Walker Spirit

by Bernadette Marie

  “But she’s still alive?”

  “For now, or so we think. That’s why we’re taking you out here. Your aunt and uncle are waiting for you. So are your cousins.”

  She swallowed hard. There was one question she needed answered. “Where is Gregory?”

  34

  Phillip had alerted Jake as to what was going on. When Gregory had the taxi drop him off at Jake’s garage, he and his fiancée Missy were standing outside waiting for him.

  “Phillip has her,” Jake said as he moved toward him. “He’s taking her out to the ranch. Everyone is out there. She’s going to be safe.”

  “Good. They didn’t find Pepper in my trailer. In fact, security has no idea how they got there. Perhaps the photos have been doctored.”

  Missy shook her head. “That means somebody has been in your trailer then.”

  “Yeah, that’s what bugs me.”

  “My truck is out back,” Jake said as they began to walk around the building. “It’s a forty-five minute drive through town and out to the ranch.” He smiled wide. “Missy and I can get you there in twenty-five.”

  Missy’s smile mimicked her fiancés. “You’re not afraid of a little speed are you?”

  Gregory shrugged as they approached the truck. “Who, me? I fly spaceships.”

  * * *

  Audrey thought she might be sick from the speed at which Phillip’s cruiser accelerated. She’d never driven those back roads that fast. With each terrifying bump in the road, she gripped her fingers tighter to the side of the door.

  “Been driving these roads all my life, just like you have. You can relax,” Phillip said. “At least you’re not the one driving out with your brother.”

  “Jake is bringing Gregory?”

  “Yeah, I assume they’ll get there about the same time we do.”

  It was then that Phillip’s phone rang in his breast pocket. Expertly, he pulled it out and answered.

  “This is him. Yeah, headed that way.” He let out a long sigh.

  He tucked the phone back in his pocket. “Gregory and his manager just got a new picture.”

  “And?”

  He shifted her a look, and she knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “Your balcony.”

  Audrey felt her stomach lurch, and she closed her eyes to look away. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Gregory is being blackmailed. Whoever has Dawson, they want him to pay to keep it all quiet. I assume that’s the reason for all the personal backgrounds. Those are all places he would take somebody. Probably the places he’s been with you.”

  “And you think if he doesn’t pay up, they’ll come for me?”

  “That’s exactly what we think.”

  “So I’m going to hide out at my family’s ranch until you guys find this person? What if it’s her? What if she’s the one setting all this up? After all, I was in the makeup department. Gregory looked like he was dead.”

  Phillip nodded as he turned down the road that would take them to the ranch. “We thought of that. We have experts looking at the pictures for trauma. I’m pretty sure we’re going to find that she has nothing to do with this. At least this ransom part.”

  When they pulled up in front of her aunt and uncle’s house, her entire family converged on the driveway. It was amazing, she thought, the panic slipped away. The only Walker missing was her father, and Jake, but she’d already been told he had Gregory. Lydia pushed through the crowd of them and headed right to Audrey.

  “Nothing is going happen to you. They have to get through all of us first.”

  Audrey had no words. She pulled Lydia in and hugged her, and then everyone else.

  Just as Phillip had said, Jake and Missy pulled up with a white-knuckled Gregory only a few moments later.

  He nearly fell out of the truck as soon as it came to a stop.

  Audrey broke from her family and ran to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck tightly.

  “This person isn’t going to hurt us. Nobody is going to let them.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re out here.” He stepped back and grasped her hands. “I have the helicopter enroute. It’ll be here in an hour.”

  “A helicopter?” she asked. “You’re leaving?”

  “We’re leaving.” He raised his hand to her cheek. “Taking you to Nebraska. Whoever that lunatic is, they’re in Georgia. Phillip is going to find them. But we are going to get you out of harm’s way.”

  “No. We just got my business back in order. We’re having a party tomorrow.”

  Phillips stepped forward. “We will have that party the moment you get back. There is no reason for anyone to get hurt here.”

  She looked around at the faces that surrounded them. It was obvious she had been the only one not in on the plan. Resigning to the situation, she took a deep breath. “Someone needs to call Nichole. She’s a single mother, and I am her source of income.”

  Her uncle stepped forward and touched her arm. “She’ll be fine. We have your back, Audrey,” he said, and she knew because she had looked around, that was a direct statement toward her father, who was missing here, too. It was then she realized that she did come to the right side of the Walker family, and he had isolated himself from it.

  Audrey looked back at Gregory. “Okay, I trust you, and I don’t want you hurt.”

  “And I love you, and I don’t want you hurt either.”

  Just as Gregory had said, the helicopter arrived behind the house an hour later. Phillip had already mobilized people to Audrey’s house, and they had found nobody there. He set somebody in motion to be waiting at her salon, or anywhere around the Bridal Mecca. It was the next logical choice of where they would take her.

  Gregory and Audrey climbed into the helicopter. He, seemed to be at ease, while she was scared to death.

  “You’re taking me home?”

  He smiled. “Yes, I’m taking you to our farm. My dad can’t wait to meet you.”

  Audrey shook her head. “I’m sure this isn’t what he had in mind for meeting me.”

  Gregory took her hand and squeezed it. “He doesn’t care about the circumstance, though he’s very worried about you. He knows how I feel about you, and he’s excited to have you in his home.”

  The helicopter took them to Atlanta, where a private jet waited for them. Though Audrey was running from a lunatic, and this was to save her life, she couldn’t help but have a little excitement for all the new things she was experiencing.

  As soon as they landed in Nebraska, the man started toward them. She didn’t need to be introduced. She knew the man was his father.

  Gregory moved to him and wrapped his arms around him.

  “Thanks for being here,” Gregory said.

  “Thanks for thinking to come this way,” the man said before he turned to her. “You must be Audrey.”

  She held out her hand. “Yes, I am.”

  “George Bishop,” he said as he shook her hand. “Nice to meet the woman my son loves.”

  Audrey sighed. She wasn’t quite sure how to handle him having that knowledge.

  Gregory slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. “I tell him everything. No secrets kept.”

  * * *

  Audrey sat in the backseat of George Bishop’s truck, and they drove from the airport out to the farm where Gregory had grown up. Through the window, she watched the miles of fields pass, and thought of how it reminded her of home. It was funny she thought, she and Gregory came from such different lives, but their beginnings were similar.

  She didn’t look at him as a movie star anymore, she thought as she listened to him converse with his father. He was just a man. A man whose job put him in the spotlight. Just as her sister was just a woman, and not some faded Hollywood star.

  And when this was all done, she knew, there might be a happily ever after. No man goes through something like this for a woman, without loving her a great deal. She put her hand to her chest to ease her
racing heart. She’d never been around true love firsthand. Well, she rethought that. She’d been around her aunt and uncle her whole life and her cousins as they fell in love. And even her sister and brother as they found true love, she’d watched it blossom. But she hadn’t been raised around it.

  It was no surprise that it took her a while to recognize it. But she certainly wasn’t going to let it pass her by.

  35

  The homestead where Gregory’s father lived, had been in their family for generations. And it, much like the fields they passed through to get there, felt like home to Audrey.

  Horses ran in one pasture and crops grew in another. The barn was as big as the one just beyond Eric’s house and painted bright red. The house was small, but who needed a big house when they had such a beautiful view around them?

  As they climbed from the truck and started toward the house, Gregory slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think it’s fantastic. It makes me appreciate you just a little bit more, knowing that you grew from humble ground.”

  “I told you we have a lot in common.”

  They settled into the house, in the room where Gregory grew up. His father set out to start dinner, and Audrey checked in with her sisters.

  There had been no commotion since they had left. But Phillip had them all on high alert.

  It had been decided that Nichole would keep the salon open, but there would be somebody there with her at all times. Phillip had taken this case personally and was going to be sure he was in the salon nearly every hour.

  “And he wants you to keep alert too. He says the movie set is abuzz over where Gregory disappeared to,” Pearl informed her. “So don’t get too comfortable. Keep your eyes open.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  When she finished her phone calls with her sisters, Gregory sat down on the bed next to her. “No one will find you here. Leo is on the set, and so is Kent. They have their ears open. Phillip and his crew are going to find Pepper, and when they do, she will lead them to the person that is sending those photos. It won’t be long.”

  “I don’t know how you deal with all of this. Why do you want to put yourself in a position where people can get to you like this?”

  Gregory grinned as he took her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingers. “How can you touch somebody you’ve never met? I mean, somebody walks in and wants a haircut? You have to touch them. You have to intimately get near them. Why would anybody want to do that?”

  Ah, so he answered her question with his own. “I guess we both love what we do too much to notice how intimate we get with people.”

  “I don’t belittle what you do. The world wants to look good. Everybody needs to feel like they get put back together, and you do that. You lend them an open ear. And well, hell, you are just very pleasant to be around.”

  Audrey smiled. She appreciated people that understood what she did. She had fought that her entire life, starting with her father assuming that hair stylists were uneducated workers.

  “What’s going to happen to the movie? You’re a vital part of that. You can’t just leave.”

  “There are ways around that. There are plenty of scenes that need my stunt double and not me. Besides, they understand that me being alive is as important as being there.”

  “So they’re as worried about you as my family is about me?”

  “Of course. Most of them know her, and half of them think she’s part of this.”

  “So what made you take off with her?” she asked, because she had to know.

  Gregory rubbed his fingertips across his forehead and took a moment to gather his thoughts. Then, he looked her in the eye and took her hand again. “I didn’t plan it. In fact, I planned to just have a weekend to myself. Do whatever I wanted to. She just happened to be there. I can’t say I took advantage of her, as much as we took advantage of each other. It wasn’t anything special. And in hindsight, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Like I said before, Hollywood gets in your head.”

  “That statement scares me more than you know, especially now that I love you.”

  “I’m not a man to take that lightly, Audrey. I don’t just say those words to anyone, and I certainly don’t accept them from just anyone. But I accept them from you—I know you mean them. This is different, I swear. I might have to prove that to you all over again, and I will if I have to. I have found my soulmate. I can’t imagine there’s anyone else out there that I want to spend my life with. If you walked out on me over this today, I’d be broken. I’m quite sure I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Audrey felt the tears stinging her throat. “I’m not sure we’re being wise about this. In a little over a month, you said I love you, and you’re making statements like that. Does anybody really know love that quickly?”

  He lifted his hand to her face and gently brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Don’t forget, you said you loved me too. You did mean it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “I’ve never felt like I feel with you. I guess you can fall in love that quickly,” she sighed as she understood it herself. “You’re right. When I think about the future, I think of you in it.”

  “And that’s why I have you here, hiding in my childhood bedroom.” He laughed as he looked around the room. “I would die if anything happened to you. And here, it won’t. So, until they find the lunatic, you’re safe here.”

  “With you?”

  Gregory pressed a kiss to her lips. “Always with me. I promise you that.”

  * * *

  For two days, there had been no word. Phillip had kept his promise to be at the salon every hour. Nichole worked just as she said she would. Each of the Walker family spent some part of the day in town at the Bridal Mecca, keeping an eye on one another.

  Audrey’s phone rang all day long. Each of her siblings, and her cousins, calling to check on her. It indeed brought a great sense of Walker spirit to her heart.

  She quite enjoyed watching Gregory jump into farm life with his father. She’d never seen anyone sexier on a tractor.

  And while he helped out with regular chores, she was able to explore a bit.

  The barn was one of her favorite places to relax, and take in the silence.

  She tended to the horses, even making friends with a young colt named Sam. It made her think of the plot of land that was promised to her. She’d never thought much of it, but now, perhaps she would like to build on it—with Gregory.

  Audrey ran a brush over the young colt. She’d spent most of her day with him, as Gregory and his father were tending to the field.

  She decided he was going to be a wise horse, as when she spoke to him, it seemed as though he answered. Audrey laughed at the thought.

  If she did build on the Walker land, as some of her cousins had and her brother would, she could have her own horse, her own garden, and chickens. On another solitary laugh, she decided she definitely wanted chickens.

  She finished up grooming the horse, and she heard the sound of the truck pulling up outside. Gregory and his father must be done in the field, she thought. Suddenly, she was very anxious to tell Gregory about her desire to have chickens.

  Audrey put away the brush and went back to tell the horse goodbye.

  “I’ll be back with a treat for you later,” she promised as she headed out of the barn.

  36

  Audrey walked out into the sunshine and enjoyed the feel of it on her skin. She looked around but didn’t see a truck. Perhaps she had just thought she heard something.

  She walked to the front porch of the house and looked out into the field. There, she could still see the tractor and the faint figures of the two men working on an irrigator.

  She wondered, could Gregory give it all up to return to something so simple? The thought of it gave her heart a little buzz. If they thought they could have a life together, she would have to be very secure in herself. After a
ll, the reason they were there was that he had let himself be too Hollywood, as he had said. But she believed him when he said it wasn’t like that with her.

  Audrey sat in one of the rocking chairs on the wraparound porch and leaned her head back. She supposed it would become old hat, just as it was for her to take on clients. She might get to travel to exotic places and be on set with him. Then again, perhaps it would be like he was just going to work, and she would go in and work her job as well. It wasn’t as if they would be the only people in the world where one of them had to travel often for work.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and let herself relax in the quiet. But then she heard the horses from behind the barn. She lifted her head and looked around. They weren’t settling.

  Audrey walked toward the side of the barn and could see the horses in the pen running in circles. Something had spooked them.

  Gathering a large stick on the side of the house, she hurried toward the horses. Was the weather changing? Perhaps a snake had gotten through the grass. But when she turned the corner, she saw what had startled them.

  The truck her cousin had sold to Gregory sat at the back of the barn. She felt her hands shaking at her side, and she gripped the stick tighter. Her breath was harder to push to her lungs, and her heart raced in her chest.

  Moving toward the truck, she saw that the passenger door was open and there was a trail of blood on the seat.

  The horses continued to battle the confined space in which they were held. What had they seen, she wondered as she noticed the back door to the barn was slightly open.

  Audrey pulled her phone from her pocket. She had to alert Gregory.

  Inside the barn, she could hear rustling, though she wasn’t sure if it was a horse or a person. Looking down at her phone she hit Gregory’s contact, and press the button to call just as she felt the sharp pain of being hit with something across her back.