by Jenna Ryan
She dipped her finger into the compote, licked it off. “I didn’t say that. No sign of anyone after us?”
“Nope, and I’m not thinking there will be.” Gage started the Range Rover. “Careful pouring the coffee, Snowbird. We’re rolling.”
The food helped enormously. Amber freed her hair and let it dry. Her stomach would jump a lot more the closer they got to Astrid, but for the moment, she simply let her mind drift back in time. How in God’s name had she gotten to such a messed up place in her life? Such a moment?
Instead of lightening up, the day grew darker and more ominous. Gage used the interstate as much as he could, then he took the appropriate exit for Astrid and switched to the back roads. Presumably, Rachel and Bobby Lee had done the same thing.
Another twenty-five miles passed before a small water tower came into view. It was set behind a sprawling three-story house with a broken sign out front that read: Cypress Inn. Honey Bee Pollen and Black-eyed Peas For Sale.”
Amber arched a shrewd brow. “Your Shady Rest Hotel?”
“More than likely.” Gage regarded the tracking device. “Blip’s not here. We need to go west a few miles.”
“By SUV or on foot?”
“There’s a road.” He motioned forward. “What time is it?”
“Almost five.” She did a double take. “Really? Already?” A frown knit her brow. “Why?”
“I want the night.”
“Do I want the details?”
“Never give the enemy an unnecessary advantage. Let them come after us. Wait half an hour, then call your sister.”
“And say what?”
“Tell her if she wants to be rescued, she and Bobby Lee need to come meet us at Belmar. It’s a plantation house fifty miles south of our current location. It’s in ruins and unoccupied. She comes or we leave.”
With a determined false smile, Amber replied, “I hate this, you know that, right? What if she doesn’t show?”
He said nothing, merely regarded her patiently.
“Right.” She expelled a breath. “I’m the prize, not Rachel. Considering the reams of information I can’t access even if it is tucked away in some dark corner of my brain, Owen’s going way over the top to capture me.”
“Mockerie’s going over the top. Remember who you’re dealing with at the heart of it, Amber. The torture factor’s paramount to him. You can’t do what you did and walk away. He’s been biding his time ever since you disappeared.”
“So the information I gathered isn’t important?”
“His FBI contact will have returned that to Owen over a month ago. You fucked with a member of Mockerie’s team. He always intended to make you pay for that at some point. Rachel handed him his golden opportunity when she left Black Creek.”
“She must have said something to Jess Murkle,” Amber mused. “Or his brother. Or a friend.”
“Who told a friend, who put it together and made a call to Fixx. Then bam, the game was on.”
Amber regarded his cell. “Twenty minutes to phone call.” She sent him a fervent glance. “I hope you know what we’re doing.”
“So do I,” he said and started the SUV.
Or tried to.
…
It took several attempts and over fifteen minutes of him fiddling under the hood before the reluctant engine turned over. The delay gave Gage time to think and rejig his virtually nonexistent plan.
Position would be key, and he was counting on Rachel to panic. True, that might get her killed, but frankly, her safety was farther down on his priority list than Amber might’ve been happy to realize.
It couldn’t be helped. The two of them could’ve been facing five people or fifty. He leaned toward the lower number for the sake of efficiency, not making a big noise, and because he didn’t want to think of how badly things might go if the number were high. Numbers hadn’t worked for Fixx at Bitterroot Lake. Lesson learned, he hoped. He imagined Fixx would go with sharpshooters and making anyone helping Amber disappear quickly.
Wiping his hands, Gage returned to the cab of the Range Rover and nudged Amber out of the driver’s seat. The engine she’d managed to start ran rough when she took her foot off the gas pedal.
“It’s almost dark,” she noted. “Those black clouds to the south are helping.” She raised her brows at him. “Call Rachel?”
“Keep it short and sweet. If Fixx’s people are with her, they’ll come; if they’re following her, they’ll still come.”
Amber dialed. There was no answer, only her sister’s voicemail.
“Leave a message,” Gage instructed her.
“Rachel, listen to me. I need you to meet me at Belmar. It’s a plantation house, a ruin, fifty miles south of the Cypress Inn. Leave as soon as you get this message.”
Gage drew his fingers across his throat, indicating she should end the call. She looked at him and broke the connection.
“I think…” she began, but got no further. The twilight, such as it was, suddenly exploded with gunfire around them.
Gage yanked her down and away from the windshield. “It’s possible we’ll be finishing it here,” he muttered.
But he didn’t like here. The location was too open. If only barely, at least the engine was running.
“Hold on, Snowbird. We’re moving.”
He knew two of his tires had been hit. He could feel the difference when he turned the wheel.
The Range Rover responded as he alternated swerving the front and back ends.
His phone rang. Amber answered it from the floor and immediately put it on speaker.
Rachel’s tearful voice wobbled across the line. “He’ll kill me, Amber, if you don’t turn yourself in. He’s already killed Bobby Lee. He swears to God, he won’t kill you.”
“No, he’ll leave that to his boss. Owen’s not the boss,” she added before Rachel could reply. “You…”
The phone zinged out of her hand when a bullet blasted through the side window. “Shit,” she swore. “That was close.”
Gage fishtailed the back end, saw Amber hunting through the many weapons littering the floor. “Shoot behind us,” he told her. “Don’t bother taking aim, just pepper our wake.”
They hadn’t expected him to rabbit, he realized. All the shots were coming from the back end.
“Where are we going?” Amber shouted above the continued spray of bullets.
He maneuvered through a stand of sycamore and hickory trees, felt the ground growing increasingly squishy beneath the tires. “As far into the swamp as we can make it on two working wheels. Get ready to bail. Grab what you can for weapons.”
He did the same even as he wound an erratic path over knolls, past humped tree roots, and through patches of murky water.
Spanish moss slapped the broken windshield. He counted three vehicles behind him, all powerful and relatively intact. No telling how many occupants might be inside them.
Amber inched upright to peer out the back window. “I see gray hair in the passenger seat of the first one. It could be Tony.”
“The brother?”
“I didn’t think he’d be this protective of Owen.”
“Brotherly love, Snowbird.”
“He also knows who pays the bills so he can veg out on St. Croix for four months of the year.” She ducked as another round of shots assailed them. “The driver looks like Quint’s cousin.”
“Apparently, nepotism’s rampant in Fixx’s branch of the organization. Hold on.”
Leaping one knoll, then two, Gage landed hard but intact.
“Dirt bike riders have nothing on you.” Amber grunted as he jumped another knoll. “Okay, my stomach’s officially in my throat… I think they’re falling back.”
“As old ladies tend to do in rough terrain.”
Double handing her weapon, Amber fired. “Don’t let my grandmother hear you say that. She rode her Harley across the U.S., coast to coast, when she was in her seventies. She and two other women she’s known since college.”
Gage’s mild amusement got lost in a wild spray of bullets. “Save your ammo, Amber.” He eyed a trio of small hillocks. “Three more jumps and we’ll lose the bastards.”
She regarded him for a moment. “In case one or both of us dies here, Gage, thank you for doing this.”
“Any time, Amber.”
The knolls rose up, one, two, three. On the final landing, he reached across the seat, shoved her door open, and rolled them both into the swamp.
…
Rachel screamed until Owen’s eardrums vibrated. He was in Land Rover Two with a pair of his most trusted men, Mort and Bronson. His brother Tony had taken point with Quint’s thoroughly pissed-off cousin and three of his best marksmen. Jake, Luka’s current friend and lover, was piloting Three with a navigator and two more shooters.
“We should have tied her up and gagged her,” Mort muttered from the driver’s seat. “Bronson can hardly hold her.”
“Can’t hold her,” Bronson shouted forward. “She’s kicked me twice in the balls.”
“Simmer down, Rachel,” Owen ordered. “Bear in mind how expendable you are.”
“You’re such a bastard,” she shrieked and clawed Bronson’s face. She began to cry. “I thought you loved me.”
“I do. I did.” What the hell was he saying? “You suited my purpose when we met. You don’t now.”
She screamed again, and that time, Bronson howled with her. “Bitch punched me in the eye. I’m fucking bleeding.”
Owen looked behind him. Bronson’s left eye appeared to have exploded.
“You’d better stop,” he said testily. “We’ll have to tie her up.”
Mort slowed on an uphill grade, popped the locks on the doors.
He should have realized how desperate Rachel was. And how determined she could be when she wanted something.
Jerking away from Bronson, she kicked the door open and tumbled out into the swamp. Owen was still undoing his seat belt when she disappeared in the gathering darkness.
Could it get worse? Hell yes, it could. He could lose James Mockerie’s ultimate prize.
Rather than take up the chase himself, he contacted Land Rover Three. “Rachel’s flown. Solo and hysterical. Reel her back in.”
“Not a problem,” was the response. Owen watched the passenger door behind them open and close, and motioned his own driver forward. “Keep going.” He raised his radio link. “Tony, stop being such a pussy. Why can’t you keep firing?”
“No point shooting at an empty car,” his brother growled back. “They’re on foot. We lost them in a tangled-up mess of trees and moss and prickle bushes.”
Owen controlled his frustration and his rising temper. “Understood.” Snatching a tracking device off the dash, he regarded the screen. And saw the red blip that was Amber heading into the heart of the swamp.
…
Amber’s lungs threatened to burst. It couldn’t have been air she was breathing. The swamp must’ve been giving off some kind of noxious gas.
She dragged Gage to a halt in a pool of green sludge. Spanish moss dipped around them. “I can’t…” Unable to speak in sentences, she waved a hand between them. “Thirty seconds.”
The band was slipping from her hair. For the umpteenth time, she dragged it off. She found herself holding a piece of elastic rope. “It broke. How could the stupid thing break?It cost me thirty-five dollars.”
“What cost you thirty-five dollars?” With his hands braced on his thighs, Gage looked up.
She showed him the band. “It came apart at the metal join. Maybe I can tie it… What?”
“The metal join.” Having grabbed it from her, he snapped off the metal end piece. “Where did you get this?”
“At a fitness store.”
“A chain store?”
“Yes, a high-end one. I told you it cost… Oh, crap. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Rather than reply, he gave the band, minus the metal end, back to her. “Tie it, use it, and let’s go.”
When he pocketed the piece, she drew her brows together. “Why are you keeping it?”
“It could come in handy. You ready?”
“No, but…”
“Let’s go.” Grabbing her hand, he pulled her out of the water and deeper into the trees.
It was a fairy-tale forest of the bleakest kind. Flying monkeys. Amber visualized the creatures. They were bound to appear any minute.
A snake dropped from of a tree directly ahead of her. She almost stepped on it. A scream rose, but she swallowed it before it escaped.
The guns weighed her down. Thankfully, Gage was carrying the heavier rifles. He also had the transponder she’d been wearing since…when?
Since a week or two, maybe more, before she’d been whisked out of Las Vegas. She remembered buying it, and two others. One black, one blue, one purple. She used one or the other of them all the time. She didn’t like her hair falling in her eyes, but she didn’t like it short, either. Problem solved with a simple band, or so she’d thought.
They ran on, dipping and weaving, never traveling in a straight line. Once again, her lungs wanted to blow apart. But fear and a strong desire to live spurred her on. How could a band used to hold hair in a ponytail have been bugged?
Rachel had been with her when she’d bought them… But no, she wouldn’t go there.
“Gage, I can’t…” She panted.
“Yes, you can.” He held tight to her hand.
And only paused when a scream cut through the nighttime cacophony of the swamp. One long, piercing shriek that Amber recognized instantly as Rachel’s.
…
“Go ahead and scream.” The hand that had grabbed her by the hair yanked her to a halt. “Scream your head off. Give her a location.”
Rachel twisted in his grasp and screamed again when he gave his wrist a vicious snap.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “You can have my Porsche if you let me go. Sell it.”
“I don’t want your Porsche. I want your sister. My life’s worth a helluva lot more than a Porsche to me.”
Her voice reverberated. “Bobby Lee wanted to make her come to New Orleans looking for me. I said yes, but I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to get away.”
“Gee, that’s nice.” Another mean twist, another scream. “Any particular reason you’re sharing this with me?”
Was there? “I didn’t love Owen just for his money,” she blurted out. “I wanted to be his business partner. But now… Bobby Lee said the scuttlebutt is that Owen’s falling out of favor with his boss. Someone will have to take his place eventually. Maybe it could be us.”
“So you’re willing to turn your sister in.”
“Maybe I am. I mean, why not?”
The hand holding her hair released her. Rachel sagged with relief. Poorly controlled hysteria washed through her in giant waves. She had no idea what she was saying or why. And a moment later, she had nothing but stars in her head.
He slapped her so hard, she lost her footing and fell.
“You are some bitch.” He sneered. “But it doesn’t matter. Babble away all day. I’m not Bobby Lee or Owen Fixx.” He showed her his teeth. “What I am is hungry for a great big slice of cunt pie. And baby, you’re going to help me get it.”
…
They wouldn’t make it to Belmar. Gage understood that even as they ran. The swamp itself would have to do. Fortunately, there were no shacks or houses, so it was unlikely any bystanders would be dragged into the looming nightmare. There was only Rachel, a group of determined gunmen, and Amber’s instinctive response to the sound of her sister’s scream.
“Where did it come from?” she demanded. She didn’t stop running, but he knew she wanted to.
He gave her a firm tug. “They won’t kill her as long as she keeps screaming. They’re probably encouraging her, hoping to lure you in.”
They stopped for breath on a weed-filled embankment alongside a slow-moving waterway.
“We need a boat,” Gage
remarked. “Do you see anything?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But the waterway expands to the right. Maybe we’ll find something that way.”
Rachel screamed again, and Gage felt Amber shudder.
“They’re using her,” he reminded her. “Try to bear that in mind. I want to find a place where I can see them coming. We can pick some of them off if we have the right kind of shelter. Barring that, we need to lose them. Another vehicle would be helpful.”
“Or that boat you mentioned.”
“In the swamp, a boat’s a vehicle. You ready?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Standing, Gage turned right, but he didn’t move as quickly as before. Something felt wrong to him. The crickets weren’t chirping, at least not the ones in the immediate vicinity.
“What is it?” Amber bumped into his arm when he broke stride and slowed to a jog.
“Quiet.”
She glanced behind them, past him, into the bushes and trees. “I don’t see anything.”
You never did, Gage reflected, when the person after you was a pro. And more so when those pros thought the way you did.
“Fuck.” He said it softly and shrugged a pair of the rifles from his shoulder.
Rachel screamed again, far in the distance. Amber looked toward the sound, Gage didn’t. He heard the bushes ahead rustle, saw a man step out. The man had his assault rifle raised and pointed right at Amber.
Following the direction of his steady gaze, Amber finally spotted the man, as well.
“You?” While she seemed surprised, Gage really wasn’t.
“Yeah, me.”
Was there a hint of apology in his features? If there was, it came and went in a blink. The clouds had broken up enough for the moon to beam down over the swamp. Over the man in front of them. A man Gage thought he knew. A man he trusted.
Abel Bodine.
Chapter Twenty
“Why?” Gage’s one-word question said it all. But the answer was obvious to Amber. Money. Far too much of it to resist. Abel had an ex with expensive taste. Hadn’t that been mentioned several times while they’d been at his lodge? He wanted her back, and that would require cash.
Maybe it would work. There was little chance that Owen would pay up, but the mere idea of so much cash had blinded people before. Which was undoubtedly why Owen had made the reward such an outrageous amount.