Cowboy's Texas Rescue

by Beth Cornelison

  The ruckus at the defense table grew louder, and with a scowl, Chelsea turned to glare her disgust with the interruptive tactic.

  Brady was clutching his chest and gasping for breath. A tingle of alarm shot up her spine. What was happening?

  The defense attorney jumped to his feet, shouting, “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but we need to request a recess. My client is ill and—”

  Before Janesky could finish, Brady yanked hard on his shackles, giving a loud wheeze, then collapsed dramatically and began writhing in his chair. “Can’t...breathe!”

  The courtroom gave a collective gasp. Janesky stooped over to assist Brady, and the closest bailiff edged forward to monitor the situation. As he convulsed, Brady slumped from his chair to the floor, though the shackles kept his arms stretched toward the locked hasp on the table.

  Chelsea gritted her teeth, remembering how Brady had duped her into freeing her from the cords Jake had tied him up with. He’d been convincing then...as he was now. The hair on her neck stood up. I’m comin’ for you, girlie.

  Around her, the courtroom came alive, a beehive of activity and noise.

  The judge banged his gavel, shouting, “Order! Bailiff, please take the jury out of the room.”

  The uniformed guard closest to the jury directed the group to stand and follow him out, even as several members of the panel craned their heads to see what was happening.

  “We need a doctor! I think he’s having a heart attack!” Janesky shouted, tugging to loosen the Windsor-knotted tie around Brady’s neck. “He needs air!”

  Chelsea divided her gaze between Brady and the judge, trying to get the latter man’s attention. “Your Honor, he’s faking! Don’t fall for it!”

  “My...hands...” Brady raised his cuffed hands, even as he bucked and wheezed, his face turning red.

  “Unlock his hands!” Janesky demanded, grabbing the bailiff’s arm. “My God, man, he’s dying! Unlock the cuffs so we can lay him flat on the floor!”

  “No!” Chelsea leaped up from the witness chair. “No, don’t unlock him! It’s a trick!”

  Her shout was drowned out by the voices from the gallery, the clanking shackles, the defense attorney’s cries for help.

  The judge pounded his gavel. “Clear the courtroom! Bailiff, what’s happening over there?”

  Panic swelled in Chelsea’s chest. This was wrong. She had to stop them, had to convince them Brady was faking! “Listen to me!” she shouted into the din. “He’s done this before! He’s faking!”

  She clambered down from the witness stand and tried to push through the gathering crowd of people around Brady. She gasped in horror as the bailiff took a ring of keys from his hip and applied one to the locks at Brady’s wrists.

  “No! Stop!” Chelsea’s gut pitched. This couldn’t be happening!

  With his hands free, Brady clutched at his throat for a moment, still sucking in raspy-sounding breaths. But an instant later, he snatched the ink pen from his lawyer’s breast pocket and thrust it into the bailiff’s neck. In the split second of shock, as the guard grabbed for his punctured throat, Brady seized the officer’s sidearm.

  As if in slow motion, although really a matter of seconds, Brady swung the gun in an arc that smashed his lawyer’s face, and fired a shot in the bailiff’s chest that knocked the guard onto his back.

  Ice flooded Chelsea’s veins. I’m comin’ for you, girlie.

  * * *

  Sounds of a commotion drifted from behind the closed courtroom doors, dragging Jake out of his self-recriminations and regrets. He exchanged a curious look with another witness waiting to testify and rubbed his hands on the legs of his pants. Something was wrong. A courtroom should be quiet.

  He slid to the edge of his chair, debating what to do...until a gunshot echoed from the courtroom.

  Chelsea!

  Jake bolted from his chair. He yanked open the heavy double doors only to be met by a tide of humanity fleeing the scene of the shooting. “Chelsea!”

  * * *

  Her breath suspended in her lungs, Chelsea backpedaled away from Brady. Screams filled the courtroom, and chaos ensued as people ran for exits or dived under tables. Climbing to his knees, Brady swung the gun left, then right, firing at anyone who came near him. The people who’d gathered close to help Brady—defense team clerks, reporters and even Janesky, whose nose and throat dripped blood—all scrambled away, seeking protection from the gunfire.

  Trembling, Chelsea crouched behind the court reporter’s desk with the woman who’d been transcribing the proceedings.

  “Jake...” she whispered.

  She glanced toward the double doors at the back of the courtroom where people fled en masse. Her heart was torn, both wanting Jake to come help her and praying he’d stayed safe outside the courtroom. Shifting to her knees, Chelsea peered cautiously around the corner of the desk to monitor Brady’s activity.

  A man from the gallery approached Brady from behind, tackling him, and tried to wrestle the convict to the ground. Brady elbowed the hero wannabe in the gut, then slammed his head back into the other man’s nose. The man slid to the ground, cradling his bleeding face in his hands.

  The bailiff who’d led the jury from the room ran back in through a side door, his gun poised to shoot. But Brady spotted the returning guard and picked him off with a shot that struck the pudgy man’s head.

  Suddenly, Brady’s gaze locked on Chelsea, and an evil sneer, full of intent, twisted his mouth. She cast a quick glance from one door to the next, trying to determine her best escape route. Every door was jammed with people filing out of the courtroom. Except one—the side door that was barricaded and marked with yellow caution tape and a sign reading Closed for Construction. She pushed to her feet and took two running steps before a hand closed around her arm, jerked her backward. She turned her head as she stumbled and met Brady’s gloating grin.

  He pressed the gun into her neck and hauled her up against his wiry frame. “Hello, girlie. It’s payback time.”

  * * *

  Jake assessed the scene in seconds. Brady firing into the room. One bailiff down, another shot in the face as he watched. Keeping low, Jake made his way up the aisle in the gallery, moving against the stream of people who shoved their way out of the courtroom. Through the throng of bodies, he caught a flash of pink, the color of Chelsea’s dress, near the court reporter’s desk. Was that her or had she already escaped through another door?

  In all the missions he’d undertaken with the black ops team, he’d never felt the edge of fear he did now. Even though lives had been at stake in all of those assignments with the team, he hadn’t had the personal stakes on the line that he did now. Because he hadn’t been in love with any of the people at risk.

  Knowing he needed to focus, he shoved down the anxiety that rose inside him. He zeroed in on Brady and hurried toward his target. Dodging spectators who’d huddled behind the railing between the well and the galley, Jake drew close to Brady...just as the convict charged across the well and grabbed—

  “Chelsea!” Jake’s heart seized as Brady jammed the pistol into Chelsea’s throat. “Chelsea!”

  Her gaze darted to his, even as Brady dragged her across the courtroom toward a barricaded side exit. Her mouth formed his name, and even though he couldn’t hear her for all the raised voices around them, Brady clearly did. Brady followed the path of her gaze and stiffened when he spotted Jake. With a dark grin, he snaked his arm around Chelsea’s waist and shouted, “You want her, hero? Come get her!”

  Brady fled toward the blocked exit, dragging Chelsea with him and barreling through the warning-taped door.

  “Jake!” Chelsea cried, struggling to free herself, fighting her captor despite the muzzle pointed at her.

  Heart pounding, Jake scrambled after them, taking the service weapon from the felled guard by the jury room door as he rushed toward the side door. He burst through the side entrance and found himself in a stairwell littered with bits of plaster, metal scraps and sawdust
from construction work. The door swished closed behind him, shutting out the cacophony in the courtroom.

  The scuffle of feet, a feminine gasp, and Brady’s barked, “Damn!” called his attention to the stairs.

  Jake darted to the railing and looked down. “Chelsea!”

  Brady had made it down one flight of steps to the landing at the turn in the stairs. Beyond the landing was an open maw. The steps to the floors below had been demolished, leaving a two-and-a-half-floor drop to the ground level. Brady had nowhere to go except back up the steps toward him.

  “You’re at a dead end, Brady,” he shouted, the bailiff’s service weapon poised in his hand. “Let her go.”

  Brady’s chin jerked up, his gaze finding Jake at the top of the stairs. “No chance. She’s my ticket outta here. You drop your weapon, or she dies.”

  The convict jammed his gun in Chelsea’s ear, and Jake’s heart lurched. He inhaled slowly. Exhaled. Forced training to the forefront. He steadied his aim, didn’t blink.

  Brady scowled. “I said drop the gun!”

  Behind him, the courtroom door burst open, and Jake darted a glance over his shoulder as a man in a suit ran out. “Can I help?”

  Jake swallowed a curse. He waved the man away. “No, get back! Get inside, and don’t let anyone except law enforcement through that door. Got it?”

  “No tricks! I will kill her!” Brady shouted. Swinging his weapon toward Jake, he squeezed off a shot. Bits of plaster rained down from the wall behind him.

  “Jake!” Chelsea cried.

  Jake dropped to a crouch behind the marble newel post at the top of the half flight of stairs, the only protection available to him. The man in the suit protected his head from the falling debris and rushed back through the courtroom door.

  With a two-handed grip on his pistol, Jake took aim at Brady’s head. But with Chelsea in front of the convict, he didn’t have a clear shot.

  The convict jerked his arm up from Chelsea’s waist to her throat, anchoring her in a choke hold, and Jake’s heart thundered as he scrambled for a plan.

  His thoughts kept circling around to one fact. He loved Chelsea. Losing her would destroy him. During the short, intense time they’d had together, the smart, compassionate, witty spitfire had become the center of his universe. The hollow ache that had gnawed in his chest the past nine months gave a painful throb.

  Almost as an afterthought, his brain registered the distant voices, the squawk of police radios coming from the floors below. Backup.

  If he could keep Brady locked in this standoff a little longer...

  Chelsea clawed at Brady’s arm, struggling to get air. Jake drew slow deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart, control the adrenaline pumping through him. He needed a steady hand, perfect aim.

  The sounds of approaching guards grew louder. Hurry! Jake wanted to shout. She can’t breathe!

  Brady clearly heard the commotion of the guards floors below drifting up the empty stairwell, as well. He glanced nervously toward the gaping maw where the unfinished construction loomed. The cops couldn’t reach him from that direction, but he was vulnerable from his position on the landing. Brady must have realized this, too, because he stumbled back a few more steps.

  “I’m not going back to prison, man!” Brady shouted. Jake heard the rising desperation in his tone. Not good.

  “Let Chelsea go,” Jake repeated, his voice firm and flat.

  “No!” Brady growled. He swung wildly toward Jake and fired again. “Get outta my way! I’m getting out of here one way or another if I have to kill you both to do it!”

  Then a memory shifted to the front of Jake’s thoughts like a gift from the beyond.

  “Chelsea,” he called, “do you remember what I told you about the stray dog in Afghanistan?”

  Chelsea lifted a startled look to him. “What?”

  “Stop it!” Brady scowled, the gun in his hand waving wildly in his agitation. “I’m not playing games here!”

  “Chels?” Jake watched her face intently for indication she understood what he was asking. Her furrowed brow eased, and her gaze held his.

  “Rex?” Her voice rasped as Brady tightened his hold.

  He nodded. Good girl.

  Taking aim at Brady again, he waited, watched....

  As Brady shuffled back another step, his arm loosened on Chelsea’s neck. She gasped a deep breath of oxygen...then ducked her head and bit the fleshy part of his forearm.

  “Ow! You bitch!” Brady barked, yanking his arm away from her.

  Jake tensed, ready to fire.

  Before Chelsea could take the needed step away from Brady for Jake to take his shot, Brady backhanded her—hard—across the cheek. The blow reverberated in the stone staircase, and Jake saw red, his body twitching as rage rolled through him.

  Chelsea reeled. Stumbled. Fell.

  Jake took his shot. And missed.

  The split second in which he’d reacted to Brady’s strike had been enough to throw him off. But as he readied for another shot with his next heartbeat, the momentum of Chelsea’s fall carried her to the ragged edge of the drop-off. Her legs slipped into the maw, and a bone-chilling horror flooded his veins. “Chelsea!”

  Brady shifted his attention to Chelsea, who was scrabbling on the smooth marble floor for purchase. A gloating grin spread Brady’s lips. He stepped over to her and kicked her hard in the ribs.

  With a cry of pain and panic, she slid farther over the end of the construction.

  “Chels, hold on!”

  “In here!” a voice shouted from below.

  Brady aimed his gun into the gaping hole, toward the lower floors.

  Jake lunged to his feet and squeezed off three more shots in rapid succession. Brady jerked, then toppled back, crimson stains blooming on his chest. Without hesitation, Jake ran down several steps, then leaped over the handrail to the unfinished landing.

  Chapter 20

  Chelsea’s breath sawed from her in ragged, shallow pants. She was afraid to move, even to take a deep breath, scared that she’d lose the tenuous grasp she had. Terror clawed at her, and tears stung her eyes, filled her sinuses. Around her the world seemed to explode. The deafening blasts of gunfire echoed in the stairwell and pounded her eardrums.

  “Jake...” she rasped, her throat raw, her voice windless.

  She clung with one hand to the broken edge of the marble floor. With the other hand she clutched an exposed rebar that jutted through the jagged concrete at the edge of the demolition. Her legs dangled helplessly over the empty space, three floors above the lobby landing.

  Voices came from below, but she didn’t dare to look. They couldn’t help her anyway.

  Adrenaline fueled her muscles, but her arms, her fingers were quickly weakening, cramping. Her sweaty hand slipped on the slick marble, and her grip faltered.

  She was going to fall. Oh, God, she didn’t want to die!

  “Jake!” The scream ripped from her throat as her fingers lost purchase on the marble and scraped down the rough concrete. She grabbed another rebar and squeezed her eyes closed as a sob of terror surged up her throat. Please, God!

  Her arms shook. Her fingers ached. She held her breath. Slipping... No!

  “Chelsea!”

  Firm hands grabbed her wrists, and she jerked her gaze up.

  “Jake!” Her cry was raw, full of tears and heavy with relief.

  “Hold on!” Fear filled his handsome face. His eyes were wild with emotion, and panic creased his brow. “I’ve got you, honey.”

  “Brady—” She gulped.

  “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

  A shiver of relief rolled through her, but the pain in her arm muscles screamed she wasn’t safe yet.

  Jake held her gaze. “Chels, I’m going to try to pull you up, but first you have to let go and grab my arms.”

  “Let go?” Her voice squeaked with fear.

  “You can do it, sweetheart. I won’t let go. I promise I won’t. I...won’t ever let you g
o again.” His voice cracked with emotion and sent an answering ripple through her.

  Below them, someone shouted, “Where’s Brady?”

  Jake’s gaze shifted to the people on the lobby level. “Dead, or close to it.”

  “Hang on to her! We’re sending help up now, and someone’s getting a construction tarpaulin for us to catch her, just in case.”

  Jake’s focus returned to her, and he drilled her with an urgent look. Clearly he knew the physics of the situation as well as she did. A tarpaulin would be little good if she fell.

  The fatigue in her arms was a physical ache, the muscles tested beyond their limits. She swallowed the whimper of pain that tried to escape. She refused to quit, wouldn’t give up.

  “Grab my arms, Chels. Come on, honey,” Jake coaxed. “Please trust me. I won’t let you get hurt.”

  His calm voice and the resolve in his eyes filled her with the will to shove her fear aside and try to shift her grip.

  She released the first rebar, and when she turned her hand to seize Jake’s wrist, a knifing pain shot through her shoulder. She cried. Having been thrown from her horse once and suffering a dislocated shoulder in a barrel racing competition, she recognized the searing pain. Based on the look that crossed Jake’s face, he could tell what had happened, as well.

  “Damn, honey, I’m sorry. I know it hurts.”

  Blinking back tears, she shifted her other hand to his wrist.

  “I’m going to try to pull you up now. Ready?”

  “Hurry!”

  She felt the muscles in Jake’s arms quiver, and he tugged her up a couple inches, but not nearly enough to get her onto the landing.

  With a barked curse, he stopped pulling, and closed his eyes. Huffing a deep breath, he returned his gaze to her, his eyes apologetic. “I’m slipping toward the edge. I have nothing to brace against, no leverage to pull you up. This marble is providing no traction at all.”