KIDNAPPED, A Romantic Suspense Novel (22 page)

He smiled at the memory. She’d come out looking like a raccoon, one very pissed-off raccoon.

Teaching her to build a fire with the old paper and the wood from one of the crates had been less hazardous. Then she’d fed them a makeshift meal of cold pop-tarts, cheese and fruit, making a game out of the process to ease Nicky’s fright.

The woman’s resourcefulness and calm efficiency amazed him. Jake knew she’d been frightened earlier when she’d run back into the house. Yet she’d put her fears aside to get down to the business of fixing him and taking care of all of them.

Now she sat, leaning against one of the empty crates, using it as a backrest. While the kid lay tucked in close to her other side, wrapped in a blanket she’d had in her emergency roadside kit, Jake lay with his head in the soft pillow formed by Samantha’s crossed legs beneath him. Her fingers ran gently through the hair on his uninjured side as she talked to keep him awake.

If it weren’t for the headache, the queasiness in his stomach, and the fact they were on the run for their lives, a guy could get used to this,.

“How’d you learn to handle that truck so well in the forest?” he asked, watching the flames jump and the wood crackle in the fireplace.

The sound of her soft laughter flowed over him and warmed him as much as the fire.

“That’s my brother Dave’s fault.”

“How?”

“When I was learning to drive, he’d just graduated from the police force. He, Matt, and Luke all went to the driving course and practiced all the maneuvers.” She chuckled again. “Of course, I had to do everything they did.”

“Of course.”

“Just making it through the hair-pin turns wasn’t enough for them. They made me drive the course in reverse. Then they flooded the course with water, and I had to prove myself on that. Finally, they took me off-roading and made me learn to drive a standard in five-inch deep mud.”

“Nice brothers you have.”

“Oh, they didn’t stop there. When winter came along, they dragged me back out to the course, and I had to do it all over again, this time in snow and ice.” She smoothed his hair, and ran her fingers through it once more. “At the time, I thought they wanted me to fail.”

Despite the throbbing in his head, he turned slightly to look at her. “I bet they’re proud to have a sister who drives like a dare-devil.”

She smiled down at him, her fingers tracing his cheek. “After I proved to them I could drive better than most rookies, they decided to put me through their own what-to-do-in-the-worst-case-scenario course.”

“What was that?”

“Matt took a worse-case scenario course after he joined the Highway Patrol. He said he wanted to know what to do if an alligator ever got loose in Ohio.” She grinned at him. “So the next thing I know, he’s taking me into a quarry and teaching me how to get out of a flooded car, or dragging me to the fireman’s training grounds to teach me how to get out of a burning building.”

“Is he nuts? You could’ve been killed.” Jake tried to sit up, but she stayed him with her hand on his uninjured shoulder.

“The point was to make sure I never would be. My brothers love me. They showed me the only way they knew how, without being sappy.”

Jake settled back into her lap, his hand lightly stroking the firm muscles of her calves. “You’re driving skills have come in quite handy the past few days.”

For a few minutes, he listened to the fire crackling in the hearth. Its heat warmed him. Samantha’s hand gently stroking his back and head relaxed him more. Weariness crept over him even though his head still throbbed. He’d love to close his eyes and just go off to sleep.

“How did your mother die?” Samantha asked, just as he was drifting off.

Damn the woman. She
would
ask the one thing that was guaranteed to wake him up, and the one question about his past he wanted to avoid. If he didn’t answer, maybe she’d think he’d gone to sleep.

“Jake?”

Samantha’s persistence gave new meaning to the word. However, considering how she’d bared her secrets to him, could he do less? Could he show her the same courage she’d shown him? He’d carried the reason behind his decision to remain alone around a long time. Maybe it was time to tell someone.

Not just someone. Samantha. Maybe in telling her, she’d understand why he couldn’t offer her anything more than what they shared right now.

He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.

“She was murdered.”

Silence hung in the room. He knew Samantha well. The silence wouldn’t last long.

“How?”

The tenderness in her question teased his memories out of the dark cave where he’d buried them long ago. “My father was working on a case against a car heist and chop-shop ring. His division wasn’t making much headway against the crew, so he went undercover to see if he could get the leaders.”

He ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. Once started, the words just seemed to pour out. “Somehow they found out he was a cop and followed him home one morning. Joe and I were in school. The crew’s leader decided dad would suffer more if they went after my mom, and at the same time, they’d send a message to all the other cops on the case. Mess with us, and your family isn’t safe.”

“When I came home from school that day, Dad was distraught. He carried on like a wild man—screaming and waiving his service revolver. Finally, two of his police friends carted him off to the hospital in the back of a police cruiser for his own protection.”

Samantha leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I’m so sorry, Jake.”

Memories washed over him like a tidal wave.

Kindly Mrs. Davis from next door had tried to herd Joe and him off the school bus and into her house, away from the prying eyes of the other neighbors and the crowd of reporters. They’d gotten pictures of both of them. One callous woman even shoved a microphone in his face for an interview.

Desperate to protect his younger brother, Jake had fled back onto his own porch, drawing most of the crowd with him. That’s when he saw her. He’d stood there staring in through the screen door paralyzed with shock at his mother’s lifeless, pale body lying on the living room floor in a pool of blood on the gray and blue print rug. Two men in black suits lifted her and laid her on a stretcher.

The police weren’t the only ones who’d learned their lesson that day. When an officer closed his mother’s unseeing eyes and pulled a course woolen blanket over her face, he’d understood the message loud and clear. Cops couldn’t afford to let anyone get close enough to become targets.

The day he’d joined the force he’d started building his world of isolation—no family, no close friends. No one was let inside who could be used to hurt him.

Until now.

He shoved the memories back in their dark hole. Needing to be connected with Samantha, he reached up and entwined his fingers with hers where they lay on his shoulder. He stared across her lap at the dark haired boy sleeping innocently on the rug beside them.

The Kreshnins, and whoever was pulling their strings, might not know it yet, but they now had two powerful weapons to use against him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jake stood in the doorway watching Samantha help Nicky read from the magazine she’d pulled out of her backpack. The late afternoon light filtered through the room and cast them both in an odd old-fashioned light. They looked out of place, almost as if they’d been carried back a century to a more peaceful place and time—a mother teaching her child to read.

He turned from the domestic scene, shoved his hands into the front of his jeans and headed around the back of the cottage where the truck sat hidden. No matter how right it felt to stay here in hiding with Samantha and Nicky, he had a job to finish. Not only did his case hinge on what happened in the next few hours, but more importantly, their lives depended on it.

With care, he inspected the car for any damage from their escape through the forest last night. Scrapes and nicks covered the bodywork, along with what he suspected were grooves from grazing bullets, one of which passed just above the gas tank.

Damn good thing Samantha drives like a professional stunt man.
He didn’t want to think what would’ve happened if he’d had to get them out of there. Not in the condition he’d been in last night.

Standing behind the truck, he hunkered down to study the wheels and suspension. He was no expert on truck frames, but after their action-movie ride, he’d bet a month’s pay it sustained some kind of damage.

Even though he’d kidnapped her and scared her bad—man he regretted that—she still saved his ass four times now. Now not only had his actions gotten her involved in a situation that might still cost her life, but he’d probably ruined her car. He rubbed his hand over his face in frustration. One more thing he owed her, a new car. He prayed this one survived until they’d gotten out of this mess.

Two battered, holy sneakers appeared next to him.

“What you do, Big Partner?”

Jake turned to see Nicky squatting down bedside him, looking beneath the truck. He grinned at the seriousness in the boy’s expression. “Trying to see if Sami’s crazy driving broke anything on the truck.”

“She fun driver. We fly though air.” Nicky grinned up at him. “Sami good driver, no?”

The way she’d gotten them out of the ambush proved how good a driver Samantha was, if a little frightening. “Yes, she is.” Jake ruffled Nicky’s hair.

“I’m what?”

Samantha’s shoes stepped in on the other side of him. Jake shifted his gaze slowly up from her feet, over her shapely legs clad in jeans, the round curve of her hip resting against the truck’s side, across her navy pea jacket where her hands stuck in the pockets, finally stopping on her face with its curious grin and sparkling eyes.

Beautiful.

Sexy.

Home
.

He wanted to tell her she was all those to him. But if he admitted it, he figured the fates would somehow play havoc with her life just to take her away. No matter what, he wouldn’t put her in anymore jeopardy, not if he could prevent it.

“You’re good driver,” Nicky happily announced from beside him, saving the moment.

“Yep, that’s what we just said.” Jake grinned at Samantha as he slowly stood, closing the distance between them for a minute.

“I’ll just bet you did.” She nodded toward the ground, then studied him with that clear gaze of hers. “How do things look down there?”

“I’m not a mechanic, but everything looks like it’s still holding together.” The urge to drag her into his arms gnawed at him. Instead, he moved around her, and climbed into the truck’s cab. Turning the key in the ignition, he switched the radio to a news station.

Commercials played as Nicky scrambled into the passenger side of the cab. Samantha stood between the driver’s door and Jake’s knee.

“What are we listening for?” she asked, her brows drawn together and a little of the sparkle gone from her eyes.

“To see if we’re still on the police’s radar.” He idly rubbed his hand over her hip. She lightly caressed the bruise the window frame left on his right temple. Her fingers felt wonderful, gentle and cool.

“They already have a kidnapping bulletin on us. What else could they do? Put out a report about the raid last night?”

“At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past whoever is in the Kreshnins’ pocket.”

“Do you have any idea who it might be?”

He captured her fingers in his hand, and without thought brought them to his lips. “My best guess is someone high up in the local police department.”

“Do you have any contacts there?”

“Before I joined the FBI, I had a few, including my old partner Doyle.”

“That’s who we’re going to contact once we get back in Columbus?”

He nodded.

“We go for ride now, Jake?” Nicky asked from behind him.

“No, little partner. We have to wait until dark.”

“Why?” Samantha and Nicky asked simultaneously.

“Because…” Jake stopped as the commercial ended and the news reporter spoke.

“New details on the kidnapping case of the little Russian immigrant boy, Nicholai Gregorian.”

“That’s me!” Nicky bounced up and down in the passenger seat.

Jake settled him with a hand on the back of his neck. “Yes. Let’s listen to what they have to say.”

“In a related incident, a source places both the kidnapped boy and his alleged captor, Jacob Carlisle, at the scene of Saturday’s shooting death of FBI Captain, Thomas Bridges. This reporter has learned that Carlisle killed Bridges in a shoot out before absconding with the Gregorian boy.”

“That’s not true.” Sami leaned into the truck and turned up the radio volume. “You didn’t shoot him.”

“We both know that. Someone is using the shooting to turn up the heat on us.”

The reporter continued. “Wanted by both federal and local police, Carlisle was last seen leaving the scene of the crime with a woman assumed to be his accomplice and now learned to be a local nurse, Samantha Edgars.”

“Dammit.” Jake slammed his fist onto the dashboard. “They’re playing hardball now.”

Samantha drew her brows together, her lip pressed in a thin line. “But after last night’s raid, we knew they had my name. What’s so different with this announcement?”

He stared out into the quickly fading light. “Before this, you were pretty much anonymous to the local and state police. I’d bet anything on it. Now you’re in more danger than ever.”

“And that means?”

The hesitation in her voice hinted how scared she’d suddenly become. Knowing he’d put this terror in her life, his anger doubled.

“What it means is now we don’t have just the Kreshnins and federal agents on our trail. Now we have pissed off local and state law enforcement agents, who think they’re looking for a couple of cop killers. And they’ve broadcasted your name all over the news, which makes you and your family as much a target as it does me.” Seething, he stood, and gently moved her out of his way. Then handed Nicky out, before climbing back in the truck and closing the driver’s door. “Get our things together. We’re leaving as soon as I get back.”