Relentless Protector

by Colleen Thompson

  “You take this one,” he said, passing her the .22. “It’s lighter and easier to use than the extra I picked up.”

  “But I really don’t know how to—”

  “Safety’s off, so be careful. But if you have to shoot, aim for the center of the chest and pull the trigger. However many times it takes.”

  “Cole...” she said. “I just want to tell you that I—”

  His cool fingers touched her cheek. “Back to the car, Lisa. But after I bring Tyler, we’ll talk. After this is over, I promise.”

  Hard as it was to leave her, he forced himself to move out at a more rapid clip. Praying that the big cat’s call

  really was as distant as he’d claimed, he put it out of mind, focusing like a laser on the sound of the car door and the flicker of light he’d made out earlier.

  The harder he pushed himself, the harder the pain pushed back. Fatigue, too, probably a result of blood loss. But he had learned the difference between what his body thought it could do and what it actually could, so with an iron will, he kept pressing, moving into a jog that forced him to pay careful attention to his footing on the uneven ground as he scanned his surroundings, looking for either the cabin or the fallen tree the tattooed accomplice had described.

  Soon a new sound had him stopping short, his hot breath fogging the air before him. Car engine, he realized, glancing back toward the dirt road. Could Lisa have made it back to the SUV already? And if so, why would she risk the noise?

  A wave of dizziness washed over him, his body’s warning that he was closer to his limits than he’d thought. Flurries of white spots clouded his vision, nonexistent snow that melted away when he blinked.

  As his eyes cleared, his stomach lurched as he saw that he’d stopped only one short step from disaster. Just ahead lay a steep drop-off—a dark space he’d mistaken for a band of shadow.

  It was a ravine, long and narrow, blocking him from the spot where he’d heard Ava’s vehicle—a spot she might have left already while he’d wasted time attempting to cut through these woods to catch her unaware. The question was, should he try to press forward or get back to Lisa as fast as possible?

  Peering over the precipice, he tried to gauge the ravine’s depth. Unable to see the bottom in the dark, he kicked a small stone over the edge instead. He heard its tumbling clatter, soft clicks as it struck one rock after another, followed by a sharp—and very human—cry.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lisa gasped as she tripped, scraping her palm painfully against a thorny shrub. But she was determined not to end up in need of rescue herself, so she pushed herself to her feet and forced herself to move more slowly.

  She shivered with the cold, her stomach knotting as she worried that Cole would arrive too late to find Tyler, that that horrible, sick woman had already—

  No. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, think it, nor could she think about the mountain lion that had killed that female hiker. But even so, the realization pressed in on her that up here in these mountains, she was on the big cat’s turf and not her own. And so was Tyler, even if he managed to remain hidden from Ava.

  Lisa froze, hearing something. A soft voice from the direction of the dirt road where they had left the SUV. A voice she would know anywhere, an answer to her prayers.

  “Tyler!” she cried, racing in the direction of the sound. Tears of joy and relief burned her eyes, choking her as she ran.

  As she broke from the cover of the trees, she saw she’d overshot the rental. Though she was about fifty yards ahead of it, she could see it clearly, because the dome light was on and the passenger-side door stood open.

  How could Cole have gotten back already? Or had Tyler spotted the Chevy from his hiding place and made it there on his own?

  “Tyler!” she called again. “Tyler, honey.”

  Though she saw no movement, she heard the same words that had drawn her originally.

  “Hurry, Mommy. Hurry, please!”

  The same words.

  The same cadence.

  The exact same intonation, all of it chillingly familiar.

  She stopped in her tracks, staring at her rental, only about twenty yards ahead now. Without warning, the high beams came on, and she raised her arm, protecting her eyes from the blinding blast of light.

  “Cole?” she called, her voice trembling. “Tyler?”

  Squinting, she made out a familiar object only a few feet ahead.

  It was Tyler’s stuffed octopus, crumpled and forlorn. A lump forming in her throat, Lisa stepped forward to claim it.

  * * *

  “HELLO?” COLE called, his heart pounding and every muscle tensed with expectation. Had it been real, the cry he’d heard, or only the product of a desperate wish? Or maybe it had been some animal hit by the stone, and his imagination had led him to hear it as human.

  A hoarse sob rose from the ravine, a raw-throated cry that was definitely human—a child in distress.

  Pulling out his flashlight, Cole risked turning it on and calling, “Tyler? Tyler Meador, can you hear me? Your mom sent me to help you. Are you hurt?”

  There was no answer beyond the boy’s continuing cries. Cries that sounded so close that Cole painfully lowered himself to his stomach, then hung his arm and flashlight over the rim. Praying for all he was worth, he swept the beam downward, skimming the rocky wall beneath him.

  And stopping at a splash of color—the grimy pale blue T-shirt of a tiny figure curled and shivering on a narrow ledge of rock about twenty feet below. And just beyond, a deeper crack so black and fathomless, it made Cole’s stomach pitch to see it.

  Whether Tyler had been thrown off this ledge or had fallen on his own, he had landed only inches from what would very likely be a fatal drop.

  “Cold,” the boy said, tears streaming down his face. “I’m cold. And I want Mommy.”

  “Your mom’s in the car. There’s a nice warm heater there, too. And Rowdy’s waiting for you at home. He can’t wait to—”

  “Rowdy’s lost. The mean lady made the Picture Man push him out of the car ’cause he growled and tried to bite her.”

  Cole made a mental note to buy the little fluff ball a filet mignon next time he saw him. “Your mom and I found your dog,” he said as he peeled off his coat. “Just like we found you. Tell me, Tyler, are you hurt?”

  “My arm hurts, and my knee, too. Can you put some Band-Aids on them and make them all better?”

  Cole’s heart twisted, touched by the boy’s willingness to trust in spite of everything he’d been through.

  “I’m Captain Sawyer, Tyler, and I’m going to do my very best to help you,” he said, “but it might take me a few minutes to get down to you. So I’m going to drop my jacket first. I want you to try to catch it, but if it’s too far out, just let it go. All right?”

  The last thing he wanted to do was send Tyler over the edge, so he aimed carefully before letting the jacket drop.

  “Great catch, champ,” Cole said, when it landed across the child’s outstretched arm. “Now I want you to wrap yourself up in it, just like a superhero’s cape. Can you do that?”

  Tyler did so, then looked up at him. “How come it’s wet and yucky on the bottom?”

  “Must’ve dragged it through a puddle.” No reason to scare the kid any more than he already was by admitting that the “yuckiness” was his own blood.

  Nor did Cole want to risk leaving the little guy alone, with Evie—or Ava—still potentially out here somewhere. Even so, the climb down could still prove deadly if he accidentally sent a loose rock tumbling down onto the boy.

  Better to move off to the right and begin his descent there, then try to sidestep his way over. Difficult, in his condition, but not impossible.

  “I’m coming down to get you,” Cole said, fighting past both pain and dizziness to move into what he judged to be the optimum position. And drawing strength from a vision, glowing and ethereal, of the beautiful Lisa Meador reunited with her son.

  * * *


  “HURRY, MOMMY! Hurry, please!”

  Lisa blinked as Ava stepped out from a clump of trees, smiling cruelly as she raised the smartphone she was holding in one hand.

  “I just love these little gizmos, don’t you?” she said as she replayed the recorded message yet again. “And I like these even better,” she added, jerking the muzzle of the AK-47 higher.

  “Where’s my son?” Lisa managed, her legs weakening beneath her. “What have you done with him, you coldhearted bitch?”

  “What do you think I did with him? I came straight back here and cut the brat’s throat in his sleep.”

  “No,” Lisa groaned, squeezing her son’s toy tight. And noticing for the first time the smear of blood on one of the stuffed tentacles.

  Dropping to her knees, she hunched forward, sobbing, her heart splintering into pieces. After she’d fought so hard, risked so much, to get him back, to find that this woman had murdered something so sweet and so precious... Now her only child, her entire reason for living, was gone, and for what? Some twisted form of revenge for some imagined slight to a woman’s sister two decades before?

  But what did it matter now, with Tyler gone? What did any of it matter?

  “Don’t cry for him, Sweet Girl Baby,” Ava told her brightly as she bent low enough to stroke Lisa’s hair. “You won’t have long to miss him. You’ll be joining your son and your dear husband very soon.”

  * * *

  PAIN BURNING THROUGH HIS thigh with every hard-won inch, Cole fought his way downward, handhold by precarious handhold. Cold as it was, sweat poured off his body, and occasionally he had to rest until the spots cleared from his vision. But each time the thought of reuniting Tyler with his mother infused him with a strength he had never felt before.

  Because for all the times you’ve risked your life for your compatriots, your duty and your country’s honor, you’ve never before done it for someone you love.

  Love? The notion made the darkness spin around him, a darkness heavy with the immensity of what he dared to feel for Devin Meador’s widow. But wrong as it was, he couldn’t spare the energy to deny what he felt.

  “How much longer?” Tyler asked, sounding small and cold and frightened.

  “Almost there,” Cole said. “Just one more big step and—”

  “Hello? Cole Sawyer?”

  Startled by the female voice above them, Cole looked up into a blinding beam of light. At the same moment his weight settled on the flat rock where Tyler waited.

  A rock that abruptly tilted as his weight came to rest on it.

  At Tyler’s scream, Cole jerked back with a shout of alarm and desperately grabbed for a rock or root—anything that would keep him from plunging to his death.

  * * *

  “HOLD ON, Tyler!” Jill Keller cried, because Cole Sawyer’s fall had left the child, too, crying out, scrambling for purchase.

  “Don’t let me fall!” the boy screamed as a jacket slid off his shoulders, slipping into the depths.

  Just as Tyler would soon slip, with the rock supporting him slowly but inevitably giving way. Heart pounding out a frantic rhythm, Jill knew that if she attempted to climb down to him, she could easily be killed, too. Or get stuck in this cold pit where no one might find her for days or even weeks. And the woman who had nearly killed Trace, the woman Jill had come so far, so fast to repay, would slip from her grasp forever.

  “Sawyer?” she called. “Cole Sawyer, this is Deputy Jill Keller. Can you hear me?”

  She heard nothing but the small boy’s crying. Not another sound.

  “Lisa Meador?” she tried. “Lisa, are you down there?”

  Hearing no answer, she asked, “Tyler, where’s your mama?”

  Tyler stopped crying for a moment. “In the car. She’s waiting for me with the heater.”

  Jill’s heart sank, because she’d passed Lisa’s SUV on the way here. There had been no one inside it, no sign of life at all. Had “Evie LeStrange” killed her, or was she out searching for her lost child somewhere in this deadly darkness?

  “Please, come get me,” Tyler called up to her. “Please take me to my mommy!”

  And in a child’s desperation, Jill felt something shift within her soul. Felt the dawning awareness that, as Lisa Meador and Cole Sawyer had both proven, there were some things worth risking death for.

  How could she have wasted so much of her life believing that anger and revenge, let alone ambition, had ever been among them?

  * * *

  GRIEF’S BLACK CURTAIN PARTED, and all that Lisa saw beyond it was the bright bloodred of fury. So Ava wanted vengeance for her sister? Well, that sword sliced both ways.

  Especially when this particular “victim” had not a damned thing left to lose.

  “On your feet and in the car,” her captor ordered, grabbing Lisa by the arm.

  But leaving her right hand free to dive into the pocket of her jacket with a speed and surety Lisa would never have dreamed she possessed.

  As nonviolent and law-abiding as she’d been her whole life, she had no intention of subduing, or even wounding, Ava Crowley. She wanted, needed, to put down the woman who had taken Tyler from her like the mad dog that she was.

  Insane as she was, Ava must have had a sixth sense, because she jerked Lisa by the hair, throwing her off balance. Instinctively moving to catch herself as she fell back to the ground, Lisa still managed to squeeze off one wild shot before Ava stomped on her hand, then snatched away the weapon and shoved it into the pocket of the cargo pants that she was wearing.

  “Nice try—if you were aiming for my toes,” she said, her cruel laughter ringing off the nearby rocks. “Now get in the car, bitch, and I’ll take you to a nice, quiet spot where I can show you how it’s done.”

  * * *

  ABOVE HIM, COLE heard Tyler crying, but he didn’t have the energy to tell the boy that he was coming. To tell him he would scale the gates of hell itself if that was what it took. Instead, he pulled himself upward using the branches of the fallen tree he’d managed to catch on his way down, every muscle straining, every tendon standing out.

  Deputy Keller called his name, but he couldn’t answer her, either, much less ask her what she was doing five hundred miles outside her jurisdiction, apparently alone. Remembering the wild look in her eyes the night her partner had been injured, he suspected she had gone rogue, which made her a dangerously unpredictable ally.

  Climbing sideways, hand-over-hand, Cole found the going even tougher. Every time he attempted to edge toward Tyler, the rock gave way, no matter how carefully he moved.

  “Just hold on a minute,” he heard the deputy call. “I’m coming for you, Tyler. So whatever you do, don’t let go.”

  From somewhere beyond the ravine, a crack echoed through the darkness. A shot that sounded as though it might have come from Lisa’s .22.

  Adrenaline ripping through him, he tried to convince himself that as inexperienced as she was with firearms, she might have started at some sound or shadow and accidentally squeezed off a shot. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make himself believe she would risk the noise unless she’d absolutely had to.

  Which meant he had to get to her as fast as he could, but how could he leave Tyler in danger?

  He managed to draw breath and call, “Deputy, did you hear that?”

  “Sawyer,” she replied, sounding out of breath herself. “Glad to know you’re still among the living, but I’m a little...distracted right now.”

  He heard the light rain of pebbles that marked her progress.

  “You still with me, Tyler?” she asked, her focus clearly on the boy. “No! Don’t try to come to me, sweetheart. I’ll be there in just a minute.”

  “Listen to her, Tyler,” Cole urged, his gut twisting with his tension. “I can’t get over to you, so I’m heading up to get your mom.” If she’s still alive.

  “Careful up there,” the deputy warned breathlessly. “Avelyn LeStage is one dangerous woman.”

  “Avely
n?” Cole repeated. “Lisa said her name was Ava.”

  “The Crowleys simplified the name when they adopted the girls. But they went back to Avelyn when she was committed to a state hospital.”

  “Committed for what?” he managed.

  “Attempted murder, but the foster girl she stabbed lived, so Avelyn eventually got out. Then, poof. She’s off the grid someplace—until several people she’d been associated with turned up missing this past year.”

  And now she’s found the girl she blamed for all her problems, he thought darkly.

  As he continued climbing, he finally heard the deputy tell Tyler, “Gotcha, buddy. Hold on tight now, and I’ll—”

  Two sharp cries echoed as a large rock hurtled down, cracking the fallen tree beneath it before banging its way lower.

  “Tyler! Deputy Keller!” Cole shouted, but the only answer was the crashing of the rocks.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Why?” Lisa pleaded, not caring if Ava shot her for refusing to get up. “Why do any of this for Sabra? She hurt you, tortured you, worse than she ever did to me.”

  Ava shook her blue-streaked hair away from her face. “You really don’t get it, do you? But then, you never did. None of them did. My sister didn’t torture me, she taught me. And I could’ve learned so much more, could’ve taught my sister a few things, too, if you hadn’t gone and run your mouth and ruined everything.”

  “It was Sabra who wrecked things, not me. She murdered Jerry Crowley. For heaven’s sake, your sister poisoned you, too.”

  Ava laughed again, a sound that raised the fine hairs behind Lisa’s neck. “Wrong again,” she said. “Poisoning was far too subtle for Sabra’s tastes. I did it, for her sake. But I gave the rest of us a little taste, too, so the police would never figure out who—”

  “You?” Lisa shuddered at the thought. Ava had been only nine then. Nine years old, and already a subtler and more dangerous predator than the sister she admired. “Why? Why would you do that, then hide the poison in her bedroom?”