by Barb Han
Her breath caught as she eased upright and took in the normally tidy space. Mason’s countertops were littered with bloody rags, bandages and cloths. A first-aid kit had been ripped open, its contents splayed across the nearby table. A bottle of peroxide was lying in the sink. “Mason?”
Allison rushed into the living room, where the wall-mounted phone’s receiver hung by its spiral cord. Abandoned. “Mason!” Her voice was loud and frantic, stirring Bonnie from her sleep.
A sense of doom spread in her stomach as she rushed through the old farmhouse, throwing open the doors and calling. Then, in a small room at the end of the hall, Mason’s feet came into view. He was lying on the floor, eyes open and unseeing, his flannel shirt darkened with blood. “No!”
Allison dialed 911 on her cell phone as she fell to her knees at his side, patted his cold cheeks, then checked his neck for a pulse that wasn’t there. Sobs broke across her lips as she cried the details into the receiver. “He’s dead. I don’t know. There’s so much blood,” she explained to the dispatch officer.
“I can’t tell where he’s hurt.” She wiped wildly at her eyes, taking small sips of air and struggling to remain composed. Then, another thought came to mind. “Someone else was here. There are footprints in the yard, and I found a button on the floor.”
“Are you certain you’re alone now?” the dispatcher asked.
Ice ran through Allison’s veins. “No.” She’d raced around the first floor, but there was still an upstairs and basement. Both places she hadn’t been.
And where was Clark? Not here, she decided, or he would be with Mason.
In the stillness, a couple of voices registered. “I hear people outside.”
“Neighbors?” the dispatcher asked.
“There aren’t any neighbors,” Allison whispered. “Not like you mean. Not here.” Allison’s home was the closest to Mason’s, and she was more than a mile away.
Allison crept to the nearest window and spotted a pair of men heading toward the home on foot. Two ATVs were parked in the trees beyond an aged outbuilding. The men scowled and barked at one another—short, snappy words, muffled by distance and the glass. Dark streaks smeared their shirts and arms.
“I see them through the window,” Allison said. “I don’t know them. And they might have blood on their clothes. What do I do?”
“Can you safely leave the premises?” the dispatcher asked. “I have the address, and units en route, but they’re several minutes out.”
Allison’s gaze fell to Bonnie, fussy and squirming from the fear and tension surely rolling off her mother. “I think so,” she said, determination rising in her core.
She was too late to help Mason, but she would protect her baby. Whatever the cost. Allison gave Mason a final look, her heart pounding in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then turned toward the hallway that had brought her to him. She reached the end of the narrow corridor and listened for any sounds indicating the men had entered the home. When silence prevailed, Allison sped back through the kitchen. “I parked in the driveway out front,” she told the dispatcher. “I think the men went around back. I’m using the front door now.” She clamped the phone between her ear and shoulder, then freed the dead bolt and swung the door wide.
Her truck glistened in the morning sunlight, waiting alone in the drive. Only a few yards away.
“Hey!” an angry voice called from behind her.
Allison froze, her hand on the open door, one foot already on the porch outside.
“Hold it right there.” A heavy footfall sounded on the kitchen floor, two rooms away.
And Allison ran.
She tossed her phone into the sling with her baby, then bolted across the porch and down the short flight of steps, landing hard on the lawn. Allison wrapped a protective arm around the sling as she tipped forward, slamming her free hand and one knee into the earth.
Bonnie screamed.
“Stop!” the man demanded.
Allison surged forward, throwing herself ahead at full speed. She flung open the truck door and jumped inside, jamming her key into the ignition as Bonnie wailed. She pulled her daughter from the sling and moved her to the rear-facing car seat on the bench beside her. Her bumbling hands and flailing newborn made the job of fastening her safety belt almost impossibly difficult.
A gunshot exploded into the air. The thunderous sound echoed off the trees and hills.
“Get out of that truck,” her assailant ordered, stalking predatorily across the porch. He lifted the gun in one outstretched arm, pointing it first at Allison, then swinging the barrel in the direction of Bonnie’s car seat.
Allison jerked the vehicle into gear and jammed her foot against the accelerator, as the man’s feet hit the lawn. Her old pickup launched forward, toward the gunman. A risky move, maybe, but far safer, in her opinion, than obeying the blood-smeared stranger.
He jumped back, screaming a string of curses as she pulled the shifter into Reverse and cranked the steering wheel. The truck spun in a wild backward doughnut through Mason’s yard before rocketing forward down the driveway and onto the desolate country road out front.
The man took aim from a shrinking position in her rearview as Allison barreled away.
Her ears rang and her heart pounded.
Bonnie screeched beside her.
“It’s okay,” she breathed. “We’re okay.” Allison pried one hand away from the wheel to stroke her baby’s tear-soaked cheeks. “You’re all right. We’re all right. Help is coming.” Allison had gotten a good look at the man with the gun. She’d be able to describe him to the police when they arrived.
A flash of red caught her eye in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, no.”
An ATV was racing along the road behind them.
Allison pressed the gas pedal with more purpose, then locked her doors. She needed to put as much distance as possible between her truck and the man giving chase.
The driver, visible in her side mirror, steered recklessly, a gun in one hand.
She slunk in her seat, fumbling to free her phone from the loose sling still hanging around her middle. “Hello?” she asked, praying the call hadn’t disconnected.
“I’m here. Are you okay?” the dispatcher returned.
“No!” she screamed. “I am not okay! The intruder shot at me, and he’s on an ATV now, chasing me!”
“Where are you?”
“In my truck. We’re on River Road headed toward town.” Allison raised her eyes to the rearview mirror, checking the ATV’s progress. Four-wheelers were fast, but her little Ford was faster. She could get Bonnie and herself to safety. Everything would be okay.
A gunshot boomed, and Allison’s truck jerked hard beneath her grip. The phone toppled from her hand as she clutched the wheel, attempting to regain control as her vehicle veered toward the hill on her right.
“He shot my tire!” Allison screamed, glancing at the floorboards and hoping the dispatcher could hear her. “I’m going to—”
The blast of a horn brought her eyes back to the road. Her little pickup had crossed the yellow line while she wasn’t looking, and an enormous black truck with a large horse trailer was barreling right at her.
Allison jerked the wheel once more, and her truck hit a small roadside embankment, sending her briefly into the air before she crashed to a stop.
Copyright © 2021 by Julie Anne Lindsey
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ISBN-13: 9780369709233
Texas Baby Conspiracy
Copyright © 2021 by Barb Han
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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