Savage Thunder by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online

have an easy time of manipulating the courts to give him control of her. He no longer wanted her, was no longer paying Elliot’s expenses to find her, and Elliot had earned nothing for all his time, trouble, and frustration before he was dismissed. Two years he had wasted with nothing to show for it. He was not a man to accept that with a shrug of nonchalance. Not by any means.
    His purpose now was twofold. He was going to kill that red-haired bitch for the pleasure of it, but also for all the feelings of incompetence she had made himfeel, and for the ruin of the reputation he had built up, of being a man who could be counted on to see a job done quickly and without mistakes. And when he informed the duke that it was done, and that he had seen to it that she left no will, that Fleming could now claim her wealth simply by being her only relative, Elliot would finally be compensated.
    He didn’t care how long it took or how much of his own money it cost, he would see it done. And killing her was much easier than trying to abduct her. It could be done from afar. It could be done in any number of ways. That he had twice attempted it and twice failed only proved she had not lost her luck yet.
    Even the bloody countries she chose to cross were more often than not to her advantage. Mexico had been ideal for his purposes, or so he thought; huge, sparsely populated outside its cities, miles and miles of nothing but wildnerness where a massacre could go unreported for days, weeks. And the duchess conveniently set up camp in the middle of nowhere time and again. It was the perfect opportunity to attack in force, to hire an army to match hers. And hiring the army would have been easy and cheap—if it were for any other purpose. But getting a Mexican to agree to kill a woman was nearly impossible. He had tried and tried, and was turned down every time. She had beaten him again without doing a thing, simply through the character of the Mexican people.
    Then he had found Dewane and Clydell Owen, two down-on-their-luck Americans who had that look Elliot always recognized as being available and willing for anything. He had sent them north across the border, and they had come up with four others just like themselves, as well as a likely spot for an ambush. They were to meet up in the mining town of Bisbee, which he had finally located yesterday. He had spent the remainder of the day riding back and forth over the narrow mule track below, looking for the ideal spot for what he had in mind.
    The spot wasn’t as perfect as he could have hoped for: nearly out of the mountains, and with the slope that the trail cut across extending on down to the bottom. Trees were in this area, at least below the trail on the lower slope, not in any great abundance, but enough to stop a rolling coach if the boulder should do no more than knock the vehicle off the track. That wasn’t likely to happen. With as steep a drop as there was directly below the boulder, and with the path wide at that point, the boulder was almost guaranteed to drop hard and go no farther.
    If there had been time, he would have moved the bloody big rock to a better spot on the trail, where it would have wedged itself between two slopes and been impossible to move, making the trail impassable for horse or coach. He might have let the duchess pass through first if that were the case, simply for the pleasure of killing her with his own hands. But as it was now, if the boulder didn’t do as it was supposed to and land directly on the lead coach, the trail would still be blocked enough to keep the rest of the escort trapped behind the boulder, with Elliot’s men providing gunfire to hold them there for a while. As long as the duchess was on the opposite side of the boulder, the two men he had prepared for that contingencycould sneak down and take care of her without a problem.
    They could just hear the horses approach now, coming slowly down the trail. “How many lead riders did you