Living with the Single Dad (The Single Dads of Seattle Book 4)

by Whitley Cox

  Her phone had her on the highway heading northbound on the 405. It would take a miracle for him to catch up to her.

  A fucking miracle.

  But he had to try.

  He had to do something.

  Fuck, he didn’t even know her license plate number. And she had a white Toyota Corolla, which were a dime a dozen. No way would the cops be of any help.

  Besides, where were the cops when Dina was gunned down and bleeding out in that mall? They were fucking useless. The only reason the cops had been called that night when Isobel and Mercedes were drugged and abducted was because Colton called them. Aaron figured he and his buddy would just go in and take care of things themselves—like he had in Colombia. But Colton didn’t think that the vigilante thing wasn’t a good idea. They needed to do things legally and call the police, especially since Aaron had Sophie to think about now. It wouldn’t be good if he ended up in prison for killing a couple of frat boys. Colton was right, of course, but Aaron still didn’t trust cops, still didn’t think they were quick enough on the job.

  He ran out to the garage and jumped in his truck, peeling out of his driveway like a bat out of hell. He set his phone into the holder on the dash and hit call.

  Maybe, just maybe she would answer.

  It started to ring.

  And ring.

  And ring.

  He was sure her voice mail message was going to pop up next, but to his relief, she answered it.

  “Hi, honey, how’s it going?” Her voice was a sing-song chipper squeak.

  Honey?

  He stopped at a red light. “Not too bad, baby. Where are you?”

  “Had to run to the cobbler to get my fixed shoe. Can’t wait for our date tonight.” The sound of heavy rain and heavy traffic competed with her trembling voice. She was fighting to stay strong, because she was strong. But she was also terrified.

  “Me either, baby. Me either.” He needed to keep her talking, needed to hear her voice. “What are you going to wear tonight, baby?”

  “Oh you know, that little black dress you bought me with the shell lace pattern on it. You know the one … I wore it when we stayed at the Gaslight Inn in Woodinville.”

  Shell.

  Gas.

  Woodinville.

  She was a fucking genius.

  She was running out of gas, and was planning to stop at the Shell gas station in Woodinville.

  Fuck, he needed to get there, and he needed to get there yesterday.

  “Oh I remember, that was the night we … ”

  “Mhmm.”

  “How’s the little one?”

  “She finally cried herself to sleep, poor lamb. Took her from Bellevue to Kirkland to fall asleep. Must be teething.”

  Bellevue to Kirkland.

  Okay, so she was past Kirkland.

  He didn’t have much time.

  Murmuring in the car had him straining his ears to listen.

  “I-I’m going to have to let you go, honey,” she said, the fear in her voice coming through the line with every shaky syllable. “I can’t wait to see you tonight. Can’t wait to—”

  “Isobel? Isobel!” He slammed his hands on the steering wheel. “Motherfucker!”

  The sonofabitch in the car must have caught on to them.

  FUCK!

  He brought up the friend finder app again and zeroed in on her coordinates. He was gaining ground on them. He’d just crossed Lake Washington and was now heading north toward Kirkland. He was maybe ten minutes behind them, give or take.

  He increased the speed of his windshield wipers, as the rain was now coming down like a tropical monsoon.

  She mustn’t be doing the speed limit, or she was getting herself deliberately stuck behind slow cars. The woman was no dummy, and she’d been raised and trained by an Army Ranger. So although she was probably scared out of her skin at the moment, particularly with Sophie in the car, Isobel was capable of making rational, practical decisions that would ensure her and Aaron’s niece’s survival.

  At least that’s what he was choosing to believe at the moment. That’s what he had to believe.

  Oh please, Lord, don’t let me be wrong.

  “What the fuck was that?” the man in the back seat of the car screamed, leaning forward between the seats and grabbing Isobel’s phone from where she had it tucked into one of the cupholders.

  She glanced back into the car. Thank God Sophie was still asleep. “It was my husband. What did you want me to do? Tell him I’ve been carjacked and I’m currently on my way to the Canadian border?”

  The man with the gun glared at her in the mirror. “Sounded like you were telling him where the fuck we’re going.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I was making conversation. He’d suspect more from me if I didn’t answer. We have a relationship like that, you know? Open lines of communication and all.”

  He was not a bad-looking guy. Short dark hair, hazel eyes, five o’clock shadow. But it was the dark bags under his eyes and the pock marks on his face that aged him. Without them, she would probably place him between twenty-eight and thirty-five. With them, he looked over forty.

  She swallowed. “I’m running out of gas. I’m going to have to stop soon.”

  “No. No stopping.”

  She caught his eyes in the mirror. “Well, if we don’t stop for gas soon, we’re going to stop in the middle of the freeway. Which would you prefer?”

  She felt like she was in the freaking Twilight Zone. Who sat and had arguments with their kidnapper slash carjacker while a baby slept peacefully between them? Nobody! What she should have done was run the car right into the nearest lamppost, then opened her door and run in a zigzag pattern as fast as her legs could carry her. But she had Sophie in the back seat, so nothing about that scenario was doable.

  So instead, she was forced to drive out of town with her carjacker and hope to God he didn’t tell her to pull off the highway, take her money, her phone and car and then leave her and Sophie dead on a back road.

  No witnesses, right?

  She tried to practice the tactical breathing her father had taught her all those years ago when she started having panic attacks at school. It had helped then, but it wasn’t helping much now.

  “Look,” she started, “I’m going to have to stop for gas. You have a gun on my child. There isn’t much I can do but do as you say. So if you tell me not to talk to anybody, I won’t. If you want to get out and pump the gas while holding on to a screaming baby as insurance, go for it. But one way or another, I need to stop for gas.”

  A flash of unease drifted behind his eyes.

  Yeah, the movies were a load of BS. All those highway chase scenes and everybody involved just happened to have started the drive with a full tank of gas?

  Bullshit.

  He knew she was right.

  “I don’t know where you intend for me to drive you, but if you want to get there, we need fuel.”

  His eyes darted back and forth. He glanced down at her phone, which by now had locked itself. She had a fingerprint reader to open it and a four-digit code. He wouldn’t be able to open it and see that she’d texted the words carjacked and help to Aaron.

  At least she hoped he wouldn’t.

  He waved the gun in the air. “Okay, okay. Turn off and get gas.”

  The Shell station in Woodinville was coming up on the right. She knew it was there because she’d stopped at it once or twice on the way to her family’s lake cabin.

  Nodding, she shifted over to the far-right lane. “There’s one up ahead.”

  His eyes turned fierce in the mirror, and he clutched the bag he was holding tighter against his chest. “If you pull any fucking funny business, I swear to fucking God I’ll put a bullet in this baby faster than you can blink. You get the gas. You get back in the car. Got it?”

  Her eyes met his in the mirror. “Got it. No funny business, I promise.” Her lips trembled as she focused on the still-sleeping Sophie. Her little bottom lip stuck out
all pouty and wobbled as if she were trying to suck. A tear slid down Isobel’s cheek. “Please don’t hurt her. Please.”

  Zero empathy glared back at her in the mirror. “Shut up and fucking drive.”

  29

  Aaron pulled his pickup truck into the Shell station just off the 405 on the outside of Woodinville. Her phone had her there.

  She had to be there.

  Unless the motherfucker tossed it out the window when they stopped for gas.

  Dread coursed through him at the thought of her not being there. At the thought of Isobel and Sophie being on the road again with no phone, no way of tracking them, with some lunatic with a gun calling all the shots.

  He wheeled around the gas station, searching for her white Corolla, but it wasn’t at any of the pumps. Not parked out front of the convenience store either. It wasn’t anywhere.

  He was too late.

  Her phone was here, but she wasn’t.

  Fear thundered inside him.

  Where. Was. She?

  He stopped and scanned the area. Looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that might give him an idea that she’d been there. A sign, a baby blanket in a puddle, anything.

  All he saw was a highway patrol car parked at one of the pumps, but he doubted those cops knew jack shit.

  He was about to pull into a parking stall and go in to question the convenience store clerk when the sound of a horn honking at the intersection and the crunch of metal on metal drew his attention—as well as the cop’s.

  A car was heading in the wrong direction on an off ramp and had just been hit.

  A white car.

  A white Corolla.

  Traffic had come to a stop as car horns filled the air and people hung out their windows, shouting at the driver.

  The driver of the car that hit the Corolla was about to get out of their vehicle.

  Nobody had stepped out of the Corolla yet.

  The impact didn’t look severe. Neither vehicle could have been going very fast. A couple of crunched bumpers was all it looked like from where he sat. It was a risky move for sure, particularly with Sophie in the car, but Aaron could just imagine that Isobel was desperate.

  He gunned it and peeled out into the street—of course, alerting the cops. The police car’s lights flashed and its siren whooped as it pulled out from the pump and followed him.

  He ignored the police, instead getting as close to the intersection as he could before traffic got too tight and he was forced to park the truck and bail out.

  He couldn’t even remember if he bothered to turn it off or not.

  It didn’t fucking matter.

  His feet hit the wet pavement and rain pelted him in the face as he ran full-tilt toward the stopped Corolla. It was hard to see inside the back window from all the rain, but he could tell that Isobel was behind the driver’s seat and the carjacker was in the back.

  He was in the back seat with Sophie.

  He was in the back seat with Aaron’s daughter.

  The motherfucker was going to pay.

  Slowly, cars and trucks began to back up, giving Isobel’s Corolla space to back up to right herself, for the two vehicles involved in the collision to pull off to the side so traffic could resume.

  He reached Isobel’s slow-moving car and slammed his hand hard down on the top of the trunk, causing her to hit the brakes.

  Perfect.

  Then, with a rage so hot, so red, so intense, he acted in a fever and flung open the back passenger seat door, grabbed the man inside by the collar and tossed him out into the wet street.

  It didn’t matter that he had a gun, didn’t matter at all.

  He wouldn’t for long.

  Guns were the coward’s choice of weapon. A real man fought with his fists. He fought with his wits. He fought with his own life on the line.

  That’s not to say that if Aaron had a gun on him at the moment, he wouldn’t have put a bullet through the fucker’s head. Because he would have. He’d put many a bullet through many a fucker’s head, because it was just easier—and quicker.

  But not today. Today he was out for blood.

  He wanted to feel the man’s nose break beneath his fists as knuckles collided with cartilage and bone. See the blood seep from his eyes as he made them black and blue.

  It was hard to see through the rain, but he didn’t have to have perfect vision. He just needed to see his target. And his target was currently scrambling on the ground, trying to grab his black bag. His gun was ten feet away in a puddle.

  Good.

  Aaron was on him in three strides, tackling him to the ground and sitting on top of the man’s chest, his fists swinging, making contact each and every time with his face. The sound of bones crunching and strident wails from the man beneath him only spurred him on, made him hit harder, hit faster.

  Nothing but the need to beat and punish filled his mind as his pulse pumped furiously through him, heating him from the inside out.

  It wasn’t until a horn honking directly behind him and the shrill call of a police siren filled the air that he slowed down, the kill-fog slowly dissipating inside his brain.

  He was soaked through. Not that he’d worn anything besides a T-shirt and jeans, but all that was saturated.

  Rain and blood mixed together and ran down his forearms. His knuckles ached from each punch. Once again, they were cut up and bloody—but it wasn’t just his blood.

  He looked down at the man beneath him. He was unconscious. He was unrecognizable.

  A hand landed on his back. A hand he would know anywhere.

  “Aaron?”

  Without so much as a second thought or glance back at the fucker to see if he was still breathing, Aaron sprang up from his knees and whipped around, grabbing Isobel and wrapping his arms around her tight.

  Her hands grappled at his damp shirt as she clung to him for dear life. Her wet hair stuck to her face.

  More sirens filled the air, followed by the slamming of car doors and people’s voices.

  Aaron didn’t care about any of it.

  All he cared about was that his daughter and the woman in his arms, the women he loved, were safe.

  Finally, he pushed her away, bent his knees so they could see eye to eye and ran his hands down her sides, making sure she was still in one piece.

  Tears dripped down her cheeks, and her bottom lip wobbled as she struggled to rein in her fear.

  He tugged her against him once more and ran his hand down her head, shushing her. “It’s okay, baby. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

  He felt her shudder against him, and her breathing slowly returned to normal. Only when he knew she was no longer crying, no longer trembling, did he separate them once more.

  The sound of guns cocking made them both pause.

  “Hands in the air,” one cop bellowed. “Where we can see them.”

  Immediately, Aaron and Isobel tossed their hands into the air and faced the police officers. At least four of them were now hiding behind their open car doors, guns cocked and pointed on Aaron.

  “Officer,” Isobel yelled, “the man on the ground is the carjacker. He held me and my baby at gunpoint and made me drive him away from the jewelry store that was just robbed on Carnaby and Stanley. I have a baby in the car.” She tilted her head toward Aaron. “This is Aaron Steele, the baby’s uncle. He is not the bad guy.”

  Damn, his woman was strong. After everything she’d just been through, her voice was still steady as she pleaded her case with the police, the freezing rain pelting her in the face, her hair sticking to her neck, clothes soaked through.

  “He is NOT the bad guy,” she repeated.

  Understanding and acceptance slowly dawned across each officer’s face until finally whoever was in charge told them to stand down, and they dropped their guns from the “ready” position.

  Aaron exhaled and dropped his arms back down to his sides. Isobel did too. She spun to face him, and he once again closed the distance between t
hem, cupping both her cheeks in his hands. That’s when he noticed that despite her tough exterior and the brave front she put on for the cops, she was terrified. Panic filled her eyes, and tears dripped down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumb, even though it was a futile gesture given how hard it was raining.

  “How’s Soph?” he asked.

  She snorted, a small smile curving on her lips. “Still sleeping.”

  A throat cleared next to them, forcing him to release her face. He immediately wrapped a protective arm around her waist. No way in hell was he letting her go. Not ever again.

  “Sir, ma’am,” a police officer interrupted, “this the carjacker on the ground?”

  Isobel nodded. “It is. He robbed the jewelry store in the Pier City strip mall on Carnaby and Stanley, then he took me and my—me and this man’s niece hostage at gunpoint.”

  The cop’s eyes flicked up to Aaron. “And how did you know where to find them?”

  “I called her. She answered and gave me enough clues to figure out where to meet them.”

  His eyebrows rose beneath the brim of his dripping hat. “Wow. How clever.”

  An angry crow from inside the car caused all of them to turn their heads.

  “She’s up,” Isobel said, slipping out of Aaron’s grasp. “She’s probably hungry.”

  “We’re going to need to bring you both down to the station for questioning,” the officer said, following Isobel to the car. She now sat inside, holding a bottle up for a guzzling Sophie.

  Aaron was right there too. He stared down his nose at the police officer, who was a convenient five or six inches shorter than him. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s just get everyone out of this rain.”

  “But we need to be home by two,” Isobel shot back. “Questioning, statements, gun-wielding robber, carjacking or not, we have somewhere very important to be this afternoon. So unless you plan on arresting us for something, we will be leaving by one thirty.”

  The police officer stepped away, gesturing for Aaron to follow him. “She always this big of a tyrant?”

  Aaron’s smile went wide, his heart constricting and his shoulders finally free of the stress. “God, I hope so.”