Chapter 35 #2
He ignored her.
“You killed my aunt, you bastard!” she shouted.
Emmett finally turned his head and looked at her. “So?”
“Why?” she asked, shocked that he had admitted it. “Dolly was good to you.”
“After all the work I’d done for her, she wouldn’t share any of the profits with me. There was more than enough.”
Dillon had never hated anyone as she did at that moment. “Having a secure job wasn’t enough, huh? Having a home, friends, someone you could count on wasn’t enough.”
“If it wasn’t for me, Dolly never would’ve known what she had. If I hadn’t found the stone and shown her, she wouldn’t have called the surveyor and had it confirmed. There is a fortune beneath our feet, and she wouldn’t share it. I’ve earned my share.”
“Because it was her land,” Dillon stated calmly.
Isaac held out the paper and pen again. “And it’ll soon be ours.”
“You’re kidding.” Dillon looked at the four of them. “Y’all think you can trust each other? I wonder who will kill who first.”
Hank pressed the gun to her head. “Do you ever shut up? Just sign.”
“I said no,” she reiterated, meeting his gaze.
Emmett sighed dramatically and turned on his heel. “I know how to get her to sign.”
Dillon glanced at Cal, who was holding her shotgun as if he were about to raise it, but his gaze was locked on Hank. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. There had been plenty of opportunities for Cal to help her, and he hadn’t. He likely wouldn’t do anything in the future, either.
Her head swung around at a loud neigh of fear from one of the horses.
Then the sound of hooves reached her. She gasped in outrage as Emmett led one of the foals into the stables.
The mother continued neighing loudly, seeking her baby.
The little filly responded and tried to return to its mother, but Emmett’s hold on the halter was firm.
“Sign the papers, Dillon. I’m only going to say it once.” He then drew a pistol and pointed it at the foal. “Or I’ll shoot her.”
Dillon knew Emmett would kill every animal on the ranch to get her to sign.
His greed wouldn’t let him stop until he had what he wanted.
Dillon’s revulsion grew. She could no more allow the foal to die than she could any of the horses on the ranch.
And Emmett knew it. It had hurt when Cal had fooled her, but she was devastated by Emmett’s betrayal.
She held out her hands to Isaac. Hank lowered the gun and backed up a few steps.
Once the papers were in her grasp, she couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take for the authorities to find her body.
If they ever found it. Les wouldn’t give up until he knew the truth, but she would probably be in a shallow grave somewhere long before then.
Dillon unfolded the papers and skimmed the first document.
The legal jargon made her eyes cross, but the gist was that she willingly signed over all rights to the ranch for the sum of three-point-five million dollars.
All of which was bullshit. She wouldn’t get a penny of it.
No doubt there was already a plan in place to state that they wouldn’t be able to transfer the money for one reason or another.
They’d likely covered all the bases. She was the only weak link they had to shore up.
She glanced at the foal, who still struggled and cried to get back to its mother. The mare screamed, and Dillon heard the horse running back and forth to get to her child. If the filly wasn’t returned soon, the mare could bust down the fence and harm herself.
How had it come to this? How had everyone she knew betrayed her? How had she been so blind to all of it?
“Ticktock,” Emmett said to hurry her along.
She shrugged, her mind racing with a plan that was more foolhardy than anything. But a chance was a chance. “I need to sign this on something.”
Isaac let out a long-suffering sigh and turned his back to her before bending over. “Use my back.”
Dillon had hoped that one of them would do exactly that.
She propped the paper on his back and clicked the pen.
Instead of signing, she raised the pen and plunged it into Isaac’s neck.
He let out a scream as she shoved him aside and rushed Emmett, knocking up his hand that held the gun.
He fired, the sound scaring the filly so that she reared, flailing her hooves, one of which struck the arm that held her.
The foal bolted. Dillon spun around in time to see Hank raising his weapon at her.
A loud boom sounded. Dillon jerked, but she felt nothing.
She looked down at herself, but there was no entry wound.
Then she looked back at Hank to see a huge red stain spreading over his chest. He turned his head and looked at Cal, disbelief on his face.
Dillon saw the end of her shotgun in Cal’s grasp smoking.
Isaac was on his hands and knees, screaming in pain.
Cal looked at her, then his face went white as he looked past her.
Dillon spun and found Emmett on his knees with his gun aimed at her.
She heard the retort as he pulled the trigger.
Saw the flash of the bullet as it left the barrel.
Everything moved in slow motion. There was no time to move, no time to duck.
There was a blur of something in front of her and then the thwack as the bullet met flesh.
Her eyes dropped to find Cal. The world returned to normal like a punch to the gut when she realized that Cal had taken a bullet for her.
She wanted to go to Cal, but her gaze jerked to Emmett when she realized that he still held his gun. His smile was pure evil and sent chills down her spine. Just as his finger curled around the trigger, a figure came from the side of the stables and pressed a rifle against Emmett’s back.
“Drop it,” Dusty demanded of Emmett.
Dillon let out a sigh when she saw Dusty.
Emmett’s lips lifted in a sneer. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”
“Did you really think I didn’t notice what you were doing?” Dusty demanded.
She dropped to her knees as Cal rolled onto his back with a moan of pain, blood everywhere. She tore open his shirt to see where the wound was, but there was so much blood. Her gaze lifted and met his.
“I . . . tried to . . . warn . . . you,” he said.
She shook her head. “Shh. Save your strength.”
Cal smiled. His face was pale from the pain. “I wasn’t going to let them hurt you. Dillon—”
She shook her head at him. “Stop talking. You need to save your strength.”
“But I have to tell you something.”
Tears gathered when he closed his eyes and grew still. About that time, the sound of sirens filled the air as cars came to a halt on the gravel drive. In seconds, sheriff’s deputies and Chet Thompson swarmed the stables.
“Help! I need an ambulance!” she yelled.
EMT personnel moved Dillon aside and began to tend to Cal. They put him on a gurney and rushed him out of the stables. She jumped to her feet to follow, only to have a deputy stop her.
Cal lifted his head and looked at her as he mouthed, “I love you.”
Her mouth parted in shock. The doors of the ambulance slammed shut, and she watched it race away.
“Dillon.”
She turned to see Chet. Her knees gave out when she realized that the nightmare was over. The ranger caught her, holding her firmly as he walked her to one of the patrol cars. He opened the back door and helped her sit.
“I need to know if he’s going to be okay,” she told the ranger.
He nodded and motioned to one of the nearby deputies. “They’ll keep us posted. Is all that blood Cal’s? Or is some of it yours?”
She looked at her hands and saw they were covered in blood, as was the front of her shirt. “It’s his. He saved me. How did you know to come?”
Chet got a towel from someone and handed it to her so she could wipe her hands. “Dusty is a volunteer for the TSCRA. Usually, volunteers only work the auctions, but he had a lot of information about what was going on here. I did tell you that I wasn’t here alone. Cal was also working with me.”
She shook her head. “But I thought he . . . You mean he didn’t betray me?”
Chet shook his head. “They tried to bring Cal in the night he was drunk, but he was so inebriated that he didn’t remember anything.
He never would’ve agreed to anything while sober.
Once you sent him away, we used that as a ploy to get him to discover all the details.
But you can rest easy now. It’s all over. ”
She watched as the deputies led Emmett and Isaac away in handcuffs. Isaac had a huge white bandage on his neck and blood staining his shirt. Hank was on a stretcher, a white sheet covering him as they casually loaded him onto another ambulance.
“Did you hear me?” Chet asked. “It’s over.”
She looked at him. “I know.”