Behind the Lens (Home in Carson Book 1)

by Renee Harless

  The sound of a knock on the apartment door had the men spinning on their feet and leaving the secret room, guns pulled ready to fire. All except Cliff who lost his at the lake. Cliff took a look at the small monitor by the door. Something about the man was familiar and as the stranger looked around Cliff pressed the button to open the apartment door.

  The man’s eyes widened in surprise as he turned to find Preston, Dylan, and Ryker standing with weapons drawn, but then his bright green eyes settled on Cliff.

  “Hey. . . ugh. . . I thought that maybe I could help.”

  “You’re the new bar owner.”

  “I am. I heard about what’s happening while I was walking home and thought that maybe I could help somehow.”

  Cliff narrowed his eyes at the stranger, but then realized the man without any friends in town was offering to help him get his woman back.

  Holding out his hand, Cliff greeted the man. “Thanks. I’ll take anything I can get. I’m Cliff. What’s your plan?”

  Returning his shake, the stranger replied, “Landon. And do you have access to a CB radio?”

  Preston nodded and flew out of the apartment toward the police station a block away.

  Cliff explained to Landon what they were looking at and the four men kept their eyes trained on the tracking system, watching as the car began to approach the service road’s entrance to the main highway.

  “You a spy?” Landon asked, breaking the silence.

  Cliff shook his head, though truthfully, it was probably the closest designation for his job that he could fathom. “You going to tell us anything about yourself?”

  “Not today.”

  “What made you come out of hiding today?”

  “I’ve spent enough time in a shell, figured it was as good a time as any.”

  True enough. Cliff could understand, he was the same way at one time.

  Two minutes later, Preston rushed back into the room, sweat lining his brow, but he was barely out of breath as he handed over the CB radio and all of its parts.

  Landon worked at setting it up as he explained that they’ll try channel nineteen first since it was the most common.

  “Tell me again what the plan is?” Preston asked wearily.

  “We’re going to ask for some assistance. Believe me, when those truckers hear that there is a kidnapping, they’re going to shut down that highway faster than you can say freeze.”

  Flipping a switch, a low humming sound filled the room.

  Landon brought the mic to his mouth.

  “This is Irish Whiskey asking for help.”

  At first, there was no response, then the room filled with a dozen or so confirmations.

  “We’ve got a kidnapping at your backdoor on 40. Need a convoy and stop.”

  Rogers and ten-fours answered in response.

  Landon gave the description of the black town car and its current location before ending the transmission.

  “All right. You guys stay here. Preston and I are going behind them.”

  “I’m coming too. We need to turn these guys into the FBI,” Dylan explained.

  “Good luck,” Landon said as he left. Ryker turned back to the monitor, promising to keep them in the loop if anything changed.

  ***

  Her body jostled against the seat and Alexis was taken back to the moment she was lying in the backseat of Heath’s stolen car, barely clinging to life. The car dipped and her head cracked against the door, the pain sending stars behind her closed eyes. Unable to open her mouth, her moan rumbled in her chest.

  Her eyes shot open in alarm only to find her mouth duct-taped closed and her arms tied behind her with plastic ties.

  “Mmm!” she screamed behind the tape, flailing her legs, which were also duct-taped together at the ankles. “Mmm!”

  “Calm down. Don’t want you hurting yourself. Had to take precautions. Couldn’t have you going after me with that gun you tucked into your waistband.” Her eyebrows rose in surprise. How could he have figured that out? “You may have fooled the brawn, but you can’t fool the brains,” her father snarled. Alexis looked up at the rearview mirror, meeting the narrowed gaze of the muscled driver who had stood outside the bedroom door.

  Alexis surmised that they were on the outskirts of town on an old back road. She couldn’t have been out of it too long, thirty minutes tops. When she had helped locate Sydney, Alexis had memorized these paths on the map, knowing that they all led to a service entrance of Highway 40.

  It was another five minutes before the weaving gravel path gave way to the opening of the main road. The driver pulled the car onto the shoulder and merged into an opening in traffic. They were heading toward Asheville, and if Alexis suspected correctly, to the airport to hitch a ride on a chartered plane. She needed to come up with something fast. Some way to deter the men from getting her on a flight. But what could she do without the ability to speak?

  She felt like The Little Mermaid without the happily ever after in her future.

  Her aggravation grew as the car zipped and zagged around the slower vehicles, everyone moving out of the way as if the town car was carrying someone of importance. Frustration built and bloomed inside her body, festering under her skin like molten lava ready to explode.

  The driver honked the horn as a trucker in the left lane refused to move over despite his lower speed. Beside their car, another trucker pulled up alongside them, and another in the rear. Alexis dared to peek out of her window, silently begging the driver beside them to take notice.

  “Yes!” she cried behind the tape as the driver winked down at her then sped up his truck to run beside the leader. She didn’t know how or why, but somehow, they were going to help her. Cliff and Preston must have got word out to them.

  Her survival instincts kicked in at the knowledge that she wasn’t alone, that they were all fighting with her.

  With renewed spirit Alexis, brought her knees to her chest, twisted in her seat, and kicked at her father’s face. Over and over again, she jerked her legs back and forth, ramming his head against the window.

  Victory was short-lived as a lower kick fell at her father’s shoulder, allowing him the chance to grip her ankles and twist, sending her falling face first onto the floor. Alexis tried to get up onto her knees but her father slammed his feet onto the middle of her back and behind her knees.

  The pain was excruciating as stars danced behind her eyes.

  Her moan went unheard as the driver began to swerve the car.

  “What do you want me to do, Boss? They’re saying it is stopped up ahead.”

  Faintly in the background, Alexis could hear the guide on the navigation system speaking.

  “No more exits for another five miles.”

  “Are there any side roads to go around?”

  “Not unless you want me to drive in a field.”

  “Do it.”

  Alexis braced against the floor, her father’s feet pressed against her back, as she prepped for the jostle of the car to veer off the highway.

  Instead, she was met with the thunderous sound of tractor-trailer trucks braking beside the car.

  “Oh, shit,” the driver cried out as the car spun. Alexis closed her eyes and tucked her head as close as possible against her chest when the first impact landed on her father’s side of the car, the next on hers. A weightless sensation floated through her until she realized that the vehicle was airborne.

  Without a seatbelt or any way to hold herself down, Alexis feared for the first time that she may not survive.

  The car flipped over the hood deploying the airbags with a pop and then settled upside down, the car spinning slightly on the roof. The only thing holding her in place was her father’s foot on the back of her knees and the way her head lodged under the front passenger seat.

  She wondered if her father survived the impact and the muscled man driving the car.

  “Get me out of here, now,” her father shouted, finally releasing his foot from her knees.
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  It happened slowly. First, her feet descended toward the ground, which was now the roof of the car, and then her head began to slip from its cubby under the seat. With no way to brace for the fall, Alexis’ shoulder took the full impact. The same shoulder that took the bullet.

  A muffled groan cried from behind the tape over her mouth. Wetness pooled against her lower lids as her head collided against the metal.

  From her position on the ground, she watched as the driver pushed aside the deployed airbag and wrenched his door open. Unleashing his seatbelt, he toppled forward but pulled himself upright as he moved out of the car. He spared no backward glance at his boss, or her. He took off on foot toward the woods.

  Jerking her head in the other direction, she witnessed the aftermath of their collision, pileups of cars as far as the eye could see. The truck drivers began to step out of their vehicles, a few with weapons of their own raised toward her father’s car.

  “You think that they’re here to save you?” her father’s voice drew her attention and she watched in horror as he took her own gun and maneuvered out of the vehicle, gripping her feet to pull her with him. No amount of wiggling would set her free.

  Just as his son had done earlier, Lev stood with one arm wrapped tightly around her and the other with a gun pointed to her head. She had to give him credit for being smart enough to have her facing him. Had she been turned around, she would have bucked against him.

  “Back up!” he yelled to the truckers as he took a step away from his car, having to drag her with him due to her taped ankles. She could already decipher his plan as his eyes darted around; with her as a hostage, he was going to steal one of the trucks to make his escape.

  She really hoped that it didn’t come to that.

  The truckers backed away, but never dropped their weapons. As he pulled her between the two trucks that blocked the highway, her view of the men drifted away.

  “You’re a bigger pain now than you were as a child. Look what you’re making me do. You couldn’t just come without a fight. Pain in my ass, just like your mother.”

  He dragged her a few more yards until he reached the driver's door of one of the vehicles. Pressing her against the metal of the truck, he pried the door open with the arm that had been wrapped around her waist, then pushed her up and inside the truck.

  Alexis tried to fight. God, she gave it everything she had. Kicking, twisting, falling, but to no avail. He managed to get her inside and pushed her over until he was able to get inside himself, gun positioned at her the entire time.

  Turning the key in the ignition, Lev moved to shut the door, only to find himself with a gun positioned at his head.

  “Drop the weapon. Get out of the vehicle now with your hands up or so help me. I will blow your head into a million little pieces.”

  Alexis cried behind the tape. Preston stood at the ready with his gun drawn at Lev as Cliff stood beside him, with his eyes trained on her.

  “Think you two scare me,” her father said, trying again to pull the door closed.

  Before she knew what was happening her father’s scream filled the cab of the truck, followed by the clanging of his gun onto the floor.

  “You shot my hand!”

  “You took too long. Resisting arrest. Now get out of the vehicle with your hands up,” Preston bellowed.

  Her father stalled, his hand held tightly against his chest. She could tell he was weighing his options as he looked back and forth between the wheel and Preston.

  Alexis was tired of waiting. Pulling her knees to her chest once more, she kicked at her father until he fell from the truck, his face landing on the hot asphalt. Preston immediately got to work cuffing Lev while he screamed that he wanted to go to the hospital.

  Cliff didn’t watch. He launched himself inside the truck and pulled her to him. Even restrained she could feel his embrace wrap around her completely.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She was amazed to see the moisture filling in his eyes, his love for her evident in each tear. “This is going to hurt,” he told her, placing his fingers at the edge of the tape. She nodded and he pulled the strip. Her skin felt like it had been pulled off and she cried out in agony, Alexis’s body pulling away with each removal.

  “I’m so sorry,” his voice was choked up as he lifted her ankles and repeated the motion, the sensitive skin throbbing afterward.

  Hating to turn away from him, she did so to show him her wrists cuffed with plastic ties. Using a pocket knife dangling from the rearview mirror, he sliced through the thick plastic and set her free. Cliff didn’t have a chance to hang the knife back in place before she launched herself at him.

  “You came for me!”

  He wrapped her in his arms so tightly that she could barely take a breath, it was the best thing she had ever felt.

  “Of course I did, I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she cried.

  “Sorry, guys. The ambulance is here.” Alexis recognized the voice as Dylan’s.

  Pulling back, Cliff only adjusted his hands toward her face and placed the most gentle kiss on her lips. She would melt into a puddle at his feet if they weren’t in this particular situation, the kiss was that sweet and potent.

  Stepping out of the vehicle, Cliff lifted Alexis into his arms and carried her tenderly down the same path that her father had dragged her through in his means to escape.

  “Did you catch the man that fled?” Cliff asked Dylan who walked behind them.

  “They have the dogs on him,” he said. At first, Alexis didn’t know what he meant, but then she saw the Asheville police SUVs with K-9 unit emblazoned along the side.

  As they reached the ends of the truck a round of applause sounded. It began softly, just one or two people, then the noise became a thunderous pulse. Alexis rested her head on Cliff’s shoulder as they made their way through the crowd. Some of the truckers patted Cliff on the back; others sobbed in their happiness of her escape. The emotions were overwhelming and exhaustion tugged at Alexis.

  “Sleep, sweetheart. I’ll be right by your side.”

  As he laid her on the stretcher, he followed the EMTs into the back of the ambulance.

  The paramedic wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her bicep and the other attached a pulse monitor on the tip of her finger.

  “Hey, Cliff,” she whispered, turning her head away from the machines to face him. His clothes were covered in mud and dust, his face still a slight shade of gray from where he must have fought death and won.

  “Yeah,” he replied, reaching over to take her free hand in his.

  “You never did tell me your real name.”

  She cracked a smile as he chuckled. “You’re right, I didn’t. My real name is Michael.”

  Closing her eyes, Alexis let the desire to sleep overtake her, but not before mumbling, “Michael, my angel and protector.”

  Chapter Ten

  The pounding of the hammer in his hand vibrated against the newly formed calluses on his palm. The ache was bittersweet. He could use the air compressed nail gun to set the boards for the frame of the living room, but he enjoyed the feel of the tool in his hand.

  “We’d be done by now if you would use a power tool,” Austin complained, the rest of the Connelly men joining with a few chuckled as they helped him finish framing the inside of his new cabin.

  Well, it wasn’t going to be a cabin any longer. Once Cliff was cleared to build on the land, he and Austin drew up the plans for a proper mountain lodge. It was going to be everything he had ever dreamed of. But one thing was missing.

  It had been over a month since he heard from Alexis and his heart stung whenever he thought about her or was reminded of her. And here on his property, everything reminded him of Alexis. He lived in a perpetual state of heartbreak, moping around the town no matter how many times Amy tried to cheer him up. Somehow the woman found out his love of Butterfinger candy bars and he’d found bouquets of them at his shop every day since he returned to Carson.

>   Cliff’s phone buzzed in his back pocket and he set down the hammer on the workbench and fished it out.

  “Finally, maybe now I can get the drywall up,” Austin mumbled as he took over nailing the board in place that Cliff had been working on.

  Cliff couldn’t hold back his look of disappointment at the image of the familiar truck cruising down his driveway.

  He prayed every night that Alexis came back to him, even knowing that her return wasn’t something she could control. The moment she had been admitted to the hospital, the FBI had swarmed the building and forcefully shoved him away. He barely got to say goodbye to her before he was kicked out and told that everything was now part of a criminal investigation.

  He had been treated like a second-class citizen when he probably had a higher clearance than most of the men and women in Alexis’ room. His only consolation was that Heath had returned and was by her side. He messaged Cliff daily to keep him in the loop, Cliff only wondered why Alexis couldn’t do the same.

  “Are we ready for walls?” Cliff asked as he shoved his phone back in his pocket and turned toward the three men in the same room. The rest had ventured upstairs to finish the framing.

  “Can we take a break? It’s fucking hot as hell in here.” Logan leaned against the wall that would be the foyer, sweat dripping down his face.

  It was hot. The middle of summer in Carson could be brutal on an average day, but they had extreme temperatures for a week now. Luckily, the HVAC system was scheduled to be installed the next day.

  “Yeah, we can wait until it starts to cool off.”

  A thud on the porch brought everyone’s attention toward the front door. Landon stood sheepishly with a cooler at his feet.

  With a shrug, he said, “I brought beer.”

  Though the man remained silent most of the time, Cliff had tried his hardest to include the newcomer. From what he learned so far, the bar Landon had been spending his time renovating was slated to open in early fall, right at the height of the beer season. He’d been asking their advice on the best local breweries to include on tap.

  “Beer!” the collective group shouted as they pound down the steps and through the front door, every person reaching into the cooler with thanks to Landon. Cliff watched as the group settled and relaxed on the porch they’d helped build.