Highlander's Love: Winter Solestice (Against All Odds Series 3) Read online

  “You’ve got two seconds to answer me or I’m taking off the top of your head with this shotgun. Who are you?”

  “Man, we don’t want you. We just want the girl! We just came for the girl!”

  What the hell would they want with Inez? The words that came out of his mouth was enough to make me see red and still took his head off. There was no way I was going let these peckerwoods live so that they could maybe come back for her. Absolutely no way.

  I rolled the newest corpse over onto his stomach and found his wallet. I flipped it open his wallet—also another sure sign these guys weren’t professionals. Pros didn’t bring their wallets along to a job—and read the address off of his license. It was a Tucson address, so that meant whoever had sent them was probably from down around there, too.

  Maybe it was time to go and visit my big brother, Sam. He was in deep with a lot of the shader types down that way. At the very least, he could tell me who sent these guys to kill Inez.

  Chapter 5

  Not long after the firefight, Juan and a few boys from the bunkhouse made it up the house. I told them what was going on and to not call the sheriff for an hour or so. I wanted to get Inez as far away from this as possible and I didn’t want her to have anything to do with the law other than my brother. For as far as I knew, she was neck deep into something that would put her in jail for the rest of her life and I wasn’t going to help put her there.

  When I had Inez open the door to the trophy room, she leaped into my arms, tears streaming down her face. We stood there like that with her trembling in my arms, and I could have stayed just like that for the rest of night, but I needed to get her out of dodge and I needed answers. I had her get dressed and we headed to Tucson in one of the ranch 4-by-4’s. As we made the hour long trip down to Tucson, she told me the whole story of why the men had come after her. She’d been through hell and back and then back again. But because of the her story, I knew that my brother would be able to help us.

  Sam had joined up with the border patrol when he turned 18 despite the fact that he had more money than he could spend in 10 lifetimes. But like me and the Army, and both my old man and my brother with the police, Sam needed the action. No, that’s not quite accurate, Sam needed the power. There isn’t a government agency in the entire state of Arizona that held more sway and power than the border patrol, and that power virtually doubled after 9/11 and the creation of the patriot act. Sam basically held the power of life and death with zero impunity in the palm of his hand. And if the rumors were true, he wielded like a mad king and built an empire for himself on both sides of the border. He was a truly dangerous man, and at this point, I was pretty damn happy that he would be siding with me against whoever had come after Inez.

  We arrived at Sam’s little ranch style house on the outskirts of Mount Lemon just after dawn. Sam greeted us wearing nothing but a tattered old bathrobe and slurping from a monstrous mug of coffee. Sam had never married, or even had a girlfriend as far as I knew, and his spartan house reflected its lack of a feminine touch; it was nothing bare gray walls and outdated dark oak furniture. He sat us down in his kitchen and stared at Inez and I like we were some kind of science experiment.

  “So, I guess you drove all the way down here to introduce me to your new girlfriend,” He said as he took another big sip of coffee.

  I pulled the ID I’d lifted off the third dead man and flipped casually across the table to Sam

  “Any chance you know who that is?” I asked.

  Sam picked up the ID.

  “Yup, Billy Zane. I know the kid all too well.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Just another uneducated redneck with a hard-on for hurting Mexicans. Who is he to you?”

  “I just killed him and a couple of his buddies back at the ranch a couple of hours ago for trying to kill me and my new girlfriend.”

  “Well, that ain't no good.”

  “How come come?”

  “Well, Billy may be nothing but poor white trash, but he’s connected poor white trash.”

  “Connected to who?”

  “Reverend Fine.”

  Shit. Just about everyone in the state of Arizona knew who the Reverend Joseph Fine was. He was one of those loud mouth yahoos I mentioned earlier who give the state of Arizona a bad name. In fact, he was pretty much the lead yahoo. The ultra-conservative politicians loved trotting out the good reverend out anytime around elections and they needed to get the natives worked up and scared and into the voting booths. He was extremely well known, but as far as I knew, he wasn’t dangerous. But then again, I avoided politics like the plague because the last time I gave a crap about them got me 6 years out in Iraq blowing people's heads off.

  “You wanna take me to him?” I asked Sam.

  “Not particularly. But I suppose you ain’t gonna give me much of a choice in the matter?”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “Then I suppose I will.”

  ***

  We left Inez back at Sam’s house and made the half hour drive to the Reverend’s “church” in total silence. Me and Sam have never been what you would describe as close. Sure, we were brothers, but we’d never paled around growing up like me and my little brother did. We were blood and that’s all that mattered. But in the same breath, if push came to shove, I was fairly certain Sam would sacrifice me in a dead second to either save his own ass or curry favor with someone who could give him a little more power. So when it came to dealing with the Reverend, I didn’t know where I stood exactly.

  As we pulled in front of the Reverend’s church—which was just an anonymous storefront in a burnt out mini-mall—Sam turned to me with his gray eyes.

  “I can’t have you killing this man, little brother,” He said.

  “And why’s that? Are you into him?”

  He snickered and cleared his throat.

  “First off, I don’t feel like arresting you today, and if you kill him in front of me, you ain’t going to give me a choice in the matter. Secondly, I ain’t into him, but a whole bunch of people you don’t want to mess with are, and if you kill him, I ain’t going to be able to protect you one damn bit. So hands off, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, and let me do the talking. He don’t know you from fucking Adam, but he’s scared shitless of me.”

  We exited my brothers truck and stepped through the glass fronted door to the jingling of bells. There was nothing in the store front other than the Reverend himself sitting at a battered desk that looked like it had been fished out of the trash.

  “Samuel!” The Reverend greeted us. “What a pleasant surprise! It’s been too long since you’ve last visited!”

  The Reverend held out his long-fingered hand, but Sam just stared at it like it was a dead moth stuck in a screen door.

  “Knock off the shit, Joe, and sit down, this ain’t a social visit.”

  “It’s not, then whatever reason do you have for visiting me today? And who is this fine young man you brought along with you?” The Reverend took a seat and kicked up his snakeskin boots on top of his battered desk. The boots he was wearing easily cost 10 grand, so obviously he was doing pretty well for himself.

  “This is my little brother and just killed the shit out of Billy Zane,” Sam tossed the ID onto the desk and it bounced off the Reverends boot. “And a couple of other fellas who just shot up his house trying to kill his girlfriend.”

  “Now that’s a shame. Billy was always a little too hot tempered when it comes to dealing with the illegal problem. Too hot-tempered, too over overzealous.”

  “Indeed, he was,” Sam agreed. “But my brother’s girlfriend also told me that Billy and a few of his other buddies killed a truckload of Mexicans just after crossing the border up near Phoenix.”

  “That is a shame. As you know, Sam, I’ve never condoned violence.”

  “Of course. But, you know I don’t feel quite the same. So here’s the deal, if you or any of your people come at my brother or his
girl ever again, I’m going come down here and put you into a pair of handcuffs. And then I going personally drive you down to Juarez to visit a couple of fellas I know down there, and these fellas, Joe, they don’t give two shits about who you know up at the statehouse, all they know is that you’re bad for business. Got it.”

  The Reverend’s face had turned visibly gray as we turned and walked out of the small office. As the door closed behind us, Sam said me.

  “Don’t say I’ve never done nothing for you, Hank, because that just cost me more than you’ll ever know.”

  ***

  It’s been two months since the attack on the ranch, and things are more or less back to normal. The day Inez and I drove back home, Sam called the Apache Junction sheriff’s department and smoothed things over with them and the attack was labeled a home invasion gone bad. The house is more or less back to normal, too, but both Inez and I have taken to sleeping in the trophy room just incase. She still has nightmares about what she experienced here and out in the desert (I do, too, but she doesn’t need to here about that.), but every night, they become a little less frequent.

  Every morning, we go out riding and every night I help her study for the GED. Neither of us talks very much, but then again, we really don’t need to.

  Because all we need is to know that we’ll always be there for one another, and that’s all that matters.

  THE END

  My Alien Alpha

  Alien Romance

  Another amazing night, I see.

  Disappointed, the woman took a sip of her blackberry schnapps while observing the inside of the bar. The place was almost full, mostly occupied by single women and the occasional middle-aged man in search of an easy lay.

  Jasmine, old girl, you have officially hit rock bottom, she told herself, unintentionally lifting the glass up to her mouth again a mere moment before she managed to regain control and put it back on the table.

  The night is young and I will have to drive home afterward. She only noted what she already knew, a transparent and fairly ineffective attempt to slow the pace of her drinking.

  “Fun,” the woman spoke aloud, allowing her voice to be drowned out by the merciless racket given off by the latest popular tune. Reacting to the mention of the word, her lips contracted, bending upwards to form a sarcastic smile. It had been ages since anyone had managed to amuse Jasmine, and by the look of things in this place, the trend wasn’t going to change any time soon.

  How do they do it? She asked herself, unable to pry her eyes away from the other patrons, completely and utterly shocked by their sheer banality. Eagerly displaying empty smiles, the various people—both paired and individual—danced and yelled while downing glass after glass of cheap alcoholic beverages, all just to temporarily become mindless enough to enjoy this place.

  Is that the point of life? Drink away your boredom every night, only to have to do it all over again tomorrow? In response to that train of thought, Jasmine’s arm moved by itself again, allowing the pleasant aroma of her liquor to take some of the edge off.

  Not nearly enough, I’m afraid. Slowly, she placed the glass back onto the table, feeling the draw of its contents the very second it left her mouth.

  Maybe I should follow the others’ lead tonight after all, she considered while watching what little was left of the sweet, potent liquid as it swirled around its transparent little container. Get myself wasted, hook up with one of these guys… Let loose for a little bit. Maybe I’ll feel a bit better tomorrow, then.

  Now partially willing to check out her options, Jasmine lifted her gaze from the table and started scanning the bar again. The situation hadn’t changed. In fact it had gotten worse, as a rural-looking elderly chap mistook Jasmine’s curiosity for interest and immediately set foot toward her.

  Oh, no. Please, God, Satan, anyone who might be listening, make it so that he’s going after someone else. Unmoved by her prayer, the man kept coming toward Jasmine’s seat, treating her with the sight of his own set of sparse, yellow teeth along the way.

  “Well, well, ‘twas about time for you to give me the eye, pur’ty thing,” the intruder bellowed out, the rough, gravelly tone of his voice somehow cutting through the omnipresent racket with little effort.

  Seems like nobody’s listening after all, Jasmine concluded, donning the least friendly expression she could instead of replying to the older man’s greeting.

  “Always knew ya had a thing for meh, little miss Paulson.” He kept on talking despite the complete lack of reaction on Jasmine’s part. Taking his unpleasantness to another level, he pulled out a chair before sitting down directly opposite the obviously uninterested woman.

  “All’a you’s the same, y’know? Yo’ time comes, you ain’t so pretty no more, them young’uns don’t chase you around th’ way they used to.” He practically spat the words out. It was remarkable how repugnant he was.

  Does he really approach girls with that attitude? Or is this his special routine, prepared just for me? Involuntarily, the woman chuckled. She regretted it immediately afterward.

  “Ah’m right, aren’t I?” The intruder seemed pleased with himself, not giving Jasmine the chance to respond before continuing with his act. Visibly swaying due to intoxication, he bent his torso over the table, now barely more than a foot away from her face. “Don’t take much to figure out. When it comes down to it, all’a ya want th’ same thing.”

  “If there is in fact one need common to all women, I’m sure that it’s to be as far away from you possible,” said another voice, interrupting whatever the older man was about to do, its origin obscured from Jasmine’s view by the interposing body. It was a deep baritone that by all means should have been drowned out by the bass of the music, but somehow managed to remain clear and understandable.

  Like a spring, the old intruder jerked himself back into a standing position, immediately turning around to face this stranger. There was strength in those old bones yet; that much was apparent from the motion, but it all evaporated completely once the older man got a sight of whom he was facing.

  Easily over six-foot-one and built like an athlete, the deep-voiced man towered over most of the bar’s patrons. The crimson shirt he wore over his black pants was slightly unbuttoned at the top, letting everyone know just how well chiseled the upper parts of his pectoral muscles were. His hair was dark and wavy, closely cropped at the back of his head but significantly longer at the top. Adding a curious vibe to this generous display of resplendent masculinity was a pair of sunglasses he wore over his eyes. They were red, and far more reflective than was the norm for shades of that color.

  For several seconds the woman and her unwanted company stared at the new arrival, both surprised for different reasons. Not willing to let the silence go on for much longer, the handsome stranger took a deep breath and spoke again, the tone of his voice still astoundingly clear.

  “The lady does not enjoy your company, sir. It would be best for you to step away right now.” The tone was strangely threatening, but the mysterious man’s posture was anything but—relaxed, slightly bent to the right, his hands resting within the pockets in the side of his pants.

  “She didn’t say a word ‘bout dat!” the older man argued, his left hand dramatically extended toward Jasmine’s part of the table. Noting her lack of confirmation, he sighed, the frustration quickly turning into anger. Now having formed fists with both of his hands, the unwelcome man started yelling at the stranger, the gravelly tone of his voice becoming even less pleasant.

  “You think you’re the shiyet, don’t you? Young, rich an’ good-looking as you are, ya waltz up ‘ere an’ take what’s not yours. Dangnabbit, I was ‘ere first, ya no-good scum-sucking son of a-“

  “It doesn’t matter that she didn’t say it, sir. What matters is that I said it, if you catch my drift.” The mysterious individual interrupted the older one’s ranting with no effort whatsoever, all while raising his right hand toward the upper rim of his glasses. In but a single motion
, he lowered them ever so slightly, enough for the standing local to see what lay behind, but insufficient for Jasmine to catch a glimpse.

  Now rendered completely speechless, the unwelcome older man relaxed his body completely, allowing his hands to drop to his sides. Defeated by something Jasmine could not comprehend, he turned toward his right and left their company, avoiding touching or even looking upon the stranger again.

  “That coot won’t bother you again,” the dark-haired man said as he placed his sunglasses. “At least, not anytime soon,” he continued, dazzling Jasmine with a smile full of porcelain-white teeth.

  “Mind if I sit down?” The stranger appeared to have asked only as a formality, having occupied the seat before Jasmine had a chance to respond in any way. Not that she’d have refused such a breath of fresh air.

  “Not at all,” Jasmine replied, a smile unexpectedly creeping across her expression. “Although I find it amusing that you’ve taken the liberty to do so before I even gave you my approval, mister…?”

  “James,” the dark-haired stranger finally introduced himself, still smiling. “James Ackerman, at your service. And if you are not interested in my company, miss, all you need to do is ask and I will be gone as fast as I came.”