“We met on an app, and we’ve been talking for six months. You needed my help, and I came to your rescue.” Jericho’s sexy smirk pissed me off. I was fully equipped to deal with my own shit.
“What? Like I’m some damsel in distress? Does that sound plausible to you? I’m not a fairytale princess who has to depend on the big, strong prince to save her from the dragon. I’m the fucking dragon.”
When Jeri chuckled, I bristled. Did I not seem as if I could take care of myself? Did Jericho believe I was unable to defend myself? That was like a blow to the gut.
Jericho sighed. “I never said you were a damsel in distress, and I’m psyched to meet the dragon. I’m sorry I phrased it wrong. I’m not looking for a damsel of any kind, Red. And my mother is going to love you. I’m not trying to humiliate you, okay? I’m committed to keeping you safe. I believe having you at my house is the best solution. Who the fuck is going to come out here looking for you?”
Well, he did have a point.
Chapter Ten
Jericho
“Mom? You inside?”
The old AM/FM radio was blasting the local country-and-western station Mom listened to all the time while she was cleaning or cooking. It might be time to restart the fight about her getting her hearing checked because the woman couldn’t hear worth a damn and refused to admit it. The volume of that radio was indicator number one.
I walked over to the small table under the kitchen window, dialing the volume down before turning toward Sean. His head was on a swivel as he took in my mother’s kitchen—chicken tchotchkes, copper Jell-O molds, and all. He’d probably never seen so much country-style crap in a house in his life.
“You want something to drink? We have coffee, water, soda, and likely some sweet tea. Mom doesn’t drink, and I... Well, you know that sad song. Anyway, we didn’t get to eat at the apartment. I’ll make you something if you’re hungry.” Why the hell was I so nervous?
As I considered what had me figuratively shaking in my boots, Mom came into the kitchen in her robe. “Oh, I thought you were Bethany. We heard a noise outside, and she took the shotgun to check it out.”
I turned to Sean, who looked bewildered. “Oh, uh, Mom, this is my boyfriend, Sean Fitzpatrick. Babe, this is my mother, Gayle.”
Sean’s eyes were huge, his cheeks flushed a pretty pink that highlighted his sexy freckles, and the way he put his hand over his chest, he seemed about to have a panic attack at meeting my mother. Obviously, I’d caught him off guard by introducing them right away, so I gave him an elbow to the ribs to get him back to the present. “It’ll be fine. I need to go check outside. I’ll be right back.”
I plucked a flashlight from the windowsill on the back porch as I headed out, closing the screen door quietly. Knowing my mom, she’d calm him down by telling embarrassing stories from my childhood before I returned.
Hurrying to the stolen truck, I grabbed my Glock 22 from the door pocket, wishing I had my Mossberg, which was still in my truck in Bethesda. I checked the mag in the Glock and chambered a cartridge before heading around the side of the house with the flashlight stable against the barrel in a hands-together carry.
I slowly made my way around the yard using the older beech, pine, and cedar trees for cover. There was movement near the barn, so I ran in a squat position along the back fence.
There were motion-detecting spotlights in a three-sixty around the barn, programmed to illuminate if anything larger than a cat passed within three feet of the sensor after dark. The horses were always put in the barn at night, so anything that triggered the lights was an unwelcome intruder. So far, they were all dark, so I had to assume it was a raccoon or an opossum Bethany had heard. Mom hadn’t heard anything, I was sure.
Fancy’s high-pitched whinnying and Thunder’s snorting cut through the quiet night, so I lifted the flashlight’s beam toward the barn to see that the lights over the open door were busted and there was glass everywhere.
The sharp blast from the shotgun had me running to the barn. I climbed over the fence outside Trixie’s stall and slid inside as the lights came on in the barn. Bethany stood just inside the front door of the barn by the light switch, and there, on the floor of the alleyway just a yard away from me, was a young guy writhing in pain.
I lowered my weapon and opened Trixie’s stall door, stepping into the alleyway near the kid. He didn’t appear to be armed, thank fuck.
“Well, well. What’s going on?” The wounds were spread out, based on the bloody spots on his T-shirt. Thankfully, Bethany hadn’t been closer or the blast would’ve killed him.
The kid appeared to be about sixteen, and if memory served me correctly, I’d seen him at Salem Ridge Equestrian Center when I hauled horses there for some of the boarders who were getting riding lessons or practicing for horse shows. I walked over to Bethany, who was hovering over him. I glanced at her. “You okay, Bethany?”
“I was just fine reading a good book until this little piss ant decided he was gonna try to steal your horses.” Yeah, her eyes were filled with fire as she stared at the boy.
“What are you doing here, kid? You’re lucky the shotgun only has birdshot. The woman was prepared to kill you.” Kids did stupid shit all the time— Hell, I’d done a lot of it myself when I was around his age. Whatever he was planning wasn’t worth losing his life.
I walked over to the barn extension phone connected to the house landline and called 9-1-1, reminding myself I needed to get a burner phone the next day. When the dispatch answered, I gave our address and asked for the sheriff to come out to the farm. “We have a vandal. He’s been injured, but not badly. My horse hand shot him with birdshot when she caught him in our barn, where he shouldn’t have been.”
“Come on, man, don’t call the cops. I just wanted a place to sleep. I don’t got a home,” the kid whined.
I hung up the phone before grabbing a piece of baling twine from a nearby hook and tying his hands in front of him. I stared into his young face and finally figured out who he belonged to. “You’re John Langer’s son, and you work at Salem Ridge. You’re not homeless. You were here to try to steal some of my horses like the lady said, weren’t you?”
The kid groaned. No doubt, all those little pellets were painful, but they wouldn’t kill him. Bethany, though, had shot him in his solar plexus, which would hurt pretty damn bad.
“Mindy Spriggs owes my pop money for work he did at her place. She won’t pay. If we have her prize mare and colt, she’ll pay, or Pop’ll sell ’em to get our money.” It was obvious he believed it was his right to take the horses. That pissed me off even more.
