Desert Ice Daddy (14 page)

And she trusted Akeem, believed that whatever it took, he would come for them. Believed it enough to send her son into the wilderness.

She blinked her eyes, wanting to see him just as long as she possibly could, but Jake stepped between them, drawing up the gun to her chest.

“Now that the touching part of the night is over, where is my damn money?”

“You’ll have your damn money,” she snapped, her heart breaking because as she looked over Jake’s shoulder, she could no longer see Christopher. She had missed that last second, possibly her last chance to see that sweet little shape, to escort it a few steps farther with her gaze in all that darkness.

“Now,” Jake growled the single word.

Her heart was shattering into jagged little pieces as
she pointed at the guardhouse behind them, behind the gate she’d just locked.

“You couldn’t say that when we were there?” Jake looked like he might backhand her again.

She couldn’t have said it, in fact. Christopher needed time to get as far from here as possible before Jake put his hands on that money.

He was going for the padlock already. “You better be right about this. Come on.”

But she couldn’t make her feet move as she heard her son’s faint voice call out, “Uncle Flint? I can’t see you,” in the distance.

Akeem bided his time until he could see the silhouette of the refinery chimney against the night sky in the distance. Then he slumped to his left as if he’d passed out or fallen asleep, went for the gun with his right hand, brought it around and smacked the butt of the weapon against the driver’s temple with full force.

The vehicle veered to the left.

He was grabbing the steering wheel the next second, reaching over with his other hand to open the driver-side door, then kicking the unconscious man to the ground, all with the pickup barely slowing.

And he was on his way.

He slammed the gas pedal to the floor, watching closely, the ground illuminated by the headlights, careful to avoid bigger rocks and potholes. Flipping the pickup over on this uneven terrain at this high speed would have been only too easy. He didn’t think of the dangers, or the hundred points of pain that was his body, he just did what he had to do in that moment,
then the next and the next. He had one thought only now—to get back to Taylor and Christopher in time.

F
INDING
P
ETE’S BODY
in the guardhouse did not improve Jake Kenner’s mood. He made Taylor pull the dead guy outside, so he would have more room looking around in there.

She took her time, groaning under the weight, which wasn’t all pretend. Pete hadn’t been the wiry cowboy type. He had at least thirty pounds on her. She’d never been more eager to be done with a task, but she dragged this one out to give Akeem time to get back before Jake decided that the game was over.

“Where is it?” he barked at her. “I don’t see anything. If you lied—”

“In there. I didn’t see exactly where Akeem put it, but in there, definitely.” She kept glancing toward the desert, but could no longer see or hear Christopher no matter how hard she tried.

“Stay where I can see you.” Jake tossed the chair out, and it crashed into the hard ground less than a yard from her, making her jump. Then came a rickety old desk that splintered into pieces on impact. He was ripping the place apart.

She moved back toward the desert, one step then another, small ones at that, the rope allowed little. Jake had left the gate open this time. Not that she thought she could run from him, not with her ankles bound, but she wanted to listen for Christopher—who she prayed was brave enough to keep going forward—
and keep an ear out for Akeem, too, hoping to hear him returning.

“Don’t set your heart on it.” Jake grunted. He could see her from the open door, just as she could see him. He was prying up a floorboard. “Your boyfriend is already dead. Either way, whether he spilled where the money is or not. Those boys can be rough.”

She tried to tune out those words, and moved back a little more to put some distance between herself and the dead kidnapper. Then she sat on the ground. If she could untie the rope that bound her feet, she might be able to make a run for it.

“Get up,” he yelled at her when he stuck his head back out. “And come closer.” He pulled back to his work again. He had to turn his back to her to do that, which apparently he didn’t much like. “Better yet, keep talking.”

So he would notice if she moved, she supposed.

She pushed up to standing. “Once you have the money, you better hightail it out of here. Your friends can show up at any time, and if they do, they’ll want a cut. It’ll be two against one.”

She didn’t want him hanging around, looking for Christopher. She wanted him away from the area as fast as possible.

“You just worry about your own troubles,” he called back.

And since he didn’t look out, reassured by her voice that she was still where he’d last seen her, she sat back down and went to work on the rope again. She might
not have been a cowgirl, but she’d been around horses and tack most of her life; she’d seen a knot or two.

“Talk,” he ordered when she stayed silent for a few seconds, focused on her task.

“It would work out better for you if you let me go, too,” she said.

“You don’t say.”

Another floorboard flew out, then Akeem’s duffel bag. Jake stepped out after it and upended it on the ground, kicked the contents around in the moonlight and swore at the tent and sleeping bag. “I don’t see any money.” He fixed her with a murderous glare.

“Keep looking.”

“I thought I told you to stand.” He kicked an empty canteen her way and it bounced off her shin.

“I’ve been walking almost nonstop for days. My feet are killing me.” She offered an innocent excuse, but obeyed him. “You have nothing to gain by shooting me,” she continued talking when he marched back in. “Everyone already knows you took Christopher. They figured that out as soon as you turned up missing the same day. Everyone knows that you’re involved, but nobody knows about the others.”

Silence in the shack.

“When this is over and I’m questioned, I’ll be giving their descriptions. The cops’ attention will be divided. They’ll be looking for the others while you get away.”

“They’ll be looking for me, too.”

“Your buddies will be a priority. If they kill Akeem like you say they will, a couple of murderers…” She let
her voice trail off. “And I’ll be telling the police that you let Christopher and me go in the end.”

Jake appeared in the door again, carrying Akeem’s second supply bag.

“A couple of murderers will take priority over a kidnapper who already gave the kid back.” He seemed to consider that.

“Right.” Taylor held her breath.
Please, please, please don’t think too much, just go with it.

Jake upended the bag and rummaged through this one, too. “I still don’t have the money,” he said in a voice that had murder in it, crushing her hopes.

“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 de
ciding 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.

S
HE 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.”