Tina Leonard - A Callahan Outlaw's Twins (8 page)

Chapter Nine

When Sloan didn’t come to her bed that night, Kendall told herself this was what she’d wanted. Space. Not to be just an assignment to him.

But the pull was too strong. Xav had recognized that her heart was becoming involved. Being housebound didn’t help. Too much closeness made her think constantly about Sloan, which was dumb, because their lives were too different.

She packed her bag and texted Sloan.

I’m going to Hell’s Colony to join the Callahan squad. Make sure the ranch stays in one piece now that it’s been overrun by your family.

It seemed as if she waited a long time for his reply. Then she heard his boots on the stairs. He appeared in the doorway, tall and lean and devilish, and her heart jumped.

“It’s probably for the best.”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “I just wanted to make sure you knew where I was going.”

A small smile briefly crossed his lips before his expression turned serious. Sloan reached out to run a strand of her hair through his fingers. “It’s fine.”

Then why did it not feel that way? Kendall pulled back from him and he let go of her hair. “I need to leave. Xav’s going to take me to the airport.”

Sloan picked up her hand and kissed it, old-world-style. Her heart beat harder at his touch. “I’ll sleep better knowing you’re safe.”

She drew away, needing distance, and picked up her bag. “’Bye, soldier.”

Sloan watched her walk out of the room. He was going to miss the heck out of her, yet he knew she’d be better off far away from here. He went down the stairs, not surprised to see his brothers grouped there and Ash hugging Kendall goodbye.

“It’ll be just me and Aunt Fiona holding down the fort now,” Ash said. “We don’t even have enough girls for a good game of Old Maid.”

Kendall laughed. “Our paths will cross again one day.”

She hugged his brothers goodbye, then Xav helped her out to a truck with chain-wrapped tires. Sloan watched him gently make her comfortable in the back, propping up her leg on the bench seat.

Xav turned. “Want to ride with us, Ashlyn? Kendall probably wouldn’t mind some female conversation. And I could use a shotgun rider on the way back.”

Sloan stared as his sister eagerly jumped into the front seat.

They waved goodbye as Xav drove away. Sloan thought Kendall looked happy to be leaving.

Only after the taillights had dimmed in the distance did he go back inside.

“We might as well call a meeting,” Falcon said. “Now that we caught one of them, we need a plan.”

Sloan looked at his brothers. “Okay.” It didn’t seem right to meet in the upstairs library—the siblings still didn’t feel like full-fledged Callahans—yet it made sense to stay in the house with Fiona and Burke. Fiona was, as usual, in the kitchen, stirring up something, and Burke was rolling out pie dough for her. “Let’s go.”

They trooped up to the library, easing into the leather chairs and sofa. He couldn’t stop thinking about Kendall, and how much he wished she hadn’t left.

If he hadn’t made love to her, maybe she would have stayed.

He looked around the room. “Where do we start?”

Jace said, “We know the scout was only a preliminary attraction.”

Falcon nodded. “He wasn’t very effective. Look at his bumbling attempt on Kendall. With the element of surprise on his side, he should have been able to lock her down.”

Sloan’s blood ran cold. It didn’t matter that his brother was telling him something he already knew—hearing it cut him deeply.

Galen went to the whiskey decanter, poured some into several tumblers. “And he cracked easily when we talked to him. Too easily.”

“We think he was expendable,” Tighe said, taking a glass from Galen. “They want us to know they’re here.”

“It’s good that Kendall left,” Dante said. “She was an easy target. And a distraction.”

Didn’t he know it. Sloan drank the whiskey, grateful for the liquid fire burning through him. “Now we just have Fiona and Burke.”

Galen looked out the upstairs window, staring into the darkness. “The snow has to be keeping our friends on ice out there.”

Tighe walked to stand beside him. “They’ll be hungry. And cold. Focused.”

“If the weather stays this way for long, they may become restless. Prone to mistakes,” Falcon said.

Sloan eyed his brothers. “We don’t know how they trained. We don’t know that they make mistakes. I wouldn’t count on it. Jonas said the first merc they caught—Sonny—had lived in the canyons for years.”

Dante nodded. “Let’s keep our same posts, taking turns on the perimeter in teams. We’ll leave Ash in the house with Fiona and Burke.”

Jace set down his whiskey. “Or we flush them out. End this game. Go home.”

Sloan blinked. “Home? This is home. According to the chief, we could be here for a long time.”

Jace stood up and started pacing. “And then what? We endanger ourselves, fix the Callahans’ problems and then ride away into the sunset?”

“They’re family,” Galen said. “They need us.”

“I know,” Jace said on a sigh. “Ignore me. I’m feeling caged.”

“Remember what the chief told us,” Falcon said. “One of us is the hunted one, if the chief is right. The only way to keep it together is to stick together.”

“I’m sticking,” Jace said. “But I’ve got questions, too. It’s my nature.”

Maybe they were
all
questioning something. Certainly Sloan didn’t have any answers. He leaned against the bar, letting his gaze wander around the room. He could understand Jace’s feelings.
Hell, I’m used to living in a cabin. Now I’m living in a palace and have made love to a princess. How’s that for crazy?

“Flushing them out would be the same as engagement,” Sloan said. “Declaring open war.”

“True,” Falcon said. “That idea deserves consideration.”

But they knew nothing about the enemy. “We need a scout of our own,” said Sloan.

“They’re going to be too smart to fall for something obvious.” They’d be well trained; contract mercenaries weren’t randomly chosen like fruit in a grocery store. Likely ex-military. He thought about the knife wound Kendall had suffered. Definitely a military-grade weapon. “I’ll go.”

His brothers stared at him.

“Why you?” Galen demanded.

“Because you’re all soft,” Sloan said.

He wasn’t about to risk any of his own family, not after they were finally back together. It had been too many years. What the chief had done was bring them under one roof. Maybe they weren’t a family like their cousins were, living tightly in a compound, where every day you saw the ones you loved. Maybe he hungered for that more than his brothers did.

Which would explain why Kendall had knocked him for a loop. And she had.

“Soft like doughnuts.”

Jace laughed. “Excuse me, but one of us in this room has been sleeping in a nice comfy bed with a beautiful blonde. The rest of us have bunked where the beds don’t have feather pillows.” He grinned at him.

“I believe I saw Sloan once with sheet marks pressed into his delicate skin after he’d napped in the ivory tower,” Falcon said.

Sloan held a hand up in surrender. “Okay, okay. I had it pretty good for a night or two. I’ll volunteer for the hard duty now.”

Galen stood. “As the oldest, I should go.”

“Nah,” Sloan said, tensing, thinking about Galen out in the darkness with mercenaries. “We need a doctor on the ranch. A
live
doctor.”

Falcon stood. “I’ll go. I’m not as pretty as Kendall, but I can probably draw out some bored, cold, hungry—”

“You’re pretty like the underside of my foot.” Dante laughed. “I’m the only one who has any experience surviving without chocolate bonbons and lacy washcloths.”

Tighe gave him a shove. “Sloan says he’s going to be the fall guy. Don’t make him feel self-conscious about his inexperience with survival conditions.”

“Yeah. I’ll pack my lacy washcloth and all will be cool.” Sloan raised his head. “Let’s figure out the battle plan, in case they bite.”

Any further conversation was cut off by the sound of a window shattering right by his head. Sloan ducked, as did his brothers, hitting the ground, taking cover behind tables, drawing their guns.

“Rock,” Galen said.

It was white and the size of a baseball. “Turn out the lights,” Sloan said, and crouched to move to the wall.

He waited for a moment until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then inched toward a window to peer out. A spotlight shone brightly on the thick snow. On a spotted Appaloosa, making no attempt to conceal himself, sat a man wearing a black felt Stetson and a long black coat. He waved, grinning, knowing someone was looking out at him and not caring that he was seen.

“Damn,” Sloan murmured. “I’m going out there.”

“I’ll go, too,” Galen said.

“Hell, all for one and one for all,” Falcon said, following Sloan down the stairs.

“Tighe and Dante, you take sniper post,” Sloan called back.

“On it,” Dante called after him.

“Jace, you’re backup,” Sloan commanded, opening the front door.

“Right there,” Jace said, moving to the den window off the kitchen.

Sloan, Galen and Falcon faced their visitor.

“Howdy, friends,” the stranger said.

Sloan stiffened. “Friends usually bring a pie, not a rock.”

The man laughed. “I don’t bake much. And I don’t know anything about a rock.”

“The rock that just came through our window up there,” Sloan said, playing along.

“Don’t know a thing about that,” the black-clad man said, his tone easy. “Just came by to welcome you to Rancho Diablo.”

“Welcome us?” Sloan tensed. No one should have known they were there.

“Name’s Storm Cash.” He shifted on the big Appaloosa. “I own the ranch up the road.”

Sloan felt his brothers tense in turn, coiled to spring.

“That’s strange,” Sloan said, his tone low and direct. “I met a man named Storm Cash yesterday.”

“Did you?” The rider shrugged. “I’m the only one I know.”

It was too coincidental. There was no way the scout they’d caught and this man had the same name. Someone was lying.

Sloan would bet this man was. He had a dark aura, set off by the silvery spotlights. The sinister-looking scar across Storm’s cheek might not represent anything more than a childhood accident. Long, jagged hair might not be a tell. A merc who didn’t have a chance to visit a barber with any regularity would probably shave his head close, with a knife if necessary. Then again, the jagged ends might mean infrequent cuttings with a knife.

Sloan couldn’t read him.

“Where’d you say you live, Cash?”

“Up the road.” Storm jerked his head in the opposite direction of their other neighbor, Bode Jenkins.

“No one’s mentioned we had new neighbors.”

“Bought the place about six months ago. Someone told me to be sure and swing by to introduce myself to the Callahans.”

Sloan kept silent. The story felt thin, but he didn’t have anything concrete to go on.

“Too bad about your window. You want to fix that. Hear another snowstorm’s on the way.” He tipped his Stetson. “Nice to finally meet the Callahans.”

“Yeah, about that. If you’ve been in Diablo for six months, why are you just stopping by now?” Sloan demanded.

“You know how a ranch takes your time from morning to night. But I’m sure we’ll run across each other again soon.” He turned the Appaloosa, patiently encouraging the animal to step over the snowdrifts to the main road.

“What do you think?” Falcon asked.

“Too easy.” Their brothers joined them. The five stood watching silently as the man disappeared.

“I mean, why pay a visit at this hour?” Jace asked.

“Maybe he was on his way home from somewhere,” Galen offered.

“Could be a neighborly sort. Our cousins are very social,” Tighe said. “He may have heard that and thought nothing of checking in, with the weather as bad as it’s been. It’s a friendly thing to do among ranchers.”

Sloan didn’t like it. “We’d better go fix that window. Someone check on the old folks, too. And one of you go look in on the horses.” He felt a huge responsibility to keep their cousins’ home safe from harm. “If there’s another storm coming in, the airport might close down.”

“I’ve been checking Kendall’s flight,” Dante said, holding up his phone with a sheepish grin. “It left on time.”

Sloan grunted, not surprised that Dante’s quixotic mind had wondered about the weather and the flights. He wished he’d thought of it himself. Instead, all he thought about was Kendall’s soft skin and how much he was going to miss her.

He looked at the sky, checking the movement of the clouds, and then followed his brothers inside. He didn’t know what to make of their supposed neighbor, but he did know it was a good thing Kendall had gone home.

He had to think of nothing but the mission—not silky hair and the softest lips he’d ever kissed.

* * *

T
WO
MONTHS
LATER
,
Christmas had come and gone. Christmas with the Callahans was always amazing, even if this year they weren’t in their home. The group that had stayed at Dark Diablo had come to Hell’s Colony so they could all be together. Kendall was pretty certain this was the best Christmas she’d ever experienced. Shaman and Gage had come home, too, with their families, which had thrilled their mother. Everyone but Xav had made it back.

“All my life I thought our house was too enormous and, in some ways, not really lived in,” Kendall told Jonas. “With your family here, it feels like a real home.”

“Wasn’t it always?” Jonas asked.

“Well, we run our business from here, so we have rooms and a guesthouse for any clients or lawyers that might need to stay over.” Kendall smiled. “It’s the first time we’ve used almost every single bedroom.”

Jonas raised a brow. “This is why you’re perfect to oversee the building of the new bunkhouse. You understand large scale.”

“The architect sent the plans over. I’ll get your opinion on them soon. I think you’ll be pleased. And building is slated to begin in March.”

Jonas smiled. “You deserve a raise. You should ask your boss for one.”