Cut Off (Book 3): Cut Loose Read online

  “I guess love isn’t much like jumping off tall buildings and into ravines,” Katie said.

  “No. It’s a lot riskier. You put your heart out there, offer it to someone, and they either turn it down or accept it. It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I hung all my hopes on her and I shouldn’t have. I should have kept it superficial and not let myself get too hung up on her unless she showed me she felt the same way.”

  Katie looked at her relationship with Aaron and realised how similar she and Hannah were behaving. Yes, she hadn’t flirted with other men but she was still denying Aaron the certainty he needed. At least Hannah was showing Camden how she felt about him, even if she hadn’t said it to his face.

  Except, I did do it today.

  “I don’t understand the lovers,” Camden said. “How they can find it so easy to be together while the rest of us struggle to even find someone who’ll love us back.”

  “It isn’t easy for them. They’re tearing their families apart and risk kicking off a fight between two families that haven’t seen eye to eye in years. All so they can be together.”

  “I suppose.”

  They were feeding each other’s disappointment and depression. Katie decided to break the cycle and focus on something they could both be happy about.

  “Things are going well at the lodge though, right? We’re getting our shit together and everyone’s pulling their weight.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re a lot better off than most people at this point. We’ve found somewhere safe and now we’re developing it into a beacon for the rest of the town.”

  Camden nodded silently. He would give it all up if it meant he could have Hannah’s love.

  Katie couldn’t help him with that. The sooner he realised she didn’t care about him, the sooner he could move on and be happier. And so would she, once Aaron got it into his thick skull that she couldn’t be with him either.

  27

  A gunshot. Somewhere in the middle distance, just beyond the tool shed and the forest behind it.

  Those working the fields stood up and peered around, unsure what to do.

  “Everybody get inside!” Katie said. “Drop your tools and go!”

  They dropped their things and ran into the lodge, chatting nervously amongst themselves.

  “Is anyone missing?” Katie said. “Who’s not here?”

  “Jodie isn’t here,” Nancy said. “Has anyone seen–”

  “Here she is,” Darryl said. “She’s here.”

  Jodie slipped down from the rooms located at the back. Her hair stuck up with a terrible case of bedhead. “What’s going on?”

  Katie scanned the scared faces and performed a headcount. There were three people missing, but who?

  “The lovers aren’t here,” Hannah said. “Luke and Louisa must be outside somewhere.”

  A rock formed in the pit of Katie’s stomach. The lovers were missing and that could only mean one thing…

  One of the families had made their move and attempted to steal the couple away. And if they managed to get hold of the son or daughter that belonged to the opposite family…

  It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Aaron? Where’s Aaron?” Bill said.

  “He’s on watch duty,” Camden said.

  “Keep him there. Katie, Camden, Ronnie, Tanya? You’re with me. Everyone else stay here. We’ll hand out weapons. Those most proficient with them will stand by the doors and fire at anyone who doesn’t knock. You all remember the knock?”

  It was the simple tune they memorised when they first arrived at the lodge so they knew whoever was at the door during times of stress such as this would be friends, not enemies.

  Bill collected the guns from the safe and handed them out. He kept the serious weaponry for those going with him.

  He approached the front entrance – Aaron would be watching it from his perch right then – and would provide them with some cover before they stepped outside. Bill nodded at those going with him and then shoved the door open, gun raised as they marched outside.

  28

  The forest wasn’t particularly dense, but even standing there now, they couldn’t hear anything save the clapping of the leaves and the sawing of the wind. They studied the ground but found no signs of a struggle, no blood, and no tracks they couldn’t be sure hadn’t been created by themselves at some point over the past week.

  “Spread out,” Bill said. “Twenty yards apart. Keep your ears and eyes open. We’re looking for a potential hostage situation.”

  Katie took the left wing, with Camden twenty yards further out from her. They swept through the forest but heard and saw nothing. Bill motioned for them to head eastwards.

  Camden and Katie paid greater attention to the great banks of endless green as they pushed forward. They swept through the forest until she caught movement out the corner her eye.

  It was Camden. He was waving.

  He found something.

  Katie waved to Bill, who in turn waved to the others. They converged on Camden’s location.

  “Up there.” Camden motioned to a slight ridge they couldn’t make out the top of. “I heard–”

  “No! Let me go! Let go!”

  They all heard it now.

  Louisa’s voice wouldn’t carry well through the dense forest. She had to be closeby somewhere.

  But where?

  The exact location of her voice was hard to ascertain. They stood there silently, listening.

  “I think it’s this way,” Camden said.

  The others vaguely agreed.

  They jogged through the undergrowth, careful where they placed their feet to move as silently as possible. Not that it matters much, Katie thought. Not with the amount of noise Louisa’s making.

  Her voice grew louder. They had to be getting close.

  Bill came to a stop and crouched down, peering between two large leaves. He nodded and pointed in one direction and then another, so they would approach the scene in a pincer movement.

  Aaron, Bill, and Katie went one way, the twins the other. They kept low and hustled around the slight rise where sunlight streamed through the overhead canopy and held spotlights on the stage before them.

  Katie made out boots of two men and two figures laying on the other side of the clearing. She clutched her pistol close to her chest.

  Bill looked her and her brother in the eye and nodded his head. It was the signal to get in position.

  Bill assumed most of the risk and ascended the rise first.

  Oliver turned his pistol on Bill, then Katie and Camden in turn. Ronnie and Tanya approached from the opposite side.

  “Theatre in the round,” Oliver said. “Very professional.”

  Luke lay beaten to within an inch of his life. Louisa kicked and flailed against a second man that held her tight in his arms.

  “Quit fighting!” the second man said. “We’re doing you a favour!”

  Louisa stamped on the man’s foot and kept bucking like a bull at a rodeo. The man howled and dumped her on the ground.

  Oliver pressed the tip of his barrel to Luke’s forehead.

  “If I squeeze this trigger, this whole episode is over,” Oliver said.

  “If you pull that trigger, it’ll start a war between your two families unlike anything seen in a hundred years,” Bill said.

  “Yeah? What do you know, old man?”

  “I was friends with your father, and his father. I know both families, and they know me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bill Walker.”

  “Nope. Never heard of you.”

  “The people around here know me as Ghost.”

  That gave Oliver pause for thought. “Ghost? You? Those are just stories to scare kids at night.”

  “Stories can be true. At least, parts of them.”

  “Huh.” There was no disguising Oliver’s respect. Then it turned. “You’re a lot older than I thought.”

  “I am old. And I’ve
done a lot of things in my life I regret. Things I don’t ever want to do again. Unless you force me to.”

  Oliver jammed the pistol in Luke’s forehead. “I’m the one being forced to act. They are the ones making me do this.”

  “I doubt anyone has ever made you do anything your entire life,” Bill said. “I know a killer when I see one. You enjoy it. Just like I did. Only, I joined the military to learn and control the impulse. You have nothing to filter your anger into. This isn’t the way.”

  “I have my family,” Oliver said. “They depend on me. And my darling sweet sister turned against me. She turned against us all. Now she has to pay.”

  “No!” Louisa screamed and resorted to flailing once more.

  Katie took aim at Oliver’s leg. She would down him if he looked like he was going to open fire.

  “Walk away,” Oliver said. “Walk away and pretend like you never saw this.”

  “I’m afraid we did see it,” Bill said.

  “This has nothing to do with you. You were in the wrong place, at the wrong time. That’s all. Give her to me and I’ll leave. You’ll never have to see me again. Give me the boy too, and you’ll be friends with the Wedges forever.” His expression turned dark. “But if you don’t, if you decide to stand against us, you’ll become an enemy forever, just like the Thornhill scum.”

  “We won’t pick sides.”

  Oliver sneered. “Then you are choosing a side. And it’s not mine.”

  He turned back to Luke, lying prostrate on the ground, and Katie knew in that instant he was dead if she didn’t act.

  She raised her pistol and fired.

  The bullet caught Oliver’s gun arm and knocked him off balance. She could have tried that shot a hundred times and not hit her target, but with the adrenaline pumping through her system, her instincts had taken over.

  Oliver pulled the trigger an instant after Katie. The bullet struck the tree trunk behind Luke, two inches above his head.

  Oliver fell to the ground and his pistol flew from his grip and out of reach. He clutched a hand over his arm. A lot of blood but it was only a flesh wound.

  The moment Katie fired her shot, the twins closed on Oliver’s accomplice, who relaxed his grip and held up his hands. They checked him for weapons as Louisa ran toward her beaten lover. She never once looked over at her injured brother.

  29

  Oliver and his accomplice put up surprisingly little resistance as they marched them back to the lodge. Katie knocked on the door with their special identification code before it opened and those inside stepped back in shock and surprise.

  Some forward-thinking person had covered the dining table with a thick blanket to absorb the worst of the blood. The two injured men were losing a lot of it but not to the point of requiring surgery.

  “Everybody move to the back,” Bill said. “Up onto the second level. Take food, water and other supplies you think you might need.”

  “Books?” Darryl said.

  Bill smiled. It was typical Darryl. “Yes. Something to keep yourselves entertained with is a good idea. With any luck, this will be over soon.”

  I wouldn’t count on it, Katie thought. Things were never as simple as they seemed at first glance.

  “Take your shirt off,” Hannah said to Oliver.

  “I didn’t know the girls over here were so forward. If I did, I would have come over a lot sooner. How you doin’ hot stuff?” He winked at Hannah and blew her a kiss.

  Katie grabbed the man’s injured arm and gripped it tight.

  Oliver screamed and clutched at her hand to pull it away.

  “You’ll respect everyone while you’re here,” Katie said. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Yes!”

  Katie let go and a fresh splurge of blood splattered across the floor.

  “Psycho!” he said.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, chum.” Katie gave him a wink and blew him a kiss.

  Aaron snorted with mirth.

  Katie joined her grandfather and Aaron in a huddle. The twins kept a close eye on Oliver.

  On the other side of the room, Louisa saw to her beloved’s wounds, cleaning and dressing them, kissing him on the cheek between each dab. The kisses appeared to be doing the work medicine ordinarily would. Luke’s face was swollen and he had a cut to his cheek, and yet he still looked to be just about the happiest man in the world.

  “The Wedges are going to come get him,” Katie said. “If they’re not here already.”

  “If they were, we’d know about it,” Bill said. “They’re not the subtle type.”

  “Just let us go back to them,” Oliver said. “You’ll have to at some point. Trust me, you don’t want trouble from the Wedge family.”

  “If we let you go, you’ll end up doing the same thing again,” Bill said. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not wrong. But I’ll succeed next time and I’ll put his head on a spike.”

  Louisa marched toward her brother and slapped him hard across the face. “I’ve chosen the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. Why can’t you just accept that?”

  “Because he’s one of them. And if you’ve been messing around with one of them, that doesn’t make you my sister any longer. You’re a traitor to the family.”

  Louisa’s lip quivered. “Then what did you come here for?”

  “Re-education.”

  Louisa backed away from her brother as if she’d never seen him before. “Who are you? You’re not my brother. My brother loved me. He would never hurt me.”

  “When father died, I took over. My duty is to the family. That’s what’s important now. Not you, or me, or anyone else. But the family.”

  “Darryl, I need you to do me a favour,” Bill said. “You’re a half decent rider, aren’t you?”

  He actually was. Despite his girth, he could ride as well as any of them. He wouldn’t share the reason how he could ride so well, but Camden knew, and he’d divulged it to Katie. His mother once wanted him to be a showjumper. She loved the sport and thought she missed her calling in life. She hoped for a girl, but the fact Darryl came out a boy didn’t stop her from wanting him to pursue her unrealised dreams. As he grew older, he grew wider. She soon gave up on the dream when the outfitters could no longer find clothes for him.

  “Ride into town to the police station,” Bill said. “Get your hands on Inspector Taylor and tell him it’s time for him to fulfil his promise. He should grab every man and woman he can get his hands on and bring them to the lodge. Tell him what he’ll be facing: a standoff between us and one or both of the families. They’ll be armed and there will be violence if he’s not here in sufficient numbers.”

  “Okay,” Darryl said.

  He took off out the door and was gone in a puff of dust.

  And so the long wait began.

  30

  An hour could feel a lifetime when your life was on the line. They waited for word from the families or Darryl with the police in tow. It was a stageplay and no one could see who would be stepping beneath the spotlight next.

  Katie tore off another strip of fingernail and spat it out.

  “You know, that’s a really bad habit,” Oliver said.

  “And I suppose you know all about bad habits.”

  Oliver’s grin was foul. “Come over here and I’ll show you some.”

  Katie thought about showing him the back of her hand. She maintained control of her anger. She didn’t know how the next few minutes were going to play out, whether they would have to hand him back to his family or not, but if they did, she didn’t want to give him cause to be overly zealous mirroring the same punishment he suffered at their hands.

  But the boy does deserve a good beating.

  “How are you holding up?” Aaron said.

  “I’m fine.” Katie didn’t ask how he was. That could lead to a conversation, and God only knew where that might lead.

  “How do you think this is going to turn out?”


  “One of us is going to lose. Either Oliver and his family, Luke and his or, most likely, us.”

  He gave her a comforting smile. “I’m sure everything will work out okay.”

  Empty words, but they did lift her mood. “Thanks.”

  “Quiet,” Bill said. “Somebody’s coming.”

  Katie joined him at the door and peered through the thin wedge of light outside. A family emerged from the dim twilight. A large writhing mass of men and horses.

  “One of the families?” Katie said.

  “The Wedges.”

  Oliver chuckled. “The cavalry has arrived. Untie these ropes now and I’ll take it easy on you.”

  “Bill?” a voice called from outside. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  Bill turned to Aaron and nodded at Oliver. “Let’s make sure he can’t respond, shall we?”

  Aaron removed his bandanna, curled it up into a ball and shoved it in Oliver’s mouth. Oliver stared at him with eyes that promised retribution.

  “I know you’re in there,” the voice outside said. “Just open up, give him to us, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

  Bill looked between the others. He focused on Katie. “Well? You’re the great negotiator here. What do you think?”

  Katie had little else to think about for the past hour, and she still didn’t have a good solution. There were too many variables. Most of all, the people in their group, huddled at the back of the lodge, watching with scared eyes.

  Lives in their hands.

  Too many variables, too much risk.

  Katie met her grandfather’s gaze and shook her head.

  “We’re going to have to play this by ear then. Will buying us time help?”

  “Yes. But enough time? I don’t know. It depends how long it takes Darryl to get to the police station, convince them to come, and whether or not they’ll answer the call. And then there’s the Thornhills to consider.”

  Bill nodded. “I doubt they’ll take lightly to what Oliver Wedge did to one of their own.”