by Paula Graves
The upside to that, Owen thought, was that their captors probably couldn’t hear much of what was going on in the back of the van, either.
He looked around for any sharp edges he could use to tear the tape around his wrists. The covering over the wheel well was bolted to the floor of the van, but the bolts were old and worn, not providing much of a cutting edge. Still, he scooted over to the nearest bolt and gave it a try.
The van must have left Mercerville Highway, he realized a few minutes later when the swaying of the vehicle increased, forcing him to plant his feet on the cargo hold’s ridged floor to keep from toppling over with each turn. But he couldn’t stop Tara from rolling across the floor. A moment later, her head knocked into his hip with a soft thud.
“Ow,” she muttered, her voice thick and slurred.
“Oh, sweetheart, there you are,” he said softly, twisting so that his bound hands could reach the side of her face. He brushed away the grit on her cheek with his fingers. “Tara, can you hear me?”
Her head lifted, her hair and the torn remains of her tulle veil obscuring part of her face. “Owen?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Careful,” he added when she tried to sit up and nearly fell over.
She managed to steady herself in a sitting position and shoved her hair and the veil away from her face with clumsy hands. They, too, were secured by duct tape, he saw, though her captors had bound her hands in front of her rather than behind her. She seemed to belatedly notice the bindings and stared at her wrists. “What’s happening?”
“We’ve been abducted,” he said, though he wasn’t sure abduction was the right term. Neither of them was exactly rolling in dough, so he didn’t imagine they’d been taken for ransom purposes. Tara’s fiancé was successful but not what anyone would term wealthy. Not yet, anyway.
So why had the men grabbed her?
“That’s insane,” she muttered, still pawing at her veil, which sat askew on her head. “Why am I so woozy?”
“They put a pillowcase over your head.” He waved his hand at the offending piece of material lying against the front of the cargo hold. “I think it was soaked with ether.”
“Ether?” Tara finally pulled her veil free and threw it on the floor beside her. The van took another turn, forcing Owen to brace himself against the side of the cargo hold. Tara was unprepared, however, and went sprawling against his side, her nose bumping into his shoulder.
“Ow.” She righted herself, rubbing her nose. She finally noticed Owen’s bound hands, her eyes widening. “You’re tied up, too.”
“Think you can get the tape off me? Then I’ll return the favor.” He twisted around until his back was facing her.
“My fingers aren’t working so well,” she warned him as she started fumbling with the tape. She wasn’t lying; it took a full minute before she was able to find the end of the tape on his bindings and start to slowly unwrap his wrists. But she finally ripped away the last of the tape, making the flesh on his wrists sting.
He stretched his aching arms, grimacing at the pain.
“What time is it?” Tara asked.
He pressed the button on his watch that lit up the dial. “Just a little after four.”
“Oh.”
He turned to look at Tara. “You were supposed to get married at four.”
She nodded. “I was supposed to.”
He reached for her, taking her bound hands in his. “We’ll get you back there, Tara. We’ll get out of this and get to a phone so you can call Robert and tell him what happened. And then we’ll get you back to the church and you’ll get married just the way you planned—”
“I was going to call it off.”
He went still. “What?”
In the low light he couldn’t make out much about her features, but the tone of her voice was somewhere between sad and embarrassed. “I was going to call it off. Right before that guy knocked on the door and told me there was a package outside.”
“That’s how they got you outside to the van?”
“Yeah.” She wriggled her bound hands at him. “Get this off me, please?”
He pulled the tape from her wrists, taking care with the last few inches to spare her as much of the sting as possible. When she was free, he rolled up the tape from both of their bindings and shoved it in his pocket. It might come in handy if they could get themselves out of this van alive.
Freed from her restraints, Tara curled into a knot beside him, wrapping her arms around her knees. The puffy skirt of her wedding dress ballooned around her, almost glowing in the low light, making her look like a piece of popcorn.
Owen had the clarity of mind not to speak that thought aloud.
He put his arm around her, trying not to read too much into the way she snuggled closer to him. They were in the middle of an abduction. Of course she was seeking a little comfort from the guy who’d been her best friend since middle school.
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t suppose Robert is secretly a multimillionaire with a hefty trust fund?”
“Not that he’s ever told me.” She made a soft mewling noise. “I am so woozy. They used ether?”
“That’s what it smelled like to me.”
She cocked her head toward him. “Exactly how do you know what ether smells like?”
“I took a history of medicine course in college, when I was still considering a medical degree.”
“And they let you sniff ether?”
Tara’s skeptical tone made him smile. She was sounding more like her old self, which meant the effects of the ether were wearing off. “Not on purpose.”
He glanced to the far side of the van’s cargo hold, where he’d thrown the ether-soaked pillowcase. In this confined area, the fumes it emitted might still be affecting them, he realized.
“We need to find a way to wrap up that pillowcase so that we limit the fumes it’s putting out in this van,” he told Tara. “I wish I had a garbage bag or something.”
“Don’t suppose you carry one of those around in your back pocket?”
“Not in a rented tux, no,” he answered with a grin, feeling a little less grim about their chances of survival now that his smart-ass Tara was back. He shrugged off his jacket. “I can wrap it in this.”
“The rental place isn’t going to like that,” Tara warned.
“Not sure it’s enough, though.”
“Well, I have about twenty yards of silk, lace and tulle you can use.” Holding his shoulder, she levered herself to her feet and started to tug at the seams of her skirt until the fabric tore free. In the darkness of the van’s enclosed interior, Owen couldn’t make out much besides a cloud of faint brightness in the gloom floating away from her body. Tara gathered the fabric into a ball and presented it to him. “Will this do?”
He crossed carefully to the corner of the cargo hold, feeling a distinct unsteadiness he attributed to the moving van, although he should be a lot more worried about the blow he’d taken to the head. He’d been unconscious long enough for their captors to shove him inside the van and tie him up. He might have a concussion. Or worse.
But for now, he was conscious. His head didn’t hurt too badly. And he had a job to do.
He wrapped up the pillowcase inside the layers of silk, tulle and lace, and pushed it back into the corner. Already, the distinctively sweet scent of the ether was almost gone.
Gingerly, he edged his way back to where Tara perched on the wheel well cover. “That should take care of—”
The van gave a hard lurch, sending him toppling over. He landed hard on his side, pain shooting through his rib cage and hip.
“Owen!” Tara grabbed his arms and helped him to a sitting position. “Are you all right?”
He rubbed his side, reassuring
himself that nothing was broken. “I’m okay—” He broke off, aware that something had changed suddenly.
The engine. He no longer heard the engine noise, or felt the vibration beneath them.
The van had come to a stop.
Chapter Two
Most of the haziness left in her brain from the ether disappeared in a snap when Tara heard the van’s engine shut off.
“We’ve stopped.” She looked up at Owen, wishing he wasn’t just a shadowy silhouette in the gloom. Sometimes just the sight of him, so controlled and serious, could make her feel as if everything in the world would be okay. At least she could hear his voice, that low Kentucky drawl that had always steadied her like a rock, even in the midst of the craziness life had a habit of throwing her way. “What are they going to do to us now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.” He didn’t sound confident.
She reached across the narrow space between them and grabbed his hands. “We need a plan.”
“We don’t have anything to fight with, Tara.”
“Yes, we do.” She squeezed his hands and pushed to her feet, heading for the corner where he’d buried the pillowcase inside the remains of her skirt. She grabbed the whole bundle and brought it to where Owen waited.
She saw the faintest glimmer in his eyes when he looked at her, just a hint of light in the darkness. “You are brilliant, sweetheart.”
“There were two of them. One who came to get me, telling me there was a package waiting for me, and one standing by the van. I think he was the one who put the pillowcase over my head.” She kept her voice low, in case their voices carried outside the van. “They think we’re still tied up. At least, we’d better hope they do.”
“It’ll still take two of them to get us out, so we won’t have an advantage. Except surprise.”
She grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Surprise can go a long way. So, first one through the door gets the ether pillowcase over his head.”
“And we shove him back onto the second guy while he’s off guard.”
She looked at Owen, wishing she could see him more clearly. “Think this has a chance of working?”
“No clue, but it’s all we’ve got. So let’s make it work.” He reached across and gripped her hands briefly. Then he unwrapped the pillowcase from the dress skirt.
The sickly sweet odor of the ether made Tara’s stomach twist, but with a little effort she controlled her nerves. She had one job—to fight with every ounce of strength and will she had to get out of this dangerous spot.
At least she wasn’t alone. Owen was with her, and if there was one thing in her life she knew completely, it was that Owen would do everything he could to keep her safe. He’d been doing that for her since high school.
The back door of the van rattled, and Tara’s heart skipped a beat. She sneaked a quick look at Owen and found him staring at the door, his focus complete.
He’d undergone training at Campbell Cove Academy, which was part of the security company where he now worked, but Tara hadn’t really given much thought to what that training entailed. After all, Owen was a computer geek. Computer geeks didn’t have much need for ninja skills, did they?
He’d been teased as a child because his skills and talents lent themselves to academic pursuits instead of sports. Even his own father had undermined Owen, calling him weak and inept because he wouldn’t try out for the football team in high school.
Tara wished some of those people could see Owen right now, ready to take on two possibly armed men in order to protect her.
The door to the van opened, and light invaded the back of the van, blinding Tara for a long panicky moment, until a rush of movement from Owen’s side of the door spurred her into motion. Her vision adjusted in time for her to see Owen jamming the pillowcase over a man’s head and giving him a push backward. The man fell over like a bowling pin, toppling the other man who stood right behind him.
Owen grabbed Tara’s hand. “Jump!” he yelled as he jerked her with him out the back door of the van.
She saw the two men on the ground struggling to right themselves. It wouldn’t be long before they did, she realized. The thought spurred her to run faster. Thank God she’d opted for low-heeled pumps for her wedding, she thought as she ran across the blacktop road and into the woods on the other side, her hand still firmly clasped in Owen’s.
The pumps proved themselves more problematic once they hit the softer ground of the woods. Behind her, the men they’d just escaped started shouting for them to stop, punctuating their calls with a couple of gunshots that made Tara’s blood turn to ice. But, as far as she could tell, none of the shots got anywhere near them.
“Come on,” Owen urged, pulling her with him as he zigzagged though the woods. It took a couple of minutes to realize there was a method to his seemingly mad dash through the trees. They were moving from tree to tree, finding cover from their pursuers.
What was left of her wedding dress was a liability, she realized with dismay. The white fabric stood out in the dark woods like a beacon. At least Owen’s tux was black. He blended into the trees much better than she could hope to do.
“You go without me,” she said as they took temporary cover behind the wide trunk of an oak tree. “I’m the one they’re after. I stick out like a hooker in a church in this dress. You could find help and send the police after the van. You could tell Robert what happened.”
Owen looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I am not leaving you,” he growled.
The sudden urge to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him caught her off guard. She’d set aside those nascent feelings of attraction to Owen a long time ago, valuing his loyal friendship far more than she valued any sort of sexual attraction she might feel toward him. To have it come back now, in this awful situation, was confounding.
“Now!” Owen growled, and he tugged her with him through the underbrush to their next bit of cover.
Behind them, the sound of their pursuers was close enough to spur their forward movement. But the men following them weren’t any closer, Tara realized. So far, she and Owen seemed to be staying ahead of the danger pursuing them.
But what would happen if they ran out of woods?
A brisk breeze had picked up as they ran, rustling the leaves overhead. Thank heaven for spring growth; two months ago, these woods would have been winter bare and couldn’t have provided them with nearly enough cover. But even here in the Kentucky mountains, the woods couldn’t go on forever, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. If they managed to find a well-populated town around the next copse, they’d be safe.
But if they ran into a clearing with neither cover nor the safety of numbers to protect them...
“How long do you think they’ll keep chasing us?” she asked breathlessly as they crouched behind another tree.
“I don’t know,” Owen admitted. “I don’t suppose you know why they grabbed you. Did they give you any indication?”
“No, it’s like I told you—one of the men came to get me and the other put the pillowcase over my head before I could even get a good look at his face. Although he definitely asked for me by name. Ms. Bentley.” She risked a peek around the side of the tree providing them with cover. “I don’t see them anymore.”
“I don’t think we should move anytime soon. They may be hunkered down, waiting to flush us out.”
Tara frowned. “How long are we talking?”
“I don’t know. A couple of hours?”
She grimaced. “I suppose it’s a bad time to mention that I desperately need to pee.”
Owen gave a soft huff of laughter. “Can you hold it awhile?”
“Do I have any choice?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go.”
Owen gave her a look that made
her insides melt a little. She might have decided years ago that she’d rather be his friend forever than risk losing him by taking their relationship to a more sexual place, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t aware that he found her just as attractive as she found him.
And right now he was looking at her as if he wanted to strip her naked and slake his thirst for her up against the rough trunk of this big oak tree.
Oh, God, Tara, you’re hiding from crazy kidnappers and you choose now to conjure up that visual?
“I think I know where we are,” Owen murmured a few minutes later.
Moving only her eyes, Tara scanned the woods around them, seeing only trees, trees and more trees. “How on earth is that possible?” she whispered.
“Because while you went to cheerleading camp, I went to Boy Scout camp.”
“And what, got a badge in telling one gol dang leafy tree from another?” Staying still was starting to get to her already. She wasn’t the kind of woman who stayed still. Ever. And the urge to look behind them to see if their captors were sneaking up on them was almost more than she could bear.
“No,” Owen said with more patience than she deserved. “It’s because I stayed in a rickety little cabin with five other boys about two hundred yards to our east.”
She slanted a look at him. “How can you possibly know that?”
“See that big tree right ahead? The one with the large moon-shaped scar on the trunk about five feet up?”
She peered through the trees. “No.”
“Well, trust me, it’s there. And that moon shape is there because Billy Turley and I carved it in the trunk on a dare. Our camp counselor didn’t buy that we were trying out our trailblazing skills like Daniel Boone before us.”
There had never been a time in her life when she’d felt less like smiling, but the image conjured up by Owen’s words made her lips curve despite herself. She and Owen had met around the time they were both in sixth grade. In fact, she could remember Owen taking that trip to the woods because she’d been over-the-moon excited about being invited to cheerleading camp, since only girls who went to the camp in middle school ever made the varsity squad in high school.