A SEAL's Devotion

by Cora Seton

  Anders’s stomach tightened. Eve was in Chance Creek for a reason. She’d risked a lot to get on the show and was risking even more going up against his father. Avery was right, Eve wouldn’t just cut and run. He didn’t want to think his father capable of taking her, but Johannes had a way of making problems disappear. He’d sounded so paranoid on the phone. So angry. So… dangerous. Eve had really gotten under his skin.

  The crackle of the loudspeaker caught Anders’s attention. Another face-off was underway.

  This was a nightmare. People all around them. Crowds moving this way and that. Eve could be anywhere.

  “Nobody saw anything?” he demanded.

  “No.”

  Had his father come for Eve? Or, more likely, sent someone to shut her up?

  “We’ve got to spread out.”

  Curtis was fumbling with his phone. “I’ll do a group text and tell everyone to keep searching.”

  “Anders? What’s going on?” Mason called from the rink.

  “Gotta go!”

  He raced to the bench where he’d stowed his boots, stripped his skates off as fast as he could and caught up to Curtis and Avery again, scanning his surroundings.

  “Harris and Greg are heading for the parking lot,” Curtis told him.

  “Good idea.” He took off running. Steps behind him told him Curtis was following. His lungs were burning by the time he reached the parking lot, Curtis pounding on his heels.

  “Over there,” Curtis hollered, racing past him as they reached the outskirts of the parking lot.

  Anders saw what he meant. A truck was screeching toward the exit. Another one—one of theirs—had its lights on, engine gunning. It took off before they could reach it, Harris and Greg inside.

  “This way!” Anders grabbed Curtis’s arm and dragged him toward the truck they’d come in. A minute later, he was flooring the gas as he raced for the exit. “Damn it!” Anders pounded the steering wheel. “I should have been with her!”

  “Focus!” Curtis grabbed the wheel and yanked it before Anders went off the road. Anders yanked it back. He focused on driving and gunned the truck until the speedometer needle went off the register.

  “Watch it—watch it,” Curtis yelled as they skidded again.

  “We’re not going to catch them.”

  “The others will.”

  “We don’t know that. Those guys had a head start!” Anders kept driving, kept trying to catch up, but the road ahead of them was empty.

  He was going to be too late.

  “Keep quiet if you don’t want to get hurt,” the man growled as he tossed Eve into the back seat of the extended cab of his truck. He slammed the door closed, leaving her sprawled across the tattered bench seat, and got behind the wheel. He’d zip-tied her wrists together, but he hadn’t bothered with her feet, and Eve fought to turn over and face forward as he revved the engine and burst out of his parking spot. She nearly slid onto the floor when he took a corner at speed.

  As the truck hurtled through the darkness, getting farther from Base Camp with each passing moment, she managed to scoot up on her seat until she was half-sitting.

  Eve knew whatever she did now would determine her fate. She had no doubt Anders and the others would do their best to help her, but they’d have no idea where to even look for her.

  A phone trilled—her abductor’s phone. He pulled it out and tapped it, one hand still on the wheel, his movements jerky. Eve could just see the screen around the back of the seat. A man’s face filled it. Someone she didn’t recognize.

  “You got her?”

  Was he trying to see into the interior of the truck? Eve ducked down behind the seat.

  “I got her,” the driver said. “Coming your way now.”

  “Good. Don’t fuck this up.”

  It wasn’t Johannes Hansen. The man was younger—in his early forties, maybe. His face was round, his eyes blue. A far cry from the dark eyes and hawk-like visage of the oil man.

  Eve didn’t know if that was a bad thing or a good thing. She’d thought she’d known who her enemy was. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “Where the hell is she at, Terry?” the man on the screen said, craning his neck. “I can’t see anyone in the back seat.”

  Terry glanced over his shoulder. “Settle down back there.”

  “Fuck you.”

  On the screen the other man chuckled. “Now I see her. Feisty. I like that.”

  “Won’t be feisty for long,” Terry said. “Be there in a minute.” He cut the call and tossed the phone on the passenger seat.

  Eve realized she was holding her breath. Won’t be feisty for long. What did they plan to do with her?

  Nothing good, she decided, which meant she had to act fast.

  Eve held still for another minute, thinking through her options. With her wrists tied, she didn’t have many. She’d get one chance at this, so whatever she did next needed to count.

  Slowly she edged down in her seat again.

  “What are you doing back there?” Terry asked, but he was having trouble seeing her, and the truck swerved as he half turned in his seat.

  Eve didn’t answer. She moved into a position that would give her more power, wriggling down until she was almost on her back, her bottom nearly hanging off the seat, but not quite. When Terry swore and focused on the road again, she quickly pulled her knees up tight to her chest and kicked out high with all her strength.

  Her feet hit the back of his headrest just as he craned his neck again to see what she was doing. His head snapped forward, and he lost hold of the wheel. The truck hit a patch of ice, and Eve shrieked as it spun in a circle, throwing her down into the space between the seats. Terry regained control, swore, gunned the engine and drove another quarter mile before he veered sharply off the road onto a track that led into an evergreen forest. The truck bucked and struggled over what must have been a dirt track before coming to a stop among some trees.

  Eve struggled to get upright again, but before she made it off the floor, the driver’s door flung open, then her door, and Terry yanked her out of the truck and threw her to the ground.

  “You… bitch! Nearly got me killed.” He stood over her, hands on his hips.

  Eve held her breath. Was this the way it would all end? Lying on her back in the snow, the dark shapes of the trees swaying in a cold wind overhead against the even darker sky? Would he strangle her? Pull out a gun and do her in with a single bullet?

  Would anyone ever find her body? Or—

  “Back off, Terry.” Another man stepped into view. The one from the phone. “There you are,” he said to Eve. “Get her on her feet,” he ordered. “Time for us to have a little talk.”

  “Harris and Greg are stopping!” Curtis pointed at the red taillights of the truck ahead of them.

  “Where’s the other truck?” Anders demanded. Peering forward through the darkness, he couldn’t see a sign of it anywhere.

  The door of the vehicle in front of them swung open, and Greg jogged back to meet them.

  “They got too far ahead of us. One minute we could see their taillights, then we rounded a turn and they were gone. I thought they sped up, but they must have ducked off the road back there somewhere.”

  “We passed them?”

  “I don’t see any other explanation.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Time was passing. With every minute they were losing Eve.

  “Tell you what—we’ll keep going, you turn back and scan the side of the road. Look for tracks turning off.”

  “Good idea.” Anders was already revving the engine. “Call if you see anything.”

  “Will do.”

  As soon as Greg had loped back to the other truck, Anders executed a three-point turn and drove back the way they’d come.

  “Slow down,” Curtis cautioned him. “We don’t want to miss something.”

  Anders did so, but it was killing him. He needed to know what was happening to Eve.

  “Why the hell would
someone kidnap her?” Curtis asked him. “Do you think it’s her ex-boyfriend?”

  “Don’t know.” Anders gripped the wheel and kept scanning the ground to either side of the road. The snowbanks made an unbreaking obstacle to either side. It would be clear if anyone had tried to drive over them.

  “There!” Curtis pointed suddenly, and Anders hit the brakes. He was right; there was a break in the snow to their left where a track branched off from the main road and wound into the woods.

  Anders pulled to the side of the road and killed the headlights. Curtis pulled out his pistol. The men of Base Camp tended to be armed after the trouble that had gone down with Nora. Anders passed him the key to the glove compartment, and Curtis passed him back another firearm a moment later. Anders hadn’t wanted to bring it to the hockey game, but he was glad to have it now. Outside, he scanned the woods and motioned for Curtis to follow him.

  It seemed to take forever to follow the track silently until it curved around and led deeper into the trees. There, Anders stopped and waved Curtis up to his position. A truck was parked, its motor running, its lights on. Another vehicle was farther on. In between them stood three people. Eve, her wrists bound behind her back. A burly man with his hands on his hips.

  And someone else Anders recognized. His father’s right-hand man. Steve Bollard, Hansen Oil’s CEO.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‡

  “You really should have listened to your boss and kept your nose out of my business,” the stranger said. “Now you’ve created all kinds of trouble for yourself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eve managed.

  “I’m talking about Hansen Oil.”

  “Then it’s not your business. You’re not Johannes Hansen.”

  “You’re right; I’m not. I’m someone who actually gives a damn about the company.”

  Eve wished he’d stop talking in riddles. She’d been sure Terry worked for Johannes. Why else would he kidnap her and drag her to the middle of nowhere?

  “I’m not Johannes Hansen,” the man said, stepping closer, “but I own a hell of a lot of shares in Hansen Oil. That means when you mess with its reputation, you mess with mine.”

  Shares. Reputation. This man, whoever he was, worked for Hansen Oil. That made him as bad as Johannes in her books.

  “Someone has to stop you. All of you,” Eve said.

  The man laughed. “Is that what you think you’re doing? Stopping me?” He waved a hand as if to say he wasn’t the one who’d been dragged by a stranger into a lonely forest.

  “Trying to.” She refused to let him see how frightened she was.

  “You realize I have to shut you up now,” the man said.

  “That’s right. Mr. Bollard’s going to shut you up good,” Terry snarled at her.

  “By killing me? Don’t you think that will shine a spotlight bright and clear on your company? I doubt your practices will hold up to any scrutiny.”

  “No one has any idea I’m here,” Bollard said. “You’re just a deluded little girl who went chasing after a reality television star. Then something happened. Maybe you had a fight. Who knows? You ran away. Went missing.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “No one’s going to think to pin the blame on me. Much more likely Anders will take the fall, don’t you think?”

  Eve nearly screamed when another man stepped out from behind a tree and put a handgun to Bollard’s temple. “Not if I can help it,” Johannes Hansen said. He nodded to Terry. “Drop it, or Mr. Bollard dies, and then you won’t get paid.”

  It was the first time Eve had seen Terry look uncertain.

  “Do it,” Bollard snapped.

  “But—”

  “Do it!”

  “Toss it over here,” Johannes said. When Terry did so, he kicked it farther away among the trees.

  Eve couldn’t believe Johannes Hansen was really here—or that he’d come to her rescue.

  “I assume you’ve got more of those zip-ties handy?” Johannes asked Terry, indicating Eve’s hands trussed behind her back. “Tie your boss’s hands. Tight.”

  “You’re going to regret this, Johannes,” Bollard hissed as Terry followed his orders.

  Johannes ignored him. “As for you,” he said to Eve. “What are we going to do with you, hmm?”

  “Let me go so I can get on with my work!”

  “Exposing my company’s mistakes? That doesn’t seem prudent, does it?”

  “I wouldn’t even have to be here if you’d just clean up the messes you make!”

  “Easy for you to say,” Johannes snapped. “Cleaning something up means admitting you made a mistake in the first place. Admitting a mistake means paying fines. Paying fines means coming up short as far as your shareholders are concerned, and God forbid you ever do that. Look—there’s one of my biggest shareholders now. Willing to murder to keep the valuation of his stock high. My own CEO—” He caught himself. Took a breath. “I would have cleaned up the tailing ponds if you hadn’t interfered, you know. I needed time.”

  “What for?” Eve demanded.

  Johannes waved over Terry, who’d finished tying Bollard’s hands, and quickly secured his hands behind his back. “Sit down,” he ordered both the men, then turned back to Eve with a withering look. “To do it without anyone noticing I’d done it. You have no idea what we deal with every day trying to get that oil out of the ground. Rules for everything. Fines for everything. It’s always wait, wait, wait to do what you need to do and then pay, pay, pay to be allowed to do it.”

  “Then why do it at all?” Eve cried.

  Johannes laughed again. “Someone has to do it. God, you kids. Am I right, Bollard?” His CEO didn’t answer, but it was clear he was furious. “You act like you know it all while forgetting everything that came before. People like me built this country. Without oil we’d have gotten nowhere. Now you want to invent new power sources and say everything that came before is evil. You wouldn’t have the technology you have today without the work we did. The work we’re doing now.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Or what it had to do with her. Did Hansen think he could persuade her to feel sorry for him?

  “You… environmentalists. Do you think solar panels and wind turbines sprout fully formed? What does it take to manufacture them? Oil. What did it take to invent them? Oil! Now you want to pretend you’ve got nothing to do with us. None of you are spotless!”

  “Not even your son?”

  That stopped him—for a moment. He nodded. “I wondered if that’s why you chose Base Camp—”

  “It wasn’t, actually,” Eve interrupted him. “I didn’t have any idea who Anders was until a few days ago.”

  “Won’t marry him now, though, will you? He’s an evil Hansen. He probably should be taken out back and executed!” Johannes blazed.

  Did he… want her to marry Anders?

  Eve couldn’t tell which side Johannes was on at all. Maybe that was it, she thought. Maybe he wasn’t on a side. Maybe he was stuck in the middle.

  “He won’t marry me, in any case.” The absurdity of their conversation struck her. They were out in the middle of a forest, in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night. A man had dragged her here like a sack of potatoes. Another man had threatened to kill her. And now here she was, discussing the sorry state of her love life with the oil baron she’d set out to bring down.

  “Then we have something in common. He turned his back on me, too. Won’t even let me finish a sentence when we talk.”

  Eve tried to corral her scattered thoughts. She’d figured if they ever met, Johannes would do whatever it took to end her attack against his company. Instead he was lingering as if he wanted something else altogether.

  What did he want?

  “I want him to come home,” Johannes said as if she’d asked the question out loud. “I want him to take his place in my company. I built it for him.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. If you had, Hansen Oil would
be a very different entity.”

  “I made it profitable. One of the most profitable companies—”

  “Who cares?” Eve stared him down. “Really—who cares? Anders doesn’t. I don’t. Profit doesn’t matter if fires are raging across California and Australia, droughts are draining the water tables in the southeast and Midwest, and Malaria and Lyme disease are surging with the spread of insects. Profit isn’t the same as happiness, or safety, or health.”

  “Spoken like a—”

  “Realist?” Eve broke in. “Like someone who’s seen hundreds of satellite images that show cropland degradation, increased instances of coastal flooding and forest fires?”

  “That’s not the word I was going to use.”

  “No, I’m sure it wasn’t.” She was shivering. The cold had seeped under the layers of old-fashioned clothing she wore, and her feet were freezing in their boots.

  “You and Anders make a perfect couple.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but she decided to take it as one.

  “You’re right. We do. I respect Anders, and you should, too. Anders wants to preserve the health of the world. To do that, he wants to help get the word out about green energy, regenerative ranching, healthy food production. You have a company with massive resources. Can’t you see your way to help him? He doesn’t know what I planned to do, by the way. He isn’t involved at all.”

  “Oh, he knows, all right.” Johannes shook his head.

  Eve tried to process his words. Anders… knew who she was?

  “That’s right,” Johannes said. “Didn’t tell you, did he? I wonder why not? As for helping him, if he would just be patient for another year or so, I could have this whole mess cleaned up, and we could make the shift he—”

  “For God’s sake, Johannes, shut the fuck up,” Bollard roared suddenly from where he was sitting in the snow. “You actually think I’m going to let you take Hansen Oil and give it to that radical environmentalist son of yours? You think I’m going to let you take a billion-dollar company and tear it to pieces trying to get into solar farms and windmills? Are you out of your ever-loving mind?”