Escape

by Jay Crownover

  “How do you know so much about this Goddard guy?” Ten pushed the covers off her head and sat up as she snapped the question in Webb’s direction. Webb’s gaze immediately rolled over her naked shoulders and sleep-rumpled hair.

  He gave her a flirty wink and leaned back against the door. “I passed through that part of the country a time or two in my old life. When you’re a career criminal, the place that makes or breaks you is the Point.”

  Lane and I exchanged a confused look. “The Point?” We asked the question in unison which had Webb grinning at us.

  “The Point is what they call the place where good goes to die. My time there is not a part of my life I like to think about. The guy I had to be when I was there is not someone any of you would want to be acquainted with. Bauer is lucky he got out of there alive, and now we gotta do something to make sure these assholes don’t drag him back there or put him in the ground.” I always thought of Webb as the kind of guy who was flirtatious and fun. He didn’t seem to take much seriously, and sort of drifted wherever the wind decided to take him. After his revelation, I was starting to see there was a lot more going on underneath his crooked grin and twinkling eyes. Again, he reminded me a lot of the youngest Warner that way.

  Ten was peering at the younger man like she had never seen him before, but she quickly shoved away her bemusement and looked around the room where we were all watching her and waiting for some kind of instruction. She sighed and ran a hand over her face, trying to physically push the sleep away.

  “Bauer doesn’t know his way around Denver. He’s got no one to turn to, and no place here where he’s going to feel like he has the higher ground. The kid’s been living on the streets for years, so his survival instincts have to be good. Where would he go where he feels comfortable? What kind of place does he know inside and out?”

  Lane rested his cheek on the top of my head as I leaned into his touch. “He was hustling street corners and working cheap no-tell-motels in LA before they picked him up and tried to move him to Vegas.”

  Everyone in the room cringed at the bleak description of Bauer’s life on the streets.

  I cleared my throat and lifted my hands to wipe the wetness on my face. Crying wasn’t going to do anyone any good. I needed to get it together. There would be plenty of time to be sad that Bauer didn’t trust me enough to take care of him after we got him somewhere safe and had the men responsible for luring him into this situation dealt with. I wanted them all behind bars, and I wanted Jonathan Goddard to suffer. The man didn’t deserve to see another sunrise as far as I was concerned. As soon as Wyatt made an appearance I was going to demand that he have his friend in the Bureau do something about the crooked politician.

  “He also knows his way around a truck stop. He told us that was how he got out of his town when his parents first kicked him out for being gay.” I plucked at the comforter and stared at the ceiling. “He seemed really uneasy whenever we stopped at one when we were driving here from Vegas.”

  Ten made a noise of disgust as she pushed the covers off her long legs and swung them around to the floor. Webb let out a sound that he quickly covered with a cough when he caught sight of the fact that the blonde Ranger was wearing nothing more than a tank top and panties. I could have sworn I saw Ten smirk, but the expression was gone before she rose lightly to her feet.

  “Well, my guess is he wouldn’t go too far. I say we split up. Lane and I can check the closest truck stop. Brynn, you and Webb hit up the closest hotels and motels that rent rooms by the hour.” She lifted her arms above her head in a stretch that exposed the bottom part of her stomach. This time Webb didn’t bother to hold back his groan of appreciation. Ten just rolled her eyes and made her way to the bathroom. “Call your brother and leave a message. Tell him the kid is missing and that he’s trying to use himself as bait. Get Wyatt moving on this thing before he touches down.”

  Lane yawned and slowly started to crawl out of bed. His voice was raspy when he mumbled, “I met a cop yesterday when she came to check out the brother’s apartment. She seemed nice and like she genuinely cared about what was going on. I think she could tell it was more than a ransacked apartment. I think I should give her a call. We’re past the point of letting Bauer call all the shots. I walked the line to keep him from running, and he ran anyway.”

  “Considering we have no idea where we should even be looking I think reporting him missing or calling him in as a runaway might be a good idea. We need as many eyes as we can find on the streets looking for him.” Ten yawned and turned her back to the room. “I need a shower and about one hundred cups of coffee. Let’s wrestle up some grub before we get going. Who knows how long we’ll be pounding the pavement or what we’ll turn up.”

  “I’m a little sad you don’t want to spend the day with me, Ten.” Webb lifted his eyebrows at her as he headed to the door. “I thought you couldn’t get enough of me.”

  Lane chuckled as Ten whipped around, eyes blazing with furious green fire. I didn’t think it was funny at all. I knew the younger man liked to needle her and poke at her thick skin, trying to find a weak spot, but now was not the time or the place for those games.

  “I don’t want Lane and Brynn distracted by one another when they’re out there walking into Lord knows what. They’ll be too busy trying to keep each other safe; they’ll forget to watch their own backs. I told you yesterday on the drive down, you aren’t nearly as cute or as charming as you think you are, Webb. I used to put guys like you behind bars for a living. You don’t fool me in the slightest. The guy you were back then is still part of the guy standing right here in front of me now, and I don’t want anything to do with either of them.” She enunciated her point with a dramatic flip of her long blonde hair and the slamming of the bathroom door. I could hear a long stream of swear words coming through the wood.

  Sighing I got to my feet and gave him a reproachful look. “You shouldn’t antagonize Ten like that. One day she’s going to shoot you, and she never misses.”

  Webb stuck his hands in his back pockets and rocked back on his heels. “She can hate me all she wants. As long as she’s feeling some kind of way about me, I’ll take it. It means I’m on her mind. Anything is better than the freeze-out she’s so good at.” He headed for the door saying he saw a Starbucks a couple blocks over so he would handle rounding up a quick breakfast for everyone.

  When he was gone, Lane made his way over to me and wrapped me up in a rib-cracking hug. I squeezed him back, so grateful I had his unwavering strength to pull from and lean against. “All I wanted to do was get you to come home. How did we end up here?” I sounded as lost as I felt.

  He kissed my forehead which had me shivering all the way to my toes and told me, “Our journey has never been a straight shot. We’re always taking the wrong turn or running out of gas along the way. This is just another bump in the road, but we’ll make it home, and we’ll make sure the kid finds his way. Home isn’t going anywhere, and it doesn’t mean anything without us there.”

  “He’s never had a home, Lane.” And I knew how lonely and horrible that felt.

  “We’ll find him one, Brynn.”

  I hoped he was right because my heart couldn’t take him being wrong.

  Chapter 15

  Lane

  Win or Lose

  “You're pretty hard on Webb. Don’t you think you can cut him some slack?”

  Ten and I were pulling up to our fifth truck stop on the outskirts of Denver. We’d been at it all morning, and so far we’d come across nothing while looking everywhere we could think of for the missing teenager. There was no sign of Bauer, and none of the people we asked had seen anyone fitting his description. I was starting to lose hope, thinking the kid may very well have outsmarted us all. The gun was missing from the glovebox of my truck which only served to add an extra air of urgency to our search. Ten had been fairly quiet most of the day, not that she was ever very chatty. She tended to be hyper-focused when she was working. Apparently, that me
ant in the city as well as the wilderness.

  She shot me a narrow-eyed look. Green eyes sharp as polished glass. “He’s annoying, and he always has some kind of agenda which he doesn’t bother to share. I wish Cy had never offered him that job. Webb Bryant does not belong in Wyoming.”

  I rubbed my thumb along the side of my mouth and pulled the brim of my ball cap down lower on my forehead. “He seems to like it there. Where do you think he belongs?”

  She shook her head, a frown tugging at her pale eyebrows. “Somewhere where all his reckless behavior won’t impact anyone I care about. He’s trouble, Lane. I don’t know what kind, but I can see it in his eyes. He’s nothing but bad news.”

  I sighed and rubbed my tired eyes. “He was, but he’s changed. You don’t think people are capable of turning things around? Look at my brothers. Sutton was two steps away from being a junkie, and now he won’t even have a beer. Cy was dead set on spending the rest of his life alone and lonely, now he’s getting ready to marry the love of his life. And what about me?” I poked myself in the center of my chest. “I’ve been walking around blind for years, thinking I could never have the one woman I’ve always loved. I was going to fill the void with random women until the day I died. That was the plan. But now I realize I don’t have to be alone, that the fear of being left and being hurt my mother instilled in all her boys was ruining the best thing to ever happen to me. I can see it all so clearly now, but not before Jack proposing to Brynn right in front of me opened my eyes. I don’t think Webb is destined to always be the bad guy.”

  Ten gave a very unladylike grunt in response and purposely turned her head so that she was looking out the passenger window as I pulled into the truck stop off of I-70. It was a massive building that was painted yellow. The chain was unmistakable, and so was the crush of semis and big rigs filling the lot. In this situation, Bauer was the needle, and a busy trucking complex with hundreds of long-haul drivers coming and going was the haystack.

  “I can’t figure out what Webb wants. I don’t understand why he won’t walk away when I’ve made it perfectly clear I’m not interested in him in any way. He’s too young, too unpredictable. I don’t trust him.” She said it as if she was trying to convince herself of her reasons for being so harsh with the younger man. I didn’t believe her. The reason she was so standoffish and argumentative toward Webb was that he got to her. Somehow and someway the slick, city boy who walked the edge of being law abiding had broken through the icy shell Ten wrapped herself in.

  “He’s willing to put himself right back in the center of a life he worked really hard to leave behind to help out some kid he doesn’t even know. From where I’m standing, the good in him outweighs whatever bad that might still be hanging around. I think you should lighten up a bit, is all. You don’t need to keep everyone at arm's length, Ten.”

  I’d grown up with Ten hanging around. Her family’s ranch bordered ours, and she and Cyrus had always had a friends with benefits arrangement, one they picked right back up with when both returned home from the East Coast. When Cy meet Leo everything with Ten was put on ice, and neither seemed to mind, even though they had spent years as convenient lovers. Even with a lifetime of having her as part of the Warner’s inner circle, Ten was still practically a stranger. I had no idea what brought her home after she left the FBI. I had no clue how she was fairing in her life now. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad, fulfilled or just going through the motions. The only thing that was crystal clear was her animosity and aggravation where Webb was concerned. The blond, newly minted cowboy was the one person who forced her to react.

  We climbed out of the truck, and I shifted my shirt to cover the revolver I borrowed from Webb. They brought a small arsenal with them from Wyoming, and since Bauer lifted my gun, I was grateful for the forethought. Ten pulled a hat similar to mine on her head and tucked her long, blonde ponytail through the hole in the back. She pointedly changed the subject by asking, “Have you heard from the cop you called this morning?”

  Officer Cross had been incredibly helpful when I called and explained that on top of the trashed apartment building I was now dealing with a missing teenager. I told her I believed the two incidents were connected and she responded that she would do her best to get an Amber Alert going for Bauer. She told me that she would hit up several of the shelters that took in runaways and some of the special services that were specifically designed to help displaced LGBT youth to see if Bauer had reached out for help. She asked that I keep her updated if I came across a description of whoever it was that I suspected of abducting the teen. There still wasn’t much she could do, but she was doing all that she could to help.

  “They got the Amber Alert up and going, and they posted the plea for information on the Denver Police Department’s social media feeds. No one on the streets has seen him, but that doesn’t surprise me since he isn’t from Denver. Bauer had a pretty sizable head start, who knows if he’s even in Colorado still. The people who took him in the first place move really fast. They had him seduced, scammed and scooped up all within a couple of days. They know what they’re doing.”

  She nodded in agreement and inclined her head in the direction of the parking lot. “I’m going to go check out the RV section and see if anything looks suspicious.”

  That was how we had divided each stop. She took the outside, and I scouted the inside since she couldn’t exactly stroll into a men’s restroom without causing a riot. I dipped my chin in acknowledgment, silently hoping that Brynn and Webb were having better luck than we were. When Brynn called for her last check-in they weren’t turning up anything either. All in all, it was an entirely frustrating day.

  I pushed my way into the convenience store part of the complex and wound my way through all the different aisles. There was no sign of Bauer, but there was an endless line of truckers and road weary tourists browsing. It was busy, so I ended up getting jostled from side to side and bumped every time I tried to turn around. Grumbling in annoyance, I prowled through the diner attached to the building, still coming up empty just like I had at every stop before this one. The bathroom was my last stop. I figured there was little chance Bauer was hiding out in the first place anyone would look for him, and I knew from my various visits to truck stops today that highway patrol officers were often found making a quick stop to make sure things were on the up and up in places like this. Bauer wasn’t the only one who figured out trolling truck stops was a good way to find a ride and quick buck. Apparently, it was common practice.

  The bathroom was as busy as the rest of the truck stop. Every sink and urinal had someone at it, and there was a steady stream of men coming and going from the shower section of the bathroom. Nothing seemed off or suspicious, so I was turning to leave when one of the chipped metal doors to the bathroom stalls opened and a shockingly familiar figure stepped out. We stood to face each other, each blinking in surprise. The guy from the RV didn’t seem any worse for wear. His eyes still looked beady and mean. He was still the size of a small truck, and his ugly face didn’t look any happier to see me than I was to see him. We both knew there was only one reason he was in Denver.

  “Where is he?” I crossed my arms over my chest and watched him watch me in the mirror. I wanted to knock his smug look through the back of his skull.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just passing through.” He shook his hands off, making sure some of the water landed on me. I gritted my teeth together and tried to keep my annoyance in check.

  “You’re the golden retriever, the lapdog they send out to bring back their prey. I know they sent you for the kid. I bet they made you pay for losing him in the first place.” I smiled at him, making sure it had a lot of teeth and sharp edges. “I hope they did everything to you that you did to the kid when you had him, and worse.”

  The RV guy narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his hips. We faced off, the other men in the restroom who didn’t leave at the first signs of trouble were giving us a wide berth
and curious glances.

  “I’m sure that little shit told you what he overheard, so you know who he was sold to. What I did to that little shit won’t even rank once he gets shipped back home and handed off to that old pervert. That rich asshole has a sadistic streak a mile wide and no one’s willing to stop him. The kid will be lucky if he lasts a week in that bastard’s dungeon.” He made it sound like it was a done deal. “Can’t believe that kid was dumb enough to think they would go easy on him and his brother if he handed himself over. These people don’t like to have their business disrupted.” It sounded like RV guy wasn’t any more certain of Mikey’s fate than I was. He really was nothing more than the delivery man.

  “You fucked with his family. Of course, he was going to sacrifice himself for his brother.” That’s what anyone who loved someone else would do.

  The RV guy snorted and rocked back on his heels. “In this world, it’s every man for himself. If the kid lives, that’s a lesson he’s going to learn the hard way. Get out of my way, cowboy. I have business to attend to. A high-value package to collect.”

  I shook my head and stepped into the other man’s personal space. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where you’re supposed to meet the kid.”

  RV guy lifted his hands and put all his weight behind his shove as he tried to move me out of his way. A couple of the other men milling about the restroom mumbled in concern, and one older man barked for us to knock it off.

  “Not happening. I don’t care how big your balls are, or how many guns you pull on me, you won’t ever be as scary as the guys who pay me to move those kids across the country. I’m not telling you shit, and even if I don’t get my hands on the kid, they’ll send someone else who will. They won’t stop.” I hated the certainty in his voice and his cocksure attitude. It also irked that he didn’t seem to be bothered by the consequences of his horrific actions. He was playing roulette with people’s lives, and he didn’t care.