Jeremiah (Stud Ranch 5)

Then there was that brief second where he’d even managed to get the gun away from Buck!

But in the end, none of it mattered. I recognized the packaging of the sedative Buck had yanked the syringe out of. It was for the damn cattle, and I had no idea how much he’d used on the Winstons or Jeremiah, or if they could possibly survive it.

And now I was left alone again, with a psychotic Buck, breathing hard as he looked down at Jeremiah, slumped on the floor beneath him.

“Take that,” Buck said, kicking Jeremiah hard in the lower back. I screamed uselessly into the tape gagging my mouth.

“What?” Buck said, looking over at me. “You got somethin’ to say? All this is your fault. None of ‘em would even be in this if it wasn’t for you.”

I went still and swallowed, then nodded and looked down, then bowed my head before finally looking back up at him.

He stared at me for a moment, unsure, before asking, “I take that tape off, you gonna start screamin’? Because no one can hear you out here. This bastard’s the only one dumb enough to come looking for you in the middle of the night on this stretch of road. Though how the fuck did he find us?” Then he frowned and came toward me, feeling all down the folds in my puffy dress until his hand landed on my phone. He looked at it in disgust, walking around behind me and shoving my finger against the little pad to unlock it. “Did you manage to send a text for help, you little bitch?”

I shook my head back and forth rapidly as he came back around to the front of me, finger tapping through the apps on my phone.

He came over, grabbed the tape at the corner of my mouth with his dirty-fingernailed hand, and ripped it off in one swift go.

“Who else did you text, bitch?” he yelled in my face.

“Ouch,” I gasped, then sucked in a large breath of air through my mouth. Buck was so pungent I could all but taste him on the air—but also the cedar forest air around us. “No one,” I gasped. “I didn’t even text him.” I nodded toward Jeremiah. “I don’t know how he found me.”

Buck turned around and reached into Jeremiah’s pocket, pulling out his phone. He unlocked it the same way he had mine and then started laughing, looking up at me. “Loverboy was tracking you. Guess he knew you were a faithless little bitch.”

Jeremiah had put a tracking app on my phone? When? Who the fuck cared? I tried to listen hard and could just make out the sound of rushing water, so we were near a river or a stream of some kind.

Not that that information helped narrow it down considering we were in Central Texas and you could barely throw a rock without hitting a stream or spring of one kind or another. Especially considering the rain we’d had lately. Even the usually dry creek beds would be running with water right now.

No, goddammit, it was official, I had no idea where Buck had taken me and less and less confidence with each passing moment that he’d told anyone where he was going or that I was even missing.

But maybe he’d told his brother where he was going?

Or… more likely, he’d just taken off like a goddamn cowboy all by himself to come find me.

And now here we both were. Trapped by this man who was clearly more than a crayon or two short of a boxset.

Buck glared at me, face only inches from mine. “So?” he demanded. “Don’t you recognize me?”

I stared back at him incredulously. “Um, yeah. You’re Buck. You’ve worked with me for—”

“NO!” He slammed the wooden wall behind my head, shaking the entire hut. “I said, look at me. Fucking look!”

I did. I looked. And saw the bloodshot eyes of a man who would have little problem doing violence to me or maybe any woman. I shook in my seat as he raised the gun toward my temple.

“Look!” he shouted again. “Don’t you fucking see him? Our father? I have his fucking eyebrows.” The hand with the gun swung wildly toward my face as his hands gestured with every word. So it took a second for what he’d said to sunk in.

But as soon as it did, it wasn’t a surprise.

Of course my father had cheated on my mother. He’d been unfaithful to his family in every other sense of the word, so of course in this most base and basic way he had been too. He’d not only cheated on my mother but fathered children with some other woman.

“Sister,” Buck said, leaning in and smiling, his foul breath between us.

I jerked back from him, revolted by him, by everything he was saying.