by Barb Han
“Yeah. What do you have?” Her eyes grew wider as she moved closer. “He has that picture on his phone. That has to be his.”
The battery had been pulled out. Dylan fished his own phone out of his pocket. Since it was the same model, the battery should work in both. He popped it in.
Several text messages had gone unanswered from the boys and Samantha. “Have you been helping out at the store lately?”
“Sometimes.”
“Has anyone been in that you didn’t recognize? Anyone talking to your father on the side?”
“No. Not that I can think of off the top of my head.”
Dylan searched through pictures, stopping on the last few. “Your dad may have just told us who was after him.”
“Those guys are wearing security uniforms. Wait. I recognize the outfits. Do they work for Charles Alcorn?” His name had a habit of showing up in connection with the crime, usually in a positive way. “That’s the security uniform for his company. They might be posing as employees, trying to fly under the radar. People wouldn’t bat an eyelash at someone who works for Alcorn. Does your father have any dealings with him? Get any supplies from one of his companies?”
“None that I know of. That’s so weird. You know, I have seen that guy in the store.” She pointed at the guy on the left, who had a big build, light hair and a beard. “He was there a couple Saturdays ago asking for my dad. I overheard from the stockroom. Dad said he was going fishing. Who knows what he was doing now?” A look flashed behind her eyes that Dylan told himself to ask about later. He couldn’t pinpoint the emotion and he didn’t think it had anything to do with her father’s disappearance.
Dylan forwarded the pictures to his secure phone line in case someone was watching Mr. Turner’s line. “We figure out who these guys are and we might get lucky with a connection.”
Chapter Eight
Samantha rubbed her temples to stave off a splitting headache as Dylan pulled out of the parking lot. Her brain felt as if it might explode. “How do you intend to find out who those guys are?”
“Jorge can help figure it out. If they really do have security jobs, then they’ve been through some kind of screening process. That’ll make his job a lot easier. He can hack into almost any system except law enforcement.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Good call. “Won’t. And I’d never ask. I find that I get a lot more information playing nice than breaking the law. That I only do when I have no other choice. I don’t think we’re going to find anything else here.”
“Where to next?” The way he’d talked about his daughter a few minutes ago had nearly cracked her heart in two pieces. There’d been a softness to his voice she’d never heard before, and his entire disposition had changed. And there’d been something that looked a lot like love in his expression.
Samantha knew firsthand how important a dad’s love was to a girl. It would define every future relationship she had with a man.
“Can I ask you something?” Dylan secured his seat belt at the same time she did.
“Sure.”
“You don’t have to answer. It’s really none of my business.”
“Go ahead. What’s the worst that can happen?” she asked, still massaging her temples.
He pulled the sport-utility onto the stretch of highway. “Your father lied to you when you were a kid. That had to make you angry.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“But you forgave him?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because deep down he’s a good person.”
“You think liars are good people?”
“Life’s not black-and-white to me. No one’s perfect. Surely you understand that after what you went through when you were younger. You made mistakes, but that doesn’t make you a bad person.” The sincerity in her words impressed him.
“The only good thing about me is Maribel.”
“That’s not true. She might bring out the best in you but the good was always there,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I’m not so sure about that.” Was it true, though? Mostly Dylan remembered being angry when he was younger. He’d been so furious with the world when he was a kid that he’d thought he might literally burst into flames from the inside out. The military had seemed a better place to take out his anger, and he’d known on some level that he needed the discipline. He’d been paddling in a sea of anger and self-hate before finding his true brotherhood in the military. As a kid, he’d blamed his parents’ rejection on himself. He’d figured he had to be one pretty messed-up kid if his own parents didn’t like him. Gram had reacted with an iron fist, and that had gone over like battery acid in a punch bowl. Dylan had rebelled even more, and then she’d died while he was in Afghanistan, before he’d had the chance to tell her he was sorry. If he could go back...
“You don’t have to be. I saw it before in you and I see it now.”
“And what is it, exactly?”
“I was in trouble and you refused to turn your back on me. Even when I tried to push you away. What does that say about you?”
“You kicked me in the groin,” he said flatly.
“I’m still sorry about that, by the way.” She smiled weakly.
“That’s okay. But I still haven’t forgiven you,” he joked, trying to loosen the knot tightened in his gut.
“Great. Now I’ve gone and reminded you of the whole thing.”
“We’ve had better moments since then.” He was thinking about her soft skin. Dylan had a weakness for great legs, and hers were perfect, long, silky and sexy. He’d like to start at the ankles and kiss his way up to the insides of her thighs. There were other things about her that he found increasingly difficult to push out of his mind. The curve at the small of her back where his hand had rested earlier gave way to a taut waist that blended into soft hips. Dylan wouldn’t mind spending a little time touching her, exploring her long curves, kissing her. He couldn’t remember the last time a kiss had rocketed his pulse like the two they’d already shared. And that was just the icing on the cake. Appreciation of her real beauty came from looking into her eyes and seeing a whole different world he wanted to get lost in. Samantha was sharp, intelligent and dangerous, he reminded himself.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Go ahead.”
“How’d you take it when you lost your mom? You were older than Maribel. I honestly don’t know how to explain any of this to her. I tell her that her mother is in heaven, whatever that is, and I’m not even sure if she realizes that means she’ll never see her again. To her thinking, heaven might be some place, like Florida, where moms go on vacation and don’t come home from.”
“Be honest with her. You don’t have to explain it to her like you’re talking to me but she deserves to know the truth, that her mother isn’t coming back.”
“I know. Damn. For the first six months of the year all she said was ‘Mama?’ every time someone came to the door. She’d run, expectant, as if she’d been at the babysitter’s all day and it was finally time to come home. There were tears, too. She cried herself to sleep for weeks calling out for her mother in the night.” He stopped to gain control of his emotions.
“What did you do?”
“I’d settle in next to her and tell her that her mother was in heaven.”
“Like I said, tell her the truth. Mom’s not coming back, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still love you or want to be with you. Use whatever language is age appropriate but be honest. The worst feeling in the world would be thinking that a mother would come back once she was gone. Tell her that her mother would come back if she could. That she didn’t want to leave her. And most of all, tell her that none of this is her fault.” Samantha’s hands started trembling. “I
t’s not her fault,” she repeated.
Dylan turned on his signal, changed lanes and then pulled over to the side of the road to park. He turned off the engine. He reached across the seat for her. The pain in her eyes was a knife to his chest. “Losing your mother wasn’t your fault, either. Accidents happen and take away people we love and there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do about it except enjoy the time we have together, make it mean something.”
She scooted over and burrowed into his chest.
“It’s okay. I’m here,” he soothed. He said other things softly into her hair.
He held on to her as the tears fell, staining her shirt.
She lifted her head, tears dripping. “You’re doing everything right with her. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
He thumbed away her tears.
“I’ve been so afraid of saying something wrong that I’ve been avoiding the topic. She stopped asking when her mother was coming back, stopped running to the door yelling, ‘Mama!’ every time UPS dropped off a package. And I just let it go.”
“Sometimes people only come into our life for a moment and we’d like them to stay longer. And we want the world to know what a beautiful person they were, to know them like we do. But all we can do is honor their memory, their legacy. And be brave enough to live without them because I know in my heart that they wouldn’t want us to be sad. Maribel’s mother would want her to be happy. And you, too.”
Dylan let those words sink in. Had he been punishing himself the past year because of his guilt over not being there for Lyndsey sooner?
He stared out the windshield for a while, thinking about everything Samantha had said.
Then his mind wound back to the present situation. “I just want you to know that I’ve heard everything you said. I have a lot of thinking to do.” He paused. “First, we have a situation to take care of.”
She nodded.
“My first instinct is to go to Alcorn directly, straight to the source.”
“Roads keep leading to him, but he’s the richest man in town. He has a lot of influence and it seems out of place that he’d do something like this.”
“I’m not taking anything for granted when it comes to our families.”
Sun was bright in the midmorning sky. Dylan noticed a glint from in between two houses across the street. “We need to—”
A crack sounded as a bullet whizzed past.
* * *
“GET DOWN,” Dylan commanded; his voice took a second to break through in her head.
Samantha dropped to the floorboard.
“Stay right there. You’ll be safer.”
Disbelief shrouded her. No way could any of this be real. Could it?
For all her panic, Dylan seemed amazingly calm.
“How’d they find us?”
“Someone might’ve been camping out at the gas station, waiting,” he said, cutting a hard right.
One hand against the dash and the other against the seat, she crouched low and balanced herself.
Another round fired, from behind this time. The shooter was following them.
“Stay as low as you can while I lose them. Got it?”
“We can’t be out in the open anymore. They’ll kill us and then the people we love.”
“If we keep you alive and out of sight, your father and Maribel will be safe.”
Frustration peeled away her tough exterior.
Dylan made a few sharp turns, mixing lefts and rights.
Suddenly, he stopped. “Get out.”
Samantha pushed up. Her legs wobbled. Dammit. This was no time to let fear get the best of her. Toughness and strength defined the Turners. She commanded her legs to hold her. Surprisingly, they cooperated this time, and she sprung from the SUV.
“This way,” Dylan said, his weapon drawn and ready.
Samantha ran in and out among the houses in the residential neighborhood until her thighs burned and her lungs clawed for oxygen.
Dylan finally stopped, barely breathing heavy. “We need alternate transportation.”
“Where can we go? Neither of our houses is safe.”
“I have an idea.” He walked, surveying the area, until his gaze fell on a garage. “Wait here.”
Samantha tried to hide behind the tree where Dylan had told her to stay put, praying the men wouldn’t find her before he came back.
An electric car pulled up near the tree. She caught and held her breath, afraid to look to see who it was.
“Get in.” Dylan’s voice was a welcome relief.
With the way her body was beginning to burn, she didn’t think she could make it any farther. She glanced down and saw blood on her shirt as she moved to the car. Panic stopped her. The blood was hers.
“Get in the back and stay down. Now,” Dylan said firmly.
She did as he said, curling up across the backseat. She caught enough of a glimpse of him to see that he was wearing a ball cap.
A ripple of heat started in her stomach and was quickly followed by a full-on wave of nausea. Light-headedness engulfed her like a flame. “I was shot.”
“I know. You’re going to be fine.” Dylan’s words came out strong and confident. There was an edge of anger there, too. “Can you see where you were hit?”
The numbness and the shock were wearing off; her left shoulder burned. “Yes.”
“Stop the bleeding with this.” Dylan passed back a shirt. “It’s clean.”
“Okay.”
“We need to get to Brody and Rebecca’s place.”
“Won’t they be watching our friends?” Samantha knew one thing was certain. If the guys got to her, then her father was as good as dead. Keeping herself out of sight was his only chance.
“Which is why we can’t walk through the front door. I need to call Brody to let him know that we’re coming.”
“I’ve been thinking about something you said earlier. About my father’s business.”
Dylan nodded, eyes focused on the road ahead.
“I remember him being stressed a lot the first couple of years we came here. There were late-night discussions with Brent and Trevor as to whether Daddy had made the right choice in coming to Mason Ridge. Stevie was too young to weigh in. I blamed it on the changes in our lives, losing Mom...
“But then Rebecca and Shane were kidnapped. Suddenly, Daddy was home every night. His drinking slowed down and then he quit altogether. His business turned around, too. He seemed sad but not as stressed, if that makes sense.”
“It does.”
“On the phone, Daddy said he knows what really happened that night. What if someone had bribed him to be quiet?”
“That was fifteen years ago. It would be impossible to trace the money now.”
“Not with computers. Daddy keeps everything.”
“So if we get into your dad’s system, you think we’ll figure out who’s behind this?”
She was already nodding. “Except that every time we’re out in the open, we seem to get shot at.”
Dylan didn’t argue that. He made a few more turns and then parked on the side of the road. Then he called Brody and asked for permission to come onto his land. Brody said he’d make arrangements for one of the guys to pick up Dylan’s SUV. He turned to Samantha after ending the call. “We’ll have to walk it from here.”
Dylan opened her door and extended his hand.
She took it, noticing how strong and capable it felt. His hand was surprisingly soft, and she already knew how adept it was from the few times he’d touched her.
They hiked what felt like ten miles before Brody’s barn came into view. Dylan led her into the back, and she could see all the way through to light at the other end. Both doors must have been open.
The barn wa
s one big, impressively long hallway with light streaming in from both ends. The floors were made of concrete and there was hay strewn around everywhere. A dozen or so horse stalls with red metal gates flanked the left-hand side and there were a quarter as many doors to the right. She assumed they were supply rooms and offices.
Dylan opened the first, held on to her hand tightly and ushered her inside. “The horses must have been turned out in the paddock.”
This room had to be Brody’s office. Centering the space was a large oak desk with a leather chair behind it. There was a matching sofa to her left. It was a rich dark tone and massive in size. Dylan guided her there and helped her ease down onto it.
There were no windows. It would be dark inside without the light on.
“Lie still.” He placed a throw pillow behind her head.
On top of the desk was a white case with a red cross on it. A medical kit. Dylan retrieved it and instructed her to roll up the sleeve of her shirt.
She did.
The sofa dipped where he sat.
“No good. I can’t see. Take it off.” His words came out harshly. He clenched his jaw. “I can turn around if you want, but I’m going to need to see to fix you up anyway.”
“It’s okay. I have on a bra, which is a lot like wearing a swimsuit anyway, right?” She tried to sound convincing. Mostly, she needed to reassure herself that it was no big deal. Heat flushed her cheeks anyway as she eased out of her shirt with his help. Her left shoulder had been hit and it hurt when she moved. The wound itself was too bloody for her to really tell how bad it was, but the bleeding had stemmed.
Dylan grunted a few words under his breath when he saw it and she assumed they were the same words she was thinking. He pulled out the antiseptic wipes first, opened them and lined up a few on the sofa.
“This is going to sting. Let me know if it gets to be too much.” He went to work cleaning her gunshot wound. His hands were assured and surprisingly gentle. She didn’t want to know how he’d become so good at it, figuring he’d picked up the skill during his time in Afghanistan.
“How bad is it?” she said, not wanting to look anymore, wincing with pain.
