Playing to Win

by Becca Van

“We miss you, too, girlfriend.” Jaylynn came to her side, hooked her arm around Cindy’s, and gave her a hug. “However, we’re also glad that you’re finally getting the chance to follow your dream.”

  “We all are.” Vi smiled. “I love this town.”

  “I do, too,” Jaylynn said.

  “So do I.” Cindy sighed as they walked along the pavement. “Although I miss my mom and Erica, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

  “How are your mom and sister?” Vi asked.

  “They’re great. Mom’s found a great job. I’m so glad and happy that she took that course and now works in an office. Erica is loving the school she’s going to, and she said she even has friends.”

  “She didn’t have any here?” Jaylynn asked.

  “No, not really. She hung out with a couple of unpopular girls, but they never really clicked, and Erica felt as if they were treating her like a charity case, felt sorry for her because she was deaf.”

  “People can be so ignorant and narrow-minded,” Vi said angrily. “Just because someone has an impairment doesn’t mean they’re any different from anyone else.”

  “I know.” Cindy shrugged. “But you know how it is.”

  “Doesn’t make it right,” Jaylynn snarled.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Cindy had the best afternoon, catching up with Delta, Carly, Enya, Vi, and Jaylynn. Even Katie and Kiera popped in while they were having coffee in the diner’s kitchen. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed everyone, and now that she did, she vowed to come back more often.

  Tomorrow was Saturday, so she didn’t need to worry about taking another day off at Safe Haven, but come Monday, no matter what, she was going to start teaching her kids. She didn’t care what her men said, they could argue till they were blue in the face. She was going to work, and that was that.

  After leaving the diner, she decided to go see if one of the docs were free to see her. She wanted to stitches out of her chin and side. With everything that had been going on, she’d forgotten to make an appointment to get them removed. Now was a good a time as any. Glancing at her phone and seeing that she had just over an hour before the guys got home, she picked up her pace and walked to the clinic.

  Half an hour later, she was heading back to her car with a smile on her face. The sutures were gone, and while the scarring was still pink and tender and the one on her chin was clearly visible, she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she hadn’t been hurt worse and was still alive.

  She couldn’t wait to get back home and see her men.

  When she gazed at herself in the rearview mirror and saw the sparkle in her eyes, she couldn’t help smiling wider.

  Cindy had never been so happy in her life.

  * * * *

  Chester could hardly believe his luck, and he thought it was meant to be. He’d been sitting in the diner, eating a late lunch after scoping out the town when the three women had walked in. Obviously they were regulars or well-known from the way the others working there had greeted them. At first, the three women had sat in the next booth over. The two waitresses with names starting with a K, had started asking questions. When he heard the shelter being mentioned, he’d perked up but made sure to keep his head down so the women didn’t realize he’d been listening.

  When one of the bitches with the golden-blond hair had mentioned his son and daughter by name, he’d been filled with excited fury. Even though he hadn’t made any plans by working out how to get his kids and his slut of a wife back, he’d known this moment was too good to pass up. Instead of paying for his check when he’d finished eating, he’d ordered apple pie and ice cream for dessert and another coffee.

  One of the hardest things he’d had to do was take his time as if he didn’t have a care in the world while he waited for the gathering to break up. When the women had headed into the back of the diner, he’d been furious and worried that the woman he needed to use to get to his family would leave the back way.

  After scarfing down his pie, he’d dropped some money onto his table with enough to cover a small tip and headed to his truck. He’d sat behind his steering wheel, tapping it impatiently as he watched and waited.

  His patience had paid off when the woman who’d been talking about his family exited the diner. As he watched her walking down the street, he saw the bandage on her chin, but he didn’t really care about his idle curiosity.

  He’d almost started the ignition, intent on turning around to follow her, but he was glad he’d held off when she entered the doctor’s office down the block.

  Chester had been aware of people walking by giving him curious looks, but he’d ignored them as he pretended to be reading the map he’d spread over the steering wheel, hoping that they’d all think he was looking for his next destination and not take too much notice.

  Just over half an hour later, the bitch walked back along the street, and as soon as she got into the driver’s seat of a blue truck, he folded the map up, tossed onto the passenger seat, and put his seat belt on.

  Being careful about not getting too close to her and spooking her, he waited until she was half a mile ahead of him before checking his mirrors and pulling out onto the road.

  Excited anticipation fluttered in his belly as he drove behind her at a sedate pace. Just after the truck she was driving past the welcome sign, he pressed harder on the accelerator to breach the gap.

  He laughed as the distance between them lessened. He’d seen a couple of sheriff cars patrolling, but it seemed it was his lucky day. The cops must have already done their hours on this stretch of road because he’d passed them going the other way at the edge of town. He just hoped they didn’t have any reason to head back in this direction.

  Chester remembered the new estate he’d passed on his way into town and knew he only had a limited amount of time to make his move. If, as he suspected, she was heading toward that estate, he needed to take action now before it was too late.

  Pushing down again on the gas pedal, the gap quickly reduced until he was only yards away from the back of the cunt’s truck. With a harder press and a firm grip on the steering wheel, he rammed into her vehicle.

  Laughter bubbled up from his chest when her whole body jerked, her head whipping forward toward the steering wheel. Chester didn’t give her time to scream or react when he slammed into the back of the truck again. The back of the truck in front of him slid sideways, and he pressed his foot to the floor, pushing the other vehicle toward the side of the road. When it was side-on to him, he crashed into it as hard as he could, grinning with glee when it teetered on two wheels for a moment before it began to tip.

  Chester lifted his foot from the gas pedal and stomped on the brake, steering to keep his own truck from going off the road. As soon as he stopped, he was out of his truck and running toward the other one, which had come to rest on the passenger side ten yards off the road.

  When he was within reach, he grasped the driver’s side door handle and yanked it open. The woman was bleeding like a stuck pig from a cut under her chin and another across the middle of the forehead. She was also out cold, but she was still breathing.

  Grabbing hold of her shirt in a tight fist, he reached over her, released her seat belt, and then dragged her up from inside the vehicle. He grunted and sweated, not caring if he hurt her against the metal frame as he yanked her out of the overturned truck. Taking a couple of deep panting breaths, he lifted her up over his shoulder and ran back toward his own vehicle.

  Opening the back door, he dumped her on the seat, slammed the door shut, got back in behind the wheel, and took off.

  He had no idea where to take her so no one would hear her, but he didn’t care. Now that he had a pawn to use against his slut of a wife, there was no way she could refuse to get back with him.

  Chester was going to get his kids back, no matter what.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Fuck!” Grant snarled. “Where the fuck is she?”

  “I don�

�t know.” Jake ran his fingers through his hair. “She’s not answering her cell phone.”

  “Maybe we should head to town to look for her,” Curt suggested.

  Shane nodded and, without saying anything, headed toward the front door. Grant and his brothers followed. Just as Shane opened it, a sheriff’s car pulled into the driveway. Dante and Mica Donnybrook got out and met them at the bottom of the porch steps.

  Grant gritted his teeth and tried to calm his rapid breathing. From the serious looks on the deputies’ faces, something was dreadfully wrong.

  “What’s going on?” Jake asked.

  Dante cleared his throat. “We found your truck out on the main drag two miles outside the north side of town.”

  “You what?” Shane stepped forward. “Was there an accident? Where’s Cindy?”

  “She’s not here?” Mica asked.

  “No, she’s… What the fuck is going on?” Shane shouted.

  “Calm the fuck down, Shane,” Dante stated calmly. “We’re trying to work that out.”

  “Tell us everything,” Grant demanded.

  Mica shook his head but started to explain. “We’d just started our shift and heading out to set up the breathalyzer. We found Jake’s truck about ten yards off the road on its side. It looks as if it was rammed from behind and the side, but since there was no one around, no witnesses, we were only guessing. Wilder and his brothers, as well as Luke, are at the accident scene now, trying to determine what happened. Luke sent us here in case Cindy had come home.”

  “She’s not fucking here.” Curt threw his arms into the air. “We’ve been home all of fifteen minutes after reading the note she left us. We were getting worried and were just about to go looking for her. She went to the diner to visit her friends after your wife, Jaylynn, and Violet came to see her.”

  “Nash Sheffield already called Vi. His, Wilder’s, and Cree’s wife said that Cindy left the diner a couple of hours ago.”

  “Then where the fuck is she?” Grant roared.

  Grant felt as if he was about to lose his mind he was so worried for Cindy. Before he could start asking questions, the deputies’ radios squawked.

  “I need you both back out on the road. We think we know who we’re looking for,” Luke said.

  “Go ahead,” Mica replied.

  “The woman who owns the internet café saw a man sitting in a black truck for three-quarters of an hour. She thought he was acting suspiciously and took down his license plate.”

  Dante wrote the information on the back of his hand.

  “How do you know this guy is who we’re looking for?” Mica asked.

  “The skid marks on the road match truck tires. My gut is telling me we’re on the right track. I sent Brax and Ajay Rhodes to talk to Jodi, the owner of the internet café, to see if she has any more information. I’ve put an APB on the truck and am waiting for dispatch to send through the photo of the owner of the vehicle. Tell the Kenny brothers we have everyone on this. We’re not giving up until we’ve found Cindy.”

  “Roger that. We’re heading out. Over and out,” Mica said.

  “What do you want us to do?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t you dare tell us there’s nothing we can do,” Grant snarled.

  “Calm down, Grant.” Shane gripped his shoulder.

  “No. Our woman is missing and probably fucking hurt. Again. I’m not just gonna sit around here twiddling my fucking thumbs when we could be out looking for her.” Grant sucked in a breath when his voice cracked on the last word. His heart was beating fast, and he was having trouble breathing his throat was so constricted with fear, but he knew Shane was right. He needed to calm down and treat this like any other mission. If he didn’t, he wasn’t sure he’d survive. He was scared shitless, but not for himself. He was terrified that whoever had Cindy was going to hurt her and maybe even kill her.

  He was also pissed at himself and his brothers. They were supposed to have protected their woman from harm, but so far they’d done a piss-poor job of keeping her safe. Well, that was going to change and now. He and his brothers were going to find their woman and bring her back home where she belonged, and he was never going to let her out of his sight again.

  What concerned him more, though, was that none of them knew who had her or why.

  * * * *

  Jake glanced at Curt from the passenger seat of his truck. He and Curt were currently driving around Slick Rock county trying to find their woman and the fucker who’d run her off the road and then kidnapped her.

  While he was glad that Cindy hadn’t found the need to ask about borrowing his truck, right now, he wished she had. He shook his head because he didn’t think that would have changed things. He would have told her yes without a qualm.

  As they searched the roads, he tried to rack his brain and come up with why someone was gunning for Cindy, but he had nothing. From the way Curt was frowning, he was thinking about the same thing.

  Grant and Shane had taken off in Shane’s truck. They’d headed northwest, and he and Curt were heading northeast. So far they hadn’t spotted another vehicle, and he was becoming more and more frustrated as the minutes passed.

  Their poor Cindy had only managed to work one day at her job before she’d broken her wrist and now she’d been abducted. Who in the hell would want to kidnap a specialized teacher and why?

  And then it suddenly dawned on him. This wasn’t about her. It couldn’t be. This had to do with the shelter. Just as he was reaching for his cell phone clipped to his belt, it dinged, letting him know he had a message. After activating the screen and opening the message, he sucked in a breath as he stared at the picture of the man. He’d seen those eyes before when he’d seen two of the kids at Safe Haven. This had to be their father.

  Jake brought up his contact list and hit the call button. “Jake?” Mica answered.

  “I think I know who this guy is.”

  “What?” Curt whipped his gaze toward him.

  “Who?” Mica asked.

  “The father of two of the kids at Safe Haven.”

  “How do you know that?” Mica asked.

  “Brett and Belinda have their father’s eyes.”

  “Fuck! Okay, I’ll get back to you.”

  Curt slowed the truck, steered toward the side of the road, and put the vehicle in park. “Let me see.”

  Jake handed his brother the phone and knew he was right when Curt gasped. “We have to do something.”

  “Yeah, but what?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know. One thing I do know is we need to get to the shelter.”

  “The deputies and sheriffs, as well as Kat and Niki, will be upset with us if we scare those women and kids.”

  Curt shook his head. “We need to know for sure, Jake. If the asshole’s wife is at Safe Haven, she might be able to tell us how to deal with the fucker.”

  “Bastards like that get off on control, Curt. You know that. He’s a fucking abusive bully who thinks he’s a man by hurting those weaker than he is.”

  “You aren’t telling me something I don’t already know. I don’t want to scare the women and kids, but if we’re going to get our woman back, we need to do something.”

  “Let’s do this,” Curt said, checked his mirrors, hooked a U-turn, and headed toward Safe Haven.

  * * * *

  Cindy bit her lip to keep herself from groaning as she tried to take stock of her body. She ached all over, but it was her chin and forehead that hurt the worst. She could feel blood on her face and wondered if her skin was torn open again, but that was the least of her worries.

  She remembered a truck ramming her off the road and crashing, but everything after that was a blank. When she realized she was in a moving vehicle, she forced her eyes open and tried to blink the blurriness away. Quickly shutting them again, she breathed deeply and evenly as she tried to circumvent the nausea roiling in her stomach.

  When she noticed that her arms and legs weren’t tied up, she pushed herself up by bracing her arms on the seat to gaze into the front of the truck but made sure to keep her movements slow, trying to not draw attention to the fact she was awake. The soft glow from the dash partially lit the man’s face, and she knew she’d never seen him before. There was also a bit of light left since the sun hadn’t fully gone down, which helped her see better than if it was totally dark. Though she had no idea what time it was, Shane, Grant, Jake, and Curt would have been home by now, and she hoped they realized she was missing, but how could they? They wouldn’t have taken the main road out of Slick Rock to get home from the shelter. It was quicker taking the back roads and bypassing town altogether.

  Had they even seen her note? Did they think she was still at the diner? Had anyone discovered Jake’s wrecked truck off the side of the road? She winced when she thought about his vehicle. Would he be pissed at her for borrowing and then wrecking it?

  No, he won’t care as long as you’re all right. What the hell are you going to do, Cindy? You need to do something to get out of this. It doesn’t matter who this asshole is. All that matters is that you get away from him.

  Since she was in the back, and after a quick look about and not seeing a weapon, the only thing she could think to do was strangling the asshole from behind. But that would mean she’d be in another car accident. That’d be better than whatever this fucker had in store for her.

  The only thing she needed to do was try to work out how to go about choking him. When she peered at his seat belt and saw that he hadn’t even put it on, she quickly vetoed the idea of using that to cut off his air supply.

  The only other option was to wrap her arm around his neck. She had the added advantage of being in the back and having the element of surprise on her side. Once she had her arm around the prick’s throat, she wouldn’t be able to let go no matter what. She wouldn’t even be able to put her seat belt on to keep herself from being thrown out through the windshield if they crashed. If she had the seat belt on, she wouldn’t be able to reach around his neck and use her body as leverage.

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