truck slowed as they reached the top of Rink’s Mound, the highest hill in the area. Cutch pulled into the parking area near the Loess Hills scenic viewing tower and the old Dodge rumbled to a stop.
It wasn’t until the truck had completely stopped moving that Elise realized she was shaking.
Cutch killed the engine and looked over at her.
She shrank against the door and pinched her eyes shut. It was one thing to be shot out of the clear blue sky. It was another thing entirely to be sitting in a truck with Henry McCutcheon IV. Elise wasn’t sure which was worse, exactly, but she sure wished she could stop trembling long enough to get the truck door open. They’d dated for a couple of months eight years ago, and he’d only kissed her once, but ever since he’d purposely humiliated her in front of half of Holyoake, she’d steered plenty clear of him.
“Hey.” Cutch reached toward her.
She instantly recoiled. “Stay back,” she snapped.
He slumped against his seat. “You’re the one who jumped into my truck.”
“I wouldn’t have if there hadn’t been somebody shooting at me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with sarcasm cutting through his voice. “Who was shooting at you, and why?”
“I told you I don’t know.”
“They shot you out of the sky?” Cutch clarified.
Elise nodded, her shoulders sagging forward as the rush of fear she’d felt was replaced with exhaustion. She pinched the clasp on her chin strap and let her helmet sink into her hands. Then she ran her fingers back through her short, cropped hair, freeing her loose brown curls before tucking the ends behind her ears with trembling fingers.
“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
