by Lynde Lakes
Nick froze. He watched Angelo and Sara Jane back into another section of the tunnel and disappear.
A cold chill settled into the marrow of Nick’s bones and something within him died. All he had managed to do was trade one Ryan cousin for the other. He wanted to run after Sara Jane, but if he left Alicia to handle the remaining kidnappers, they might capture her again.
“Nick! Behind you!” Alicia cried just one second before one of the kidnappers tackled him, slamming his face into the stone floor. Blood trickled from his nose and lip.
A gunshot came from above. “Freeze,” Alicia told the other men.
Nick rolled to his back and kicked off his attacker. They both scrambled to their feet. He hit the man in the jaw. The guy returned the blow, twisted and captured Nick in a headlock. Nick did a reverse-twist, shoved the guy against the hard slate wall and judo-chopped his windpipe, downing him.
****
Sara Jane’s forehead throbbed. “Can we slow down? I feel faint.” Angelo tightened his grip on her arm, jabbed his gun deeper into her temple, and hustled her faster. The flashlight beam didn’t provide much light, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going. Were they headed for the rear entrance?
The fix she was in was mostly her own fault. Nick had warned her to stay back from the edge. Her desire to get the first glimpse of the kidnappers when they paraded in front of her had cost her. Now, she headed the parade—and not as rodeo queen.
The passageway forked, and Angelo took an unfamiliar tunnel with a downward incline. She wished she had something to drop along the way so Nick would know which fork they took. Now her chances that he would find her went from slight to zip, and she could only count on her wits
She thought of her strengths. She could outrun most folks. She had lots of experience running beside her horse during trick-mounting in rodeo competitions. The gun at her temple was a problem, but if Angelo needed a live hostage to blackmail her dad as Alicia had said, then at most he’d wound her. Sara Jane winced at the idea of getting a bullet even in an arm or leg, but doing nothing wasn’t an option. Still as Nick liked to say, timing was everything.
Rocks crunched ahead—boot steps thudded toward them. If it was another of his cohorts, in minutes she’d have two men to contend with.
She blew upward at a wild tendril. It was now or never. Sara Jane stumbled, lurched forward away from the gun and yanked her arm from his hold and ran like a wild mustang, zigzagging to avoid the expected bullet. Angelo gave chase, spotlighting her with his bright beam. His speed surprised her. He grabbed a fistful of hair and swung her against the tunnel wall. His hands closed around her throat. She gripped his hand to stop the pressure as she brought her knee up and jammed it into his groin. He doubled up in pain. When he let go, she grabbed the flashlight he had dropped, switched it off and ran blindly, leaving him in darkness.
“You’re a dead woman,” he shouted after her.
She tripped over stones, feeling her way along the walls, terrified of stepping into a fissure, but more terrified of Angelo than the unfamiliar blackness that stretched before her. Boot steps from behind and ahead closed in on her. Then, all sounds stopped except her gasps for breath and the wild thudding of her heart.
****
Perched on the ledge like Annie Oakley, Alicia held her gun on the downed men. Experience told Nick not to leave without tying them up and disabling them. He shredded their shirts into strips. He used the strips and the men’s belts to tie them up. It took only minutes, but with every second the chance of rescuing Sara Jane lessened.
He glanced up at Alicia. She would slow him down, but he couldn’t risk losing her again. Besides, her knowledge of the tunnels, regardless how slight, might help. “Jump, I’ll catch you.”
Without hesitation, she jumped into his arms.
He stood her on her feet and handed her an un-shredded shirt. “Quick, bundle all of their weapons and flashlights into this. Even if they get loose, without light or weapons they’ll be helpless.”
Nick grabbed the lantern from its hiding place, lit it, and he and Alicia headed into the tunnel. He dropped the bundle into a fissure as they skirted it. He could travel faster without the extra weight. They came to a fork in the tunnel. He lowered the lantern. “Help me look for fresh prints,” he whispered. They scanned the dusty rock floor of the left tunnel and found nothing. He noticed that the fork to the right had a downward incline. “I have a hunch they went this way.”
“If you’re wrong,” Alicia said softly, “we could wind around for hours, and Angelo could escape with Sara Jane.”
“Damn it, I don’t need you to tell me that.”
Alicia’s eyes widened, and she stepped back like he’d slapped her.
“If it’ll make you feel any better,” he said, gentling his tone, “we’ll take a minute to try to confirm it.” They checked the first five feet without success. He couldn’t delay any longer. He had to commit to this tunnel or go back to the other fork.
****
Sara Jane’s pulse thundered in her temple. Time had run out. Angelo’s other cohort in the kidnapping would reach her in minutes and the two of them would sandwich her in. She had to risk turning on her flashlight to find a hiding place.
She discovered a low, narrow ledge over the next fork in the tunnel. If she crouched, she’d just fit into the small space, but then what? Ever since she had fallen from the ledge and landed on Angelo, she’d been making choices. She was free only because each time, she chosen to hang tough and fight. Was she pressing her luck to fight again? She could hide and hope that Angelo’s man wouldn’t look up and see her. But that gave him all the control.
Determined to have a say in her destiny, Sara Jane grabbed a loose boulder that weighed about five pounds and was a little bigger than a baseball and heaved it to the ledge. It landed with a dull thud and rolled a few inches. When it lodged in a pocket in the stone, she let out a sigh of relief.
Sweating and gasping, she climbed to the hiding place. She sent a wary glance at the other section of the tunnel where Angelo would enter and prayed that she’d be on her way again before he showed up. She flicked off her light and waited in darkness. A light flashed on the wall and a shadowy man appeared below her. She lifted the boulder over her head and thrust it downward onto the man’s head. He cried out and crumpled to the ground. His flashlight rolled toward him and highlighted the blood trickling down his young face. Oh, my God. Cousin Erik! What had she done?
****
Nick flashed his light in a sweeping motion as they headed deeper into the tunnel. His heartbeat speeded when he found fresh boot prints on the dusty floor. “They went this way,” he told Alicia. “I’m sure of it.” He aimed his beam on the muddle of prints. “It looks like they struggled.”
“Sara Jane’s a fighter,” Alicia said. “I’ll bet she got away.”
“But for how long? Angelo’s temper and Sara Jane’s never-knuckle-under policy is an explosive mix. We have to find them fast before Angelo decides that catching her alive is just too damn much trouble.”
****
Sara Jane jumped from the safety of the ledge and crouched beside her cousin. Before she could find a pulse, stones crunched and she raised her gaze and found herself looking into the barrel of Angelo’s gun. Her mind raced. Angelo had been in darkness long enough to be briefly blinded by it. She flashed the heavy beam of her flashlight into his eyes. He covered his face with one hand and backed up a step. She grabbed Erik’s gun from his holster and fired.
****
Nick froze at the sound of a gunshot, followed immediately by a second shot. Sara Jane wasn’t armed—Angelo was shooting at her! He had to get to Sara Jane. Alicia raced behind him, her lantern adding light to his. His heart hammered. Sara Jane, hang on, I’m coming. Lord, let her be alive.
Alicia screamed. Nick whirled as she fell forward and her clear shriek muted to a hollow echo. He rushed to the fissure as the light from the lantern she carried faded and disappeared.
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Oh, dear God. Why hadn’t he held onto her? Unable to breathe and fearing the worst, he flashed the beam into the hole. Instead of black nothingness, he saw Alicia dangling from the opposite wall, peddling her feet against the rough stone surface, her fingers clawing the rim.
“Nick, help me!”
“I’m here.” Hearing the thread of fear in his own voice, Nick deepened his tone and shouted. “Hang on.”
A third gunshot rang out. His heart skipped a beat, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off Alicia. He felt trapped. Everything within him wanted to leave her and race ahead into the darkness to Sara Jane. Rocks trickled into the hole with no sound of ever hitting bottom. He propped his flashlight in a vee of rocks, beam into the hole, and dropped down on his stomach. Sweating, he clasped Alicia’s damp wrists and pulled.
“I’m caught,” she cried.
Holding onto Alicia with one hand, he yanked, ripped the caught looped fringe, then reached down and closed his right hand over her other wrist. Sweating and tugging, he finally drew her up to safety.
She threw her arms around his neck. “Thanks, pardner, thought I was a goner.” Her words had her usual gutsy lilt, but the tremor in her voice was unmistakable.
He roughly untangled himself from her trembling body and grabbed her arm. “Let’s go. We have to get to Sara Jane! And this time watch your step.”
****
Sara Jane kicked Angelo’s gun away and stared down at him. Blood oozed from the hole between his eyes. She expected to feel triumphant and filled with her own power—she had proven she could take care of herself. Instead of feeling elated, bile rose in her throat. Her first shot had been to the right shoulder. But when he returned fire, missing her head by inches, it was either him or her.
She cocked her gun and stooped carefully and checked for a pulse—none. She’d killed a man. How would she ever live with that?
Erik moaned and she forced herself to her feet and went to him. His pulse-rate was strong, steady. At least she hadn’t killed her cousin. She grabbed the first aid kit from his backpack and drew his head onto her lap. She waved the smelling salts under his nose. When his eyes shot open she said, “Erik, I’m so sorry.”
She darted glances at the tunnels. Angelo was dead, but what about his men? Had Nick managed to capture them? She refused to consider the outcome if he had failed. At the sound of boot steps, she tensed and looked up into a bruised and battered face—a face that was the handsomest she’d ever seen in spite of the fact that one of his eyes was swollen almost closed and his lips were cut and bloody. “Nick!”
Alicia was right behind him. Sara Jane couldn’t miss that they were holding hands, and Alicia was beaming. Sara Jane swallowed hard. “You’re alive!” She squealed. “Thank God!”
“We heard gunshots and…” Nick’s voice thickened with emotion.
Alicia laughed. “Shoulda known you’d be able to take care of yourself—you’ve never really needed anyone.”
Sara Jane frowned. Maybe she’d given that impression, but she knew now that she’d always needed her family—and now she needed Nick, too. But she also needed respect for the woman she had become. She especially needed her dad to trust her judgment more than he did. If he’d trusted her more, she wouldn’t have had to resort to reckless acts to prove she could take care of herself. It was ironic—it was probably her recklessness that made him treat her like a child. Suddenly she felt so young, so in need of comfort. She stared at Nick, longing to be in his arms.
Alicia let go of his hand and dropped to her knees beside Sara Jane, her eyes wide. “Saints above, what happened to my baby brother?”
Erik rubbed his head. “Sara Jane clobbered me!”
Nick stood over Angelo’s body. His gaze met Sara Jane’s. “You do this, too?”
“I gave him a warning,” she said softly. “He chose his time to die.”
Erik tried to sit up. Confusion clouded his eyes. “Alicia!” he said as though it just came to him who she was. “How did you get here?”
“Long story. What about you?”
“I had a hunch about Sara Jane.” He gently touched the bloody gash on his crown. “And this is the thanks I get for worrying about her. Shoulda known better. She has always had to come out on top, even as a kid. Miss tough britches. Fight to the death, that’s her in a nutshell.”
Dad and Uncle Luke charged onto the scene, guns drawn. Dad stopped and stared at the battered group. Disbelief, then relief flooded his face. After one more sweeping gaze he strode in wide steps to Nick and hugged him fiercely. “You saved our girls. I knew I could count on you.”
Uncle Luke hesitated, then joined the embrace, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Whatever I have ya hanker for, pardner, it’s yours,” he told Nick.
Even Alicia? Sara Jane wondered, feeling on the outside again. She watched the men hugging like blamed idiots. Damn Dad and Uncle Luke, too. They hadn’t even considered that she’d saved herself.
Chapter Ten
Nick stepped back from the Ryan brothers’ embrace of unearned gratitude. He had to set them straight. “Matt, Luke, you need to know that I didn’t save this amazing young lady. Sara Jane rescued Alicia…and then she saved herself.”
For a moment no one spoke. “Guess I underestimated you, honey,” Matt said.
Sara Jane shrugged and laughed without humor. “What can I say? I’m a Ryan.”
“Hey,” Alicia cut in with her twangy drawl. “Ryan-folks ain’t the only heroes. Y’all need to give Nick credit. He cut the odds against us. And le’me tell you, this man has the emotional control of a robot.” She smiled up at him. “Most men would have raced after Angelo when he grabbed Sara Jane, hell bent on getting her back, but Nick stayed with me, made sure I was safe, and hog-tied the other kidnappers first.”
Nick winced. “I just did what I was trained to do.” Later when he got Sara Jane alone he would tell her what a tough call it was to secure the prisoners when everything in him wanted to race after her, but now he had to divert the attention from himself. “Alicia is another amazing Ryan. She’s courageous and comes through when the chips are down.” Nick watched Sara Jane lower her gaze. Oh, damn. He’d only made things worse. He had to let her know how proud he was of her. “But it was Sara Jane who took out the man I hope proves to be the Honey Killer.”
Matt sighed and looked down at Angelo’s body. “Forget that. This scum only copied the Honey Killer’s MO to mess with my mind. I got word from the Bureau. They found another body early this morning in San Antonio. The real Honey Killer is still out there.”
Nick’s gut tightened. He knew what that meant—his hell wasn’t over. But he’d deal with that later. Right now it was Sara Jane who worried him. She kept rubbing her head. All anger had left her eyes and she kept blinking as though she couldn’t focus. He inspected the cuts and bruises on her battered face. The darkened lump on her forehead especially concerned him.
He tried to catch her gaze, but she turned her attention to Erik. When her cousin rose and staggered, she shot to her feet and steadied him. As Alicia took his other arm, he let go of Sara Jane and hugged Alicia fiercely. The sight of her brother hugging her rocked Nick to the core. His throat constricted. Had he ever hugged his sister like that—had he ever let Shirl know how much he’d cared? And now it was too late…
Sara Jane stood still, looking abandoned, then swayed and braced herself on the wall. Nick pushed down the emotion tearing at his gut and took two wide steps and drew her into his arms. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just fine.”
She pushed on Nick’s biceps, but he clung to her. He didn’t believe her assurance in spite of the warmth of life that pulsed through her firm body. Suddenly, Sara Jane moaned and slumped against him. He eased her to the ground and someone handed him smelling salts. When that failed to revive her, he called her name over and over, begging her to speak to him. Her lashes didn’t even flutter. He lifted her into his arms. “We have to get her to a doctor!”
/> She remained unconscious as Matt led them out of the darkness and flew them in his helicopter to the nearest hospital for X-rays. A doctor in emergency examined Sara Jane.
“She’ll be okay, won’t she?” Nick asked.
The doctor lightly touched the lump on her forehead. “We’ll know more after X-rays.” He turned to a burly orderly. “Wheel her to radiology.”
“I want to go with her,” Nick said.
“Only staff is allowed,” the orderly said as he pushed Sara Jane’s still body through the blue double doors.
Nick considered flashing his badge, but throwing his weight around might delay treatment. He choked down his frustration and joined Matt and Luke as they paced the waiting room. Nick had seen Alicia in another cubicle being treated for minor injuries and dehydration.
“Any news?” Luke asked.
“Nothing on Sara Jane yet. The doctor ordered an X-ray. Alicia’s orderly said she’ll be released soon.” Nick had noticed that Alicia was quieter than usual, but he chalked that up to exhaustion.
With nothing left to say the men went back to pacing in silence. Nick glanced at the clock on the wall several times. Time dragged. At the sound of footsteps, his gaze shot up. He sighed in disappointment. It was only Amber and Molly bringing coffee from the vending machine.
Molly handed Nick a cup. “Any word yet,” she asked, concern in her green eyes.
Before Nick could answer, the doctor came out. “Sara Jane has a concussion,” he said. “The first forty-eight hours are critical, and she needs to be watched. After that, her memory might be foggy, but with a few days of bedrest she should be fine.”
Nick locked in on the word fine—he would make sure she was.
****
Forty-eight hours later, Sara Jane awoke to the smell of bacon. Slowly her unfocused gaze cleared and she saw Nick standing beside her bed with a big smile on his face. He was the most gorgeous sight she had ever seen, black eye, facial cuts, and all. He extended the tray in his hands toward her.
