Free The Texan's Reward by Jodi Thomas Page A

over the covers, expecting to touch pieces of the window.

    Gypsy and Marla ran into the room buzzing like horse-flies in a cow lot. They both asked the same questions,
    echoing one another before Nel had time to answer. Gypsy got her robe and Marla found her slippers, but
    when Nell asked for her chair, Jacob shook his head.

    He lifted her up and carried her downstairs, ordering Marla to run through the trees to town for the sheriff and
    telling Gypsy to roll the chair after them.

    Nell started to tell him that she preferred to dress before going down, but the words froze in her throat when
    she saw the bul et hole in the wicker of her wheelchair.

    “Jacob?” She gripped the lapels of his unbuttoned shirt. “Jacob, someone . . .”

    “I know,” he answered before she could finish. “Someone tried to kil you. They couldn’t have seen clearly
    enough to know that you weren’t in the chair.” He hesitated. “But the rider was definitely aiming at your
    window.”

    She tried to think of who might know that normal y she watched the sun rise from the exact spot where the
    chair had been. Everyone, she realized or anyone who passed by the house. From dawn until dusk that spot had
    become her place to watch the world go by. Even the people passing in the trains leaving town might look over
    and see her sitting in her window.

    Nell leaned her head against Jacob’s shoulder and let his arms surround her. She might be fully grown, a woman
    of means who knew her own mind, but right now she needed to be protected. The only safety she’d ever known
    had been with him near. He’d always been the one rock in her ever-shifting life.

    “It’ll be all right, Two Bits,” he whispered in her hair. “I won’t let any harm come to you.”

    They’d reached the main room, but he stil held her tight. For a few minutes, she curled into his arms, closed her
    eyes, and let the world go away. He’d always been near when she needed him or couldn’t make sense of life.
    When she’d been a kid, everyone she’d ever known had let her down. Then, Jacob came along, little more than a
    kid himself, but thinking he was al big and grown. He’d made her believe in the goodness of people.

    He lowered her to the couch by the fireplace. Gypsy covered her legs with a blanket while Jacob built the fire.

    Once he finished, he stood and faced her. “As soon as the sheriff gets here, I’l saddle up and see if our early
    visitor left enough tracks to follow. If he headed away from town, I’ll follow him. I’d have trouble tracking him if
    he rode in, but it looked like he was heading away.”

    “Why would anyone shoot at me?” Most of the folks in town didn’t bother speaking to her, but they didn’t wish
    her dead, or at least she didn’t think anyone did.

    Jacob lowered to one knee in front of her and pul ed a smal pistol from his boot. “I don’t know, but whoever
    rode by and fired that shot was on a mission. It wasn’t an accident. No drunk riding home from a wild night. No
    young cowhand testing his gun. I watched him coming. When I realized he was headed here, I stepped from the
    barn, thinking he had a message to deliver.”

    The pistol felt warm as he placed it in her shaking hands. “Only he didn’t see me. He was staring up at your
    window as he rode by at ful speed. He got off one shot before I saw the gun. He didn’t have time for another.
    When I returned fire, he leaned low, and his horse ran like ground lightning across the open range behind the
    house.”

    “It was too dark to see him. How will you ever find him?”

    “I know two things about him. He’s a good shot, too good not to have been trained to fire from the saddle, and
    he rides like he was born on horseback.”

    Nell smiled. “I guess that eliminates two people in town. Randolph Harrison and Sheriff Smith.”

    Jacob squeezed her hand. “You know of any reason why someone would want you dead?”

    She shook her head. “Maybe it’s just