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Coldly silent, Max Rutledge looked on while Barnett switched instruments and resumed his search for the buckshot buried in Boone’s back. Sweat beaded on Boone’s forehead, but it was the only outward indication of discomfort as he sat unmoving, not a sound coming from his throat, not a single muscle twitching in pain. Once the foreign object was extracted, Barnett was quick to press a gauze pad on the area and stanch the fresh flow of blood from the wound.
“For your information,” Max began in an icy-hot voice, “the use of a third party for such tasks as tonight’s provides deniability if he should have the misfortune of being caught in the act. It makes it a matter of his word against ours.”
“So you’ve said before.” Boone’s anger simmered closer to the surface as he lifted his head in challenge. “Have you ever considered how many third parties are out there, scattered over the country? If one starts talking, what’s to stop the rest from speaking up? Suddenly it’s their word against ours.”
“Don’t be stupid. That will never happen.” Max dismissed the notion out of hand.
“Probably not,” Boone agreed with reluctance. “If any tried, you’d just hire a bunch more third parties and harass them until they broke, just like you always do.”
“Nobody will ever cross me and get away with it.” The flat, hard statement was its own warning.
Boone knew it was true, but he felt nothing but disgust for the gutless methods employed by his father. He looked away and muttered, “Why don’t you go back to bed and leave me alone? You got what you wanted tonight. The hay’s been destroyed.”
“I’ll leave when I’m ready.” The answer came back hot and quick. “In case you’ve forgotten, I own this house!”
“How can I forget when you constantly ram it down my throat?” Boone fired back, then muttered, more to himself, “Sometimes I wonder why I’m still here.”
“You’re here because you don’t have the brains to make it on your own,” Max retorted. “You’d fall flat on your face if you tried.”
Goaded by the scathing rebuke, Boone challenged, “If that’s true, then how come I know there’s a quicker way to put the Cee Bar out of business than the way you’re going about it?”
“And just what bright idea have you come up with?” The question was riddled with contempt for its answer.
“I certainly wouldn’t waste my time setting fire to a bunch of hay,” Boone sneered. “I’d burn the whole damned place down and poison the cattle—”
“And have it splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the state while you’re at it. There’d be reporters all over the place. Wouldn’t that be an intelligent move?” Max declared in open disparagement. “Don’t do any more thinking. Just do what I tell you. And only what I tell you,” he added in emphasis. “And try not to screw that up.”
With a flip of the controls, Max swung the wheelchair in a half circle and rolled out of the bedroom while Boone glared holes in his back. As soon as the door closed, he twisted his head around to throw an impatient glance at Barnett.
“Aren’t you finished yet?” he muttered.
“I’ll only be a few more moments, sir.” The placid Barnett never looked up from his task as he methodically swabbed antiseptic on the first wound and placed a small bandage over it.
“Hurry it up,” Boone grumbled and bowed his head once more, but he was smarting too much from his father’s cutting remarks to notice the sting inflicted by the antiseptic solution Barnett used. “I’m tired of all his bitching. Every time I turn around he’s crawling up my ass about something. It doesn’t matter what I say or do, you can bet he’ll find fault with it. And I’m getting damned tired of it.”
Fully aware that no comment was expected, Barnett withheld any, although he was privately of the opinion that Max Rutledge’s judgment of his son was an accurate one.
“All he wants from me are my legs,” Boone said in a vindictive mutter. “One of these days he’s going to push me too far and, crippled or not, I’ll haul him out of that wheelchair and throw him across the room.” He paused and laughed to himself. It had a cold, ugly sound. “I can just see him crawling on the floor. Don’t you know he’d hate that?”
Barnett smoothed the last bandage in place and straightened up. “There you are, sir. All finished.”
“It’s about time.” Boone pushed out of the chair with the swiftness of an animal that had been too long restrained.
“I’ll need to change those dressings tomorrow evening. As slight as your wounds are, we don’t want to risk infection setting in,” Barnett stated as he gathered together his assortment of instruments, bandages, and antiseptic bottles and returned them to his personal medical bag.
“Yeah, whatever,” Boone murmured in absentminded agreement as he scooped the whiskey decanter off the drink tray on his dresser and splashed some in a glass. Too consumed by his own thoughts, he never noticed when Barnett exited the room.
“I get shot. But does he get mad and start ranting about getting even with the man who hurt his son? Hell no. Instead he chews me out for going there in the first place.” Boone gulped down a swallow of straight whiskey, the searing fire of it fueling his own anger. “And not because he cared whether something happened to me. No, it was only because the trail would have led straight back to him.”
Boone downed another swallow of whiskey, but the anger he felt wasn’t the kind that could be washed away.
Smoke swirled among the line of firefighters like a thick fog, blurring shapes and making it impossible for Dallas to identify the men working only yards from her. Now and then a flame would leap high enough to reveal the blackened stretch of fire-scorched earth on the opposite side of the dry wash. But she searched only for the tiny tongues of fire that sprang up on her side.
Rivulets of sweat ran down her neck, partly from the physical exertion of fighting the blaze and partly from its blistering heat. Soot and ash mixed in with the perspiration to leave muddy streaks on her face. But Dallas was oblivious of them.
Not far from her, water from a fire hose arced across the wash and hit a section of flames on the other side. There was a whoosh and a sizzle, and an instant eruption of steam and smoke, littered with sparks.
Enveloped in a thick, hot cloud, Dallas automatically turned away and clamped a hand over her mouth and nose to avoid breathing in too much of the choking smoke while she retreated from the dense haze.
