Death valley hideout, p.1
Death Valley Hideout, page 1
Tony gripped the rope until it bit into his palms.
“Willow,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound like he felt, as if there was a stick of dynamite about ready to explode in his gut.
“Almost there,” she said, but he could detect the strain in her voice now. She pulled Carter over the front seat and into the back. He exhaled in relief. All they had to do now was climb out the ruined window. Willow lifted Carter. With his free hand, Tony helped him out. The little boy hopped onto the ground and hugged Tony around the knees.
“Carter...” The word was drowned in the whoosh of earth giving way. The car began to slide over the side.
Tony pushed Carter away and jammed his torso inside the car, where Willow had been thrown off balance. She was scrambling back onto the seat when he reached for her. “Grab my shoulders.”
She flung her arms around him.
Dana Mentink is a nationally bestselling author. She has been honored to win two Carol Awards, a HOLT Medallion and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She’s authored more than thirty novels to date for Love Inspired Suspense and Harlequin Heartwarming. Dana loves feedback from her readers. Contact her at danamentink.com.
Books by Dana Mentink
Love Inspired Suspense
Desert Justice
Framed in Death Valley
Missing in the Desert
Death Valley Double Cross
Death Valley Hideout
Alaska K-9 Unit
Yukon Justice
True Blue K-9 Unit: Brooklyn
Cold Case Pursuit
True Blue K-9 Unit
Shield of Protection
Act of Valor
Roughwater Ranch Cowboys
Danger on the Ranch
Deadly Christmas Pretense
Cold Case Connection
Secrets Resurfaced
Visit the Author Profile page at LoveInspired.com for more titles.
Death Valley Hideout
Dana Mentink
Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
—Galatians 6:2
To Papa Bear, for showing me Death Valley and sharing every adventure with me from here to eternity.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Unsolved Abduction by Jill Elizabeth Nelson
ONE
Willow Duke felt a shiver of uncertainty at her own daring, but she pushed it away as she took the last turn. The wide, smooth drive cut through the flat acres of the airstrip a couple hours east of her own Death Valley hometown. Her anxiety puzzled her. What could be wrong about surprising Tony for his birthday? They’d shifted from acquaintances to friends in the past four months so she figured she knew him well enough to stage a late afternoon birthday treat. Why the worry?
Probably because she’d decided to let someone into her life, and that hadn’t happened since the last outsider she’d trusted turned out to be a snake.
But this situation was completely different. She and Tony weren’t a couple. Easy friendship, that’s what they had. Tony was a widower with two kids to raise; he could use all the friends he could get.
He and Willow were polar opposite temperaments to be sure. Tony was reserved to the point of mysterious, and Willow knew her own ebullient personality could sometimes be too much for the faint of heart. Opposites made for great friends and plenty of fun adventures.
She wiggled her finger in the rearview mirror at Tony’s four-year-old son, Carter, strapped into the back in his “big boy seat” as he called it. Facing the opposite direction, his eighteen-month-old sister, Ruby Josephine, nicknamed Bee, kicked off one sock and gurgled. She was a happy baby, regardless of her rough start in life. Willow admired that personality trait. She and Bee were kindred passengers on the optimism train. Just keep chugging, that was Willow’s motto.
“Are you holding on to the balloon string real tight, Carter?” she asked, catching his eye in the mirror.
“Uh-huh,” he answered, giving the ribbon an experimental tug.
“And you remember what to say when it’s time?”
“Happy birthday, Uncle Tony!”
“Uncle Tony?” she said with a laugh. “Don’t you mean ‘Daddy’?”
Carter’s brow puckered and she wondered if she’d hurt his feelings by her laughter. Where had he come up with uncle? Tony didn’t have any siblings. Strange. Muscles deep in her stomach tensed.
Carter’s brow was crimped as he stared at the airstrip coming into view. “We’ll shout happy birthday, and he’ll be so surprised,” she said. Again a tendril of tension tightened inside her. Sure Tony hadn’t meant for her to overhear his phone call that afternoon revealing that he was heading to the airstrip, nor probably expected she’d made note of his birthday from the driver’s license he’d dropped in the store. He spent a good amount of time at the airstrip, where he’d gotten a job flying tourist helicopters after his navy retirement, so it was the perfect place to plan a birthday surprise. Yet his tone on the phone when he’d been setting up the meeting hadn’t exactly been friendly nor businesslike, she recalled as she scrolled through her memory. There was something in it she could not quite identify, something almost like anger, though the words themselves had been civil.
Was it a mistake to join him if he would be having a difficult meeting? But who wouldn’t love a surprise birthday greeting from their two adorable children? And Willow and the kids had been bored anyway, once the Play-Doh was done and the chunky crayon coloring was completed. Too hot to play outside that afternoon until the 110-degree temps cooled. The Mojave Desert was no gentle climate in June. Maybe if she was more practiced at watching the kids, she’d know how else to entertain them. She didn’t care for them often. Tony had a reliable neighborhood lady for that. But he’d needed a favor, and she’d agreed without a second thought.
Tony will love his birthday treat, she reassured herself. His serious face would break into that smile, the unguarded one she’d only witnessed sporadically in the four months she’d known him. He was always so busy...too scheduled even to meet her twin brother, Levi, in Furnace Falls. Levi had extended an invitation after Willow explained how Carter would love riding horses on her brother’s ranch. Well what single dad wouldn’t be busy with a career to manage and two small kiddos to tend to? There was something sweet and quiet about Tony that made her want to help him, or maybe it was the adorable children who accompanied them almost everywhere.
His wife had died in a car accident when Bee was a newborn, so it made sense he would want to have them around whenever possible. Aside from their “nanny,” a sweet older lady in town, he’d only left them with Willow. She was honored, and maybe flattered too. Carter liked her, and the feeling was mutual. Bee loved everyone, and it was a pleasure to hold and rock the little girl with the cutest button nose in the universe.
The sun was low in the sky, trapped behind the distant foothills, sending long shadows across the road as she drove. She rolled down the Jeep’s window to test for a breeze. No visitors to speak of, she thought, as she pulled into a parking space near the welcome center. The paint was dingy and the cement porch cracked, but the sign was cheerful... Welcome to Desert Air Excursions. Tony’s helicopter was a sleek black Bell Ranger with a red tail and rear rotor. Her brother Austin, a plane afficionado and pilot himself, asked to see it every single time she brought up Tony in conversation. At least Austin was too preoccupied with his new wife and their four dogs to badger her about it lately.
Tony was probably just shy, she thought, like Levi, her quiet twin.
The sinking sun blazed so brightly through her windshield that she had to shade her eyes. It took a moment before she realized that Tony was striding out of the visitor center through a side entrance, hands on hips. She was ready to put her plan into motion when she noticed there was another man following him, with a similar lanky build and sandy hair. They charged out into the heat, one after the other until Tony stopped and spun toward his companion. The conversation did not appear to be a friendly one. She put a hand on the ignition to activate the window button so they wouldn’t be eavesdropping, but the sentence stopped her.
“You can’t go on the run with them,” Tony yelled. “Man up, for once in your life.”
On the run? Tony’s voice was steeped in rage, so unlike anything she’d ever heard from him before. The other man turned on Tony, shoulders pitched forward as if he was expressing himself heatedly, but she could not hear what he said. Walk away from what?
The two men were closer together now, feet apart from each other, and she could not help but notice how similar they looked. Almost as if they were...brothers. The tingle of unease increased into a flash of foreboding. If they were brothers, then Tony had been lying to her about being an only child. And what else? His dead wife?
Suddenly it seemed her plan to surprise him was a very, very bad idea.
Carter wiggled in the backseat. She had more immediate problems. What was she going to do? Starting the car would draw attention, but she couldn’t exactly about-face and leave with Carter hanging on to his daddy’s birthday balloon. As much as she wanted to slink away to think, that was out of the question with the two kids accompanying her.
Wait, she thought. They’ll go back inside in a minute and she could figure out how to proceed then, but Carter was already undoing his car seat straps.
“We have to stay in the car until Daddy is finished.”
Carter did not appear to hear. Now he was peering out the window. “It’s Daddy,” he said, small hand pressed to the glass. “Bee, it’s Daddy.”
“Just one minute, Carter. We have to wait until the grown-ups are done talking, okay?”
But then she heard the door unlatch. “Stay put, Carter,” she said more sternly, but he was already out of the car. She thrust open her own door and hopped out in an effort to catch him. “Stop,” she said. Too late. The child slid out on the tarmac.
“Daddy,” he called, running now, the balloon trailing behind him.
Both men jerked to look at the boy. She couldn’t hear what they said, but Tony half raised his arms as if he would try and stop him. Her grand idea had gone from bad to worse. She started to follow Carter, still trying to draw him back.
Carter had crossed half the distance, when an engine roared, loud in the thin air, as another car raced onto the tarmac. She couldn’t see the driver through the blistering sun. A guest reporting for a tour? Surely not at this hour, at that speed. When the vehicle pulled closer, she saw the driver’s side window of the sedan opening.
A nightmare unrolled before her eyes as a gun was aimed out the window. Dreaming, she had to be dreaming. It could not be a gun, not really.
Like a slow-motion clip from a movie, she saw an arm extend, wrist bare and hairy, gun nestled in the fingers. And then there was a flash and bang. Carter stumbled. Terror seized her heart in a vise-like grip. Had he been shot, or had he tripped? Horror froze her in place for a second, and then she was running, screaming Carter’s name, entreating God with everything in her that the child had not been hurt.
The man Tony had been talking to ducked under the belly of the helicopter as the intruder’s car screeched to a stop. Now Tony was running too, his long legs eating up the distance as he raced toward Carter.
But the shooter fired again. Tony hit the ground a fraction of a second before, the bullet flying over his head. Willow screamed as she dropped to her knees, rolling into a ball, listening to several more shots punching holes into the asphalt to her right. The car rolled by. Possibly after the man who’d run away? Crawling, the hot asphalt burning her palms, she continued on toward Carter, who was sitting up, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Carter, I’m coming,” she screamed again. Rocks bit into her palms and the knees of her jeans. She was almost there when the car with the shooter backed up. Her breath froze as he reversed, coming to a stop between her and the boy. Another shot in her direction made her curl up and cover her head again. She heard Carter squeal. By the time she got her legs to lift her from the ground, the car was retreating into the setting sun.
It took a moment for her to comprehend. Carter was gone. The gunman had swept him up and taken him. A security guard barreled up in a marked car, but she barely saw him.
Tony ran to her, brown eyes electric with fear, judgment in his words as he gripped her shoulders. “Why did you bring them here, Willow?” he asked through gritted teeth.
Why? She could not rally an answer just then. Her mind was somewhere else, with the terrified boy she’d brought into chaos.
“Get back to the car,” he snapped. “Take Bee somewhere safe.” Then he was sprinting to the helicopter. She heard the sound of flipping switches, and less than three minutes later the whine of the rotors as he coaxed the aircraft to life. Covering her ears, she crouched with the security guard as the thwop, thwop of the blades shook the ground.
In a moment, the helicopter roared out of sight, wheeling in the direction of the kidnapper’s car. The shock settled slowly around her as her senses struggled to take in what had happened.
Carter’s balloon drifted away into the sky. The security guard was radioing the police. In a fog she stumbled back to the car. Bee was crying, wailing until her cheeks were red, scared from the noise and the screaming. Willow lifted her from the back and retrieved her beloved stuffed toy, a cow named Moo Moo. “It’s okay, Bee. Don’t you worry.” She wanted to say nice things like ‘your brother will be fine’ and ‘Daddy will bring him back,’ but she could not push the words over the impenetrable wall of fear. Bee eventually subsided to a whimper, stuck her two fingers in her mouth and began to suck them.
The guard approached. “Cops will be here soon. Is the baby hurt? Are you?”
Hurt? How could she describe what she was feeling, the anguish.
Why did you bring them here?
An innocent reason, but she’d brought them nonetheless, when he’d expected her to watch them at his safe little home.
She was the reason Carter had been snatched by the gunman. What if Tony lost them? If the car turned down a road he could not see from the air? What would happen then to the young boy who was her responsibility?
“Let’s get you both inside the building to wait for the cops.” The guard held out a hand to her.
Without any more thought, she thrust Bee into the startled arms of the security guard. “Keep her safe. I have to go.”
“Wait a minute...” he called after her but she did not stop. Leaping back into the car, she cranked on the engine and floored the gas.
* * *
Tony hadn’t completed any of the normal preflight warm-up routine. There wasn’t a second to spare. As soon as the N1 gauge hit 58 percent, he’d released the button on the throttle and urged the bird into the air. In five additional minutes, he’d locked onto the kidnapper’s location, tracking the progress of the car as it sped through the canyon. His pulse pounded so hard it almost drowned out the noise of the rotors. He should have realized the moment his brother showed up there would be others right behind, ready to kill. But the children weren’t supposed to be anywhere close. It shouldn’t have happened.
A million insults poured through his head at his brother’s dumb choices, but he tried to shove them aside. The fallout of what Ron had done would be catastrophic for Bee and Carter, for himself, maybe even for Willow, but he didn’t dare consider that. Willow’s choice, albeit unwittingly, had put them directly in the crosshairs.
Why had she brought the kids? If only she’d listened to him when he’d asked her to keep them in. Her impulsive nature, so unlike his own, was why she’d stood out to him in the first place. He wanted to blame her, but the truth burned at him.
You messed up, Tony. You never should have let her into your life. You can’t afford to have friends. Period.
He looked below and spotted the black car speeding into a rocky canyon. The overhanging boulders and the failing sunlight obscured his view, offering only glimpses as the vehicle appeared every few moments. Was Carter in the front seat? The back? Hurt? Or worse?
Tony was trained to stay cool in difficult situations from his years as a Forest Service pilot, so he did his best to shove down his rising panic. If the guy had wanted to kill Carter, he wouldn’t have bothered snatching him.
Unless he changes his plan.
Tony swallowed, throat sand dry, and gripped the control.
Carter’s best chance, his only chance, hinged on Tony keeping the car in sight. When the driver stopped, Tony would be there. Another flicker of headlights appeared on the road a mile or so behind the kidnapper’s car. He did a double take. Willow? Unbelievable.
“Turn around before you or Bee gets hurt,” he hollered to no one. She should be back at the airstrip with the police, he thought savagely.
The two cars continued on, whisking around the turns in and out of the rocky canyon walls. Fortunately, the Bell was fully fueled to take the next day’s passengers on a flying tour around the outskirts of the Death Valley National Park and surrounds.
