by Joan Swan
How much stress was too much? At what point did a person break and do the unthinkable?
She squeezed her eyes shut and managed to roll onto her side, then paused there to catch her breath. “I’m not ...” Every word was like a mini-bomb exploding in her brain. “I’m not one of them. But they’re coming. They’re ... looking for you. What did you do to her? Is she unconscious?”
Tara pulled Kat closer to her chest and cast a frightened look toward the front door as if someone would come bursting through any second. Alyssa wished she’d stuck with Teague’s three minutes instead of pushing for five.
“No, she’s sleeping,” Tara said, as if incensed at the insinuation she could have hurt Kat. “A little Benadryl always helps her sleep. She’s been so upset. All she wants is to go home. She doesn’t understand that we can’t go home anymore.”
“But you can, Tara. You can take her home. I’m here with Teague.” Alyssa pushed all the way over to her stomach and pressed her palms against the carpet, getting her knees under her. “He’ll keep you both safe from Vasser. He loves her so much. Don’t take her from him. She’s all he has.”
“She’s all I have.” Tara’s voice came out harsh and bitter. “She’s all I’ll ever have. He was going to marry that girl. He was going to take Kat away. I tried to talk to her. Tried to reason. But she didn’t understand. She wouldn’t listen. It was just an accident. She tripped. Fell and hit her head on a table. An accident. But they said I’d go to prison. Said I’d never see Kat again.”
“Vasser says anything he has to say to get people to do what he wants.” Alyssa’s head throbbed. Her stomach swirled. “You won’t go to prison. You’re right, it was an accident. Teague knows you love Kat. He would never take her away from you.”
“I’m not taking that chance.” Tara leaned down and kissed Kat’s forehead, the sugar voice returning. “No one’s going to take my Katrina, are they, baby?”
She started for the door. Alyssa pushed off her hands and knees and took one desperate lunge. “Tara, wait!”
Alyssa’s hand locked around Tara’s ankle and the other woman stumbled, hit the door frame and cried out. She stumbled, dropped to the floor and immediately scuttled out of sight.
“What the hell is taking so long?”
Teague pried his gaze from the house and looked at the dashboard clock. She’d been out there four minutes, yet it felt like she’d been gone an hour. But that probably had more to do with the way his thoughts kept drifting back to the decisions he’d have to make once Alyssa returned to the car.
The fact was, they had different priorities. No matter how he twisted things, he came back to the same bottom line—he couldn’t see how he could keep Kat and Alyssa and his freedom. He’d have to sacrifice something.
He lifted his gaze from the dash to scan the street again. Movement near the house caught his eye. His heart lifted for a split second, until he realized it wasn’t Alyssa coming back to him. It was someone else, moving toward the house. A man. Disappearing alongside.
Fear zipped up Teague’s spine and spiked the hair on his neck. “Sonofabitch.”
Every muscle contracted. Flexed. Pumped into action. He shoved the car door open. Hit the ground running. How had he found them so fast? How would Teague keep him away from Alyssa, Kat and Tara? Questions, tactics, worst-case scenarios raced for the trophy like thoroughbreds at the Kentucky Derby.
Following Alyssa’s path toward the rear of the house, Teague held the gun tight to his thigh. The small detached garage sat twenty feet away from the rear corner, one door askew on broken hinges, alongside a rusted propane tank overgrown with thick vines. The remainder of the yard was bordered by unkempt hedges and patchy grass.
With his shoulder pressed against the stucco wall, his heart beating hard and fast, Teague peered around the corner and down the length of the house.
Something hit the side of his head. Pain exploded. His brains scrambled, vision blackened. Before he could right himself, another blow hit his left kidney. He went down. Hit the grassy dirt on his knees. Fell to his side. A foot stomped on the wrist of his gun hand.
“Hello, there, Creek.” Vasser’s voice ricocheted through Teague’s head. “Let’s go inside and join the others.”
The others meant Kat was here. Alyssa and Kat were inside. Everything he wanted, everything he loved was in that house. Within reach. This one man was standing in his way.
A familiar desperation welled up from a primitive place inside Teague. A desperation that instilled men with superior strength, unimaginable stamina, terrifying brutality. One that drove men to fight to the death. A place he’d discovered in prison.
The sensation grew inside him until it overwhelmed him. Dominated him.
And it raged.
He dropped the gun and grabbed Vasser’s leg. Using the limb as leverage, Teague coiled his stomach muscles, pulled both legs back and kicked out, slamming Vasser in the sternum. The other man’s air wheezed out of his lungs. He stumbled backwards, arms flailing. His spine hit the side of the house, and his gun discharged.
The bullet pinged a decorative metal sun hanging on the side of the garage. The huge hunk of metal fell, hit the top of the propane tank and bounced off with another loud clank as it landed. An instant later, a high-pitched, angry hisssssss signaled the break of the gas line and a thirty-foot high-pressure stream of volatile propane shot from the two-hundred gallon tank.
A fireman’s worst nightmare.
Teague popped to his feet and maneuvered for his next attack. If Vasser took another shot, he would be instant toast. And most likely Teague would be, too.
He charged Vasser again, driving his head into the other man’s chest. Teague grabbed Vasser’s gun hand and slammed it against the house. The crack of bone sounded in Teague’s ear, followed by Vasser’s howl and the plunk of the gun on dirt.
The propane fumes invaded Teague’s nose, his throat, his lungs. His head felt as if it would spin off his neck. He straightened away from Vasser, searching the ground for the weapon while the vertigo seemed to whirl him three-hundred-and-sixty miles an hour.
His stomach pitched, rode up his throat. The gun swirled in his vision. He kicked out, caught the handle and knocked it across the yard. But not far enough from the concentration of fumes.
Vasser pushed off the house and stumbled after it.
“Don’t!” Teague yelled. “You’re going to blow us up.”
Vasser dove for the gun, picked it up, and squeezed off another shot.
The weapon’s spark ignited the surrounding vapors in a ground-shaking explosion. Flames grabbed Vasser and feasted.
Teague could do nothing but watch as Vasser flailed and screamed, fire eating at his clothes, his skin, his muscle, his bone. He stumbled, turned, and swatted. The propane followed, a relentless, ravenous predator until the man’s charred remains hit the back of the house and slumped to the ground. One feast over, the fire lost interest in devouring Vasser and started in on wood.
The vile scent of seared human flesh reached down Teague’s throat and gripped his stomach. He pressed his hands to his knees, gagged, and dry heaved.
His gaze landed on the gun lying on the ground. He swooped down, grabbed it. Pushed it into his jeans and forced his feet toward the house.
Alyssa couldn’t see anything but black. She couldn’t hear anything but an incessant drone. And she couldn’t breathe.
Orange flames snaked along the junction of wall and ceiling.
Tara. Fight. Fire. Kat. Oh, God, Kat.
She rolled to her hands and knees, wheezed smoke into her lungs, and slid her hands over the floor, searching blindly.
The ringing in her ears dimmed, immediately replaced by the roar of fire. Glass burst nearby, spraying Alyssa with razor-sharp debris. Light speared the room, illuminating the solid gray clouds of smoke spilling out the new opening. A trickle of flames devoured the oxygen, then exploded across the ceiling.
She pried her gaze away from the undulatin
g, consuming, orange river and peered past the tears pouring from her eyes. “Kat!”
As soon as the word was out of her mouth, Alyssa’s lungs seized and she convulsed in a coughing fit. She continued to run her hands over the carpet in one direction. She found a wall. Doubled back to the opposite wall.
She kept moving. Touched something soft. Relief mixed with adrenaline and fear. Her hands worked fast, pulling at fabric, palpating limbs, bodies, until she distinguished Kat’s body from Tara’s. Her fingers immediately pressed against the little girl’s neck and found a pulse, regular and strong.
By the time she hefted the unconscious girl into her arms, panic had taken root. Using the wall for support, Alyssa pushed up and turned toward the door, only to find a curtain of fire. She wrapped the blanket tightly around Kat and drew one end over her own head like a tent, then dropped to her knees. With one hand on the floor, one arm around Kat, she crawled beneath the flames and into a hallway. Her side burned from injury and exertion. Lungs ached from searching for every molecule of oxygen. Head throbbed from Tara’s attack.
She pushed herself toward the next doorway. Assessed the distance to an exit and found a huge hole in the front of the house where the roof had caved in. A hundred yards of burning building stood between her and safety.
“Alyssa!” Teague’s voice drifted to her above the howl of flames and crack of wood. “Over here. This way.”
She peered from under the blanket. Across a trench of whipping, snapping flames, Teague stood waving frantically. He was covered in soot, his clothes torn.
“Run,” he yelled. “Bundle and run. I’ll catch you.”
Christ. He couldn’t be serious.
You need to trust me.
Crap. She hated it when her own words came back to haunt her.
Overhead a loud crack signaled a beam giving way.
TWENTY-FOUR
Before Teague could reach her, before she cleared the danger zone, the beam gave. A massive sheet of flaming drywall fell, crushing Alyssa and Kat right in front of his eyes.
“No!” Teague didn’t think, only reacted. He dove into the burning mass, chucking fiery boards and debris until he cleared a space. If he burned, he didn’t feel it. He felt nothing but the utter torment of losing Alyssa and Kat.
Water showered him, the first realization that firefighters were on scene. He’d blocked everything else out. He worked, throwing tiles, kicking debris, heaving wall sections.
When he peeled back a piece of smoldering sheetrock and saw the familiar blanket, a sob rumbled up his throat.
Please be alive.
You have to be alive.
You both have to be alive.
His stomach felt like a feather in a storm, twirling, spinning.
Teague reached down to grab whatever part of Alyssa he could reach. The flooring cracked, swallowing Teague’s foot. He fell back, struggling to regain traction. By then, Alyssa was moving. Yes. She was alive. Teague reached for her.
“I’m here.” He grabbed her upper arm and dragged her partially from the rubble.
“Take her.” Alyssa pushed the soot-covered, swaddled bundle toward him. “She’s okay. Take her.”
Teague lifted Kat from Alyssa and held her to him with one arm, grabbing Alyssa’s with the other. Smoke swirled around them. Flames snapped and snarled.
Another set of hands delved into the pit and grabbed Alyssa’s other arm. Teague jerked his head around to find a familiar sight: a firefighter staring at him through the Plexiglas facing of a breathing apparatus.
“Get the kid out.” The firefighter’s voice came as a muffled yell from behind the mask. “This place is gonna go.”
Which told Teague he had seconds before the entire structure collapsed. Teague lifted Kat from his chest and thrust her at the firefighter. “You take her. I’ve got this one.”
The man plucked Kat from Teague and retreated. Teague leaned down, grasped Alyssa’s arms with both hands and lifted her from the pit. He turned toward the exit as he tugged one arm up and around his shoulders and dragged Alyssa across the debris and out onto the grass.
In the street, he spotted the firefighter, still holding Kat, blankets unwrapped to display his baby unconscious, while a paramedic pressed a stethoscope to her chest.
“She’s alive.” Alyssa’s assurance instantly calmed him. “She’s not hurt. I think she’s just drugged.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, only wanting one answer.
Alyssa coughed, then nodded, wiping the black film from her eyes. “Her pulse is strong.”
Thank you.
More sirens pierced the fire’s turbulence. Teague surveyed the vehicles on the scene: fire trucks, battalion chief, emergency medical. There was only one group who hadn’t shown up yet: cops.
“You should go.” Alyssa’s voice refocused him. “Get out of here before they come.”
No. He wasn’t leaving without Kat. He wasn’t leaving without Alyssa. He wasn’t willing to make the sacrifice he’d known all along he’d have to make.
He led Alyssa to the ambulance just as the paramedic looked up at them and removed the stethoscope from Kat’s chest. Another EMT crawled out of the rig with an oxygen mask. “This will help.”
That might help, but Teague knew what Kat really needed, something only he could provide. He drew close, wiped his hands on his jeans and laid his palm over the top of Kat’s head like a cap. Eyes closed, head bowed, he focused.
He pooled his fear and anxiety, blended it with all the love he had for his daughter and Alyssa and directed all the emotion into his touch. In his mind’s eye, a soothing, healing heat glowed in the center of Kat’s chest. Slowly, he added strength to his visualization, growing the energy until it filled Kat’s body.
“She’s coming around.” The paramedic’s voice brought Teague’s eyes open.
Kat had gone from sooty pale and limp to sooty pink and squirmy. She hadn’t opened her eyes, but was pushing at the mask over her nose and mouth.
The firefighter still holding Kat turned toward them and, as if instinctively laying the child in her mother’s arms, offered Kat to Alyssa. “You got her?”
Alyssa nodded and took possession of Kat. The sight shifted something inside Teague. They looked so right together. So natural. Alyssa had risked her life for Kat. For him.
“Tara.” The name popped out of his mouth almost sooner than it entered his mind. He swung toward the house. “Tara’s still inside.”
He thought of Seth, of how dedicated he’d been to Kat, what a solid friend he’d been to Teague, and started toward the burning house.
“You’re not going back in there.”
A hand fell on his shoulder. Teague turned to find himself facing a cop. His stomach dropped.
A black Lincoln Towncar pulled up in a cloud of dust, drawing his gaze past the cop. A petite, blond woman emerged from the back, four large men clustering around her, all headed directly for Teague.
Dargan. He recognized her from the photographs.
Her eyes, a light, icy blue, chilled him from yards away. The freeze started at his shoulders and slid down. Spine, chest, belly, limbs. He could have been standing naked in a snowdrift.
And as if he could visualize his future, Teague saw himself getting into that Lincoln and never getting out alive. A shiver rocked his upper body.
He moved close to Alyssa and Kat, put his arm around Alyssa’s waist from behind and tilted his chin so his mouth was right next to her ear. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. Wanted to tell her he loved her. But there was no point. They had no future.
“Arrest him.” Dargan’s curt voice cut through the chaos. “That’s Teague Creek. Arrest him, now.”
The cop standing near him went into immediate action, drawing his weapon and pointing it at Teague. “Sir, step away from the woman and child.”
“Teague?” Alyssa’s voice wavered.
“Take care of Ka ...” His voice broke on Kat’s name. Tears pushed at the backs of his eyes
. “Make sure she gets to Luke. Call Mitch the second this is over. You’ll be okay. They won’t take you or Kat with so many people watching.”
“I said, arrest him!” Dargan barked.
Half a dozen dark blue uniforms closed in around them. Half a dozen weapons pointed at him. And Alyssa. And his daughter.
“Do it now, Creek,” the officer behind him said, clearly pushed by the little blond bitch.
Teague did what he swore he’d never do when he’d walked out of prison. He released Alyssa, lifted his hands above his head and stepped back, putting as much room as possible between them before the cops took him down.
He didn’t pay attention to the who, what or where of the takedown, but gave himself over to it. Resisting would only cause pain and injury. There was already enough of that to go around.
One cop yanked the weapon from his jeans. Another shouted orders. It didn’t matter that Teague followed them to the letter, he still got the royal treatment. A shove to his back, a knee to his spine, a wrench of his arm, his face scraped in the dirt. Yeah. This was familiar. Pain. Shame. Control. So familiar, part of him believed it was what he deserved. That prison was where he belonged.
He kept his eyes fixed on the ground as the cuffs closed around his wrists. Kept his mind averted from all he was losing, where he was headed.
Another vehicle thundered close and came to a quick stop. The burn of rubber met Teague’s nose. The screech of a heavy metal door scraped his ears, followed by the clomp of boots and the clack of weapons.
“Stand down, Director Dargan.” An authoritative male voice joined the rush of fire hoses, sirens and shouts of working firefighters. “Senior Special Agent Marshall, A.T.F. We’ve been authorized to take control of this scene and this prisoner.”
