Passion to Protect

by Colleen Thompson

  CALL SHERIFF. 2 MEN IN STUDY AFTER MONEY. OTHER ESCAPED CONS?

  As soon as he hit Send he picked up the gun and moved back toward the study.

  “Time to head upstairs, then,” the deep-voiced man told his partner. “Might be the old man stashed it upstairs. Maybe in his bedroom. Mac’s ex’ll know.”

  The words chilled Jake to the marrow. I’ll shoot both of you dead before you take your first step up that staircase.

  “What if she’s got a gun?” the Mexican asked.

  “We catch her while she’s sleeping, she won’t have time to do a thing.”

  “You’re one crazy gringo.”

  “Crazy smart, ’cause you can bet your ass she knows something. If the old man had a safe, she’ll have the combination.”

  “What if she won’t tell us?”

  “She’ll tell us quick enough,” the deep-voiced man said darkly. “All I have to do is shove my gun in her face.”

  “I thought you said you’d never hurt no woman.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before the man answered. “McCleary promised us a split. He promised. Besides, you know damn well that if they catch us, they won’t bother takin’ us back in. They’ll shoot us down like damned dogs, so we got nothing to lose.”

  “Well, here’s what I know, hombre. I been eight years in that hellhole, and I could seriously use a woman. So if you want somebody to put the fear of Jesús in her—and a little somethin’ extra—I’m volunteerin’ for the job.”

  Jake had heard enough. He surged forward, his gun in hand as he put his faith in his prosthesis and kicked the door wide open. Harnessing his anger, he ordered, “Drop your guns and raise your hands, or both of you are dead men!”

  With the element of surprise on his side, his gambit should have worked. It might have, except he realized he’d made one crucial error.

  A mistake that had him backpedaling and then diving for cover.

  Chapter 10

  Seconds after Liane received the text from Jake, she paced the room as she phoned for help, her fingers fumbling so badly that she had to redial twice.

  Finally she was rewarded with a female voice saying, “Cascade County 9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

  Panic throbbing in her chest, she whispered urgently, “There are strangers downstairs—inside my house! Send a deputy, please. I’m upstairs with my two kids.”

  “If you can give me your location,” the dispatcher told her, “I’ll send units out right away.”

  As Liane rattled off the address, then added her cell phone number in case they were cut off, she dragged her gaze from the locked bedroom door, where the dog stood whining, and saw that Cody was awake. His huge brown eyes were focused on her, then moved to the shotgun she was holding. She hurried over to him, knowing he must be remembering his grandfather’s murder—and the night his father had tracked them down and kicked in the door to their hotel room. The night he’d shot her down.

  This time, she vowed silently, the story’s going to have a different ending. This time, if she was threatened, she had something a lot stronger than tears and pleas on her side.

  For her children’s sake, she would find the courage to pull the trigger. For her father’s, she would pull a second time—blasting the intruders with both barrels.

  Kenzie, too, was stirring now, but before she could ask questions, Cody whispered something to her and took her hand in his.

  A loud bang from downstairs made all three of them jump. It was quickly followed by two others.

  “Jake...” Liane moaned, before begging the dispatcher, “Please hurry! There’s shooting, and my—my friend is down there.”

  Please, no, God, she prayed. Please don’t make me bury Jake, too.

  “Don’t hang up,” the dispatcher urged as Cody cried, “Where’s Mr. Jake?”

  Liane didn’t disconnect, but she laid the phone down and pulled her children closer, shifting the shotgun to her other hand to touch each frightened face in turn.

  They all flinched at the sound of angry voices downstairs, followed by another shot. A louder shout soon echoed up the stairwell. Liane quickly switched the gun back to her shooting hand.

  With a whine, the normally intrepid Misty gave up her role as fierce protector to tuck her tail between her legs and run back to the bed.

  “He’s hurting Mr. Jake!” Cody cried, as the whining dog tried to force her too-tall body underneath the bed frame. “We have to go help him.”

  Pulse throbbing in her throat, Liane said, “No, Cody. He wanted us to stay here.”

  But as both her children wept, her mind catapulted back to last time. Though Kenzie had been too young to remember, her son knew, as she did, that huddling in the darkness and waiting like mice for help had not been enough to guarantee their safety. And that had been in Las Vegas, where the police had been less than ten minutes away, not the eternity it might take a deputy to get here.

  Agony exploded low in her abdomen, the ghost of the gunshot that had cost her so much. Even worse than the resurrected pain was the memory of how utterly helpless she had been to protect her children that night. How could she, when she couldn’t even keep herself safe?

  But I didn’t have a shotgun then. And I didn’t have the courage.

  Her father had, but he was dead now, taken from her by the same man who had robbed her of so much. Jake, too, had insisted on protecting her and her kids, and for all she knew he might be dead or dying, too, while she sat here doing nothing to help either of them, nothing to keep the violence from coming up the stairs and making its way into this room.

  She looked down at Cody, seeing him through tears. “I need you to keep Misty here and lock the door behind me. Then you need to take Kenzie and hide in the closet, way in the back behind the clothes. Keep my phone and keep talking to the dispatcher. Anything she tells you to do, you do.”

  “I’m scared, Mommy,” Kenzie said, reaching to clutch Liane around the waist. “Don’t go.”

  Outside, wind-driven sheets of rain heightened their assault against the cabin’s weathered exterior, as if the storm meant to wash away even the memory of the drought.

  “It’s okay, baby. I promise I’ll be right back,” Liane said soothingly, despite her mounting fear that she was making the wrong decision. But in the back of her mind she remembered how, on that night in Las Vegas, Mac had spent his fury on her, ignoring the children altogether. Though she had every intention of coming out of this alive, she would die willingly if that would spare her kids.

  It was Cody who pulled his sister away. “Shh. You have to listen,” he told her, sounding braver and more grown up than any eight-year-old should ever have to be.

  Liane had never been prouder of both of them in her life.

  “Don’t open this door for anybody,” she told them. “Nobody except me or Mr. Jake or a deputy.”

  While Kenzie sobbed, Cody nodded gravely and draped his arm around his sister’s shoulder.

  “I love you both,” Liane told them, hating herself for leaving them, but hating even more the idea of waiting up here passively and making the room where she was holed up with her children ground zero in this fight. “Now, don’t forget to lock up.”

  Because whatever had to happen, she decided, she was going to make sure it took place downstairs. She was going to do whatever it took to get the kids, herself and the man who had gone downstairs to protect them out of this alive.

  * * *

  Jake’s thighs were cramping as he squatted behind the kitchen counter, but he didn’t dare stretch.

  Though he had meant to shock the two men as they argued, he had been the one surprised by the presence of a silent third person, a hook-nosed man with a scowl engraved into his long face.

  And he was holding a revolver and covering the study
door.

  Both of them had fired so quickly that Jake had no idea who had pulled the trigger first. Or how he’d survived to get off a second shot even as he leaped to one side and scrambled to safety.

  His hearing sharpened by adrenaline, he made out, beyond the pelleting rain, a heavy thud that might have been the gunman’s body falling. It was quickly followed by the rushing of two men leaving the room, one moving to the left, the other right.

  Coming from a lit room into darkness, they would be temporarily blinded as their eyes adjusted, giving him a brief advantage. But now, with each rumble of thunder, lightning shone through the big windows, leveling the playing field.

  “We’ve got you in our sights, so drop the gun and we’ll spare the woman and her two brats,” a deep voice boomed from his left. “Raise your hands and give up now, and you got my word we won’t even touch her.”

  Jake knew better than to trust any promise made by an escaped fugitive intent on stealing a fortune. He was willing to bet the man was a liar, too. His instincts told him the guy had no idea where he was.

  The intruder’s words helped Jake pinpoint his location, but he couldn’t get a clear shot into the living room without breaking cover, and he had no idea where the Mexican had gone.

  Out the back door, Jake prayed, hoping the man valued his own survival more than money. But now that he had taken out one of their number—at least he prayed he had—the remaining cons might be too enraged to bail. And the Mexican might be too eager for a chance at the rape he’d threatened earlier. I’ll be damned if I let you lay a finger on Liane.

  The wind outside must have shifted, flinging raindrops hard as pennies into the glass. But Jake made out another sound behind him—the quiet sound of footsteps coming from behind.

  Pulse thundering in his ears, he whipped around to face the threat.

  As fast as he was, he was barely in time to see the muzzle flash.

  Chapter 11

  When the phone first started ringing, Sheriff Harry Wallace was having the dream again, the one where he was struggling out of the thick underbrush where he had been lost. Struggling from the shadows into bright light, only to encounter an undiscovered inland sea. Hot and breathless from his hike, he wanted more than anything to soak his tired feet, but the water churned and swirled, its slashing waves brown, and he knew instinctively that it was far too salty too drink. So salty, in fact, that it had poisoned every living thing that once made a home in and around it.

  Still, his sore feet and his parched throat propelled him forward, no matter how hard he fought to stop himself.

  Deke Mason’s hand was just emerging from the waves and reaching toward him—pointing at him—when he felt his wife, Myrtle, shaking him awake. Starting upright, he stared at the empty bed beside him—empty since her death six months before.

  She might be gone, as Deke was, but Myrtle was never truly absent. Even now, an echo of her voice urged, “Hurry up and get that, will you?”

  Stomach burning, he snatched up the receiver and glanced at the clock. Unable to make out the fuzzy numbers, he fumbled for his glasses, noticing the heavy patter of the long-overdue rain. But it was the thunder and the wind that bothered him most, reminding him too sharply of the night his oldest friend had died.

  “Wallace here,” he huffed into the receiver.

  “I don’t know what I did, Uncle Harry,” his grandniece wailed. “I must’ve hit the wrong button, and now I’ve cut him off! I’ve got a deputy heading out now, but what if it’s too late?”

  Harry sighed and rubbed his sternum, which still burned with the aftermath of the take-out burger he’d picked up on the way home. He should have known that punishing Camille by forcing her to work the night shift in dispatch would only come back to haunt him. Should have guessed that somehow she would manage to foul things up there, too.

  “Cut who off?” he demanded as the clock came into focus. Two forty-three.

  “The little Mason boy,” Camille said. “He was hiding in the closet while his mother—”

  “Cody Mason? What the hell is going on?”

  “I tried to call him back, but—”

  “Damn it, Camille,” he said, already groping for his clothing. “Just explain from the beginning.”

  A ghost woven out of memory, his wife emerged from the pillows to sit up and stare at him—possibly out of concern that he was going to stir the whole family into a state by strangling his sister’s granddaughter, if Camille’s incompetence didn’t end up giving him a stroke first.

  As Camille filled him in on Liane’s call, he switched on the lamp and Myrtle vanished. “Who’s en route?” he asked.

  “Winslow, sir. But he’s still fifteen or twenty minutes out. He was all the way over in—”

  “Who else?” he asked, reaching for his pants.

  “That’s it for now. Jackson’s dealing with a domestic—that horrible Tyler Blake’s gone and fallen off the wagon and—”

  “I don’t give a damn about that drunk. Get me every unit we have out there, and I’m heading that way, too.”

  From this side of Mill Falls, he might even beat his own men out there. But no matter how fast he drove, he was terrified that he wouldn’t be in time.

  * * *

  Liane had been two steps down the staircase when she thought of Cody’s bedroom and how ridiculous her father had thought she was for purchasing an emergency escape ladder to give the family an alternate escape route just in case.

  She’d been imagining a house fire, not a break-in, when she’d bought it in response to her counselor’s urging to deal proactively with any realistic terrors. But as she stood, poised to descend into the darkness, she couldn’t move for worrying that whoever was down there would be expecting her to come this way.

  So don’t, then, she told herself, turning and racing for Cody’s bedroom, then finding the package that contained the rope ladder and the red metal “arms” that grasped the sill. After tearing off her bulky robe, she shoved Cody’s toy box out of the way and opened the window. A gust of wind sprayed her with cold rain that soaked through the thin cotton of her pajamas.

  She told herself it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered except climbing down safely. Once outside, she could round the house and find or force her way inside.

  Whatever you do, hurry! her own panicked voice screamed inside her head. Hurry before they kill Jake—or come upstairs for the children!

  After positioning the red metal arms over the sill, she quickly stepped out of the window, though she felt awkwardly unbalanced with the shotgun under her arm.

  Too awkwardly, it turned out, or else she’d been in such a panic that she hadn’t correctly set the arms. Whatever the case, she’d barely started down into the wind and rain-whipped blackness when she found herself flipping backward.

  She cried out, her arms windmilling as her right leg slipped through and hooked a ladder rung, jerking her to a graceless stop as the shotgun plunked down on the pine needles below. When she could breathe again, she realized she was dangling upside down, at least ten feet above the ground.

  Her racing heart was stuffed somewhere in her throat. Would she fall and break her neck? Or had the intruders heard her? Paralyzed with terror, she cursed herself. She should have stayed back in the room like the little mouse she was.

  “No,” she said through gritted teeth as she grabbed another rung and fought to right herself. She hadn’t been wrong to try to save Jake, herself and, most of all, her kids.

  She would only be wrong if she gave up on saving the people she loved most in all the world.

  * * *

  Pain screamed along Jake’s upper right arm, but somehow he managed to squeeze the trigger twice before rising. Shoving the injury out of his mind, he raced from his now compromised position, desperate to evade whoever had come u
p behind him.

  Adrenaline gave him the strength to make his way back toward the staircase, that and his determination to buy Liane and the children enough time for the sheriff’s deputies to arrive, even at the cost of his own life.

  Fully expecting to be taken out at any moment, he clung to the deepest pools of shadow, crouching in frozen silence whenever lightning flickered and moving only when the room once more went dark. At some point he stopped hearing the rain and thunder, stopped noticing the pain, as his entire focus shrank down to the necessity of gaining another foot, a few more inches...a final chance to make his life count for something.

  Finally he reached a point where no more cover was available. Forced to creep past the huge picture window that looked out across the black expanse of forest, he could only pray that another flash would not betray him.

  He had nearly made it when the booming baritone finally broke the silence, and it came from far too close. “Drop the gun now or I pull this trigger. And believe me when I tell you, I don’t miss from this distance.”

  “You got him, Smash?” Jake recognized the heavily accented voice. “Damned cabrón almost took my head off with that last shot!”

  Footsteps approached, and then Jake felt the barrel of a gun jabbing into his back.

  “You gonna drop that weapon,” bellowed the deep-voiced man, “or am I gonna have to drop you?”

  Straightening his back, Jake let his .38 clatter to the floor as the pain in his arm reawakened. “Sheriff’s department’s on the way,” he warned the two men.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be dead before they ever get here. Unless you tell us where that money is, or make that woman of yours—”

  Jake’s eyes slammed shut reflexively as someone switched a light on. It must have been the Mexican, because an instant later he was shouting, “Mira! She’s outside!”

  A shattering boom followed as the window glass exploded. Jake instinctively twisted, desperate to reach his gun before the huge man behind him fired.