Hidden (Jacobs Family Series Book 1)

by Vannetta Chapman

  “Ben’s behind me. Ben’s behind me.” The words became a mantra as she whispered them, but doubt soon overwhelmed her. What if Ben wasn’t behind her? What if Drogan had already found and murdered him? She wouldn’t have heard the slice of a knife.

  The idea paralyzed her. She stopped, temporarily disoriented. A branch moved, and she brought up her gun. Scanning left, then right, she saw nothing. She turned in a circle, trying to find Ben or the noise that had startled her. A night bird flew to her right, moving one branch then another. She followed its progress through the sight of her gun until she was looking at the clearing.

  Lowering the weapon slightly, she continued walking, ignoring the branches that caught in her hair. Finally, she broke through and drew a deep breath.

  She lowered the Glock and increased her pace. No doubt that was her mistake. She was watching the distant stand of trees, worrying she’d left Ben waiting too long. Later, she would remember looking down briefly. In an instant, she saw signs of freshly dug dirt. Evidence he’d been there. But her mind registered it all a fraction of a second too late.

  She felt the ground shift, tried to grab something, but there was nothing to catch hold of. She was in a meadow.

  Then the ground gave way, and she was falling.

  The stars were above her, and below her was an abyss.

  Seventy-three

  Ben was running before Dana hit the bottom of the ravine. He had watched in horror as the ground began to give away, tried in vain to call out to her.

  He prayed as he ran.

  The climb down seemed to take an eternity. When he reached her, she was lying on her back and beginning to come around.

  “Don’t move, Dana. Honey, lie still.” He ran his hands up and down her legs, wondering how she could have survived such a fall without breaking anything, knowing it would have been a miracle. He was checking her left arm when she came to and gasped.

  Her amber eyes were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. If they were the last thing he saw, he’d die a happy man.

  “What happened?”

  “You—”

  “He—”

  Ben tried a third time and finally gave up, the emotions too strong as he sank his head and allowed relief to wash over him.

  Dana’s fingers in his hair brought him back. He wiped at his face and stroked her hair.

  “You look happy to see me,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  She winced again as she leaned on her left arm.

  “Let me help.” He moved to her right side, supporting her as she sat up, then retrieved a bottle of water from his pack. Her pack was covered with leaves and branches, and the outer pockets were torn, but it was holding together. “I think your pack took the brunt of the fall.”

  “Tell my arm that.” Dana bent it at the elbow, but when she tried to move her wrist, she looked at Ben and shook her head.

  He ran his hand gently over it. “I can’t feel a break, but you probably have a nasty sprain.” Opening his pack, he pulled out an ACE bandage and fashioned a sling. Positioning it over her head, he brushed the hair out of her face. “It’s a miracle—”

  “I don’t want to hear about your miracles.” She practically spat the words at him as she holstered her weapon. She’d managed to protect it in her fall, but the cost had been the injury to her arm.

  “Look at the fall you survived.”

  Dana shook her head, struggling to stand up as he spoke. “Look at us, Ben.”

  He stepped back from her anger.

  “What else could go wrong tonight? All of my teams are scattered. We have mutilated animals at every turn. You’re injured, and we’ll be lucky if you can use your arm come sunrise.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it.”

  “You’re right, because we don’t have any luck. If we did, we’d still have our horse. Instead, we’re walking, which is why I stepped into his trap.”

  Ben’s head snapped up at her last word. “The shelf looked solid. Maybe last year’s rains wore away the shelf underneath.”

  “It was a trap. I saw the shovel marks, but I saw them too late. Somehow he knew we were going to cross there. How did he know?”

  Ben stepped near her in the darkness, close enough to see past her anger to her fear. “What are you talking about?”

  “Before the shelf gave way, I looked down and saw freshly dug dirt. My falling was no accident. It was a trap. This entire night is a trap.”

  Ben walked over to where he had dropped his rifle, picked it up, and inspected the barrel to see if he’d damaged it on his slide down.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” she demanded.

  “What do you mean where?”

  “He made sure we’d end up in this ravine, so wherever we go is a where Drogan wants us to be. Do we want to keep following his plan?”

  Dana’s eyes reminded him of the mountain lion, wild and without hope.

  Ben pointed to the steep banks on both sides. “Can you climb out of this with your wrist sprained? Because honestly I don’t think I can with my shoulder injury. So we can sit here and wait for him to shoot us, or we can head north in this ravine and hope there’s a way out.”

  When she still didn’t move, he walked back over to where she stood. “Dana, we can’t stay here and wait for him to kill us.”

  “Tell me why, Ben. Tell me why God allows men like him to live.”

  “I don’t know why, but I do know this isn’t over yet.” He knew his answer wasn’t good enough. The need to move was suddenly so strong he almost picked her up and ran with her.

  “Yeah. Okay.” Dana shrugged the pack over her right shoulder, refusing any help, and followed him.

  She didn’t ask any more questions, which was a good thing. He’d proven that he’d run out of answers.

  Seventy-four

  The walls of the ravine grew steeper and more narrow as they walked, which was about what she expected.

  Dana moved closer to Ben—not out of fear, though she was terrified. She didn’t want to lose him in the darkness. She was exhausted. If she lost him, she knew she would sit down. Sitting would be the same as signing her own death warrant.

  As they plodded along, she admitted to herself she wasn’t ready to die. Tears fell down her cheeks, and she wiped them away.

  Ben’s talk of miracles infuriated her.

  How dare he?

  She’d prayed for miracles when she was ten. All it had gotten her was orphaned. She would not call out for help again. God had abandoned her once. Why give him a second chance?

  Erin’s face swam into her mind, and she pushed it away. She should have called. She’d put it off the last few nights, knowing her sister would ask how her new romance was going. Looking at Ben’s slumped shoulders, she regretted so many things—her bitter words not the least of them.

  And what if God were to give her another chance?

  She flung the thought away before it could fully form.

  Foxhole faith. If there were a God, he should have let her die in the bottom of the ravine. She was no better than all the others—proclaiming no faith, then converting in her hour of need.

  Except she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live.

  Ben stopped so suddenly she ran into the back of him.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  Dana’s heart hammered so hard she could feel it in her throat.

  “Stay here.”

  “No.”

  “Dana—”

  “No. I’m going with you.”

  “I need to look—”

  “I’m going with you.”

  All pretense of supervisor and employee was gone—had been for hours. She pulled her Glock out at the same moment he raised his rifle, although neither of them knew if it would fire straight.

  They crept forward side-by-side, not even an inch separating them.

  The trees thinned out. Ben pointed up, and Dana could see an entire canopy of st
ars for the first time in an hour. The walls of the ravine had spread out, not far, but enough for her to see they were entering some sort of clearing. Moving toward the edge of the woods, they saw what might have been a cave at one time.

  In fact, they’d walked into a dead end. Built into the cave-like opening was a cabin, nearly identical to the one at Lake Abiquiu. She’d barely had time to process the thought when the sound of hoof beats reached them.

  “He’s coming,” Ben said. “We need to get out of this clearing.”

  And then they ran to the cabin, because there was nowhere else to go.

  Dana almost couldn’t walk inside, she was shaking so badly.

  Ben pushed her through the door, shut it silently, and moved to the window. “Dana, I need you to watch out this window while I check the room for explosives.”

  When she didn’t move, he glanced back at her. “Dana?”

  She didn’t speak, couldn’t have, but she did manage to walk to the window. She tried to raise her pistol, but her hand was shaking too badly.

  “Here.” He raised it for her, rested it against the frame of the glass. “You see anything, start shooting.”

  She swallowed and nodded once. Supporting the gun with her injured hand, she pulled the slide back with her right.

  “Good girl.”

  She heard him moving around the room, shoving furniture aside, opening and closing the few cabinets in the kitchen. When he walked into the pantry, she cringed.

  His boots rang against the floor as he walked back out into the single room, down toward the bathroom, and back into the main room again.

  Finally, he squatted beside her at the window.

  She glanced at him, then gazed back out into the darkness.

  “There’s no secret room, Dana. No sign of explosives. It looks like the other cabin, but it’s not.”

  He put his hand over the top of the Glock, waited for her to ease her finger off the trigger. “Go and sit at the table. I’ve got this.”

  Seventy-five

  It was three in the morning when Drogan made contact. Ben knew because there was an old watch in one of the drawers. Surprised to find it ticking, he’d strapped it on.

  Dana was still at the table, bottle of water in front of her. She hadn’t spoken since he’d taken her position at the window. She hadn’t moved in thirty minutes.

  He heard the horse first, but couldn’t see it.

  Raising the Glock, he stepped away from the window. “Get down,” he warned her.

  Dana dropped to the floor like a stone falling to the bottom of a well.

  A bottle hit the front porch. Ben ran outside, intending to knock it off before it exploded. That was when he saw the note wrapped around it.

  Seventy-six

  Dana stared at the bottle that Ben brought in. His gaze never left her face as he tugged the note free, smoothed it out, and set it on the table. The he switched on the flashlight he’d found, though he cupped the light in his hands. No use making them a easier target than they already were.

  Together, they looked down at the words.

  The lettering was identical to the note they’d found in the backpack four weeks ago. As if it would matter whether there were fingerprints now, Drogan had again carefully cut out letters from magazine pages to compose his message. Which meant he had composed the message before he’d met them in Elizabethtown. He’d carefully planned the entire night.

  It was easier for Dana to focus on those similarities between the notes than it was to comprehend the words the letters formed.

  “Dana—” Ben put a hand on her shoulder, but she jerked away.

  “Don’t. Please don’t say anything.”

  She stared down at the words, her death warrant. Essentially, she was reading her death warrant.

  I’ll be back for her at sunrise.

  No conditions. No terms. No way out.

  She felt the blackness descend around her. Why did it have to end like this? And what could she have done differently?

  Ben stood up, walked across the kitchen, and poured some of their water into a small pot. Turning on the stove, he set the pot on the front burner.

  She watched him for a moment, then stared back down at the note.

  He would kill her either way.

  “I’m going with him,” she said.

  “No. You’re not.” Ben placed the med kit on the table between them.

  “He’ll either kill me in the morning, or kill us both in the morning.” She couldn’t look into his eyes, couldn’t bear the depth of love she saw there. “Ben, do this for me. He’ll let you through. I know he will.”

  When he didn’t answer, she finally turned her eyes back to him.

  “I’m not leaving, Dana. Nothing you can say will make me go. Do you understand?”

  Slowly, she nodded.

  “Now I need you to change my dressing.”

  It took her longer, working with only one hand. His wound was red and hot to her touch. As she removed the old bandage, it began to bleed again.

  “I need to cut the shrapnel out.”

  “I’m afraid if you cut it deeply enough to remove the debris, I won’t be able to use that arm at all when I need to. Clean it superficially, as best you can, then rewrap it.”

  His face lost all color when she applied the warm compress to the worst part of the wound. The muscle along the upper part of his arm had turned a dark purple, and the larger of the cuts began to ooze puss as well as blood as soon as she removed the compress.

  They’d turned off the flashlight to save its batteries. She was working by the light of a single oil lamp they’d found on a shelf. When she’d suggested they should keep the room dark, he’d shrugged.

  “He knows we’re here. What difference does it make?”

  She rewrapped the wound, and Ben pulled a fresh shirt out of his pack. It provided at least one more layer of protection.

  Dana wondered if they’d live long enough to need it.

  Then there was nothing to do but sit and face her regrets. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember why it had been so imperative to move away from Erin. Had she really thought the ghosts of their past was stronger than the bond they shared?

  And what of the man sitting across from her?

  He’d stepped into her life, saved her more than once, offered her his love. She’d rejected him at every step.

  Because she was his boss?

  There had been a more burning reason, one that scraped at her soul. Watching him in the gas light, she wondered if she’d ever known anyone who possessed a more peaceful spirit.

  Did she even believe they each had a spirit? And if she didn’t, would she see her mother again? Would she see Erin?

  She stood up and began pacing around the room and then worried Drogan would see her. She sat back down.

  She’d never considered dying before thirty.

  And she’d never expected to live to see thirty.

  How was it she had come to set her standard in life so low?

  Looking out at the darkness, she realized she wasn’t surprised it had come to this. She’d been living without hope for a very long time.

  Seventy-seven

  Ben didn’t know what to say to Dana, so he prayed.

  He prayed for wisdom. He prayed for guidance. Mostly, he prayed for God to intercede.

  He knew he couldn’t beat Drogan alone.

  Finally, he stood up and looked for oil to clean the rifle. No doubt he’d gotten dirt in the barrel when he’d clambered down the ravine after Dana. The fool thing might not work if he’d jammed debris in there.

  He wasn’t surprised to find a can of gun oil and some old rags under the kitchen sink.

  Sitting back down across from Dana, he went to work disassembling and cleaning the rifle.

  He didn’t have a plan yet, but he knew what he wasn’t going to do. He wasn’t going to turn tail and run. He wasn’t going to leave the woman he loved. And he wasn’t going to allow Drogan to walk awa
y, not if he could do anything about it.

  So he cleaned the rifle, and he waited. The hands on the watch he’d borrowed read ten minutes until four.

  He glanced occasionally at Dana, longed to pull her into his arms and tell her how much he cared for her.

  Patience, he heard his granddad whisper.

  Course Granddad hadn’t known he’d be sitting in a madman’s cabin with a deadline fast approaching.

  God knew though.

  Ben assembled the rifle, checked the sight, and tore it back down again.

  God knew.

  Seventy-eight

  Dana glanced over at Ben, thought of Erin, and swallowed her pride.

  Walking across the cabin floor, she squatted down in front of him. He was cleaning his rifle—again. The oil lamp threw plenty of shadows on the ceiling though it provided very little real light. She wondered how he could see well enough to work. But then she imagined he could probably clean the M24 in the dark. No doubt he had while he was in Iraq.

  He set the cloth and rifle aside when she squatted in front of his chair. He didn’t touch her. He hadn’t touched her since she’d screamed at him earlier. She had herself to thank for the distance he kept.

  She yearned for the feel of his hand in hers, the touch of his arm across her shoulder, even a casual brush of his fingers through her hair. But she didn’t know how to ask for those comforts.

  “What is it, Dana?”

  She looked up into his face and swallowed. “Do you think he’s waiting out there?”

  “Yes, I do.” Ben’s eyes were calm. Had they ever been anything else?

  Dana tensed, felt her head nod up and down, but something inside her cracked like a giant tree going down. Her mind flashed back on the old pine she’d run to so many years ago. Like every time before, she pushed the image away.

  “So this was all a trap?”

  Ben nodded, started to reach for her, then pushed his hands down to his side. “Yes, it was a trap. Don’t be afraid, Dana.”