Mountain rescue, p.22
Mountain Rescue, page 22
“Call them back,” she said when Dallas walked in. “I can’t let you all risk yourselves like this.”
He came right up to her and put his hands on her face, cradling her cheeks. “It’s going to be okay, Rachel. We know what we’re doing.”
“How do you know he’ll show up today?”
“Just a hunch. He wants this over as much as you do because he thinks he can go right back to his life once he takes care of you. We’re not going to let that happen.”
“Robert’s a snake. He won’t play fair.”
“We know how to play dirty and won’t hesitate to do what we have to.” He kissed her. “It’s time for you to feel safe.” He kissed her again. “Nothing’s going to happen to us, I promise.”
This time when he kissed her, he lingered. His tongue tangled with hers, and his spicy scent surrounded her. He tasted like coffee and mint toothpaste. She fisted her hands in his shirt. Maybe she could hold on to him, keep him from leaving.
As if he understood what was going through her mind, he wrapped his hands around hers and gently pried them away. “I have to go, sugar.” He kissed her one last time, then stepped away.
“I’m going to be worried sick. Will you call me as soon as it’s over?”
“Yes. Stay inside and lock up behind me.” He paused at the door. “We’ll go out tonight and celebrate.”
“Like a real date?”
“Yeah, like that.” He winked, and then he was gone.
She slid the deadbolt closed, leaned back against the door, closed her eyes, and said a prayer that her three protectors would return safely home. Bella whined, and Rachel opened her eyes to see her and Blue looking up at her. Bella had a worried expression, and she looked at the door and whined again.
Rachel dropped to the floor and wrapped her arms around Bella. “He’ll be back. He promised.” Besides, they had a date tonight, and she was going to hold him to that.
To try and keep her mind off worrying about the guys, she decided to inventory the clothes she’d brought, see what kind of outfit she could put together for their date. She wished she could go shopping and find something sexy. A pretty sundress would be nice, but she’d have to make do with what she had, and there wasn’t much in her suitcase.
“What do you guys think of this?” She held up a sleeveless pale blue blouse. It was the nicest one she had. Bella and Blue were on the bed, Bella seemingly interested in her choices and Blue more interested in catching Bella’s tail.
“I think it will work.” Paired with her black skinny jeans, her black half boots, the black belt with a silver buckle, and the silver bangle bracelets and hoops she’d bought for her college girl disguise, she’d do.
Once her date night outfit was decided on, she looked around. What could she do now to keep from worrying about her guys? She stretched out on the bed and played with the kitten for a while. Dallas would be at the cabin now, and she tried not to think about the danger he and the guys were in. She must have dozed off because she jerked up, disoriented when Bella barked, then shot off the bed and raced out of the room. Blue jumped inside the suitcase and disappeared under the clothes.
Right, she was at the new cabin. “You gotta go out, Bella Boo, just say so.” She picked up her phone from the bed so she wouldn’t miss a call from Dallas and followed the dog to the back door. She almost opened it but stopped and went to the kitchen window. There was no one and nothing suspicious in sight. As soon as she opened the door, Bella took off.
“Guess you really had to go, huh?” Bella never went far, and would bark when she wanted back in. After locking back up, she decided to make a cup of tea while she waited for Bella to return.
She set her phone on the counter, then found the cabinet with the cups in it. She was filling one with water to heat in the microwave when the front door crashed open. Robert stormed in and the cup fell out of her hands and shattered on the floor.
How was he here? She was stuck in one of those nightmares where your feet refused to move even though the monster was coming for you. Bella raced in behind him, growling and snapping at his legs. Robert tried to kick her, but she backed away.
Rachel shook off her stupor when Robert pointed a gun at Bella. “No! Don’t hurt her.” Broken china crunched under her sandals as she stepped forward. “Bella, come.” Still growling, Bella backed toward her, never taking her eyes from the bad man.
When Bella’s rear end bumped her legs, Rachel grabbed her collar. “You should leave. The guys are going to be back any minute.”
Robert laughed. “They’re busy looking for me.”
“How’d you find me?” She needed to keep him talking while she tried to think of how to escape. If he didn’t have a gun, she’d run or try to fight him, but if she tried anything, he’d shoot her. Which was what he planned to do anyway, so maybe she should try to get out the back door.
“My man put a tracker on the Jeep.”
She glanced around. “Where are your men?” Were they outside, waiting to help him haul off her body?
“They’re off playing war games with your toy soldiers.” He smirked. “They actually begged me to let them show those boys what real soldiers can do.”
“They’re not soldiers.” At his confused look, she said, “They’re Navy, sailors, not soldiers.” She didn’t know if he was aware they were SEALs, and she wasn’t going to enlighten him.
“Well, my men will be disappointed. They were looking forward to a challenge. But never mind that.” His gaze roamed over her. “I was just going to put a bullet in your heart, but I’ve decided you owe me.”
She took a step back. “I don’t owe you anything.” She wasn’t sure what he believed she owed him, but she had a suspicion. Just the thought of him touching her sent her stomach into a sickening roll. Robert was a good-looking man, a walking cliché for tall, dark, and handsome. But the evil pouring off him had always given her the creeps.
If she could get close enough to the door, she’d make a run for it. If she could take him by surprise, she might have a chance to escape before he shot her.
“Think again, doll. Because of you, I have cops looking for me.”
“You made that happen when you shot Henri.” She took another step back, bringing Bella with her.
“With you gone, there won’t be a witness, so no proof. Problem solved.” When she inched back some more, he pointed the gun at Bella. “One more step, doll, and I’ll shoot the dog.”
“You won’t get away with this.” Brave words, but she was very much afraid he would.
He laughed again. “Oh, I think I will.” He put his hand on his belt buckle. “On your knees.”
“No.” Was she having a heart attack? It was beating so hard and fast that her chest hurt.
“On your knees, doll. Now.”
If she got out of this...no, when she did, the first man who called her doll was going to get punched in the nose.
“Do it, or I’ll shoot the dog.”
“You’re a sick bastard.” She couldn’t do what he was asking. She just couldn’t. “Let me put her in the bedroom. She won’t like you touching me.”
“Go, but you try anything, you’ll both be dead.”
If only she could get to a knife, but they were in a drawer, and she’d never get one before he shot her. He followed her down the hallway to the main bedroom, and after she pushed Bella inside, she pulled the door closed before Bella could get back out. When her hand was on the doorknob, she noticed the paracord bracelet on her wrist. She had a weapon! It wouldn’t be as effective as a knife or gun, but it was better than nothing.
As she headed back to the living room, he walked behind her. She slipped the small blade from its slot. Careful not to cut herself, she gripped the flat end between her fingers.
Robert grabbed her hair, jerking her back against him. “In here.” He pushed her into the bedroom.
If she let him keep her in this room, he would rape her and then kill her. She’d rather die fighting than let him put his hands on her. It was time to act. When he stood next to one of the twin beds, no longer blocking the doorway, she waited even though her mind was screaming at her to run. One thing she’d learned performing stunts in movies, timing was everything.
“On your knees, doll.” One of his hands went to his belt buckle, and he lowered the hand holding the gun to his side.
And action! She was trained to become the person in a role at those words, and hearing them in her head, she became a woman fighting for her life and determined to win. Letting him see her fear and revulsion—emotions he fed off—she stepped forward until she was close enough to touch him. As she dipped her knees to fool him into believing she was falling to the floor, she raised her hand with the blade held tight in her fingers and dug it into his arm, just below his elbow, and dragged it down to his wrist.
“Fucking bitch,” he yelled, the gun dropping to the floor as he brought his bleeding arm up.
She ran. Right out the door he’d kicked in. She made it outside, but she didn’t know where to go. There wasn’t another building or a place to hide that she could see in front of her, so she raced around the side of the cabin. As she passed the main bedroom window, she heard Bella barking up a storm.
Seeing woods behind the cabin, she headed for them. Her sandals were slowing her down, so she kicked them off. A few yards from the edge of the woods, a bullet flew past her head, and she stumbled, falling to the ground. She glanced behind her, and seeing Robert running after her, she scrambled up and zigzagged her way to the trees as another bullet came so close to her neck that she felt the air it displaced.
When she reached the woods, she kept going, even though her lungs were bursting. She wished her heart would stop pounding, as if it needed to beat that hard while it still could.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Testing,” Dallas said. He didn’t know how or where Jack had gotten hold of comms, but he appreciated the hell out of his friend’s resourcefulness.
“Whiskey here.”
“Double D here.”
“Seen any sign of Hargrove or his men?” He walked into the cabin. This place was filled with memories of a wildcat, and he chuckled, still amused that she’d tried to crack his head open.
“Negative,” Jack said. “We have eyes on you. I’m to the west of the cabin. Double D’s to the east.”
Since the front of the cabin was cleared and only had a patch of grass before the drop-off, they’d agreed that the attack would come from the woods.
There were so many memories in this cabin that he’d never forget. Maybe Jack would let him buy it. His intention had been to clear the rooms, but as he walked down the hall, he went past the smaller bedroom, drawn to the spot where he’d first met the woman he was falling in love with.
An inexcusable lapse when the cold iron of a gun barrel pressed to the back of his head. A mistake he never should have made, but it wasn’t as big of a mistake as the man holding the gun had just made.
“I’d pull the trigger right now if my boss didn’t want you to suffer,” said the man who was about to learn a lesson.
“Do you know why you shouldn’t get close enough to me to dig your gun into my head?” Dallas said conversationally. Jack and Noah would hear that he had company, but they wouldn’t move from their location, knowing he wasn’t going to die at the hands of this idiot.
“Shut up,” the man said as he pushed the gun harder against Dallas’s head.
Dallas sighed. He hated stupid people with guns they should never have in their hands. The trick was to first get his head away, and he jerked it to the side, away from the gun’s barrel. As he did that, he spun, wrapped a hand over the man’s on the gun and pushed the barrel to the side. With his other arm and using all his strength, he thrust his elbow up into the man’s throat while at the same time kicked his kneecap hard with the heel of his boot.
As soon as the man’s fingers loosened on the trigger, Dallas relieved him of the gun. The man grabbed his throat as his knee gave out, and he fell to the floor.
“Word of advice. Never get close enough to an adversary for him to turn the tables on you. Like taking candy from a baby,” he said to the dude looking up at him, wondering how he was flat ass on his back. “You picked the wrong person to play with. Where’s your boss?”
The man spit at him.
“Wrong answer, asshole. I’m good with you dying today, so if you want to see tomorrow, tell me where your fucking boss is.”
“Have a tango in my sights,” Jack said into Dallas’s earpiece. “Going after him.”
“One moving in from my side,” Noah responded. “Sounds like an elephant tromping through the forest. Time to party.”
Dallas chuckled. This really was a party compared to life in the sandbox. That these men coming after them thought they were hot shit was a joke. He pressed his gun into the man’s ear. “You have three seconds to tell me where your boss is before I pull the trigger.” As tempted as he was to do it, he wouldn’t. But the bastard didn’t need to know that.
“Go ahead. If you don’t kill me, he will when he finds out you’re not dead. About now, I’d say he’s putting a bullet through Rachel Denning’s heart.”
Dallas’s world stopped on its axis. The man had to be pulling his chain. “You’re lying. He doesn’t know where she is.”
“Ebers put a tracker on the Jeep before you caught him. When the police come, make sure you tell them I’m cooperating.”
“Ghost, he’s messing with you,” Jack said, having heard the conversation over their comms.
“What if he’s not?” Dallas took a few seconds he didn’t have to bind the man’s hands and ankles together with zip ties. “I’m outta here. Come get him.”
Not getting Rachel back wasn’t an option. And when he did, they were going to talk about where they went from here, because not having her in his life wasn’t an option either. As he raced to the SUV, he tried calling her, but got her voice mail. He tore off the comms and tossed them on the passenger seat, and as he sped back to their new cabin, he prayed he’d be in time. He had to be in time.
The twenty-minute drive from the cabin only took him fourteen minutes to return. Dirt and gravel flew up behind the SUV as he sped toward the cabin. A black Mercedes was parked in front, the nose only a few feet from the porch. He stopped directly behind it to prevent Hargrove from using the car to get away.
Dallas pocketed the SUV keys as he raced up the steps. The front door was open, and he growled at seeing the splintered wood where it had been kicked in. Holding his gun in front of him, he entered the cabin.
The only sound was Bella’s barking. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were all in sight, and nothing looked out of place...except, was that blood on the floor? If that was Rachel’s blood, Robert Hargrove was a dead man.
He eased down the hallway, following the blood trail, his heart erratically beating in his chest at the thought of what he might find. Since his car was still here, Hargrove hadn’t left, but Dallas didn’t sense him or Rachel in the house.
The blood led him to the first bedroom, and he eased around the corner. The room was empty, but there was a pool of blood next to one of the twin beds. Was that Rachel’s? He couldn’t think how it could be Hargrove’s. It took every ounce of his training and discipline to stay calm. Losing his shit wouldn’t help her.
“Where are you, Rachel?” he murmured. He cleared the closet, then the next bedroom and second bathroom. That only left the main bedroom, where it sounded like Bella was trying to dig her way through the wall.
When he eased the door open, she blew by him, running toward the front door. “Bella, come!” She skidded to a halt, looked at him, then the door, then barked. He got the message. She wanted him to follow her. First, he had to clear the main bedroom. “Come, Bella.” She whined but came to him.
“Rachel?” he said. “If you’re hiding, it’s safe to come out.” Nothing. He cleared the room and bathroom anyway, and as he was walking out of the room, he noted the wall next to the bedroom door. Bella had been maybe one more dig from breaking free.
She sure wasn’t the same dog as the one that had tried to climb into her own skin the first time he’d talked to her. Her leash was on the kitchen counter, and when he walked over to get it, he saw Rachel’s phone on the counter. His heart sank. Without it, she couldn’t call for help.
“I sure wish you could talk,” he said as he clipped the leash to Bella’s collar. When they got outside, Bella put her nose to the ground, went back and forth at the bottom of the stops for a few seconds, then raced for the corner of the house, pulling him with her when she reached the end of her leash.
At the back of the cabin, with her nose still to the ground, she headed for the woods. Because he had to think positive if he didn’t want to lose his mind, it had to mean Rachel had managed somehow to escape if Bella was leading him toward the trees. When she started running, he picked up his speed to keep up with her.
“Good, Bella. Let’s find our girl.”
* * *
“I’m going to kill you, bitch,” Robert yelled.
Going to have to catch me first. Rachel dodged around trees, changing directions every few minutes, hoping to lose him. She’d never been more grateful that running was a part of her training regimen.
She ignored her pounding heart and tender feet. None of those mattered more than getting away from him. She’d hoped he would decide she wasn’t worth chasing, that he’d be better off leaving and trying again another day.
No such luck. He was chasing her. She willed herself to run faster. The sound of gunfire filled the air a millisecond before a bullet whizzed by her ear. Again! The bullet hit the tree in front of her, and the bark exploded from the impact, a piece hitting her cheek. She stumbled. Damn, that hurt.
