Out on a Limb

Her eyes followed the shiver that ran down her arm at his touch, and settled on the place where his strong calloused hand covered hers. Her heart gave another gasp. “Somebody tried to kill me, Cutch. From your land. And now you’re trying to stop me from calling the sheriff? I don’t think so.” She jerked her arm away and looked at him with begging eyes, wanting him to explain, wanting him to say something that would make everything right.

But he hadn’t been able to do that eight years ago, and she doubted he could do it now. She knew better than to spend even one more second getting any closer to him than she already was.

RACHELLE MCCALLA

is a mild-mannered housewife, and the toughest she ever has to get is when she’s trying to keep her four kids quiet in church. Though she often gets in over her head, as her characters do, and has to find a way out, her adventures have more to do with sorting out the carpool and providing food for the potluck. She’s never been arrested, gotten in a fistfight or been shot at. And she’d like to keep it that way! For recipes, fun background notes on the places and characters in this book and more information on forthcoming titles, visit www.rachellemccalla.com.

Out on a Limb

Rachelle McCalla

MILLS & BOON

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Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…Do to others as you would have them do to you.

—Luke 6:27–31

Special thanks to my father, retired City of Norfolk Police Sergeant Brian M. Richter, and to my brother-in-law, Page County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles McCalla, for answering all my questions about ballistics, bail and meth. And thank you for keeping the places we live safe for all these years. You make the world a better place every day.

Thank you to all the powered hang glider enthusiasts and pilots of small aircraft who’ve taken the time to post videos and instructional materials for every conceivable flying procedure on the Internet. I couldn’t have written this book without your help. You make me feel like I can fly.

Thanks also to all the wonderful people at Steeple Hill, especially my editor, Emily Rodmell, for doing such a bang-up job on my books. I feel so tremendously blessed to work with you all!

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LETTER TO READER

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

ONE

Elise McAlister wouldn’t have paid any attention to the sound echoing up from the hills below her if she hadn’t felt a sharp sting as something grazed her leg. Even then, putting two and two together took her a moment, because the situation went so far beyond anything she’d experienced flying before—or even heard of anyone experiencing. Nobody would really attempt to shoot down a hang glider, would they?

Pop! There it was again.

A spray of shot punched through the fabric of her right wing. The powered glider listed heavily.

“Lord, help me,” Elise began to pray as she looked down, frantically trying to assess her situation. Only moments before, she’d been enjoying her Saturday morning flight, soaring peacefully above the scenic Loess Hills of southwestern Iowa, lost in thought and equally detached from any navigational landmarks. Now she was going down and didn’t even know where she was.

Pop!

Elise braced herself for this hit, almost relieved to hear the spray take out her motor instead of what remained of her wings. She could glide without a motor. She couldn’t stay aloft without wings.

Her hang glider sagged in the air, and the wind messed with the damaged wing, creating drag. Elise spotted a gravel road in the distance. At the rate she was going, there was no way she’d make it—not with all the treetops she’d have to pass over. She was losing altitude fast enough as it was.

Without the steady purr of the motor behind her, she could hear the wind flapping through the torn fabric of her right wing—and below her, the distinctive chinking of metal on metal as a gunman racked the slide on his shotgun. In her mind’s eye, she could picture the empty shell kicking out and falling to the ground as a fresh shell was loaded into place, ready to be shot. Sure, she’d taken her dad’s twelve gauge out plenty of times, but she hadn’t been shooting at anyone.

A dust cloud rose where the gravel road topped a nearby hill. A vehicle was headed this way. If they saw her go down, maybe they could help her—unless they were with whoever was trying to shoot her down.

Blam!

They were getting closer. Elise heard the shots rattle through the thick canopy of leaves below her before ripping through her Dacron again, this time tearing through her left wing. Grateful she’d at least begun to level out, Elise felt her stomach dip as the glider sank toward the treetops.

The jagged hills lunged up to meet her. Below, she could hear shouting, scrambling noises as her pursuers crashed through the underbrush. The gentle breeze, which had clocked in at a pristine six miles per hour when she’d checked it that morning, stilled to almost nothing.

The gun cocked again.

“Please, God, please,” Elise begged, knowing that, as low in the air as she was now, those shots were going to penetrate deeper. If she was hit again, it would do a lot more than sting a little.

Blam!

The shots tore through her wings again, and a couple balls slammed into the soles of her feet. Maybe her heavy steel-toe hiking boots hadn’t been such a bad choice for her morning flight, after all. She didn’t usually wear them for flying, but—

Whap! Trees leaves slapped her toes as she skirted the top of a high hill, causing her body to tilt and her wounded craft to tip unsteadily in the air.

Not good. The drag on her wings increased, sapping her momentum, pulling her down. With her pursuers clambering up the hill behind her, she didn’t dare go down in this valley. She’d be a sitting duck. They’d be on her before she ever got unstrapped from her harness.

“Lord, I really need your help now,” she whispered, her shoulders tensing as she tried to angle upward for maximum lift. She had nothing. No wind. No updraft. She was going down in this valley, and she could hear the gunmen crashing through the woods on the backside of the hill behind her. They’d be on her in a moment.

The next hill careened toward her, its tree-covered sides a mess of fingerlike branches, ready to grab her out of the air and hold her captive until the gunmen caught up to her. Praying hard, she tried to guide her damaged wings upward.

The trees moved closer. She could see each branch. She could see each leaf. She braced herself.

The updraft hit her face at the same second it caught her wings, lifting her clear from the hilltop. “Thank you, God,” she prayed, almost-sobbing, instinctively running through the air as the treetops slapped her feet. Though she knew sudden thermal updrafts often occurred on hillsides, between the timing and her desperation, she felt as though God had reached down from heaven and pulled her up the side of the hill just in time.

A dead branch jutted into the sky, and for a moment she was sure she’d hit it straight on. Lifting her legs, she pulled up her whole body, bracing herself against her speed bar. The sole of her boot made contact with the branch, and she pushed off, effectively propelling herself another ten feet through the air.

After clearing the trees on the hilltop, her wounded glider seemed to crumple right out of the sky as the updraft that had filled her wings dissipated. At least with one more hillside between her and the gunmen, she’d have some chance of escaping, however small.

She went down in the treetops of the next valley in a tangle, her lines, wires and splayed-open fabric wrapping in branches, squeezing her in an unfriendly embrace. She struggled to unhook her harness, but it wouldn’t even budge against the overwhelming tension as she dangled from the snarled mess in the treetop.

Elise slapped the side pocket of her parachute pants. Yes, she’d dutifully remembered to bring her hook knife, though she’d never had to use it before. Now she whipped it out and slashed through the nylon restraints, not even regretting destroying the expensive equipment—not if it meant saving her life.

With one arm tightly gripping the wedged speed bar, she tossed the knife uphill where it would be out of her way, looked down and said another quick prayer before dropping the last ten feet to the ground. The soft soil of the Loess Hills felt hard enough when she hit it, meeting the earth with as much of a roll as she could muster, and half sliding, half running down the rest of the hill. She could hear her pursuers shouting as they crashed through the valley behind the hill she’d just crossed over.

She didn’t have much time.

Ducking to avoid the jutting branches that jabbed at her from all sides, Elise ran the length of the valley, hoping to skirt the hill and save herself the effort of climbing up the steep, rugged hillside, while at the same time, hopefully, losing her pursuers in the undergrowth.

She ran blindly, fear pushing her as she leaped over fallen logs, swung around saplings and tried to pick her way as quickly as possible over the uneven ground. It would never do to turn an ankle now.

At the side of the hill, the evenly spaced trees gave way to thick bushes, and their sharp briars snagged her as she ran headlong into their midst. About to recoil, she nearly missed seeing the aging fence line that ran through the windbreak. Windbreaks and fence lines didn’t just occur randomly. They followed property lines, which usually followed roads.

Elise remembered the road she’d seen from the air. Had she really made it that far? Or would forcing herself into the thick bushes only trap her for the pursuers she could hear topping the last hill behind her?

She threw one arm up in front of her face before ducking headfirst into the briars.

The thorns grabbed relentlessly at her windsuit, tearing through her clothes and snagging her skin. She made it to the barbed-wire fence in one lunge and grabbed the line between the barbs, grateful when it sagged enough to permit her to scramble over. A barb tore at her pants, but she was beyond caring. She could hear the gunmen closing in behind her as she tried to press forward through the unrelenting bramble. She was stuck.

Terror filled her, reminiscent of the nightmares in which she tried to run but couldn’t and awoke to find her self tangled in her bedsheets. But this was no dream. She was stuck in the bushes, and the bad guys were closing in.

Twisting, turning, pushing, she snapped through branches with desperate force, her eyes stinging with tears as thorns bit through her arms and stiff sticks jabbed her ribs. “Please, God. You didn’t bring me this far to let me down now.”

Scrambling frantically forward, she fell free of the trees and stumbled out onto the chalky, white gravel road.

Right into the path of an oncoming truck.

Brakes squealed as the vehicle threw up a cloud of dust that powdered her face in the same dirty white as the road. Her outstretched hands slapped against the warm hood as the truck’s brakes locked, and it slid another couple feet on the loose gravel, roaring to a stop nose-to nose with her. The instant it came to a stop, she ran around to the passenger side of the vehicle, peeling off her flying goggles as the dust began to settle.

The passenger door opened just as Elise recognized the shade of indigo-blue paint underneath the dust-covered sides of the older Dodge Ram. For a second, she thought about diving back into the bushes.

“Need a lift?”

“No,” Elise answered instinctively. No way was she getting into a truck with Henry McCutcheon IV. McCutcheons were trouble, and Cutch was the worst kind of trouble. He’d broken her heart eight years ago, and she’d never fully recovered. She certainly didn’t need a run-in with him today. His blue eyes twinkled at her from underneath a shock of thick black hair as he leaned across the front seat to address her.

“Elise?” Recognition crossed his perfect features. “Were you flying that glider that just crashed?”

“Uh—”

Before she could fully answer, another gunshot rang through the woods, spitting gravel and shot around her feet and peppering the sides of the truck.

Cutch’s blue eyes widened. “Get in!” he shouted.

Elise dived into the cab, pulling the door shut after her as Cutch took off in a cloud of flying gravel. She ducked down as another shot rang out behind them.

“Is somebody shooting at you?” Cutch asked as he gunned the engine, quickly shifting gears as he accelerated.

“Yes,” Elise admitted, keeping her head low and wishing her flying helmet was insulated with more than a shock-absorbing layer of Styrofoam. It wasn’t made to block a bullet. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Her trembling fingers fumbled with the seatbelt as she attempted to strap herself in. She’d had just about enough after what was supposed to have been a peaceful morning flight through the hills. Her panting stilled as she began to catch her breath.

Cutch quickly put a few more hills between them and their pursuers. “Those guys on foot?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Anybody else after you?”

“I don’t know.”

The truck slowed as they reached the top of Rink’s Mound, the highest hill in the area. Cutch pulled into the parking area near the Loess Hills scenic viewing tower and the old Dodge rumbled to a stop.

It wasn’t until the truck had completely stopped moving that Elise realized she was shaking.

Cutch killed the engine and looked over at her.

She shrank against the door and pinched her eyes shut. It was one thing to be shot out of the clear blue sky. It was another thing entirely to be sitting in a truck with Henry McCutcheon IV. Elise wasn’t sure which was worse, exactly, but she sure wished she could stop trembling long enough to get the truck door open. They’d dated for a couple of months eight years ago, and he’d only kissed her once, but ever since he’d purposely humiliated her in front of half of Holyoake, she’d steered plenty clear of him.

“Hey.” Cutch reached toward her.

She instantly recoiled. “Stay back,” she snapped.

He slumped against his seat. “You’re the one who jumped into my truck.”

“I wouldn’t have if there hadn’t been somebody shooting at me.”

“You’re welcome,” he said with sarcasm cutting through his voice. “Who was shooting at you, and why?”

“I told you I don’t know.”

“They shot you out of the sky?” Cutch clarified.

Elise nodded, her shoulders sagging forward as the rush of fear she’d felt was replaced with exhaustion. She pinched the clasp on her chin strap and let her helmet sink into her hands. Then she ran her fingers back through her short, cropped hair, freeing her loose brown curls before tucking the ends behind her ears with trembling fingers.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would somebody shoot you out of the sky?”

“I don’t know.” She sucked in a deep breath and tried to think. Why would somebody shoot her out of the sky?

“Do you think it was some teenagers playing around?”

“They acted pretty serious.” Elise inspected the scratches on her hands and arms from her tangle with the thorn bushes. Drying blood wept from the more serious cuts, but that was the worst of it. She stuck a finger through the hole in her pants where she’d been shot and fingered the spot on her calf where the steel ball had grazed her. It had already stopped bleeding.

Thoughtfully, she prodded the fabric where it gathered at the elastic band near her ankle and felt a ball hiding inside. She leaned down, cautiously peeled back the cuff of her pants and plucked it out.

“What were they shooting?” Cutch continued questioning her. “Birdshot? Do you think they were trying to scare you or something?”

Elise held up the hard metal ball. “Not birdshot. Buckshot,” she held the steel ball—over a half centimeter in diameter—in the palm of her hand so he could see. Shot that size was meant to deeply penetrate flesh. “They weren’t trying to scare me. They were trying to kill me.”

Cutch looked into the warm brown eyes of the woman he’d once loved, and the eight years since their romance seemed to melt away. Elise. She was still so attractive, even covered in dust and perched like a frightened bird in the corner of the cab of his truck. So attractive and in spite of the long separation of time, still so familiar to him. What had happened?

“Why would somebody try to kill you?”

“I don’t know,” she told him again, and he could see from the fear in her eyes that she meant it.

He just couldn’t accept it.

“Okay. Help me figure this out. What would you be doing to cause someone to take a shot at you?”

“I was just out flying.” Her usually strong voice sounded weak.

“In your powered hang glider?”

She nodded and bit her lower lip.

Cutch felt his heart give an unfamiliar flop. He had no business wanting to pull her into his arms and comfort her, and he had no doubt she’d smack him if he tried it, but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to reach for her. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel, though the truck was parked and the cooling engine tapped out a tune in concert with the grasshoppers whose late-summer songs poured in the open windows.

“So you were out flying in your glider,” he prompted.

The woman beside him sniffled, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as she swiped at her cheeks. Elise McAlister was crying in his truck, and somebody had just been trying to shoot her—from his land. He did not need this, especially not today.

“Did you see anything unusual before they started shooting?” He risked a glance her way, realizing that if he hadn’t gone out early to clear brush on the north quarter, her pursuers would likely have caught up to her. His stomach knotted.

She had her eyes pinched shut, and a trail of wet tears meandered down her dust-cloaked face. “The trees.” She sniffled. “The trees are planted in rows back there. And they’re all the same. Hickory, I think. Or maybe—”

“Pecan,” he supplied reluctantly. It wasn’t as though she wouldn’t have figured it out on her own, and he needed her to rack her brain for what might have triggered the attack instead of focusing on identifying what kind of trees she’d been flying over.

“Pecan,” she repeated in a whisper and looked at him, recognition crossing her features.

She knew. But how much did she know? She didn’t know everything, did she? Eight years before, he’d foolishly shared with her his dream of reclaiming his grandfather’s pecan groves and clearing the McCutcheon name. And now here he was, already admitting things to her that no one else knew.

Cutch tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. What mattered right now was Elise’s safety, and he couldn’t do anything to help her until he understood what had just happened. “Did you get a good look at the guys who were shooting at you?”

“No. Nothing. They were too far behind me, and the trees blocked my view.”

“You ever fly out this way before?”

“Not really. Where were we, exactly?”

“Five miles west of Rink’s Mound.”

“Do you know who owns that property?”

Cutch returned her gaze, feeling a tiny trickle of relief that she’d regained enough of her composure to ask him such an intelligent question. Of course he knew who owned the property. As the Holyoake County Assessor, he knew down to the last lot and acre who owned what in the whole county. “Yup.”

“Who?” An undercurrent of impatience ran through her voice.

He closed his eyes. “Nobody who’d be shooting at you.”

“Cutch—” a strangled half panic, half impatience infused itself in her tone “—somebody was trying to kill me. Do you know something?” She glared at him and reached into one of the many zippered pockets on her pants, pulling out a phone. “That’s it! Why didn’t I think of this sooner? I’m calling the sheriff.”

“Wait.” He reached out his hand to stop her. The last thing he needed was the sheriff stomping around on his property—especially if somebody was doing something illegal out there. And attempted murder was certainly illegal.

He felt Elise freeze the second his fingers brushed her hand. She looked up at him, and for a moment, time rolled back and they were young again, certain their love could conquer all. They’d been so naive back then.

“Just wait a second. Let’s sort this out first.” He watched as she swallowed and obediently lowered the phone, though she still held it tightly in her hand.

She repeated her earlier question. “Who owns that property?”

He didn’t want to tell her, didn’t even want to think about why someone had been shooting at her from his land or what the legal implications might be. But if she was in danger, he couldn’t withhold information that might help keep her safe. He met her eyes.

“I do.”

TWO

Elise stared at Cutch, the old feelings he stirred up making her heart flop around like a glider caught in a gale. She needed a steady head to sort out what was going on. Having Cutch so close only made things worse. “You own the land from which someone was shooting at me?” she clarified.

He looked back out the window as though he could still see the spot, though it now lay five miles behind them. Meeting her eyes again, he nodded. “Yup.”

“That settles it.” Elise jerked the door open and slid out of the truck, flicked her phone open and dialed 911. The McCutcheons and the McAlisters had been rivals for generations, even before the McCutcheons had sabotaged her grandfather’s plane long before she was born, though it wasn’t until his fiery death that the feud had become so fierce. It had been eight years since she’d experienced their direct hostility, and she hadn’t thought they’d be so territorial, but she’d always been wrong when she’d dared to trust a McCutcheon in the past. She needed to wise up.

Cutch was out of the truck and around to her side before she could hit Send. “Hang on just a second. This isn’t as bad at it looks.” His hand slid down her arm to her fingers.

Her eyes followed the shiver that ran down her arm at his touch and settled on the place where his strong, calloused hand covered hers. Her heart gave another dying gasp. “Somebody tried to kill me, Cutch. From your land. And now you’re trying to stop me from calling the sheriff? I don’t think so.” She jerked her hand away and looked at him with begging eyes, wanting him to explain, wanting him to say something that would make everything right. But he hadn’t been able to do that eight years ago, and she doubted he could do it now. She knew better than to spend even one more second getting any closer to him than she already was.