by Marton, Dana
“It’s in there, I swear. I saw Akeem carry the briefcases in.”
Jake fixed her with a hard look, and hesitated for a moment. “If you’re playing for time—” He kicked the empty bag viciously but then went back in.
She inched closer to the mess on the ground—all of Akeem’s supplies—looking for anything she could use to cut her ropes or as a weapon. Food, flashlight, first-aid kit, extra blankets—not exactly a treasure trove of possibilities.
Then her gaze went to the dead guy who stared blankly into the night, his body twisted at an unnatural angle. She pressed her lips tight.
Akeem had taken his gun, but he still had Akeem’s knife sticking out of his throat. She needed to overcome her revulsion and grab that somehow, because in seconds Jake would have the briefcases and would be deciding whether or not to let her live. She wasn’t too optimistic about her prospects.
She shuffled toward the body, bent and reached for the knife’s handle, froze when Jake whooped in the shack, held her breath and threw herself over the dead guy as Jake was coming out.
“What in hell are you doing to him?”
“I tripped.” She flailed. “Yuck. Oh, God. Please get me up. Get me up!”
Jake laughed at her as he hurried by and put the briefcases in the pickup.
She had seconds only. She groaned with frustration when the knife wouldn’t come easily. Her hand brushed against the man’s front pocket. He had something in there. An empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She pocketed the latter. Maybe she could weaken her ropes with a flame if Jake got distracted by something long enough.
She moved back to the knife while pretending that she was trying to push herself up and away. Jake’s boots crunched on the small rocks. He was coming back to her.
“All things considered, what you’d tell the cops and whatever, I think I prefer you dead.” His voice was cold and hard. “One less witness if this ever comes to trial.”
Her fingers wrapped around the knife’s handle and it moved at last. But by the time she turned around, Jake already had the gun pointed at her head. He took in the knife with a surprised look.
“Too late, but it could have been a good move.” He cocked the gun.
She lurched forward blindly, her feet still tied. This was the end. She had seconds. Akeem hadn’t made it back. But she couldn’t give up the fight, not even as she braced for death. She stabbed, kicked and screamed, but no longer saw Jake. She brought Christopher’s sweet face up in her mind instead, wanted that to be the last thing she thought of before she died. Then the shot did go off finally, and she went down, hitting the ground like a sack of horse feed, gasping for air.
Jake’s weight was crushing her lungs.
A second passed before she got her bearings and shoved him off, only to see Akeem running toward her in the moonlight.
She cut herself free from the ropes at last and stood as Akeem reached them, his gun still trained on Jake.
“Are you all right?” He rolled Jake over with the tip of his boot, made sure he was truly dead before letting his gaze move to her, then drawing her into his arms.
She took only a second to scan him, to make sure he didn’t have any major injuries. He walked and talked, she reassured herself. “Christopher is out there.” She was pulling away already.
She reached for the flashlight that was among Akeem’s scattered supplies on the ground, disappointment slicing into her when she realized Jake had broken it when he’d kicked it around.
“Let’s go and find him. Which way?” Akeem was collecting Jake’s gun and searching his pockets, his movements stiff. He might not have life-threatening injuries, but he was beaten and bloody.
She glanced toward the first-aid kit, for a moment torn between helping him and rushing out into the night yelling her son’s name.
He caught her. “We don’t have time for that.” He was opening Jake’s cell phone. “Flint,” he told her as he dialed, then talked into the phone when the call was picked up. “We’re at the old refinery. We need everything you’ve got, choppers, ground vehicles, whatever. Christopher is lost somewhere around here.” He listened. “She’s fine.” He listened again. “Yeah, I know it’s hard to find in the dark. I’ll send a beacon. You won’t be able to miss it.”
With that, he hung up and reached for a blanket from his camping supplies, ripped a long strip off, walked it to the pickup, unscrewed the cap on the gas tank and shoved one end deep inside before going around and getting a fistful of papers from the glove compartment. Then he opened the hood and bent under it.
“What are you doing?” She moved closer and watched him pull wires.
“Trying to get a spark.”
And she understood at last. “How about this?” She pulled the lighter from her pocket.
“You’re brilliant.” He kissed her hard on the mouth as he took it and went back. “Start running.”
“One more thing.” She moved to the cab and pulled the two briefcases from behind the front seat, then took off.
He waited until she was a good hundred yards away, lit the end of the strip of cloth then hurried after her. They had maybe two hundred feet between them and the pickup before it exploded and lit up the night sky.
The sound of a helicopter came from a distance, filling her stomach with dread. No way Flint could have gotten here this fast. “Who is that?”
“Probably the boss, coming to pick up his money.” Jake took the briefcases from her and doubled his speed. “Jake wasn’t the brains behind the kidnapping.”
They had no time for her to ask where and how he’d gotten the information, and for the moment it didn’t much matter.
The chopper dipped lower, apparently having noticed them in the light of the flames. Then whoever was up there opened fire.
SHE RAN BLINDLY, too scared to think.
“We need to split up,” Akeem shouted behind her.
She heard him, but couldn’t make herself go in any other direction except the way she had sent Christopher. He must have understood, because after a moment, he veered off sharply to the right.
She glanced back in time to see him run toward a clump of low bushes and dive among them, bringing up one of the briefcases for protection. The chopper went after him. Her heart about stopped. What was he doing? He would have been better off staying a moving target.
But when he returned fire at the chopper, and after a few seconds the helicopter lifted higher then banked to the left and pulled away, she realized he was doing the exact right thing, as he had been doing since he had shown up at the farmhouse and offered his money and his life to help her.
That they were still alive was a miracle. But they didn’t have Christopher. She kept going, knowing Akeem would catch up with her, and he did within minutes.
“Christopher?” she yelled into the night. “Christopher, honey?”
He moved off and gathered some dried branches from the bushes surrounding them, lit some shriveled leaves that still clung to the tips and used the makeshift torch to light their way. “He’ll see this from farther away.”
Provided that he was nearby. He was just a four-year-old out in the dark. He could have veered off course, gone in circles for all she knew. He’d gone off over half an hour ago. She would not think that he could have already been carried off by a coyote or a cougar, or bitten by a snake and lying crumpled under a bush somewhere.
“Christopher?” Akeem called out. His voice was deeper, probably carried farther in the night.
She listened carefully for a response that didn’t come.
They walked on, taking turns calling out, stopped every once in a while to listen, but heard nothing beyond the usual night noises of the desert. They met no wildlife, which gave her hope, although all their yelling was probably responsible for that. They had likely scared every living thing away.
They moved pretty fast, rapidly approaching the limit of how far a little boy could have gotten in the given time. Her hope was dwindling with each
stretch of dirt they covered now, fear gripping her heart tighter and tighter.
“Christopher?” She was hoarse. They both were.
“Mom?” A pipsqueak of a voice came from above.
“Christopher.” She searched the branches above frantically. They were in a sparse grove of trees. “Christopher?” And then she saw a bulk on one of the branches.
It moved.
“I’m too scared to come down, Mom.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll catch you.” Akeem tossed his latest torch—he’d had to make a few as they’d kept burning down—and stood right under the spot, holding his arms out. “Just jump. I’ll be right here.”
Christopher hesitated. He didn’t know Akeem all that well, Taylor realized. He’d been all alone in the dark, scared, traumatized from being kidnapped.
“We’ll catch you together.” She moved over and reached her arms up. “We are here now, honey. You don’t have to worry about anything. You can trust Akeem. We can trust him.”
“Are the bad men here?” He still hung on. “I’m scared of the bad men, Mom.”
The fear in his voice squeezed her insides. “The bad men are gone. They can never hurt us again.”
And then he shifted, and the next thing she knew, he was dropping into her arms, into Akeem’s arms, which he held below hers to support them. She held Christopher as Akeem held the both of them. She soaked in the moment and let relief wash over her. The rush of emotions was making her knees go weak.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I couldn’t find Uncle Flint.” He snuggled into her, burrowing against her chest, his arms so tight around her neck that she couldn’t breathe.
Which she didn’t mind at all. She could do without air. She couldn’t do without Christopher.
“I’ve got you, honey. I’ve got you,” she said, then couldn’t stop saying it. “I’m here, baby. Everything is okay.”
The sound of a chopper came, approaching rapidly. Her heart beat wildly, adrenaline rushing into her limbs all over again.
Then that first rush of fear hardened into resolve. She had her son back. Nobody was going to take him away from her this time.
“Get down.” Akeem was covering them with his own body as soon as she squatted.
But he stood again after a few moments, and she recognized the sound of this chopper, too, the F28F Falcon Flint sometimes used to herd cattle. Next to Christopher’s voice, it was the sweetest sound she’d heard in days.
“That would be your uncle Flint,” Akeem told Christopher and picked up his torch, grabbing her hand and leading them out into the open. “You are safe now. We are going home.”
The chopper circled, then began lowering to the ground, the noise of the rotors too loud now to speak and be understood, so she couldn’t thank him again.
But Akeem’s eyes caught hers for a moment over Christopher’s blond locks. And held.
Everything they’d gone through in the past three days was there in the air between them. Even the words they had left unspoken.
And she realized that maybe, just maybe, Akeem Abdul was better than all of her girlish fantasies. She had trusted her own life and her son’s to him. Maybe she could trust him with her heart.
Chapter Eleven
“So you think it’s all connected?” Flint asked after the police and Gary had taken off. Gary had stayed sober for his son’s return. Maybe there was hope for the guy yet. Dr. Hardin, the ranch’s very own physician, was gone now, too, having cleared Christopher and checked out Taylor and even Akeem, although he had resisted to the bitter end.
Taylor’s pleading had done him in. There wasn’t much in this world he could deny those cornflower-blue eyes.
“There was this guy in a chopper before Flint got there. He shot at us at first, but when I returned fire, he took off,” he told his friends.
“And?” asked Jack Champion, another member of the Aggie Four.
The three of them were together again, and like every time they gathered, Viktor’s absence was a tangible presence in the room, something they all thought of but none would speak about. They were sitting in the living room at Diamondback, the house quiet around them.
“Just didn’t seem like he was fighting all that hard for the money,” Akeem explained. “Or that they had been in a rush to get the money in the first place. The front men, Jake and the rest of those lowlifes, yes. But I almost feel like the boss, whoever the bastard is, was playing for time.”
“For what?” Flint asked. “What did time get him? He didn’t get anything.”
He gave that some thought, sitting in silence that was disturbed only by the faint whirring of the air conditioner. Suspicion built with each new thought. “If we’re right and the boss was directing not just his men on the ground, but also had some influence with the police, he could have sent the cops to bust up that first exchange at the boulders.”
“If he didn’t want an early exchange, why did he agree in the first place?” Jack asked. “Would have been a hell of a lot simpler just to say no when you asked.”
“He didn’t agree. I negotiated that with his guy on the phone.” Akeem rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow as he thought. “What did we miss out on in the past couple of days?”
“Other than the horse auction in Saudi you were so hell-bent on? How much potential profit did you lose on that?” Jack was somber, that famous smile of his that sent women swooning on a regular basis nowhere in evidence these days.
Akeem shrugged. His business mattered little when compared to Taylor and Christopher. But he would definitely look into that. He hadn’t advertised that he would be bidding, but neither had he kept it a secret. It would be easy enough to find out who won the horses he’d had an interest in. “I’ll do some research on that and let you know if something looks off there. What else?”
“I was supposed to go to Rasnovia.” Jack grew even more thoughtful. “Our latest venture there hit a snag. Antitrust stuff. It’s insane, just made-up charges that are coming out of nowhere. We’re not that big. I was supposed to testify.”
“Right.” Akeem remembered now. He’d meant to talk to Flint about that when he’d driven out to the ranch then forgot about everything but helping Taylor when she’d run through that front door and into his arms.
Rasnovia.
Now that had some potential. There’d been a lot of trouble there lately. Viktor. His thoughts darkened. He hated to keep secrets from his best friends, but he could not do otherwise this once, not after having given his word.
Soon.
He told himself to be patient. It wouldn’t take long before those secrets were revealed to all.
“I have to be back in Greece for an eight o’clock meeting in the morning. Then I have to make it over to Rasnovia to see what I can salvage from the antitrust hearing I missed.” Jack was standing already. He clapped Akeem on the shoulder affectionately as he walked by. “Good to have you back in one piece.”
“Thanks for rushing to the rescue,” Akeem said.
Jack’s choppers had been out there, too, combing the desert, going up in the air tonight against a police order. Having them around meant that they could divide the area up among them and Flint, which allowed Flint to find Taylor, Christopher and him that much sooner.
“Let us know what happens,” Flint called after Jack, then leaned forward on the couch as the screen door banged closed behind their friend. “Do you think that’s it? Rasnovia? We owe it to Viktor’s memory to help that country. I’m not going to let anyone stop us from doing that.”
“I think we need to check out the possibility.” Akeem could think of a whole list of Rasnovian politicians and businessmen who might resent their interference in the country. There were a couple of budding capitalists who were keen on gaining financial advantage, and didn’t much care about the means.
“Sounds like a place to start.” Flint sounded bone tired after working twenty-four/seven to get around the police in the past two days, and get into Hell’s Porch. He had
n’t been able to get the chopper in the air until today, but he’d been out there in his truck, every day, searching. He looked bone tired.
And so was Akeem. “I should get going, too.” He glanced toward the stairs one last time before he stood.
Flint got to his feet as well, emotions filling those famously hard eyes all of a sudden as he drew a deep breath. “I never said thanks.”
“You don’t have to.” He hesitated. “You mind if I check in on Taylor and Christopher?” He found it hard to leave without seeing them safe one last time.
Once they’d returned to the ranch in the chopper, the police and Dr. Hardin had separated them quickly enough, then Christopher had been packed off to bed and Taylor had gone up with him, stayed up with him. She probably wouldn’t let her son out of her sight for a long time to come. He couldn’t blame her.
“You should stay the night,” Flint said. “Look at yourself. You’re not fit to drive.”
Which was bogus, and they both knew it. Flint had seen him drive and do more than that in worse shape before. They’d gotten into a few scrapes during their college years.
“I should—”
“It’s been a long time, Akeem. Don’t wait so long again.”
The air seemed stuck in his throat. Did Flint know he lusted after his little sister? And he didn’t mind? “You think—”
“She’s my sister. You’re my best friend.” Flint shook his head with a grin. “Guest bedroom is up the stairs, to the left.” And walked away toward his wing of the house where Lora Leigh no doubt waited for him in bed.
He stopped before he would have turned the corner. “If you leave, do me a favor and set the alarm on your way out. Well, set the alarm either way, once you’re done thinking. But if you do go up those stairs—” he flashed a meaningful look “—I do expect there to be a wedding.”
Akeem was too stunned to say anything back.
He stood on the spot for minutes after Flint was gone. He wanted Taylor, had always wanted her, wanted her forever. There had never been a doubt in his mind about that. In the past couple of days, he had realized that she was different now than she’d been before. And if possible, he loved her even more.