When Kerri made it to the top of the stairs, she paused with her hand on the doorknob. What if someone else was in on the kidnapping and in the house also? Listening through the door, she didn’t hear anything, so she slowly eased the door open. After being in the dark so long, the bright daylight that filtered through the door blinded Kerri and caused tears to well up in her eyes. Blinking the tears away, she was able to focus and saw that she was in some sort of old run-down house. The kitchen that she was currently standing in seemed to come straight out of the sixties or seventies with moss-green appliances and yellow countertops. The wallpaper seemed to have lost its design years ago due to fading from the sun, and was curling at the edges and peeling in most spots. The dust on the floors and countertops was about two inches thick and let Kerri know that no one had lived in this house for a long time. Was this the reason her kidnapper had brought her here? Did he know that not only had time forgotten this house, but people had forgotten it as well?
Snapping herself out of observations that she could only contribute to lack of food and sleep, Kerri noticed the back door and ran toward it. Grabbing the knob, she yanked but nothing happened. Then she noticed that it had been nailed shut. Just as she turned to find another way out, she heard a groan and sluggish footsteps on the stairs. Trying not to panic, Kerri knew that she was about to run out of time to make her escape. She laid the lightbulb that she realized she was still carrying down on the counter and grabbed an old wooden chair that sat at the kitchen table. Lifting the chair, she swung it at the small window above the sink, smashing the glass. Just as she was about to grab the bulb and climb on the counter, the basement door swung open to reveal her kidnapper and, from the look in his eyes, he was in pain and looking to make her pay for trying to escape him. Not waiting any longer, Kerri turned and dove through the window. Standing, she winced at the pain traveling down her leg and looked down to see that the stark white sheet she had wrapped herself in was quickly becoming stained with blood. Knowing that she didn’t have time to see what damage she had done diving through the window, she dashed in the direction of the woods in front of her.
Running barefoot did not help, but Kerri had no choice. Her feet felt like they were being run through a meat grinder as she felt every sharp poke and jab from the leaves and sticks on the ground. It felt like she had been running for hours, and she was quickly becoming tired and out of breath.
Not once did she slow down or look behind her as another one of her dad’s life lessons played through her head. If you ever find yourself in a situation that you know you can’t win, run, and don’t stop until you get to safety. No one will judge you or consider you a coward for being smart and knowing when to fight your battles and when to give up. Always playing it smart is what will keep you alive to fight another day.
Kerri knew this was one of those moments to play it smart and run. She knew that she didn’t have a chance against her kidnapper, especially now. She could feel herself getting weaker as she ran and knew it was due to the cut on her leg. She had to get to safety soon because she was losing blood way too fast, and passing out in the woods was not part of the plan, nor was being captured again. Kerri leaned against a tree and took a few deep breaths. She squeezed her eyes closed to fight off the dark spots that were flashing before her eyes and listened. She could hear sticks snapping and leaves crunching from the direction that she had just come from and knew that her kidnapper was coming. She didn’t think her heart could beat any faster, but it seemed like it tripled in speed when she also heard the unmistakable sound of vehicles on a highway a short distance in the direction she was going.
Taking off at full speed, Kerri’s only thought was making it to the highway before her kidnapper caught up with her. She noticed that it was getting harder and harder to breathe, but she didn’t care. She knew that if she made it to the road, she would be safe. She didn’t stop once she reached the edge of the woods. She continued running the last twenty feet to the road and directly in the path of an oncoming car. The last thing she remembered was hearing tires squeal and then looking up at a clear blue sky as everything faded to black.
* * * *
Two days later
The smell was the first thing that Kerri noticed when she regained consciousness. She hated hospitals. The smell of antiseptic and sick people was what she hated the most. All the memories of her kidnapping ordeal came flooding back. Was she still drugged? Did her kidnapper catch her again? She panicked when she tried to open her eyes and couldn’t.
Evidently, she whimpered or made some sort of noise because she felt a hand grip hers, and she heard her dad’s voice.
“Shh, baby, it’s all right. You’re safe now.”
Safe. Kerri didn’t need her dad to tell her she was safe. All she needed to hear was his voice, and she immediately relaxed. Her dad was here, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Still gripping his hand, she drifted back into darkness.
* * * *
Chase took a deep breath and slowly released it as he drove toward home. This weekend wasn’t as relaxing as he’d thought it would be. Something was wrong, and he couldn’t figure out what it was. The back of his neck was tingling, and from past experience he knew that was not a good sign. He’d always had a sixth sense about danger, but his years in the military honed those skills, and he learned to trust them. Those skills had saved not only his life, but the lives of his team members on several occasions. The last time Chase had this feeling was when his parents had died in a car accident. Being halfway around the world on a mission, he didn’t find out until three days later, but he knew something bad had happened before ever finding out. He came home to find his baby sister fighting for her life, and his two younger brothers and Logan barely handling it. That was the day Chase walked away from MacGregor Inc. and combat without looking back and took over taking care of his family. Now it was happening all over again. He had called home several times over the weekend to check on his family, but not wanting to frighten them, he pretended to be checking on the ranch and how things were going. Everything seemed okay, but Chase couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was about to happen and it involved him.
The ringing of a phone snapped Chase out of thoughts about the past. He was so caught up in his memories that he didn’t realize that it wasn’t his cell ringing until he picked it up to answer it. Swearing, he threw the phone on the passenger seat and pulled over to the side of the road. He hated being right sometimes. The sound of his satellite phone ringing under his seat only meant one thing. The situation was critical.
Quickly grabbing the phone, he answered. “This is Chase,” he said.
“Chase, we have a situation, and I need your help,” said Daniel MacGregor, his former commanding officer.
If his former CO was asking for help, then the situation was beyond critical because Daniel “Bulldog” MacGregor didn’t ask for help from anyone. He didn’t need to. He was just that good.
Without hesitation, Chase answered, “When and where?”
Chapter 2
Just walking through the sliding glass doors of the hospital brought up all kinds of unwanted memories for Chase. He’d hated hospitals ever since his sister had been forced to spend a few months in one. Just being in one reminded him of how his parents died and how he almost lost Ali. Forcing back the memories, Chase bypassed the elevator and took the stairs to the fourth floor. He was curious to find out what the hell was going on and why he was meeting his CO in a hospital of all places. Rounding the corner, he spotted the man in question leaning against a wall with his head back and eyes closed. He looked like he was out of it, but Chase knew that Daniel was aware of exactly what was going on around him. As Chase began to move toward him, Daniel opened his eyes and stared in his direction. Damn, the man looks like shit. Something very bad must have happened for his CO to look like this.
“Sir, I got here as soon as I could. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
Rubbing his hands over his f
ace, Daniel sighed. “I need your help, Chase. My daughter is in there,” he said as he pointed to the room door directly across the hallway. “Some bastard thought he could get to me by kidnapping her. She was taken from a mall parking lot five days ago and turned up here two days ago with cuts and bruises and her leg sliced open from hip to knee.”
“Damn, how did she get here?” Chase asked.
“Not sure.” Daniel sighed. “She nicked her femoral artery and lost a lot of blood. They have been keeping her sedated so that she doesn’t move the leg. All she has done is open her eyes a few times. All I know is that she somehow escaped and ran. A woman passing by says that she ran out of the woods directly in front of her car. She was barely able to stop in time to keep from running Kerri over.”
Chase frowned and began pacing the hallway. He knew they had all made enemies from their many missions, but this was going too far. This guy was crazy if he messed with a man’s family and actually expected to get away with it. He hadn’t seen Kerri since she was about fourteen, but still, he considered Daniel family, and that included her as well.
“Give me all the details on where she was found and came out of the woods, and I will start backtracking and see if I can find anything on this guy.”
Daniel’s face hardened. “No, whoever this bastard is, he came after my family, so I will be the one to take him down. I called you here for another reason.”
Before Daniel could tell Chase the reason, a high-pitched scream came from the door that held Kerri. Without thinking, Chase removed his gun from his back and burst into the room. Going on instinct and knowing that Daniel had his back, Chase quickly scanned the room and bathroom. Yelling “Clear,” he set the safety back on his gun and turned to watch as Daniel leaned over the bed to hug Kerri. He could hear him murmuring to her, but couldn’t tell what he was saying over her panicked breathing. Hearing the door swinging open again had Chase pointing the business end of his gun at a very frightened nurse. Damn, keep it together. Lowering the weapon but keeping it ready, he watched as the nurse checked all of Kerri’s vitals with trembling hands. Once she was done and had asked Kerri a few questions, she shot Chase a nervous look and left the room as fast as she could. He knew he probably just scared ten years off the nurse’s life, but he couldn’t worry about that now.
Chase turned his attention back to Daniel and his daughter and sucked in a deep breath as he was met with the biggest, lightest-brown eyes that he had ever seen. Kerri wasn’t the little fourteen-year-old girl with braces and frizzy, blonde hair and light-brown eyes too big for her face that he remembered. She was gorgeous. Even with the dark circles and scratches all over her face, she was stunning. Her face was rounded with high cheekbones and the longest eyelashes that he had ever seen. She had a mouth made for kissing, lips plump and pink. Chase found himself licking his lips as he stared at them and was shocked when he saw Kerri’s hot, pink tongue dart out to trace her bottom lip. He snapped his eyes up and saw that she watching him with a dazed expression. That look alone not only made him want to lay her back and be inside her within thirty seconds flat, but it made him want to protect her. It made him want to keep the world away from her in order to keep her safe. He didn’t know why he was feeling this way about someone that he hadn’t seen in years, but Chase never fought his instincts, and he wasn’t about to start today.
All thoughts of staying single and needing his space went right out the window. Kerri MacGregor was his, his to cherish, and his to protect. She didn’t know it yet, but once she healed and the threat to her was eliminated, he would damn well make sure she did. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed his CO watching him with narrowed eyes, and Chase realized that he was going to have to make sure Daniel knew it as well.
* * * *
Wow. Kerri was stiff and sore from head to toe. Her feet felt like someone had used a cheese shredder on them, and the pain in her leg was damn near unbearable, but that didn’t stop her from noticing the huge, gorgeous man standing at the foot of her bed. Chase Matthews was still as handsome today as the first day she’d met him. He was eight years older than her, but that didn’t stop her from having a few fantasies about him over the years. As far as she knew, her father hadn’t kept contact with his old team members, so what was he doing here now? And why was he staring at her like that? Feeling a hand grip hers, she looked up to see her father staring at Chase, and he didn’t look happy.
“Daddy, what’s going on?”
Her father relaxed his grip on her hand and smiled. “Hey, pumpkin,” he said as he leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I’m glad you are finally awake. You gave me quite a scare over the past few days.”
Kerri didn’t hold back the tears that started to leak out of the corner of her eyes when she looked up at her dad. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I should have listened to you, and none of this would have happened.”
“Shh, enough of that now, baby,” her dad whispered as he gently rocked her. “You’re safe now, and I won’t let anything else happen to you. I promise I will catch whoever did this to you and make him pay.”
Keri knew it wasn’t an idle threat that her father had just made. She knew that he would stop at nothing to catch the man who took her, and when he caught him, her dad would make what she suffered feel like a day at the spa compared to what he would do to her kidnapper. Kerri knew that her father had a dark side, but she loved him anyway, and she knew that he took her safety seriously and would stop at nothing to protect her.
“Pumpkin, I need to know what happened so that I can get started trying to find this guy. Do you feel like talking?”
Not really. But she was a MacGregor, though, and no way in hell did they show weakness. She definitely wasn’t going to look like a coward in front of Chase “OMG would you look at that body” Matthews. Breathing through the pain and nausea, she told her dad everything she remembered from the time she was kidnapped up until she ran out of the woods in front of an oncoming car. The whole time she told her story, she could feel Chase’s eyes staring a hole into the side of her head. Instead of it making her feel uncomfortable, she could feel warmth flooding her, starting from her toes and racing up her body to her face. Hell of a time to be aroused. As much pain as she was in, arousal should have been impossible, but it seemed her body had a mind of its own. She glanced over at Chase to see if he noticed, and saw his eyes narrow and his jaw flex like he was gritting his teeth. Yeah, he noticed, and damned if that didn’t make her blush even harder.
“Kerri, what’s wrong? Do you want me to get the nurse in here to give you something for the pain?”
Looking back up at her father, she could see the concern on his face. He thought she was flushed because she was in pain. If he only knew that it was because of the huge man standing at the foot of her bed and the very grown-up thoughts that she was having about him, he would probably blow a gasket.
“I’m okay, Daddy, just exhausted, that’s all. I don’t want to go back to sleep, though, so maybe you can see if they have something mild for the pain, please?”
“Okay, pumpkin. Just wait right there, and I will go get the nurse,” Daniel said with a huge grin on his face.
“Ha ha, Dad, really funny. Where am I going to go?” Joking was her dad’s way of trying to make her feel better and lighten the situation. Her dad may have been a serious man when it came to his business, but he knew how to have fun, too. Taking a deep breath, she watched the door close behind him and turned to face the man standing at the foot of her bed.
“Um…hi, Chase.” Feeling herself blush again, Kerri looked away.
What was wrong with her? She had never been afraid to talk to guys before. Why was she so nervous now? Yeah, Chase was hot with those bright-green eyes and all those muscles, but that never stopped her before. Maybe it was the way he looked at her. She felt like he could see through her right to where she kept her secrets hidden. Tired of lying down, Keri tried to sit up but groaned and fell back as the pain in her leg flared. She looked up, panting,
as she felt hands grip her shoulders and lift her into a sitting position. She was amazed that someone with hands so big could be as gentle as he was. Kerri cleared her throat and told Chase thank-you. He grunted and took his position back up at the foot of the bed.
Uncomfortable with the silence, Kerri felt the need to talk. “I don’t suppose you know what is wrong with me and how soon I can get out of here, do you?”
Chase nodded. “From what your father said, you have a deep cut on your leg that nicked your femoral artery, not to mention other cuts and bruises, and the fact that you have barely any skin left on the bottom of your feet. They have been keeping you sedated so that your leg can heal without you moving it. As far as when you can get out of here, I’m not sure about that. If I had my way, it would be as soon as possible.”
Chase spoke in a no nonsense kind of way, but the deep, growly sound of his voice sent chills down her spine. “Sexy” was the only word Kerri could come up with. The man was too sexy for his own good. Where was her dad with those pills? If he didn’t come back soon, Kerri was going to jump this man, injured leg and all.
Davis, Keyonna - Faceless Enemy [Pine Valley 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 2