Colton's Ranch Refuge

by Beth Cornelison

  Gunnar narrowed his eyes and angled his head. “I pulled the trigger way more than once in my five tours in Afghanistan.”

  Uncertainty flickered across the man’s face. Tensing, Charlie jerked his gaze down the aisle where Violet watched the events with apprehensive eyes.

  As quickly as the man’s intent registered in Gunnar’s mind, Charlie had grabbed Violet and yanked her in front of him as a shield. She yelped in fear and pain as her injured leg buckled.

  “Let her go!” Gunnar growled, hearing the note of panic in his voice. Sucking in a deep breath, Gunnar fought for composure despite the turn of events. He couldn’t reveal his fear for Violet or Charlie could use it against him.

  “No.” Charlie snaked an arm around Violet’s throat and another around her waist, lifting her from the floor as if she were a rag doll. “You weren’t the only one who served in the military. Uncle Sam taught me how to break someone’s neck with one twist. You slide me the gun and let me pass, or the pretty lady dies.”

  * * *

  She couldn’t breathe. Violet kicked her legs, desperate for leverage to relieve the pressure of the kidnapper’s arm across her throat. The man’s threat to snap her neck chilled her to the bone, and adrenaline fueled her struggle. But the man’s viselike hold was unyielding.

  Air. She needed air.

  She’s played the victim of crime in plenty of movies, but living such terror in reality was a different beast. Already her vision was growing fuzzy. She had to have oxygen soon or...

  “Let. Her. Go.” Gunnar’s command was a steely and cold as his expression.

  Despite the stony warrior expression he wore, she saw the Gunnar who’d laughed and played gently with her boys. She saw the compassionate man who’d opened his home to her and doted on her as she convalesced. She saw...spots.

  Oh, God...was she flashing on those aspects of Gunnar because she was dying? Was this her brain reliving the sweet moments at the end?

  “Drop the gun,” her captor snarled in return. She wouldn’t survive a prolonged standoff, a testosterone-infused battle of wills between the men. She clawed at Charlie’s hands, gasping for air.

  Without warning, Charlie shifted his grip on her. He moved his arm from her neck to circle her head and sink his fingers into the side of her forehead.

  With a ragged gulp, Violet sucked in precious air, the influx of oxygen making her dizzy. As grateful as she was to breathe, two stark truths jolted her like current from a Taser.

  One, she loved Gunnar and couldn’t bear to give him up. And two, Charlie’s new grip gave him perfect leverage to snap her neck.

  * * *

  Gunnar’s heart thundered, and his pulse pounded in his ears. He’d played deadly games of chicken before without blinking...and won. But he’d never had someone he loved caught in the middle. How could he risk Violet’s life?

  “Get out of my way or blondie dies,” Charlie grated.

  Gunnar’s gut told him Charlie was bluffing, that he was just desperate, and if he kept him talking, kept him occupied until Emma arrived—damn it, Emma, what was taking so long to buy one pair of gloves?—he could help bring in one of the creeps involved in the kidnapping ring. But what if his gut was wrong? What if he failed? What if he screwed this up and he lost someone he loved?

  Again the image of the dead Afghan boy from the street market crowded into his mind, distracting him. His hand shook harder, and his gut pitched. You let that boy down and he died, a voice in his head taunted.

  No, no, no! Not now! Gunnar shook his head, blinked hard, forcibly erasing the voice, the image from his head. If he lost focus, if he let the ghosts of the marketplace bombing get in his head now, Violet could die.

  Acid roiled in his stomach, and he gritted his teeth as he redirected his attention to Charlie. Get him to talk...

  Keeping the gun trained on Charlie, Gunnar raised one hand in a conciliatory gesture. He cut a furtive glance to Piper, who’d rounded up the other teenage girls and hunkered down behind a sturdy display case. Good girl. “C’mon, man. You don’t want to add murder charges to anything you’ve already done.”

  Charlie’s feet shifted, his eyes darting to the front door, then back to Gunnar. “I’ll kill her if I have to. I will!”

  “You don’t have to. If you talk, if you give them names and locations, I’d bet you can get a deal. A good deal.” The thought of this guy cutting a deal and getting away with attacking Violet made Gunnar nauseated, but he took a breath and forged on. “What happened to the girl who was with Violet last week?”

  Charlie shook his head, and he swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob. “I don’t know. My job is just to get the girls.”

  “For who?” Gunnar made sure to keep his voice flat, calm, even though chaos ruled his insides.

  “I don’t know their names. They run an online dating service for guys who like...virgins.”

  Dating service, my ass. Gunnar clenched his jaw tighter and swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. While Charlie talked, he crept a small step closer to Violet.

  “What did they pay you for getting the girls?”

  A sheen of perspiration had popped out on Charlie’s face, and he nervously shifted his stance again. “It’s not like that! I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to!”

  “Have to?” Gunnar heard the hard edge in his tone and mentally checked himself. Stay cool. He moved closer to Violet and her captor.

  “Hey! Stay back!” Charlie snarled, lunging back a few steps and dragging Violet stumbling with him. Her injured leg buckled, and she cried out in pain.

  Adrenaline spiked in Gunnar’s blood, and the screams and dying moans of the bombing aftermath echoed in his head. Your friends died because of your mistake! Shaking to his core, Gunnar battled down the memory of broken bodies and lifeless eyes. He couldn’t lose control of this situation. He had to rein in the burgeoning flashback, keep his head.

  “I owed them money. I...used their services once and...they hiked up the fees after I brought the girl back.”

  Gunnar dragged his attention to Charlie, fighting the rage and panic and guilt that clawed at him.

  “I couldn’t pay, and they...they said they’d take payment another way.” His face crumpled, and his voice cracked. “They knew I have a fifteen-year-old daughter. They said they’d take her if I didn’t help them bring in Amish girls.”

  Gunnar struggled to calm his ragged breathing.

  Keep him talking. Buy time. “Wh-who are they?”

  Charlie’s face contorted in a feral snarl. “I said I don’t know! No names were used!”

  Violet gasped, winced, and Gunnar saw Charlie’s grip on her tighten as he lifted her feet from the floor once more. Damn it! Charlie had already said that he didn’t know who he was working for. Stay in the game. Concentrate. Focus! If his distraction led to Violet’s death...he’d want to die himself.

  “Okay,” Gunnar said, his voice thick. He inhaled. Exhaled. “Okay. You were protecting your daughter. I get that. You had your reasons for taking the Amish girl. I’d do the same thing.” Yeah, when hell froze over. “Why don’t you let Violet go now, and we can talk some more—”

  “No!” Charlie took his hand off Violet’s head and aimed an accusing finger at Gunnar. “No more stalling! Get the hell out of my way!”

  Violet twisted in Charlie’s grasp, and when her toes found purchase with the floor, she used the leverage to throw her head back into Charlie’s nose. She followed with a swift jab of her elbow in his gut and spun away from his startled and weakened grip.

  “Bitch!” Charlie growled and swiped a hand through the air, groping for Violet.

  Gunnar tensed, his finger curling around the trigger.

  Violet ran a step, then cried out and fell, holding her leg, clearing Gunnar’s shot.

  Training kicked in, and in the next heartbeat, Gunnar aimed and squeezed the trigger.

  The blast reverberated through him. Female screams filled the air. Violet lay motionless on
the floor. For a second that lasted an eternity, Gunnar feared he’d hit Violet.

  “FBI! Nobody move!” Emma shouted as she burst through the front door of the shop.

  Gunnar sucked in a shaky breath and held it. Violet! Why wasn’t she moving?

  Emma’s gaze swept the room, taking a quick mental inventory before zeroing in on Charlie, who groaned and clutched his thigh. “Show me your hands, buddy! Slowly.” Her gun trained on the kidnapper, Emma moved forward. “Violet? Are you okay?”

  A post-adrenaline crash sent a wave of tremors and nausea rolling through Gunnar. He staggered toward Violet and dropped to his knees beside her. “Violet?”

  She rolled to her back and blinked at him with frightened doe eyes. “Breath. Knocked. From...me,” she gasped, and only then did Gunnar take a breath himself.

  He stroked the side of her face, his hand trembling. “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head and clutched his hand as she dragged in thin gasps. Gunnar helped her sit up, then pulled her onto his lap to hold her, to reassure himself she was safe, to calm the tumult still jangling inside him. “Oh, God, Tink. I was so scared he’d hurt you. If something had happened to you—”

  “I’m...all right.” She buried her face in his shoulder and clung to him, her body racked with tremors.

  Emma pulled a pair of handcuffs from under her windbreaker and snapped them on Charlie’s wrist. When Emma rolled Charlie to his back, Gunnar spotted the bloody wound on the man’s thigh.

  Payback, he thought with smug satisfaction. We’ll see how he likes having a hole in his leg like the one he gave Violet.

  “Piper?” Emma called as she snatched a decorative scarf from a display and shoved it against the seeping wound on Charlie’s leg.

  The teen surged to her feet and ran to Emma. “I thought you’d never get here!”

  “Piper, call an ambulance and the local police and get them in here,” Emma said brusquely. “This is their jurisdiction until we officially tie this guy to the kidnappings.”

  Piper scuttled over to the pile of cell phones Charlie had collected and found hers.

  “And good job leaving an open line to me,” Emma added, her tone softening for her little sister. “Smart thinking. I heard everything.”

  Gunnar looked up. “What did Piper do?”

  Piper joined them again but kept Emma between her and Charlie. “When I tossed my phone on the pile, I hit the key to speed-dial Emma’s cell.”

  “When I answered, I heard the shouting and knew there was trouble,” Emma said while applying pressure to Charlie’s wound.

  Violet smiled at Piper. “Smart.”

  Emma glared at Charlie, who was groaning in pain. “By the way, you have the right to say nothing now, until you have a lawyer present.” The tinkle of the bell over the front door drew Emma’s gaze, and she shouted to the teenage girls who were trying to leave. “Hold up there, ladies. You need to stay and give the police a statement. Lock that door, and have a seat at the back of the store.”

  “Wow.” Gunnar sent Emma a half grin, his pulse finally settling back in a normal rhythm. “Look at Tomato-head taking control of the situation.”

  Emma sent him a smug look. “Don’t sound so surprised.” Her expression modulated, and she lifted one auburn eyebrow. “You didn’t do so bad handling the situation yourself. Good job, big bro.”

  Gunnar forced a quick grin and jerked a nod of acknowledgment, but his gut rebelled with sour disgust. Emma didn’t know the truth, didn’t know how close he’d been to a meltdown, didn’t know how his fear for Violet’s life had almost paralyzed him.

  Violet smoothed a hand down one cheek and placed a warm kiss on the other. “My hero.”

  Her adulation raked through him with sharp tines. He was anything but a hero.

  When the room seemed to shrink around him, he shoved to his feet, helping Violet up as he did so, then set her away from him. “I’ll be back. I...I need air.”

  “Gunnar?” Violet and Emma called after him.

  But he didn’t stop. His personal demons had put Piper and Violet in jeopardy today, and that was unacceptable. Whatever it took, he would take control of this...this...

  Posttraumatic stress disorder. He sighed and admitted the truth to himself. He needed help to take control of his life again—before it was too late.

  * * *

  The hour grew late before the Eden Falls police had finished questioning everyone about the incident in the crafts store. Violet called Rani and told her to keep the twins at the bed-and-breakfast until she could get free to meet them. After they had all answered questions for the police report, Gunnar and Emma had insisted she go to Derek’s clinic, just to make sure she was all right. She had some bruising on her throat from Charlie’s choke hold and a few scrapes from tussling with him, but she was alive...thanks to Gunnar. She had no doubt his quick thinking and courage to take on the kidnapper, facing down the man’s gun, had saved her life today.

  Violet wanted desperately to have some time alone with Gunnar, to thank him for his heroics and to tell him some of the things she’d realized about their relationship today. But Gunnar had disappeared from his brother’s clinic as soon as Derek passed on a good report on her.

  With a heavy and troubled heart, she returned to the bed-and-breakfast, eager to hug her children after her brush with death. What would have happened to Hudson and Mason if she had been killed? Her family would have taken them in, of course, but she hated to think of her babies growing up without a mother or father.

  Her thoughts flashed again to Gunnar playing with her boys, laughing with them, hugging them when they cried. Gunnar was nothing like Adam, whose self-involved lifestyle and self-destructive addiction had taken him from his children and caused her heartache. She saw that so clearly now. And she also saw that she’d cast Gunnar’s issues with PTSD in the same category as Adam’s drug problem when they were so different. She’d been scared, confused by her feelings for him. She’d overreacted. She’d been unfair.

  That evening when she went to bed in her room at the B and B, she tried to called Gunnar, but he didn’t answer his cell. While she stared down at the phone in her hand, it jangled her incoming call tones, and her heart leaped.

  “Hello?” she said, full of hope.

  “Violet, it’s Emma. I promised to call you when I had news.”

  “Oh, hi.” Violet tried to hide the disappointment in her tone.

  “Charlie cut a deal. He’ll still do time, but he gave up his partner. That’s probably not a lot of comfort to you but...it’s something.”

  “No, no, that’s good. Did he say anything that will help you find Mary and the other girls?” Violet stroked Sophie’s fur when the cat jumped up on the bed and settled in next to her.

  “I can’t get into classified details of the case but...we do have a few tentative leads.” Emma went on to explain the kidnapper, Charlie Harris, was a farmer from a nearby community who built birdhouses and other wood crafts to sell on the weekends at the Eden Falls store. He had no priors other than parking tickets and a domestic disturbance call that happened just before his divorce. Once treated for the gunshot wound in his leg, he was interrogated by the police in his hospital room.

  His accomplice was another lackey for hire being threatened by the men behind the online sex ring. Harris swore he had nothing that could identify the men who now held Mary Yoder and the other girls. He claimed that after he and his partner grabbed the girls, they handed them off to a third man, described only as medium height, dark-haired and mean-looking, on an isolated side road in the heart of Amish country.

  “Violet, we will do everything in our power to find Mary and bring her home. I promise,” Emma said, and the steel edge in her voice told Violet just how serious Emma was in her intent. After all, Caleb Troyer’s sister was among the missing girls. For Emma, as for Violet, this case was personal.

  “Thank you, Emma. For everything.” Violet closed her eyes and sighed. “Will you do one
other favor for me? If you see Gunnar, tell him I need to talk to him.”

  “Will do. Good night.”

  Violet disconnected the call with her thumb and let her hand fall limply to the bed. She was both physically and mentally exhausted.

  “And I need to talk to you, too,” a familiar voice said from her door.

  Violet sat up with a jerk, whipping her gaze to the ruggedly handsome man across the room. “Gunnar.”

  “Hi. I was worried about you after what happened today. How are you?” His gaze drifted to the bruises darkening on her neck, and a scowl tugged his mouth down.

  She pulled the collar of her bathrobe up to hide the distracting evidence of her injury. “Shaken, but...relieved that Harris has been caught.” She frowned. “Even if it doesn’t bring the cops any closer to finding Mary.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “You’d be surprised how little tips and pieces of information can lead to a big picture and arrests. Emma and Tate will catch the scum behind the sex ring. Have faith.”

  “You wanted to talk?” she asked at the same time he said, “What did you want to—?”

  Then together, “You first.”

  They both grinned awkwardly and shook their heads. Gunnar moved from the door to the corner of her bed in the few silent seconds that followed and gave Sophie a quick scratch behind her ears.

  Violet took a deep breath. Perhaps it was best that she go first.

  “I was wrong,” she said, as he blurted, “You were right.”

  Violet chuckled and raked fingers through her hair before his statement hit her. “What?”

  “Today I realized—” he started, then paused as if making sure he had the floor “—you were right. All of you. Derek, Emma, Tate, even Piper...you’ve all told me at some point since I came home from the war that I need help. I need to see a counselor. And you were right. I saw that today, and...this afternoon, I called a counselor in Philly that the army recommended.”

  Violet pressed a hand to her mouth as tears of joy and relief prickled her sinuses.