Out on a Limb

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would somebody shoot you out of the sky?”

“I don’t know.” She sucked in a deep breath and tried to think. Why would somebody shoot her out of the sky?

“Do you think it was some teenagers playing around?”

“They acted pretty serious.” Elise inspected the scratches on her hands and arms from her tangle with the thorn bushes. Drying blood wept from the more serious cuts, but that was the worst of it. She stuck a finger through the hole in her pants where she’d been shot and fingered the spot on her calf where the steel ball had grazed her. It had already stopped bleeding.

Thoughtfully, she prodded the fabric where it gathered at the elastic band near her ankle and felt a ball hiding inside. She leaned down, cautiously peeled back the cuff of her pants and plucked it out.

“What were they shooting?” Cutch continued questioning her. “Birdshot? Do you think they were trying to scare you or something?”

Elise held up the hard metal ball. “Not birdshot. Buckshot,” she held the steel ball—over a half centimeter in diameter—in the palm of her hand so he could see. Shot that size was meant to deeply penetrate flesh. “They weren’t trying to scare me. They were trying to kill me.”

Cutch looked into the warm brown eyes of the woman he’d once loved, and the eight years since their romance seemed to melt away. Elise. She was still so attractive, even covered in dust and perched like a frightened bird in the corner of the cab of his truck. So attractive and in spite of the long separation of time, still so familiar to him. What had happened?

“Why would somebody try to kill you?”

“I don’t know,” she told him again, and he could see from the fear in her eyes that she meant it.

He just couldn’t accept it.

“Okay. Help me figure this out. What would you be doing to cause someone to take a shot at you?”

“I was just out flying.” Her usually strong voice sounded weak.

“In your powered hang glider?”

She nodded and bit her lower lip.

Cutch felt his heart give an unfamiliar flop. He had no business wanting to pull her into his arms and comfort her, and he had no doubt she’d smack him if he tried it, but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to reach for her. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel, though the truck was parked and the cooling engine tapped out a tune in concert with the grasshoppers whose late-summer songs poured in the open windows.

“So you were out flying in your glider,” he prompted.

The woman beside him sniffled, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as she swiped at her cheeks. Elise McAlister was crying in his truck, and somebody had just been trying to shoot her—from his land. He did not need this, especially not today.

“Did you see anything unusual before they started shooting?” He risked a glance her way, realizing that if he hadn’t gone out early to clear brush on the north quarter, her pursuers would likely have caught up to her. His stomach knotted.

She had her eyes pinched shut, and a trail of wet tears meandered down her dust-cloaked face. “The trees.” She sniffled. “The trees are planted in rows back there. And they’re all the same. Hickory, I think. Or maybe—”

“Pecan,” he supplied reluctantly. It wasn’t as though she wouldn’t have figured it out on her own, and he needed her to rack her brain for what might have triggered the attack instead of focusing on identifying what kind of trees she’d been flying over.

“Pecan,” she repeated in a whisper and looked at him, recognition crossing her features.

She knew. But how much did she know? She didn’t know everything, did she? Eight years before, he’d foolishly shared with her his dream of reclaiming his grandfather’s pecan groves and clearing the McCutcheon name. And now here he was, already admitting things to her that no one else knew.

Cutch tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. What mattered right now was Elise’s safety, and he couldn’t do anything to help her until he understood what had just happened. “Did you get a good look at the guys who were shooting at you?”

“No. Nothing. They were too far behind me, and the trees blocked my view.”

“You ever fly out this way before?”

“Not really. Where were we, exactly?”

“Five miles west of Rink’s Mound.”

“Do you know who owns that property?”

Cutch returned her gaze, feeling a tiny trickle of relief that she’d regained enough of her composure to ask him such an intelligent question. Of course he knew who owned the property. As the Holyoake County Assessor, he knew down to the last lot and acre who owned what in the whole county. “Yup.”

“Who?” An undercurrent of impatience ran through her voice.

He closed his eyes. “Nobody who’d be shooting at you.”

“Cutch—” a strangled half panic, half impatience infused itself in her tone “—somebody was trying to kill me. Do you know something?” She glared at him and reached into one of the many zippered pockets on her pants, pulling out a phone. “That’s it! Why didn’t I think of this sooner? I’m calling the sheriff.”

“Wait.” He reached out his hand to stop her. The last thing he needed was the sheriff stomping around on his property—especially if somebody was doing something illegal out there. And attempted murder was certainly illegal.

He felt Elise freeze the second his fingers brushed her hand. She looked up at him, and for a moment, time rolled back and they were young again, certain their love could conquer all. They’d been so naive back then.

“Just wait a second. Let’s sort this out first.” He watched as she swallowed and obediently lowered the phone, though she still held it tightly in her hand.

She repeated her earlier question. “Who owns that property?”

He didn’t want to tell her, didn’t even want to think about why someone had been shooting at her from his land or what the legal implications might be. But if she was in danger, he couldn’t withhold information that might help keep her safe. He met her eyes.

“I do.”

TWO

Elise stared at Cutch, the old feelings he stirred up making her heart flop around like a glider caught in a gale. She needed a steady head to sort out what was going on. Having Cutch so close only made things worse. “You own the land from which someone was shooting at me?” she clarified.

He looked back out the window as though he could still see the spot, though it now lay five miles behind them. Meeting her eyes again, he nodded. “Yup.”

“That settles it.” Elise jerked the door open and slid out of the truck, flicked her phone open and dialed 911. The McCutcheons and the McAlisters had been rivals for generations, even before the McCutcheons had sabotaged her grandfather’s plane long before she was born, though it wasn’t until his fiery death that the feud had become so fierce. It had been eight years since she’d experienced their direct hostility, and she hadn’t thought they’d be so territorial, but she’d always been wrong when she’d dared to trust a McCutcheon in the past. She needed to wise up.

Cutch was out of the truck and around to her side before she could hit Send. “Hang on just a second. This isn’t as bad at it looks.” His hand slid down her arm to her fingers.

Her eyes followed the shiver that ran down her arm at his touch and settled on the place where his strong, calloused hand covered hers. Her heart gave another dying gasp. “Somebody tried to kill me, Cutch. From your land. And now you’re trying to stop me from calling the sheriff? I don’t think so.” She jerked her hand away and looked at him with begging eyes, wanting him to explain, wanting him to say something that would make everything right. But he hadn’t been able to do that eight years ago, and she doubted he could do it now. She knew better than to spend even one more second getting any closer to him than she already was.

“Fine.” He took a step back and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Go ahead and call the sheriff, but where are you going to have him meet you? Here? Or at the scene of the crime?”

“At the scene of the crime.”

“And where is that?” Cutch challenged.

“Where I was being shot at. Where my glider went down.”

“Yeah? Where’d your glider go down?”