Time to Heal (Harlequin Heartwarming) (22 page)

The other shed was even closer to the house and appeared to be in better shape. It also had no windows, and the boards were tight. Not even driving rain could penetrate the walls.

“Smokehouse,” Frank ventured softly.

Jake agreed, recognizing the smoky, charcoal smell. Biggs probably hunted and smoked the game he killed in the shed. He stood for a moment in silent frustration. The door faced the back of the house, and the light from the window in the kitchen fell directly on it, so he couldn’t try it. How in hell was he going to get a look inside? He couldn’t call out or knock on the walls.

“We’re going to have to pry a board loose in the back,” he told Frank. “I saw a crowbar in the other shed.”

“Yeah. I’ll get it.” Moving with surprising stealth for his size, Frank melted into the darkness.

Left alone, Jake stood for a moment, his head bent and his hand against the wall of the shed. That was when he felt it. Movement of some kind. Then he heard a dull clink. With his heart pounding in his chest, he frowned, trying to place the sound.

Frank materialized by his side and extended the crowbar. In his other hand, he held an iron rod of some kind. Between the two, they should be able to pry a board loose.

“Something or someone’s inside,” he told Frank, barely moving his lips. It was all he could do not to call out to his sons. Was it Michael? Or Scotty? Or both? Maybe it was a chained dog. Biggs was the type to chain an animal in a dark shed. But if it were an animal of some kind, wouldn’t it raise an alarm?

Using his fingers, he found a space between two boards just big enough to wedge in the flat side of the crowbar. He put his weight on the lever and easily pried the board away from the two-by-four framing.

He and Frank exchanged a triumphant look. Inside, the shed was pitch black. Nothing for it but to use the penlight, if only for a second or two. Luckily they were on the back side of the shed,
completely blocked from the view of the poker players.

He pulled the small light out and flashed it. One fraction of a second was all it took to see both his sons huddled against the wall of the filthy smokehouse.

“Keep quiet, boys,” he said quickly, softly, closing his mind against the rush of emotion that threatened to knock him to his knees. Joy and relief and pain and outrage all swirled together as Jake took in the sight of his sons. Michael blinked in confusion and reached instinctively for the smaller, sleepy Scotty, who burrowed into his older brother’s shirtfront with a whimper.

Jake heard the dull clink again, but in the dark he missed its significance. He flashed the penlight again, and what he saw sent rage, white-hot and fierce, roaring through him with the force of a freight train.

His sons were chained like animals.

“Take it easy, Jake.” Frank’s voice cut through the red tide of fury inside Jake’s head. With his bare fingers, Jake fumbled blindly at a second board. Frank moved in close, working the iron bar between the planks. “Here, let me get in position and then you use the crowbar.”

“They’re alive!” Jake muttered, needing to affirm the miracle, to keep the rest of the horror at bay.

There still wasn’t enough space for Jake to wedge his hundred and eighty pounds through. He was nearly wild to touch his sons, to sweep them up and hold them so tight that nothing would ever threaten them again. Tossing the crowbar aside, he ripped away the third board with his bare hands.

At that exact moment, the music ceased. The sound of the nails pulling through the wood was like a shriek in the night. From the house, there was a second or two of charged silence, then a door opened and a dog began barking. Willard Biggs walked out onto the porch and looked into the yard. “Who’s out there?”

R
ACHEL’S HANDS
were tight on the steering wheel to keep Todd from seeing how scared she was. It was her dream all over again. The swamp, endless dark water, trees draped with Spanish moss looking like ancient gray ghosts. Long ago swamp vegetation had threatened to swallow up the miserable excuse for a road. She could well believe that no one used it anymore.

“Todd, are you sure you know where the house is from here?”

“Yes, ma’am. I know it doesn’t look it, but it’s no more than a few hundred feet around that curve. We can’t drive the car. They’re sure to hear it.”

They’d doused the headlights two miles back. If the road hadn’t once been overlaid with crushed
white shells, it would have been impossible to drive without going off into the marsh. As it was, Rachel had worried every inch of the way. Now she had to force herself to press onward. She wasn’t sure what she could do if things didn’t go well for Jake and Frank, but with the lives of her sons at stake, she simply had to be there.

She took a deep breath and looked at Todd. “You can’t go any farther, you know that, don’t you, Todd?”

“I know.”

She was surprised. She’d expected him to want to stay with her all the way. “Okay, then, I’m out of here,” she said, borrowing a phrase she’d heard from Mike. She reached for the door handle, hoping she wouldn’t step on a snake.

The moment she stepped out of the car, a heavy splash sounded not thirty feet away. She swallowed a scream and closed her eyes, trying to calm her heartbeat. A hopeless endeavor. She’d already had one miracle today. Expecting no wildlife in a swamp would constitute two in one day.

She leaned down and focused on Todd’s shape in the pitch blackness. “Don’t leave the car for anything, Todd. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“No sweat,” he said, sounding no more concerned by the prospect of being abandoned in the middle of a swamp than at being dropped off at the movies.

Two steps away from the car and Rachel knew that traveling the dark trail alone in the swamp would forever rank as the most harrowing experience of her life. She was suffocatingly aware of every sound, every hoot and call, every splash and plunk. If slithering had a sound, she was convinced she heard it. She was not brave and fearless like her sisters. She was only a mother going to her sons. And only her love for Scotty and Michael gave her the courage to keep moving ahead into the very jaws of her nightmare.

She stopped, trembling, and listened. From somewhere, she heard country music. She had to be close. Rounding the bend finally, she nearly cried out with relief as she spotted the outline of a house.

At the same moment, she caught the brief flash of Jake’s penlight behind a shed situated close—too close!—to the house. Frank was with him. Keeping well back, Rachel watched, holding her breath as they worked to loosen the boards of the building. Her heart leaped as she sensed their haste. Was Scotty inside? Michael? Was their search almost over?

A burst of male laughter drew her gaze toward the house. From her vantage point it was difficult to tell who was inside or how many, but it seemed that most were men. Then she spotted two children. Her hand went to her throat.
Please, please,
don’t let anything go wrong.
Fear and anxiety made her teeth chatter as she stood watching like a spectator at a horror show. Her mouth dry, she glanced from the house to the shed, where Jake’s movements had taken on a frantic urgency. She chewed her lip, debating whether to let them know she was there. And then she froze with terror when she heard a sound behind her.

“Don’t yell, it’s just me.”

She almost fainted as Todd materialized out of the swamp. Because she was afraid to make a sound, she gave him a fierce look in lieu of a sound thrashing. Recognizing it, he grinned and shrugged with the charm that he would probably use with devastating success when he got a little older.

When a dog barked, they both turned. To Rachel’s horror, a man opened the door and stepped onto the porch. She heard him call out.

“It’s Willard,” Todd murmured. “He heard them. Shoot! He’s goin’ out there.”

Rachel’s eyes flew to Jake and Frank, who stood frozen in the dark shadow of the shed. She reached out helplessly to touch Todd, but she only brushed his arm. He was already half a dozen steps in front of her when she realized what he intended. With a sense of impending doom, she watched Todd step boldly from the haven of the shadows and begin jogging straight toward Willard Biggs.

Flattened against the shed, both Jake and Frank were motionless. Biggs was striding across the porch. Beside him, the dog barked eagerly. Jake searched the outlying yard frantically for something, anything, that might distract Biggs. He just needed a few more minutes to free the boys. Without a tool, that chain was a problem. He didn’t want to confront Biggs and his cohorts if he could avoid it. Rick Streeter wouldn’t appreciate any complications that threatened the success of his coup. As he weighed his options—all of them poor—he heard another voice.

“Hey, Will! It’s me, Todd.”

Jake felt a moment of blank shock. Todd Stewart. What was Todd doing here? As though echoing Jake’s thought, he heard Biggs demand, “What the hell are you doing out here, kid?”

Easing to the edge of the smokehouse, Jake watched the dog dart ahead past Biggs, making a beeline for the shed. His body went taut, but Todd darted sideways in a deceptively casual move and caught the animal by the collar.

“It’s Hazel’s kid!” Biggs yelled loud enough to carry inside. To Todd, he said, “You better have a good excuse to be out here, kid.”

“I’m just bummin’ around,” Todd told Biggs. Then, holding the dog firmly by the collar, he went forward to meet him.

Beside Jake, Frank Cordoba released a pent-up
breath as Todd jogged up the steps, obviously bent on keeping Biggs on the porch. Both were now too far away for much of their conversation to be heard.

“Jeez,” Frank said with feeling, his admiration for Todd’s spunk plain.

“Yeah.” Jake turned and slipped through the space they’d cleared in the shed wall. “Let’s free Mike and Scotty. After that—”

“After that, I’ll take care of Todd,” Frank said in a tone that told Jake an argument would get him nowhere.

“How’ll you get him out if I’m gone in the car?”

“You let me worry about that.”

“Daddy—”

Jake drew in a shaky breath and bent down and pulled Scotty into his arms. “Shh, I’m here, son. Everything’s going to be fine, now. We’re going home.” Even as he embraced Scotty, he reached for Mike, who threw his arms around Jake with a choked sob.

“Jake—”

Jake looked up at Frank’s urgent whisper and nodded. The real danger still lay in front of them: getting the boys—and that included Todd—safely away. Still holding Scotty, whose arms were locked around Jake’s neck, Jake stood still while Frank examined the chain anchored to the wall.

“Any ideas?”

Frank leaned back on his heels and spoke softly. “We could place the crowbar just right, and using the steel rod as a hammer, one solid hit to that bolt would do the job, I think.”

“I think you’re right. Now, if they’ll only turn the radio back on.”

“Dad…”

Both men looked at Michael.

“Scotty’s chained to me. We can’t run until the chain’s cut.”

“I see that, son.” Shifting Scotty slightly, Jake lifted the little boy’s foot and grimly examined the shackles.

“They used regular handcuffs on Scotty because his ankles were small,” Mike stated, keeping his voice down but unable to disguise the tremor. “Then they chained me to him, wrapping the chains around both of us. I couldn’t jimmy the cuffs open, Dad, no matter how hard I tried.” He cast a desperate look around the dark shed, giving both men a glimpse of the torture he’d undergone. “There wasn’t anything in here to use. I’m sorry, Dad.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, son.” Jake’s throat threatened to close with the power of the emotion that rose inside him. “Just hold still for another minute or two and we’ll have you free. Then we’ll slip out of here as slick as you please.”

Scotty stirred, obviously wanting to speak. Jake
touched his finger to the little boy’s mouth. “Shh, hush, son. Soon as we get back to the car, I promise you can tell me everything.”

Scotty nodded solemnly, his eyes fixed on Jake’s. Then he mouthed the words, “Mike’s my big brother, did you know?”

Clamping his jaw, Jake nodded.

Still whispering, Scotty added, “He came to get me.”

“I know.”

“Even if we have to go into the swamp, we aren’t scared.”

Jake hugged him wordlessly, sending Mike a look that made the older boy squirm and duck his head.

“Jake, we’ve gotta get out of here,” Frank reminded him.

Jake set Scotty on his feet and stood up. Taking the crowbar from Frank, he felt around the bolt, looking for the best place to set it for the blow. Right on cue, someone turned the radio on in the middle of a loud used-car commercial.

“Perfect,” Jake muttered as Frank struck once, hard, with the steel rod. The chain fell away from the wall.

“Now for the easy part,” Jake murmured. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a key and quickly slipped it into the handcuffs. One touch and they fell away, freeing Scotty’s ankles.

The links binding the boys took a little more time, but with Jake and Frank working together, both were soon rid of the steel that had shackled them to the wall for three days. Jake didn’t ask, but he wondered whether the boys were hungry and how they’d been forced to relieve themselves. He sent a cold look toward Biggs’s house, wondering how much time over the past six months Scotty had spent alone in the shed.

He swallowed the violence simmering in his chest, knowing the first priority was getting the boys out of there. But nothing would prevent him from personally seeing that Biggs paid for the agony his family had suffered.

They were slipping through the boards to head back to Jake’s car when they heard the shots.

“What the—”

A frenzy of shouts and commotion came from the cabin, and light suddenly flooded the grounds. Men spilled out of the door and down the steps, pulling on shirts and stumbling in drunken confusion. No one spared a glance for the shed or the two boys supposedly chained inside for the night. A footpath, unnoticed by Jake earlier, led away from the house on the opposite side. Within moments, the men had disappeared in that direction, and all sound was soon swallowed up in the dense growth. Only the dog, barking wildly, went in a
different direction. Cheated of his quarry earlier, he headed directly for the rear of the shed.