by Elle James
“No. I don’t want to become addicted to them and end up overdosing because I’m an addict.”
Molly laughed. “You? Never. You’re one of the toughest women I know.”
“Damn right, I am.” She batted away Molly’s hands. “A little pain won’t hurt me. It’s a good reminder to be thankful.”
“Thankful?”
“Yes, thankful.” Her mother cupped her cheek and smiled. “Every day I wake to see my children and grandchild is a day to be thankful for.”
Molly chuckled. “I get your point and love your attitude. And you’re right.” She stepped away, watching to make sure her mother could walk without support.
The woman shuffled slowly but steadily out of the living room, carrying the mail she’d opened.
“Where are you headed now?” Molly asked, following her mother.
“To the kitchen,” she responded.
“Not to cook,” Molly said, her tone stern.
“Fine. I won’t cook, but I think I can make myself a cup of tea.”
“I can do that for you,” Molly said. “Why don’t you have a seat at the table while I get the pot boiling?”
Her mother stopped, blocking the entrance to the kitchen. “What part of I can make myself a cup of tea did you misunderstand?”
Molly held up her hands. “Okay. You can make your own tea.”
“Thank you,” her mother said with a thick layer of sarcasm. She handed her half the stack of mail. “You can throw those away for me.”
“What about the rest?” Molly asked as she carried the torn envelopes and advertisements to the garbage pail.
“I need to do something with these. Some are bills that need to be paid. And there’s an invitation to the Lucky Lady Lodge for a fundraiser to help save the lodge. I need to RSVP to that.”
Molly’s head jerked up. “You’re not going, are you?”
Her mother’s brows dipped. “Of course, I am. I refuse to stand by and watch the places that were such a big part of my life shrivel up and die, especially when I can do something about it. Your father would go with me, if he were here. He knows how I feel about the lodge.”
“What’s the big deal about the lodge?” Molly asked. “Why are you so interested in its success?”
Her mother smiled with a faraway look. “I worked there as a waitress at the restaurant and helped the cleaning staff when they were overwhelmed with the summer crowd.” She sighed. “I loved that place. It had so much history in its walls. They say there are secret rooms and passages all through the old lodge. I never found them, but rumor had it there was one in the library. I think I moved every book on the shelf, opened every cabinet and felt along all the wood panels for knobs, buttons or switches and never found anything that looked like it could trigger a hidden door to open.”
“But can’t you just donate some money? You don’t have to actually go to the lodge for the fundraiser.”
Her mother nodded. “I know. But I need to get out. I haven’t gone anywhere since your father disappeared until my trip to the hospital.” She frowned. “That doesn’t count.”
“But the lodge will be filled with people.”
“Most of whom we will know,” her mother noted.
“I’m sure Lewis Griffith will invite past customers as well. It could be crawling with people we don’t know. What if one of them is the person holding Dad hostage?”
Her mother’s face firmed into tight lines. “All the more reason to go then. We can set ourselves up as targets with plenty of bodyguards intermixed. When someone makes a move to grab one of us, we’ll catch him, and he’ll lead us to your father.” Her face brightened. “The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.”
Molly poured boiling water into a mug holding a teabag and carried it over to the table. “I don’t like the idea of putting you in danger. You almost died.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m fine. Nothing that won’t mend.”
“Yeah, but if the guys holding Dad want to make him talk, they could put a whole lot of hurt on one of us to make it happen.”
“Did you hear the part about having plenty of bodyguards in the mix?” She took the proffered mug and stirred in a teaspoon of sugar and a little cream.
“The idea makes me very nervous,” Molly said. “What if they cause a distraction like they did with the fire? If everyone is running in different directions, the bodyguards might lose track of one of us. They could swoop in and take you, me…even one of the boys. You saw how they tried to drug me. What if they slipped a roofie into one of our drinks?” Molly shook her head. “No. We can’t risk your life.”
Her mother’s mouth firmed. “It’s my life. If I want to risk it, I will. I’m tired of waiting for some clue to emerge. Weeks have passed, and your father is still not home. I know he’d risk his life for me. Why not risk my life for him? You’d do it for Parker, wouldn’t you?”
Molly had been on the verge of arguing the point with her mother when the woman had brought up Parker. For a second, she froze. Yes, she’d risk her life for Parker. Her mother wanted to do the same for the love of her life.
Her mother reached across the table and touched Molly’s hand. “You love Parker, don’t you?”
Molly nodded. “I do.”
“If he were in the same situation as your father, you’d do anything to get him back, wouldn’t you?”
Again, Molly nodded. “But…you’re my mother. I can’t let you do this.”
“You can’t stop me, either.” She straightened her shoulders.
Molly pointed to her mother’s side. “You have a broken rib. If they capture you, they’ll use your weakness to cause you more pain.”
“I’m tired, Molly. Tired of the chase, the mystery, the not knowing. Mostly, I’m tired of lying down at night in my comfortable bed without my husband, while he’s probably lying on a cold, hard floor or in the dirt, hungry, hurting and close to death.” She placed both hands on the table. “We’re McKinnons. We’re going to war to take back what belongs to us.”
Molly nodded. “Okay. We’re going to a party. I hope everything turns out all right. I don’t want to lose both my parents.”
Her mother pushed to her feet, wincing.
“Where are you going?” Molly asked.
“To call Hank Patterson. We’ll need the help of his Brotherhood Protectors.”
Molly didn’t try to stop her. When her mother got a thought in her head, she was like a pit bull with a stick between her teeth. She was going through with this insane idea whether the rest of the family liked it or not.
Parker chose that moment to walk through the door, his hair wet from his shower, freshly shaved and smelling like his aftershave. His brow twisted as he glance back down the hallway. “Why is your mother calling Hank Patterson?”
Molly shook her head. “Get ready for a rough ride.”
He turned and smiled at her, making her stomach flipflop. “What do you mean?”
“Mom’s on the warpath. She’s declaring war on Dad’s captors.”
“Does she know something we don’t?”
Molly sighed. “No, but she’s over all of this waiting. If we can’t find the people who are holding my father, we can make it easy for them to find us.”
Parker frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Neither do I, but I’m beginning to lean in her direction.”
“What exactly does she have planned?”
“Not much, other than putting herself up as bait to flush out the bad guys.”
“No way.” Parker shook his head. “You have to talk her out of it. She’s in no shape to handle what they’ll have in store for her.”
“You know that. I know that.” She jerked her head toward the hallway where her mother was talking to Hank on the land line. “Try telling her that.”
“What are we going to do?” Parker asked. “We can’t let her go through with it.”
“We’re going to call an intervention.”
> “You’ll need your brothers,” Parker noted. “When does she plan to make this happen?”
“At the Lucky Lady Lodge fundraiser,” Molly said. “That gives us just a day to find my father or come up with a plan to keep from losing both our parents.”
Chapter 10
The next morning, Parker stood in the Brotherhood Protectors’ war room in the basement of Hank Patterson and Sadie McClain’s house on the White Oak Ranch. Hank, Taz, Kujo and Boomer were there well before the McKinnon clan arrived.
Molly, her four brothers, their significant others and their mother had gathered around a large white board on the wall where a timeline depicted the dates of the ex-convict’s escape, his subsequent death, their father’s disappearance, finding the ring James always wore, finding the house where he was tortured and the men who’d performed the torture, and finally, the attacks on Molly and her mother.
“They’re getting desperate if they’ve made three attempts in as many days,” Hank said.
“That’s why I wanted to take this opportunity to be more proactive,” Mrs. M said. “The fundraiser will expose us to everyone in the community and have enough people there for our bad guys to mix and mingle with us under the radar.”
Parker hid a smile at Mrs. M’s tone. She sounded like a general describing her battle strategy.
“Whoever is in charge of this effort has to be someone in the community,” Swede said as he entered the room carrying several gold chains with shiny pendants dangling from the ends.
“Which means, we probably know who it is,” Mrs. M said. “It breaks my heart to think anyone I know could be so evil as to torture a neighbor, all for the love of money.”
“They can’t even spend it, because it’s marked,” Parker said, shaking his head.
“That’s what the layers of corporations and off-shore companies are for,” Swede said. “Once they find the money, it’ll be laundered all around the world. It’ll get spent somewhere.”
“I wish we could find that money and use it to bargain for our father’s release,” Colin said. “Has anyone tried to get inside William Reed’s demented head?”
“Kind of hard to do when he’s dead,” Molly muttered.
“Yeah, I know,” Colin said. “Has anyone talked to the people he knew and hung out with? Were there any places he frequented?”
“The man was in the mountains when he was shot. He was probably looking for the money then.”
“Or meeting with the person who helped him escape,” Swede said. “I did a search of all his known addresses prior to his arrest for the murder of the driver and guard and the theft of the money from the armored car.
“We sent out some of our guys to question Reed’s friends, girlfriends and former roommates. None of them had contact with him during the months prior to the heist.”
Hank picked up the story. “Reed’s ex-girlfriend said he spent more and more time in the Eagle Rock area. He told her he was fishing. She thought he was sleeping with another woman. He finally dumped her and didn’t even bother to come get his stuff from her trailer. She threw all his stuff out in the yard. When he still didn’t come to collect it, she burned everything.”
“That’s too bad,” Bastian said. “There might’ve been some record of where he’d spent his time and with whom.”
“Did he have any credit cards? A cellphone we could trace?”
Swede shook his head. “Nothing. He must have used a burner phone and cash. Someone had to have helped him with the heist and the escape. The who is where we’re stumped.”
Hank took the necklaces from Swede. “From now until we recover Mr. McKinnon, we need to be able to track all the women. Any one of you could be their next target.” He went around to all the ladies. “These necklaces should be worn at all times. You can even wear them in the shower. They’re waterproof, and they’ll allow us to track you should you be separated from the family.”
Swede went around the room with small metal disks, handing them to the men. “Put one of these in a pocket or your shoe. Have it on you whenever you leave the house.”
“How will we know whose is whose?” Angus asked.
“Whoever is not where he should be will be the one we’ll be looking for. Otherwise, we could spend a couple of hours assigning codes to each of them.”
“No, thanks,” Molly said, slipping the necklace over her head. “We still have a ranch to run.”
“The fundraiser is tomorrow evening at the Lucky Lady Lodge,” Swede said. “Each of you will be assigned a buddy to stay with at all times. The members of the Brotherhood Protectors will keep track of each pair and provide backup if something goes amiss.”
Swede pulled up a rough schematic of the lodge and displayed it on a large monitor to the right of the white board. “The event will start in the dining room where those people who purchased the limited number of plates will eat. Once dinner is over, everyone will move to the ballroom where more guests will join you in the ballroom.”
“Me and my men are getting into the event with ballroom tickets,” Hank said. “They’ll be waiting for you in the ballroom, having gone around the room, planting miniature web cams in both the ballroom and the hallway leading to the bathrooms.”
“I’ll keep an eye on you from those webcams and the GPS devices. The Brotherhood Protectors and prior military McKinnons will be equipped with communication devices in the form of earbuds. You’ll check in when you arrive in the ballroom. And if there is anything out of the ordinary, say something.”
“We know the people we’re up against have weapons. If there is any gunfire, don’t stand around looking at each other,” Hank said. “Hit the ground.” He nodded to the men who’d all experienced combat. Then he gave a narrow-eyed look at the women. “Everyone hits the ground. Do you understand?”
Molly nodded along with her mother, Fiona, Emily, Jenna and Bree.
“In the meantime,” Hank said, “don’t say anything to anyone about the money, the fundraiser and our plan.”
“Everyone on board with this?” Angus asked. “Me, personally, I’d rather the ladies stayed home.”
All six women shook their heads.
“As for Caity,” Hank continued, “she’ll be here with Chuck Johnson, Sadie and Emma. Sadie would be coming to the event, except she’s getting pretty close to her due date and doesn’t want to risk hurting herself or the baby. So, she’ll stay with Chuck and the little ones. Boomer’s wife, Daphne, will be here with their little girl Maya to help out.”
“Until then, we go about our lives, business as usual, keeping close to your buddy,” Angus said. “They might make an attempt again today. Be ever mindful.”
Parker approached Swede. “Have you found anything else about the corporation that paid Otis Ferguson to torture Mr. McKinnon?”
Swede nodded. “Not enough to take to the bank yet, but there is a connection to a mining company I thought interesting. Only I can’t find the bank associated with the company or if the company is currently a going concern. I’m sifting through hundreds of mining companies. Most of those with an online presence are current or recently defunct. None of them are the Lettie’s Lucky Strike Mining Company or LLSMC. I’ve combed through every angle I could. I’m not finding anything.”
Mrs. M’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t there a historical registry of mining companies in this area at the library in Eagle Rock?”
“I believe so,” Jenna said. “I had to research a particular mine on a county plat for a client once. The records were all on microfiche. They haven’t had the time to convert them to digital.”
“Wow,” Mrs. M said. “I haven’t looked at microfiche in decades.”
“What’s microfiche?” Bree asked.
Jenna chuckled. “I asked the same thing when the librarian led me to the historical records. It’s an archaic, plastic film you insert into a microfiche reader that enlarges the images so that you can read them. I can run by the library later this afternoon. I have to show a property i
n an hour, otherwise I’d go straight there.”
“Parker and I can check into it on our way back to the ranch,” Molly volunteered. “The animals are good to go until this evening. We have the time,” her gaze met Parker’s, “right?”
He nodded, just as interested in finding the Lettie’s Lucky Strike Mining Company. If it led them to the owner and the person holding Mr. McKinnon hostage, he was all for looking through old records.
“It can be tedious,” Jenna warned. “Don’t expect great results right out of the chute.”
Parker didn’t care. Any action was better than no action with regard to finding his boss.
The family left the White Oak Ranch, some heading back home, others making their way to Eagle Rock. Duncan loaded his mother, Fiona and Caity into his truck. Colin and Emily would follow them to make sure they made it back safely.
Parker held the door of his truck open for Molly to climb inside. She didn’t even make a comment about how she could do it for herself.
He smiled.
She was getting used to having him do things for her. And he didn’t seem to mind doing them.
That was a good sign. Right? Or was he this nice to all women?
Molly was falling more and more hopelessly in love with the man. She found herself wanting to say the words and watch his reaction. But she was afraid. She figured it wasn’t a good time to drop that on him. Not when her mother was making plans to use herself as bait to flush out the bad guys. They all had more important things on their minds.
They followed Bastian and Jenna back to Eagle Rock, stopping at the library on Main Street.
The building wasn’t very big and had been donated to the city so long ago no one would’ve remembered who’d donated it, except for the fact it had a plaque on the sidewalk naming the long-ago donor.
Inside the library, the air smelled of books, paper and that musty scent only an old building could produce.
The librarian was excited to see them and glad to show them the microfiche drawers and how to use the reader. Soon, they were sifting through county records with images of documents signed back in the late 1800s when the gold rush changed the west.
