and I want them now.”
He gave her a flat look. “You took the words right out of my mouth. Since I’m the one at gunpoint, I think I deserve an answer or two.”
Those teary brown eyes narrowed. “Don’t play games with me, Houston Sadler. You might have half the money in Texas, but I won’t let you get away with this. Why did you do it? Why? “
Houston shrugged and tried to stay calm. Hard to do with that gun on him. “Because your brother was wrong to try to sue me, that’s why. He was fired for a legitimate reason. Because he abused one of the cutting mares. Jay’s damn lucky I didn’t go after him the way he did that mare. Instead of beating him senseless, I fired his sorry butt. There was no wrongful dismissal involved. End of story.”
Gabrielle shook her head. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my brother.” She paused, blinked. “Does it? Did you do this to get back at him by using me?”
Houston huffed. He was tired of these nonsense questions and having a Saturday-night special aimed at him.
He made sure Bear was out of the way first. The gelding was. So he lowered his head and dove right at Gabrielle. He didn’t hit her with his full weight, and cursed himself for being a gentleman at a time like this.
They landed hard, against the stable wall, and her hand smacked right into his groin. She probably hadn’t planned to do that, but it worked. Houston saw stars and growled in pain. He also grabbed her hands, pinning them to the wall so she couldn’t fire that gun.
Gabrielle fought back. No surprise there. Houston hadn’t expected her to give up without a struggle.
He maneuvered his body so that he held her in place. It wasn’t that hard to do. She was five-four, if that, and her feeble attempts to hit him landed like weak thuds on his chest. She was what his father would have called a “pretty little thing.” Houston figured he could add “desperate” to that particular description.
“Now, tell me why you’re here,” he insisted. “And I’m not giving you another chance. Talk now, or I yell for my ranch foreman. He’ll come running, then call the sheriff, who’ll haul your butt off to jail. Got that?”
Her breath gusted against his face, and she continued to glare at him before she finally started to relax. When she nodded, Houston nodded, too, and eased away from her. While he waited for her explanation, he checked the Saturday-night special.
“Forget something?” he asked, showing her the empty chambers. The gun wasn’t even loaded.
“I didn’t want to hurt you. I only wanted answers.”
This was getting more and more confusing with each passing moment. “And you thought this was the way to get them? Guess a phone call or e-mail would be too simple? ”
“Too risky,” she mumbled.
Okay, that got his interest. “Why?”
“Because I knew you’d just let them know where I was. Please, call them off. Tell them what you did was a mistake. Don’t try to take him away from me. Please, don’t.” The tears started to stream down her cheeks again.
Well, he’d demanded an explanation and had gotten one … of sorts. But Houston still didn’t have a clue who she meant by “them” or “him.” Was she talking about her brother now? Was someone after Gabrielle and him?
Before he could press for clarification about the mistake she thought he’d made, he heard his ranch foreman, Dale Burnett, call out to him.
“Houston? You in there?”
He also heard Dale’s footsteps coming straight for the stables. His ranch foreman wasn’t alone, either. There were at least two sets of footsteps.
“The sheriff’s with me,” Dale added. “He says it’s important and he needs to speak to you.”
Gabrielle immediately ducked behind a tack shelf. “Please, don’t tell anyone I’m here,” she whispered. She added another “please,” and he saw the color blanch from her face. Her fingers trembled as she caught onto the shelf.
Hell.
Again, Houston cursed his upbringing. He was a sucker for a pretty little thing in trouble, and while Gabrielle and he might have had their differences, she was indeed in trouble.
Even though he figured he’d regret this, Houston shoved her gun into the back waist of his jeans and walked to the stable entrance to meet Dale and Sheriff Jack Whitley.
Dale’s weathered face was ripe with concern, and he looked at Houston as if he had answers. Houston didn’t. But he hoped to remedy that soon.
“Mr. Sadler,” the sheriff said, in greeting.
“Houston,” he offered, for the umpteenth time, though he figured the sheriff would probably never call him by his first name.
None of the townsfolk in Willow Ridge did. That was almost certainly due to Houston’s surly father and grandfather who made sure everybody knew the Sadlers were stinkin’ rich and should therefore be respected.
“What can I do for you, sheriff?”
Sheriff Whitley didn’t jump right into an explanation. In fact, he looked downright uncomfortable when he turned to Dale. “Could you give Mr. Sadler and me some time to talk, alone?”
Dale looked at Houston, and he gave his ranch foreman a nod, to let him know he could leave.
“Is someone hurt?” Houston demanded, the moment Dale walked away. “Dead?”
“No. But I just got a visit from two detectives from the San Antonio Police Department. It’s related to the maternity hostage situation that happened at the hospital about six weeks ago. You remember it?”
“Of course.” It’d been all over the news. Masked gunmen had stormed into the San Antonio Maternity Hospital and held a group of women hostage for hours. People died, including a cop’s wife. If Houston remembered correctly, the gunmen had been killed in a shootout with the police, but there were rumors that they might have had an accomplice who was still at large.
“One of the former hostages, a woman, is missing, and SAPD wants to question her,” the sheriff explained.
While that sounded like a serious problem, Houston wanted to hurry up this conversation so he could finish his little chat with Gabrielle.
“You don’t think the gunmen’s accomplice or the missing woman is around Willow Ridge or the ranch, do you? “ Houston asked.
The lanky sheriff shook his head, paused again. “SAPD and the FBI don’t have actual proof that there was an accomplice. They don’t know where the woman is, either, but you might be able to help with that.”
Houston glanced at Gabrielle to make sure she was staying put. She was. But he didn’t think it was his imagination that she was even more alarmed than she had been before the sheriff’s arrival.
“How do you think I can help?” Houston wanted to know.
The sheriff
