Just Evil (49 page)

She dropped the stack of trays and rushed inside.

Collin stepped into her path.

Standing over Jake was a man she recognized as Gerald Auslo.
She turned around and bolted for the door. But Collin caught her by the hair
from behind and pulled her backward. She began punching and kicking and
screaming.

Collin yelled for Auslo. “Leave that son of a bitch and get
out here. Help me with Kit. And tell Taft to bring the van around.”

As if on cue Auslo stepped out into the garage behind Collin
and began talking into a two-way radio. Collin tightened the hold on her hair
and started backing her out of the garage toward a van, now parked at the end
of her driveway.

“You can’t run from me this time, Kit-Kat. God knows you’ve
tried all these years, but this is the end of the line. You can’t get away from
me this time. Boston can’t protect you. And this time I mean to have you,
understand? I mean to have what you’ve been giving that piece of shit Boston.”

“Why are you doing this, Collin? We grew up together.”

“You told the cops about me. Some detective came to see me,
wanted to know where I was the night you lost control of your car, I gave him a
very convincing story, told him I had an alibi. Cade and Connor backed me up.
Surely you didn’t think the cops would believe you over me, did you? He can’t
touch me now, Kit-Kat, but that doesn’t mean he won’t come after me later. I
won’t spend time in jail. You hear me. And without you they’ll be no witness
for later.”

Kit didn’t intend to make it easy. With her long legs, she
kicked out at Collin, and sent him sprawling onto the concrete floor. She took
off running. But Auslo soon caught up with her.

“Goddamn it, Gerald, get the fucking needle. I wasn’t going
to do this, Kit-Kat, but you’re pissing me off.”

As soon as he got to his feet, Collin back-handed Kit across
the mouth. The blow sent her reeling. She fell back against the wall of the
garage, knocking over a stack of paint cans.

Collin ordered Auslo, “She isn’t going without a fight. Give
her the damn drug.”

In one quick motion Auslo pulled the syringe from his jacket
pocket and plunged it into her arm. “She’s a fighter. I like that in a woman. I
wouldn’t mind a go at her when you’re done with her, Boyd.”

“Shut up, Gerald. Kit belongs to me and don’t you forget it.
She’s mine, she’s always been mine, got it?”

Kit looked at the man she’d known all of her life and saw
nothing but cold, stony eyes, not a shred of compassion. But she tried to
reason with him anyway. “Collin, you won’t get away with this. This is
kidnapping. This is crossing the line. When Jake finds out, he’ll come after
you. We can…” But as the drug started to work, blackness descended.

Her last conscious thought was of Jake, as she fell into the
arms of Collin and Auslo, who carried her to the waiting van.

Jake sat on the sofa in the living room holding his
throbbing head in his hands as what constituted as the law in San Madrid, a
sheriff’s deputy from Ventura County, took his statement.

When he looked up, he saw Reese and Dylan rush into the
room. They took one look at Jake and saw the miserable look on his face—and the
guilt.

“Collin took her. He was inside the house waiting for us.
And I bring her right in, hand her to him on a silver platter.”

Dylan reached out, rested his hand on Jake’s shoulder.
“We’ll find her, Jake.”

“How? How the hell will we do that, Dylan? Where do we start
looking?” He looked at the deputy. “Or where do they look? She’s gone. And it’s
my fucking fault. I couldn’t protect her.”

He’d followed the van from a safe distance back. Through
night vision goggles, he watched as they unloaded the girl, carried her inside
what looked like an abandoned warehouse, surrounded by an eight foot chain link
fence.

He got out of his car, surveyed the terrain, gauged the best
location for his kill zone. Deciding in an instant, he opened the trunk of his
car, took out a black case and began to assemble the Remington rifle. With a
rhythmic motion that comes from having done this more than a thousand times, he
snapped the scope into place, slid a bullet into the chamber, gathered up
another magazine, and took off up the hill. As he crouched behind whatever
cover he could find, adrenalin pumped through his veins.

“I’ve killed others far less deserving than these three,” he
muttered to himself, as he took up his position on the hill overlooking the
warehouse. The only question in his mind was which one of them he would take
down first. Before he had time to think, that question answered itself as the
man known as Taft moved from behind the wheel of the van into his line of
vision on the way to the open doorway. He locked on the target through his
telescopic lens, sucked in a breath, steadied his gun, and slowly squeezed the
trigger.

On target, a bullet through the head, Taft lay dead.

When Auslo came into his line of sight to check on his
buddy, he squeezed off another round before the man had time to react. The
bullet hit Auslo in the chest. He watched Auslo grab his shirt, stagger two
steps backward before falling inside the doorway of the warehouse.

Two down.

I’m coming for you, Boyd.

He charged around the side of the warehouse, scanning from
left to right, watching for any movement out of the corner of his eye. He could
hear Collin screaming at the two dead men, ridiculously trying to find out what
was going on. He recognized the voice for what it was. Collin’s voice trembled
with panic―and fear. He’d seen Collin’s type many times, the man was a
weakling, and would either run at some point or would try to bargain for his
life. Either way, Collin would be dead before the night was done.

As he reached the corner of the building, he peered through
a broken window. He had no clear shot. The son of a bitch had taken up position
in a crumpled mass trying to use the girl as a shield as she lay on the floor.
He moved to try from another vantage point. As he made his way around the side
of the warehouse, he heard Collin shout, “Who’s out there? You come any closer,
I’ll kill her. I swear I will.”

He knew as long as he didn’t answer Collin, the silence
would unnerve the man, so he kept holding to the side of the building, kept
moving, and kept checking each window for his clear kill zone. He knew if he
wasn’t careful a bullet at this range might exit Collin and keep going, so he
had to make sure the girl was not in the line of fire.

As he came to an outside stairway going up to the second
level, he realized he could get a clear shot from above. Swiftly and silently,
he ascended the stairs. As he went through the doorway at the top of the
landing, he spotted a narrow catwalk midway up. With Collin below and to the
right, he’d found his clear shot.

Silently, he dashed onto the wooden catwalk. Even from this
distance, he could smell Collin’s fear. He lowered the rifle, sighted him in,
held his breath, and put his finger on the trigger. As he fired, the rotted
wood beneath his feet gave way, and he fell to the first floor below. He knew
before he hit the floor, the shot had been off target.

Jarred by the fall, it took him almost a full sixty seconds
to scramble to his feet. Outside, he heard the van’s engine roar to life, tires
squealed, gravel spitted, and he knew at that moment he’d missed.

And he had never missed. 

As he dusted himself off, he approached the girl with
caution. But as he got closer, he realized she was still unconscious, drugged.
He searched for a pulse, found it slow, but steady. Untying her hands, he laid
her back on the concrete floor. He looked around for something to put under her
head and noticed the sizeable amount of blood on the floor. Well, well, well,
he hadn’t completely missed after all, he thought. The bastard would need a
doctor for that, and he’d be easy enough to track.

He saw nothing he could use for a pillow and shrugged out of
his jacket, making sure the pockets were empty. As he gently lifted her head,
he slid the jacket underneath and placed the gold cowboy in her hand, closed
her fist around it.

Looking down at her, his thoughts inexplicably turned to the
daughter he’d once had from a lifetime ago, a little tow-head blonde who had once
been the light of his life, who’d followed him around wherever he went. She’d
looked exactly like her mother. Had his wife and daughter lived, his life would
have been far different from the one he had now. All at once, snapshots of the
people he’d once loved went off like a collage inside his head. He pictured his
wife, his daughter as they’d been in life. Realization hit him. Kit Griffin
reminded him of his daughter. She was causing emotions to surface that had long
since died, emotions he’d put on hold for so long, it was as if someone else
was standing there…feeling.

He came out of his reverie long enough to push a lock of her
hair from her forehead. “Looks like it’s time to call that man of yours and
have him get his ass over here to pick you up. Maybe next time he won’t be so
careless.”

He stripped off his leather gloves, replaced them with a
fresh pair from his pants pocket.

“You should know Collin and his brothers aren’t likely to
just let this go. They’re bound to regroup. But don’t worry. I’ll be watching
out for you and the people you care about.”

Noah Parker would have expected nothing less.

Kit woke up swinging, both hands bunched in tight fists as
she punched at the air.

“Whoa there, honey. It’s me,” Jake announced as he blocked
the jab she’d thrown at him. He’d been sitting beside her hospital bed for the
last couple of hours waiting for the drug to wear off.

Kit heard a familiar voice through the haze in her brain and
collapsed back down on the bed, her body spent. Trying hard to get rid of the
cobwebs clouding her head, get her eyes to focus, she propped herself up
momentarily, only to slide back down again. She tried to open her eyes but the
room spun. She realized she was back in a hospital room.

She focused on Jake standing over her and whispered, “How’d
you find me, Jake? Take me home, I want to go home.”

“I’ll get you out of here just as soon as we know you’re
okay. What do you remember?”

“I remember fighting, kicking at Collin and his two thugs.
Then that Auslo guy took out a needle and gave me some kind of shot.” She
reached to rub the site of the injection on her arm. Then as if she’d just
remembered he’d been hurt too, she touched his cheek. “What about you, how’s
your head?”

“I’ll live. The doctor thinks they might have given you
something called a hotshot, a very fast-acting drug, a cocktail mixture that’s
gonna leave you with a helluva headache.”

She scrubbed at her face and laid a hand on her belly. “My
head’s pounding and I’m sick to my stomach.” Clearly a bit disoriented, she
asked again, “What happened, Jake? How’d you find me?”

“I was in the process of giving my statement to a sheriff’s
deputy, when I got this weird phone call. The man on the other end told me
where to find you, said you were okay, not to worry, gave me the location of a
warehouse, and the directions on how to get there.”

He paused, rested his forehead on hers to clear his head.
He’d been out of his mind with worry, afraid he’d never see her again. He
touched his lips to hers for a chaste kiss. “I jumped in the car with Reese and
Dylan. We followed the police car to this abandoned warehouse near Thousand
Oaks. When we got there we found Auslo and Taft lying dead, each from a single
gunshot.

“When we walked inside the warehouse there you were lying on
the concrete floor with a jacket underneath your head and this in your hand.”
He held out his palm, and showed her the gold cowboy. “Do you remember
anything, honey, about the man who helped you?”

She picked up the gold cowboy with a confused look on her
face. “I don’t remember anything, except the fight with Collin.” She paused and
then added, “And the fear, I remember the fear knowing Collin planned to kill
me.” Her voice began to shake, and the tears came. “I vaguely remember hearing
another man’s voice, a voice that oddly tried to reassure me that everything
was going to be all right.” She rubbed her throbbing head. “The voice sounded
familiar, you know, like I’d heard it before. The voice wasn’t Collin’s or
those other guys, that’s for sure. I thought it sounded like my father.”

Jake shook his head. “I promise you Collin will never get
another chance to hurt you again. When I woke up and found you gone I’ve never
been so scared in my life. I’m so sorry, honey. I won’t let him near you again.
That’s a promise.” He wrapped her up, placing kisses on both cheeks, her nose,
her lips. 

Her brain might have been foggy, but she knew one thing for
certain. “You can’t make that kind of a promise, Jake. No one can. What
happened wasn’t your fault. It’s ridiculous to think we can spend every waking
minute of every day with each other. We can’t live our lives afraid to go about
our daily routines. We can’t live like that, and I won’t have you blaming
yourself.”

When she looked up, she sucked in a breath. Jake felt her body
tense and followed her gaze to the doorway.

Dan Holloway stood just inside the room.

“Sorry folks, but I need to talk to both of you for a
minute.”

“Now’s not a good time. Can’t you see she’s wiped? Her
head’s pounding. She’s been awake for less than ten minutes. She’s in no shape
for an interview.”

Holloway shook his head. “No, we need to talk. Collin Boyd
showed up at the police station a couple of hours ago, turned himself in on the
advice of his attorney, Jacob Gatz, who happens to be his cousin. I thought you
might want the short version of what Collin said on the record.”

Hearing that, Jake spun around to face him and noticed the
expression in his eyes, a weary look that said he’d come as a courtesy and
didn’t have to be here. “We’d appreciate that.”