by Barb Han
Trips down memory lane didn’t change a thing. He should know. After losing Lyndsey, he’d taken a bunch of them.
“Here. You open the drawer just a little, then press this plastic piece down.” His arm grazed Samantha’s, causing electric impulses to fire through him. He didn’t want to think about how soft her skin was, or those slender, long legs being right next to him. How much she trembled when he stood close.
Or how well she’d fit him earlier when she was underneath him.
He was pretty sure any of those things would wreck a friendship faster than a mosquito bite itched.
Samantha hesitated for just a second before gripping the wooden knife handle.
Dylan took a step back, then took his seat at the breakfast bar as she went to work chopping the green bell peppers. She seemed to know her way around the kitchen, and he caught himself staring at her fluid movements.
What the hell?
He chalked up his being sentimental to watching too many Disney movies with Maribel. They were making him soft.
Dylan Jacobs needed another person in his life like dry grass needed a lit match.
Chapter Seven
The second Dylan’s ringtone sounded, Samantha’s heart raced. It was bad enough that every time he was near, her pulse quickened. And that every time he touched her, awareness skittered across her skin.
And now every sound had her on edge.
She’d been jumping at shadows for a solid week. Every time she thought she saw something move, her stomach lurched. She exhaled slowly and refocused on the pan in front of her, turning the omelet.
“Yes, sir. She’s right here,” Dylan said. His voice carried a sense of foreboding. She turned off the heat on the stove and set the pan aside.
“It’s for you.” Her heart dropped to her toes when he turned and caught her gaze. One look in his eyes said there was trouble. “It’s your father.”
She studied Dylan’s expression carefully as they met in the middle of the kitchen.
“Daddy?” she said into the receiver.
“Don’t say anything to anyone. You hear? Don’t let them get to you. I’m going to fix this,” her father said. Rustling noises came through the line.
“To who? Fix what? What are you talking about?” She listened closely, trying to identify a noise that might give away his location.
A crack sounded, followed by a grunt, and she couldn’t breathe.
Fear roared through her, causing her hands to shake.
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say to her. I thought we had an understanding,” a male voice said.
“Daddy? What’s going on? Where are you?” Questions fired out frantically. Her heart pounded in her chest as she looked straight at Dylan.
“Try to keep him on the line for as long as you can,” Dylan whispered. He’d already picked up his landline and was making a call. Dylan was the picture of focus.
She figured he was calling his technical contact to see if they could get a trace.
“Hello? Who’s there? Talk to me, Daddy. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on,” she said quietly. The silence on the other end was deafening. “Tell me who is doing this to you.”
“I tried to run but they found me” came through on a raspy, winded breath. “I know what’s really going on and it’s big, he’s big. It’s—” More shuffling noises came through the phone and her father screamed.
Her entire body began to shake.
“Please don’t hurt him. Who is it, Daddy? Who’s hurting you?” Desperation sat like an anchor in her stomach.
This was so not good. Her father was getting older, and no way would he be able to protect himself against younger, stronger men.
“Daddy. Are you there?” She said a quick prayer that her father would be all right. She couldn’t imagine life if anything happened to him. The two of them had been the closest. And he hadn’t been perfect but she’d always known that he’d been the best father he could be, especially when he’d had to step in to be a mother, too. And even though it was Samantha’s fault her mother was dead, her dad had never once made her feel that way. He wasn’t that kind of person. How on earth could he have gotten himself into this kind of serious trouble?
“They already know I confessed everything to you,” he said loudly, through labored breathing. Then he whispered, “They won’t hurt me as long as they can’t find you.”
A thousand fears raced through her all at once, and at least a dozen scenarios of ways they might torture him.
“Daddy?” What could she do? Call Brent? If she could get ahold of her brothers, would they know what to do? She needed her father too much for anything to happen to him.
More sounds of struggle came over the line before it went dead.
“Oh, no. No!” A heavy weight pushed down on her as she looked toward Dylan. “This isn’t real. This can’t be happening. They’re going to kill him.”
Dylan ended his call. “I have someone all over this. Maybe we’ll get lucky this time and get a location. We’ll know something in a few minutes.”
“And then what? Go to him? They found him. They’re going to kill him. He’ll be dead by the time we start the car.” Panic was getting the best of her and she knew it. She needed to take a few deep breaths and calm down. Except that was her father out there. Alone. And he didn’t deserve to die by the hands of some jerk, no matter what her father had seen or did fifteen years ago.
She relayed what her father had told her.
“Now we know for certain why they’ve been looking for you,” Dylan said quickly.
“But I have no idea what my father knows,” she said quickly.
“They don’t know that. He said that for leverage.”
She paced back and forth in the kitchen. “But they will kill him. He might be dead already.”
“If they wanted to kill him right away, then why not shoot him and stuff him in the back of the car? Why subdue him? They’re using him to get to you. Once they tie up that loose end, they have no need to keep anyone alive.”
His words, as direct as they were, did their job well. He was right and she couldn’t come up with an argument to his point.
Samantha thought about Dylan’s words as she stalked back and forth in the kitchen. “He said this whole thing is bigger, that he’s bigger.”
“Meaning Thomas Kramer was only a small part of it, like we suspected.”
“Daddy was clear.” She stopped for a second. “This nightmare just won’t end.”
“There’s only one thing we can do.”
“And that is?”
“Scout out the meet-up location and then wait.”
* * *
WHEN DYLAN’S PHONE RANG, he snatched it off the table, in part to stop himself from walking straight over to Samantha and pulling her into his arms. The last thing he needed was for this situation to get stickier than it already was, and he shouldn’t get any closer to her than he felt. Being there for each other during a difficult time was one thing. Friends did that without question. There was something else going on between them and that was sending him into a tailspin. One he didn’t have time or energy for.
“What do you have for me?” he asked Jorge after checking the screen.
“Good news. I figured out who owns the plot of land for the address you gave me. Sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
“Whoever owns it is smart enough not to use a traceable company.”
“Are you saying there’s a dummy corporation in place?”
“The one listed is offshore,” Jorge confirmed, “making it that much more difficult to pinpoint.”
“Any chance you can figure out who owns it?”
“Can a retriever bring back a ball? Of
course I can. It’ll take time, though. These things are like peeling an onion once you dig into them. The best are smart enough to put up a lot of layers.”
“What about the call that came in on my cell a few minutes ago? Did you pick up anything on that?”
“That’s easy. That came from a pay phone at a gas station near Eagle Lake,” Jorge supplied.
Dylan repeated the information to Samantha.
“Daddy likes to fish there sometimes. It’s not his favorite spot, but he’s been there once or twice.” Her mind looked to be clicking through the possibilities.
“Which is smart. He’d know the area fairly well but most people wouldn’t associate him with that place when they thought of him leaving town.”
“True. You’d have to be really close to him in order to figure that out.”
“Who might know about this other than you and your brothers?”
“My brothers wouldn’t know. Only me. I’m the one who fishes with him. My brothers haven’t gone since we were kids. It was sort of mine and Dad’s thing. I think he did it to make me feel special after my mom...” Her tone changed when she spoke about her mother. He’d noticed it before. There was a subtle shift. He doubted she would tell him what it meant even if he asked outright.
He turned toward the cell in his hand. “What about the IP address? Get anything there?”
“Sorry, man. It’s a dead end,” Jorge said.
Dylan thanked his friend and ended the call.
“Eagle Lake is not that far—less than a half hour’s drive from here.” Dylan grabbed his keys from the counter. “We’ll head out as soon as you’re dressed.”
It took Samantha only three minutes to throw on the clothes he’d had Rebecca drop off for her, pull her hair up in a ponytail and walk into the living room with an expression that said she was ready.
Even wearing running shorts and an athletic shirt, she was stunning.
“Think he’ll still be anywhere near there?” she said as she followed him into the kitchen and toward the back door.
“I doubt it, but there’s no way to know for sure unless we chance it. I want to ask around. See if anyone saw anything. Maybe we can get a description of the person or persons who took him.” Dylan grabbed Rofurt. For reasons he didn’t want to examine, he laced his and Samantha’s fingers and led her out the door. His sport-utility was parked out back. He surveyed the area as they stepped outside.
The first light would break the horizon in an hour, which gave them just enough time to slip out of town in the dark.
“Think we should split up? Would that make things easier?” Samantha asked.
The question caught him off guard as he opened the door for her. He glanced at the empty car seat in the back and a coil tightened in his stomach. He clenched his teeth.
“We need to stick together. It’s our best hope of finding either of them.” Since Maribel’s kidnapping was connected to Mr. Turner, Dylan planned to be glued to Samantha. Besides, she was the missing piece. They got her and it was game over.
He moved to the driver’s side, took his seat and fired up the engine.
Neither spoke on the half-hour-long drive to the gas station where her father made the call.
“Do you have a picture of him in your purse?” Dylan parked near the pay phone.
“No. I ditched my phone a long time ago. That’s the only place I have... Wait a minute. My phone automatically updates to storage in a cloud. I can give you the password and you can get in.”
“Good.” Dylan handed his phone to her.
“We were fishing two weeks ago and I snapped something... There.” She held up the screen. Her father had a decent-size fish on the line.
“Show that around inside.”
“Think they’ll ask questions about his disappearance? I don’t want to make it worse for him if someone gets the bright idea to call the police.”
“Tell him he’s been forgetful lately and that he might’ve wandered off. Say you’re heading to the police station next.”
Samantha agreed and then disappeared inside the store.
Dylan searched the grounds for anything that might help, any clue that might assist him in finding her father and, dare he hope, his Maribel. He didn’t want to think about how scared she might be right then.
Anger tightened the coil.
He fisted his hands and focused on the ground as Samantha stalked toward him.
“Any luck?” he asked, instantly regretting his word choice. Luck was for slot machines.
“No one has seen him.”
He’d feared as much. It would’ve been dark and this area was known for fishing. No one would’ve thought much about a man in a truck. “Hey. Wait a minute. If your dad was out here, where’s his truck?”
“That’s a good point. Wouldn’t they have taken it?” she asked.
“If they did, there had to be at least two of them. Maybe they didn’t want to cause a stir when the truck was left overnight.” Dylan searched the ground for tracks, heel marks, anything that might indicate they were in the right spot.
Stepping lightly, he noticed a thick line in the gravel. “Come over here.”
Samantha did. “What is it?”
“What does that look like to you?”
“It’s the size of the heel of a boot.” She gasped. “Daddy?”
“Could be. Looks like the person might have been dragged over here.” He pointed to a boot imprint. “Might’ve gained his footing here.”
The trail stopped.
Glancing a few feet away, he saw tire tracks. “This looks suspicious, doesn’t it?”
“They went in this direction.” Samantha’s line of sight traveled away from the boot imprint.
“Took him in his own truck,” Dylan said. “They must’ve had another vehicle here.”
“He said he knows what really happened all those years ago, and all I keep thinking is how can that be if he wasn’t involved? If he wasn’t out there that night? It would make sense. He was drinking back then. Cleaned up his act after... Maybe he was so shaken up by what he’d done he started walking the straight and narrow?”
“Doesn’t mean he was part of it.” Dylan didn’t say that his reassurance meant very little, and the look she gave him said she appreciated him for it.
“He wasn’t home a lot during that time. He’d stay out after the shop closed and drink. I thought he was going to disappear like my mom, so I’d wait up for him. I could tell something was wrong with him but I didn’t know what. I thought he was sick or something, so I asked Trevor.”
Dylan was so caught off guard that she was opening up to him. “That’s how you found out he’d been drinking? From your brother?”
“Trevor sat me down and explained to me how much Daddy loved our mother. That her dying had been difficult for him and that we should cut him some slack. I felt so betrayed and so stupid. How did Trevor know all this but I didn’t?”
“He was older, for one.”
“True, but he had his own life. I was closer to Daddy than the boys were. Or so I thought.”
“Your father was trying to protect you.”
“That’s exactly what Trevor said. How did you know that?”
“I have a daughter. And it’s the easiest way to get to me, which was most likely the reason they tried to take you in the first place. Everyone knows you and your father have always been close.”
“I saw you with her at the grocery last week.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You looked as though you had your hands full.”
He cracked a smile. “She keeps me busy, that’s for sure. But I don’t bite and neither does she, no matter what her teacher says. False accusations.”
“Did you teach her
to do that to keep boys away?”
“Not yet. I figure I have a few years before I have to start worrying about them. And then I’m not too concerned. I have weapons.” He chuckled, and it felt good to release some of the tension knotting inside him. “You could’ve said something in the store.”
“What? It’s not as if we’ve kept in touch since high school.”
“We knew each other.”
“I remember you getting into a lot of trouble. What happened to change that?”
“The US Army. They gave me a brotherhood. Taught me life was about more than myself and my problems.”
“You ever hear from your folks?”
“No.”
“Well, they’re missing out. Maribel is a doll. I could seriously pinch those cheeks for days. And that curly hair. Who could miss out on such an adorable thing?”
“I did. For a while,” he said.
“I wondered what had happened.”
Dylan wasn’t prepared to talk about Lyndsey to anyone. Not yet anyway. If he was going to talk about her, then Samantha would be exactly the kind of person he could see himself opening up to. He just wasn’t the type, or maybe this wasn’t the time. “It’s long over. I didn’t even know about Maribel until last year.”
“I’d heard you bought your ranch a little more than a year ago. Dad’s a bit of a gossip in his old age. He’s lonely, I think. I wish he’d found someone to spend time with. He just withered away after Mom. Honestly, I was surprised to find out you had a daughter.”
“You and me both,” he said a little more curtly than he’d planned. Talking about the past was opening old wounds—wounds he didn’t want to think about right then.
She seemed to take the hint, and kept quiet as they walked the perimeter of the parking lot.
He saw something out of the corner of his eye. Might be nothing, so he didn’t want to raise the alarm just yet and get Samantha’s hopes up unnecessarily.
On closer look, there was a phone on the ground. He picked it up and examined it. There was a picture of a bass on the protective cover. “What kind of phone does your father have?”
“An iPhone. Why?”
“Any special markings on it?”
