The Trouble With Love (19 page)

"She's hanging her red bra on
the flag pole to welcome us to
M
idland
," Cole
told him then
bent over laughing.

His eyes widened and his eyebrows hit his hairline, then Gabe shook his head and said, "Come again?"

"She found a hole in the back wall of the building where they're holding her, and she's going to hang her red bra out of it so we can find her."

Gabe's laughter was loud and incredulous
. 
Elmer and Luke turned around to look at
them
then walked over. "I need a laugh, what's so fricking funny?" Luke asked folding his arms over his chest.

Cole told them and
Luke and Elmer joined in the laughter, then Cole sobered and said, "She saw an arms deal go down too..."

"Fuck!" Gabe shouted then started pacing and shaking his head, "They'll kill her if they know that...they won't care about what I know."

Cole swallowed hard then said, "I know...I told her to make sure they didn't see her and keep quiet."

Gabe stopped pacing and asked him shortly, "Is that hole where she's hanging her bra the same one she saw the arms deal from?"

Seeing where he was going with his thinking, Cole's heartbeat kicked up and he said, "Yeah, I think so..."

"
Dammit
, Cole
!
" Gabe shouted then walked
over to Cole and got
up
in
his face,
putting
his finger in
Cole's
his chest.
"If they find her bra, they'll
know
she saw them!
  Call her back and tell her to take it down!
"

Cole nodded and took out his phone to dial her number, praying she'd turned the ringer off. 
On the third unanswered ring, f
ingers of fear worked their way through is body and wrapped around his hear
t
to squeeze painfully.  He swallowed thickly then told them, "She's not answering."

A roar erupted from Gabe and he shoved his hands into his hair, then walked away from them and got back in the chopper
, where Junebug had just reseated himself
.

***

Sabrina put the chair back where it was and carefully placed the plate back on the seat like it had been, then walked to the bed and laid down again.  There wasn't anything else to do, but pace, and that wouldn't do anything but make her hotter than she was right now.  The sun was up and there wasn't air conditioning in the room
,
other than the vent, and it was getting damned hot in the
re
.
  Hopefully, the calvary, as Cole had called them, would find her soon.

Unbelievably, she'd closed her eyes and dozed off into a dreamless sleep, but
was jerked out of the dark coziness when the door to the room was flung back on its hinges and the guy who'd been in her room yesterday stalked in.  Her heart dropped to her toes when she saw what he had dangling from his fingers...her red bra.

She swallowed and found her voice
then
tried to play dumb, saying, "Nice bra, whose is it?

His face was a mask of fury as he stomped across the room and stopped by the bed.  When he raised his hand, she flinched and covered her face, but it didn't stop his hand from connecting with her cheek in a brutal blow.  Her jaw swung sideways then back and she bit her tongue.  Putting her hand over her cheek, she scooted back in the corner of the bed and curled her body in a ball.  "Why did you do that," she whispered tearfully.

"Who were you trying to signal with this?" he held up the bra and twirled it on his finger.

"I don't know what you're talking about..." she said and flinched when his hand arced back again then came down on the side of her head.  Her ears buzzed and she saw spots in front of her eyes.
  Fuck this, Sabrina thought, she wasn't going to sit here and let this bastard beat her to death.

She whimpered then loosened her body and crawled up on her knees in front of him.  "
Please, don't hit me again...there has to be
something I can do to make you forgive me?"  Batting her eyelashes up at him, she let him know what she meant.  If she could just get her hands on that gun stuffed in the back of his pants, she'd show him
exactly
what she could do for him.

Suspicion filled his eyes and then he looked at the bra
in his hand,
then glanced down her shirt, where she'd pressed her breasts together for maximum effect.
  His eyebrow lifted and he gave her a hard look, then turned around walked to the door to slam it shut.
 

"I
might
not kill you today, if you
please me
,
"
he told her then unbuckled his belt and yanked his zipper down.  He reached behind him and put his gun down on the chair, then pulled his pants down exposing himself to her. 

It was all she could do not to gag when he walked toward her.  Quickly, she got off the bed and stood, and he tensed like he might hit her again.  She put her hand on his arm and smiled what she hoped was a sexy smile.  "I'm a good dancer, let me dance for you first," she said and ran her hand down his chest.

He grabbed her breast and pinched her nipple, and she gritted her teeth, but didn't give him the knee to the balls she wanted to so badly.  Instead when he released it she pushed against his chest and he fell back on the bed.  "You relax and watch..." she told him then started moving her hips and lifting her hair from her neck. 

Turning around, she bent over and located exactly where he'd put the gun, and looked to see if the safety was on or not.  She couldn't tell if the big gun even had one.  The recoil on that thing was probably like an elephant gun, she thought
,
and raised back up
then
began moving her butt in circles as she reached for the hem of her shirt.
  She had it halfway up her stomach when she heard a loud steady whooping noise
.  It didn't sound very close, but she heard it.
..the cavalry had arrived.
 

Sabrina dropped her shirt and dove for the gun, then spun around and fired in the general direction of the big disgusting man on the bed. 
The bullet hit him in the gro
in
and he fell back on the bed wailing and clutching himself.  The recoil from the gun took her back about three feet and she stumbled over the chair and her finger accidentally squeezed the trigger again.  When she got back on her feet, she saw
the last bullet
had hit him in the forehead.

Without waiting, she ran to the door and flung it open and ran outside. She didn't know where she was going, but she was going to hide somewhere in case someone else had heard those shots.  If they found her, she knew they'd kill her now and ask questions later.

She saw an unoccupied army-type truck parked across the compound near another building and zigzagged her way over there, hiding behind things as she went.  Grabbing the handle and pulling it, Sabrina jumped up inside and slammed the door behind her, laying down on the seat
, her heart beating erratically as she took short shallow breaths
.  Quickly she looked at the ignition and smiled when she saw keys dangling there.  These guys really were a bunch of dumb
asses, she thought
, then
got on the floorboard so she could peek over the doorframe
to
get her bearings
and see if any of them had noticed her
.

A minute later, Sabrina heard the whooping sound again that she'd heard earlier, and she looked up and saw a large helicopter making wide circles around the compound, pretty high up.  Her heart skittered inside of her chest,
then nearly burst with joy.  That had to be Cole and the cavalry coming to get her.
 

She had to let
Cole know
she was here, she thought
, before they took off without her
.  Looking around the cab of the truck, she didn't see anything she could wave as a flag
, not even her bra, which she'd left in the room with the dead bad guy
.  Her eye snagged on a small crate on the passenger side floorboard
.  Curious what was in it,
she ya
nked back the lid then gasped.

"Holy, shit..." she said and lifted out one of the hand grenades with trembling hands.  Studying it, she saw there was a pin, obviously that set it off, and a clamp.  That must be to keep it from exploding until she threw it.  A big grin cut across her face. "No guts, no glory," she said quietly, then took five of them out of the box and put them on the se
a
t.  There was a dirty, nasty cap on the floorboard too, so she picked it up and put it on her head and tried to hide her hair under it.

Sabrina sat behind the wheel and twisted hard to crank the big truck.  It was a stick shift and she hadn't driven one of those since she was fifteen out in her daddy's cow pasture.  Reaching beside the seat she pulled the handle to get as close to the wheel and clutch as she could, then she put the truck in gear.  It bucked a few times, until she got the motion right, then it evened out and she hit the accelerat
or and headed for the lean-to where she'd seen the weapons being transferred.

Pulling up sideways
in front of the tent,
she
put the truck in neutral then picked up a grenade.  Two of the men she'd seen out there earlier came walking outside and stopped to shield their eyes from the sun.  Sabrina pulled the pin on the grenade and held down the
clamp, then leaned
out of the window
.  S
he drew her arm back and threw it as hard as she could toward them, then popped back inside and laid down on the seat covering her head.
  The concussion was very loud and the truck rocked.  Heat poured through her window and debris rained down on her skin.

Bouncing up in the seat, she saw the grenade had blasted the right
quarter
of the building and it was on fire.  That should give Cole and crew the signal they needed to find her, she thought and rammed the gear shift into first and slammed her foot on the gas, headed for the open field right outside the circle of buildings. 
Behind her she heard shouting and gunshots, but she didn't stop.  Loud explosions started behind her right when she cleared the buildings, but she didn't stop.

She knew there had to be a road around here somewhere and if
there
was, she was going to find it, and get the hell out of here.
  A bullet pinged off the
right
side mirror of the truck and it shattered.  Sabrina swerved to the
left
then
right
trying to avoid getting hit again. 
She looked out the mirror on her side and saw a jeep behind her with several men with guns pointing at the truck.
 

She swallowed and looked down at the .45 on seat beside her.  That wasn't going to do her any good, she thought.  She picked up a grenade with her right hand then took her left off the wheel and pulled the pin.  "Holy, shit...I'm holding a live grenade and trying to drive a truck," she mumbled then turned the truck sharply to the left and hit the gas. 

The jeep turned with her and tried to get parallel beside her just as she hoped.  They were shooting, but missing, thank god.  When they got closer to her, she tossed the grenade out the window toward the jeep and hit the gas.

The grenade exploded behind her and rocked the truck violently, tossing her around on the seat.  She grabbed the wheel to keep from getting thrown across the cab and the truck wobbled then she felt it poi
sed
on two wheels
.
There was a loud screech then she felt herself falling sideways it slow motion.

***

All of them, even Luke was sitting on the edge of their seat looking out the windows of the helicopter
,
searching the property they had come back to for a second look.  Junebug was flying much lower than he had the first time, and Cole now realized that what he'd seen earlier wasn't hay trucks, they were army type trucks, and this place was a compound of some sort.