Revenge on the Ranch, page 1
“At least you survived your first date with me.”
Luke grinned at her, hoping to lighten the mood.
She laughed. She had a nice laugh. It was light and musical and easy on the ears. “I survived thanks to you protecting me.” Her gaze was warm on him. “Thank you, Luke, for throwing me down and using yourself as a shield to protect me. That’s real hero material as far as I’m concerned.”
“Hell, Carrie. I’m no hero. I’m just a man on a mission to find my father’s killer.”
REVENGE ON THE RANCH
New York Times Bestselling Author
Carla Cassidy
Carla Cassidy is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author who has written over 170 books, including 150 for Harlequin. She has won the Centennial Award from Romance Writers of America. Most recently she won the 2019 Write Touch Readers Award for her Harlequin Intrigue title Desperate Strangers. Carla believes the only thing better than curling up with a good book is sitting down at the computer with a good story to write.
Books by Carla Cassidy
Harlequin Intrigue
Kings of Coyote Creek
Closing in on the Cowboy
Revenge on the Ranch
Desperate Strangers
Desperate Intentions
Desperate Measures
Stalked in the Night
Stalker in the Shadows
Scene of the Crime
Scene of the Crime: Bridgewater, Texas
Scene of the Crime: Bachelor Moon
Scene of the Crime: Widow Creek
Scene of the Crime: Mystic Lake
Scene of the Crime: Black Creek
Scene of the Crime: Deadman’s Bluff
Scene of the Crime: Return to Bachelor Moon
Scene of the Crime: Return to Mystic Lake
Scene of the Crime: Baton Rouge
Scene of the Crime: Killer Cove
Scene of the Crime: Who Killed Shelly Sinclair?
Scene of the Crime: Means and Motive
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Luke King—He’s a man on a mission...determined to find his father’s murderer.
Carrie Carlson—She’s determined to help Luke fulfill his goal. Maybe then he’ll realize her true feelings for him.
Peter Jeffries—Luke believes he is the guilty party.
Dr. Raymond Stillson—Has the doctor’s obsession with Carrie turned deadly?
Caleb King—Luke’s younger brother. Did he kill his father?
Leroy Hicks—Did the former ranch hand kill the man who fired him?
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Excerpt from Maverick Justice by Delores Fossen
Chapter One
Luke King raced silently across the tall prairie grass, grateful that there was very little moonlight tonight. It was just after 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday, and as he headed toward Wayne Bridges’s barn, his heart beat rapidly. Every nerve and muscle in his body was taut with tension. Even the cool early-June night air couldn’t chill the fire that burned in his gut.
Tonight, he was hoping to find the evidence he needed to put his father’s murderer behind bars. A little over two months ago, Big John King had been shot dead in his driveway, sending Luke’s entire family into a tailspin of confusion and grief.
Even now, just thinking about his father shot a shaft of deep anguish through him. His grief had turned into a ball of rage that never left his chest, a rage that threatened to consume him all the time.
He believed he knew the identity of the man who had shot his father. John King had been running for mayor of their small town of Coyote Creek, Kansas, at the time of his death. He had been running against two other men—fellow ranchers Wayne Bridges and Joe Daniels.
Everyone believed that Big John would be the next mayor, and Luke believed Wayne wanted his father dead and permanently out of the race. He had a very strong hunch that Wayne had hired one of his ranch hands to pull the trigger.
Luke jumped behind a tree as he got closer to Wayne’s barn door. He could now hear the men inside, their boisterous, drunken voices and laughter drifting outside the partially open door. He’d followed them here from the Red Barn, a popular bar in town where they’d begun their drunken escapades.
He believed the actual shooter was Peter Jeffries, a particularly nasty man who was known as a champion sharpshooter and a big drunk.
Luke was betting that one night Peter, in one of his drunken hazes, would confess. He would probably boast to his fellow ranch hands about what he had done. And that’s why Luke was here, eavesdropping on the drunken fools inside Wayne’s barn. He’d been listening to them every Friday and Saturday night for the past two weeks, hoping to hear a drunken confession that he could take to Lane Caldwell, the chief of police.
He crept closer to the barn door and tried to pick out Peter’s voice among all the others. It sounded like there were four or five men inside laughing and talking. The current topic of conversation was the women in town.
“Give me some of that Heather Jacks,” one of the men said. “Have you seen the rack on that woman?”
“Oh yeah, I’d like to order her right off the menu at the café,” another voice said and laughed raucously.
Heather Jacks was a pretty waitress who worked at the café. Luke had gone out with her a couple of times. She was a nice young woman, but there had been no real sparks between them. Still, it fed his anger to hear the men talk about her like she was nothing more than a piece of meat.
He’d just moved a couple of steps closer when suddenly a big hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. “What have we here?” a deep voice growled.
Luke whirled around to come face-to-face with Sly Baskum, a big, burly man who worked for Wayne. “Hey, guys,” he bellowed loudly. “Looks like we’ve got a spy out here.”
Luke backed up as several of the other men exited the barn, their faces silhouetted by the bright barn light behind them. “Well, if it isn’t one of those stinking Kings,” one of them said.
Luke instantly smelled danger in the air. The men were all liquored up and spoiling for a fight. “Did you lose your way, little boy?” another one of them said and poked Luke in the chest.
“Hey, man, don’t touch me,” Luke said as his heart beat frantically. Fight-or-flight adrenaline soared through him as the men circled around him.
“Don’t touch you? Is that what you said, you little trespasser?” Sly pushed him from the back, causing him to fall into Peter Jeffries, Alan Kauffman and Jeff Tanner.
“Okay, I won’t touch you... I’ll punch you instead.” Alan threw a fist that caught Luke in his stomach. The air whooshed out of Luke, and he heard the other men laugh uproariously.
Luke might have had a chance if the fight had been fair and one-on-one, but it was five against one, and as they began to pummel Luke, all he could do was fight back while at the same time trying to get away.
The punches came faster and faster, hitting him in his stomach and on his face and head. Pain roared through him, making him nauseous. The men all laughed, but their laughter was mean-spirited as they fed off each other’s drunken energy.
An uppercut to his chin snapped his head back, and that was followed by a blow to Luke’s stomach that sent him to his knees. The men then began to kick him. Why didn’t they stop? They’d proved their point. He had been where he shouldn’t have been.
He attempted to crawl away, but they followed him, still kicking and punching him. Boots connected over and over again with his ribs. Luke’s only desire was to get away from the agonizing pain they were inflicting on him.
Nobody knew he was here...not his older brother, Johnny, or his younger brother, Caleb. Nobody was going to suddenly show up to save him, and if these men didn’t stop, they were going to kill him.
He took a hard kick to the side of his head. Pain seared through him as stars danced dizzily in his brain. And then...nothing.
* * *
HE AWAKENED SLOWLY, his body screaming with pain. Luke opened his eyes and stared in bewilderment at his surroundings. How had he gotten to the hospital? Why was he in the hospital and why was he hurting so badly?
For a moment his thoughts were completely confused. Had he been in a car accident? Or had he fallen off his horse? What in the hell had happened to him?
He closed his eyes and searched his brain, and then he remembered. He’d been at the Bridges barn, and the ranch hands there had given him one hell of a beating. So, how had he gotten to the hospital? He didn’t believe any one of those men had brought him here.
His ribs were killing him, and he had a headache that torched pain through him each time he moved. Those men had really done a number on him.
He was now clad in a god-awful pale blue flowered hospital gowns with an IV running from the back of his hand to a bag on a stand next to his bed. So, how in the hell had he gotten here? The question kept repeating itself in his head.
A sound in his room snapped his eyes back open. It was Carrie Carlson, one of the nurses. “Luke, oh good. You’re awake,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a truck ran over me, a very big truck, and it ran over me more than once. How did I get here?” He pushed the button that raised the head of his bed.
“I wasn’t here when you were brought in, but it’s written in the notes that Jeb Taylor found you on the side of the road just outside your ranch. You were unconscious and had obviously been beaten badly, so he brought you straight here.”
Jeb Taylor was the town handyman, but at that time on a Saturday night, he’d probably been going home from a friend’s place. Luke would need to find the tall, bald man and thank him.
“Now, I need to take your vitals,” Carrie said and moved closer to the side of his bed. She scanned his forehead with the thermometer, and even that slight touch caused his head to pound unmercifully.
She then wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. As she pumped it up, he gazed at her. He’d seen Carrie around town, but he didn’t know her personally, and he definitely hadn’t really noticed before just how pretty she was.
Her long, dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, and her blue-violet eyes had long, thick, dark eyelashes. When she leaned closer to him, he smelled the scent of her, a fragrance of flowers mingling with mysterious spices. It was a very attractive fragrance.
In another life, in another time, he might have flirted with her. He might have even asked her out on a date. But, in this life and in this time, romance and love were the very last things he had on his mind.
The only thing that ticked him off about last night was he now knew he wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop at that barn and on those men anymore. He’d been busted, and there was no way he’d be able to sneak back there to listen to them again.
“I’m happy to give you some good news. I have a little pain relief to give you,” she said with a smile. She had a very nice smile.
“I’ll take it,” Luke replied.
“I’m just going to administer it into your IV. You should feel some relief fairly quickly.” She put the medicine in and then stepped back from the bed. “Is there anything I can do for you, Luke?”
Her gaze was soft, sympathetic, and once again he noticed how pretty she looked in the purple scrubs that turned her eyes more violet than blue.
“No, I’m good,” he half growled, hating to be in such a state of weakness in front of anyone else.
“Dr. Reeves will be in to speak to you later.”
He half nodded and then closed his eyes. True to what Carrie had said, within minutes he felt a softening of the jagged pain he’d awakened with.
He must have fallen asleep, for he jerked awake once again when he heard somebody entering his room. It was an older woman he didn’t know, and she pushed a cart before her.
“How about some breakfast, handsome?” She smiled widely and grabbed a tray from the cart. “You’ve got scrambled eggs with crispy bacon, some toast and coffee. There’s also grape jelly, and cream and sugar if you want it.” She set the tray on the table that would slide across the bed.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, surprised to realize that despite everything hurting, he had an appetite.
“You need anything else, handsome, you just press that little button and ask for Wanda. Wanda, that’s me. Everyone here knows Wanda.” She grinned at him again. “Now, get to eating while it’s all hot.”
The moment Wanda left his room, he took the lid off the coffee cup and took a sip, grateful that it was strong and good. He’d just finished cleaning his plate when Chief of Police Lane Caldwell walked into the room along with Luke’s older brother, Johnny.
“I hope the other guy looks worse than you, but I’m not sure that’s possible,” Johnny said and sat in the chair next to the hospital bed. “So, what happened to you?”
Luke frowned. “I guess I got the hell beat out of me.”
“Who did this to you, Luke?” Lane asked. He stood at the foot of the bed, a deeply concerned look on his face. Luke knew Lane was in his fifties, but in the last month or so, he seemed to have aged ten years. Apparently, the unsolved murder of Big John King, along with other cases he had, weighed heavily on him.
“How did you two even know I was here?” Luke asked curiously.
“Dr. Holloway called me when you were brought in late last night. He wouldn’t allow me to speak to you then. I’m the one who called Johnny this morning to let him know you were here,” Lane explained. “Now, want to tell me who did this to you, Luke?”
Luke winced as he changed positions in the bed. “It doesn’t really matter who did it.”
Johnny leaned forward in his chair. “Luke, it does matter. Whoever did this to you should face some criminal charges.”
Luke laughed, instantly regretting it as his ribs protested with a searing pain. “Since when do we press charges for a fistfight around here? Besides, what happened was my own fault, and I take full responsibility for it. Lane, all I need from you is to find my father’s murderer.”
Luke hadn’t really told Lane too much concerning his suspicions about Peter Jeffries. He didn’t want Peter to be warned that he was under suspicion. Otherwise, Luke might not be able to get the evidence he needed.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me who did this to you?” Lane asked with concern.
“I’m positive,” Luke replied firmly.
“Okay, then I guess I’ll just get out of here,” Lane said.
“Now, tell me what really happened,” Johnny said the moment Lane had left the room.
“There’s nothing to tell. Just for your information, it was more than one man beating on me, and it happened because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that’s all I intend to say about the matter.”
Johnny narrowed his eyes as he gazed at Luke. “Luke, you’ve got to stop. I’ve told you before, leave the investigation to Lane.”
“Yeah, because he’s doing such a good job,” Luke replied bitterly. “It’s been a little over two months since somebody shot our father, and still nobody is under arrest. Hell, Lane doesn’t even have any suspects.”
“Luke, you’ve got to leave it alone. I don’t know where you were last night or what you were doing, but you could have been killed. Do you hear me? You could have been killed.”
“Okay, well, I wasn’t,” Luke replied.
“This time you weren’t. Dammit, Luke, I need you on the ranch. You’re supposed to be coming up with a plan for us to move forward with a horse-breeding program.”
“I’ll get to it. I’ve been working the ranch every day. What I do in my spare time is nobody’s business,” Luke snapped.
“Dammit, Luke, do you hear the rage in your voice?” Johnny asked. “You’re being eaten alive by it.”
“I’m done talking.” Luke lowered the head of his bed and closed his eyes. He didn’t want his brother to tell him what to do or how to think. Of course, Luke had a lot of rage inside him. Somebody had killed his father, and even getting the hell beaten out of him wouldn’t stop Luke on his mission to get the person responsible behind bars.
* * *
CARRIE CARLSON LEFT the house she rented with fellow nurse and her good friend Emily Timmons. She got into her car, pulled out of the driveway and then headed down the tree-lined street toward the main drag.
It was a beautiful early-summer afternoon. The trees were filled with big fat leaves, and the grass had all turned a lush green after the long winter. It all felt like new beginnings, and in keeping with that, Carrie was about to do the most brazen, most forward thing she’d ever done in her life. She was going to check on a former patient at his home. More specifically, she was going to check on the man she’d had a crush on forever, Luke King.
He’d been released from the hospital two days before, after being diagnosed with a concussion, three fractured ribs and bruised kidneys. He’d also had various other contusions, including a rather nasty bruise on his lower jaw.
Before his father’s death, Luke had had a reputation as a ladies’ man. With his rich dark hair, beautiful blue eyes and handsomely sculpted features, he’d never had to beg for a date.
