Issued to the Bride One Airman (Brides of Chance Creek Book 2)

by Cora Seton

  “Checked it out. Hardly looks like anyone’s living there. Lady next door told me he spends most of his time up at a drying shed he rents from the park’s owner. She’s a talkative type. Lonely. She would have given me the pedigree of everyone in the resort if I’d had the time to listen.”

  “Resort,” Connor echoed with a shake of his head. “More like end of the road. Did she say he’s up there now?”

  “I took a look. He’s there, all right. Got himself a lawn chair and he’s all stretched out like he’s working on his tan. Didn’t want to get too close. Figured if he’s got the dogs around they might smell my scent and give me away.”

  “Good work. What about Grant?” Where was Max? Connor wondered. In that shed? His fists clenched.

  “Sounds like he’s in and out. Sometimes staying here, sometimes not. She hasn’t seen him in a few days. Says his truck hasn’t been around at all.”

  Connor ticked over the information in his head, asked his father a few more questions and made his plan. When he’d filled Brian and his father in, they got Willett’s puppies out of the truck, put them on leads and took a long, circular route through the woods that bordered the road to come within striking distance of the drying shed.

  It was heavy work. The terrain was nearly vertical in places, the ground uneven. It was hard to keep the puppies in line and Connor was afraid their yipping would give them away too far in advance.

  The dogs settled down as they tired out, though, and when Connor emerged on a rise of ground with a line of sight to the drying shed, Sean handed him the binoculars, and he spotted Ron. Just like Sean had said, the man was laid out in his reclining lawn chair like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Is he stupid?” Brian whispered when Connor had passed him the binoculars.

  “Confident,” Connor corrected him. “He’s got the dogs where he wants them. He thinks he’s got us over a barrel.”

  “Think Grant’s inside?”

  “I think we’d better count on it. Although I don’t see him as the type to sit in a shed while his buddy’s getting a tan.”

  “He has to know no one in their right mind would waste a quarter million dollars rescuing puppies,” Sean said.

  “Maybe. But maybe that’s not his game. Think about it; you and the women blew up their drugs. They want money and they want revenge. Either way things go here, they win.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “If we’re crazy enough to give them the money, they get what they want. If we don’t and they kill those animals…”

  “Jo will lose her mind,” Brian said.

  “And her sisters will blame us for failing. It’s like releasing a snake into paradise. A slow, nasty revenge.” Connor didn’t think they’d stop with that, though.

  “Maybe they’re not really after all that much money,” Sean said suddenly. “Maybe they’ve set the bar high to see how much you’ll cough up.”

  “That could be,” Brian said. “So, now what?”

  “I get as close as I can. You get the dogs into position,” Connor said. “Be ready in case Grant’s in that shed.”

  Sean and Brian moved off, leaving Connor to continue a slow, steady advance toward Ron. The cowboy had a lanky build, a sharp nose and straw-colored hair that showed under his hat. Connor made a wide circle slowly around to the back of the shed and scouted every step before he placed his foot down. He couldn’t make a single sound. Nothing the dogs inside might hear—

  As Connor came around the corner, Sean released the Willett dogs right on cue. They ran barking across the clearing mere feet in front of Ron, who jumped to his feet.

  “What the hell?” Ron, momentarily confused at the sight of the puppies—which he must have thought were the ones he’d locked into the drying shed—stopped in his tracks long enough for Connor to cold-cock him with the butt of his pistol. The man dropped like a stone. Connor searched him quickly, removed a Glock from a holster tucked under Ron’s armpit and handed it to Brian, who’d looped back to reach his side.

  “Tie him up. I’ll get Jo’s dogs.” Careful to make sure first neither Grant nor anyone else was inside, he busted down the door of the shed and rounded up the puppies, taking a moment to give Max a squeeze and whisper to him it would be all right soon while the puppy showed his enthusiasm with a lot of wet kisses.

  It took longer for him and Sean to collect the Willett dogs, but they eventually lured them back with treats, and soon the bed of Connor’s truck was full of puppies.

  “What’ll we do with him?” Brian nudged Ron with his foot and the man groaned. Coming around, he thrashed for a moment, but when he realized he was trussed hand and foot, he soon gave up.

  “You’ll pay. Don’t think you won’t,” he snarled at them.

  “Save it for the sheriff.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You’re the one who’s fucked.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I don’t think there’s a big penalty for stealing a couple of stupid dogs.”

  Connor lost his patience, grabbed a roll of duct tape, ripped off a length of five inches and slapped it over Ron’s mouth. “You bother anyone at Two Willows again, I’ll put you in the ground where you belong,” Connor snarled at him. Ron was right, and that pissed him off. Plus, he still had no proof Grant was connected to any of this. The thought of him roaming free—hitting on Jo—

  “Get him in the truck. Grab the dogs. Let’s get out of here.”

  Brian drove the truck. Sean climbed into the bed with the dogs. Connor sat in back with Ron, who kept writhing and trying to shout against the duct tape over his mouth until Connor wanted to bash him with the butt of his pistol again. He was hot, sweaty and frustrated. After all this, Ron would probably get off with little more than a fine.

  If that.

  “We’ll take him straight to the sheriff’s office. I don’t know what Cab can do, but it’s a start,” Brian said.

  They were quiet for the rest of the trip back into town, except for Ron, who never stopped trying to talk. They were almost to the Sheriff’s Department when a phone buzzed. Connor patted his pockets, but it wasn’t his.

  “That yours?” he asked Brian.

  “Nope.”

  Sean was in the truck bed, so it couldn’t be his.

  Ron’s words were garbled against the duct tape, but Connor finally figured out he was trying to say the cell phone was his. Connor yanked him forward, spotted a rectangular shape in his back pocket and fished it out. It was Grant video-calling him.

  “Your friend’s a little busy,” Connor told Grant when he accepted the call.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, I’ve been busy, too.” Grant’s face filled the phone, but then the image tilted, and a moment later, Jo came into view. “Say hello, honey.”

  Connor’s chest tightened.

  Hell.

  “Connor?” Jo’s voice was slurred and her eyes were unfocused. “Connor—they’ve got—” Grant yanked her away and the next moment, all Connor could see was his face.

  “Got your attention now? You know what we want. You know when and where we want it. You don’t get another chance. Fuck this up, and Jo’s dead.”

  He hung up, leaving Connor speechless.

  Ron said something against the duct tape that sounded cocky as hell.

  Connor whirled around and slammed a fist into his face. “Go!” he yelled at Brian, who had already slammed his foot down on the gas. “I’ll call Cab and tell him what’s going down.”

  “All right, ladies. Thank you for your hospitality, but your sister and I should be on our way,” Grant said. He hoisted Jo up over his shoulder.

  Sadie could kick herself for giving her sister a sedative tea. Jo dangled as limply as a rag doll. She must have overdone it with the herbs; that’s what she got for tampering with them when her connection to them was cut.

  “You can’t take her,” Cass cried, but like Sadie, her hands were tied behind her back. Both of them seated in kitchen chairs,
trussed up like turkeys. Sadie had never felt so helpless. When Grant had come in waving a gun, there was nothing they could do. Thank goodness Alice was in town and wasn’t due back for several hours, and Keira and Dalton were off rounding up cattle with Lena. She, Cass and Jo had been the only ones in the house when Grant burst through the back door.

  “I can do whatever I want. When I’m gone, you two had better rustle up some cash. Two hundred and fifty grand. Got it?”

  “Don’t you hurt her,” Sadie said. “If you do, I’ll kill you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” When he turned, Jo flopped against his back, and Grant craned his neck to try to get a better look at her. He nearly rammed Jo into the kitchen counter and Sadie flinched. “What the hell did you do to your sister?” he demanded of them.

  She must be out cold, Sadie thought. “She was upset. She needed to sleep. I gave her a—” Sadie shrieked when Jo reared up suddenly, grabbed a knife from the carving block on the counter and stabbed it into Grant’s back with all her strength.

  Grant roared, dropped Jo to the ground and turned a circle, clutching at his back. Jo scrambled to her feet, grabbed another knife from the butcher’s block and ran to her sisters. First she cut Cass free, then Sadie, sawing through the plastic ties on their hands with a strength Sadie hadn’t known she possessed. Once free, Jo shoved both of them toward the living room.

  “Get outside! Now!”

  “Dammit!” Grant grappled with the knife in his back and finally pulled it free with another roar of pain. He charged after them, and Sadie increased her speed, tugging Jo after her.

  They nearly made it to the front door before he rounded the corner and took a shot. The bullet whizzed by Sadie’s head and buried itself in the thick, wooden front door. She grabbed a vase from the delicate table that stood in the entryway and chucked it at him.

  He twisted sharply to dodge it, exposing the still-growing blossom of blood across the back of his white shirt. “Fuck!” he yelled. “You fucking whore—I’ll—”

  Cass yanked open the front door. Sadie pushed Jo out of it. “Go!”

  “—kill you!” Grant pulled the trigger on the pistol again, as Cass dashed after Jo.

  Sadie didn’t wait to see where the bullet hit. She leaped out the door, yanked it closed behind her and ran like her life depended on it.

  It did.

  There was no cover on this side of the house. They had to get around back—get her car—no, she realized as she skidded around the corner. She didn’t have her keys. Hide in the carriage house maybe, or keep running—

  “Sadie!”

  Cass and Jo had made it to the carriage house. Sadie raced their way.

  “Run!” Jo cried, as awake as if she’d never been dosed. Sadie realized belatedly she probably never was. How many times had Jo spit out one of her mixtures the moment she turned her back? Thank goodness she’d done it again.

  Sadie reached the carriage house and Cass pulled her inside. Jo slammed shut the door and locked it.

  “Phone—phone!” Cass cried.

  Sadie patted her pocket, but Grant had taken hers.

  “He’s got mine,” Jo said.

  “Mine, too.” Cass scanned the room. “We need weapons.”

  “Connor and Brian know what happened. They must be on their way,” Sadie reminded her.

  “From Silver Falls,” Cass retorted. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

  She was right. Grant might be injured, but he had a pistol and they didn’t. “Let’s get upstairs.”

  Alice’s workshop was full of costumes, and Sadie realized it could buy them time. “We can hide,” she said, keeping her voice low as they darted up the old wooden stairs. She wondered where Grant was now. Back at the house? Or right outside?

  “That’s not good enough,” Cass hissed.

  “He’s got to get up the stairs before he can get us.”

  As if he’d heard their words, Grant called out from the front of the carriage house, “I know you’re in there. You can’t get away from me!”

  “How is he still moving?” Jo said. “I got him good!”

  “Not good enough,” Cass said. “Look at him!”

  Alice’s second-story workshop was lined with large arched windows, and Cass had crossed to stand beside one, her back pressed to the wall to stay out of sight.

  Windows, Sadie thought, a memory coming back to her. “Window seats.”

  “What?” Cass asked.

  “Check the window seats. Alice saves everything!”

  Jo understood first. She fell to her knees, scrambled across the wooden floor to the closest window and propped open the seat cushion. Beneath it was a capacious storage space. Jo began to rustle through it. Sadie did the same with another one. “Hurry,” she hissed at Cass. “He’ll find a way in.”

  Her window seat was filled with toys from their childhoods, back when they’d shared the space as more of a playroom than anything else. During rainy days, and in the winter, they’d turn on the radiators, heat it up until it was cozy and romp around in the large open space when their mother had had enough of them inside.

  A chess set, decks of cards, board games, pads of drawing paper, scribbled over with their childish drawings—Sadie chucked them over her shoulder to see what was underneath.

  “There’s nothing in here.” Jo scrambled to the next window.

  “Nothing here, either,” Cass said. “Nothing good. Why does she keep this stuff?”

  Sadie ignored her. The storage space in front of her was nearly empty, but she ran her hand around the base of it one last time—

  —and pulled out a slingshot.

  “What’s that?” Cass called.

  Sadie held it up.

  “Fat lot of good that’ll do against a pistol.”

  She was right. And still—

  “So far it’s the best we’ve got.” She jammed it in her back pocket and moved to another window, stopping on the way to scoop up a hard rubber ball. She jammed that in her pocket, too.

  Cass pulled held up a bottle. “Jesus—she’s got lamp oil in here. That’s dangerous.”

  Lamp oil? Sadie rushed to her side. “Find cloth—tear it into strips. Lots of them. Find small heavy things to wrap them around.” She held up the hard rubber ball as an example, and grabbed a swath of fabric from where it lay on Alice’s worktable. With shaking hands, she tore off strips, wrapped them around the ball and tied them in place until she’d mummified it—leaving a tail of cloth dangling from it. She doused the tail with lamp oil. “That’s one.”

  “Sadie—”

  “Got a better idea?” she said as a thump downstairs announced Grant had stopped circling the building and was getting serious about getting in. “We set them on fire and nail him with them when he tries to come in.”

  “And set the carriage house on fire around us!”

  “There’s a fire extinguisher.” Sadie pointed to it. “Another one downstairs. Besides, the bottom floor is concrete and so is the pony wall.” She spotted a bottle of water, tore another long strip of fabric and wet it thoroughly. She wrapped that around the rubber tubing, hope it would help prevent it from burning. She tested the rubber and breathed a sigh of relief when it stretched but didn’t snap. Age hadn’t hurt it.

  “That’s crazy,” Cass said.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” Sadie told her. The pony wall extended four feet up from the cement floor downstairs. All she could do was hope the missiles wouldn’t find anything to burn when they landed. And that they kept Grant at bay until the men reached them.

  All three of them spread out to find cores for their fabric-covered missiles. Sadie found some batteries, a small glass votive candlestick and a paperweight. She wrapped them up as fast as she could and doused them, too. Cass and Jo handed her more missiles, but they’d only constructed seven of them when another crash downstairs told them Grant had made it inside.

  “The stairs. Now!” Sadie scooped up one of the missiles. Her sisters grabb
ed the other ones. Cass snatched a pack of matches off Alice’s worktable.

  At the top of the stairs, Sadie got in position, fetched the slingshot from her pocket and positioned the first of the missiles against the rubber strap. Cass held out the missile’s tail. Jo readied a match.

  They all held their breath.

  “Fucking whores,” Grant bellowed.

  Suddenly, he was on the stairs. Jo lit a match, nearly dropped it, caught it and held it to the missile’s tail. It caught more quickly than Sadie expected, and when the flame whooshed up to engulf the ball, she dropped it with a shriek and watched it roll down the steps harmlessly and land at Grant’s feet. Grant kicked it out of the stairwell down to the first floor.

  “Going to take a lot more than that!”

  Thank God for that concrete floor, Sadie thought wildly as he stormed up the stairs two at a time. Cass handed Sadie the next missile and she held it firm. Jo lit a match. The cloth lit, but this time Sadie was ready for it. She let go the rubber and it snapped forward, propelling the fiery missile straight at Grant. It hit him square in the chest and he batted at it, dropping his pistol and slapping out the flames that caught fire to his shirt. He stumbled down several steps, caught himself with a hand on the railing and kicked the flaming missile down the stairs.

  Cass handed her a third missile, Sadie positioned it and Jo lit the tail. As Grant turned around, Sadie nailed him in the face and he bellowed, flailed his arms, and slid and tripped most of the way down the stairs before he caught himself. With a roar of rage, he scooped up the fallen pistol on his way back up and fired off two shots. They buried themselves in the walls before Sadie took another shot and hit him again.

  “Fuck!”

  This time he charged them. Sadie couldn’t get off another shot. Jo lit the tail of the fourth missile, and it roared to life between Sadie and Grant as he flung himself at her and knocked her down at the top of the stairs.