Love Inspired Suspense July 2015 #2

by Terri Reed

  Olivia was standing in the pit of his living room foundations. Her head was bowed toward the ground. A man in a fake police uniform with messy blond hair pointed a gun at her. The sight of her was enough to make hope leap in Daniel’s chest. Olivia was trapped. She was in danger. He didn’t know how to reach her, help her, to even let her know he was there.

  But thank You, God. Olivia is alive!

  The man moved to the side and Daniel felt the flicker of joy die in his chest.

  There was a shovel in Olivia’s hands.

  Her captor turned.

  It was Jesse.

  He was making Olivia dig her own grave.

  *

  The shovel shook in her hands. The gun pressed into the back of her head.

  “Keep digging.”

  She gritted her teeth. Her stomach was still upset from whatever had been on that cloth he’d clamped over her face. But it couldn’t match the turmoil in her mind.

  Jesse.

  How had she not recognized him before? The angry fake cop with the bushy fake beard who’d tried to stop her from following Brian to the parking garage was the same gravelly voiced man who’d threatened her over the phone, tried to kidnap her outside the diner and demanded the photos over walkie-talkie—and the same fake, charming man she’d fought when she’d caught him alone with Sarah.

  The only thing he’d never been able to hide was the hatred in his cold gray eyes. Now they were alone, and the mask was finally gone as he ordered her to dig a hole in the foundation of Daniel’s living room for him to bury her in.

  The hole at her feet was at least three feet long and almost two feet deep now. She kept digging. Slowly. Buying time. The moment she’d been lifted out of the trunk and felt her feet touch ground, her first impulse had been to run.

  I would have done it if not for Daniel’s words shooting through my brain. “Sometimes running is what keeps you alive. But sometimes running can get you killed.”

  She hadn’t taken his words to heart when she’d first heard them. In fact, not long after he’d said them she’d run toward a kidnapper’s car thinking it was Ricky’s and then pelted into the abandoned strip mall to escape Jesse, without even realizing the headlights ahead of her were Daniel’s. Those same words had flashed again through her mind when Ricky had run toward the road and into danger.

  So when Jesse dragged me out of the trunk and dropped my feet on the ground, I paused. Long enough to think. Long enough to realize her wobbly legs would’ve dropped her to the ground before she could get very far. Just long enough to spot Shorty and Brute in the shadows and to notice when Jesse sent Brute to watch the road and left Shorty on the front porch. Long enough to remind herself that if Jesse thought she was cooperating, it would buy time for a rescue. Which might be the only reason she was still in one piece and digging this hole.

  “So you decided you needed to kill me when Sarah told you Daniel wanted her to meet a reporter who’d survived the parking garage bombing? You realized I might be able to identify you as the cop I’d argued with just before Brian was killed, right? I might even have a picture of you following him to his death on my camera. Must have scared you to realize someone could link you to Brian’s murder. Is that why you used Brian’s computer to invite everyone up here for a fake party? To pressure Sarah into helping you kill me?” No answer. She dug a few more shovels full. “No wonder she looked terrified when I walked in on you two in the bedroom. Probably worried what two murders would do to her image.”

  “Shut up about Sarah.” The sound of gritted teeth in his voice told her more than any words could about just how accurate she had been. “Keep digging or I’ll cuff you upside the head.”

  He’d cuffed her a few times already. So many times in fact, that she was now able to sense it coming. The gun would leave her skull. His arm would pull back. Then a sudden blow would snap her head forward, filling her vision with stars.

  There was a sound of a voice outside. A muffled syllable. Nothing more. A dull thud of something hitting the ground. Then the slightest tapping sound, like fingers drumming on the windowpane. She pressed her lips together and counted. One long. Three short. Three long.

  “Rumor has it that all this links back to organized crime.” Olivia dug her shovel deep into the soil, fighting to keep her body language neutral, not to give anything away. Her hands tightened their grip on the handle. “But let me guess. You’re a very minor player in a big operation, which is why you had to hire an incompetent gang of thugs to do your dirty work. Oh, your bosses are into big things—counterfeit bills, money laundering, drug trafficking, illegal gambling. But you, you’re a nobody. A loser who got embedded in some minor construction company because he wasn’t even making enough money on crime to get by. But you met a pretty and vulnerable teenage girl with a big inheritance coming to her and realized you could use her, her money and her company to really get somewhere. Get her to fall in love with you, and you’d finally be able to make a big name for yourself in organized crime, laundering money and who knows what else through her company. Must have driven you mad when the tiny little woman you were trying to kill managed to pull you off her and get the better of you.”

  “I said, shut up!” The gun pulled away from her head just long enough for him to bring his arm back to swing again.

  This time, she wasn’t about to give him a chance to let him land the blow.

  Olivia swung around, ducked under his fist and threw a shovel of dirt in his face. He swore and grabbed his eyes. She brought the shovel down hard on the side of his head. The gun flew from his hands and disappeared into the foundations. Jesse landed on his knees and rolled onto his back, groaning in pain.

  Olivia scrambled across the dirt floor.

  A tall, broad-shouldered figure stepped into the doorway, backlit by the morning sun.

  A cry left her lips. “Daniel!”

  “Hello, you.” His hand reached down and grabbed hers. In one swift motion, he pulled her up out of the pit and into the strength of his arms. The smile that filled his eyes set lights dancing inside her heart. “You have no idea how happy and relieved I am to see you.”

  “Me, too.” Despite the pain and fear she couldn’t stop an exhausted smile from brushing her lips. “Where’s Sarah?”

  “Safe but under arrest.” His face darkened. “She was working with Jesse.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He sighed. “Me, too.”

  Jesse was still down on the ground at the other end of the living room pit, swearing as he searched for his gun.

  “Are there more of them?” Daniel asked.

  She nodded. “Brute is patrolling the woods. If we’re not careful, we’ll run right into him.”

  “Too bad. I’d have loved to have the time to go deal with Jesse properly. But I don’t want to risk Brute coming back shooting while I’m busy knocking Jesse out.” Daniel pulled her out onto the porch and slammed the front door, then used a bungee cord to attach the handle to the railing. “Locking him in will have to do for now. Won’t last long. But it should buy us a small head start.”

  She glanced around the lawn. Shorty was lying on the driveway. His eyes were closed but his chest was still moving. “Once I heard him fall and you tap my initials, I knew it was time to get ready to run.”

  “You managed to catch all that?”

  “Of course. The hardest part was trying to think like you, pay attention and fight the urge to just run off wildly.”

  “Well, we both seem to have learned something from each other.” Daniel’s hand tightened in hers. “Come on, we’ve got to run. I did manage to grab Shorty’s gun, but I’m hardly going to launch into a gun battle with illegal weapons against a killer if I can help it.”

  A gunshot blast sounded from the living room behind them. The door frame exploded into splinters. Looked as though Jesse had managed to find his gun.

  Then a second bullet flew past from the other direction. Brute was running down the driveway toward them. He
was still probably too far away to get in a fatal shot. But he was closing in fast. One gunman behind them. One in front of them and getting closer.

  They were trapped in the middle with nowhere to run.

  Olivia wheeled around to Daniel. “Now what?”

  “Up.” Daniel jumped on the porch railing. “We’ve got to climb.”

  NINETEEN

  “Come on.” Daniel pulled her up onto the railing. “We’re going to climb onto the porch roof and up onto the second floor.”

  “What?” How was that not a death trap? “We’ll be cornered up there with two men shooting at us.”

  “Please.” He reached up and grabbed the shallow roof above their heads. His eyes grew darker as they fixed on her face. “I have my firearm stashed up there. I took out their explosives guy and destroyed the only bomb Shorty had on him, which he never even got a chance to set. Considering how wet the wood is, unless they brought a foolproof backup bomb, or they’ve got a major accelerant handy, I can get up there, arm myself and come back faster than they can set this place on fire. Trust me. It’s the best option we’ve got.”

  I want to trust you. But this is crazy! “You said the second and third floor were in such bad shape we were likely to fall through.”

  “I know.” He let go of her hand and hauled himself up onto the roof above her head. “But I also went through and painstakingly marked on the floor where all the main supporting walls were. If we stick to my path, we won’t fall through.”

  She scrambled up onto the railing and reached up with both hands. He grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her up onto the porch roof. It shook under their weight.

  Jesse broke through the door beneath them. Brute shot toward the house again, but only managed to elicit a burst of swearwords from Jesse.

  “This way!” Daniel yanked a window open. They tumbled into a huge master bedroom. The crescent-shaped room had huge windows and several boards missing from the floor. Fluorescent spray paint traced a single vertical line across the room. So not a lot of supporting walls under this room, then.

  She leaped to her feet only to feel her right foot punch a hole through the worn floorboards all the way to her knee. Daniel grabbed her hand and helped her out. “Careful. Probably best we stay on our hands and knees until we’re out in the hallway.”

  They crawled along the thick fluorescent line and through the doorway. A bullet flew up through the floor where her foot had been. They reached the hallway and started running single file. Her eyes barely took in the rooms on either side, drinking in the beautiful, ragged empty spaces with no doors, holes in floors and huge broken windows.

  There was shouting beneath their feet, followed by a blast of gunfire and the sound of floorboards splintering behind them. They hit the end of the hallway. A door flew open in front of them. Brute was standing there at the top of the stairs with a gun in his hand. He leveled them in his sights.

  “Get down!” Daniel yelled. He raised his hand above his head and spun something around like a slingshot. She dropped to the floor just in time to see it fly through the air. The projectile caught the huge thug in the chest. Brute grunted, fell back, then suddenly dropped from view like a stone.

  A deafening crash filled the air.

  They reached the doorway and looked down through a gaping hole at the pile of broken timber that had moments ago been the rickety staircase. She grabbed the wall to steady herself. Brute had fallen straight through.

  “Told you those stairs were dangerously unsafe.” Daniel’s hand touched hers. “I just pray he manages to stay alive until we can get out of there and send an ambulance for him. He might be a killer, but I’m not.”

  “What did you throw at him?”

  “A wrench attached to a bungee cord. I just wanted to knock him out, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised his fall took down the stairs.”

  A bullet shattered the door frame beside them. Daniel yanked her back against the wall. A second hole appeared in the ground by their feet. All three of the Faceless Crew were now accounted for. But Jesse was still shooting. She didn’t want to know how many holes it would take through the floor before the whole thing collapsed beneath them.

  “This way.” Daniel pulled her through a doorway and into a narrow staircase. “We need to keep climbing.”

  They couldn’t head down. They couldn’t stay where they were. But would climbing up higher make them any safer? Daniel was already heading up the narrow, darkened staircase. “Hug the wall and watch your step. Some of the stairs are missing.”

  She climbed up behind him. They came out into a small, dusty attic. The ceiling slanted steeply above their heads. A large window looked out at one end of the room. Rays of sunshine spread out across the dingy floor.

  Daniel looked around the empty space and groaned.

  “What?”

  “I kept my hunting shotgun up here. It was in a locked box under a tarp. It was the most obscure, unlikely place I could think to hide it, because I didn’t want Sarah stumbling upon it. She could be pretty nosey but she knew she wasn’t allowed up here. Figured she’d be afraid of crossing the floor. Guess I was wrong.” He sighed. “I do have the gun I lifted from Shorty. It’s a horrible piece, totally illegal and only has two bullets left. But it’s better than nothing. At least we managed to take out the Faceless Crew, so it’s now just Jesse we have to worry about. Sarah made it sound as if they were planning on blowing the house up, and when I took out Shorty he had an explosive device on him. Looked as though he hadn’t set it yet. I managed to slice up the wires pretty good, then yanked the whole contraption apart and tossed it in a puddle. Hopefully, Jesse doesn’t have the technical know-how to put it back together.”

  Daniel crossed over carefully to the window at the front of the house and looked out. She did, too, but saw nothing but an empty driveway fading into the tree line. More bullets sounded below them. Then came the sound of Jesse bellowing and shouting words she couldn’t make out. Daniel sat on the floor against the wall and gestured for her to join him. She sat beside him. Her head dropped against his shoulder. “I’m really sorry about Sarah.”

  “Me, too.” He slid one arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. “Ever since I became her guardian, I had this feeling I was just treading water trying to keep her out of jail. I think I had mostly forgiven myself for everything that had happened with Mona, but I hadn’t quite been ready to get rid of this nagging feeling that if I’d only loved her just a little bit harder, she’d have given up the drugs and the partying, and her life would’ve turned out differently. I think I needed to spend the past few years working this hard at taking care of Sarah for God to show me that no matter how hard you try to guide someone’s life, people are still going to make their own choices. You helped me see that, too.” His arm tightened around her. “I’m just thankful Sarah’s still alive and safe in police custody. Maybe she’ll get the kind of help she needs behind bars.”

  “Now what?” She couldn’t remember ever feeling so trapped and helpless. There was nowhere left to run. Nowhere to go. Yet somehow with Daniel beside her, sitting in the attic of this ramshackle old house, she felt the most at home she’d ever been.

  “First we pray and thank God we’re here, still alive, still together. Then we make a plan for getting out of here alive.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment and lifted her heart toward God as Daniel whispered a prayer into the darkness. They squeezed each other’s hands tighter than she’d ever held on to anything in her life.

  Lord, I’m not ready to die. Not here. Not now. But thank You that I met a man like Daniel. Thank You for showing me there are people I can rely on when the world all falls apart. Thank You that he and I are in this together.

  Then she felt Daniel’s lips brush against her hair. “We’ll figure something out. I drove Ricky’s car here and it’s parked not that far away, if we can get down safely and run to it.”

  The sound of gunfire stopped below them. She d
idn’t know if that was a good or a bad sign. “Does anyone else know we’re here?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Trent took off to coordinate with the police and turn over Rake. Your sister took Ricky to the hospital. The bulletproof vest saved his life. We just have to pray they’ll put two and two together and figure out where I went.” His hand brushed up her neck and under her chin. She turned her face toward his. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d handled things differently. Maybe if I had, we wouldn’t be here. I wish I hadn’t tried to stop you from following your gut. I wish I hadn’t told you to run—”

  His voice caught in his throat. Her fingers ran up the back of his neck.

  “And I wish I hadn’t rushed up here Friday night with Ricky to interview you the way I did without clearing it with my editor,” she said softly. “We both made a lot of decisions, some right, some wrong. But we’re here now, and like you said, we’ll find a way out of this.”

  “Yeah.” His voice grew husky. “At least we’re together now.”

  His face bent toward hers. Then she felt his lips brush over hers.

  Something crashed outside.

  “What was that?” Daniel jumped up and walked over to the window. She followed just as an angry shout filled the air.

  “You want to stay up there? Fine, then you can die up there!” Jesse was standing on the lawn, staring up at them. In one hand he clutched a gun. In the other he held up a jug of gasoline. “You may have destroyed my bomb, but I’m going to set fire to the house. I promised I’d burn you down. One way or another, you’re going to burn!”

  She watched in horror as Jesse dragged the can up onto the porch. The smell of gasoline wafted up toward them. He sloshed gas wildly over the wood. The stone walls themselves wouldn’t catch fire. But the blaze would still burn the floorboards out from under their feet—if the smoke didn’t choke them first. Even if they climbed to the roof, Jesse could watch and shoot while the house raged into an inferno beneath them.

  They’d run out of time. They’d run out of options.

  In moments the porch would be ablaze.