Page 19 of Rainwater
He made it back to the motel in record time. He wouldn’t sleep, he thought as he parked the Harley. He knew he wouldn’t. He might as well just gather together his stuff and get back on his bike and ride until he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
Finally he got off the bike, his mind so preoccupied with his inner struggles that he didn’t see the shadows waiting. He didn’t hear the scrape of a boot heel against the asphalt. Delving into his pocket for the key to his room, he stiffened as the hair on the back of his neck lifted in warning. But awareness came too late. The white-hot agony of the blow to the back of his head knocked him to his knees. He felt the warm rush of blood over the back of his neck.
The attack was so sudden and vicious that Corey found his quick reflexes and formidable fighting talent couldn’t respond in time.
The blow from a baseball bat across his back pushed him to the ground and he scraped his face painfully against the asphalt of the parking lot. A blow from a booted foot exploded against his side, knocking the breath out of him. He grunted from the pain and tried to pull in enough oxygen to get another breath. Torturous blow after torturous blow rained down on him. He curled into a fetal position to protect himself as best as possible, nausea from the pain and the suddenness of the attack roiling in his stomach. He felt cold and paralyzed. In his disorientation, he wondered if his father had beaten him. He wondered if he was at home lying on the carpet instead of the hard ground. And he wondered, as he did when he was a child, if he’d done somethingto deserve this. He thought that he should be used to pain by now, but some rational part of his brain was telling him shock was setting in.
Finally they stopped kicking him. He was unable to move, his ears still ringing from the blows, his vision blurred. Sounds came to him as if through water. He could hear the smashing of chrome and metal and the breaking of glass. But he was moving in and out of consciousness at this point and couldn’t pinpoint the noise.
He thought he heard someone whoop and say with smugness, “Look what we got here, boys. A nice little bonus.”
Suddenly the commotion stopped, and one more kick landed with excruciating precision against his back where the baseball bat had inflicted pure agony. “Hey, chief. I hope the little bitch was worth it.”
He recognized the voice before he gave up the fight and darkness closed in.
The shrill ringingof her cell phone startled Jennifer out of a light doze. Adrenaline stabbed through her, and she whirled to get the phone so that the ringing wouldn’t wake Ellie. “Hello.”
“Jennifer.”
Corey’s voice was so weak she could barely make out her name.
“Corey? Corey! What’s the matter?”
“Need you. Motel.”
She heard the phone drop, but the line was still open. “Corey! Corey!” she said frantically, but the hum of the open line was her only answer. It was ominous and frightened her to death.
She dropped her cell, picked up her discarded jeans skirt from this morning and struggled into it, stuffing her shirt into the waistband. She ran through the house, grabbed her denim jacket and shrugged into it, and hardly remembered reaching the back door. She slipped out the door closest to the bunkhouse and entered at a run. She tripped in the dark and swore, then got up and grabbed Jimmy, one of her live-in cowhands, and shook him with all the pent-up frustration and fear in her. She explained that she wanted him to stay with Ellie and he agreed immediately. She then asked Tex, another of the hands, to come with her.
Something was wrong, terribly wrong and she was frantic to get to Corey. She took a deep calming breath and tried to push the panic back. But it was like pushing a ball underwater. It kept bobbing back to the surface.
She drove like a complete and utter maniac. Tex looked at her with surprise on his face. Once he made a comment about her killing them both, but she just flashed him one of her quelling looks and he clammed up. She was sure he’d never seen her this way because she’d never been this way before.
She hit the brakes so hard when she got to the motel that Tex was jerked forward from the sudden stop. Immediately she saw the motorcycle on its side, smashed and dented as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. “Oh my God!” she whispered, not enough breath left in her lungs to shout. She threw the truck into park, not even bothering to turn off the engine. She left the truck door open and raced into the only motel room with the door ajar.
He lay on his side, the his cell resting on the bed where it had fallen. A fear she had never felt before in her life arrowed through her. A world without Corey Rainwater in it was an unbearable thought. She flew to the bed and touched him. When he moaned, some of the panic left her.
She felt Tex at her back. “Help me get him to the truck, then get the doctor and tell him to come to my ranch. Ride there in the doctor’s truck.” Together, they supported Corey while he stumbled to her truck. His face was ashen and again, fear sliced through her, making her voice urgent. “Hurry, Tex.”
The drive to the ranch seemed to take an eternity. He didn’t stir. She kept one arm around him to steady him and glanced down every few minutes to make sure he was still breathing. Only one man—or rather, group of men—were capable of such utter violence.
Her hand shook on the wheel, and tears coursed down her face. She couldn’t even wipe them from her cheeks. She couldn’t take her hand from the wheel, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let him go.
Back at the ranch, she ran into the house to get Jimmy to help her move him inside. She told him what had happened at the grocery and feed stores, and he swore softly under his breath.
“I’m responsible for this,” she groaned as she helped Jimmy get Corey up the stairs to her room. They laid him down on her bed and she cupped the back of his head to ease him down onto her pillow. He moaned softly in pain, the small distressed sound wrenching at her heart. When she pulled her arm away, she saw blood on her hands and on the sleeve of her jacket where the back of his head had rested while she held him. Fresh tears blurred her eyes and for a moment, she looked at the crimson stain on her hand. The anger and hatred that jolted through her surprised her in its intensity. She wanted to see the men responsible hung by their thumbs, whipped, punished. The violence of her thoughts astonished her because she was not a violent woman.
She went into the bathroom and frantically washed the blood off her hands. She removed her denim jacket and threw it on the floor in disgust.
She leaned against the sink, trying to quell the rest of the panic inside her. And the anger that seethed for Jay. She was sure he was responsible for this and with that knowledge came the guilt.
It was her fault that Corey was in this mess, his motorcycle smashed and him injured. Seeing him hurt bothered her the most.
She started to shake and couldn’t stop. What if he had been killed? She couldn’t bear the thought that her actions two nights ago had caused such danger to him.
She felt consumed with guilt. She felt responsible and she would make it up to him.
Chapter
