"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

"There's some gravel spilled and I'm trying not to ping the oncoming vehicle with it. The driver might call the cops."

"Oh. Okay. Good thinking. Guess you're pretty scared." And he sounded pretty d.a.m.n happy at the prospect.

"Terrified."

She didn't know why, but she focused on the oncoming vehicle as if it was her salvation. And then, just a few seconds away from pa.s.sing, she saw the woman behind the wheel. Am I losing my mind? How could it be?

But the driver was Chloe Rhodes and her eyes widened when she recognized Emily Anne!

She mouthed the word "help" as they pa.s.sed and then she began to pray as she'd never prayed before.

"Turn at this driveway here."

She put her turn signal on and then turned. Her eyes flicked to the mirror, and relief flooded her when she saw the brake lights of Chloe's car come on.

Don't stop, friend, just make a note and get help. Emily Anne didn't believe in telepathic communication, but she sure as h.e.l.l believed in the power of positive thinking and in prayer.

"Here."

She'd heard a jangling in the back and a key landed beside her. "Use that to open the gate and no funny stuff."

"Don't worry."

She opened the door and got out of the car. She did her best not to make it seem as if she was looking back down the road the way they'd come.

But in her peripheral vision she saw that Chloe's car crept ever so slowly down the road, and finally over the hill.

Emily Anne felt tears sting her eyes. Help was on the way. All they had to do, she and Lucy, was stay alive until it came.

Chapter 24.

"Hey, if you decide to go that route, when the time comes, I'll put on a wig and mustache and carry a big stick. I'd love to help you scare the s.h.i.t out of that f.u.c.ker." Beck O'Malley's smile looked a little fierce.

Mel grinned at his enthusiasm. The man seemed like he'd be good to have in his corner in a fight. "We'll give you first dibs on the role of hired muscle, then."

Someone's cell phone rang, but that was all right, because for all intents and purposes, they were done here. Mel got to his feet. They'd covered all they could for now. The plan they had was solid, if simple. Prints, distraction, search and then, hopefully, enough to get a warrant.

It was time now for them to scatter, before the Pony opened its doors for business and Bruce Smith came in for his beer. Because he and Connor were unknown in town and therefore might raise suspicions, they were leaving-or they would as soon as Emily Anne got there. Mel frowned and then looked at his watch. It was well after noon hour, nearly one. She should have been back from Discretion by now.

He pulled out his phone to call her but something Ace Webster said into his phone made him stop. His attention snapped to the other man.

"Do we know who else Smith grabbed?"

Mel wasn't the only one who went silent and still at those words. Ethan and his two friends, O'Malley and Owen, stopped talking in mid-sentence, turning their attention to Ace Webster.

"f.u.c.k. Okay. What about Ms. Rhodes, then? Well, that's something at least. All right, we'll meet you there. Just wait for us, all right? No, we won't go off half-c.o.c.ked, Hank. We're not amateurs. We won't do anything until you give the word-not with those two women's lives in jeopardy. Oh yeah, I believe in my gut they're in real danger. We believe Bruce Smith has already killed once."

Mel's cop instincts went on full alert. A quick glance at his partner told him Connor was just as ready.

Ace looked up and met his gaze. "That was Hank Stinson. He just got a call from Adam Kendall. Chloe Rhodes was on her way here when she pa.s.sed a car she didn't recognize being driven by someone she did-your Emily Anne. She said Ms. Bancroft looked scared out of her mind, and there were two other people in the vehicle with her, in the backseat. Ms. Rhodes kept her cool, took note of the car license plate number, and called Kendall." Ace turned his attention to O'Malley and Owen. "The car she was driving belongs to Lucy Carter."

"Lucy!" Both men looked at each other and then looked like they were about to charge out the door.

Ace Webster held up his hand. "Hold it right there. You're not going anywhere." He turned his attention back to Mel and Connor. "Kendall was able to relay GPS coordinates taken through Ms. Rhodes's phone to Hank. He told her to stay put and wait for help. We know where they are-he took the women to his home. Hank is on his way there now. We need to get moving. Hank has a couple of deputies with him, but you two know the layout of Smith's place."

Mel nodded, then pointed toward O'Malley and Owen. "If Smith has their woman, they have to come, too. They won't get in the way of whatever it is Hank decides to do."

"We won't," Owen said. He looked toward Ethan. "I don't know why this has happened. How could this happen? Why would Bruce Smith take Lucy?"

Corinna stepped into the room. She looked at the men standing in a circle then turned to her boss. "d.a.m.n it, I'm sorry, boss. Did Mr. Smith take something when he was here earlier? Tommy gave him a few bucks to help him off-load the soda. I swear he was in my sight the entire time-well, except when he had to go to the bathroom."

"Bruce Smith was here? Today?" Connor asked.

"What time?" Ethan asked. He placed his hand on the waitress's shoulder. "You're not in trouble, Corinna. We just need to know. When was he here?"

"Gosh, about thirty minutes or so ago. Y'all were in your meeting at the time."

Mel ran a hand through his hair. "f.u.c.k. He knows we're on to him."

"Makes sense," Ace said. He looked at O'Malley and Owen. "You recognized him, he must have recognized you. That's why he took your woman. He would have remembered where he'd seen you and with whom. He made a move of desperation, likely trying to buy himself some time, while he figures out how to get out of the mess he's in."

Connor had stepped away with his phone to his ear while Ace had been speaking. Now he came back into the circle. "I just spoke to your wife, Webster. She confirms that Emily Anne left Discretion before noon and was planning to stop in to see Lucy Carter before coming here. Apparently the two had met the last time Emily Anne visited her store." Then he looked at Mel. "I also spoke to Adam. He said he most emphatically told Chloe to stay put but he had a really bad feeling that she was going to defy him. You know how close she and our woman are."

"Yeah. Best friends. d.a.m.n it, what a cl.u.s.ter f.u.c.k," Mel said.

"Kendall also contacted Grant and Andrew Jessop, who were spending the day in San Antonio at an Arson Investigation conference. They were already on their way home. They've adjusted their route and should be here in about thirty minutes."

"Let's go," Ace said. "We'll take my SUV. We'll all fit."

"I'd just be in the way," Ethan said. "Y'all keep me posted. I'll be saying a prayer for your success."

"Will do," Mel said. He followed Ace and Kemp in a ma.s.s exodus out of the club to the parking lot. "d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l, we have two for certain and possibly three women in peril," he said to no one in particular. "I guess we don't have to worry about just cause now."

"Smith hurts Lucy, I'm going to f.u.c.king kill him," O'Malley said.

"Get in line," Connor said. "He's got our woman, too. As far as I'm concerned, he's already a f.u.c.king dead man."

Everything inside Connor had turned to ice. He was on a mission-the most important mission he'd ever undertaken in his life. He felt the edges, the tension, and knew that he could be back in Afghanistan as far as his body was concerned.

The only difference was that this time, it wasn't him or his teammates who were in danger, it was his woman.

They'd found Mel's car, right where Emily Anne had parked it in front of Lucy Carter's spa, with Lucy's red Ford Escape conspicuously absent. Connor had taken a moment to retrieve his rifle from the back of the vehicle. As far as he was concerned, Baxter had forfeited his right to a trial the moment he'd put his hands on Emily Anne.

If he got the chance, he was going to put the expensive sniper training he'd received from Uncle Sam to very good use.

Owen had run next door-apparently Lucy's brother had a tattoo place right next to her business-but Seth Carter hadn't seen anyone or anything. He'd been in back with a client. He immediately wanted to drop everything and come with them, but Ace Webster had convinced him that any more people involved could just jeopardize the rescue.

Seth hadn't been very happy with that logic, but he agreed. He locked his sister's place of business, and told them he'd be at The Dancing Pony, waiting for word with Ethan Grant.

The GPS coordinates that Adam Kendall had sent to Sheriff Hank Stinson led them directly to Smith's place.

By the time they arrived on scene, Stinson had set up a perimeter on the Farm to Market road, the perimeter and the cops hidden from sight of the house by the natural undulations of the land.

The sheriff stood, arms akimbo, and waited for him and Mel, and Ace and Kemp, to join him. O'Malley and Owen wisely hung back, but he'd bet they'd be able to hear everything just fine. He caught the movement of Owen nodding to the man, and the sheriff giving him a bare nod back. But that wasn't, Connor knew, where the man's attention was.

Despite the sungla.s.ses, Connor knew the sheriff's gaze zeroed in on the weapon in Connor's hand.

Stinson looked up, took off his sungla.s.ses, and met Connor's gaze.

"You know how to use that thing?"

Connor reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open and handed it over. "I'm sniper qualified."

Stinson took a moment to examine his credentials. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that. One question before we go any further. Why the h.e.l.l wasn't I informed that there was a murdering lunatic living in my jurisdiction?"

Ace and Kemp looked to Mel to provide the answer.

Smart men. Let the out of town guy draw the heat.

"We didn't know he was a murdering lunatic. We had suspicions that aside from robbing two young orphans of their inheritance, he'd also committed murder about fifteen years ago. But we only had suspicions. We were working on finding evidence sufficient for a warrant to search the place, and once we had that evidence, you were going to be our next stop, Sheriff. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to any of us, Bruce Smith-aka Ralph Baxter-overheard our planning session this morning." Then he looked at Connor for a moment, before he met the sheriff's gaze again. "One of the women he's taken as a hostage belongs to us, Sheriff."

"Right now, Mister Richardson, those women-all three of them-belong to me."

"All three of them?" Beck O'Malley came to stand beside Connor.

"Apparently Miss Rhodes is also in that house. Her vehicle is that Lincoln parked over there. Her cell phone and purse are still on the seat." He shook his head. "She locked her car, and then headed right into harm's way. I just spoke to Adam Kendall, and he told me that it'd make perfect sense to her to try and rescue her friend." Stinson gave what could have been a tight smile. "Then he mentioned something about wanting to go back in time and have a talk with one of his ancestors about Town Trust rules, whatever that means."

Connor felt the ice surrounding him begin to crack. He recalled hearing a similar lament from the man not that many months before when a crazy stalker chick had targeted his cousin, Rebecca Jessop.

"Anyone know the setup of the house? Blueprints would be on file with the county, but if either of you has knowledge-from your legal surveillance from County property of course-I'd appreciate the heads-up."

"Yeah." Connor asked for a piece of paper and then looked up for a surface to write on. Using the open tailgate of Ace's SUV as a drawing board, he got to work. It didn't take him long to sketch out the interior of Smith's simple house.

As he worked, he filled Hank Stinson in on the background. "He's lived here since he fled here, a.s.suming the name Bruce Smith, in the late nineteen nineties. He made off with nearly five million dollars that had been left to Chloe Rhodes and her sister, Carrie, on the death of their parents." Connor was able to note the relative positions of windows and doorways, crucial information for the police operation about to unfold. "He had a partner in this crime, the lawyer a.s.signed, by the state, to guard the children's interests. That man's name was Neil Jackson, and he has not been seen or heard from since. We suspect Baxter killed the man."

"What makes you think that-other than the obvious fact that while theft and misdirection of funds has a statute of limitations, murder does not?"

Connor didn't comment on the fact that Stinson had correctly surmised that he and Mel had wanted to get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, statutes or no. "We traced the money to an account in the Cayman Islands," Mel said. "All five million of it. It was withdrawn the same way a few months later, as a single, lump sum-and Jackson had already been reported as missing at that point. The man didn't have the means to finance a couple of months in hiding."

"And when did Smith move in here?"

"Before the money left the Caymans."

"He bought the place here before he absconded with the funds?"

"Yeah," Connor said, looking up from his drawing. "He'd borrowed a lot of money from the wrong people and had, we've guessed, planned to go into hiding anyway, when his luck at the c.r.a.ps table stayed sour. Then his business partner and that man's wife got killed in a tornado in Tennessee, and suddenly-"

"Suddenly the b.a.s.t.a.r.d felt like he'd won the f.u.c.king lottery." Stinson said. "Okay, let's see what you have here."

It didn't take the sheriff long to formulate a plan. When he told Owen and O'Malley they had to stay with the vehicles, they weren't happy about it, but they agreed. Ace, Kemp, Mel, and the sheriff and all but one of his deputies were going to surround the house. Connor was going to find that tree he and Mel had climbed previously.

If that son of a b.i.t.c.h came out with a female hostage, which was very likely, Connor would have him in the crosshairs.

He turned to head for his position.

"Talbot, wait up. One more thing."

Connor turned to face Hank Stinson. The man looked at him for a long moment, and then sighed.

"You're now a duly sworn deputy of the sheriff's department of the County of Divine. That means you may not kill that b.a.s.t.a.r.d. But you're sniper qualified, so you should be able to wound him, if need be." He waited a beat. "Don't kill him unless you have absolutely no other choice."

Son of a b.i.t.c.h. He met the sheriff's gaze for a long moment. It didn't appear as if Stinson was going to move and he certainly wasn't likely to back down. Finally, Connor nodded. "All right, Sheriff. I won't shoot to kill unless I have to."

He headed toward his position, trying to decide where the most painful place would be for him to put a bullet in Ralph Baxter.

Chapter 25.

The hardest thing Mel had ever done was cede control of this rescue mission to Hank Stinson. Not that he doubted the man's smarts or ability, far from it. He'd heard only good things about the sheriff of Divine County before he'd ever thought he'd work with the man.

He felt as if he should be the one leading the charge to get to Emily Anne. Stinson couldn't possibly know what she meant to him and Connor.

But as he'd listened to the way Hank had outlined the operation, he caught the thread of anger that ran deep and true through the lawman. Mel began to understand that in the way of a true alpha male in a position of authority, as far as he was concerned those women did belong to him, and he meant to get them out of harm's way.

"I'm in constant communication with my office. We figured Smith might have called us, or the State boys, threatening the women if we don't give him s.p.a.ce, but so far he hasn't made a single call." Then he picked up his cell phone. "You in place, Talbot?"

Connor's voice came through the phone, clear and just loud enough for the men standing with the sheriff to hear him. "I'm in place. All the drapes are still closed. I can't see a d.a.m.n thing."

"Do you think maybe he has them out with him in one of those sheds?"