by B. J Daniels
“I know. Lonny should have spoken up, man. He shouldn’t have let you walk into that, especially after he knew how bad it could get. But you know Lonny.”
Yes, he did. Lonny had obviously carried more resentment than any of them had known during high school.
Tucker turned to leave.
“Wait, that’s it?” Jayce asked behind him.
“I’ll be back. Let’s just hope your story checks out.” He slammed out of the lawyer’s office with every intention of going straight over to Rip’s body shop even though he figured Cal and Lonny were probably there and it might get ugly.
But as he reached his pickup, he saw that the truck was sitting at an odd angle. He swore as he bent down and saw that his right front tire had been cut. He glanced around, wondering who could have done this. Cal? Lonny?
Swearing, he opened his pickup to get out his tools but stopped short. The sweet scent hit him first. Jasmine. Then he saw the dusky-rose-colored teddy hanging over the bottom of his steering wheel.
His gaze shot up. He’d half expected to see Madeline standing on the curb laughing. But as he looked around again, he didn’t see her. But he suspected she was somewhere watching him and enjoying this.
He hoped she enjoyed watching him change his tire. For the time it took him, he cursed her black heart, telling himself he couldn’t wait until they met again.
* * *
KATE LEFT HER father’s hospital room feeling a little better than when she’d arrived. Earlier he’d looked so pale. He’d always been a large man, but it was as if he’d shrunk in that big white-sheeted bed with all those wires and tubes running from him.
But his color was better and the doctor had assured her he was resting peacefully. This time, he really had had a heart attack.
“He’s going to have to make some changes in his lifestyle,” the doctor had told her mother before Mamie had to leave for a social engagement she couldn’t cancel.
“Don’t worry,” her mother had told the doctor. “Kate will be joining her father in Washington, DC. She’ll see that he slows down, won’t you, dear?”
Kate had said nothing as she’d watched her mother leave. Now, as she walked toward the exit, she just wanted to go home and get some needed sleep. She’d tried to call Tucker but his phone had gone straight to voice mail. She’d left a message updating him on her father’s condition and telling him she was going to stay a few more days.
As she came around a corner in the hallway, she almost collided with her father’s personal assistant.
“I feel as if you’ve been dodging me,” Peter said. “You’ve been to see your father?”
“He’s better. I was just headed home to get some sleep.”
He raised a brow. “What’s going on, Katie?”
She grimaced at the use of her father’s pet name for her. “Peter, I don’t want to get into this here in the hospital hallway.”
“Fine, let’s go to dinner. But you can’t expect me to—”
“No dinner. Like I told you, I need sleep.”
“Yes, I can see that. Any reason you haven’t been getting enough, Katie?”
“My name is Kate. My father calls me Katie...” She took a breath and let it out. “Peter, I thought I made myself perfectly clear the last time we talked.”
“I’ll make a dinner reservation for tomorrow night because I haven’t had my say yet,” he said, pulling out his phone.
She groaned, not wanting to sit through a dinner with him. Nor did she want to get into it here in the hospital hallway.
“Katie—excuse me—Kate, your father’s heart attack isn’t a good time to make any big decisions.”
“Thank you for that expert advice. But, Peter, if this is about me going to DC to work for him—”
“Your head is in the wrong place right now.”
“Oh, I think I’ve never seen things more clearly,” she snapped. “You seem to think that we have some kind of...arrangement that is leading me to DC and to you as if my marrying you is some political deal you’ve made with my father. But we don’t.”
“It’s what your father wants. It’s what I want. You’ll see things differently once we’re in DC together. And once we’re engaged.” He started to go down on one knee, but she grabbed him and pulled him back up, amazed he would try this again.
“Listen to me,” she said, lowering her voice and looking around to make sure no one was watching. She’d spent her life in the public eye. Her father didn’t need any negative publicity right now.
“We are not a couple. We will never be a couple. I’m in love with someone else.” There, she said it.
“That cowboy from Gilt Edge?” He laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Katie. This is just some romantic fantasy that will quickly grow old. Like I said, you aren’t in the right frame of mind right now. Once you get over this silly quest of yours... Wait, where are you going?”
Kate had let go of him and now started past him for the elevator. “I’m not going to change my mind,” she said over her shoulder.
“At least let me walk you to your car.”
“Don’t bother.” As she reached the elevator, she changed her mind and took the stairs down the few floors, anxious to get out of the hospital and away from Peter and the demands her father had been making on her for years. She’d felt she couldn’t let her father down because she was all he had with her brother, Clay, gone.
Once past the outer door, she took a deep breath of the late-evening air. She was angry at herself because Peter’s words made her question herself. Her father wanted her in DC with him. He’d always said that was where her future career was waiting for her. A part of her had been excited about the prospect. Until she’d met Tucker.
Could she be happy in Gilt Edge as a cowboy’s wife?
She couldn’t believe how foolish that thought was. She reminded herself that Tucker was still in love with Madeline, who might be alive. Also, it wasn’t as if she and Tucker were at a place where she should even be thinking about being his wife.
Kate started for her car, telling herself she was too exhausted to even think, let alone plan her future with so much up in the air. The visitors’ part of the lot was empty this late at night. She hadn’t realized it was so late or so foggy. The streetlights cast an eerie glow in the fog that now blanketed the city.
As she walked toward her SUV, she couldn’t help still being angry with Peter. How dare he try to tell her when she should make decisions. Her father would be fine. Her mother... Well, Mamie always managed somehow. But things had changed.
Not for her parents. She doubted either of them could change even if they wanted. But Kate wasn’t the old Kate who’d stayed around, believing she had to fill in where her brother should have been.
When the time came, she’d decide what she wanted to do. Right now all she could think about was Tucker curled up in some warm soft bed. She hurried toward her SUV, anxious to reach home and her own bed. It surprised her. All these years of planning her retribution... She still wanted justice for her brother, but it was no longer the force that drove her each day.
What she wanted now was Tucker. The memory of being with him... For a moment she was back in that cabin, the fire crackling in the woodstove, her body wrapped in Tucker’s strong arms.
She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t paid any attention to the footfalls behind her until this moment.
The steps had quickened and were now right behind her. She spun around, thinking it would be Peter. The moment she realized it wasn’t, her hand went to her shoulder bag, but not quickly enough. The blow to the side of her head dazed her.
As she groped for her gun, her purse was jerked away. She struggled, kicking and fighting, as a second man came out of the trees and grabbed her from behind. Her lips opened, but her scream was muffled as a large hand clamped over her mouth. Like t
he first man, he wore a ski mask over his face.
“What you got in here you want so bad?” the first man asked. “What’s this? A gun?” He sounded shocked and offended that she would even think about pulling it on him.
“I could use some help here,” the second man said as she struggled to get free with every ounce of her strength.
“All right, all right.” The first man, the larger of the two, stepped forward and jabbed her arm with a needle. She fought as if her life depended on it because she had a bad feeling it did. But the drug was too powerful and so were the men.
As her body went limp, the darkness closed in and all she could think was, Tucker. I need you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ONCE TUCKER’S TIRE was changed, it was late, but that wasn’t going to stop him. Now more than ever, he wanted to talk to Rip. This was all about Madeline, but there was more than her involved. He didn’t think it was a coincidence that after he’d told Jayce he was going to talk to Rip, he’d come out to find his tire cut.
So who had Jayce called? Madeline? Or her accomplice? How deep was his old friend in all this?
The body shop itself was dark by the time he got there, but a light burned in the apartment upstairs. Tucker parked and got out. Gilt Edge wasn’t the kind of town that had a dangerous neighborhood. But there were good and bad areas in town. The good had neat, well-kept houses and yards. The bad had piles of junk, broken-down cars, dirt yards often with at least one big barking dog.
Rip lived in the large apartment over the shop just as his parents had until their divorce when only his father had lived there until his death. Tucker remembered Rip’s father as a disagreeable man with powerful, strong-looking arms and constant grime under his nails. Rip, even as big as he was by junior high school, was scared of his sour and often angry old man.
Tucker walked to the side of the building to where the stairs led up to the apartment. He could hear loud music as he took one step, then another. When he reached the top of the stairs, though, he stopped, surprised to find the music blaring—and the door standing open. All his instincts told him something was very wrong.
* * *
KATE FELT HERSELF going in and out of consciousness. She woke to the murmur of voices. For a few moments, she didn’t know where she was or what had happened. But it came back quickly when she realized that her hands were bound behind her, her mouth was gagged and something had been tied over her eyes.
Lying in the back of a lurching vehicle, her stomach roiling from whatever drug they’d injected her with and car sickness, she fought to not throw up.
“Stop complaining and just let me drive,” said a male voice from behind the wheel. She recognized the voice as the smaller of the two men.
“Come on, this is crazy. What are we supposed to do with her?”
“Keep your voice down.”
Kate heard the second man’s seat squeak as if he’d turned to look toward the back of what she realized must be a van. “She’s still out cold. If not dead. What did we shoot her up with, anyway?”
“Stop worrying so much.”
“Easy for you to say. I wish I’d never gotten involved in this. If anyone is to blame, it’s you.”
The sound of the motor drowned out whatever else they were saying as the driver slowed and then turned onto a bumpy gravel road. The engine roared, giving her the impression the van was climbing up a mountain road.
Her heart pounded, fear making her all the more sick to her stomach. Where were they taking her? And why had they abducted her to begin with?
* * *
STANDING AT THE open doorway to Rip’s apartment, the music was deafening. Since this part of town was more industrial, there were no close neighbors. Otherwise, there’d be a deputy here by now arresting someone for disturbing the peace.
Tucker knocked on the open door and knocked again as loudly as he could. Finally, he stepped in, fighting the urge to put his hands over his ears.
“Rip!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Rip!”
There was no one in the living room area and he couldn’t see into the other rooms from where he stood. He spotted the stereo, though, and quickly stepped to it and shut it off.
The silence was deafening. He let it sink in for a moment. “Rip?”
No answer.
Moving toward what appeared to be the kitchen, he called again. The first thing he noticed was the pizza and beer bottles on the table. It appeared that Rip had had a dinner guest.
Tucker touched one of the cans of beer. It was half-full, the can still cold to the touch. A good portion of the pizza was still congealing in its cardboard box, appearing that the meal had been interrupted.
“Rip?” He listened, but now, with the stereo off, he heard nothing. Wouldn’t someone have come out the moment they heard the stereo go off? And why so loud? Loud enough to drown out raised voices? Or gunshots?
He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as he moved down the deathly quiet hallway. Tucker knew he had no choice but to see what was wrong. Because something was very wrong here.
Maybe Rip had gotten a business call and he’d left to go pick up a wrecked car. But he’d seen the wrecker sitting out front as he’d come in. Or maybe they’d gone out back. There was a door off the kitchen that might be an exit from the apartment to the steep wooded hillside behind the shop. He tried to imagine something that would make Rip and his friend leave behind their beer and pizza to go out the back way unless...
Had they seen him coming? Known he was going to want answers? Had Jayce called Rip to warn him that Tucker was on his way? Why else would his tire have been slashed?
“Rip?” The sound of his own voice as he looked into each room was no longer comforting. Ahead, he could see one room at the end of the hall. The door was open. Tucker told himself that if he didn’t find anyone in it, he was out of there.
Fighting a bad feeling, he eased on down the hallway. He was almost to the open door when he heard a moan. He closed the distance to the doorway. The first thing he saw was blood, splotches of it on the dark filthy carpet. He hadn’t realized it was blood, though, until he saw it smeared on the wall. Next to him was one large handprint in deepening red.
A figure came flying out of a room. Tucker had no time to react. Caught off guard, he tried to duck. Something hard and cold struck him in the head before he was slammed backward. He went down hard as the person nimbly slipped past him and was gone.
As he fought to get to his feet and turned, all he got was a flash of dark clothing as the person turned into the kitchen. He heard the back door open and slam and the thunder of footfalls. By the time he reached the door and looked out, whoever it had been was long gone.
He was fumbling out his phone when he heard the sound of a moan again from down the hallway. He hurried back down the hallway to the last bedroom—the one the figure had come busting out of minutes before.
Rip lay on his back, one hand trying to hold his guts in from the long gash in his stomach. His eyes were open along with his mouth. Tucker pulled out his phone again and hit 911 as he rushed to Rip.
“Who did this?” he demanded as he grabbed some discarded clothing on the floor and tried to staunch the flow of blood. “Rip? Who did this?”
The big man’s lips moved. The word came out on a dying breath. “Madeline.”
Tucker felt a chill wrap its icy tentacles around his neck.
Rip grabbed his free hand, but his fingers loosened, his hand dropping to the floor as his eyes glazed over.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?” said a female voice on the phone.
* * *
BOUND, GAGGED BUT no longer blindfolded, Kate was dragged from the vehicle. She stumbled along what seemed to be a rocky path. Still weak and sick from the drug and the van ride, she fought to make sense of where she was and what was happening
.
She felt as if she’d been in the back of the van for hours. Her body ached. As she looked around in the darkness, she didn’t recognize her surroundings from anything she could see. The starlight was bright, a half-moon hanging over the mountain ahead of them.
That earlier feeling that she’d spent hours in the van came back to her in a rush. This wasn’t Helena with its fog and low clouds. But where had they brought her?
She knew her life might depend on knowing where she was being taken. If she had any hope of escaping... Escaping was her only hope since no one knew where she was. No one would be looking for her. Her mother would just assume she’d gone back to Gilt Edge—just as her father and Peter would. While Tucker would think she was in Helena with her father.
She felt a tremor of panic wind through her. She breathed in the night air, trying to keep calm. Pine trees. The air was colder here, too. They were in the mountains. She listened, praying there might be other people around. That if she got the chance to scream, someone would come to her aid.
But she heard nothing but the grunting and groaning of the men as they half dragged her up the mountainside to the flicker of the first man’s flashlight. She fought the terror at the back of her mind that she would die here in this isolated spot. That this was the end. That she would never see her family and friends. But mostly, she realized with growing panic, that she would never see Tucker again. He would never know what happened to her. No one would.
The thought was too much to bear that she might never see him again. That she might never get the chance to tell him how she felt about him.
Lost in her grief and panic, she hadn’t realized at first what she was hearing. Water. Rushing water. She took another step and the ground seemed to drop out from under her. Kate knew she would have fallen if one of the men hadn’t had hold of her. She saw then that she was standing on a precipice next to a waterfall. The rocky land dropped away below her as water roared off the mountain to pool far below her.