by Elle James
Corley’s lip curled. “What do you care? They weren’t the ones paying you to get the information out of McKinnon.”
“I’m concerned that the trouble you stirred up will make them lose confidence in us. They might think we’re loose cannons and will let others know what they’re up to in the hills. And it’s all because of her.” He motioned with his gun.
Jenna held her breath, expecting Otis to shoot despite Corley getting in his way.
“You think they’ll blame us for them having to move camp?”
“Yes, I think they will,” Otis said.
“Maybe we should think about leaving the area altogether,” Corley said. “Then I could take her with me.”
“And she’d kill you in your sleep.” Otis drew in a deep breath and blew it out his nose like a bull getting ready to charge. “I’m not leaving this area until that money is found. I want my cut of it.”
“The people who paid you to work McKinnon over promise you a cut?”
“No, but if I get another chance at McKinnon, I’ll find that stash first and take my cut.” Otis’s eyes narrowed. “Now, do something about her, or I will. But you can’t keep her here.”
Otis turned and walked back into the other room.
Jenna let out a little of the breath she’d been holding. She was more afraid of Otis than she was of Corley. Now that she had one hand free, she might have a chance to defend herself, maybe even get away from the brothers.
The only problem was there wasn’t a door in the room where she was being held. Just a picture window, and it was covered in dark sheeting like the cabin where James McKinnon had been tortured.
Her blood boiled at the cold, calculating way Otis talked about torturing James McKinnon. If she was going to stab anyone in the face, it would be Otis Ferguson for what he’d done to Bastian’s father. James McKinnon was a tough man, but he was kind and fair. He didn’t deserve what was happening to him.
“So, what’s it going to be?” Corley said. “Should I do as my brother said and put you out of my misery? Or should you and I run away together and start all over?”
Jenna ground her teeth together at the thought of starting all over with Corley. But if it got her out of that house and away from Otis, she’d have more of a chance to escape. Swallowing the bile rising in her throat, she said, “If you promise not to hit me again, I’ll run away with you.”
Corley tilted his head to one side. “Now, you know I’ve got a temper. I can’t promise nothing.”
She bit down hard on the words she wanted to say and forced others out of her mouth. “If you promise to try, I’ll go with you. We can start over.”
“She’s lying, Corley,” Otis called out from the other room.
“Shut up!” Corley yelled back at his brother. His face grew red, and he clenched his fists. “You ain’t lying to me, now, are you?” He started toward her, his lips curling back from his teeth. “I can put up with a lot of shit but lying ain’t something I got patience for.”
“I’m not lying, Corley,” she said.
“Then tell me you love me.” He towered over her, his fists clenching and unclenching.
At this point, Jenna would tell him anything he wanted to hear. Her goal was to get out of there alive.
“I love you, Corley,” she choked out, though she wanted to vomit once the words left her lips.
Corley’s face went from red to purple, and his eyes bulged. “You lying bitch.” He cocked his arm and swung his fist.
Jenna ducked in time to avoid the brunt of the blow, but he still caught the side of her head and sent her sprawling, chair and all across the floor. The wooden chair broke into pieces. She struggled to scoot away from him, but he caught her by the hair and yanked her to her feet.
She yelped in pain. This was it. She was going to die in that house and never know if Bastian loved her.
The hell, she was. If she could get Corley’s hand out of her hair, she’d throw herself out the window and make a run for the woods. It was a crappy plan, but the only one she could come up with, considering Otis had a gun, and he wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through her head.
Chapter 14
“We’re within a half mile of our target. Stop the vehicle. We’ll go in on foot from here,” Hank said as he pulled off the highway onto an old dirt road with low-hanging branches.
Before the SUV came to a complete halt, Bastian was out of the vehicle and hurrying toward the location the little green blip on the tracking device had indicated.
“Bastian,” Angus caught up with him and grabbed his arm. “You can’t just charge in there. They might freak and kill her. We don’t even know who has her, and why they took her and left our mother.”
“I don’t care. They’re going to die if they’ve hurt her.” Bastian shook Angus’s hand free of his arm.
“Angus is right,” Colin said. “We have to assess the situation and come up with a plan to save her.”
“Fine. Then let’s get there, assess and deal with the bastards who took Jenna.” Bastian moved out with the team.
Swede held the tracker out in front of them. “Not far now. We should be able to see—”
“House ahead,” Bastian spoke into his radio headset and picked up the pace, passing Swede.
“Spread out and hold your position,” Hank instructed.
Bastian came within twenty yards of the house and dropped down beside a tree.
No lights shone through the windows. A dull glow indicated the windows were covered by something dark, and lights were on inside.
Voices came from inside. Deep, male voices.
Bastian’s gut twisted. Jenna was in there. His mind came up with a multitude of scenarios of what was going on in there, and none of them were good. “The windows are covered,” Bastian spoke into his mic.
“I hear voices,” Angus said. “It sounds like two men arguing.”
“Wait,” Colin’s voice came over Bastian’s headset. “I think I hear a woman’s voice.”
Bastian strained to hear it as well. There. It was a woman’s voice. He couldn’t tell what she was saying, but it had to be Jenna.
Then he heard the woman cry out as if in pain.
Bastian leaped to his feet, his rifle in his hands, loaded, chambered and ready for action. He raced toward the house, his focus on getting to Jenna before someone got to her first.
“Cover us,” Angus said as he caught up to Bastian and ran with him. “Got a plan?” he asked.
“Get her out.”
At that moment, something crashed through the window, bringing with it the dark sheeting that had covered the glass and exposing the interior of the house and two men standing in the opening. One of them pointed a gun at whatever had fallen through the window.
Bastian raised his rifle and fired at the man holding the gun.
The man stood for a moment without moving, his brow raised, a surprised look on his face. Then he fell through the window, landing on top of the jumble of back sheeting and broken glass.
The other man pulled a gun out of his waistband and aimed toward them.
Bastian and Angus dropped to the ground as a barrage of bullets flew over their heads.
The second man fell backward into the house and lay still.
“I’m getting up,” he said into his mic. “I don’t know if there are more where they came from.”
“We’ve got your six,” Hank said.
Bastian and Angus ran forward. Angus pulled himself up into the house, while Bastian sorted through the pile of debris on the ground.
He shoved the gunman over on his back. Light from inside the house shined down on his face. He pressed his fingers to the base of the man’s throat. A faint pulse beat there. “This is Otis Ferguson. He’s still alive.”
From inside, Angus said, “All clear. This guy is dead.”
“Did you find Jenna?” Bastian asked, leaning into the house, his gaze searching. Not finding. His heart beat fast, and his chest tightened.
>
“No sign of her,” Angus said.
The others came forward.
Colin helped Duncan lift Otis out of the debris and laid him out on the ground. Duncan located his wound and applied pressure.
The dark pile of sheeting moved.
Bastian dug under it. His breath lodged in his lungs and hope swelled in his chest. “Jenna?”
“Bastian?” her voice came from behind the dark fabric.
He pulled it aside and found Jenna lying on her back, her arm strapped to what was left of a wooden chair, and her face bruised and bloody.
“Oh, sweetheart, you’re a mess,” he said.
“Not exactly the words I was hoping for,” she said, raising a hand to his face.
“Let me finish.” He pulled her out of the rubble and into his arms. “And the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.” He started to wrap his arms around her.
“Don’t,” she said and shoved his arms away.
“What? Are you mad because I didn’t say I love you? Well, I do,” he said. “I love you and want to spend the rest of my life telling you I love you.”
She let out her breath. “Oh, thank God. I wasn’t sure.”
When he started to take her into his arms again, she held up her hands.
“Don’t hold me.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” He helped her step free of the debris.
“I think I have glass in my ass,” she said and turned around.
A large piece of broken glass caught the light from inside the house.
“Oh, baby. You do. What do you want me to do? Leave it there and let the doctor extract it, or pull it out?”
“Pull it out,” she said. “It hurts.”
He tore off a piece of the dark sheeting and wrapped his fingers with it, then eased his hand around the protruding glass.
“Need some help there, Bastian?” Colin asked.
Bastian swore softly. “Give me your T-shirt.”
“Huh?” Colin looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“T-shirt. Now,” he said. “She’s gonna bleed.”
Colin stripped out of his jacket and pulled his T-shirt over his head.
Bastian handed him his K-bar knife. “Strips.”
While Colin cut his shirt into strips, Bastian focused on the shard and not causing the woman he loved more pain.
“Just pull the damn thing out,” Jenna said, between gritted teeth.
“Yes, ma’am.” Bastian pulled out the glass and held out his hand. “Shirt!”
Colin handed him a strip of his T-shirt he’d folded into a neat square.
Bastian applied pressure to the wound to slow the bleeding. “We need to get you to the clinic in town. You’ll need stitches.”
Jenna let go of the breath she’d been holding in a long exhale. “At least you got the glass out. Think you can get the tape and chair parts off my arm?”
Bastian straightened, keeping his hand on her bottom, while continuing to apply pressure. “Hold this while I work on the tape.”
He spent the next few minutes trying to ease the tape off without pulling off half of her skin with it.
“Yank it off like an adhesive bandage,” she finally said.
He did as directed, hating that it hurt her, but seeing no other way.
She bit back a yelp, and the tape and wood were tossed onto the pile of debris.
At that moment, the sheriff pulled up to the cabin, followed by an ambulance.
“Perfect timing,” Jenna said. “If Otis is still alive, they need to revive him long enough to interrogate him about your father. He was the one who performed the torture. Someone paid him to do it.”
Bastian’s teeth ground together. “If we didn’t need answers from him, I’d let the bastard bleed out.”
“Me, too,” Jenna said. “The man inside is my ex, Corley Ferguson.”
“He won’t be hurting you anymore,” Angus said as he came to stand beside her. “Hank and Kujo went to retrieve the vehicles. We can take you to the clinic in Eagle Rock now, or, if you can stand being in a vehicle that long, we can get you to the Emergency Room at the hospital in Bozeman.”
She nodded. “I can wait for the ER in Bozeman. The clinic won’t be open. They’d have to bring in the on-call. But tell me, did they find your mother?”
Bastian nodded. “A neighbor found her and called an ambulance. Molly went with her to the hospital in Bozeman. That’s where we’re going next.”
“Is she going to be all right?” Tears filled Jenna’s eyes. “I tried to get her out of the vehicle. That’s when Corley caught me. I was too worried about your mother, I didn’t see him until too late. He slammed my face against the pavement and knocked me out.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “I really must look a mess.”
“You’re not going to let me live that down, are you?” Bastian said, his throat constricting.
“Never,” she said. “I might forgive you though, if you kiss me.”
“I’m kind of afraid to. You’re pretty banged up.”
“You can kiss me here,” she said and pointed to the side of her mouth that wasn’t swollen and crusty with blood.
He brushed his lips across the tip of her nose instead. “We’ll save the kisses for when you’re not hurting so much.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay. Could we go now? I’ve got a splitting headache, and the other end isn’t feeling much better.”
Hank drove up at that moment, jumped out and held the back door for her to climb in.
Bastian assisted Jenna up into the truck, got in with her and helped her stretch out across his lap and the back seat lying on her belly.
“I’d say relax and sleep, but I’m afraid you might also have a concussion,” he said, stroking her hair gently back from her face.
Jenna lay with her cheek resting on her arms. “We can talk on the way to Bozeman. You can tell me what happened at the camp, and I’ll fill you in on everything Otis and Corley had to say. I think Otis had every intention of killing me. He wasn’t too concerned about talking in front of me.”
“Hopefully, we’ll get everything out of him, and then he can die of a staph infection.”
“That would be true justice,” Jenna said. “You know he’d be out of jail in no time, since he hasn’t actually killed anyone.”
“I hope someone makes him his bitch.”
Jenna laughed and winced. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.”
During the long trek into Bozeman, Bastian did his best to keep Jenna talking. Even so, she drifted off several times. He didn’t like having to wake her, but he was afraid that if he didn’t, she might never wake again.
At the hospital, she was met at the emergency room door with a gurney and rolled into a room.
Bastian insisted on going with and held her hand as the nurses stripped her out of her clothes, then cleaned her up and dressed her in a hospital gown. The doctor came in, examined her wounds, checked her for concussion and stapled the cut on her bottom.
They moved her into the same room where his mother was to observe them both throughout the night. If all went well, they’d be released the next day.
Bastian kissed his mother. “How are you doing?”
“Better now that I know my boys are okay.”
“She’s been beside herself not knowing what was going on,” Molly said. She sat in the chair in the corner of the room, her legs pulled up to her chest.
Bastian caught her glance and held it.
Molly nodded. “She knows you didn’t find Dad.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. Apparently, he never was in that camp. He was in the cabin, and Otis Ferguson was the man responsible for interrogating him.”
“Does he know where James is?”
“They brought him to the hospital with a gunshot wound. When he’s able, the sheriff will try to get some answers out of him.”
His mother pinched the bridge her nose. �
�This has to end soon. I don’t know how much more he can take.” She looked up at Bastian. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”
He held his mother’s hand. “I know. I feel like we’re getting closer. We just need that one piece of information that will tip the scales and blow this case wide open.”
“Please, let it be soon.” His mother closed her eyes. “Right now, I just want to sleep.”
He kissed her cheek and moved to Jenna’s bed. “Hey, sweetheart.”
“Did he tell you he loves you?” his mother said behind him.
Jenna chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
Bastian took her hand in his. “I told her. And I’ll spend the rest of my life telling her, if she’ll let me.”
His mother lifted her head from her pillow. “Is that a proposal?”
Bastian looked down into Jenna’s eyes. “Does it count if I don’t have a ring?”
“Yes,” his mother said.
Jenna smiled.
“To make it official, do I have to get down on one knee?” he asked.
“Yes,” Molly said, dropping her feet to the floor. “Good grief, do we have to tell you everything? Ask her already. We don’t have all night.”
Bastian took Jenna’s hand and dropped to one knee. “Jenna Meyers, if I promise to love you for the rest of my life, would you marry me?” He held up a hand before she could answer. “You need to know what that means to marry a SEAL. I still have a commitment to the Navy, and I’ll be deployed more than I’m home, but when I’m home, I’ll make up for all the time I’m away. And you’ll likely be living on a Navy base, or close by, and have to commiserate with other Navy wives, who are in the same boat as you and miss their husbands whose whereabouts they aren’t allowed to know. It’s a hard life, but eventually, we’ll retire here in Montana and live on the Iron Horse Ranch.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, you’re not.” She frowned. “Do you want me to say yes?”
“More than I want to take my next breath. I’d be honored if you’d be my wife.”
He waited, holding his breath, praying he hadn’t just shot himself in the foot.
“Yes,” she said quietly and drew his hand to the not so broken side of her mouth and kissed his fingertips. “The fact you could ask me while I look like this says a lot about how you feel about me. Yes, I’ll marry you. I love you, Bastian McKinnon. I think I always have.”
