and didn’t let him claim all of her attention. Hurry. Her rifle hung over her shoulder, his gun tucked behind her back, no way for her to quickly reach for either if whoever had shot him came back and caught her by surprise.
Lightning lit up the sky. The water was coming down in sheets by the time she reached her pickup. She dumped him in the passenger seat then ran around and jumped behind the wheel. The dry creek beds could fill quickly in weather like this. Then they’d both be trapped out here.
He coughed and opened his eyes as she drove way too fast over the uneven road, the pickup rattling.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Ryder… McKay.”
She didn’t know any McKays around here. “Do you know who shot you?”
He passed out again before he could have answered.
Hot anger hit her, a hard punch right in the chest. This was her land, dammit. Stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen here.
The creek beds were filling up, but she made her way across them. The mud proved more dangerous, at the end. The pickup’s tires spun out on a steep incline she tackled. Long minutes went wasted before she could maneuver the truck free.
“Hang in there,” she murmured, not knowing which one of them she meant to bolster.
Her windshield wipers swished back and forth madly and still weren’t enough. Intermittent lightning flashed across the landscape. The thunder sounded like heavy shelling. The ground shook as if bombs were falling. Not now. She bit her lip hard and used the sharp pain to yank herself back from the edge.
She navigated the barely visible road, doing her best to pay attention to everything at once: the mud, the injured man, the trees that could be hiding the shooter.
The drive back to the house took three times as long as the drive out. “Okay, we’re here. You’ll feel better once you’re flat on your back and we’re out of this rain.”
She parked by the front door and dragged the man in, ignoring the mud they tracked all over the floor. A particularly nasty bolt of lightning drew her gaze to the window, and for a second she could see all that driving rain drowning the open land, field after field. No other houses.
Neighbors would be nice. The kind of close neighbors you could run over to in a time of need. But the ranch was in an isolated spot, the farthest house from town.
“Here we go.” The old couch groaned under the man’s weight as she laid him down. “I’ll be back in a second.”
She dashed back to the truck for her rifle and the veterinary supply bag behind her seat. She locked the front door on her way back in, something her grandfather hadn’t done once in his life. They lived in good country, around good folks, he used to tell her.
She wondered what he would think about this. He’d have words to say. And not the kind of words you’d find in a church bulletin.
She wiped her face. No time to dry herself fully. Bag. Scissors. She cut off the man’s pants so she could do a better job at assessing and cleaning his injury. If being a field medic in the army had taught her anything, it was to be resourceful and find a way to use whatever she had at her disposal. The veterinary bag was a godsend.
“Wake up. Can you hear me?”
No response. He didn’t even flinch.
Clean the wound. Stop the bleeding. Dress the wound. Make him drink so he had enough fluids in him to get his blood pressure back up enough for him to permanently regain consciousness.
“You’re going to make it. That’s not a suggestion. That’s an order.” She snapped the same words at him as she had at soldiers on the battlefield.
She checked his limbs—everything moved, nothing felt broken. His heart beat slowly but steadily. His pupils were the same size, responding to light. His airways were open. He was in top combat shape, a big point in his favor. The patient’s physical condition always had a big impact on recovery.
Once she finished with the basics, she moved to the niceties. She washed his bloody hands, then wiped his face with a wet washcloth. She’d definitely never met him before. In the light of the lamp and without the smudges on his face, she could fully see him at last: tussled dirty blond hair, straight nose, a masculine jaw, sexy lips. The fact that he looked drawn failed to deduct from how ridiculously handsome he was.
“Ryder McKay,” she said his name out loud, then felt foolish when the cat padded in and gave her a curious look.
The scrawny feline assessed the situation while she licked her lips.
“That better not be cream on your whiskers,” Grace warned the cat, pretty much resigning herself to the fact that her Twinkie was history. “And you better not get sick from all that sugar. I’m not kidding.”
The cat flashed her a superior look then strolled away.
The man’s eyes blinked open slowly, the color of desert honey, then closed again.
“Ryder? You need to wake up. Can you hear me?”
He didn’t stir, not even when a loud banging shook the front door the next second.
Grace jumped to her feet, faced the door in a fight-ready stance, her heart lurching into a race before she caught herself. It’s not an attack. Someone’s just stopping by for a visit. Most likely.
Could be Dylan. She walked to the window, but could see only her own pickup in the driveway through the sheets of rain.
Looking sideways, she could just barely make out a shadow outside her door. Maybe Ryder McKay had a partner out there who was looking for shelter. She hurried to the door and put her hand on the key, but then hesitated. Whoever was outside could just as easily be the one who’d shot McKay.
She ran back to him and pulled the large afghan over his head, covering his entire body. The couch stood in line of sight from the front door. This way, at least he wouldn’t be immediately seen.
The late-night visitor knocked again, even louder and more forcefully.
She strode back to the door, reached for her grandfather’s rifle that she’d hung back up on the peg, then drew a deep breath. “Who is it?”
Chapter Two
The short, plump woman on the other side of the door stood soaked to the skin and poised to flee. She was unarmed and covered in mud—must have slipped a couple of times on her way here. She broke into rapid Spanish.
Grace put away the rifle and motioned her in. “Yo no habla Español. Lo siento.”
She’d forgotten ninety percent of the Spanish she’d learned in high school. And the woman spoke way too fast to even catch individual words, anyway.
But one didn’t have to be bilingual to understand that she was in trouble and ready to drop from exhaustion. Scratches covered her arms, dirt and leaves clung to her wet hair, dark circles rimmed her eyes. She rushed on with her torrent of unintelligible words.
