Guardian Cowboy

by Carla Cassidy

  “Let me go. I need to talk to Dillon,” James said angrily.

  “Then let’s go.” Sawyer released his shirt and instead grabbed him by the arm and marched the man through Janis’s room and into the bar where Dillon was seated in the booth.

  “Look who I found lurking around the back door,” Sawyer said as he shoved James in front of Dillon.

  Dillon stood, his eyes narrowed. “Where have you been the last two days, James?”

  James cast a glance toward Sawyer. “I kind of wanted to talk to you alone about that.”

  “You can talk to me now,” Dillon said. “What do you know about Janis’s disappearance?”

  “Nothing... I don’t know anything about what happened to her,” James exclaimed.

  “Then where in the hell have you been?” Sawyer asked.

  “With Ivy Martin.” James’s cheek flushed red.

  “Ivy Martin?” Dillon stared at the man.

  “Yeah...you know her husband...he travels a lot and...” James’s voice trailed off.

  “You two are having an affair,” Sawyer said flatly.

  James gave a curt nod of his head. “I just didn’t want it getting out. She’s a nice lady and she doesn’t want problems in her marriage.”

  Sawyer fought back a hysterical burst of laughter. While they had been desperately hunting for the man, assuming he was behind Janis’s kidnapping, James’s biggest crime was bedding a married lady.

  So, who had Janis?

  Chapter 12

  There was no escape.

  Janis had come to that conclusion after hours of exploring her glass prison. As her head cleared and after the initial horror had passed, she began to build a wall around the bathroom area. The kitchen table was turned on its side to form one wall, and she covered the chairs with sheets she’d found in the pantry and built a wall on the other side.

  She still didn’t remember how she had gotten here or who had brought her to this horrific place that appeared to have been built specifically for her.

  The freezer was stocked with plenty of bags of french fries and her favorite canned goods were in the pantry. The bedding was all in shades of purple and pink, her favorite colors. Even the toilet paper was the same brand as what she used at home. It was all so creepy...so sinister.

  She had no idea whether it was day or night. There were no clocks on the wall and no windows. She had no way to tell what time it was. She didn’t know how long she’d been here, but it felt like an eternity. She couldn’t even find a light switch to turn the overhead lights off and on.

  Although she was tired, she didn’t want to sleep. Not here where somebody could creep in on the other side of the glass and watch her.

  What kind of a person did this? Who did she know who was messed up enough and had the resources to build something like this? This had taken months of preparation, of building and plotting and planning. And that was horrifying in and of itself.

  She now sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for something to happen, for somebody to come in. Her heart pounded a frantic rhythm that had kept her half breathless since the moment she had regained consciousness.

  She tensed as a door in the outer building opened and closed. Her heart stopped beating as her breath caught in her throat.

  Somebody was in here with her.

  Who was it? The area outside the fishbowl she was in was in darkness, making it impossible for her to see the person who had just come in.

  “Hello?” she called out. She had no idea if the person could hear her through the Plexiglas or not. “Who’s there?” She hated the way her voice trembled, sounding so weak and frightened.

  “Don’t be afraid.” The voice came from someplace overhead and she realized there must be a speaker system in the ceiling. She recognized the voice and suddenly she remembered how she had come to be here.

  She’d opened the door to him and before he was fully inside the motel room he’d stuck her with a needle. She’d had only seconds of consciousness before the darkness had rushed up and swallowed her.

  “Gary, what have you done?” she asked.

  He stepped close enough to the glass that she could now see him. It was her boss, her friend, and yet she knew now he was also her monster.

  “You don’t have to be afraid, Janis. I would never hurt you. I don’t even want to touch you.” He looked beyond her and clucked his tongue. “You’ve made quite a bit of a mess upending your table and moving your chairs.”

  She took a step closer to the glass. “Gary, if you take me back now, I won’t tell anyone what you’ve done. Nobody has to know and we can just go on the way we were before.”

  “Now, why would I do that? Why would I even thing about taking you back? I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make this the perfect place for you to live. You don’t have to worry about anything. You don’t have to stress yourself by serving nasty men who try to touch you inappropriately. Whatever you want, I’ll provide for you. All you have to do is ask.”

  He smiled and for the first time she thought she saw a hint of madness shining from his eyes. “This is what I dreamed of since that morning I first sat with you in the café.”

  “What do you want from me?” she asked in frustration...in fear.

  “Nothing. I just want to have you. I want to watch you as you go about your days. I want to watch you as you sleep at night. Watching you brings me a tremendous amount of happiness, Janis.”

  His words chilled her to the bone. This was something different than ordinary voyeurism as she understood it. There didn’t appear to be a sexual component in what Gary was describing. So what kind of madness was this?

  “Just take me back, Gary,” she said, trying to insert some command in her voice. “Let me out of here and take me back where I belong.”

  “You belong here with me,” he replied.

  “When did you make those holes in my room at the bar?” she asked, the fake bravado gone as her horrified fear sneaked into her voice once again.

  “The day that I offered you the job at the bar and the room to live in. I knew before I left the café that day that you were going to be somebody special to me.”

  She sucked in a breath. My God, he’d been watching her for years and she’d never sensed anything calculating or odd from him. He’d been so incredibly normal in his madness.

  “Watching you through those holes was frustrating. I could only do it at night and on Sundays.” He spoke so matter-of-factly, as if his behavior was perfectly normal. “It was in the last year that I realized I needed more. I didn’t want to watch you from little holes anymore. I needed something better, and so I built this place.”

  “What about Abigail and your children?”

  “What about them? They have nothing to do with any of this. I love my wife and I adore my children. What I have with you has nothing to do with them.”

  “You shot Sawyer.” Her mind continued to reel.

  Gary nodded. “I tried to kill him. He had no business being with you. I tried to warn him off with the note and the flat tire, but that didn’t work. Don’t worry about him anymore. Now that I have you, I won’t have to kill him. You belong to me, Janis. You have since you were nineteen. I just couldn’t let another man get close to you.”

  “Gary, for God’s sake, let me out of here. You need professional help. What you’re doing isn’t normal.” She tried to keep her voice calm and friendly even though she wanted to leap through the glass and scratch his eyes out.

  This man had violated her for years, he’d tried to kill the man she loved, and yet he smiled at her as if she should be happy to be here in his monstrous prison.

  “I don’t need help. I don’t care if what I’m doing isn’t normal. I’m doing what makes me happy. I’ve finally gotten what I want. Now, you’ve been through a lot. It wouldn’t hurt you to get some extra rest.
I’ll just dim the lights for you and then you can just forget I’m here.” He stepped back from the glass, disappearing into the shadowed darkness.

  If he thought she was going to undress and get into bed to sleep while he was there, he was out of his mind. A hysterical laugh nearly escaped her. He was out of his mind.

  The overhead light dimmed but remained illuminated enough that she still couldn’t see him standing in the dark outside her glass prison.

  There was only one place she could go to escape his prying eyes. The pantry. She walked across the room to the wooden structure and opened the door.

  It was a small room. Packages of paper towels and toilet paper took up much of the floor space. She tossed them out and then stepped inside. She pulled the door shut behind her.

  She welcomed the complete darkness as she sank down to sit on the floor. At least he couldn’t see her in here. In this dark, tight space she was safe from his prying eyes.

  Gary’s laughter sounded from someplace overhead. “I knew there would be a couple of days of adjustment for you, Janis. And that’s okay. But you can’t live your life in that closet. Sooner or later you’ll have to come out. You’ll have to come out and accept that this is your life now. Here...with me...forever.”

  She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, an overwhelming hopelessness sweeping through her. She had no idea where this place was located. It could be in the Bitterroot city limits or it could be miles and miles away.

  Gary hadn’t even been on their suspect list. He’d been a man helping them find the guilty party. How was anyone going to find her?

  At least with her tucked away here, Sawyer would no longer be at risk. Sawyer. Sawyer. Her heart cried his name over and over again.

  She knew he’d be going crazy, wondering what had happened to her and who might have taken her from the motel room. She knew the kinds of thoughts that were going off in his head. Had she been hurt? Was it possible she was dead?

  Her heart ached with the pain she knew he must be feeling for her. If she could only blink her eyes and be back with him, back in his warm, strong arms.

  But no magic would get her out of this situation. She couldn’t even believe that good police work would find her here.

  As the last wind of bleakness blew through her, stealing all her hope away, she leaned her head back against the pantry door. Gary’s words echoed over and over again in her head with a horrifying finality.

  Here...with me...forever.

  Chapter 13

  It was just after one when Cassie placed a plate with a sandwich in front of Sawyer. “Eat,” she demanded.

  “I can’t... I’m not hungry.” He was seated in the booth, alone for the moment as Dillon dealt with an armed robbery at the convenience store across town.

  He didn’t even want to be here. He wanted to be out driving the streets, doing something active in an attempt to find her. But somebody had to be point man here for all the people to check in with after searching an area of town or any abandoned buildings.

  Sawyer had requested that somebody bring him a notebook. It was now open in front of him as he’d begun taking notes so that searches wouldn’t be doubled.

  “Sawyer, you have to eat something to keep you thinking clearly,” Cassie replied. “Janis needs you to stay strong.”

  He gave a curt nod and picked up the sandwich. He’d eat because Cassie was right, he needed to fuel his body and his mind. But the last thing he cared about was food.

  He was consumed with thoughts of Janis. They no longer had any suspects. Everyone who worked at the bar had been checked and rechecked.

  The only thing they could figure was that, as loose as Gary was with the keys to the bar, it was possible one had made its way to somebody who didn’t work at the bar. And that meant every man in Bitterroot was a potential suspect. But with a suspect pool so big, how would they ever find the guilty party?

  At the moment there were only four people in the bar. Tanner was the bartender for the day and Annie was currently seated on a stool in front of him and softly talking.

  The day regulars hadn’t showed up, obviously knowing their favorite drinking place had become headquarters for a missing person’s case.

  Gary had called Dillon earlier to let him know that he was sick and wouldn’t be coming in until later that evening. Apparently he’d picked up some kind of a stomach bug.

  This couldn’t go on forever. They couldn’t hurt Gary’s business by being here. Probably by tomorrow things would have to move to the police station.

  He grimaced at the thought and lay the remaining half sandwich back on the plate. He didn’t want to believe that tomorrow would come and they still wouldn’t have answers.

  And, as ridiculous as it sounded, moving this to the police station would only make it more real, more horrifying, than it already was.

  Where? Where are you, Janis? It was the question that pounded in his head over and over again. What if she wasn’t even in Bitterroot? Enough time had passed now that she could be anywhere.

  It was quite possible she wasn’t even in the state of Oklahoma anymore. It was equally possible that she was dead. His greatest fear was that one of his fellow cowboys would return to tell him they’d found her body.

  He quickly shoved that alarming thought out of his head. He couldn’t handle it right now. He needed to believe with all his heart that she was still alive and just waiting for his rescue.

  Before Dillon had left on the emergency call from the convenience store, he’d interviewed Janis’s mother, who had told him that she hadn’t spoken to her daughter in years and if she was missing it was probably her own fault. Sawyer had never disliked a person more in his life.

  He was almost grateful when Clay came in, although he knew by the expression on his friend’s face that he brought nothing. He flopped into the chair next to Sawyer’s. “I checked out that old barn out on the Miller property. There was nothing in it except moldy hay and rats.”

  Sawyer nodded and made a note on the paper before him. “How are you holding up?” Clay asked.

  “I’m hanging on by a thread,” Sawyer admitted. He blew out a sigh. “If she isn’t in any of the abandoned buildings around town and she isn’t with any of the people we have checked out, then I won’t be satisfied until we do a door-to-door search for her.”

  “I heard about the holdup at the convenience store. I’m assuming Dillon is busy with that right now.”

  “Yeah. It would be nice if all the criminals in town held off doing any criminal activity until we find Janis,” Sawyer replied.

  “What can I do now? Where do you need me to go?”

  Clay left minutes later with instructions to head out to Abe Breckinridge’s ranch and, with Abe’s permission, to check out several old barns and sheds on the property.

  After he left, Sawyer flipped the pages of the notebook to a clean sheet. They had to be missing something. What he wanted to do was to write down everything that had happened and everyone they had spoken to from the time the bar had been spray-painted until the moment Janis had disappeared from the motel room.

  He wrote frantically, his brain in a frenzy. Somehow he felt as if the answer was there, all he had to do was sort it all out. He needed to look at the chronology of things without letting his emotions get involved.

  He didn’t know how long he sat and wrote, but by the time he got to the moment when they’d realized Janis had been kidnapped, he had a new name and a burning fury deep in his chest.

  When Dillon walked through the door, Sawyer jumped to his feet. “I think it’s Gary,” he said.

  Dillon frowned. “Gary? Why on earth do you think he’s guilty?”

  “Think about it. Who had better access to plant a listening device in the smoke alarm in Janis’s room than Gary? Who knew what room she was in at the motel? And isn’t it convenient that Janis disa
ppeared the day that she was coming back here to catch the Peeping Tom? You and I and Gary were the only ones who knew of our plan.”

  He reached out and grabbed Dillon’s forearm. “It’s Gary, Dillon. I feel it in my gut. He’d been under our noses all along. He’s the only person here we didn’t check out. We trusted him.” He dropped his hand to his side. “I’m going over to his house now.”

  “You’ll come with me,” Dillon replied firmly.

  Minutes later they were in Dillon’s car and headed to Gary’s large, two-story home on the west side of town. “I can’t believe we didn’t even consider him as a suspect,” Sawyer said.

  “That’s because we both thought he was on our side. He called the staff meeting that morning after we found the peepholes. He appeared as genuinely horrified by it as we were.” Dillon hit the steering wheel with his palm. “Damn it, I should have checked him out thoroughly. Best case scenario is we bust him and find Janis. The worst that can happen is that he’s home and he’s innocent and we both come down with the stomach flu.”

  Sawyer didn’t reply. He stared out the window and tried to rein in the beat of his heart. Was he right about Gary or was this just another dead end?

  Dillon couldn’t drive fast enough for Sawyer. The closer they got to Gary’s home, the more Sawyer believed in the bar owner’s guilt.

  Although Sawyer didn’t believe Janis was inside his home where he lived with his wife and his two daughters, he did believe Gary had Janis stashed away someplace.

  He didn’t know if Gary owned other property or not. If he had to, he’d beat the location out of the big, beefy man. Sawyer didn’t care if Gary was in his sickbed. Hell, he didn’t care if the man was on his deathbed.

  Damn it, he should have thought about it sooner. He should have thought about Gary when Janis had told her how Gary had taken her off the streets and offered her the room.

  Dillon pulled into the driveway of the attractive home that boasted a huge wraparound porch and a stained-glass front door. Sawyer jumped out of the car, his heart actually hurting as it beat so quickly in his chest.