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Chapter 15
“Sierra!” Ace’s heart kicked like a mule as a portion of the hillside gave way just beneath him, disappearing—along with Sierra—before she could so much as cry out in alarm.
There was no answer but tumbling stone and hissing sand and the roaring of his own blood in his ears. Was she hurt down there? Unconscious? Before he could find a way down to her on the slope, now steeper and more precarious than ever, three blasts echoed in quick succession. Gunshots that rang in the rocky gulch, offering him no clue as to where they’d come from or who had pulled the trigger.
Did Sierra even still have the pistol she’d been carrying when the hillside gave way beneath her? If so, was she shooting at his father’s would-be killer—or had the noise from her fall
drawn his fire?
Ace froze in place for what felt like an eternity but was probably in reality only a minute or two, straining his ears for any clue—a moan or cry, a breath or footstep, that might give him some idea of which way he should go.
With his mind churning out image after image of Sierra bleeding, possibly dying, struck by one or more of the shooter’s bullets, Ace finally decided he could wait no longer to try to find and help her. Praying he wouldn’t make the situation worse—or fall himself—he started downhill.
Almost immediately, the loose, round rock rolled beneath his feet, collapsing his left knee and sending him skidding downward. Rocking backward, he sat hard, only to pick up speed until he desperately snagged a twisted tree root with one hand, finally jerking to a stop near the hill’s bottom.
Hissing through his teeth with the pain of the splinters driven into his palm, he shifted off a rock jabbing uncomfortably into his lower leg. But as he moved to push himself to his feet with his uninjured right hand, he felt something cool and flat beneath his touch. His heart leaped as his fingers curled around what he realized, with a surge of raw emotion, was the grip of the gun.
The same gun Sierra must have lost in her fall.
The same weapon Ace had taken from the shooter in his father’s room at the hospital.
Whether fate, fortune, or even random chance had guided his own drop, it had once more come back to him.
Praying he didn’t end up shooting himself before he reached the ghost town’s street level, Ace kept his head low as he descended the final six feet or so to level ground, where he immediately heard someone running toward the jailhouse.
Was it Sierra? Or was she lying somewhere in the darkness—or even partly buried by debris and in desperate need of help?
With no way to know and little chance of finding her in the darkness without making enough noise to draw more fire, he made the wrenching decision to follow the footsteps before he lost track of them.
And if that decision led him to the shooter—Ace’s jaw clenched and his grip on the gun tightened, liquid fire streaming through his muscles at the thought of the man who’d come so close to murdering his father and destroying Ace’s own life, and who might very well have just put a bullet in the woman that he loved. To hell with getting answers. What he most wanted now was the chance to end the threat forever, to make the shooter pay.
As he approached the corner of the jail, the runner’s footsteps ahead of him stopped abruptly, leaving only the sound of Ace’s own movement to carry on the dry desert air. Realizing the danger just as an arm emerged ahead of him, Ace slid to a stop, throwing himself to one side.
The air exploded from Ace’s lungs as the hard ground came up too fast to meet him, the whine of a bullet slicing the air above his head. Pushing himself to his feet, he held on to the gun but didn’t try to use it as he made for the closest cover available, the freestanding adobe wall of some small structure. He could only pray that it was thick enough to stop another bullet as he raised the gun in his hand, watching for his target to edge from behind cover to attempt another shot.
Willing his breathing to slow and his shaking muscles to stillness, he warned himself that he might well only get one chance at this. One shot at taking down a monster and getting back to help Sierra before it was too late to save her.
Ace startled as a shout of alarm—a man’s voice—echoed from inside the walls of the jail. Hearing the thuds and grunts of a struggle, he quickly bolted from his hiding place, running toward the building.
“I warned you, stay down!” he heard Sierra order before she called out, “Hey, Ace? A little help in here? It’s darker than a grifter’s conscience—Ooofff!”
Ace reached the open doorway in time to make out the gunman elbowing Sierra in the midsection before breaking for the exit. Relieved as Ace was to see Sierra alive—and apparently in no need of anybody’s rescue—he didn’t fire on the shooter. But that didn’t stop him from hauling off and landing the kind of punch he hadn’t thrown since high school—a blow that caught the shooter’s chin hard enough to lift him off his feet.
This time, the assailant stayed down, not moving a muscle.
“Nice one,” Sierra said to Ace as she strode over, the gun she must have taken from the shooter in her hand. After checking on the shooter, she said, “You knocked him out cold, and with your left, too. You a southpaw?”
“No, but I figured if I clubbed him with the gun I’m holding in my right hand, I might—never mind that. Are you okay? You scared the devil out of me when you went tumbling down that hillside.”
“It wasn’t my plan for an entrance, either,” she said, “but in the end, we got our man.”
“You got him, you mean.”
“Probably would’ve lost him, though, without that timely assist from you, so go, team,” she said cheerfully, as, at Ace’s feet, the curly haired shooter groaned, beginning to come around.
Grabbing him by one arm, Ace hauled the smaller man to his feet.
“Never get in the boxing ring, buddy,” Sierra advised him. “You’ve got a heck of a glass jaw there.”
