Heroes in Uniform: Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Rangers and Cops: Sexy Hot Contemporary Alpha Heroes From NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors

by Sharon Hamilton

  So, hopeless as it was, she threw her head back, but she only met his shoulder and he laughed, the cruelty in his tone almost stunning to hear, given what she’d come to associate with Charlie Hanford. The whole town saw him as the benevolent benefactor he’d always portrayed himself to be. Charlie had been so supportive. There was none of that in him now as he dragged her toward the door of his office and out onto the back lawn. Katelyn kicked out, knocking over a flower pot that sat next to the door. Her only chance if she couldn’t stop him from taking her was to leave a sign for John, some clue that she’d been taken, and pray he could find her.

  As Charlie dragged her to his car, Katelyn fought his hold, digging her heels into the soft dirt to leave a furrow of evidence. She kicked out at the planter that stood at the end of the path, but missed. The driveway was paved. She was running out of opportunities to leave signals for John. Katelyn kicked off a shoe as Charlie opened the trunk of his car and shoved her in. Panic flooded her, and she didn’t start breathing again until the trunk door slammed and she realized she was already shut in its coffin-like interior. There could be no more signaling John. If he was going to figure out she was in trouble, he’d have to do it with the clues she’d left. She just had to hope he’d come to Charlie’s place and then find some way to track her once he figured out Charlie had taken her.

  It seemed hopeless. How could John track where Charlie took her? Katelyn choked on a sob, but focused on her breathing and tried to calm herself. The darkness of the trunk was overwhelming. It filled her with dread as she realized Charlie could take her anywhere he wanted to and she’d be defenseless when he opened the trunk. Katelyn reached around her, trying to find something, anything, to use as a weapon, but the trunk was empty. Of course it was. He’d planned this.

  Her mind raced back to a TV show she’d seen once. One of those Worst Case Scenario episodes or something. It showed what to do if you’re locked in a trunk. Yes! There should be a safety release latch in all new cars. Katelyn felt for the latch on the side of the trunk. Nothing.

  She shifted and twisted, wincing as the car hit a bump, tossing her up into the ceiling of the cramped space. She kept moving though. She doubted she had much time. Katelyn’s hands found the flap that should have covered the safety release, but there was no release. Could he have removed it before putting her in here?

  Not a problem, she tried to tell herself, attempting to force her stomach to stop the roiling flips it was doing and steady her hands as she thought back to the TV show she’d only barely watched.

  Not a problem? What am I, nuts?

  The girl trapped in the trunk as part of the reality show had next done some trick where she pulled the wires of the tail light out and made it blink to let people know she was in there, or to try to get a passing police officer to pull the car over. Katelyn couldn’t for the life of her remember how the girl had done it, but she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to try to signal someone. The car slowed and then turned, the turn and the bumps in the road combining to toss Katelyn sideways to one end of the trunk. They had to be on a dirt road.

  She scrambled back to the center, trying to balance herself before focusing on getting into the guts of the tail lights. She didn’t make it very far. The car pulled to a stop, and Katelyn braced herself for her face-off with Charlie. She might have nothing to fight with other than her fists or nails or feet, but she’d fight.

  As the trunk opened, Katelyn was blinded by the sudden light, but she swung her arms and scratched at Charlie’s face as he pulled her out of the trunk. He wasn’t gentle; he let her drop to the ground and kicked her in the side. Katelyn curled in a ball against the blow and tried to get her bearings. Nothing but dry, dusty dirt on the ground and quiet all around them. Of course, he would have taken her somewhere isolated.

  Charlie hauled Katelyn up by the arms and she saw where they were. A construction site, but one that appeared to be abandoned. He held tight to one arm, shoving her toward one of the half-completed buildings, and Katelyn had the odd realization that he was a lot stronger than she would have guessed he’d be for his age. Her mind seemed to be focusing on all the wrong things even though everything in her being was telling her she’d be dead in minutes if she didn’t do something.

  “You should have stayed in Austin, Katelyn,” Charlie said, as he wrenched her arm to the side viciously. She tried not to cry out, but the pain engulfed her. Her scream seemed to egg him on further. “A few more years and I would have been out of here; I would have retired before anyone knew what had happened. But you just couldn’t stay away, could you?”

  Katelyn thought about telling him she wouldn’t say anything, that she would never tell his secrets, but he wasn’t a stupid man. He wouldn’t believe that after things had come this far.

  She pretended to trip and fell to the ground, praying she could make this work. When Charlie reached down to grab her again, she jabbed her thumbs into his eyes as hard as she could, nails out and thumbs braced to try to inflict maximum damage. She raked her fingers down the front of his face, digging in with her nails. It wasn’t pleasant, but if the pained howl he let loose was an indication, it was effective. Katelyn shoved back, pushing herself out from under him.

  She kicked out with one leg, knocking him down, then turned and ran, stumbling for a second before gaining her footing and running for the road. She didn’t know how she’d get away. They were so far away from anything and anyone and she was on foot, while he could get in the car and hunt her down, but she had to try. She ran blindly, resisting the urge to turn back to see if he was coming for her. She was a runner. Surely she was in better running shape than he was even if he was a lot stronger than she’d realized.

  Katelyn stayed focused on moving, intent on getting out of this alive. She would not die at the hands of the same man who had taken her mother’s life; who had already taken so much from her.

  * * *

  John smiled as he read the text from Katelyn. Dinner sounded like just what he needed right now and he couldn’t wait to get back to her. The phone rang before he put it back down.

  “This is John Davies,” he said.

  “John, it’s Catherine Tanner. I got back some of the results from the scenes we’ve processed. What do you want first? Info from Sam Denton’s scene or info on Ken Statler?”

  “Start with Sam. Anything usable there?” John asked.

  “No prints on anything you wouldn’t expect them on from people you wouldn’t expect to be there. Prints on the blockade that should have been up around the elevator shaft, but they belong to the construction guys and Charlie Hanford, so nothing unusual there and no evidence of tampering. Either he threw himself at those wooden barricades or someone else did it for him. I guess if he was really drunk or something, he could have fallen against them hard enough to break through them, but I ran his blood. Nothing. No alcohol, no drugs. Nothing.”

  “Hmm. Danny spoke with friends, neighbors, people he worked with and no one reported the kind of thing Charlie said he witnessed. Is it possible for you to check for dementia now?” John asked, wondering if he should really be spending county resources this way. Something about the way this case wrapped itself up in a nice neat bow with Sam Denton’s death didn’t sit well with him. He couldn’t say for sure what it was, but some small whisper of doubt wouldn’t let this one sit. He’d feel a lot better if they had clear evidence of either a suicide or an accident.

  “Sure, I can look at the brain, see if there are any signs of degeneration,” Catherine said.

  “Okay. Do that. What did you find at the Ken Statler scene? Anything useful?”

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. I pulled the bookend from the scene of Caroline Bowden’s murder out of storage. They do appear to be a matching set. I sent the one we pulled out of the pond to Austin. Just as we thought—no useable DNA, prints, fibers. Nothing. Same with the chain that Ken’s body was wrapped up in. Whoever lashed him to that steering wheel either wore gloves, or any DNA a
nd prints were washed away over the years.”

  “Okay. Anything else?” John asked, anxious to get back to Katelyn to see how she was doing. He hated leaving her so soon after her father’s death.

  “Cause of death was likely drowning. The blow to the head wouldn’t have killed him.”

  “Okay, thanks, Cathy.” John hung up the phone and sat staring out the windshield of his cruiser for a minute. Something wasn’t right, that much he knew. He just needed to find out what was actually giving him this gut feeling.

  He muttered a curse under his breath and started the car. Time to put the case out of his mind for the evening. He turned out onto the highway and headed over to meet Katelyn at Charlie’s place.

  He’d swing by to get her and see if she felt up to going out to dinner. Maybe they’d even drive over to Johnson City and eat somewhere nicer than Two Sisters Diner or Tiny Bob’s.

  It didn’t take long for him to realize dinner wouldn’t be happening. There was no answer at Charlie’s even though Katelyn’s car sat out front. When John went around to the back, his blood ran cold. The door to Charlie’s office stood open. One of the flower pots was overturned and there were clear marks of someone being dragged from the house. And suddenly, the pieces John hadn’t been able to see seemed to click into place. He’d thought everything around Caroline Bowden’s death was connected to Sam Denton, but everything was equally connected to Charlie Hanford. It had been stupid not to see it before. Sam Denton and Ken Statler had both worked for Charlie, just as Caroline had. She’d been found in Charlie’s office.

  John let a string of curses fly, directed mostly at himself for not seeing what now seemed so obvious as he ran back to his cruiser. But if Alan hadn’t seen it, hell, maybe John had just picked up Alan’s blinders where Charlie was concerned. They’d both obviously missed one hell of a big signal.

  He shifted into gear and radioed for Danny and Carter Jenkins to meet him back at the station, then jumped on the radio to Berta.

  “Berta, does your sister’s husband still work for Charlie Hanford?” he asked without worrying about greetings.

  “Yup. Sure does,” she radioed back.

  “Get him on the phone and find out where Charlie’s got projects. I need to know every site he has active, everything they’re working on.” A thought occurred to John. “And, first priority, find out if there’s anything they’re not working on. Any projects on hold or delayed? Anything that wouldn’t have anyone on site today.”

  “You got it, boss,” Berta said and John floored it as he headed to the station. He didn’t know what had happened, but his gut told him Charlie had Kate and he had to get to her before it was too late. If there’d been any doubt in John’s mind that he loved Katelyn, that he wanted to spend his life with her, it was gone now.

  His heart clenched as he made himself ignore the possibility that he might not get to her in time. He didn’t have a choice. There’d be no coming back from this one. If she died, he died, too.

  Everlasting: Chapter Twenty

  John parked his cruiser haphazardly in front of the station, not bothering to straighten it out or worry about whether it took up two spaces or one. Danny pulled in right next to him and they ran toward the building together.

  “How long ago did he grab her?” Danny asked as they took the steps in front of the entrance two at a time.

  “She texted me an hour ago when she arrived at Charlie’s. They could be anywhere by now,” John said. The men were grim and silent as they entered John’s office. They both knew what could happen in an hour.

  They found Carter and Berta in front of the large wall map in John’s office, the phone on speaker and a marker in Berta’s hand. She was listening to her sister’s husband, Gordo, list off properties Charlie Hanford’s company was working on.

  “Gordo,” John cut in, not bothering to apologize for the lack of niceties. “Which ones aren’t currently active or not being worked, today?”

  “Two of them. We’re waiting on some zoning approvals at a home site off Palmer Drive near the elementary school.”

  John shook his head even though Gordo couldn’t see him. “Too close to town. Where’s the other one?”

  “A small set of rental houses out on Edge Road. The owner lost his funding so the project is on hold until everything is sorted out, or Charlie decides to buy out the owner and complete the project on his own. It’s pretty damned isolated. There’s nothing else out that way.”

  John was halfway out the door before Gordo finished, with Danny and Carter following.

  “Carter, head to the Palmer Drive site in case I’m wrong,” John called over his shoulder.

  “You got it, boss.”

  Danny rode with John in his SUV taking the highway out to the long dirt road that would lead them to the site. There were a lot of remote locations in the Hill Country and this was certainly one of them. John just prayed he would reach Katelyn in time.

  He gritted his teeth as the car fishtailed when he took a turn too fast. Not reaching her in time wasn’t an option. It simply wasn’t an option.

  * * *

  Katelyn felt the burn in her lungs as she pushed her body to keep going, running hard across grass flattened by construction machinery and the boots of the men who’d been here days ago. There wasn’t anyone here now. No one in sight.

  Her feet hit the dirt road and she powered on through the pain as rocks cut into her bare feet. She focused all her energy on moving forward, churning her legs trying to eat up ground faster than she knew she realistically could. The distance to any populated place was too great, but she pushed herself on anyway. Fighting him had proven hopeless. She needed to keep moving.

  She heard the sound of a car coming up behind her. Fast. Charlie had gotten up and was coming for her. Katelyn veered off the road and headed out into one of the fields that flanked either side, running hard toward one of the stands of trees that dotted large swaths of the open area. Her mind raced. The field hadn’t been fenced, so she wouldn’t be likely to run into any cattle. She had no idea what a bull might do if she entered its field, but she’d worry about that if she came to a fenced-in area. For now, she just ran.

  At the very least, if she could make it to the trees, she could make Charlie get out and chase her on foot, which would even the fight out a little bit. She focused on nothing but the trees in front of her coming closer, seeming to do so at an impossibly slow rate. Her breath grew ragged and she forced herself to steady it, churning her legs as fast as she could. The tree line continued for some length, but there were areas where the field opened up again and she’d have to lose the cover. Would he just drive around and cut her off, keeping her trapped until she could go no further and had to submit?

  She chanced a glance over her shoulder and saw his car plowing through the field after her. He’d had to slow down on the rough ground considering he was driving a sedan that wasn’t very suited to off-roading. Katelyn ran through the trees, feeling branches lash at her arms as she pushed on. The trees opened up, and she had to cross a large patch of open land once again. She looked back and saw Charlie doing just what she’d thought he would. He circled wide and cut to the open area, nearly catching up to her as she broke through and raced for the next patch of trees. She heard a loud clank and looked back over her shoulder. The car had bottomed out in one of the large pitted areas that were hard to see in the field. Thankfully, it didn’t look like it was going to keep going. She didn’t know if it was a blown tire or the rut itself that was trapping the car, but Charlie was now coming after her on foot.

  Katelyn angled back toward the road. Now that Charlie was running, she wanted to get back to the relatively flat road and try to make it closer to civilization to flag down help. She hadn’t been jogging as much lately, with her father’s illness. Back in Austin she’d been running five to seven miles at a time. She tried to estimate how far she was from town. Charlie had driven at least twenty minutes. That was a lot more miles than she could run, but
maybe she could get to a busier road and flag down help.

  Ten yards from the road, Katelyn knew she wasn’t going to make it. It wasn’t that she gave up. She would never stop fighting. Never stop trying to live, trying to make it out of this.

  It was the rock or branch or who knows what that her foot hit and the sound like popping ice cubes that told her, in her heart, her ankle was done. She wouldn’t be running anymore.

  She cried out as she went down. Cried out in pain, and anger, and utter frustration. Flipping onto her butt, she pulled her leg in close to her and looked out to the field. She barely had a moment to register how close Charlie was before he was on top of her.

  His face was red with rage and his eyes were swollen almost closed at this point. His scream was guttural as he flung himself on her and went for her neck. Katelyn tried to kick out with her good leg as pain shot up her other one, but his hands found their mark. The crush of his hands on her neck, the shocking pain as his grip closed in on her, sent Katelyn into panic. This just couldn’t be happening. She wouldn’t let it.

  She tried to pry his hands off her neck, but it was clear her efforts were futile. She flung her arms out and wildly felt the ground around her for anything she could use as a weapon. When her hands touched the cold hard surface of a rock, Katelyn grasped it and hit Charlie in the side of the head as hard as she could. Unfortunately, her best wasn’t very hard at this point. She was losing strength and consciousness more quickly than she thought she would.

  The blow seemed to stun Charlie for a split second, making him ease up on her throat briefly. Katelyn sucked in a small amount of air and tried to twist out of his hold, but the pressure returned right away. Her arm was too weak to deliver a strong enough hit to get him off, but Katelyn didn’t stop hitting him—again and again. If he killed her, she’d make damn sure she went down fighting; make damn sure there’d at least be evidence of a fight that he’d have to explain away. She wouldn’t let him walk away free after killing her. She wouldn’t let him go on living without punishment, like he’d done to her mother.