Sidney’s Triple Shot [Apache Crossing] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Lori King

  Sidney wouldn’t have had time to react, even if she had guessed what he was planning, but Robert’s trigger finger did. She watched in horror as a loud crack split the air, and then almost simultaneously Tyce’s bare back broke open with a small bullet hole. Blood began running down his back as he gasped loudly, and she screamed.

  “No! Tyce! What have you done, Robert?” She jumped off of the front of the stage, but before she could get her hands on Tyce, who was now kneeling on the floor a few feet away, Robert grabbed her arm and jerked her to his side.

  “I warned him that I would shoot him if he moved. Quit your crying. I already told you they were dead men after I saw them touching you,” Robert said icily. There was just a hint of panic in his tone, and his eyes were round as saucers.

  Sidney watched as Noah moved at a slower pace to reach Tyce’s side and used his T-shirt to press against his brother’s upper shoulder where the entry wound was. It looked like the bullet went into his shoulder at collarbone level and came out the back. Hopefully that meant that it wasn’t life threatening, but Tyce’s face was pale white, nearly gray. Fear overwhelmed her at the thought of him dying.

  “Wicks, you just shot a man in cold blood. No matter how far you run, you will get caught,” Noah said softly as he helped support Tyce, who seemed to be losing his strength quickly as the blood seeped out of him.

  Sidney couldn’t stop the flow of tears running down her cheeks. Tyce was bleeding in front of her, and any moment now Robert would shoot Noah, too. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to let her live if she left with him. Her eyes met Tyce’s beautiful cobalt-blue ones, and she could almost hear him in her head reassuring her that he would be okay.

  Robert seemed to refortify himself at Noah’s words, and his face turned beet red. “Shut up, asshole, or I’ll shoot you in the head right now. Wouldn’t that be fun, Sidney? We’ll watch both of your lovers die before we head home. Just remember, sweetheart, this vacation was your idea.”

  “It’s not a vacation, Robert. Please don’t hurt anyone else. I already said I would go with you. Let’s go. Please!” Her voice wobbled and cracked, but she hoped she sounded convincing.

  “No, Sidney. If he gets you out of here, he will kill you,” Tyce said. Pain and anger laced his tone, and his breathing was heavier than normal, but his concern was still for her. She gave him a small smile that she hoped was reassuring.

  “I’ll be okay, Tyce,” she said, feeling stronger already. She mouthed the words I love you to the two brothers before turning back to Robert. “Let’s go before the sheriff gets here. Someone had to have heard that gunshot.”

  “Fine. Just for you I’ll let them live, but you two commandos better remember that if you come after us, she’ll die,” Robert said, waving the gun around in the air before he headed toward the front door with Sidney in tow.

  Sidney threw a last glance over her shoulder at Tyce and Noah, her heart dying in her chest at the sight of blood, anger, and fear. She just hoped that they knew how much she loved them, because she didn’t honestly think that she would ever see them again.

  Robert reached the door in front of her but hesitated before opening it. He turned to her and forced her to move in front of him. “You can go first, just in case that third cowpoke is out here waiting to shoot me when I step outside.”

  With a rough shove between her shoulder blades, he shoved her out the door of the bar and into the parking lot. Glancing around her, she quickly felt the last smidgeon of hope in her chest snuff out like a flame as she realized that the lot was empty and there was no one waiting to help her.

  She let Robert pull her along the front and side of the bar toward the wooded area that was behind it. His pace was fast, and his fear seemed to make him move in a jerky, unstable way that kept causing Sidney to stumble as he dragged her along beside him.

  Plowing through the trees, she felt branches and bushes tearing at her face and her bare feet. She could feel blood trickling down her cheek, and her arm was beginning to really ache where Robert kept a viciously tight grip on her. Her toe stubbed into a large rock, and she fell to her knees with a cry. Her shoulder wrenched, and she felt her wrist snap as the weight of her body hit the ground while Robert still held on to her.

  “Fuck it all to hell. What is wrong with you, you lazy bitch? Are you trying to get me caught? Get up, and move your ass. The car is only another hundred yards away.” He threaded his hand into her hair and jerked her back onto her feet. Her wrist and shoulder were screaming in pain, and tears now flowed freely down her cheeks again.

  “Robert, my wrist—”

  “Damn it, quit your bitching. I’m going to break more than just your wrist if you don’t get your ass in that car in the next sixty seconds.”

  Knowing that he was deadly serious and that he still held a gun in his other hand, she followed his instructions and headed in the direction he gestured. Every step was agony, and she figured she had probably broken her toe if not her whole foot when she stumbled. It wasn’t the worst pain she had ever felt, but it was close. Bruised and bloody, they reached the car where it was parked along a gravel road that Sidney had never been on before.

  Robert pushed her in through the driver’s-side door and climbed in after her. Without giving her time to settle into her seat, he turned the keys that were already in the ignition and gunned the engine, throwing her backward against the seat roughly. A moment later she was thrown into the dashboard when he took a turn too sharply. Her cheekbone connected with the hard plastic, and she reflexively reached out with her injured arm to brace herself, screaming out in pain as the broken bones shifted again.

  Her body slumped to the floor on the passenger side, and she gasped for air as pain swallowed her. Black spots danced in her vision, and her stomach rolled just before she vomited all over the passenger seat.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Robert screeched as he drove. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  He swung the car wildly around a bend and parked it. They couldn’t have gone far from the bar, but Sidney’s brain was so foggy with pain that she couldn’t be sure. She heard him climb from the car and then felt the door she was pressed against jerk open. He managed to keep her from hitting the ground, but when he pulled her out, she couldn’t stand on her feet. Grumbling and cursing, Robert lifted her up and carried in her into a motel room. With one eye now swelling from where she hit the dashboard, she was barely able to glance around to see that they were at some sort of dive motel and that his was the only car parked in the whole lot. There was no one to see them or to help her. Closing her eyes as he dropped her on the bed, she gave up and passed out.

  Chapter 16

  The second Sidney and Robert Wicks were out the door, Noah ran for the bar to call for help. As much as he wanted to immediately go after them, he had to take care of Tyce first. Hanging up with the sheriff, he turned back to Tyce, who had climbed to his feet and was retrieving his boots from the stage.

  “Let’s go,” Tyce snapped.

  “The sheriff is on his way—” Noah was cut off by the sound of Xavier’s Harley pulling into the parking lot. He caught his own boots as Tyce tossed them to him from across the room and quickly shoved his feet into them.

  “There’s no time. We have to go after them,” Tyce said. Noah nearly laughed out loud. He should have known that a simple shoulder wound wouldn’t put his brother on the ground. Tyce had been playing it up for Wicks, trying to make him believe he was more injured then he actually was.

  “Bro, you are one hell of an actor,” Noah said as they both made a beeline for the exit.

  “I’m also one hell of a sniper, but you’re the tracker, so let’s go rescue our woman,” Tyce said. Noah could tell by the set of his jaw that Tyce was feeling the pain, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from the fight, and Tyce was right, Noah was a kick-ass tracker. That had been his job in the Marine Corps. He would find the insurgents’ hidey-holes so t
hat they could clear them out.

  Quickening his pace, he reached the parking lot just before Tyce and realized immediately that the only vehicle in sight was Xavier’s bike. “Wicks has Sidney!” he told Xavier, whose face paled.

  “Oh shit! What happened? Where are they? How?” Xavier said, looking terrified and furious.

  “We’ll explain later. Did you pass any cars on your way in?”

  Xavier shook his head and then cursed when he got a glimpse of Tyce’s bloody shoulder. “Wicks?”

  “Yep, but it’s a clean shot straight through. I’ll be fine. I’m more worried about what he’s doing to Sidney right now,” Tyce said. “Noah called the sheriff, but we can’t wait for him. Wicks and Sidney can’t be too far away, considering they have to be on foot.”

  “He would have taken her through the woods to avoid anyone seeing them,” Noah said resolutely. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to get a grip on the rage that was threatening to blind him to what he needed to do.

  The idea of Sidney in the arms of that nasty bastard made him wish he had a gun on him. That thought clicked into his brain, and he cursed. “Xavier, get the guns from the office and catch up. I’m not letting them get any more of a jump on us.”

  With that, Noah took off around the side of the building at a dead run. He slowed for a moment as he breached the tree line, and immediately his instincts kicked in. He could see the broken branches and disturbed leaves that indicated someone had been through the area recently, and he began to follow their path. At one point he took a moment to look over a spot where it seemed that the two had stopped before continuing on. The impressions in the dirt looked like knees, but they weren’t deep, so she hadn’t been on her knees very long. With a prayer of thanks, Noah moved on.

  He reached the gravel road in time to see the car going around the bend. The license plate burned into his brain, and he stood for another moment, panting. From here he could only see one head through the windows, and that was in the driver’s seat. That meant that either he put her in the trunk, or she was too injured to sit upright in a seat. Fear churned in Noah’s gut as he heard Tyce reach his side.

  “Well?” Tyce asked, panting to catch his breath. His face was a lot grayer than it should have been, and considering how fit his brother was, Noah knew that he was fighting off the pain from his injury and going on pure adrenaline.

  “Gone. But I did get a license plate.”

  “Good, let’s get back to the bar, and tell the sheriff so that we can start our search. He won’t stick around for long, and if he gets her across state line the sheriff can’t stop him,” Tyce said as they headed back into the woods.

  They met Xavier, who carried their three personal guns, about halfway through the woods, and after a quick explanation, they continued on to the bar. They had to move fast to coordinate a search and get Sidney out of that bastard’s hands.

  Sheriff Limpkin was waiting behind the bar as they emerged from the trees. “Well, boys, what’s going on?”

  “Thanks for getting here fast, Lumpy. Sidney’s ex found her here in Apache Crossing. He came into the bar and caught us off guard. After he shot Tyce, he kidnapped Sidney. I have the license plate number, but I couldn’t get there fast enough to stop him from driving away with her,” Noah explained. Rage was still humming through his body, and he had to mentally force himself to relax his body. It wouldn’t help anything if he went off the handle at this point. For Sidney’s sake he had to be thinking clearly.

  “Good, let’s get that number in the system and get an APB out on the car. Do you think he headed back to South Carolina with her?”

  “From the intel I gathered when I was running a search on him, my gut tells me that he will want to stop long enough to beat the hell out of her first,” Xavier said grimly, and Noah’s heart clenched.

  “He’s been here since the car fire at least. He said he’s seen us with her, so he has to be staying somewhere close by,” Tyce said, and then he grimaced as he shifted his shoulder.

  “I’ll have Joey start checking all of the motels and B and Bs by phone. See if we can get a tip based on his description and license plate. In the meantime let’s have Doc Woolsey check out that shoulder, son.”

  Tyce nodded in agreement and followed Sheriff Limpkin down the street. Noah watched for a moment before turning back to Xavier. “What now?”

  “Now we call in the cavalry,” Xavier said with a grimace. The smile that grew on Noah’s face would have made Robert Wicks shiver in fear.

  “So what exactly is wrong with this guy? What fucked him up so bad that he needs to beat the shit out of a woman to feel like a man?”

  Xavier chuckled at Lane’s blunt question, but he couldn’t answer him. All of the digging into Robert Wick’s background had yet to reveal a motivation or a trigger for his abusive nature. He found a man born into the upper middle class, raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, and given every possible chance at a great life. He also found a man that hid his true nature from most of the world. On the outside, Robert Wicks was a successful businessman, a talented soccer player, a known supporter of local veteran’s charities, and an upstanding citizen, but when the shiny, perfect-looking skin was pulled back, it revealed a rotten core. Wicks had been arrested three times for various physical abuses, but he had never actually stood trial or been convicted of anything. Instead, it seemed as though every time he got caught, somehow it got brushed under the rug. Xavier figured money was the root of the problem, but there wasn’t any evidence to prove it.

  Right now, all he cared about was getting his woman back safe and sound. He glanced around the sheriff’s office at the men and women gathered there and felt reassured that they would be successful. More than a dozen people had shown up when the call for help went out. They already knew that Sidney was in a motel down the highway about ten minutes in Coleman and that Wicks had stolen the car he was using to transport her. The sheriff could easily arrest him on that charge and the kidnapping, but they couldn’t assure Sidney’s safety if they didn’t get Wicks to leave the motel room with her first. Xavier’s nerves jangled as he itched to go retrieve his woman. As a trained Marine, though, he knew that to go in with no plan was a recipe for trouble, and he wasn’t willing to risk Sidney’s life any further.

  “Ladies and gentleman…and Lane, I have known all of you for a while now, some longer than others”—Xavier glanced pointedly at Lane and Gage, who threw him a salute—“and what I know about all of you is that we take care of our own. Noah, Tyce, and I are coming to you as friends and asking you to help us get Sidney back. We love her, and we plan to marry her at the earliest possible opportunity. This guy Wicks is dangerous. I honestly believe he’s gone off the deep end, so we have to proceed with caution and anticipate that he has no desire to protect Sidney. He will throw her in front of a bullet to protect himself.”

  “We saw the pictures, Dawson. He’s a psycho. Now, what are we going to do about it?” Derek Novak asked as he stood next to his brother Paxton. The two were born and raised in Apache Crossing and rumor was that they were in love with the same woman. Unfortunately for them, she left town while they were still in high school for bigger and better things and never looked back. They probably understood better than any other man here the helplessness that the three Dawson brothers felt right now.

  “What if we have a distraction?” Gage suggested. “We can stage a fire in the motel so they have to evacuate.”

  “He’ll see right through it. I know it seems like he is a moron, but this man isn’t stupid. He knows we’re looking for her, and he also knows that if we find them, he’s a dead man,” Tyce said coldly. Xavier respected the anger in Tyce’s eyes. It was the hardest thing he had ever done to just sit here patiently working out a plan of action instead of running into battle half-cocked with blazing guns.

  “Tyce is right, but we do need to figure out a way to make sure she’s not already dead or incapacitated,” Nathan Blake said. Xavier flinched
at the suggestion that Sidney could be dead already, but he nodded his agreement to Nathan.

  “I can call out the National Guard!” Melanie Scott said as she paced near the front door next to her wife, Darcy. “I’m the mayor. Surely I have that authority, right?”

  “I think that’s the governor, boo, but it’s a good suggestion.” Darcy patted Melanie’s arm as she paused on her next turn.

  “We most definitely do not need the National Guard for this. You have a handful of Marines, ma’am. That’s better than a whole contingent of guardsmen.” Kace Mulvane spoke up from his seat on the edge of the sheriff’s desk, and the rest of the Marine Corps buddies shouted a “hoorah” in agreement. Everyone was silent for a moment as they tried to come up with a solution to their situation.

  “I’ll go. I’ve been busy running horses back and forth to shows for the last few weeks, so I haven’t even been able to introduce myself properly to Sidney, much less run into this guy here in town. I’m the least likely to be recognized from Apache Crossing,” Jaxon Blake answered, and after a few more moments of discussion it was agreed. Jaxon Blake, Nathan’s little brother, was the best candidate to make the first contact with Robert Wicks. If all went well, they would confirm that Sidney was okay and scare Wicks out of his hidey-hole so that they could take him out like the scared fox that he was.

  As they all got ready to leave for Coleman, Sheriff Lumpy held up his hand to get their attention. “Listen, folks. I know we’re all worried about Sidney, but we can’t start World War III over her either. Everyone has permission to be armed, but do not draw your weapon without my signal or in self-defense. Clear?” Once everyone had nodded their begrudging agreement, he continued, “Tyce, you’re the best shot we got around here, so I’m relying on you to take him out once she is clear.”

  Tyce’s face lit up like the sun after a rain shower, and he let out a whoop. “Damn straight. I want to repay the bastard for this pretty little plug in my shoulder.”