Kansas Flame [Kansas Heat 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Jenny Penn

  All the while, thoughts of a naked Lindsay and the things he could do to her danced in his head. First, he was going to have her strip…or maybe he’d rip the clothes off her instead. Cooper liked the sound of that. He’d have her on her knees and ready to be mounted before she could even—Ka-Boom!

  An earth shattering blast ripped over the plains, causing Cooper’s truck to shudder with enough force to almost tip it over as he cut a sharp turn onto the back lane. The truck tipped up onto two wheels before the heavy vehicle banged back down, bouncing Cooper in his seat.

  His shoulder hit the door, his head the ceiling, but he didn’t feel any of it, couldn’t feel anything but the pure fear consuming him. Before his very eyes a violent cloud of oranges, yellows, and blues erupted into the dark sky, lighting the world with a horrific glow that revealed the massive plumes of smoke billowing upward right over Elton’s cabin.

  Cooper’s heart seized as a second blast shook the ground, fueling the bright flare of the fire raging just down the road. Pale wisps of light slithered over the dark line of trees hiding the flames behind it. He knew exactly what those flames were feasting on—the old, rotted timbers of Elton’s cabin.

  God, please, oh please, don’t let Lindsay be inside.

  Repeating that prayer over and over again, Cooper slammed the gas pedal down into the floorboard and sent the truck hurtling down the dirt road. In seconds the old homestead came into sight. Flames devoured the old rotted building, sizzling and hissing as they consumed the dry wood. The barn stood as a silent, dark observer as the motor home glowed and glistened beneath the shower of molten ash raining down over it.

  Lindsay was nowhere in sight.

  Not waiting for his truck to come to a complete stop, he was out the door, roaring out from deep within his soul.

  “Lindsay!”

  Nobody responded.

  He flew up the steps of the motor home but found it empty, leaving his feet and fear only one place to go. Hollering her name over and over again, he ignored the painful flicks and flecks of burning shards that filled the night air as he tore across the yard. Nobody hollered back. The only answer he received was the crackle and snap of the fire, and that’s all he needed because deep in his heart he already knew the truth. Lindsay was in the cabin, hidden by the blaze and possibly already dead.

  That thought didn’t slow Cooper down as he raced right up the porch steps, feeling them crumble beneath his feet. He felt the heat and choked on the smoke but that didn’t even slow his steps. Neither did the flames curling around the edge of the doorframe as he crashed into the cabin.

  “Lindsay!”

  A high pitched wail, sounding more animal than human, greeted his roar, pulling Cooper’s gaze straight toward the bathroom door and the heavy beam locking it closed. Barely able to breathe let alone see, he rushed toward the door to kick the barricade out of the way. Almost instantly Jack cat leapt through the opening and went leaping through the flames toward the door.

  Piled up on the floor and dead to the world, Lindsay looked beyond saving in that heart-stopping moment, but Cooper didn’t have the time to let that terrifying thought take hold. Later he’d face the horror seeping into his soul and taking root, right then he had to work through the pain.

  Without thought, without hesitation, he stepped over her to smash through the window over the toilet. An entire section of the wall went with it, creating a ring of fire that made the opening a treacherous invitation. The sudden rush of air drew the flames licking around the doorway inward, making that avenue of escape just as dangerous.

  The golden waves of fire rolling across the ceiling and the ominous groan of the roof beams buckling warned Cooper that he had only seconds before the cabin came crashing down. Smoke was already thickening across the floor as chunks of the old wooden slats started to sizzle. Cooper reached down to lift Lindsay out of the fire beginning to smolder under his feet and turned toward the makeshift exit he had created.

  They were going to get hurt. There was no hope of avoiding that. Offering a prayer to his maker, Cooper ran right through the wall, leaping as far as he could as his feet launched off the edge of the house. Lindsay flew out of his arms, toppling to the ground as Cooper landed hard on his side.

  The building collapsed behind them with a soft, whooshing growl that unleashed a puff of burning embers. The molten breeze brushed over Cooper, filling his lungs and setting the cuff of his dungarees ablaze. He paid the flames no regard and refused to let the pain in his chest slow him down as he latched onto Lindsay’s arms and began dragging her away from the fire.

  His mind latched onto that single need—the need to escape the flames. He didn’t let go of it until he tripped over his own feet and fell backward, cracking his head hard enough for the world waver and fade around him. The distant wail of sirens echoed through Cooper’s head as his body finally gave up and succumbed to the exhaustion pulling at him.

  Chapter 30

  August 22nd

  Carl stood at the glass wall and watched as Lindsay struggled for breath on the other side. Silently he cursed Crugman. He knew sending the man to handle his stepdaughter had been a mistake. Carl needed Lindsay alive and institutionalized but not so messed up that she couldn’t one day escape, have a drug-induced, wild good time, end up pregnant and unfortunately passing away after Carl had his grandkid.

  Now he was about to be stuck with an invalid. An invalid showing up pregnant was going to raise alarms that as her concerned guardian he’d be forced to ring himself. Then all his connections would end up being a pain in the ass as his friends swore to assist. They’d have catch somebody, which either meant he had to pay the guy he got to rape his vegetablized stepdaughter enough to go to jail for him or frame some other bastard.

  The whole situation was a mess. He might not even have to worry about the future if Crugman got caught. The man had become a liability. One Carl could no longer afford. Actually Carl couldn’t afford much thanks to Lindsay.

  He’d manage to pay off most of what he owed the cartels, nearly bankrupting himself in the process. If he didn’t want everything to come apart, then he needed to get access to Lindsay’s trust. The steady beep of Lindsay’s heart monitor taunted him, making him wonder if it wasn’t time to follow through on Crugman’s attempt and eliminate Lindsay.

  He could get away with it now thanks to Crugman, who had set himself up as the perfect fall guy. All he had to do was add a little something to the bitch’s IV, but then it would be over. Carl loved his life more than he hated his stepdaughter.

  Turning away from the sight of Lindsay, he went in search of the one man whose help he needed, the one man he knew he could afford to buy. Carl found Dennis Rendell leaning against a tree in the hospital’s courtyard, talking to somebody on his cell. He waited until the sheriff snapped his phone closed before approaching.

  “Rendell.”

  “Carl.” Rendell gave him a once over before straightening up. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  “I was hoping avoid this visit.” Carl didn’t need more than those two words to convey his annoyance at having had to come to this shit-poor town.

  “I guess your plans didn’t exactly work out, did they?” That amused Rendell, Carl could sense it. “You know I’m going to have to arrest your boy now, don’t you?”

  He did. “Why do you think I’m talking to you?”

  “Because you want something and let me guess, your boy is going to resist and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to take him alive,” Rendell guessed with a smug certainty that irritated Carl. Then again he’d always found the man grating but useful.

  “Yes.” Carl pinned Rendell with a hard look and spoke slowly. “And I assume the matter will be handled sooner rather than later.”

  “Hmm.” The sheriff appeared to consider that for a long moment. “It would be a shame if it worked out that way. Lot of paperwork and explanations go along with those kinds of disasters. You know they’re kind of considered a black mark
against a man’s ability to do his job, which is no small matter when that man is elected to his position.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine…but a man your age has got to be thinking about retirement.” Carl offered Rendell a small smile, knowing the man taunted him with inconsequential details simply to drive up the price. If Rendell only knew how desperate Carl really was he wouldn’t have bothered with these petty games. Instead he would have gone for the jugular.

  “True. Very true.” The sheriff nodded. “Nothing like having an offshore nest egg worth…say, five million to make a man feel more secure about his decisions.”

  “I imagine it would,” Carl agreed. Getting rid of Crugman was worth more than five million. “In fact I bet if a man worked really hard he could make that dream a reality.”

  “I’ve always been a hard worker,” Rendell assured him with a smirk. “So don’t you worry, Carl. We’ll find the bastard who hurt your daughter. He won’t be a problem you ever have to deal with again.”

  “That’s a relief.” Carl smiled, certain that everything would work out. That confidence faded at Rendell’s next comment.

  “Though technically he’s the bastard that hurt my daughter.” Rendell pull out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He hesitated for a moment to offer Carl his own smile. “And that’s where my problem lies.”

  “Your problem,” Carl repeated slowly, not expecting that shift in the conversation. “You mean…”

  “She’s evidence of a past crime,” Rendell finally answered as he shook a few butts loose of his pack. He held them out to Carl in a silent offering he declined with a shake of his head. “My past crime.”

  “And you want her eliminated,” Carl guessed, knowing how Rendell felt about loose ends.

  “I can handle that. It’s the media circuits that might follow given she’s your stepdaughter.” Rendell shrugged and lifted the pack to his lips. Clamping down on a single butt, he pulled it free before tucking the pack back into his pocket. With the cigarette hanging from the thin lines of his lips, Rendell spoke around it. “I don’t need you brining in the state police.”

  “And I don’t need you putting her six feet under the ground.”

  “Now we got ourselves a problem,” Rendell commented before striking his lighter.

  The bright flare of the flame that leaped to life cast Rendell’s features in a demonic glow as his head tilted and dipped forward. Never a gentleman, never a soft man, the hard edges of his face had sharpened with age, leaving him no mask for the bitterness and hatred that blackened his soul. An instant later the flame vanished as Rendell straightened up with a deep breath in. He held it for a long second before finally breaking the silence Carl had allowed to linger.

  “So what are we going to do about this, Carl?”

  “Nobody knows that there is a past crime but you and me,” Carl stated carefully. “All Lindsay proves is that you had sex with her mother and everybody knows what a little slut she was. You could have been having sex with her well before that night at the bar.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need Lindsay alive.” Carl left it at that.

  “Is that right?” Rendell took another deep drag on his cigarette, burning away the last half of the stick before dropping the butt and grinding it beneath the heel of his boot. “I tell you what, Carl, why don’t you just add another two and a half to my fantasy nest egg and I won’t even challenge you for control of her trust the next time you pack her off to an institution?”

  “Fine.” Carl should have known that’s what Rendell wanted. The man liked money, making him easy to work with. “I assume the old payment method still works for you?”

  “Yep. Just wire the money in by midnight and I’ll have your problem taken care of in twenty-four hours.”

  With that, Rendell turned to strut off, leaving Carl to hope that the man delivered. He felt confident the sheriff would. With Crugman taken care of, all Carl had to do was to figure out how to get Lindsay out from under Andrew Cooper’s watchful gaze. It would have been nice if he could have just had Rendell off that bastard, too, but Carl wasn’t stupid. Cooper wasn’t some nobody. The man had money, power, and influence. Admittedly not as much as Carl, but enough that he’d have to move carefully.

  Chapter 31

  Nick paused at the door leading into the trauma and burn unit only because it stood locked before him. He pressed the call button and waited impatiently, feeling his anxiety grow as the seconds ticked by. He’d been stuck in this nightmarish time warp ever since Sally called to tell him that there had been a fire. Cooper and Lindsay were being rushed to the hospital.

  That’s all he’d needed to hear. Nick had cut a U-turn so sharp he’d nearly tipped his truck over in the middle of the highway. It was in that moment that time had slowed down, making it feel like it took forever for him to get to the hospital. That, incidentally, was how long he had to wait for the door in front of him to move.

  Pressing on the call button he held his finger there until the door finally snapped open. It curved inward too slowly for his taste and he shouldered through it, barely sparing a glance around as he stormed down the hall toward the nurses’ station at the end.

  Glass cubicles encircled the large desk, each filled with a bed and an array of medical equipment. All but three were dark and it didn’t take Nick more than a second to locate Lindsay. She was laid out like the dead, enshrined in her own glass tomb. Nick damn near died of heart failure right then and there.

  Without thought, without notice for the rest of the world, he headed straight toward her despite the fact that a part of him wanted to turn and flee. He didn’t want to face this, didn’t want to walk in there and know that he failed again. Nick wouldn’t allow himself to be ruled by either fear or cowardice. Lindsay needed him.

  Thankfully Cooper didn’t. Sally had assured him of that when Nick had swung by his brother’s room. Cooper had been out getting X-rays to make sure he hadn’t broken any of bones in his hand but other than that they expected him to make a full recovery. Nick had left his aunt to keep an eye on his brother and taken off to find Lindsay.

  The urgency pounding at him finally died down as he got a good look at her. Stalling out at her door, Nick took in the sight of Lindsay lying pale as death and stiff as a corpse beneath the bleached white sheet and it finally hit him. She could have died.

  Then what would he have done?

  “Sir?”

  The sharp hint of censure buried in that single word snapped Nick back to the moment and the reality that the nurse had fled her station, chasing after him as she’d tried unsuccessfully to gain his attention. She did so now with a clawlike grip on his elbow, as if that would stop Nick if wanted to proceed. He had a feeling, though, that he’d have to drag the nurse with him and so spared a moment to glance her way and take in her objection.

  “Only family is allowed back here.”

  “I’m Lindsay Howell’s fiancé.”

  Not bothering to wait to see if that sufficed and lacking any concern if it didn’t, Nick jerked free of the woman’s grip and moved straight for Lindsay’s side. The nurse lingered in the door, not completely satisfied but not willing to offer any strenuous objection. Instead she squawked at him from safely across the room.

  “We don’t have a Lindsay Howell here. This woman’s last name is Bryne.”

  “Somebody lied to you then because this woman is Lindsay Howell,” Nick informed her, not that the woman accepted his explanation without argument.

  “Mr. Bryne, Carl Bryne,” the nurse expanded as if that would impress Nick, “made it clear that this is his daughter—”

  “Stepdaughter,” Nick corrected instantly. “And she wants nothing to do with him. The man shouldn’t even be allowed in her room.”

  “Sir—”

  “Don’t worry, her lawyer will be here to explain it all soon enough.” Nick cut her off a second time, knowing that threat would buy him the moments he needed to deal with the sight before his eyes.
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  Lindsay’s looked so pale. Her skin was too cool against his own and her fingers limp and lifeless within his grasp. If it wasn’t for the steady pulse of her heart beneath his fingertips, Nick would have believed he’d already failed. But she was alive, giving him reason to hope.

  Settling into the chair that sat by the bed’s side, he stared at Lindsay ashen features and silently willed her awake. She had to wake up because he couldn’t live like this, knowing that he’d failed her. He shouldn’t have left her. If only she would open her eyes, Nick would never make that mistake again.

  “I hear you’re my daughter’s fiancé.”

  Nick jerked out of his chair at that smoothly given comment and turned to face the monster he knew haunted Lindsay’s every move. Only Carl Bryne didn’t look like a monster. From the polish of his shoes to the fit of his obviously hand-tailored suit, Lindsay’s stepfather looked too refined and sophisticated to fit the mold of the villain. Then again, Nick reminded himself, villains came in many forms, even well-spoken, articulate ones.

  “I’m Carl Bryne.” Stepping forward to offer Nick a perfectly manicured hand, the man held it there for a second longer than necessary before letting the gesture go. “And I imagine given your reception you believe you know me well.”

  “As well as I want to.”

  “And more than you ever cared to?” Carl lifted a perfectly groomed brow but the smile that tipped his lips up held a sadness that echoed in the heavy breath of his sigh and the words that came with it. “I have no doubt the kind of tales my daughter has woven for you, or the role she cast me in.”

  “Perhaps that’s because her tales are accurate and the role one you made for yourself.” Nick fought to keep his tone as calm and reasonable as Lindsay’s stepfather’s but couldn’t disguise the hard edge of his disgust.