by Diana Palmer
* * *
WHEN THEY GOT to the cabin, the sheriff’s car, a state police car, an ambulance and a fire truck were sitting on the road that led to it, sirens and lights just dying down.
“What happened?” Tank asked, trying to fight down terror as he joined Cody Banks at his squad car.
“He’s got the women,” Cody said in a hunted tone. “He won’t negotiate. He says he’s through trying to do it covertly. Now he’s just going to kill them.”
“They aren’t dead?” Tank asked.
“Not yet,” Cody replied.
Tank let out the breath he’d been holding. “Then what do we do?”
“I don’t have a hostage negotiator,” Cody told them. “The police department in Catelow has one, but he’s back East on a long Christmas holiday with his folks. The state police sent us a man who did it for Houston P.D. a few years back.” He indicated the man, who nodded. “Right now we’re waiting for the utility companies.”
“Utility companies?” Tank burst out. “What in hell for?”
“We turn off everything we can turn off,” the state trooper said gently. “Then we negotiate for power, water, electricity...”
“He’ll kill them before you get that far.” Tank drew in a ragged breath. “It’s me he wants. I’ll trade with them.”
“You will not,” Cody said firmly. “Then we’ll have three victims instead of two.”
While they were talking, Carson was stripping off his jacket. He tossed it into the front seat of the ranch pickup.
“And what would you be doing then?” Cody asked.
“What I’ve made a living at for the past several years,” Carson said. “Who’s got a sniper kit I can borrow?” he asked grimly.
The men stared at him.
He stuck his hands on his hips. “Are we going to stand here and make judgments or let me save the women?” he asked curtly.
“Sorry,” Cody said. “Wasn’t thinking. Frank,” he called to one of his deputies, “break out that new rifle with the scope.”
“New. Damned things never shoot right until they’re used,” Carson muttered.
“It’s what we’ve got,” Cody told him.
“You’ll never get close enough.” Tank tried to reason with him. He was sick with fear. “He’ll see you coming.”
Carson lifted an eyebrow. “Remind me to tell you a story or two when this is all over.” He glanced toward the deputy, who was carrying a heavy metal gun box. He sat it on the lowered tailgate of the ranch pickup and opened it.
“Sweet,” Carson said as he fingered the light wood of the stock.
“Ya, isn’t it?” the deputy asked with a sigh. “I’ve just used it on targets, but it’s accurate to a hair.”
“Shoots true?”
“You bet.”
Carson took it out of the box with a faint reverence and looked down the scope toward the house. “Nice optics,” he said. He concentrated. He could see movement at one of the windows. It fluttered, and a woman’s frightened face looked out. It was Clara. She was talking to someone behind her, scared and crying.
Carson’s jaw set. “He sent Clara to look out the window, to see what’s going on out here.” He took the rifle and slung the strap over his shoulder. “I need a diversion,” he told Cody Banks. “I’m not going to tell you where I’ll be. But when you hear a shot, move in quick.”
“Don’t miss,” Cody said firmly.
“It would be the first time,” Carson replied solemnly. “But I won’t.”
He turned and went off toward the end of the driveway.
“He’s going in the wrong direction,” the deputy muttered.
“Think so?” Tank asked. He knew Carson. He turned back to Cody. “If those utility trucks showed up right now, it would be a great help.”
Cody pressed the mike on his radio. “I’ll see if I can hurry them up. Dispatch,” he began, talking into the unit, “I need an ETA on the power company.”
“This is dispatch, Sheriff. He’s two minutes away.”
“Tell him to turn on his yellow lights and come in fast,” Cody said.
“Sir?”
“Just do it, okay?”
There was a smile in the voice that answered. “Okay.”
Cody turned to his deputy. “There’s a sudden emergency you have to handle. Turn on the lights and sirens full blast and make a big production of turning around in the driveway. Go closer to the house when you do it, but not too close.”
The deputy nodded. “Yes, sir!”
He jumped into his car, turned on the lights and sirens and went careening a little way toward the house before he cut the wheel sharply and tore off down the road.
“There,” Cody said. “Maybe that will give him time to get in place. And here’s another diversion.”
The power truck pulled up next to the squad car. “I had some really strange directions...” the driver began.
“No time to talk, I’m afraid,” the sheriff told him with a weary smile. “We have a hostage situation. We need you to cut power to the cabin, as quickly as you can.”
“I’ll get right on it.” He turned off the engine, got out, pulled on his tool belt and climbed into the cherry picker. He lifted himself up to the connections. A few twists and turns with his tools and the cabin went dark.
“Nice work,” Cody said when he came down again.
“Now what?” the man asked.
“Can you stay with us for a few minutes?”
“Unless we get an urgent call about something,” the lineman agreed.
“Thanks.”
Cody turned to the state trooper. “I’ll try to get him to answer the phone, if it’s still working.” Some phones wouldn’t work without power.
The trooper nodded.
Cody dialed Clara’s number and waited. The phone rang once, twice, three times. It rang again. And again. Just when Cody was about to give up, there was a click.
“Yeah. What do you want?” a man with an Australian accent asked.
“Your hostages,” Cody said.
There was a cold laugh. “No way, mate. Messed up all me plans, they did. Now they have to pay for it.”
Cody handed the phone to the state trooper.
“Can you let me verify that both women are still alive?” the trooper asked in a gentle tone.
“You’ll just have to take my word for it,” the man replied.
“What do you want?”
“For starters, turn the power back on.”
“Can’t do that, I’m afraid. Not yet, anyway. Talk to me. What do you want?”
“You’ll find out, very soon.”
He hung up. The trooper relayed the message.
Tank groaned. He should have married Merissa weeks ago. He should have carted her off to a minister the night they had Chinese food. Why had he hesitated? He knew how he felt. He knew how she felt. Now it might never happen. That murderer in the cabin was going to kill her, kill her mother, and it was all his fault.
A telephone truck came down the road, followed by a county water truck. They pulled into the driveway.
“What do you want us to do?” they asked Cody Banks.
“Wait.” He turned to his deputy, who was just driving up. “Rev that thing up, hit the lights and sirens, hard, and head toward town!”
“Yes, sir!”
The deputy went through the same routine he’d used earlier, and cut out onto the highway. Just as he vanished into the distance, a shot rang out.
* * *
HEART IN HIS mouth, hammering, Tank disobeyed a direct order from Cody Banks and ran toward the cabin just as fast as his legs would carry him. Who’d fired the shot? Carson had said to come running if they heard one, but what if it was the man in the cabin firing and they cost the women their lives by running in on him?
He couldn’t stop. He already was imagining seeing Merissa lying dead on the floor, blood in her mouth. He’d never live if she didn’t. He couldn’t go through the process of los
ing her, not again, not when she’d almost died of poison just days ago.
His chest was bursting as he followed the other men up on the porch. Cody reached for the door handle and there was an explosion.
The concussion from the explosion knocked the men backward onto the ground. Tank, flat on his back, breathless, saw the fireball go up into the air, like an orange balloon that just kept growing. The sound of the explosion followed seconds later.
“Get them out of there!” Tank yelled.
The firemen were already on the way. They pulled the tanker up next to the steps, jumped out and started stretching hoses.
Tank tried to go onto the porch, but Cody tackled him and brought him down again.
“No!” Tank raged. “God, no! I have...to get...in there!” he pleaded with his friend.
Cody wouldn’t let go. “If you go in there, you’ll die with her.”
“I don’t...care!” Tank choked out. “I can’t live without her! I won’t!”
Cody ground his teeth together. He’d never heard so much raw emotion in a man’s voice. He was dying for his friend. But he wouldn’t let go, either.
The water jetted into the cabin, the pressure of it breaking the rest of the glass that the explosion hadn’t.
Tank watched in horror as a flaming human body came diving out the door, screaming. It was too tall, too big, to be a woman.
The man, because it had to be the killer, went running toward the driveway. A fireman in full gear tackled him and brought him down while another fireman aimed a fire extinguisher at him. His clothing was burned half off; his body under it was black already. The foam covered him. Still he screamed and screamed. But very quickly he lay still, shivered and died.
Merissa and Clara. Had they already burned to death? Tank looked into the cabin with dead eyes. His life had burned up in there. What would he do now? He had no life left. His Merissa was gone. Gone, like the cabin that was slowly being consumed in the bright yellow flames, in the thick black smoke that rose up into the sky.
He sank to his knees and just sat there, watching the structure burn.
He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer for their souls. He felt a wetness in his eyes, rolling onto his cheeks.
“Merissa!” he groaned. His voice echoed the anguish in his heart.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he could hear Merissa’s sweet, clear voice calling his name. It would haunt him forever.
“Dalton!”
He smiled. It was like an angel singing.
“Dalton!”
How odd, it seemed so real.
“Tank! Dammit!”
Tank. Dammit?
He got to his feet and turned around. There, black with soot but still very much alive was Merissa, in Carson’s arms. Clara was standing to one side, grimy, too, but smiling.
“Oh, dear God,” Tank whispered, and it was like a prayer. He went to her, took her gently from Carson’s arms and kissed her. And kissed her. And kissed her!
“I thought you’d died in there!” he whispered as he rained kisses on her face and hair. She smelled like smoke, and to him it was the sweetest perfume on earth. She was alive and breathing and cursing him. He loved it.
“We thought we were going to die,” she said wearily. “He’d already opened the valve on one of the gas canisters.” She coughed. “The fumes were choking us. We didn’t know why he did that, although we knew he had them wired to some sort of timer. He was looking out the window when the sirens started up. He’d just cut off some cord from a roll we had. He was going to tie us to the chairs. The gas was making us dizzy, and we knew what he planned. I motioned to Mama, and we covered our mouths and ran to the back door. We figured we were going to die anyway and being shot was easier than burning up.”
“My poor, brave girl,” he groaned. “Come on.” He picked her up and carried her to the paramedics, who were giving Clara oxygen. She’d inhaled more of the gas than Merissa had, because the shooter had made her stand at the window to watch the law enforcement people.
“Better now?” Tank asked when she’d had a few whiffs of oxygen and the EMTs had examined her and her mother.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Thanks,” she told the EMTs with a smile.
“What happened when you got to the door?” Tank asked.
“Well, I managed to unlock it. He was yelling at us to stop or he’d just shoot us. We panicked. I threw open the door. Carson was just a few yards away. He threw up the rifle and fired once. The man behind us in the house cried out. I heard him fall over a chair or something, I didn’t stop to look. Carson yelled for us to run and he’d cover us. We did, we ran like mad toward him. I think the man’s pistol went off, because there was a second shot behind us. Just seconds later, when we were barely away from the porch, the house blew up.” She drew in a shaky breath. Dalton folded her close.
“Sorry.” She laughed. “I’m still shaky.”
“You’re alive, honey, that’s all that matters to me. Go on...”
“Rourke had gone to check something out. We were eating chicken salad in the kitchen when we heard bumping on the back porch. I thought it was Rourke so we didn’t really pay attention. We went to watch the news on television. Just a little later, the man came into the living room with a pistol and told us to go into the kitchen and not make a move or he’d shoot us dead.”
She shivered. He held her closer.
“There were propane tanks just inside the back door. He’d set them up with some sort of fuses. He made us sit at the table while he opened the valve on one of them. He said he’d kill Mama first if I tried anything.” Her eyes closed. “We were scared to death. He was furious, cursing, raging because he couldn’t kill you and that sheriff in Texas. And he’d just found out that the death of a man he hired to kill a woman in Texas was being investigated. He said he’d poisoned the man because he botched the job. He said there was another killing, one that happened before all that, but we’d never have time to learn about that one, because he was going to kill us and then make sure his tracks were covered. He said his boss thought he was addicted, but he wasn’t, he could quit anytime he liked. He was yelling and waving his arms around....” She shook her head. “I thought he’d lost his mind.”
“It sounds like it,” he replied grimly. He smoothed over her soft hair.
“He said he was going to blow us up and leave in the commotion that followed. He said you’d never have another moment’s peace and he’d never be discovered. He was going to Texas afterward to finish up the business down there. He said he’d found someone reliable to kill the woman in Texas who saw him. No more loose ends, he said.” She leaned against him. “I was so happy to see Carson. But I was even happier to see you.”
“I thought you were gone,” he whispered huskily. “When the house went up.”
She smiled and kissed him. She buried her soft face in his throat. “We were just going out the back door when one of the propane tanks went off. I don’t know what caused it, but it must have set the others off.” She looked at Carson, who was still holding the rifle and listening to their conversation. “Thank you for my life.”
“You’re quite welcome,” he said, and smiled back.
Tank added his thanks. But he was too busy kissing Merissa to say much more.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND about the propane tanks,” Tank said a little later, while the women were being treated for the gas inhalation at the local emergency room. He and Cody Banks had superficial burns, but those had already been dealt with.
“From what Merissa said, he’d set them on timers,” Carson explained. “The first one detonated and triggered the others.”
“Yes, but how did the first one detonate?” he asked. “I saw a show once about propane tanks exploding. They shot a bullet into one. It just went straight through. No explosion.”
Carson’s face was grim. “It’s the vapor you have to worry about, when the gas is released and concentrated in a ro
om. If it’s thick enough to hamper breathing, any spark will make it explode, even turning on a light switch.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“Merissa said he’d opened the valve on one of the tanks, that they were having trouble breathing. He’d set the timer to go off and was probably counting on the fumes to cause the explosion, to cover his exit and kill the women. I assume he planned to tie them up first, but he didn’t foresee someone getting close enough to shoot him before he could follow through. Nice diversion, by the way.”
“Thank Cody, it was his idea.”
“Anyway, I couldn’t get a clear shot from the position I was in, so I moved closer to the cabin. All at once the back door opened and the women tried to come out. The would-be assassin was after them. I aimed past them, hit him in the shoulder, and motioned to them to run. He was stunned long enough for us to get clear of the cabin. I smelled gas before I even got as far as the porch. The women were coughing from contact with it. He fired after us, just before the explosion.”
“You think the shot ignited the gas?”
“Yes,” Carson replied. “When he shot at us, the spark from his pistol must have ignited the gas.” Carson shook his head. “He burned to death. Even for an evil man, that’s a hell of a way to die.”
“Merissa said that’s how he’d go,” Tank replied heavily. “She knew.”
“You take care of her,” Carson said firmly. “If you don’t, I’ll take her away from you and marry her myself.” He grinned.
Tank chuckled. He clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“I didn’t,” he replied, puzzled.
“You saved her. Without her, I wouldn’t have had a life.”
“Got it,” Carson told him, with an understanding look. “You’re welcome.”
Cody Banks joined them in the waiting room. “Well, we’ve got a dead body and no way to identify it,” he said heavily. “Coroner’s working on him down in the autopsy room, but there isn’t much left to go on, unless his DNA is in a database somewhere.”
“Did he have anything on him like a cell phone?”
“He did. It’s pretty much toast. We’ll send it to the state crime lab and hope for a miracle. Just between us, I doubt we’ll get lucky.”