Free Chase the Wind by Cindy Holby - Wind 01 - Chase the Wind Page B

road.
    The men came out to meet him. He touched his heels to the gray’s flanks and the horse burst though the mob, scattering the group in all directions. Faith held on for dear life. Ian heard the sound of pursuit behind. He leaned over the gray’s neck, Faith leaning with him, and looked back under his arm.
    It was Mason. The big hooves of Armageddon were eating up the road, quickly closing the distance between them. The gray was no match. He was tired and he was carrying two on a wet track. Armageddon was in his element; he was born and bred for conditions such as this. Ian knew he had to stop and fight. He reached his arm back and wrapped it around Faith’s waist.
    “When we stop, you run.”
    “No!” she screamed in his ear. Ian pulled up on the reins with his left hand and swung Faith to the ground with his right.
    “Run!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. He wheeled the gray around and kicked him towards the big black that was looming up on them before Faith hit the ground. She dashed into the woods by the road and took shelter behind a tree. Ian could practically see the smile on Mason’s face as he headed Armageddon right for them. Ian knew his gray couldn’t survive a full charge from the animal. At the last minute he flexed his right knee and the gray turned from the charge. Ian leaned into Mason as he passed by and pulled him off the back of his horse, both of them going down into the muddy road. They struggled to get a hold on each other, rolling around in the mud, each looking for an opening.
    “She’s mine,” Mason ground out as he went for Ian’s throat with his meaty hands.
    “She doesn’t belong to anyone but herself,” Ian returned as he pushed Mason away with a forearm. Ian rolled out from under Mason’s body and staggered to his feet, the mud clinging to him, sucking against him. Mason reached out a hand and tripped Ian, and he went down on his hands and knees. Mason made to grab Ian’s waist, but Ian slipped away, rolling. Mason lurched after him.
    Faith came out of her hiding place and grabbed the reins of the gray. Both men were so covered with mud that the only way she could tell them apart was by their builds. Ian was leaner and taller than Mason, while Mason had a good thirty to forty pounds more on his frame. She anxiously watched the men rolling and slipping, as neither one could press an advantage. She frantically wondered what she could do to help Ian, but realized that if Mason got his hands on her it would seriously jeopardize their escape. If only she had a weapon . ..
    Ian had a gun. She had seen it the night he had put Katrina down. She began to search his saddlebags, sticking her hand in one to see if she could feel anything. It wasn’t there, so she tried the other side, the gray dancing away from her as the fighters rolled under his forelegs. She jerked him around and began to search the other saddlebag; Her hand closed around the cold, hard barrel at the same time that she felt something else cold and hard pressed against her back.
    “I should have killed you along with your mother.’ It was the man she had referred to as her father all these years.
    Faith leaned her head against the gray, her hand still in the bag. “You killed my mother?” she said in an icy voice.
    “Yes. I pushed her down the stairs. I needed to find a new wife with some money, and hers had run out.”
    While the voice belonged to the man Faith knew as Melvin Tay lor, the tone was one she had never heard before. It was the voice of one who would do anything to get what he wanted. “Now step away from that horse. We’ve got to get you home for your wed ding.”
    “I am not going to marry Randolph Mason,” she said between gritted teeth. She pulled the gun out of the bag and in one motion swung around and struck Taylor in the jaw with it. The man staggered back, his gun flying out of his hands into the muck. She hit him again, this time sending him into the mud with his weapon.
    She