by Kay Hooper
“To get his tools.”
“Which tools?” Lucas asked warily.
“The ones he designed for precision work. You want to bet Ryan hasn’t got the house wired?”
“Not really, no.” Lucas sighed. “Boss, I think he’s gone already. Ryan. I couldn’t find any fresh tracks, and there’s no sign of another car, but I think he got out somehow. It just feels like he’s gone.”
Musing, Josh said, “He wouldn’t have given Zach a final warning. Wouldn’t have threatened to blow the house up with Teddy in it if Zach came too close.”
“He wants Zach dead,” Lucas agreed. “He’d expect him to go in after Teddy sooner or later.”
“Ummm. And he wouldn’t have wanted to travel with that stolen artwork—but would have wanted to keep a close eye on it. Call Rafferty again.”
“Find out if there’s somebody following the truck? Gotcha.” He hesitated on the point of leaving. “Boss? I’ve only seen Zach this way once before, and you stopped him then. D’you think—?”
“No. Not this time.” Unemotionally, Josh said, “Clay Ryan’s a dead man.”
Lucas opened his mouth to speak, apparently thought better of it, and went to call Rafferty.
Out of an automatic sense of caution Josh tested the direction of the wind before lighting a cigarette. He stubbed it out a few moments later when Zach appeared silently at his side. “Lucas thinks Ryan’s flown the coop,” he advised tersely.
“He has good instincts.” Zach’s opaque gaze flickered toward the house and the hand holding a large leather pouch tightened until the knuckles shone white. “Teddy …”
In the same bracing tone Josh said, “Inside is our bet. She’s bait, Zach, to get you in there.”
Calmly, Zach said, “It’s working.”
To Josh, that was unnecessary information. “He hasn’t had time to rig up anything fancy, Zach. I mean, he may well have the house wired top to bottom, but he hasn’t had time to—to booby-trap a hostage.”
Still utterly calm, Zach said, “So getting in without setting off a bomb will be the trick.” He rose abruptly. “I have to go now.”
“Zach—”
Beneath the layers of icy cold, Zach’s mind was working methodically. “If I were him,” he mused softly, “I would have rigged no more than a fifteen-minute fuse. Time enough to realize he had gone. Time enough to get inside the house. There’ll be a secondary bomb rigged and hidden. Not time enough to find and defuse that. And not time enough for me to find Teddy and get her out.”
Rising, Josh said urgently, “Wait. Just a minute. We need to know if he’s really gone.”
“I can’t—”
“Zach, he could be standing by somewhere with a remote, ready to blow the house as soon as you get inside. We have to know he can’t see what we’re doing.”
Lucas reached them then, a little breathless. “Bingo,” he said, panting. “I think. Rafferty says there’s a nice, unassuming sedan following the semi.”
That was all Zach needed. “You two stay here—”
“Forget it,” Josh said briefly.
If Zach had been thinking of anything other than getting to Teddy, he likely would have decked both his friends and gone on alone. But in his present condition such strategy was a bit beyond him. Besides, he needed help to get her out and defuse the bomb, because no man could be in two places at the same time. So he simply headed for the house.
It took no more than five minutes alone for Teddy to feel an abrupt, bloody-minded temper rising. She was on her back, bound head and foot, gagged, helpless. She hated being helpless. It was one thing, she realized, to take comfort in the protection of a strong man and quite another to await rescue feebly, like some delicate princess in an ivory tower.
She tilted her head back against the pillow and stared up at her wrists. The knot looked all too secure, dammit. But the rope was fastened to a decorative metal ring in the headboard, and maybe, just maybe … Carefully, she jerked her bound wrists away from the headboard. They moved only a few inches, and her left arm protested in a jolt of agony that took her breath.
Teddy rubbed her cheek against the aching arm. She felt wetness and thought she was crying, but then realized that Ryan’s rough treatment, and her own, had broken the wound open again. She was bleeding.
Maybe not much time, then.
She locked her teeth down on the gag, held on to what she could of the rope to spare her wrists, and jerked again. And again.
By the third jerk, the wetness on her face was indeed tears, and she was breathing in sobbing gasps. But she kept jerking, fighting waves of pain and nausea, struggling to remain conscious. And finally, the metal ring tore loose, and her bound wrists fell heavily to her stomach. Through the hot tears filling her eyes she could see that the left sleeve of her dark sweater was stained with blood. Not much blood, though; she could at least be thankful for that.
Teddy counted slowly to twenty before she could find the strength to sit up, then closed her eyes at the wave of dizziness. Her jaw was aching, and she realized that her teeth were still gritted. She relaxed her jaw, and her breathing gradually steadied.
Even though she’d tried to protect them, the rope hadn’t been kind to her wrists; there was a little blood, a great deal of chafing, and her hands had swelled a bit from loss of circulation. She flexed the stiff fingers, wincing as the blood returned to them, and then fumbled to draw her purse around so that she could open it. Not for the first time, she cursed her pack-rat habits as she scrabbled through the jumble in search of the small penknife. Finding it at last, she sawed through the rope between her wrists, sacrificing a bit more skin in the process. The pain barely disturbed her; she was very conscious of the passing minutes and far too aware of several much more disturbing facts.
She had seen Ryan’s face, and he didn’t leave witnesses.
He had left her alone far too long; there was something wrong with that.
He hated Zach, hated him and wanted him dead.
And something else, there was something—
Explosives.
Ryan had nearly killed Zach once with explosives. Would he try a second time? Set a trap with her as bait—
“You’re his Achilles’ heel.”
Teddy tore off the gag and went to work on her bound ankles. She wanted to call out, to scream a warning to Zach, but didn’t dare. She had heard the big truck leave minutes before, but what if Ryan was still nearby? With a remote detonator in one hand and a meaningless white smile on his face, waiting for Zach to get inside the house—and Zach would get inside, would come after her.
She scrambled off the bed and dug in her purse for the tranquilizer gun. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.
The door swung open.
Teddy whirled, leveling the gun automatically in a two-handed grip, knowing she might have only one chance. And the blond man in the doorway took a hasty step back, his own gun pointing quickly at the ceiling.
“Whoa! I’m with Zach.”
She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Lucas Kendrick?”
“Right.” He didn’t ask how she recognized him but turned his head to call loudly, “I’ve found her. She’s fine.”
Teddy straightened and returned her dart pistol to her purse. “Where’s Zach? Ryan might have a bomb.”
“He left two. Zach’s defusing the second one now. If he can’t do it, we’ve got five minutes before it blows.” Lucas’s sharp blue eyes narrowed. “Is that blood on your cheek?”
“From my arm. It started bleeding again.” She lifted a hand to wipe away the smear of blood, and Lucas swore softly. He returned his gun to its shoulder holster and produced a snowy handkerchief from his pocket.
He was tearing the square of linen in two as he moved to stand before her and, obviously seeing her anxious impatience, explained quickly as he began to wrap one of her wrists. “If Zach sees blood on you, he’s likely to go right around the bend and do something really crazy. Did that bastard do
this?”
Suddenly aware that she could no longer even move her left arm, Teddy concentrated all her will on just remaining on her feet and coherent. “No, I did that getting loose.”
“Must hurt like hell,” he commented with sympathy.
“I can’t feel anything,” she responded honestly. “Can’t move my arm, either.”
“Josh said you were wounded yesterday.”
“Ummm. Ryan hit my arm. That’s why I screamed.”
Lucas’s handsome face went decidedly grim, but he said nothing. He wrapped her wrists as carefully as possible, noting quickly that the blood on her sweater was obvious, but only close up. She was very pale, but clearly determined to remain on her feet. He admired both her courage and her obvious strength.
She’d done a damn good job of getting herself out of this mess, and he wouldn’t soon forget the resolution in her small face as she’d expertly aimed that gun at him. He wondered if Zach knew what a tough lady she really was.
He gently tugged the sleeves of her sweater down to hide the makeshift bandages, then said, “Let’s go.”
Teddy was grateful that he kept a light but firm hold on her right arm as he led her from the room. She wasn’t at all sure she could have made it on her own.
The house was a large one, the bedrooms they passed sparsely furnished, most of them with covers over everything. A curving staircase led down into an open foyer, and Josh Long was waiting for them at the bottom.
Teddy was dimly aware that some silent signal passed between the two men, but she had no time to react before Lucas had hurried away and Josh swung her easily up into his arms.
He carried her toward the front door.
“Wait! Where’s Zach?”
“He’ll be along. Dammit, Teddy, be still!”
She dug into reserves of strength she hadn’t known she had and struggled harder to escape him, staring back over his shoulder as he carried her from the house. “No! Put me down! I want to go to Zach—”
“It’d be more than my life’s worth to let you go back in that house,” he told her grimly. “Teddy, he’ll be fine. If he can’t defuse the bomb with a minute left, Lucas’ll pull him out of there.”
Wildly, she said, “Pull him out? He won’t be able to pull him out! He’s a damned army; nobody could pull him out. He’ll stay till the last bloody second and get his stubborn, macho hide blown to bits. Josh, let me go!”
“Listen to me,” Josh ordered harshly. “Now that you’re safe, the single thought in Zach’s mind is to get Ryan. And he is not about to let himself be blown to bits while that man is still walking around. There’s nothing in that house worth dying for. He’ll come out, Teddy.”
That argument made sense, but rational though it was, nothing could ease the agonized fear for her man. Still, she forced herself to stop struggling, and when Josh set her on her feet at the edge of the woods, she didn’t try to run back into the house. She stood perfectly still, staring toward the house, her nails biting into her palms.
“How much longer?” she asked in a husky whisper.
Josh, who had rarely taken his eyes from his watch, replied tautly, “A minute and a half.”
“He has to come out.” She barely recognized the queerly conversational voice as her own. “He just has to, that’s all. He doesn’t even know if … if we—He can’t die not knowing. He won’t do that. Even if it isn’t likely, it’s still possible, and he’d want to know. He’d want to—Zach!”
Josh leaned back against a sturdy tree and, in a detached manner, watched his hands shake. Then he looked up to see Zach being engulfed by a distraught redhead. Speaking to Lucas as the other man reached him, he said heavily, “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”
“You and me both.” Lucas was looking a bit white around the mouth, but his voice was steady. “A minute twenty-five left on the clock, and he never turned a hair. Is there anything that can shake that granite foundation of his?”
Josh glanced again toward the couple several yards away and spoke softly. “One thing. One small thing.”
Teddy found that she could move her left arm, after all, at least enough to get it around Zach’s neck. And she gloried in the strength of his arms as they held her tightly against him. In a fierce, shaking tone she said, “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
He hugged her, hard. “I’m sorry, honey. I should have known he’d go for you,” Zach murmured against her neck. “It’s my fault he got you.”
Teddy drew back and stared at him, hardly aware that her boots dangled well above the ground. “Since when d’you read minds?” she demanded, finding that much of her strength had returned in the security of his embrace.
“I know his mind,” Zach said gruffly. “I should have known what he’d do.”
Teddy said something derisive, and it wasn’t “malarkey.”
Zach grinned in spite of himself. “You never should have learned words like that. Or at least not learned how to use them like that.”
Peering at him owlishly almost nose-to-nose, she said. “Listen, when I was a little girl, I played jacks under my father’s boardroom tables. They usually forgot I was there. I learned how to use a lot of words I shouldn’t have learned.”
He kissed her and then set her gently on her feet but kept an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll have to tell me, maybe I’ll learn something.”
Suddenly remembering that the danger was far from past, she said fiercely, “I’ll tell you a few of them now if you’re planning to do something crazy!”
“Who, me?” Zach looked up as Josh and Lucas approached, both weighted down with Teddy’s bags and as much of Zach’s equipment as they could carry.
Succinctly, Lucas said, “I say we get the hell out of Dodge.”
“And head for Tombstone,” Josh murmured. “Zach, weren’t there supposed to be some federal marshals called up here? Now would be the time. I’d say there was a fair amount of physical evidence in the house.”
Tombstone. OK Corral. Gun battle. Finally, the remainder of Josh’s comments sank in. With a slight start Teddy exclaimed, “Ryan left fingerprints, I know that. He wasn’t wearing gloves when he tied me to the bed, and he touched the headboard. I’ll bet he touched the explosives too.”
Zach looked down at her. “When he tied you to the bed? He tied you to a bed?”
“I didn’t tell him that,” Lucas murmured.
Since Zach was on her left side and that arm had gone numb again, Teddy couldn’t manage a reassuring hug. But she did manage a bright—and slightly wary—smile. “He was a perfect gentleman,” she said, editing the truth somewhat. “And I’m just fine, after all.”
“You screamed,” Zach said, his voice going placid and remote in a way she recognized.
“I was scared,” Teddy retorted stoutly.
Josh and Lucas, fascinated spectators to this, looked back and forth as though at a tennis match.
“You were hurting.”
Teddy, who still had hopes of getting her warrior through all this without him going berserk and spilling precious blood, like his own, wasn’t about to admit that Ryan had nearly caused her to pass out with his cruel blow.
“You weren’t there,” she told him.
“I know pain when I hear it.”
“Your imagination.”
“There’s blood on your sleeve.”
“I did that getting loose.” Hastily, she looked at the other two men. “Can we go now? Let’s go.”
Lucas started slightly, jolted rudely from fascination, then turned. “This way,” he directed carefully, after clearing his throat.
They were all silent as they made their way through the woods to where Lucas had parked his van. Their stuff was loaded, then Zach helped Teddy into the backseat, climbed in after her, and pulled her securely onto his lap.
She didn’t object.
The other two men got in front, with Lucas driving, and it wasn’t until the van pulled out onto the main road that Zach s
poke.
“West?”
Josh half turned to look at him, his eyes narrowing at his friend’s tone. “That’s the way the semi went. Why?”
“Because,” Zach said heavily, “the guns are supposed to be waiting east of here. Along with Kelsey, probably Hagen, and by now, half a dozen federal marshals. That’s why.”
Teddy rested her head on Zach’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She didn’t really pay attention to the ensuing discussion but remembered it all very well later.
Josh used the van’s radio to contact the helicopter where Rafferty was to relay several messages. On a particular frequency he was to summon the marshals to the house. On another frequency he was to contact Josh’s wife—who was apparently in search of someone named Kelsey—and explain where the guns were supposed to be but probably weren’t. And on yet another frequency he was to try to contact Hagen, on whom all four of the men seemed somewhat determined to get their hands.
After that Teddy went to sleep.
The van rolled along in silence for a while, until Zach was certain Teddy was asleep. Then, directing his words at their driver, he said, “Now you can tell me.”
Lucas glanced in the rearview mirror, then at Josh, and sighed. “When I found her, she was fine, Zach. I don’t know how she’d managed to get herself loose, but she was on her feet—and ready for anything. She had a gun pointed at me and looked like she knew how to use it.”
“Gun?”
“Yeah. Put it in her purse.”
With less hesitation this time, Zach dug into Teddy’s purse and produced the gun. He stared at it for a moment, and then his lips twitched. In a slightly unsteady voice he said solemnly, “She was loaded for bear, all right.”
“That’s what I thought,” Lucas agreed.
Zach cleared his throat. “The four-legged kind.”
After a beat Lucas said blankly, “What?” and Josh looked back over his shoulder at the gun and began smiling.
“Real bears,” Zach explained. “Furry bears. I don’t know much about dosage, but I’d say this would have decked a hungry grizzly bent on getting his next meal. You certainly would have taken a nice long nap.”