Jedidiah's face twisted in a sneer. "He's a liability. Best to put him down now."
"Is that any way to treat your son-in-law?" Mick gave Jedidiah a chiding look. He spoke with that same mild tone, yet steel lurked beneath.
Did he disagree with the marriage Jedidiah had forced them into? Probably. There certainly seemed an undercurrent of disagreement between the two of them. Something he’d never heard before.
Usually, they were united in their evil, a fact that made them even more lethal. A rip in the fabric might prove helpful.
Jedidiah's jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing as he met Mick's gaze. For a moment, it seemed he might argue, but then he gave a curt nod. "Fine. Tie him up at the edge of camp. But if he causes any trouble, it's on your head." His voice hummed with barely restrained anger.
Mick just smiled, a cold, calculating curve of his lips. "Of course. I'll take full responsibility."
Joe grabbed Sampson’s left elbow—the broken arm still strapped against his chest.
Sampson bit hard on his lip to keep from howling from the fire blazing through him. He stumbled forward, anything to keep the man from jerking him. Flashes of light exploded in his vision.
At last, he was spun around and pressed down to sit on the ground. His head thunked against the hard bark of a tree behind him. He focused on drawing air in, then forcing the breath back out. Past his aching ribs. More air in. Maybe he should let himself pass out. A blessed oblivion from this torture.
But something inside wouldn’t give in.
As the men cut loose the bindings Dinah had so carefully wrapped around his arm to secure the bone in place, he worked to keep each breath steady.
Mick’s and Jed’s voices drifted to him, filtering through the haze of his breathing. He shifted his focus to hear what they were saying, but they spoke too low to make out. He strained harder, yet the words remained elusive. Were they talking about him? About attacking the ranch? He couldn't tell.
One of the guards wrenched the wrist of his broken arm backward. A blaze of agony exploded inside him. He couldn’t keep in the cry as he jerked forward.
The man spared him nothing as he forced his wrist down to meet the other.
Sampson jerked in breaths, fighting for control of himself. Fighting for relief from the torment. He needed that oblivion. Now.
Even as his body cried out for relief, a thought crept in.
Jericho and Jonah were out there somewhere. They might try to rescue him. They wouldn’t succeed.
They'd be captured too. Or worse. He couldn't let that happen.
He had to find a way out of this mess. On his own. Before someone he loved got hurt.
* * *
The night pressed in around Grace as she rode, a heavy cloak of darkness broken only by the fleeting glow of stars through the branches overhead. She gripped her reins as her mare picked its way down the steep wooded slope, following the shadowy forms of Two Stones and Sitting Bear. The other two braves rode behind her, hemming her in like a protected child.
She was beyond grateful.
The men had spoken little on this long uncomfortable ride, but Two Stones said they would go first to the camp he’d made to nurse Sampson after he found him so badly beaten. Jericho knew the location of that camp, so he might have also ridden there to begin the search for her father.
A horse nickered in the darkness ahead. Grace's pulse leaped into a gallop. Could it be Jericho and the others, with news of Sampson? Or had they stumbled on her father's camp?
Two Stones held up a hand, signaling the group to halt. He dismounted, then crept forward to investigate.
Grace's breath caught in her throat, her body tense as a drawn bowstring. She strained for any sign of danger, but the night remained still save for the hush of wind through the trees.
Long moments passed before Two Stones returned and motioned them forward. She eased out a breath. That must have been one of the Coulters’ horses.
Had he seen Sampson and his brothers?
She nudged her mare forward behind Sitting Bear’s horse as they descended the final slope and reached level ground.
Tethered at the edge of a small clearing were several horses she recognized—Sampson's big gray, Jonah’s bay, and the paint horse Jericho rode. But no sign of the men themselves.
