Saving the Gunslinger

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty

The evening sun was glowing orange in the sky when Zachary saw the home he shared with Samantha come into view. Blaze was tired but the horse was strong and Zachary was glad for that—he'd pushed the gelding too hard today. Betty hadn't been able to keep up and Zachary had lost sight of her and Timothy hours ago. That hadn't mattered. All that had mattered was getting home and finding Samantha safe and sound.

Never in his entire life had Zachary wanted so badly for his gut to be wrong.

The closer Blaze carried him toward the ranch house, the more memories of the past blasted through the protective walls he'd built to keep them at bay.

His family.

The blood.

The bodies.

Eyes once full of happiness and laughter staring up at him with nothing but cold lifelessness that ripped his heart from his chest.

If Samantha's eyes looked through him that way.....

Zachary hardened his heart as his pulse thundered in his veins. They wouldn't. He couldn't lose her. He wouldn't lose her.

The moment Blaze's hooves reached the yard, Zachary was leaping from his back. He saw bodies. Two of them. His gut clenched a moment before he realized they were too big to be Samantha or Eleanor. They were very clearly the bodies of men.

Paying no more attention to them, he raced to the house, his boots pounded up those steps, his hand touched the door handle—and he froze.

Memories so full of blood, fear and pain had him squeezing his eyes tight as his breath came in short pants and terror clutched at his heart. If he swung open this red chunk of wood and found her lying there in a pool of blood....

Zachary opened his eyes and clenched is jaw so tightly his teeth ached. If that was what he found then Timothy would find his cold body lying right there beside Samantha's when he arrived. Zachary could not live through that pain again—he would not live through that pain again.

Not even vengeance would keep him going if he lost Samantha. His light.

Zachary a deep steadying breath, his soul crying out desperately for him to stop. To leave. To not see what waited in that house. Zachary pushed open the door—the creaking of the hinge echoing loudly in the quiet of the evening as if taunting him.

Slowly he stepped inside.

And froze.

For five years Zachary had seen countless scenes that had rendered him terrified, horrified, speechless... He had come up on so many of Clinton's crime scenes—seen the aftermath that him and his men left behind. The blood and the death and the destruction.

And yet none of that had caused true terror to grip his heart the way the eerie silence and seeming hominess of the scene before him did.

Clean dishes sat on the counter covered by a soft towel. A basket of biscuits sat on the table along with a pitcher of lemonade and a newspaper.

Glancing toward the living room he saw the bright quilt folded neatly over the back of the sofa and a bowl of uneaten nuts sitting on the side table—something Eleanor had found herself craving during her pregnancy.

There was nothing out of place. No broken or overturned furniture. No shattered glass. No destroyed decorations. No sign of any struggle. There were no bloody handprints on the walls, no smears along the floor, no pools and puddles. No bodies.