The Last Resort

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  He held a wet washcloth.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Watching her, those oddly pale eyes unblinking, he sat beside her, much as he had out on the ancient couch. When he’d tried to take care of her, Leah couldn’t help remembering.

  That didn’t mean she was safe from him, though. Why would he have claimed her if he didn’t want sex from her?

  But she only closed her own eyes when he laid the warm washcloth over her face and very carefully wiped away her tears and probably some blood and, yes, snot. The heat and rough texture felt so good, she heard herself make a tiny sound that might have been a whimper.

  “Better?” he asked quietly.

  She bobbed her head. Pain stabbed both shoulders, now that her arm on the uninjured side was stretched above her head, but everything was relative.

  “Then we need to talk.” He paused. “I want you to look at me.”

  Leah rolled her head enough to be able to see him out of her right eye. The other one had to be swollen completely shut despite the ice this man had applied to it. Why would he have bothered unless...

  “You’re not going to escape at this point,” Spencer said, his gaze steady, his tone rock hard. “You’re alive, and not in the hands of one of those animals, because I took responsibility for you. Everyone here will respect that unless they see me as failing. Say, if you make any kind of serious attempt at taking off. It’ll be a free-for-all then, and you could end up in anyone’s cabin. Or shared between them. Do you understand that?”

  After a moment she nodded. She did see that; she just didn’t know what kind of threat he represented.

  “You have to cooperate. For both our sakes, I wish you could stay holed up in this cabin, but that’s not an option. I have to participate in training exercises and planning sessions. That would leave you alone. What you need to do is join the other women and imitate them.” He paused. “You saw them at dinner.”

  This time her nod was uncertain. She hadn’t paid that much attention. Mostly, she’d hoped for...she didn’t know, maybe a signal from one of them? Any hint that one or all of the women would help if they could?

  “They’re abused women.” His expression was grim. “They each try not to meet the eyes of any man but their own husband or boyfriend, and that rarely. They tend to keep their heads down, shoulders hunched. They scuttle across open ground.”

  Could she act that well? Leah thought so. Fear was a great motivator.

  He continued relentlessly. “The women are expected to do all the cooking and cleaning. They don’t complain, because they know their role in life. They talk among themselves only when they’re working together in the kitchen, and then it’s quietly, and about their work. One of the men—the husbands and boyfriends—always keeps an eye on them while they’re together. The message is that they can’t be trusted.”

  Feeling growing horror, she whispered, “You’ll do that, too?”

  “Damn straight I will, as often as I can.”

  He startled her by planting a hand on each side of her torso and leaning over her. Dominating her, so she couldn’t look away from him if she tried. The triple scratches she’d inflicted showed vividly on his angular cheek above dark stubble. A small bump on the bridge of his nose wasn’t her fault.

  “I am your only protection,” he continued relentlessly. “You can’t forget that. Right now they’re all afraid to cross me.”

  “Even the boss?”

  “Colonel Higgs?”

  The irony in his voice had her blinking. “That’s what he’s called?”

  “He is a retired US Air Force colonel. He doesn’t let anyone forget it.”

  “That’s scary.”

  His eyebrows twitched. Leah couldn’t tell if he agreed or was pleased to have a leader with a legitimate military background.

  “I wouldn’t say he’s afraid of me,” Spencer continued. “Wary, maybe. Preferring to keep my loyalty. Apparently, he has no interest in taking you on himself.”

  She shuddered.

  “You might have been safer with him,” the big man with the icy eyes told her. “Nobody would have thought to argue with him. I’m...not popular with a few of the men. We may run into trouble if someone works up the guts to challenge me.”

  We? This bizarre conversation had her bewildered. Us against them. Did he imagine she’d be happy to be one of those stoop-shouldered, timid, obedient women?

  Or... Leah replayed everything he’d said. His expressions, subtle though they were. His actions, if it was true he’d left the hideout key to the car deliberately to give her a chance to get away. His care with her injuries, the flickers of rage she’d seen. Even when she fought, when she hurt him, he’d still been careful not to hurt her.

  Very slowly, she said, “You’re not one of them, are you?”

  * * *

  SPENCER QUIT BREATHING as he stared at her. Only long practice allowed him to keep his face impassive despite his shock. After a moment he said, “That’s not a smart thing to suggest. Not to me, and especially not to anyone else.”

  Her eyes searched his. The impulse to confide in her took him by surprise. Part of it, he understood. Seeing her so terrified of him that she’d fought with crazed ferocity had hit him hard. If she hadn’t calmed down, he might have had no choice. As it was...he shouldn’t even think about trusting her to that extent. One careless word, a reaction that seemed off to one of the men, and he and she both would be dead. She had to be seen to be scared of him, unwillingly bowing to necessity, or somebody might get curious. No cover was good enough if someone was willing to dig deep.

  No.

  Bending even more closely over her, he said softly, “Do you hear me?”

  She shrank from him. “Yes.”

  “Good.” He straightened so that he was no longer caging her body with his.

  “You can’t tell me—” she began.

  Spencer almost groaned. She was either very, very perceptive, or just naturally rebellious. Neither quality served them well right now.

  “I’ve got to get some sleep,” he said abruptly, bending to pull off his boots and socks. “I don’t think you have a concussion—your eyes seem pretty focused to me—but I’ll keep a watch for any problems. You can try to sleep.”

  Her eyes widened.

  Ignoring her, he pulled his belt from the loops, then unbuttoned and unzipped his cargo pants.

  Wearing only the T-shirt and knit boxers, he went out to the living room to check locks again, pick up his Sig Sauer and turn off lights. Returning to the bedroom, he briefly thought about switching the cuff from the bed frame to his wrist but decided against it. She couldn’t go anywhere, and if she attacked him again, he’d wake up in the blink of an eye and deal with her. He might have slept on the futon so that she could relax a little—but he couldn’t afford for someone to look in the uncurtained window above the sink and see that he was pandering to Leah. Besides—even rocky ground would be an improvement over the futon.

  He adjusted the bedroom curtains to block anyone trying to steal a look, turned off the light and tugged the covers out from beneath her so that he could pull them over both of them. Then he claimed one of the two nearly flat pillows, doubled it over and stretched out beside her.

  Leah lay rigid, as close to the far edge of the bed as she could. Given that the bed was only a full size—his feet hung over at the bottom—that wasn’t very far away. Besides...the mattress was as old as the futon and the stained kitchen sink. Once she nodded off, she’d roll to meet him in the middle.

  A rueful smile tugged at his mouth as he pictured how happy she’d be waking up plastered against his body.

  Chapter Five

  She dreamed about being stretched on a medieval rack. At the same time she was weirdly comfortable, the cozy warmth feeling as if it came from a heated blanket, but more...solid. Comforting.
>
  Leah surfaced slowly, realizing that she lay on her side with her head resting on her upper arm. That arm was stretched above her, and ached fiercely. Not stretched, she thought on a sudden memory; pulled.

  And somebody spooned her, his hips pressed to her butt, thighs to the backs of hers. A heavy arm lay over her, his hand tucked—Leah quit breathing. If his hand wasn’t so relaxed, it would have enclosed her breast.

  His chest felt like a wall. Was it possible she could feel his slow, steady heartbeats?

  He. Spencer. The man who’d claimed her and now expected complete obedience as payback. How had she let him wrap her in such an all-encompassing embrace?

  When he climbed into bed with her as if that was routine, she’d resolved to stay awake. Obviously, that hadn’t gone so well, and no wonder, considering how desperately tired she’d been by then. Not just from lack of sleep. Shock and pain and fear had taken a toll.

  Lying completely still, as if she could fend off the reality that she shared the bed with a very large, muscular man who might well have squeezed her breast in his hand while she slept, Leah understood how poorly prepared she’d been for any of this. She’d grown up in a middle-class home with loving parents, had a good relationship with her sometimes irritating little brother, enjoyed college and even her job, although she did want more. Her only major stumble had been being so blind where Stuart was concerned, and compared to her current predicament, that was...normal. Her letting love, or some facsimile thereof, blind her. And to think of the agonies she’d suffered over that jerk. If only she’d known.

  Now she had to face the fact that there was a really good chance she’d be gang-raped or—no, make that and—killed in the next few days. It would seem her only chance at survival was to obey the stranger who shared this bed.

  His pelvis wasn’t all that was pressing into her butt, she became gradually aware. That hard bar hadn’t been there when she first woke up. His breathing had changed, too.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” she said loudly.

  His chuckle ruffled the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. “Gotcha.”

  He gently squeezed her breast, gave a regretful sigh, and he rolled away from her. The mattress rebounded without his weight.

  “Now, what did I do with that key?” he said.

  She growled; he laughed.

  A moment later he’d unfastened the cuff on the bed frame. Leah scrambled to get out of bed. She hadn’t thought about her bladder until she’d told him that, but now she really needed to go.

  Amusement on his face, Spencer stepped out of her way. She rushed for the small bathroom. The warped door didn’t quite latch, but stayed closed. Relief.

  The mirror was spotted, but she inspected her face. It wasn’t pretty. She could see out of both eyes, although the one side was still really puffy, the discoloration gaining new glory. The last time she’d had a black eye, a scared Labrador mix had head-butted her in an attempt to escape. This one would be way more spectacular before it was done.

  She surveyed the bathroom before she went back out, but didn’t see anything useful. A good, old-fashioned straight razor, or even a disposable kind of razor, might have come in handy. But no; a rechargeable shaver lay on the pedestal sink.

  Arming herself might be stupid at this point anyway. A razor blade would look wimpy to men all carrying semiautomatic pistols. And really, given her inexperience, even a gun in her hands might get her in more trouble than it would solve.

  Whatever else she could say about the man who’d stepped forward on her behalf—an optimistic way of phrasing it—he exuded danger. So much so, none of the other men had been prepared to challenge him, as he put it. That made him the best weapon she could have acquired...assuming he didn’t have an end game that had nothing to do with her welfare.

  She ran through a plus list. A) he hadn’t raped her when he could easily have done so; B) he had done his best not to add to her injuries, even when she was attacking him; and C) he had actually seemed to care that she was hurt and had tried to make sure she was comfortable.

  Plenty of negatives came to mind readily, too, starting with the fact that he was a member of a frighteningly well-armed white supremacist militia with big, scary plans. Moving on to B, if she tried something, he could handle her without breaking a sweat; and C, she had no idea how much of what she’d seen was facade and how much real.

  She didn’t know him, and one of the greatest threats right now was an unreasoning belief that he wasn’t a member of the group at all, that he despised them and was really an honorable, good man. Oh, yeah—and she would have been sexually attracted to him in any other circumstances at all.

  Maybe even these circumstances, which meant...she didn’t know. Was this a primitive response to the fact that he claimed to be standing between her and the world?

  Not happening, she told herself firmly. She’d do as he asked, for now. What choice did she have? But she’d watch for an opportunity to escape, and she couldn’t afford to soften toward Spencer Wyatt—or to entirely trust him.

  * * *

  SPENCER FELT ANTSY from the minute he left Leah in the large kitchen at the lodge and headed out to the shooting range with the others. The women were washing up from breakfast, Lisa Dempsey planning lunch while Jennifer Fuller handed out cleaning assignments. Spencer wasn’t sure he could have made himself walk away if TJ Galt had been the one “supervising,” but Dirk Ritchie was staying behind this morning. He’d brought the fourth woman along, Helen Slocum.

  Helen didn’t seem so much terrorized as mentally slow, Spencer had come to think. Dirk could be unexpectedly patient with her, even showing flashes of genuine caring. In fact, he seemed like a decent guy in many ways, which left him the low man on the totem pole in this crowd. Decency registered as weakness here. Spencer made a point of supporting the guy. Dirk’s background suggested a reading disability, a lousy school district and a father who was disappointed in his only son’s spinelessness. As with Shelley, Spencer wanted to quietly tell Dirk to take Helen and drive away—and not go home to daddy.

  He’d as soon not feel sorry for any of this crowd, but couldn’t entirely shut down that side of himself.

  Obviously, or he’d be able to keep his mind on business. As it was, he should have taken this shot two minutes ago.

  He lay prone in the dirt looking through a scope at a target that he’d calculated was five hundred and seventy-five yards out, give or take a little. It was crystal clear. He breathed in, out, in, out...and gently pulled the trigger.

  Higgs squatted beside him, peering through military-grade binoculars. “Hell of a shot.”

  As had been every one he’d taken today.

  Higgs was in love with the Barrett M82 rifle, not because of accuracy, although it was fine. What he liked—and why he’d acquired several of these rifles—was that they fired the exact same .50 BMG cartridge used in the heavy machine gun. The heavy-duty round excelled at destroying just about everything up to armored vehicles. Higgs wasn’t interested in subtlety. He wanted a big boom.

  One of the downsides of this particular rifle was the lack of accuracy for truly long-range shots. In fact, anything over nine hundred yards. Personally, Spencer had preferred the M40A5, one of many descendants of the Remington 700 rifle commonly owned by hunters. He had comfortably made shots at twelve hundred yards and farther, although there were military snipers who could make longer ones. So far, Higgs hadn’t asked for anything remotely difficult for a man with Spencer’s experience, which meant a simple assassination wasn’t on Higgs’s agenda.

  Now Spencer peeled off his ear protection and rose to his knees still cradling the rifle. “That’s it for me. You know I had sniper training at Fort Bennett. I’ve spent enough time on a range to stay sharp. Let’s focus on some of the guys who need the work.”

  Happy with what he’d seen, Higgs stood, too, letting the binoculars
fall to his chest. “I agree. We’ll be lucky if any of the men become reliable at even a hundred yards out. We could use another real sharpshooter, but unless you have a former army buddy you can recruit, we’ll have to get by with what we have.”

  Temptation flickered at the opportunity to bring in another agent, but Spencer was inclined to think the risk was too great. Aside from backup, how much could a newcomer achieve anyway? He was well enough established to be in a good position to be included the next time Colonel Higgs met with his arms dealer. Nailing down who was stealing and selling contraband US Army weaponry to the group was one of his highest priorities, along with finding out the final details of the spectacular attack that Higgs was so convinced would not only deal a major blow to the government, but also fire-start a civil war.

  The crack of shots interspersed their few words. Spencer didn’t need binoculars to see how badly Tim Fuller, stationed closest to him, was shooting.

  Another week or two, he told himself, but he’d thought the same before. Ed Higgs was being cagey even with Spencer, who wanted some serious time alone with Higgs’s laptop. As it was, he had to hold out for that upcoming exchange of cash for arms.

  He’d had better luck tracing the source of the funding, and managed to share that much with his superior the last time he’d been part of a supply run to Bellingham and had had a minute to get away to make a call. Some names weren’t all, though. A lot of the money was coming from someone who remained cloaked in shadows. Even the one chance to share what he’d learned had been a few weeks ago, but now instead of hoping he’d have the chance again, his gut told him bad things would happen if he left Leah for an entire day.

  In fact, when he looked around he didn’t see Joe Osenbrock.

  “Where’s Joe?” he asked sharply.

  The older man’s gray head turned. “Don’t know. Taking a leak?”

  The AK-47 Osenbrock had been using lay in the dirt where he’d apparently left it. Spencer had spent time drilling these idiots in how important it was to treat their weapons with care, but nothing he said had sunk in. They thought they were ready, their impatience building almost as fast as their confidence, until they had begun looking at their great leader with doubt. What use was more target shooting? Hand-to-hand combat? Why did they need any of this, when they had the weaponry to shoot planes out of the sky? Spencer had heard the whispers.