South Dakota Showdown

by Nicole Helm

  * * *

  THEY WERE GETTING AWAY. Liza should feel relief. Hope. But her stomach was in knots and she couldn’t help but look back every few minutes, hoping to see Jamison catching up with them.

  But he didn’t.

  Most of the girls didn’t make a sound as they hiked along in the dark. The farther they got away from the cabin, the more Liza let the pace slow. The girls were tired, likely undernourished no matter how much supper they’d been given, and most of all, terrified.

  Liza carried Gigi after a while, Jenni carrying Bette, who appeared to be her little sister. The older girls helped the younger girls. A few times Liza got turned around, but she kept moving forward. She had to believe she’d find the cabin or safety—as long as she was leading them away from the Sons, everything was okay.

  Somehow, Jamison would eventually show up. Somehow, she would get the girls to Cody and he would get them all to safety.

  Somehow, because her life had always been a series of somehows and she was still here. Still breathing, no matter how much her ankle throbbed or her lungs burned with exertion.

  She pushed forward into a clearing, and found her next somehow.

  Somehow they’d made it. The cabin sat in the eerie dark of predawn, where it was still dark but the sky seemed to glow.

  She’d led the girls to the cabin. She’d saved Gigi. She hugged her sister closer and gathered the girls closer. Relief was a balm, but it was short-lived.

  It isn’t over yet.

  No, no, it wasn’t. She couldn’t forget that. Even if she wanted to. Jamison missing left a hard weight of dread in her stomach.

  Was he trying to fight them off? Was he lost?

  Is he dead?

  Even though that question kept swirling around in her head, every time it hit her square, she had a hard time sucking in a breath or letting one out.

  Cody stepped out of the cabin as Liza brought the girls into the clearing. He opened his mouth as if to greet them, but as his eyes traveled over the eleven girls, his expression changed.

  The girls quickly huddled together, and then behind Liza as much as they could.

  “It’s all right,” she said, looking at Cody. He’d been something like thirteen the last time she’d seen him. Even when he’d spoken to Jamison earlier, she’d only seen a shadow, the hint of a man.

  Now she could trace all the similarities to Jamison on his face. His nose wasn’t crooked in the same way, and his eyes were lighter—tinged with green. He was more rangy, not quite as broad, but taller.

  But, boy, was he a Wyatt. Not only did he have the same appearance as his brothers, it was the expression in them that solidified what she’d begun to accept. She didn’t have any doubts about Cody’s involvement with the Sons anymore. That look was all cop.

  “This is Cody,” Liza said. Though she was talking to the girls, she kept her gaze on Cody. Wanted to watch his face and make sure he understood what he was seeing. “He’s Jamison’s brother. He’s going to help us, just like Jamison helped you all out of the stables.”

  “Let’s get you all inside,” Cody said. He tried to smile, but he wasn’t very good at it. He kept his hands behind his back, though, and stepped clear of the door as if to say to the girls he wasn’t a threat. Liza encouraged the girls to go inside, following them like a sheepdog herding its flock.

  When she reached the doorway, Cody stopped her. She looked down at his hand on her arm, then gave him a raised-eyebrow look that said “Watch yourself.” He might not be with the Sons, but that didn’t mean she trusted him.

  He didn’t budge.

  “Sit wherever you like,” Cody told the girls as they stood in a group in the middle of the cabin. “You can’t do anything wrong in here. You’re safe now. Have a seat. Rest.” There was a fire in the hearth and a few camping lanterns strewed about. There was also that computer from the bathroom sitting on the counter.

  “I’ll see what food I can scrounge up in just a moment,” Cody continued, his hand on Liza’s arm still keeping her from entering.

  He nodded at the girls, then closed the door a little bit—leaving it ajar. She didn’t want to give him credit, but he seemed to understand the girls wouldn’t want to be locked up in another dark place.

  “Where’s Jamison?” Cody asked quietly, his fingers tightening around her arm.

  Liza tried to jerk it away, but he held fast. “Listen—”

  “Tell me where he is,” Cody seethed.

  And because she knew Jamison well enough, she thought she saw something more than anger and a cop on a power trip. Something like fear lurked in Cody’s hazel eyes.

  “He helped get the girls out, but he...” She swallowed, because she wouldn’t believe it meant anything bad. Not yet. “He didn’t follow the last one out. He told her he would, but he didn’t.”

  “Liza, are you telling me he isn’t... He’s not with you? He’s back there at the cabin?”

  “At the stables. The girls were in the stables. He probably just stayed to make sure we got away. There were men coming and—”

  Cody swore and rubbed a hand over his face.

  “What? What is it? What’s wr—”

  Something boomed in the distance, followed by a flash of light.

  Everything inside Liza froze as she watched the blaze bloom and grow. “What was that?” she whispered.

  “Liza.” Cody’s voice was careful. Too careful as he slowly released her arm.

  “What was that, Cody?” she demanded, giving him a shove. Even though she knew. Even though she knew exactly what it was.

  And what it meant.

  “He hit the button twice.”

  “What? What does that mean? What are you talking about?”

  Cody heaved out a sigh—irritation, fear, sadness. “I gave him a device. It sends me a message that can’t be picked up or intercepted. He hit it once at first, which meant he’d found people in the stables.” Cody looked at the door, shaking his head. “Those girls were in there.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I should have,” he muttered. “I didn’t engage the explosives. I was having a conversation with my superiors about the potential for collateral damage when I got the transmission again—this time twice. That was the signal to engage the explosives.”

  “For the cabin,” Lisa said, more desperate hope than rational thought.

  “Liza...”

  She didn’t wait for him to continue. She turned and started to run back from where she came. Her ankle screamed and she didn’t care. Didn’t dare worry about her own pain when Jamison was...

  “You can’t go running into an explosion,” Cody called after her. “They’ll go off before—” Another boom, more light.

  She stopped, looked in horror at what was clearly fire in the dark distance. No. She refused to let this be it. She could get to him. If he’d hit the button, he wasn’t stupid enough to be in there getting blown up. No. It wasn’t possible.

  She didn’t get more than a few more strides before Cody grabbed her from behind. She turned and swung a fist at him, but he easily dodged it before grabbing that arm, too, and holding her immobile.

  She tried to fight him off, but he held firm.

  “You have to stay here with the girls,” he said between gritted teeth as she continued to struggle and he maintained his iron hold to keep her in place. “I’ll go and—”

  “I can’t save them, Cody. I’ve done what I can do. I can’t get them to safety from here. You can. You can get men in here or get them out or...something. You have the connections and the computer. You have superiors to communicate with. You have to get them away from here.”

  “You can’t save Jamison if he can’t save himself. Liza. He’s a trained police officer.” There was a pause, and when Cody continued, his voice was flat. “If he didn’t survive, there’s n
othing we can do.”

  “That’s bull.” She stilled, then gave up fighting him off, sucked in a ragged breath and let it out. She believed Jamison could survive almost anything, but she also believed she was the same.

  She’d needed help sometimes, and Jamison needed help sometimes. He hadn’t liberated all his brothers on his own. He’d needed help from his grandmother, from the occasional Sons member who wasn’t so keen on hurting kids, sometimes even on strangers.

  “Maybe he got out,” Cody said, and his tone was almost gentle, perhaps because he had to hope for the same. “Maybe he’ll make it here. But you can’t go after him. We don’t know what’s left out there and there’s still one more blast to go off.”

  She didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t accept it. “Stop it!” She tried to free her hands so she could reach out and shake him, but he wouldn’t release his grip.

  “I can’t stop it, Liza. If I could, I would have already done it. The explosives are connected. The third one will go off any second. It gave Jamison time—if he ran away after the first blast, he’ll have time to get here. You should stay here and wait for him to show up.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “That’s why you need to let me go. I’ll call my guys to come in and get you and the girls out. Then I’ll head out and you stay here and safe. Let Wyatts handle Wyatts.”

  Wyatts handle Wyatts. Jamison was as much hers as anyone’s. Beyond that, her father had been the one in the center of this. Not theirs. “But Ace Wyatt wasn’t keeping these girls, was he?”

  Cody’s expression shuttered, going into full cop mode now. She’d hoped he might loosen his grip on her hands, but he held firm.

  “Go inside, Liza. I’ll handle the rest.”

  “Be a good little woman and let the big, strong men handle it?” She thought about stomping on his instep, but he shifted, almost as if he could read her thoughts, so that she’d have to do it with her bad ankle.

  “Let law enforcement agents handle it.”

  “Just what agency are you with, Cody?”

  He shook his head, refusing to answer.

  “That’s what I thought.” Because Cody might have some cop training, but computers and explosives were something else altogether. He might be on the right side, but that didn’t mean he was on the right side of the law.

  When the third explosion went off, she knew she didn’t have time to argue. Cody still held her arms. She just needed to escape. She needed to do what she could to help Jamison.

  She looked up at Cody, letting all the worry and fear show in her eyes. “Sorry about this,” she whispered.

  “About wh—”

  She kneed him in the crotch, using the moment of surprise and pain to wriggle away from his grasp and run like hell.

  She reached the edge of the woods before she felt someone grip the back of her coat and yank hard—hard enough she fell backward. She glared up at Cody but got right to her feet. He wanted to try to stop her? Let him.

  She squared, fists clenched and ready to deck him. She’d fight tooth and nail to have a chance to save Jamison.

  He rolled his eyes. Insultingly. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “What does that make him?” Liza gritted out, keeping her fists up and ready. Cody had already let his guard down once. He’d do it again and she’d land a decent enough punch. Again and again, until she got to Jamison.

  But in two seconds flat he moved, like a ghost or a ninja, and had both her hands behind her back with one hand and snaked his other arm around her throat.

  “It makes him completely insane,” Cody said with disgust. “Now, get ahold of yourself and I’ll let you go.”

  “You’ll what?”

  “I’ll let you go. I just need you to let me do something first.”

  “I’m not going to fall for any tri—”

  “You’ve got to stop,” Cody muttered. He started grumbling about people who wouldn’t follow orders and how this was life-and-death, on and on. But she’d stilled, and as he grumbled, he shoved something up her sleeve.

  “There. Now, go ahead on your fool’s errand. But when you end up dead, don’t come haunting me. I warned you.”

  She stared at her sleeve. “What did you do?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Trust me.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “I’m assuming because we both love Jamison and don’t want him to be dead.”

  Liza blinked at that, then scowled when Cody made a shooing motion. “Go on, now. I’ve got to deal with the girls you saved. Just trust that if you find Jamison, I’ll be able to send someone to find you both. All you have to do is stay alive.”

  The girls you saved. Because she’d gotten Gigi out, gotten her safe. Cody had explosives and contacts and would be able to get law enforcement in here to get those girls somewhere safe—so she’d done her duty to her sister.

  Now she had to do her duty to the man she’d always loved, who’d saved her once upon a time. Because she’d saved those girls, and she was going to save him, too.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There was pain. Everywhere. Pulsing, searing, burning. He wanted to float away from it all, but there was something he needed to do. Somewhere he needed to be.

  Jamison managed to blink his eyes open, only to find flame. Everywhere.

  It was the fire—that clear reminder of what had happened—that had him leaping to his feet no matter how his body and balance protested. He stumbled a little to the left, trying to right himself before he fell over and only just barely succeeding.

  He searched the world around him. Everything was on fire—or at least so it seemed. He ordered himself to calm, to catalog. The blast had thrown him some and he wasn’t as close to the stables as he’d been. Now that he was on his feet, he could see that the spots of fire were where debris had landed and smoldered.

  In one of those spots of fire lay a body. Not too far off from Jamison himself. Jamison took a few stilted steps toward it.

  Tony Dean lay completely still, eyes open and unseeing, a gruesome piece of debris sticking out of his gut.

  Jamison stared at the body for more time than he had, trying to reconcile...any of what had happened. Tony Dean was dead, and somehow Jamison was alive.

  There was no time for contemplating that, though. He had to find...safety. Water. Fresh air. He had to get away from this place because he could hear shouts, see shadows of men trying to put out the blaze.

  It hadn’t taken down everyone.

  Liza’s father and surely the men Jamison had left in the stables were dead. Maybe the men who’d tried to tie him up, but maybe not—they’d started running after the first blast. Which would have definitely killed the men who’d been inside the cabin at the time, but Jamison could see at least eight men running around house and shack. Their focus was on putting out the fire, as far as Jamison could tell.

  He began to walk, though every part of his body throbbed in painful protest. He moved for the woods. He wanted to believe that everyone would be too busy with the flames to look for him, but he knew the Sons.

  He knew what kind of orders Tony would have given his men before he’d gone out to meet Jamison at the stables. Tony had known it was him. It would have been imperative for Tony to spread the message that the person who’d liberated those girls was none other than Ace Wyatt’s son.

  Someone would be looking for him once the confusion died down.

  Jamison had to be gone by that time, and not toward the cabin where Liza had been headed. That could lead the wrong people toward Liza and those poor girls. He wasn’t sure how much time he’d been unconscious for, but it couldn’t have been that long if the flames and shouts were anything to go by.

  Not enough time for Cody to have helped Liza and those girls to safety.

  Jamison swore under his bre
ath and had to hope against hope that his brother would prioritize the girls and not come running after him once he realized Jamison had sent the signal while still on the premises.

  Jamison found the woods behind the wreckage of the stables. Some of the trees were on fire. He skirted the line of trees and the fire and moved toward the front of the cabin. He’d go that way—the complete opposite of the direction he’d come.

  He tried to bring the map to his mind, picturing where he’d be going if he headed out that way. How he could get to safety and help in that direction. Everything was a little fuzzy—clearly he was more rattled from the explosion and his loss of consciousness than he wanted to admit.

  Rattled or not, he had to keep moving. There was no time for stopping to clear his head and think. He couldn’t afford to be seen or caught. Not in such bad shape. He wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight right now.

  He made it toward the front of the burning cabin. The explosion had impacted the back side of the house the most, so anyone trying to stop the fire was back there. The front seemed empty.

  But there was a road here. A road Jamison didn’t remember being on his map—though it was dirt, so maybe that was why. If he was going to go in the opposite direction of where Liza had taken the girls, he had to cross this road with no cover.

  Something in his body recoiled from the idea. He pushed it away, chalking it up to explosions and head fuzziness and the odd shakes now racking his body. Just shock or adrenaline or something. He moved forward, feeling as though he was pushing through molasses.

  Something wasn’t right, but he didn’t have time. On the next step, his leg gave out and he fell to his knee. He looked down in surprise at the offending limb. It was only then he realized he had his own dagger of debris stuck in his calf and he was just now noticing the pain, the blood dripping down into his boot.

  That couldn’t be good. Worse when all he could seem to do was stare at the piece of wood, not sure what to do about it.

  The sound of an engine brought him out of his reverie. He spotted a Jeep cresting the hill. Also not good.