by Becky McGraw
“I have an ulterior motive, yes. But I’m willing to help you come out smelling like a rose if you help me.”
“Leland will—“ he started, but Ronnie held up her hand.
“Leland will not only throw you under the bus, he will back over you a few times to make sure you’re dead. Just like Ray Brown is dead, if you catch my drift.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ll be complicit. The feds have the evidence. They’re just looking for a few more pieces that I have and would be happy to give them,” she said putting a finger to her chin. “Let’s see. There’s election fraud, malfeasance in office, theft of public funds, drug dealing, human trafficking, horse thievery, two counts of capital murder, several counts of bribery.” Ronnie smiled at him. “That should get you a few lifetimes in the penitentiary.”
“You haven’t been sick at all have you?” he asked with narrowed eyes. “Those files that Conner Lucas has been pulling were for you.”
“Oh, I’m sick all right. Sick of letting Leland Rooks get away with murder, and any number of other crimes. It’s time he paid. Now, the decision as to whether you want to go down with his sinking ship or not is yours. I’m in town until tomorrow. Think about it,” she said as she walked over to the desk to pick up a pen. She jotted down Dave’s cell phone number and handed it to him. “If you decide you want my help, give me a call.”
Ronnie knew she was taking a calculated chance, but she walked over to the large painting hanging cockeyed on the wall and shoved it aside to click the safe shut, before she eased it back into place. “There,” she said and turned to face him with a smug smile. His horrified facial expression was priceless. She walked to the door and opened it, then looked back at him once more. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Now, she had to get the hell out of there, before the goon guards could be alerted. This could go either way with Talmedge Bartlett. The man was scared, but he was loyal to Leland Rooks. He could very well run straight to him, and they could have her locked in the basement of this house before she could spit. Or shot dead. Even though she had told Dave she didn’t think that would happen, she thought now it was a real possibility.
Running in high heels wasn’t easy, so she stopped to pull them off, then took off down the long hallway toward the front door. She slowed down as she passed the crowded ballroom, but didn’t stop until she reached the front door. Dave wasn’t there and neither were Lou Ellen or Allison. Her heart was pounding by the time she opened the door and stepped outside into the cool night air. A few people milled under the lights out there, some smoking, the rest talking.
She walked down the wide curved steps and stopped to talk into her shoulder. “I’m outside where are you?” she hissed, then looked back up.
Across the yard, two big men walked toward her in ground eating strides. The lights strategically hidden in the shrubs lining the garden path lit their determined faces. Ronnie knew they weren’t just coming to the house. Their suits said they were not there for the party. They were coming after her. Her heart kicked and she started walking away from the house, down the uneven brick driveway toward the big wrought iron gate.
Maybe she had bitten off more than she could chew this time. Confronting Talmedge like that might have been the worst decision she’d ever made. Potentially a lethal one if she didn’t get out of here. She hoped the others had escaped. They did not deserve to die because of her impulsive risk. She would face the consequences alone, because it served her right that Trace and Dave had left her here.
If those consequences included being manhandled by the goons following her, Ronnie wouldn’t go down without a fight. Her hand shook as she slipped it inside her bra to pull out the small can of mace. They hadn’t met the Shark Lady yet. Yeah that persona was all smoke and mirrors to mask her insecurity, but they didn’t know that. Ronnie was used to using harsh words to get out of sticky situations. This one qualified as that, but she had the mace in case that didn’t work out. Thank goodness Trace had given it to her, she thought as she quickened her pace a little.
The sharp edges of the bricks cut into the soles of her feet and shredded her stockings, but she didn’t stop walking down the well-lit driveway. Ronnie had no idea how she would get through the closed gate when she reached it, but she would figure that out too. Right now, she had to focus on getting there, before the goons caught up to her.
The sound of loud, screeching tires pulled her eyes to the street outside the gate. Bright headlights hit her in the eyes and blinded her, but she could see a vehicle barreling down the street toward the gate. The front end of the van collided with the gate. Metal crunched, the gates peeled back and Ronnie dove into the bushes beside the driveway. A black van jumped through the gate and skidded to a stop beside the shrubs. The side door slid open and a dark figure hopped out. Strong fingers gripped her arm as she was jerked to her feet and shoved toward the van. She fought, but the man was stronger, and she’d lost her damned can of mace.
She was shoved inside the back of the van and landed in a heap against the far wall. He jumped in behind her, and slammed the door closed, then yelled, “Go, go!”
She recognized the voice, and spun to sit on her butt. Her eyes locked with Dave’s angry glare as the van lurched when the driver threw it into reverse and punched the accelerator. She was thrown across the van and only stopped because her body slammed into the back of the front seat. There were several loud booms then pings off the side of the van that could be nothing other than gunshots. With a squeal, she ducked lower between the seats and covered her head.
“Left, left!” Dave shouted as the van shot forward and the tires squealed again. Ronnie lifted her head and leaned forward through the seats to hazard a look out the passenger side window. The houses she’d admired coming into the neighborhood were nothing but a blur as they zoomed past now.
“Run it,” Dave ordered gruffly, and the engine of the van roared faster.
Through the windshield, Ronnie saw the guard shack and the yellow cross member that blocked their exit. She ducked and covered her head again, wood splintered and something heavy bounce off of the side of the van.
“You are one hardheaded woman,” Dave growled, bracing against the side of the van as they made a sharp left. “That stunt you pulled was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard or seen. What the fuck were you thinking?” he grated.
“I was thinking we needed Talmedge Bartlett to help decode those books, or it will be two weeks before we can sort this mess out and get back to our lives. He wouldn’t have just helped us if I invited him to lunch, you know,” she said defensively. “You won’t think it’s stupid when he calls us tomorrow.”
“He’s not calling us. Talmedge Bartlett knows who butters his bread, Veronica. He’s probably helping Leland get a posse together right now to find us,” Dave argued. “He’s been in Leland’s pocket for thirty years. You think because you threatened him with jail, he’s going to roll on Leland? He knows the size of the stick that Leland wields. They will all come out of this just fine. And we’ll be in jail most likely.”
The frustration in Dave’s tone made each word as sharp as the sound of the bullets that had hit the van a few minutes ago. Each one drove into her heart like a bullet too. He shook his head. “We were almost clear, and you should have just followed the plan.”
“We won’t be clear until those men are taken down,” Ronnie said folding her arms over her chest. “He’ll call tomorrow. You’ll see.”
Dave grunted. “You’re deluded, Veronica.”
“We’ll see who is deluded tomorrow,” she countered stubbornly.
“If we see tomorrow,” he said seriously. “Trace, turn right up here. There’s a logging road where we can hide the van.”
“Did Caleb get out with the files?” she asked as she clutched onto the seat back for dear life when the van rolled to the right on what felt like two wheels.
“He put them in a garbage
can and pushed it outside the gate. Trace picked them up,” Dave replied. The anger in his face was spotlighted by every street light they passed.
Trace hadn’t said a word, but she could feel his anger surrounding her like a scratchy wool blanket. “Are you pissed off at me too, Trace? If you are, just spit it out.”
He didn’t answer, he focused on the road, but she could see his hands gripping the wheel and his knuckles were white. Dave leaned through the split in the seats and pointed to the right. “There,” he said gruffly.
The van swung to the right and Ronnie was thrown into Dave’s bulk, then bounced from side to side in the back of the van as Trace drove the van over the deeply rutted dirt road. The bouncing continued for what felt like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, until it turned left and suddenly stopped. He killed the engine, and she heard a heavy sigh. “What now?” Trace asked.
“I texted Jamie and he’s on his way to pick us up, but we need to hike back to the highway and wait.”
“Hike?” Ronnie screeched. She looked down at her sore, bare feet and shredded stockings. Her heels and the can of mace were in the bushes at Leland’s mansion. There was no way she could hike through the woods.
Dave didn’t seem to hear her, or care. He opened the side of the van and got out. Trace exited the driver’s door and they stood outside waiting. Ronnie scooted across the van and got out. When her feet hit the sharp pine needles and burrs on the floor of the woods, she whimpered and sat back on the edge of the van door. “I can’t walk out of here.”
“You’re going to have to,” Dave replied. “And you’re going to have to move, because we’ve got to get our weapons out.”
Ronnie stood again and gritted her teeth as she took a step away from the van to give them room. It was pitch black in the small little alcove in the woods where Trace had parked the van, but she could hear things moving in the woods around her. And what she heard wasn’t comforting. Was that a coyote or a bear with those heavy footsteps? Or maybe a mountain lion. She’d heard there was an overpopulation of those this year.
The night sounds quieted when Trace and Dave started making noise inside of the back of the van as they gathered their weapons, but she could feel eyes watching her. Ronnie shivered, and hugged herself. The air was cooler here too, and she wished she’d have brought a coat. She could handle the chilled air though, if she just had a decent pair of shoes. Her feet would be bloody stumps by the time they got back to the highway.
Something tickled the back of her neck and she swatted it, then realized it was just her hair that had come down from the rhinestone clip. She tugged it out of the snarled mess and tossed it to the ground, then worked her fingers through her hair. In the headlights that Trace had left on, Ronnie saw the front tires of the van rested against a log. She limped over there and sat down to remove her stockings. Maybe she could wrap them around her feet to make shoes of some kind to protect her feet while they tramped through the underbrush, she thought. She removed one black stocking then the other and bent her knee across her thigh to wrap it around her swollen foot. Repeating the process she covered her other foot and stood to test her handiwork.
She took a step, and felt something slither by her foot. Ronnie screamed, she heard metal on metal scraping as guns were cocked, then looked up into the barrels of those guns and screamed again.
“Fucking be quiet, Red,” Trace hissed and uncocked his weapon. Dave did the same and they lowered them to their sides. Ronnie tried to get control of the adrenaline that was making her heart beat like a drum inside of her chest. When his words cut through the adrenaline to register, it combined with anger.
“Be quiet?” she screeched taking a leap away from the log. “So I should let the wild animals in these woods have their way with me?” she asked indignantly.
Trace laughed. “With a scream like you just let out, I could almost guarantee there’s not an animal left in the woods,” he said as he hopped out of the van with weapons strapped across his chest and a lantern swinging at his side. He looked like Rambo meets Wyatt Earp with the plaid western shirt, jeans and dusty boots on his feet. All that was missing was a ten-gallon hat. Where he’d gotten the clothes, Ronnie didn’t know, but she guessed either Dave or his men had loaned him some. The jeans were a little tight, but it was the sexiest she’d ever seen him look.
“Where’d you get those clothes?” she asked.
When they left the lodge, he’d been wearing the same too-small camo pants he’d been wearing for a week. The same black t-shirt that had developed a hole under the arm, because his biceps were too big for the material to contain them.
“We’re about to die and you’re worried about my wardrobe?” Trace grated with disbelief.
“He took Caleb’s clothes,” Dave informed as he exited the van and slid the door shut. “Because he pissed his pants when you said what you did to Talmedge.”
Trace shot him a look. “I fell in the mud asshole.”
“Because I had to tackle your ass to keep you from running into that house and getting yourself killed.”
Trace’s eyes met hers in the glow from the lantern, and she saw the fear there. Dave was telling the truth. Trace had been coming to try and save her. Her heart did a somersault in her chest and something bloomed there. Both of these men cared about her. They were the only people on Earth who did. “Thank you,” she said and her lips wobbled.
“Welcome,” he said gruffly and walked over to her. He sat the lantern down on the ground, then squatted. “Lay over my shoulder.”
“You’re going to carry me?” she asked softly, as she took a step forward.
“Don’t have much choice, do I?” he replied brusquely.
The side of Ronnie’s mouth kicked up. He was acting like it was an imposition, and she knew it was. He was already loaded down with the weight of the weapons, but he was going to carry her. Because he cared. Her heart did another little flip in her chest as she took another step forward and bent over his broad shoulder. The steel band of his arm clamped around the back of her thighs and he grunted as he stood.
He shifted her weight a little, then moved the weapons to the side. “Grab the lantern, Dave, and let’s get going.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I can make out about every fourth word,” Allison said with a frustrated sigh. “I thought for sure I’d be able to figure this out.”
“You did good last night,” Ronnie said tightening the tie of the fluffy robe she wore a little tighter around her waist.
“Getting these calendars and diaries was the easy part,” Allison said, her eyes scanning the items scattered over the table. There was also a black satchel Allison had gotten that they hadn’t opened yet. Ronnie wanted to know what was in there.
“We’ll figure it out,” Ronnie said pacing the length of the long wooden table in the three-bedroom hotel suite Lou Ellen had rented for them late last night. Trace had insisted they take the bedrooms, and he had slept on the pull-out sofa. It was a quarter til noon, and she, Allison and Trace were up, but Lou Ellen was still sleeping behind the closed door across the room.
“I’m not so sure,” Allison said.
“If worse comes to worse, we’ll just turn them over to Susan Whitmore with our notes and the files we have. If she agrees to my terms on Monday, that is,” Ronnie replied glancing over at Trace who was watching TV on the sofa on the other side of the room.
The robe he wore barely reached mid-thigh, and the way he leaned lazily back against the sofa, allowed her to see straight up the hem of the robe. She didn’t know if that was accidental or on purpose, but she certainly took advantage of it. Her eyes slid up his long muscular legs to his inner thighs then skipped across his abs and up over his delicious chest. When her eyes reached his, he was staring at her. A sexy smile eased up the corners of his mouth, and a knowing look came into his eyes.
“See something you like, Red?” he asked.
She saw a helluva lot she liked, and he knew it. Trace was s
itting like that on purpose to tease her. Because he knew his mother was there and she couldn’t do a damned thing about the effect he was having on her. Retribution probably for what she’d done at that mansion last night. Dave had come right out and called what she did stupid. Let her have his anger with both barrels all the way to the hotel and then some.
Trace hadn’t reamed her out, he had even kissed her discreetly before he helped her into the van when Caleb picked them up on the highway last night. But he had let her know, even though he admired what she had done, thought it was courageous, he was not happy about it, and there would be consequences. Ronnie was turned on enough from his thumb raking across the inside of her thigh, while he carried her through the woods. Hearing that had almost sent her over the edge, as the delicious consequences of the last time she crossed him flitted through her mind. Then he put her into the van and hadn’t touched her since.
Since they arrived at the hotel last night, all she’d had to think about was that kiss. And the consequences he promised. She’d lain awake half the night waiting for him to come into her room last night, but he never did.
Trace evidently heard something on the TV, because his smile faded and he grabbed for the remote to turn up the volume. “Amarillo criminal defense attorney Veronica Winters, daughter of prominent attorney Phillip Winters, was a guest at a party last night hosted by state Senator Leland Rooks. Sources with the Dallas Police say she was kidnapped by men in a black van right from the guarded and gated mansion.”
Ronnie’s heart shot up to her throat and she ran across the room to sit on the sofa beside Trace. “Around ten o’clock last night, the van sped down the quiet street and crashed through the gate. One man exited the van and shoved Ms. Winters inside, before it fled. Police haven’t located the vehicle as of yet, but they say they are looking for it and leads in the case. Guards at the compound say they were approaching Ms. Winters, because Senator Rooks wanted to see her, but before they reached her, she was abducted.”