Desert Ice Daddy (12 page)

“Maybe they’re busy setting a trap.”

“You want to scare me?” They’d made it through the open; he could have been more positive just for a second.

“I want you to think before you act.” His voice had some bite to it. “Or, at least, give some warning before you leap.”

Okay. Fine. He was right. She was about to say so, but he was already heading toward the chimney that had a row of frighteningly rusty metal spikes going up the side.

No guardrail.

Clouds drifted across the moon, dimming visibility further yet, but as she stepped to the towering chimneystack, she could make out now that it was a lot bigger around than she’d judged from afar. Over twelve feet in diameter at the base, if not more. Not as flimsy as it had looked. Thank God for that.

He tested the first spike, stepped on it, reached as far as he could, tested that spike before putting his weight on it, then placed his foot on the next. “Try to put your feet where I do,” he said.

No problem there. She had plenty of motivation to pay attention.

“And stay a little back,” he warned.

He meant in case he slipped, she realized after a moment and was glad he thought of everything. She was too frazzled to think beyond the next step, her mind on Christopher.

She would not allow herself to think that her little boy might not be here.

The climb was nerve-racking, and she prayed all the way. They were nearly level with the roof when a shout sounded somewhere inside the building. The first bullet wasn’t far behind.

No time to finagle their way onto the narrow brick bridge that served not as a walkway but as a link to secure the chimney to the building and give it extra stability. Akeem lunged, caught the edge of the flat roof, swung his legs and pulled himself up, then reached for her. She had to let go and catapult herself over the five-foot gap that stood between the chimney and the building.

For a moment, she had nothing beneath her but air and a hundred-foot drop to a cement slab below. The she felt Akeem’s hand close around hers.

She had just enough time to catch her breath before she realized that she was slipping.

She grabbed with her other hand and caught his sleeve, heard and felt the fabric rip. Another bullet slammed into the old bricks close enough to send dust into her eyes.

She blinked, trying to clear the tears that gathered to wash out the dust particles, as she dangled over the abyss, held by nothing but a torn sleeve and her fingertips.

Boots pounded on metal stairs somewhere below them, inside the building.

“Try to swing back to the chimney.” Akeem helped by giving her a boost.

She let go of his half-torn sleeve that wouldn’t have supported her anyway, shoved her feet against the side of the building. Her other hand did slip out of Akeem’s then, and she did fall.

But she fell in the right direction, and she could lurch her weight toward the spikes. She grabbed on to one, and just barely avoided another one skewering her side.

“Go around.” Akeem jumped to a spike above her with his usual graceful agility.

“Around where?” She looked around, bewildered.

There was shouting on the roof now. Those men would reach the edge in seconds and pick her and Akeem off with two easy shots.

But Akeem was already moving, and she could see now that a lot of the bricks had been damaged over the years, chunks missing here and there. He was moving foothold by foothold, handhold by handhold to put the chimneystack between him and the approaching men.

She didn’t hesitate, but did the same.

The chimney was wide enough even up here, so that if they made it to the other side, they would be completely invisible from the roof.

She barely slipped out of view when she heard, “Where the hell are they?” bellowed with full force.

Some shuffling sounded next.

“Could be they climbed down and got in on the floor below us,” another voice responded.

There was a moment of silence, then, “Jimmy stays here.”

The sound of boots on the roof came next, running in the opposite direction.

She looked at Akeem.

He mouthed a single word, “Stay.”

She didn’t have a problem with that. She watched with her heart in her throat as he inched to the side. Peeked around. Pulled back.

Then he let go with his right hand. And she was shaking with nerves just watching him. Their situation was precarious enough. All her strength was barely enough to keep her where she was. If one foot or hand slipped, she would fall to her death. And here he was, willfully dangling.

She held her breath as he pulled a knife, leaned to the side again, then aimed. The weapon sailed through the air with a hiss, closely followed by a thud.

Then Akeem was moving forward. “I got him. Come on.”

She didn’t hesitate. The iron spikes that had seemed way too flimsy before now felt like the height of security. Akeem pulled himself up to the bridge and reached back for her. This time, they made it to the roof without trouble.

Akeem took the guy’s gun and stuck it into his waistband next to his other weapon. He didn’t bother with the knife.

She hesitated for a second, bent over, pulled it from the man’s chest then wiped the blade and put it away. She only shrugged at Akeem’s questioning look. It wasn’t just the tough-for-a-girl thing anymore. She was being tough for her son.

They stole across the roof, down the stairs and found themselves on a gangplank inside that overlooked some odd machinery. Nobody down there that she could see. Maybe the men had already moved on with their search. Everything smelled oily, even in here.

Akeem crept across the gangplank, then down to the floor below. She followed just as carefully. A long wall divided the space, closing off the area to their left. They moved along the wall, in the cover of some pipes.

When they came across a window opening to another space, they dipped low and walked in a crouch, and since she was shorter than Akeem, she caught a gap in the wall that Akeem hadn’t. Something moved on the other side.

Akeem wasn’t looking at her, and she couldn’t say anything. Anyone on the other side could hear.

The board next to the gap was loose. She moved it a fraction at a time, stopped as soon as she had an inch or so to look through, although she could have moved it farther.

Christopher was sleeping in a corner not ten feet from her. Tears gathered in her eyes at the sight of his sweet, smudged little face. She blinked them away to clear her vision. She’d cry later, tears of joy, when her son was back in her arms again.

Her heart lurched into a mad race. He was here. God,
they were so close. She pulled back to survey the board. Akeem was way ahead of her now. Something was drawing his attention there, and he hadn’t noticed that she had stayed behind.

And she still didn’t dare make a sound. So she turned her attention to something she could do—the board.

The gap was too small for her to get in. But if she could somehow get her son’s attention, he could come to her. She could possibly move that board enough for him to squeeze through.

Maybe whoever was guarding him was sleeping, too, or had left the room to search the building with the others for her and Akeem. Try as she might, she couldn’t see the whole room from her vantage point.

Wake up, honey. Wake up and come to Mommy.
She sent her thoughts across the space between them. Christopher did stir, but didn’t open his eyes.

Probably wouldn’t have made a difference if she said the words aloud. He always could sleep through anything from summer storms to tractor motors. He was just like her brother, Flint.

She had slid the board back as far as she could. She hadn’t made a noise so far. The hole was big enough. He would fit, she knew he would. Please, God, let him be alone in there.

He was so close. He could make his way over to her in seconds. Once he was close enough to the hole, she could reach in and pull him through. Then she would grab him up and rush after Akeem. Akeem would find a way to lead them out of here.

Mommy is here. Everything is going to be fine. Wake up, baby.

Christopher shifted in his sleep again. Which was when she spotted the rope around his right ankle. He was tied to some pipe that ran along the wall behind his back. He was trapped.

Taylor hated, absolutely hated, letting her son out of her sight, but she had to get Akeem. So she pushed away and scurried after him, making as little noise as possible.

“He’s here,” she whispered when she caught up with him at the top of the stairway.

“You’ve seen him?” He mouthed the words as his gaze settled on her for a second before going back to scanning the area.

“Back there.”

“Guards?”

“Can’t tell. He’s—” She swallowed. “Tied up.” But he looked unharmed, and that infused her heart with new hope.

“Looking okay?”

She nodded, and tears threatened to spill again. Every atom of her body was pulling her back to that hole in the wall. “Sleeping.”

“We’ll get him. I swear,” he said just as someone stepped into the stairway below them.

Boots pounded up the metal steps.

All she could think of was that they could not get caught this close to Christopher. It would be so incredibly unfair.

Akeem pulled her into the cover of a rusty column that only protected them from one side, and gently pressed his index finger against her lips. Then his body to hers. Close then closer, so that the two of them would take up as little space as possible.

A
KEEM WAS AWARE OF
many things at once: Taylor pressed tight against him, the tangled jumble of his feelings for her and the growing danger that surrounded them.

He felt that hard resolution rise up in him. He didn’t like what was to come, but he would do it anyway.

The four years spent in the desert with his grandfather had brought him face-to-face with his warrior heritage and not all of it had been pleasant. Some parts had been downright shocking.

He had seen his grandfather kill. He would be hard-pressed to forget the two-hundred-year-old sword that had chopped off the head of a tribesman who’d been caught transporting drugs through tribal land. He also knew that his grandfather would have killed his mother if she hadn’t escaped to the U.S. Would have considered it an honor killing and the righteous thing to do since the girl was found carrying a child before being wed.

He’d seen his grandfather cut off the hand of a thief, and order the caning of a young boy for some minor sin. He’d seen his grandfather in battle, bathed in the blood of his enemies.

In the same battle where Akeem had first killed at the age of sixteen. And had wondered how much of that ruthless wildness ran in his own blood. He had sworn never to shed his humanity on that level again, an oath he had broken already, and in front of Taylor.

He had wanted to be a better man than that for her. He wanted to be all that was good and civilized. But he would do whatever he needed to do to keep her and her son safe. He would kill again and again if he had to. He would die if he had to. He would make a deal with the very devil.

And he might have to do that soon. As in right now.

Someone was coming up the stairs.

Akeem shoved his gun into his waistband, positioned himself and waited until the guy passed him. When he lunged, he made sure that his right arm would go around the windpipe. A sharp, yanking move up and back would crush it. He didn’t let up on the pressure, held tight as the man struggled, held while the guy kicked out, clawing Akeem’s arm, held as those furiously kicking legs went slack.

He wouldn’t look at Taylor as he held the man a few seconds longer to make sure that he was finished, then dragged him to the empty oil barrel under the turn of the stairs and dumped him inside, covered him with an oily rag he found on the floor.

“Show me where you saw Christopher,” he said, still not looking at her, because he didn’t want to see the revulsion that must sit plainly on her face.

She’d seen him kill three times within as many hours,
commit the worst violence. And he had a suspicion that she had barely escaped from a rough and violent marriage. Would she think that he was exactly the kind of man she was escaping from? He hated the thought of that, yet couldn’t be a hundred percent sure that she wouldn’t be right thinking it of him, and worse. He wasn’t sure if he could stand having her be afraid of him.

But she surprised him by stepping right up to him and moving into his arms, as if she weren’t afraid of him at all, as if she were seeking shelter in his embrace. For a moment, he wasn’t sure who was comforting whom. A couple of seconds passed before she moved away and visibly pulled herself together.

“This way,” she whispered.

They backtracked the way they had come, and he followed her, gun at the ready, until she came to crouch by one of the holes low on the wall. He would have known from the look on her face what she was looking at on the other side, even if she hadn’t already told him. The tenderness mixed with worry in her eyes was gut-wrenching.

He looked behind them one last time before he crouched next to her to assess the situation at hand.

Christopher slept like the four-year-old that he was, mouth hanging open, oblivious to the world. His face was smudged, his blond hair sticking up every which way. Akeem registered the rope on his ankle and the red mark that it had rubbed on his skin, and his jaw tightened.

From his vantage point, he couldn’t tell if there were any other people in the room with the boy. Nor could he see an entry on the opposite wall. Maybe to the right?

He twisted, and the back of his head came into contact with something cold and hard.

“I got them,” a voice called out cheerfully behind him.

Then the guy whacked Akeem hard in the back of the skull.

S
HE SHOULD HAVE KEPT
watch while Akeem had looked. Fury at the men who held them raged in Taylor’s blood, mixing with anger at her own stupidity. She hadn’t been able to tear herself away from the sight of Christopher, had crouched with eyes glued to a gap in the boards.

But now all she could see was the blood on the back of Akeem’s head. They were shoving him ahead, in front of her.

A metal door banged open. Akeem was kicked inside. They pushed her behind him. Into
the
room.

“Christopher!” She tore herself from the man who held her and lunged toward her little boy, folding to the floor next to him, frustrated that she couldn’t hug him to herself with her hands tied behind her back.

But those little arms came around her neck as soon as his baby blue eyes opened. “Mommy?”

The men, three of them in the room, didn’t seem to bother with her. They were all focused on Akeem. So she pulled back a little and greedily took stock of her son, examining every inch. “Are you okay?”

“I knew you would come.” Christopher scrambled onto her lap. “Can we go home now? I don’t like it here.”

“We—”

The thud coming from behind her had her whipping her head around.

Akeem was halfway to the floor. She watched as the man in front of him delivered a vicious kick to his knee—another thud—and Akeem crashed to the ground. Instinct had her move protectively in front of Christopher to block the sight. She could do nothing at all to help Akeem.

“No, please don’t,” she pleaded with the men, but they paid no attention.

Another one kicked Akeem’s back, sending him face-first onto the floor. He looked stunned from the pistol-whipping he’d gotten when they had been captured. More kicks came as he struggled to get up, struggled to fight back, although he could do little being all tied up.

The two men were brutal. She flinched when she heard the crack of a rib. Christopher pressed closer to her back and whimpered.

“Jake, please.” She addressed the only man she knew in the room.

But Jake Kenner stood back, letting the other two take care of the dirty work, holding a gun on Akeem in case he got the upper hand by some miracle.

Which would have been impossible.

He’d fought hard when they’d been captured, but could do little against guns, gave up when they put one to her head. That was when they’d first gone to town on him, beating him to within inches of losing consciousness.

And they seemed hell-bent on finishing what they had started. They didn’t stop until he was a bleeding heap on the floor.

“Take him out into the desert and get rid of him,” Jake said dispassionately, in a voice colder than she had ever heard from the man. From any man, even Gary on his worst day. “Make sure he’s dead.”

He watched as his buddies hooked a hand under Akeem’s arms and dragged him across the floor, then he turned those cold eyes on Taylor.

“And now, you are going to tell me where the money is.”

She curled around her son as much as possible, not knowing if the words she was about to say were enough to save Akeem, or if they would be a death sentence for her and Christopher.

“I don’t know. Only Akeem does. He hid it.”

The men dragging him paused and turned, and a silent communication passed between them and Jake before they moved on.

Jake waited until they were gone before he pushed away from the table he’d been leaning against. “Either you’re telling the truth, or you aren’t. One way to find out.” He flashed a slow smile as he pulled a knife she recognized. The standard utility knife Flint supplied all his ranch hands with. “And we have plenty of time to do it.”

H
IS BODY WAS MOVING
toward unconsciousness to escape the pain, but Akeem was fighting it. He needed to pay attention to where they were taking him so he could find his way back to Taylor. He needed to figure out a way to escape summary execution. He wasn’t sure how much time Taylor and Christopher had left.

One of the men who’d dragged him out was in the cab, driving, the other was sitting in the back of the pickup with Akeem.

“She was telling the truth,” he said, just loudly enough so the guy next to him could hear as they bounced over uneven ground in the night.

The driver followed no road. Probably so Akeem’s body wouldn’t readily be found.

“I wouldn’t let her see where I buried the money so if she got caught, she couldn’t tell. She’s a woman.” He made a dismissive sound. “She wouldn’t stand up to questioning.”

If these two thought he had something, they might give him a little more time. He needed a minute or two to focus away from the pain and make his broken body obey his will once again. He was little more than a heap of bruised flesh at the moment.

The guy wouldn’t look at him, but from the way his eyes were focused, he appeared to be listening.

“This is going to go down badly. You know that. Whatever the original plan was, it’s gone way off track. Her brother is a powerful man,” Akeem went on.

The guy simply shrugged.

“How much is your cut? Can’t be too much. Too many people are involved. There were expenses. Someone had to pay off the police.”

He was fishing around in the dark, but the guy didn’t protest that last assumption. Anger boiled in Akeem’s blood. So the cops
had
been paid off. That—and not safety concerns—was why no civilian aircraft were
being allowed over Hell’s Porch. They were making sure that no rescue was coming.

“I know where the money is. You help me get out of this, it’s all yours. Just yours. For one man, it’s enough to disappear and live a pretty fine life for the next seventy years or so.”

The man looked at him at last. “What if you’re lyin’?”

Akeem breathed a little easier. The shark was nibbling the hook. “You know I had the money yesterday. You saw me with the briefcases. I still have it. I can show you where.”

“And if it’s a trick?”

“You’ll still have your gun.” He shrugged as if saying,
you could always shoot me then.

The thug seemed to mull that over, but shook his head when he got to the end of his silent reasoning. “The boss would kill me dead.”

“Jake will never find you. When I go back for the woman and the kid, I’ll take care of him, I swear to that.” The bastard could take that to the bank.

But the guy sneered. “Jake ain’t nothin’.”

Akeem paused to digest that. So there was another boss. Someone bigger and more powerful. Which made sense. Someone who had the police in his back pocket.

The whole thing was starting to sound eerily familiar. Like what had happened at the airstrip with that plane that had carried Flint’s horses a couple of months back. They had a powerful enemy whose sole purpose seemed to be to bring them down. Why? And who was it? And how did kidnapping Christopher play into the bastard’s plans?

If the man behind all this was as powerful as Akeem suspected, two million dollars wouldn’t be worth the risk of getting involved in a federal crime.

Not that two million wasn’t a respectable amount. He needed to convince his newfound friend of just that.

“Two million will buy you a hell of a lot of protection. The way I look at it, it’s your best chance to stay alive. Because before all this is said and done, one of your buddies is going to figure he’d be happier if he didn’t have to cut the paycheck quite so many ways. Then there is the chance the boss might decide to eliminate his liabilities. Big men like that, they don’t like to leave witnesses. They have too much to lose.”

And the bastard was going to lose everything, if Akeem had anything to do with it. “Think this over. It could be your last chance. Two million dollars—”

He was cut off when the pickup stopped in the middle of nowhere.

“Shut up.” The man stood and opened the tailgate, took the safety off his gun then kicked Akeem to the ground.

Landing knocked the air out of Akeem’s lungs. He stayed motionless while he waited for the pain in his ribs to abate. If he could get his hands loose, he might stand a chance, but they were tied good and proper, the way you would expect from a couple of ex-cowboys who had more than a passing acquaintance with ropes.

“Get the shovel,” the blond guy who’d been driving said as he got out of the cab.

“What shovel?” the other one asked.

“You didn’t bring the damn shovel?”

His buddy shrugged.

The scene was starting to look like some screwball comedy, but Akeem was grateful for anything that would keep them occupied for now. He wiggled his hands behind his back, trying to stretch the rope enough to slip out of it. At this stage, leaving some skin behind was the least of his worries.