A loud snap sounded, and pain grabbed his ankle, so excruciating he shouted as he fell. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as it hit in wave after wave.
He opened his eyes. When he smelled metal, he touched his ankle and felt around the device holding him in its grip. A trap of some kind. Maybe a bear trap? He wrenched at the jaws that held him fast, and the pain was so severe he thought he might pass out. He took deep, steadying breaths until the next wave of pain passed. Sweat beaded his forehead and mixed with the moisture driving into his face.
He had to do this.
The light still shone dimly through the windows of the house, and he’d heard no outcry. Maybe the sound of the rain on the metal roof had muffled it.
He put his foot out in front of him and examined it in the dim light. Two springs, a pan where his foot rested between the jaws. Though he’d never seen a bear trap, if he compressed the springs, he’d be able to pull his foot free. Taking a deep breath, he pressed down on the springs with all his might. The jaws eased open, and he maneuvered his ankle free.
The sudden release brought another throb of pain, and he rubbed his ankle. He didn’t feel any blood, but his ankle was swelling fast. Was it broken? He rolled to his knees, wincing, then managed to stand. His left foot wouldn’t take much weight, so he hopped back to the tree line to find a stick to use.
He hobbled into the woods. He leaned against a tree and wiped the rain from his eyes, then looked around for a sturdy branch for several moments. Nothing. He stared overhead and saw an attached branch that might work. He wrenched it off and stripped it of leaves before testing it for a few steps. It would have to do. He hobbled back toward the house.
Where was his boy? And Jane? There was nothing moving but the downpour sluicing from the sky in torrential buckets. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning flashed across the dark clouds.
A whisper of movement was followed by something striking him in the head before darkness claimed him.
* * *
When he opened his eyes some time later, he lay on his back on something hard. Stifling a groan, he turned his head to the right and saw the distant lights of a trawler in the bay. When he tried to get up, chains rattled on his uninjured leg. The other end of the chain linked to one of the dock’s support piers.
Water sluiced over the tops of the boards, soaking his back even through the yellow slicker he still wore. The storm surge that had been forecast seemed to be on its way. He moved closer to the pier to see if he could free the chain that tied him, but another strong set of links ran from post to post, and his bonds were snapped into one of those.
He tried to pull the chain apart with his hands, but it didn’t budge. He stood on the chain and tried again. Nothing. Was there anything nearby he could use? The gas can he saw was empty and useless with its half-rusted-out metal. No boat bobbed at the dock. He stopped and looked back toward the house, obscured by the curtain of rain except for a dim outline.
Where was Jane? He could only pray she was still out there focused on rescuing their son. He’d happily drown if it meant she and Will survived this. But what if they needed his help? What if they were in a desperate situation in that house?
He attacked the chain with renewed determination. They needed him.
* * *
The deluge blocked out Jane’s vision except for a few feet in front of her, and the raging wind snatched most noise away before she could identify it. She thought she’d heard someone cry out once, but it had to be an animal somewhere. No human made a noise like that.
The floodwaters rolled across a dip in the yard, and it was deep enough she feared she might be swept away. How did she get to the house from here? She retreated back the way she’d come. She thought a small hill ran to the left of the house. She might be able to make her way through there.
The wind struck with full force as she climbed the hill, and it seemed to take forever battling the weather before she stood above the backyard. A sudden slide in the ground beneath her sent her arms flying above her head as she slid down the hillside to land in the yard. She lay there stunned for several long moments before she struggled to her feet.
She inched along the side of the house to a window, then stood on tiptoe, cursing her short stature the whole time, to peer in. Her breath caught at the sight of Will, arms tied behind him, in a wooden chair by a table. Her first warning of alarm came when she saw no captor nearby. The kidnapper could be prowling around the exterior of the house.
She wanted to drink in the sight of her son, alive and well. No bruises, no bleeding. As if he felt her gaze on him, he strained at his bonds, and chafing marked his wrists. He’d tried before and failed.
Though she wanted to climb through the window, she forced herself to drop back down with her back against the wall. Someone could be creeping up on her, and she’d never know it with the din of the storm swirling around her.
Where was the kidnapper? She touched the butt of her gun and studied the darkness around her. The back of her neck prickled as if someone was watching her, but her gaze couldn’t penetrate the darkness of the stormy night.
Keeping her back against the wall, she sidled toward the backyard. If she could get inside without being seen . . . The wind picked up, sending twigs, leaves, and branches scudding to land at her feet. She picked her way through the debris until she rounded the corner where the wind grew even more ferocious.
Her phone vibrated and conveyed a storm surge warning. And this house was right on the water.
With no way of knowing how high the tide would rise, she needed to get Will to higher ground even if it was the upstairs of this place. It might be too late to run for the SUV and get out of here.
The wind hammered at her back and billowed her yellow slicker. She struggled to keep on her feet as she searched the darkness for movement. Where was Reid? Could he be inside? She went to the back door and tried the knob. Locked. If Reid had gone in this way, he would have left it unlocked.
The wind shrieked with fury. It might mask what she had to do. The yellow slicker wasn’t much protection, so she pulled it over her head, then wrapped her hand in it and struck her fist through the windowpane. The glass cut through a spot in the slicker but spared her hand. She reached through and unlocked the door, then stepped inside.
The vague outline of a washer and dryer coupled with the scent of fabric softener told her she was in the utility room. The floor sloped a little as if it had once been a back porch, and she lurched as she moved toward the door into the rest of the house.
The lurch sent her stumbling forward as a whoosh went by her ear. Her phone fell onto the floor, and a brick smashed on top of it, splintering it. She whirled with her gun in her hand to see who had thrown it.
She was too slow, and a figure came at her from the shadows and knocked the gun from her hand.
Still unsteady from the slanted floor, she fell onto her backside as he loomed over her. He aimed a kick at her, but her training kicked in, and she caught his leg and sent him sprawling. She rolled over and grabbed her gun, then regained her feet as he got up and faced her again.
She didn’t recognize the twentysomething guy with his ropy muscles and hard brown eyes, but she brought her gun up at the determination on his face. “Hold it right there.”
He grimaced, then held his hands up in slow motion. “Take it easy, Chief. Unless you want lover boy to drown.” He held another brick in one hand.
A weight pressed on her chest. “Where’s Reid?”
“Shoot me, and you’ll find his dead body after this storm is over.” He lowered his hands. “In fact, I don’t think you are in any shape to threaten me. Which is kind of a shame because I would like to have seen your face when the oil platform blows up. It has to be hard to be such a monumental failure.”
It was true. There was a plot to take out the oil platform. She had to get the workers off the rig.
She lowered her gun, but as he smiled with a satisfied gleam in his eyes, s
he kicked out with her right foot and planted it on his chest. He reeled back and crashed into a freestanding cabinet, then toppled to the floor. The cabinet door opened, spilling its contents on his head.
He grabbed something from along the wall, and she saw the gleam of a rifle barrel as he brought it up to her chest level and fired. She had just enough reaction time to dive to her left. It wasn’t until he fired again that she felt the heat in her shoulder. She’d been hit.
The fire spread to her neck and down her arm. The gun dropped from her numb fingers no matter how hard she tried to hang on to it and return fire. She grabbed at her injured shoulder with her left hand and dove through the door into the next room. She kicked the door shut with her foot, then clicked the dead bolt into place.
The man rattled it from the other side, but she didn’t wait for him to blast through the lock. Will needed to get out. Her head felt woozy as blood pulsed down her arm. She staggered through the kitchen to the living room, where her son was on his feet straining at the bonds tying his hands to a chair.
“Mom!”
She propped her leg on the chair and let go of her wound long enough to grab the knife from the sheath on her left ankle. She sawed through the rope, then thrust the knife at him. “My SUV is parked just down the lane. Hurry!”
A rifle blast came from behind her. “Go!”
His eyes wide, Will looked at her for a moment, then bolted to the front door, unlocked it, and vanished into the deluge.
She could only pray the storm surge wouldn’t sweep him away. Clutching her injured shoulder, she staggered after her boy into the night.
Thirty-Seven
Don’t pass out. Stay awake.
The rain sluiced over her as Jane stood swaying at the pathway to the SUV. Her shoulder pain was of epic proportions and made it hard to think. Lightning struck a tree nearby, and the thunder rumbled through her body before the sharp tang of ozone cleared her head.
Should she make sure Will made it out or try to find Reid? It was hard to think past the wooziness and pain, and she fought the lethargy slowing her muscles and dulling her brain. She was losing blood quickly no matter how hard she pressed against the wound in her shoulder.
Reid would expect her to take care of their son no matter what, but she couldn’t just walk away from Reid. The kidnapper had said he was going to drown. Where was he?
Another flash of lightning flickered through the swirling black clouds, and she flinched. Such an impossible decision, but she had to take five minutes to find Reid. She had to.
She turned toward the bay, but a hard shoulder crashed into her and she fell headlong onto her injured shoulder in the rising water. She screamed as pain seized her in its jaws. She must have passed out a few seconds because she wasn’t conscious of the man hauling her to his shoulder until she realized her head was dangling down his back, and her legs were draped over his chest. She couldn’t think, couldn’t plan past the horrific pain, but she had to push past it or she and Reid would be dead.
The man’s legs sloshed through water nearly to his knees. The storm surge. Where were Will and Reid?
She shook her head to clear it, then struggled to extricate herself from the man’s grip. His hands tightened on her knees, and he hefted her forward and onto her back in the water. The salty waves covered her nose and mouth as he held her under the water.
She kicked out her strong right knee, and it connected with his body. He reeled back with an oof, and she came up gasping for air. He’d fallen into the water and gotten tangled in branches and debris. While he struggled to free himself, she lurched to her feet and reached with her left hand for the cuffs on her waist. Gone. She must have lost them somewhere in her struggles.
If only she had a rope or some other way to restrain him. Her shoulder was on fire, and she was getting weaker and weaker.
He threw off the last of the clinging vines and branches and got to his feet. Bellowing, he put his head down to charge her again, and she knew this time would be the end. She had no strength left to fight.
An engine roared behind her, and she jumped back as her SUV splashed through twelve inches of water toward him. She glimpsed Will’s determined face in the wash of dashboard lights for an instant before the grille smashed into the man. He flew over the hood and slid across the roof before landing face-first in the water.
Somehow she managed to find the strength to stumble toward him and flip him over before he could drown. He was no use to her dead. He was the only one who knew how to stop the attack on the oil platform. He was woozy but conscious as she sat him up and rested him against her leg while she tried to find the strength to do what she had to do.
Will jumped out of the vehicle. “Mom!”
“Grab the handcuffs in the back of my SUV.”
She was holding on to consciousness by a thread. Will retrieved the handcuffs and brought them to her.
“Can you cuff him, Will? I-I don’t think I can.”
She barely kept to her feet as he pulled the man’s hands behind him and slapped on the handcuffs. “We need to get him in the back of the SUV. And make sure he has no weapons on him.”
“I can do it.” Will frisked the man, then dragged him to his feet and hustled him into the backseat. He slammed the door. “Where’s Dad?”
“I haven’t found him yet, but the guy said something about a plan to drown him. I think that’s what he was going to do with me too. He was taking me toward the water.”
Will pointed. “There’s a dock.”
She tried to stagger toward him, but her knees gave out, and she was barely aware of her son’s strong arms lifting her and carrying her to the passenger seat.
He brushed a kiss over her cheek. “I’m going after Dad. Pray, Mom.”
Pray? Would God even listen to her? She wanted to spring into action, to be the warrior she’d always been. But she’d lost too much blood. Prayer was all she had. She thought she whispered a prayer before darkness claimed her.
* * *
By the time the rising water covered Reid’s leg, it was bloody from efforts to free himself. His other ankle was swollen, and it was hard to stand, though he didn’t think it was broken. The salt stung the open wound, but he couldn’t get out of his bonds no matter how much he tried.
The ocean had reached his knees, and the strong current kept throwing him down into the waves. He’d struggled to his feet multiple times only to be tossed down again. His hands were numb from clinging to the dock post, and he was barely aware of the prayer he kept whispering.
Save Will and Jane, Lord. I’m ready. Just save them.
Thunder and lightning raged in the heavens, and the noise drowned out everything else. He staggered to his feet as yet another crash of waves threw him down, and as he rose dripping and exhausted, he spotted a light moving toward him.
He squinted in the darkness. “Here, over here!”
Jane’s SUV. He waved his hands. “Go back! The water’s too deep.”
The SUV stopped, and a figure got out. At first Reid thought it was the kidnapper until he realized this guy was taller and broader. Will?
Terror gripped him. “Go back, Will! It’s not safe.” The wind whirled his words away before he could be sure his son had heard the warning.
Will wouldn’t have a chain to hold him onto the dock, and the next big wave would sweep him out to sea. The boy went around to the back of the SUV and opened it. He took something out and came toward the dock. In the next flicker of lightning, Reid saw he’d tied one end of a coil of rope to the grille before wrapping the other end around his waist.
The first stab of hope lifted Reid. “We need something to cut a chain,” he called above the sound of the storm. “I think there are bolt cutters in the back of the SUV.”
Will waved and went to the back of the SUV again. Something gleamed in his hand when he returned. Bolt cutters. The boy tied them into the rope, too, then started for the dock.
But where was Jane? Dead? The dread Reid
had been fighting for an hour seized him again.
He couldn’t lose her again, not when he’d just found her.
With his feet wide Will inched toward Reid. Every time the current tossed a fresh wave toward him, he grabbed hold of a support post and held on until it passed. The water was rising fast, and they both might drown at any moment.
“Save yourself, son! Go back!”
Will shook his head and inched closer. “I’m not leaving you, Dad.”
With agonizing slowness the teenager finally reached the post Reid clung to. A massive wave swamped them both and tossed them into deeper water. The rope had too much slack in it for Will to use it to haul himself back to the dock. With one hand on the chain holding him, Reid reached out blindly for his boy, and his hand brushed something. He lurched forward and managed to grip Will’s arm.
“Hang on to me.” He wrapped the chain around his wrist and pulled as soon as Will had both arms around him.
His muscles ached with the strain, but he managed to get close enough for them to feel the dock with their feet. “Climb, Will! Grab the post.”
The boy obeyed, and they stood trembling next to the pier. The water was to their waists.
Will unwrapped the bolt cutters from the rope and cut the chain. “Let’s get out of here, Dad. Hang on to me.”
“Let’s both hang on to the rope. Wrap it around your wrist until it’s taut.”
He showed his boy how to use the rope to steady him as they half-swam, half-stumbled back to the land. The water was still rising, but it was not as deep yet where the SUV was parked.
“Where’s your mother?”
“In the SUV. She’s hurt bad, Dad. Lost a lot of blood. We’ve got to get her to a hospital.”
“The kidnapper?”
“In custody in the back of the SUV.”
They reached the SUV, and Reid released the rope and helped Will unwind it from his wrists. Barely able to walk, Reid limped to the passenger side of the SUV. Jane was slumped unconscious in the seat.
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