Blood had crusted in his hair and around the wound, making it almost impossible for her to see where the edges were. She needed water, a needle, and some thread. A couple of bandages. A hospital. They really needed a hospital.
“I don’t know what I can do about this. Without something to clean it out with—”
“Then leave it.”
“But you’ll get an infection if we don’t do something.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and dragged her closer to him. “If I promise I’ll go to a hospital as soon as we get out of this place, will you let it go?”
She looked down at him, fear dancing in her heart even as she found solace in his green eyes. She could still hear the voice of the man outside the doors, promising to end her life. She shivered with the memory, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the tears at bay. She didn’t want to be weak; she didn’t want to make him think she was the kind of girl who would fall apart at the tiniest threat. But she felt like someone had pulled the carpet out from under her, and the world was spinning as she fell.
“How are we going to get out of here without him knowing?”
“He can only be on one side of the building at a time. And, if I were him, I’d be at the front. That’s probably where he’ll be.”
“But there’re no other exits.”
“We’ll make our own.”
“What?”
He brushed his hand against the side of her face, pushing a piece of her hair away. “We’ll make a hole in the wall at the back and slip out while he’s busy watching the front.”
“And what about the storm? What if the snow’s too deep?” She gestured down at his feet. “What about you? You can’t walk two-feet out there barefoot, let alone the length of the farm.”
“You have a neighbor behind here, right? Maybe we can borrow their car.”
“Mrs. Philips?”
That set off something in Abigail’s thoughts. Mrs. Philip’s had called her about the light in the barn. But there were no windows in the back of the barn low enough for him to have shone the flashlight onto. For her to have seen the light, she had to have been at the front of the barn.
Why would Mrs. Philips be at the front of the barn?
“She didn’t see the light.”
“What?”
Now it was Axel’s turn to be confused. He studied her face, brushing her brown hair away from her eyes again. She reached up and tugged her hair into a pony tail between her fingers, twisting it around into a knot to keep it off her face. He watched, a hungry look in his eyes she’d never seen focused on her before.
“Mrs. Philips. She’s the reason I rode out here tonight. She said she saw a light in the barn, but I don’t think she could have seen the light from that flashlight unless you went and stood out behind the barn and waved it around.”
“I found it in here, in a drawer.” He gestured behind him, to the drawers at the front of the desk he was perched on. “I only used it for a moment before the cold got the better of me.”
“She couldn’t have seen the light. But why did she call me?”
Axel’s face grew grave, his hold on her body stiff. But then his hands softened, moving slowly over the small of her back as he drew her closer to him.
“He put her up to it. He must have confused her, made her think he was friendly.”
“He watched you come here. He wanted me here, too.”
“He thinks we’re trapped. Sitting ducks.”
Panic suddenly burned in Abigail’s chest. She pulled away from him and crossed the room, slipping out into the main part of the barn. He followed, tugging the blankets over his shoulders again.
“What are you doing?”
“We have to go. I need to go.”
She went to the horse, tugging at the reins that were now tangled because Romance couldn’t stand still. Tears filled her eyes, burning as they rolled down her cheeks. She didn’t want to die. Her life wasn’t what she had intended it to be, but it was a good life. She had friends in town, had Josh and Terri. And Julia had told her about that website, Match.com. She was so close to convincing Abigail to go on there and find some guy who might be interested in a small-town girl. She had a good life.
“Abbie,” Axel said, grabbing at her shoulder.
She’d never liked being called Abbie. But there was something about the way it sounded coming from his lips. She let him pull her away, let him push her against the wall.
“You cannot panic. Panic is what leads to mistakes.”
“He’s going to kill me. You heard him out there.”
“I did. But he’s also playing a game with you, and that works to our advantage.”
“How?”
“It gives us time. If he’d only wanted you dead, he would have taken a shot at you when you left your house to come up here. He knew what you would do; he probably knew what route you would take. He could have gotten to you then, but he didn’t. And tonight, he could have charged in here, could have taken us both out.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“I don’t know. But the fact that he didn’t has to mean something, right? Something we can work with, something that gives us an advantage.”
“I can’t do this,” she said softly, shaking her head. “I’m not this person. I plant crops, I ride horses. I try to make the books make sense. I don’t run from homicidal killers!”
He touched the side of her face, his fingers kind against her jaw. And then he kissed her, drawing her gently against him. After a moment, she moved into his embrace, sliding her arms around his neck. There was life in his touch. But then Romance came over and pushed her nose against Abigail, pushing so hard she nearly fell over.
Abigail laughed as she looked at the horse.
“What? I’m allowed a little fun, aren’t I?”
The horse snorted. She was hungry and cold, confused by this change in her routine. Abigail untangled her limbs from Axel and moved to Romance, sliding her hand over her nose.
“It’s okay, Ro,” she said softly. “I’ll get you home tomorrow and give you a double helping of oats, okay? You deserve it after this crazy night.”
She could feel Axel watching her. It made her nervous, but it was exciting at the same time. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about him. When he kissed her, she knew it wasn’t right. Too much, too soon. But he was so handsome and his touch was . . . aggressive, but erotic in a way she’d never experienced before. She wasn’t quite as innocent as she was sure he thought she was. She’d spent some time in this very barn with a couple of local boys. They’d climb up into the hay loft and fool around.
“There’s a window up in the hay loft,” she said thoughtfully, her hand still moving over the velvety nose of the horse. “And there’s a tree back there. If we could climb down . . . I used to do it as a kid. Haven’t done it in twenty years, but the tree’s bigger now, so it should be easier, right?”
Axel didn’t respond right away. She could almost feel the wheels turning in his head.
“How far is it to your neighbor’s house?”
“Half a mile. Maybe slightly more.”
Abigail watched as he moved away from the wall and looked up at the loft.
“Is there anything up there? Can we walk around without the lights?”
She glanced at the two flashlights that were still burning, one in the office they’d abandoned a moment ago, the other on the floor near Axel’s feet where he’d dropped it while he was exploring her hips. She understood that he didn’t want to give their position away to the man watching from outside. But the idea of wandering around up there in the dark, what with the spiders and rats that were probably snuggling in for the cold night, sent a shiver up her spine.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“I’m going to check it out.”
She watched as he climbed the ladder, moving away from Romance as she did. The horse snuffled at her, but then went back to sniffing at the floor of the barn. Food was
her main priority right now and, honestly, Abigail couldn’t blame her. She could go for a hot cup of tea and some popcorn right about now.
Axel disappeared when he hit the top of the loft, his footsteps causing dust to rattle down on the stalls underneath. Abigail wrapped her arms around her chest, wondering what would happen if he was bitten by something. She couldn’t get him back down. And an ambulance was out of the question at the moment. But, again, if she called 911 and the area was flooded with cops and ambulances, wouldn’t that scare the hitman away?
That might be their only choice at this point.
Abigail pulled the phone out of her back pocket, pleased to see she still had three bars. And 50 percent battery life. It would only take a second to call the emergency operator.
She glanced back up at the loft, wondering if he’d notice if she made the call.
Hell, it wasn’t his life on the line right now, was it? He was only here because someone was paying him to be. If she hadn’t found him, he might never have told her what was happening, might never have gone back to the house to protect her. What would have kept him here? He’d tried. Why risk his own life for a stranger?
She had to save herself. Calling 911 seemed incredibly logical to her at this moment.
Abigail dialed and pressed the phone to the side of her head, moving into the office to reduce the chances of Axel hearing. She waited for a distant voice, maybe a maternal female voice. Instead, she heard a mocking male one.
“Abigail, Abigail, Abigail. Did you really think I’d sit here and allow you to call out for help? Surely you knew better than that.”
It was his voice. The killer.
“What do you want from me?”
“To kill you, obviously.”
“Why?”
There was a low chuckle. “Because someone asked me to. Now, Abigail, put the phone down and go spend a little time with that beautiful horse of yours. You might as well spend your last few hours in a happy place.”
Something like a squeal escaped Abigail’s lips. She threw the phone down on the floor, watching the case crack. But that wasn’t enough for her. She stomped on it over and over again, stomped with everything she had in her, imagining she could still hear his laughter coming from the crushed device. She was still stomping on it when Axel burst into the room and grabbed her upper arms, jerking her close to him.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“I just want out! I want this over! I want to go back to my farm, to my simple life. I don’t understand what he wants from me!”
“Who?”
“Him!”
It was nearly a scream. She was hysterical, she could feel it, the panic that was threatening to burst out of her chest. She needed to go, needed to move, but Axel was holding her arms too tight, holding her so tight that it should have hurt, but the adrenaline rushing through her veins from the hysteria wouldn’t allow her to feel it.
“What did you do?” he demanded, his voice almost a growl.
“I wanted out. I needed out.”
“What did you do?”
He shook her this time, snapping her head back hard enough that she did feel that.
“I called nine-one-one. But it was his voice that answered.”
Axel’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t seem angry, he seemed confused.
“What’d he say?”
“That he’d been hired to kill me, and that I should go hang out with Romance because I’d be dead soon.” A sob escaped her lips. “He wants to kill me! I can’t . . . I can’t do this!”
Axel abruptly let her go, storming out of the room without a word. She followed him, afraid to be alone. She watched him walk around the room, pausing every few feet to look up at the ceiling and to run his fingers along the edges of the wood that made up the walls and the doors to the stalls. He disappeared into the tack room, making her heart stutter in a very painful way. When he came out, he snatched up the flashlight that was still sitting on the floor and switched it off. She was suddenly plunged into complete darkness.
“What are you doing?”
He was there in a second, his hand slipping over her mouth to silence her. And then his lips were next to her ear.
“You have got to fucking trust me,” he said in a low, quiet voice. “I know what I’m doing. I’m going to get you out of here.”
She shivered, moving closer to him. But he was gone before she could touch him.
Abigail was suddenly alone in the darkness. Ironically, however, the hysteria suddenly left her, a strange sort of calm washing over her. She wrapped her arms around herself, her ears straining to hear all movement. But she was no longer afraid.
Had she accepted that she was going to die?
Chapter 14
Rain Drop Farms
Axel was cold. He could feel the chill of the wind outside burning the bottom of his feet as he walked around the hay loft, but he ignored it. He’d been in much more uncomfortable situations while in Afghanistan. Granted, the weather was almost always hot there, but the heat was its own sort of enemy.
Abigail was right about there being a window at the back of the loft. It looked out over the fence line and a few trees that grew along it. He thought he could easily reach the tree branch that hung closest to the window, and, from there, it would be a simple climb down. His only concern was getting Abigail on the ground without her making a sound that would alert the killer. She was a small woman, but she’d never had military training, didn’t know how important silence could be. And she had this habit of panicking.
Speaking of which . . . Axel heard a squeal and the sound of something breaking in the office below him. He rushed down the ladder, losing his blankets in the process. His feet stung when he landed too hard on the wood floor. He ran anyway, rushing into the office, expecting to find the killer there with Abigail. Instead, he found her crushing a cell phone under her boot.
What the fuck?
He grabbed her and spoke to her, trying to be as patient as possible. This job had taught him a lot about patience. All these hysterical women he had to protect.
“What’d he say?”
Abigail looked up at him through her massive, crocodile tears. He didn’t need the details, really, he just wanted to make sure she hadn’t been confused and heard the killer’s voice in a confused 911 operator’s voice.
But it seemed obvious it was him. And that meant that he was far more invested in this thing than Axel had initially believed. Axel thought this was just a hired gun, someone sent to rid his client of a nuisance. But this man knew his shit, and he was determined. And he liked to play games.
Axel rushed back into the main room and began searching the walls, the floors, everywhere he could see and touch, for cameras, microphones, anything this killer might be using to keep track of them. He’d wondered when he woke up why he had been moved, why he was lying in a frozen field east of where he’d last been.
The farm was roughly fifteen hundred acres. It had been Axel’s intention to walk just out of sight of the main house and go west to parallel the place where he’d left his car, hoping Abigail wouldn’t see them if they were far enough away, far enough from where she’d be for the rest of the morning. But when he’d woken, he was at the back of the property rather than the front where he’d been before he was hit over the head. He’d thought it was just luck, happy that he’d been dumped within a fifteen minutes’ walk to this old barn. But maybe it hadn’t been luck.
Maybe the killer wanted them here so he could play his little game with them.
In that moment, Axel’s fingers brushed a teeny camera squeezed between two planks of wood on the wall. He tried not to look directly at it, not wanting the killer to know he’d found him out. He continued moving around the room, his fingers brushing four more cameras before he stopped. He picked up the flashlight and snapped it off, moving to Abigail to reassure her.
“We should conserve the battery,” he said aloud as he moved away from her again, searching
for the loft ladder in the dark.
She was quiet for a long time, making him nervous. He wondered if a full meltdown was coming. But when he returned to her in the dark, her hands were steady, and her breathing was normal. He took one hand and retraced his steps, moving back to the place where he’d felt the ladder. Axel pushed her in front of him, resting her hands on the rung directly in front of her.
“Up. Quietly,” he whispered in her ear.
She nodded slightly before she began to ascend. Axel stayed close to her, more concerned with the noise she might make then the possibility that she could fall.
Once up in the loft, he pushed her into a sitting position while he crawled over to the identical window at the front. There was no glass in this one—it had been broken long ago, probably by some bored kids walking by. He stopped off to one side, leaning back, afraid the moon’s reflection off the snow might give him away. The storm Abigail had promised was still an hour or two off, but the clouds were slowly beginning to blow in. If they waited an hour or two, they might have good cover when the clouds buried the moon. But he wasn’t sure they had that much time to wait.
He couldn’t see anything at first. But then . . . there was a stand of trees along the edge of the back field that marked the separation between the field and the wide path that was broken into the earth in front of the barn. Axel thought he saw a reflection there between the trees, a movement or the moon reflecting off something metallic. He watched for a long few minutes, doing the calculations in his head that the SEALs had taught him. That spot would have been ideal for the shots the killer had gotten off earlier. It had to have been his sniper’s nest.
He was watching them.
What the hell was he up to? Why didn’t he just come into the barn? Why not take her out and get it over with? Why go through this damn circus, why play games with them? And why leave Axel alive? Why not kill him and get him out of the way instead of sending him here, setting him up with this girl?
Mastiff Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 7
