Honorable fool that he was, he’d respected her insistence that he leave, and then he’d upped the ante by not coming back.
Now she might lose him forever. Her heart staggered at the prospect.
She urged the horse to move faster and let the wind whip the tears from her cheeks.
She couldn’t lose him. Not like this. Not at all.
“Finally come to your senses and decided to leave town?”
The gun hidden beneath Caleb’s jacket burned against his hip and his palm itched to use it, if for no other reason than to erase the smug expression of victory from Kirkpatrick’s face.
He wouldn’t be smiling for long, Caleb reminded himself. Still, the idea of killing churned his guts. Ending a life was never an easy thing, even if the life belonged to scum like Kirkpatrick. Any other time he’d pulled the trigger it had been because trouble had come looking for him. This was different.
He steadied his mind. There was no other way. Kirkpatrick wouldn’t listen to reason or be talked out of taking what he wanted. So long as he lived, so long as he wanted her land, Rachel and her family were in danger.
“I’m leaving,” Caleb allowed. “But you and I have a little business to conduct first.”
Kirkpatrick scowled and arrogance glistened in his eyes, reminding Caleb of a snake. “I can’t imagine what we have—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. Caleb recognized the twitch of the man’s hand, the shifting of his weight. He was going for his gun. Caleb drew, and in one fluid motion held the gun level with Kirkpatrick’s chest.
The Colt weighed heavy in Caleb’s hand. Like fate. Like destiny.
Like death.
Something flickered across Kirkpatrick’s face as his hand moved away from his holster. Surprise. Respect, perhaps. But not fear. Men like Kirkpatrick never conceded defeat. They always assumed they would come out on top, regardless of the odds.
“You really that stupid, Beckett? You honestly think I’d let you get this far onto my land without having this room surrounded by my men? You won’t get out of here alive. The second you pull that trigger you’re a dead man.”
Caleb nodded. He knew the hand he’d been dealt. “But you’ll be dead first.”
Kirkpatrick’s eyes hardened. “You ain’t got it in you to shoot me. You’re just some insignificant drifter with a conscience who thinks he needs to rescue—”
“I buried my conscience a long time ago.” The fact that Rachel Sutter had resurrected that conscience didn’t bear mentioning, at least not now.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Ever hear of a man by the name of Sinjin Drake?”
Kirkpatrick’s eyes widened enough to let Caleb know he had. For once, his notoriety served him well and he was thankful for it. Part of him wondered which name would grace his tombstone. It hardly mattered now.
“What about him?”
“You’re lookin’ at him.”
Some of the smugness left Kirkpatrick’s expression, but not much.
“Before you get too cocky, there’s someone here I think you might like to talk to.” He barked out an order to one of his men waiting outside his office. “Bring in the boy.”
Caleb’s stomach dropped as, a moment later, one of Kirkpatrick’s henchmen, the one with the scar stretching down the size of his face, entered the room, pushing Brody in front of him.
“Quit shovin’ me, Titus!” Brody pulled his shoulder away from the man and glared at him, but his gaze quickly swung back, stopping short when it reached Caleb and his raised gun. “What’s he doin’ here?”
Caleb cursed his hesitation. The words he’d told Rachel echoed in his head, mocking him.
You don’t think, he’d said. You aim and you shoot. There’s no time for thinkin’.
Truer words were never spoken. When you gave yourself time to think, you started to second-guess yourself. You started to realize the gravity of what you were about to do, and in those moments everything was lost.
He should have shot Kirkpatrick the moment he issued his order. He’d known who Kirkpatrick meant by the boy but the sudden fear of Brody getting caught in the crossfire stilled his trigger finger. The hesitation had cost him. Now he had more than his own life to contend with.
The thought of what Rachel would do if anything happened to Brody did not even bear thinking about. Her devastation would be so palpable it would reach clear into the afterlife and haunt him beyond the grave.
Kirkpatrick smiled, a slick, hard grin. Caleb wanted to backhand the expression off the man’s face, but if Brody caught the magnitude of the situation, he gave no indication. The foolish kid probably thought Kirkpatrick had his best interests at heart. Caleb knew from experience this man didn’t possess a heart. He’d chew Brody up and pick his teeth with the bones, and not think twice about it.