Soul of the Wildcat Read online

  “I can see that, Rusty.” Clearly familiar with the newcomer, Zerbe held his own weapon rock steady. “But there’s no reason anyone has to get hurt.”

  “We’ll see…,” Rusty warned vaguely.

  Without really wanting to, Dakoda eyed her captor. Unlike the other outlaws, he had a strangely pale complexion. He was tall and thin, and his long red hair was tied back at the nape of his neck.

  Nobody moved, except to breathe. Strangely, the cougar had also gone quiet. Almost as if the animal understood the danger of the situation.

  The redheaded stranger made a gesture with the barrel of his weapon. “Now you be a smart little girl and get your hand off that gun.”

  “Just take it slow, Dakoda,” Zerbe advised.

  “Okay.” Forcing herself to stay calm, Dakoda withdrew her hand. “We all want out of here.” Alive, her mind filled in.

  A thin smile parted the newcomer’s lips. “Maybe. Maybe not.” A strange glint behind his pale blue gaze said he didn’t care if neither of them walked away.

  “I think it would be best if we just made a trade and let things be today,” Zerbe suggested. “You boys go your way and we’ll go ours.”

  Dakoda silently agreed. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, they had no backup. They were on their own, with only their own wits to survive on. A false step could be a fatal one. The notion of her career ending in these lonely mountains wasn’t pleasant. Killing two rangers and hiding the bodies would be damn easy. The remains would probably never be found.

  Such a grisly thought was hard to ignore. She shouldn’t be thinking that way but couldn’t help it. That’s just the way her mind worked.

  Willie Barnett broke in. “I agree with Ranger Do-Right, Rusty. We don’t want no trouble here today.” Surprising, considering who was speaking.

  More antsy than the others, Waylon Barnett didn’t agree. “We got the drop on them, goddamn it,” he argued.

  Dakoda’s pulse skipped a beat at the innuendo behind his statement. Full of deadly threat. Three outlaws easily outnumbered two rangers. The odds were not good or fair. But nothing about life was fair. You just took the hand life dealt you and did the best you could.

  Right now the anticipation of getting out alive was a very slim one. There were no promises or guarantees anyone would walk away.

  Rusty nodded and grinned. “That’s pretty much true, Ranger Do-Right. My little queen here is awfully pretty. I’m sure you’d hate to see her guts splattered.”

  Keeping her hands in place, Dakoda tried not to wince. Guts splattering didn’t sound pleasant at all. Were that to happen, she’d probably be dead before she hit the ground.

  Somehow Gregory Zerbe remained rock steady. “I’m reasonable enough not to want anyone killed today,” he said slowly.

  Shooting the uniforms a glare, Waylon Barnett jabbed a finger at the rangers. “Let ’em go today and they’ll just come back tomorrow.” He speared his brother with a glance. “Both of us got warrants, and you’re just gonna let them walk away?”

  “I’m willing to settle this peaceably,” Zerbe interrupted.

  The scarred outlaw ignored him. Tension rolled off him like a foul odor. Though he didn’t look as if he possessed many brain cells, the few he did have were obviously working together. And the idea they were forming had already occurred to Dakoda. No doubt Gregory Zerbe had also followed the track.

  “That’s stupid, man,” he bellowed. “I don’t know about you boys, but ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna be sittin’ in one of their jails.”

  Ice drizzling through her veins, Dakoda shut her eyes, sure she’d be hearing the blast of gunfire any second.

  Fortunately, a saner head prevailed. Sucking up a mouthful of tobacco juice, Willie Barnett spat a thick brown wad toward Zerbe. “Oh, hell. Let ’em go, Skeeter.” He grinned though a mouthful of stained teeth. “They ain’t very good trackers if they didn’t even figure out Rusty was guardin’ our tails.”

  Of course they’d had no damn idea there was a third man. It was a mistake not to be made a second time. That is, if they ever got a second chance.

  Though he kept his weapon level, Rusty slowly stepped back. “You heard the man,” he said, motioning for Dakoda to rejoin her partner.

  Dakoda hurried over toward Zerbe. As she did so, the cougar stood up on its hind legs, placing its great paws against the bars. She couldn’t be sure, but Dakoda was fairly certain she saw something akin to envy in its amber gaze.

  She’d be walking away.

  The cougar would have to be left behind.

  Her throat tightened. Cutting the men loose meant losing the cougar.

  Damn it all to hell.

  His own weapon in place, Zerbe followed her lead as she edged toward the direction from which they’d arrived. “I’ll be back, you bastards,” he muttered under his breath. “Count on it.” Walking away wasn’t something Zerbe easily accepted.

  Dakoda winced. Now wasn’t the time to antagonize these men. “Let’s go, Greg,” she urged quietly. “There will be another day.”

  “Just get gone,” Rusty urged. “The faster, the better.”

  Just as it seemed everything was under control, the event took a turn for the worse.

  Waylon Barnett clearly wasn’t agreeing with the plan. Rushing up to his cousin, he grabbed the shotgun. Something brutal and cruel twisted his features as he lifted the gun and aimed.

  “No, Skeet! Don’t!” Willie Barnett lunged at his brother. He might have been a poacher, but he wasn’t a murderer.

  That didn’t hold true for Waylon Barnett. Glaring at them with vicious intent, he pushed past his brother and leveled the shotgun squarely at the two rangers.

  Realizing the danger, Gregory Zerbe suddenly gave Dakoda a body-jarring shove, sending her flying toward the ground.

  Dakoda stumbled, landing flat on her side. A soft rush of air broke from her lungs when she hit the hard ground. What the hell is he doing?

  Reacting instinctively, she rolled aside, struggling to climb to her feet. Her heart pounded fiercely. Her lungs burned with the need to drag in a breath of air, but she couldn’t seem to make herself breathe.

  Her gaze swung toward the man who was determined they wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Her eyes widened, adrenaline seared her veins. Surely he isn’t—She braced herself against the inevitable. Her stomach performed a slow roll of anxiety. A series of horrible images slithered into her mind. Worry morphed into sheer, unrelenting panic.

  A single loud crack split the air.

  BLAM!

  The shotgun roared, blasting liquid fire directly at her partner.

  Time unexpectedly turned into a surreal slow-motion blur as the unstoppable assault of double-ought buckshot shredded Gregory Zerbe’s guts even as the force knocked him backward. His body hit the ground hard, falling in a lifeless heap. Blood pooled around his mutilated corpse, forming a gruesome halo.

  Dakoda’s mouth dropped open. The odor of fresh gunpowder clotted her throat, as choking as the fear bubbling up from her belly. Shock radiated through her. Tears burned behind her eyes. It was all she could do not to scream. If she started, she was afraid she’d never stop.

  Fighting to keep her wits, she scrabbled on hands and knees to the fallen man’s side. Hands cupping his cheeks, she searched his face. His fathomless gaze collided with hers when she looked into his eyes. A single look was all she needed to know he was dead.

  Dakoda made a noise in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own, a keening wail burbling up from her throat. “Greg—no!” She paused a moment, panting, trying to pull her thoughts together, but fear sent her brain cells scattering like ashes in a high wind. How the hell had this happened? Why had it happened?

  She had no answer.

  All she knew for sure was that Gregory Zerbe was dead.

  Murdered in cold blood right before her very eyes.

  Bitter acid welled up from Dakoda’s gut. She forced herself to swallow, determined not to vomit. He
r body felt paralyzed. Numb. Nothing in her training had adequately prepared her for this. She forced herself to reach for calm before hysteria started to take root.

  A man’s hand suddenly closed around her arm, pulling her to her knees. Fingers like steel bands dug into her skin. Her gun was snagged from its holster, effectively disarming her.

  Dakoda instinctively reared back. She cried out in shock, jerking away from the numbing clasp, but it still held tight. Her gaze zeroed in on the man Gregory Zerbe had identified only as Rusty.

  A chill invaded Dakoda’s bowels, tightening like fingers determined to tear her insides apart. Terror temporarily blanked her mind, a whiteout of pure, unadulterated fear. For a second or two she couldn’t breathe. The cold continued to tear at her heart, ripping away piece after tiny piece.

  The tall redhead jerked her arm again, attempting to drag her to her feet. “Nothin’ you can do to help him now,” he said coldly.

  Dakoda’s fear darkened and curled, a fresh rush of rage eating through her inertia like battery acid. She gathered the last reserves of her energy in a concentrated burst. “Rot in hell, you murdering bastards!” Her voice was sharp edged, nearly frantic.

  Rusty’s face revealed no regret whatsoever. He released a short laugh. “Goddamn, I can’t believe you killed him, Skeet,” he drawled, giving the dead man a prod with one scuffed boot.

  A snarl immediately rolled past Dakoda’s lips. “Leave him alone!” The command escaped before she had time to consider the consequences. At this point, she didn’t care. She already knew she wouldn’t be going anywhere. No way they’d let her walk away now.

  Skeeter looked unrepentant. “He needed killin’,” he spat, glowering darkly at the downed ranger.

  “Now what the hell are we going to do with her?” Willie Barnett demanded.

  Waylon’s deluded gaze cut toward the caged cougar. “Didn’t we promise those Asians we’d bring them two pets for their zoo?”

  A nod. “Yeah.”

  Waylon Barnett snorted a giggle. “Then this is our lucky day, boys.” Delighted with his brainstorm, he grinned like a shit-eating hound. “Looks like we’ve just made our sale.”

  A cold, damp sweat rose on Dakoda’s skin. She trembled before she could stop the reaction. Whatever the outlaw was raving about, she was sure it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  2

  Dakoda had assumed Waylon Barnett was joking when he’d proposed caging her with the cougar.

  He hadn’t been joking.

  Assume makes an ass out of me.

  Crouched in a corner of the pen, Dakoda warily eyed the huge animal lounging barely five feet away. To her relief, the big cat remained still. Eyes half closed as it dozed, the cougar lay on its side. Stretched out, the cougar was almost as large and heavy as a grown man.

  Dakoda swallowed thickly. “Good kitty. You stay there and I’ll stay right here.”

  Barely daring to turn her head, she peered through a crack in the thick log slabs. The compound the outlaws called home stretched out around her. In the cul-de-sac of an obscure valley, a series of overhanging cliffs provided natural shelter for the small settlement that had taken root. Most everything was constructed from logs: cabins, sheds, and a small corral for keeping the horses penned.

  Still, not every item smacked of pioneer living.

  The outlaws had more than a passing acquaintance with the outside world. A series of beat-up F-150 pickups and a couple of ATVs were an indication trails passable by more than foot or hoof existed.

  “Slick operation,” she muttered.

  More than anything there were cages. Lots of cages. All shapes, all sizes. All clearly meant to keep animals penned and controlled.

  Including the two-legged ones.

  Gregory Zerbe was right, of course. These people had lived in the mountains all their lives. And they’d burrowed in permanently. There was no way to measure how far they’d traveled since her capture. Just as she had no idea where this place might be on a map.

  Memory of her late partner brought a hitch to Dakoda’s throat, a thickening that presaged blurred vision and lots of tears. She hated the idea he’d lay cold and alone in an unmarked grave. He deserved better.

  So did she.

  Dakoda swallowed hard, desperately struggling not to remember his grisly death. She’d deliberately tried to blank Greg’s murder from her mind, refusing to let her memory push rewind, then play. It was no use. Every moment was irrevocably etched inside her skull.

  She cast another wary glance toward the cougar, listless save for an occasional flick of its tail. Its amber eyes were narrow, not directly focused on her, but aware of her presence nevertheless. A low rumble emanated from its throat.

  A warning.

  You keep your place and I’ll keep mine.

  Dakoda gulped. My very last breath might be arriving sooner, rather than later. Her thought was a grim one, and not very pleasant to contemplate.

  Reaching up, Dakoda fingered the thick metal band around her neck. After the indignity of wearing her own handcuffs, she’d hoped to be rid of her shackles. Not so. Like the cougar, she’d been fitted with a collar. Since her capture the animal had been unnaturally docile, as though the sight of seeing another taken and chained had temporarily robbed it of the will to be defiant.

  Had she not known better, Dakoda would have sworn the beast was showing an intelligent response to their mutual plight of captivity.

  Their coop looked more like a cell a human being would be confined in. The floor was plain dirt, packed hard and swept clean. A bunk was built into one wall. A crude table and chairs occupied another corner. A chamber pot and basin for water shoved under the bunk served as personal facilities. Altogether the space probably measured twelve by twelve feet, if that much. Between the cougar and herself, there wasn’t much free room to move.

  The rock and the hard place.

  These two forces threatened to grind her to dust. Bitterness took root, but she wouldn’t let it beat her down. Life had handed her more than one raw deal, and she’d managed to survive. Fresh determination kicked in. She’d hold on to the memories, hoping to someday use them to punish the men who’d killed Greg in cold blood. She wouldn’t give up until her very last breath.

  Cradling her arms around her knees, Dakoda gave the cougar another wary glance. “Looks like it’s just you and me, kitty.” The rumble of an empty stomach reminded her just how near danger lurked. That cougar was probably just as hungry.

  She winced. It vaguely occurred to her the outlaws had locked her up with the cougar as a method of torture. The big cats were carnivores and could easily take down a grown man.

  The way it looked, she probably wouldn’t live through the night. The sun was beginning to arc into the west, on its way toward setting. The temperature would soon begin to drop, drastically. Days in the mountains might be warm, but nights bordered on uncomfortably cool.

  Tightening her grip on her legs, Dakoda propped her chin on her knees. She knew a search-and-rescue team would be sent out once she and Gregory failed to turn up, but the chance of rescue was probably slim to none. The outlaws knew how to survive, how to hide, in these mountains; they’d been doing it for generations uncounted.

  There would be more than one anxious person awaiting news. Gregory Zerbe had a wife and kids at home, people who would want to know what had happened to him.

  Dakoda frowned. She had…nobody. Not one person on the face of this earth cared if she lived or died.

  Somehow she’d gotten through a childhood that could be described as pure hell. Her mother was a druggie, an itinerant wanderer who’d dragged her daughter throughout the state. With little education and few morals, they survived by hook or by crook. Time after time, Dakoda found herself waiting out long months with one caregiver or another as Jenna Lee served time in jail for petty larceny. Her father was unknown, one of the many rabbits running through her mother’s briar patch.

  Most of Dakoda’s sitters were men, most of whom hoo
ked up with her mother to party. Some would stay a few days, some a few months. The rare ones hung on a few years, maybe because they felt sorry for her. As she’d gotten older, their care and concern had turned carnal. By the time she turned fourteen, Dakoda wasn’t a virgin anymore. She was also beginning to experiment with drugs and alcohol.

  By all expectations, Dakoda was pretty much assured of walking straight down her mother’s well-worn path. No one expected anything out of a juvenile delinquent, nothing more than trash from the wrong side of the tracks.

  Salvation arrived in the form of her mother’s last hookup, a man named Ashton Jenkins. Unlike the rest of the men who’d passed in and out of their lives, Ash was a good man, a responsible man. A cop, he’d spent his life enforcing the law, not breaking it. For once good luck had been on Jenna Lee’s side when she’d gotten picked up for shoplifting.

  Dakoda had to smile when she remembered Ash Jenkins. Though he was a big brawny man who took no shit, he was surprisingly gentle with women. Ash really loved Jenna Lee and tried to do right by her and by her teenaged daughter. For the first time in their lives, they had a home. Stability. A responsible man who brought in a paycheck instead of a six-pack and a crack pipe.

  It didn’t last.

  Jenna Lee wasn’t the kind of woman who could easily settle down into domestic tranquility. She craved her parties, the booze and drugs that made her small, dead-end life just a little less boring. Less than a year after marrying Ash, her mother packed up and moved out in the middle of the night. Disappearing yet again with another man.

  Normally, that meant the man would pack up and leave, too.

  Not Ash Jenkins. Instead of cutting and running, he’d stayed on, applying to the court to become Dakoda’s legal father so he could finish raising her. Her days of running wild and running with the wrong crowd were over. Despite the fact she’d hated every minute of it, Ash Jenkins had taken her ass and whipped it into shape. By time she graduated from high school, Dakoda was a straight-A student.

  Though he’d seen her into college, Ash Jenkins hadn’t lived to see her graduate. A punk with a gun shot him down during a convenience-store robbery gone bad.