper, wasn’t sure he wanted to. He hadn’t been thinking when the publisher had cornered him.

He took the paper from Marta and mumbled, “Thanks,” before the door closed. Gripping the newsprint, he turned toward his ranch pickup. He felt light-headed with fury and frustration and that constant ache in his heart. Not to mention he was worried about what would happen when the rest of the family saw the story in the paper.

And yet, all he could think about was driving over to the feedlot and dragging Wade out and kicking his butt all the way from Whitehorse to the North Dakota border.

But even as he thought it, he knew he was to blame for this. He’d let Abby get away. He’d practically propelled her into Wade’s arms. He hadn’t been ready for marriage. As much as he loved her, he’d wanted to wait until he had the money for a place of his own. He couldn’t bring Abby into the house at Sundown Stallion Station. He could barely stand living on the ranch himself. He’d told himself he couldn’t do that to her. Then Wade had come along, seeming to offer everything Ledger couldn’t.

Head down, he was almost to his pickup when he heard someone call his name.

* * *

THE COWBOY WHO got out of the second Sundown Stallion Station pickup made Nikki catch her breath. She’d seen photos of Cull McGraw, usually candid paparazzi shots over the years, but none of them captured the raw power of the man in person.

From his broad shoulders to the long denim-clad legs now striding toward his brother, he looked like a man to be reckoned with. The one thing he had in common with all the photos she’d ever seen of him was the scowl.

“Ledger!” Cull looked like he wanted to tear up the pavement as he closed in on his brother. “Have you seen this?” he demanded, waving what appeared to be a newspaper clutched in his big fist.

Ledger stared at him as if confused, as if he was still thinking of the waitress back in the café. Clearly, he hadn’t bothered to look at the newspaper he was now gripping in his own hand.

“Why in the hell did you talk to the press? Not to mention, why you didn’t tell me that Dad had raised the reward. Again!” Cull slapped the paper against his muscular thigh. “Patricia is going to lose her mind over this. All hell is going to break loose.”

“We probably shouldn’t talk about this out here,” she heard Ledger say. “Enough of our lives is open to public consumption, don’t you think?”

Cull swore and looked toward the café. Two waitresses stood looking out the large plate-glass window along with several patrons.

“Fine. We’ll take this up at home,” Cull said through gritted teeth as he turned on his boot heel and headed back toward his pickup.

With an expression of resignation, Ledger turned toward the café window. The redheaded waitress was no longer at the window. He stood for a moment, looking as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders before he headed for his truck and climbed behind the wheel. The engine revved and he roared past, sending up dust from Whitehorse’s main street.

Nikki shifted her gaze to Cull, realizing her plan had just taken a turn she hadn’t expected. She hesitated, no longer sure.

Cull had reached his truck, but hadn’t gotten in. He was watching Ledger leave, still looking angry.

If Cull was this upset about the article in the newspaper and new reward, wait until he found out that she would be doing a book about the family and the kidnapping case.

She almost changed her mind about the truly dangerous part of her plan. Almost.

* * *

JERKING THE DOOR of his pickup open, Cull climbed in, angry with himself for coming here this morning to confront his brother. He should have waited, but he’d been so angry with his brother... He knew Ledger hadn’t meant any harm.

Tossing the newspaper on the pickup seat, he reached for the key in the ignition. Like most people in Whitehorse, he’d left his keys in his rig while he’d confronted his brother. Had it been winter instead of a warm spring day, he would have left the truck running so it would be warm when he came back.

The newspaper fell open to the front-page story. A bold two-deck headline ran across the top of the page. Twenty-Five Years After Kidnapping: Where Are the McGraw Twins?

The damned anniversary of the kidnapping was something he dreaded, he thought with a shake of his head. Like clockwork, the paper did a story, longer ones on some years like this one. He hadn’t seen anything but the first few quotes, one from his brother Ledger and the other from their father, when he’d grabbed up the paper and headed for his truck.

It was just like the publisher to talk to Ledger. His brother was too nice, too polite. If the publisher had approached him, the man would have gotten one hell of a quote. Instead, Ledger had said that the loss of the twins was “killing” his father after twenty-five years of torture.

How could their father still be convinced that Oakley and Jesse Rose were alive? Travers McGraw had this crazy fantasy that the twins had been sold to a couple who, not realizing the babies were stolen, had raised them as their own.

Cull and his brothers had tried to reason with him. “How could this couple not have heard about the kidnapping? It was in all the newspapers across the country—not to mention on the television news nationally.”

His father had no answer, just that he knew the twins were alive and that they would be coming home one day soon.

He knew his father had to believe that. The alternative—that his wife and her alleged lover had kidnapped and killed the twins for money—was too horrible to contemplate.

Under the newspaper fold were the photographs of the babies that his father had provided. Both had the McGraw dark hair, the big blue eyes like their other siblings. Both looked angelic with their bow-shaped mouths and chubby cheeks. They looked like the kind of babies that a person would kill for.

When he’d seen that this year his father was doubling the reward for information, Cull had lost it.

With a curse, he could well imagine what his stepmother was going to say about this. Worse, a reward that size would bring every crank and con man out of the woodwork—just as it had over the years. What had his father been thinking? He was desperate, Cull realized, and the thought scared him.

His father had been sick and didn’t seem to be getting any better. Was this a last-ditch effort to find the twins because he was dying? Cull felt rattled as the idea sunk in. Was their father keeping the truth from them?

Accompanying the story were also photos of Oakley and Jesse Rose digitally age-progressed to show what the twins could look like now. Cull shuddered. How could his father bear to look at these? It was heartbreaking to see what they would have looked like had they lived.

The rest of the story was just a rehash of the kidnapping that summer night twenty-five years ago. What wasn’t in the story was that Travers McGraw had sold his most prized quarter horse to raise the ransom demand, and that even after horse trainer Nate Corwin’s arrest, the $250,000 ransom had never been recovered.

Nor was there anything about what Travers and Marianne had lost. Not to mention the children left behind. Their mother was in a mental institution and their father had fallen into a debilitating grief and held on to a crazy hope that might be killing him.

Cull wadded up the newspaper and threw it onto the passenger-side floorboard. Had he really thought he could keep this from his family? It was only a matter of time before everyone back at the ranch saw this. His stepmother, Patricia, had long ago tired of this yearly search for the twins. This latest story would set her off royally.