The hallway closed in around her. Nate huddled close to her side. Gunmen all around. It was dark in here, the walls bare. The floor nothing but broken floorboards and bits of trash.
“It smells in here, Mom.”
“I know.” She squeezed his shoulder.
Grief rolled through her for what had become of Patrick’s house. His mom had taken such good care of it, making sure it was a pleasant place for him to live. A sanctuary from everything that happened outside.
Jennie had modeled her own home for her son on the same principle. A place Nate could rest. Somewhere he wanted to come home to at the end of the day, where the atmosphere was one of peace and rest.
Instead, her father had forced Patrick and his mom from their home. Had her brother been using this house since going AWOL from the army?
The man ahead of them shifted. He shoved a door open. “Get in here, kid.”
When Nate didn’t move from her side, the man reached for him. Both of them stepped back. She stumbled a little but kept them from falling down. She didn’t want to know what nasty thing they would land on.
“Let’s go, Nate.” She tugged him forward so they could enter the room. Safety. Space. Somewhere they could wait together and not be bothered.
“No,” the gunman said. “He goes. You’re in there.” He pointed at a room across the hall.
“We’re staying together.”
“Those aren’t my orders.”
“And you do everything my brother tells you?”
“Pays the bills.” The man shot her a toothy grin, his stubbled face displaying his amusement. He enjoyed this. She might even be inclined to believe he particularly enjoyed their fear. What horrible things had he done in his life?
Maybe she didn’t want to know.
He waved his gun between them and the room. “Now, he goes in there. Got it?”
“No.” Anger surged in her. She wanted to stomp her foot. Put her hands on her hips. It worked with a room full of boys at a sleepover. These were just overgrown boys, right? She planned to treat them as such because she was just fed up. “No. We aren’t getting separated. My son will stay with me.”
The door behind her was shoved open so hard it bounced off the wall. Martin stormed in. “What’s going on?”
“You’re not separating us.”
Beyond him she could see Patrick, standing outside with Tucker. The look of helplessness and fear on his face was surely a match to what was on hers. Neither of them could get their family out of this alone. He’d tried, and they’d slammed his head.
Now there was blood running down the side of his face.
“You’ll do as you’re told.”
Jennie faced down her brother. “Nate is nine years old. He was already kidnapped and terrorized. You’re not separating us.”
She prayed things weren’t going to get worse. That her actions now wouldn’t cause additional problems for any of them. But this was nonnegotiable. She held Nate to her side.
Martin huffed out a breath. “This is all your fault. I should separate you, considering all the problems you’ve caused me.”
“Because I wouldn’t allow you to trespass on my land.”
He really thought this was her fault? All she’d done was call the authorities. Had she known at the outset that it was her brother, she would probably do the exact same thing as she had before. After all, a criminal didn’t get special treatment just because they were family. Especially not when Martin had been absent from her life longer than Nate had been with her.
Seeing him now did nothing more than break her already shattered heart.
The man he could have been was evident when she put him side by side with Patrick. Goodness and evil. There wasn’t a greater contrast in life, was there? The ultimate opposites, they would be forever at odds.
She was sad for who he was now—who he thought he should be. The man her father had made him into. She’d had Patrick, and it just hadn’t been the same between her and her father. But he’d groomed Martin to follow in his footsteps. To do exactly this.
Still, the life he lived now... On the run, full of not much besides illegal activity to fill his time. He would have to always look over his shoulder. It was all down to his own choices.
The decisions he’d made.
As much as she wanted to be immune to him, a tear rolled down her face anyway.
Martin ignored it. “I’d have been free to do what I wanted if you’d just left things alone. Instead you’ve caused me so many headaches I have a migraine because of you.”
She should have called the army back a year ago. They’d have swooped in and taken him into custody, right? Problem solved.
Martin snickered. “I can see you planning something. Well, you know what? It won’t work. So don’t waste your energy. Keep your son quiet. Patrick does his job, and you get to go free.”
“But you’ll continue like nothing is wrong?”
“No. I’ll be long gone. One last severance payment for everyone I employ and I go live my life. You’ll never see me again.”
That was enough to make her smile. He would be gone? “Fine.” She had every intention of calling the army and telling them everything as soon as she got to a phone. “Nate and I stay together.”
“Get in there.”
She looked at Patrick. He gave her a short nod, everything he wanted to say plain on his face. She wanted to mouth the words I love you, though she wasn’t all the way there. Yet. Those feelings were fast coming back.
Jennie had loved him once. Had that ever really gone away? Giving those words to him now would mean everything to her. Yes, there were qualifiers. She was falling for him again. But complicating it with specifics didn’t mean much. In a situation like this, she needed to either go for it or not. Their lives were on the line.
Why not her heart, as well?
He lifted his chin. “It’ll be okay.”
She nodded back. “Okay.”
A pact. They were together. Even if they got separated, they’d stick with each other through this. Come out of it a family. Where it wouldn’t be too soon or too complicated. She’d be able to tell him the simple truth of how she felt.
Martin strode outside. His man shoved them into the empty room and slammed the door.
Nate walked around the empty space for a second. He settled against the wall and slid down, knees to his chin. Jennie sat beside him.
“I wish Tucker was in here.”
She gathered him to her, holding him in her arms. “Sorry, buddy. I guess he needs to work.”
Nate made a pfft sound through his lips but said nothing.
“We should pray.” She didn’t wait for him to agree or disagree. It shouldn’t matter whether she “felt like it” or not. The situation was out of control and they needed to hand it over to the One who was in control of everything.
Jennie prayed over them, and over Patrick’s work with Tucker, asking God to help them get out of this alive.
Nate said, “Amen.”
Jennie shuddered. A vibration of fear she could no longer contain.
Help my son to live.
A gun jabbed into his back. Patrick stumbled away from the house. “Okay. Ease up.” He turned to them, hands raised. “You got what you wanted, so just lay off, okay?”
Yeah, he was repeating himself. But it seemed like these guys needed an extra hand understanding. He was supposed to find a truck? Martin knew that didn’t have a scent. And a man, from his sweater? Sure, if they could find a place where he’d actually been. If they had no idea where he was, how was Patrick supposed to have Tucker find the scent? It would be like finding a needle in a haystack that could be thirty miles away, for all they knew. And drugs? Tucker hadn’t been trained as a drug detection dog, so that wasn’t a possibility.
Patrick scrubbed both hands down his face. When he looked, Tucker was leaning forward. Body straight, muscles tense. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Any second now he would flash his teeth and growl.
He wanted to let the situation escalate in a way Martin would regret, but that would result in Tucker being hurt. Patrick pulled the long leash from the pocket of his cargo pants and snapped it on. “Heel.”
Tucker shifted to his side, but didn’t back down. Much.
Martin eyed the dog, then said, “We got a problem?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re going to find my truck.”
Patrick didn’t even know where to start with that. “He can’t find a vehicle. Or a man who’s been in a vehicle. If the windows were rolled up, there’s no scent. And he’s not trained to find drugs.”
“He’s a search and rescue dog, right? So search for my truck and rescue my drugs.”
Patrick blew out a breath. What did this guy expect him to do? It literally wasn’t possible. “Do you have an idea of the location where he is, or somewhere he was, like, when you last saw your friend?”
There were a million other questions rolling around in his head, but that was a pretty good start.
“I’ll give you what I have.”
That sounded more like a threat than an intention to share information. This man was a dangerous loose cannon. After all, he’d lived under the radar for the better part of a year since he’d walked away from the army and disappeared into civilian life—the criminal underworld.
“And I’ll have to figure out how to do the impossible, I guess.”
Martin shrugged. “The alternative is I kill you and Jennie, take Nate and raise him as my son.”
Patrick surged forward. Tucker did the same, barking at Martin.
Jennie’s brother lifted his gun and pointed it at Patrick’s face.
That was the only thing that stopped him from tackling the guy. Take his son, when he’d just met the boy? Destroy his life, and Jennie’s, and all that could be?
“No.” He practically stared down the barrel of the gun. Never a good spot to be in. Even with a K-9 partner by his side, Patrick was in serious danger.
“Mmm. I agree.”
So this was about control, then. “Just give me what you have and let me do my job. Then, you will let us go. Unless you want the army crawling all over this place and breathing down your neck until they finally catch up with you.”
“As if they will. I’ve gotten away with it so far.”
“They know you’re here.” Patrick shrugged one shoulder. “The call’s already been made. Wheels are in motion. In fact, it’s probably only a matter of hours before they descend on this place en masse.”
Boy did it ever feel good to say that to this guy’s smug face.
Until Martin slammed the gun down, aiming for the same spot where he’d already been hit. Patrick turned away from him in time. The butt of the gun slammed into his shoulder instead. He grunted at the impact as pain reverberated through his torso.
He straightened. “Everything you have?”
“Good choice.” Martin waved to one of his buddies.
The gunman spread a map of the local area on the hood of the van that had brought them here. The kind of map you’d buy at a grocery store. Only this one had penciled lines. Notations. Asterisks. There was a clearly indicated route that cut through the foothills from what had been Patrick’s home, across the desert, through Jennie’s land, to the highway east of town.
“This is where he was last seen.” Martin pressed a dirt-smeared finger north of Jennie’s land.
“That’s why you were trespassing?” Or, at least, why there’d been an uptick in activity on her land recently.
“He went missing five days ago.”
“And you want your drugs?”
“We all have our retirement plans.”
Patrick had a lot to do before retirement—like get his family back. All of it. The way it should be. But he got what Martin meant. “What’s in that truck is your nest egg? How do you know the driver didn’t take off with the drugs and he’s in Mexico by now?”
Martin pulled out a phone. “GPS. The tracker in the truck went offline. That’s how we lost him. Then he never checked in when he should have. But he couldn’t have disabled the tracker himself. He didn’t even know about it. Besides, he’s dumb as a box of rocks. Actually, that’s an insult to rocks.”
Patrick faced off with Jennie’s brother. “Great. Let’s go out there and I’ll get Tucker to search for a scent. Assuming that item of clothing you’ve got is even something he can get a scent from.”
He was waiting for a hitch in this plan that would mean Martin had no use for them.
So long as his not needing them anymore didn’t mean he would execute them all and leave them out here. Or stage some kind of elaborate murder-suicide scene to throw off the sheriff.
“Is the sheriff in your pocket?”
Martin shrugged. “I might do that. If he actually cared enough to try to get rid of me, I’d probably offer to pay him money.”
That didn’t answer Patrick’s question. Not really. “So he just leaves you alone?”
Martin said, “I don’t care about him. Find my truck.”
“Give me that sweater so I can use it for a scent.” That was better than trying to get a straight answer out of Jennie’s brother.
Martin looked about ready to slam him with the gun again, but Patrick didn’t care. What more could Martin do, or threaten to do, that hadn’t already been done to him by the men in Jennie’s family? Then there was the damage they’d done to Jennie. To Nate. They’d been through enough—too much, in fact.
One of the men retrieved the grocery bag holding the sweater.
“Ready to go, Tucker?” He needed to get the dog excited about work. Focused on Patrick, and not the fact he wanted to be in the house with Nate.
I know how you feel.
Martin’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and muttered under his breath. “The sheriff is headed here. Everyone load up. Now!”
“What about Jennie and Nate?” He wasn’t going to give them back to the sheriff, was he? That would mean he’d lost all his leverage.
“They come, too.” He turned to his gunman friend. “Get them. Two minutes. Let’s move!”
Patrick was shoved toward a car as Jennie and Nate came out.
“What’s happening?”
He got close enough to grasp her hand. “The sheriff is coming.”
But the happiness on her face was short lived.
One of the gunmen grabbed Nate around the waist and hauled him away from them.
“Mom!”