Larkspur Road (31 page)

From the condition of the cabin it was obvious that Wade had been squatting here, probably ever since Abner and his brother left on their trip. The sleeping bag rolled up on the floor, the open backpack stuffed with clothes, a flashlight, camping supplies, and the assortment of opened beer cans scattered on tables and across the old wood floor all told her he’d been here several days at least.

But the only weapon in sight seemed to be the one in his hand.

Then her gaze returned to the beer can lying squashed and empty on the round table beside her. It wasn’t much. But if she had a chance, any kind of chance, it would be better than nothing.

How long had they been here now, listening to Collins yell at them how much he loved Brittany, how much she’d hurt him? Telling her how he’d been sleeping on the hard ground in the middle of nowhere for weeks, just to be close enough to stay near her, to keep an eye on her? How he’d probably lost his job for taking off after her, spending every waking moment trying to prove to her how much she meant to him?

It felt like hours since she and Britt had run up to Abner’s
door, but in all this time, she hadn’t found an opening yet to do something. Anything.

She had to stop him.

All she needed was an opportunity….

“How did…you find me?” Britt gasped as he dragged her to the rocking chair a few feet from the sofa, sank down, and forced her to sit on his lap. Glancing uneasily back and forth between the two women on the sofa, he kept the gun trained on Mia.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d follow you wherever you went? You’re my girl, I’d do anything for you.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, then scowled as she tried to pull away.

“Finding you was easy peasy. All I did was pay my cousin Ralph fifty bucks. He’s a computer programmer, remember? He can hack into anything under the sun. Once I offered him the dough—and the added bonus that I wouldn’t tell his mom he smokes weed on the weekends and does a little dealing on the side—he got right to work. Didn’t take him long to track the location of the computer you used once you got to this dump of a town. Led me straight to your aunt’s pretty little house. Nothing’s too much trouble when it comes to you, baby.” He sounded defiant and more than a little desperate. “I thought you knew that.”

Winny was holding tightly to her cane, her fingers rigid as she, too, watched Collins. Mia could almost sense the heat of her aunt’s fury.

So she was surprised when Winny spoke in a voice that sounded unsteady.

“Young man, I…have to use the bathroom.”

His head jerked toward her. “No way. Stay where you are.”

“Please. I…I’m scared and I…need to go. I’m an old woman and you’ve frightened me.”

“Let her,” Britt begged softly, tilting her face toward him. “Please, Wade. She’s not in good health. Let her for me.”

His skin darkened with an angry flush, but uncertainty
hovered in his eyes. “Haven’t I already done enough for you? I gave up my job, I’ve been hanging around this dump of a town…I’ve done nothing but try to show you…” He stopped, swallowing down the tremble in his voice. Then he scowled at the pleading look on Winny’s face.

“Hell, Granny, why not? Go ahead, use the can.” He stood up, clamping Britt to him again and training the gun on Mia once more. He was struggling now to keep his voice steady. “But you just remember—you do one thing I don’t like, make one little move, and I’ll have to shoot her. You got it?”

“Y-yes. Th-thank you.” Winny’s voice sounded more frail than Mia had ever heard it. She didn’t sound like Winny at all. Mia’s heart began to thud. She braced herself for whatever was coming next as her aunt leaned heavily on her cane and began to hobble across the room.

She limped past Collins and Brittany, moving more slowly than Mia had ever seen her move, and Wade turned slightly to keep her in his line of vision. For an instant, the gun no longer pointed straight at Mia.

Suddenly everything happened at once. Winny slammed her cane with astonishing force at Collins’s knee. Even as he screamed in pain, Mia snatched the beer can and launched herself at him, ramming the can into his jaw, and at the same time, Britt drove her elbow backward into his rib cage. She lurched free of his grasp at the same moment Mia grabbed for the gun.

Desperation fueled Mia as she used every ounce of her strength and will. Her fingers latched onto the cold metal with strength she never knew she possessed as pain suffused Wade’s face. Then Winny hit him again with her cane, and as he howled with the impact, Mia gritted her teeth and wrenched the gun from his fingers.

Suddenly the front door flew open. Travis sprang into the cabin, soaked from the rain, water streaming down his taut face, his shirt clinging to his chest. Yet the Glock in his hand
was trained with cold, impervious efficiency on Wade Collins.

“Freeze, Collins. Don’t move.”

But Wade, his face bloodied, wheeled and took his chances, dodging for the back door like a wounded jackrabbit confronted by a mountain lion. Travis swore, his eyes narrowing as in that split second he chose not to shoot. An instant later, Collins was gone, fleeing into the rain.

Travis reached Mia in two strides just as she set the gun down on the floor. His free arm caught her to him, holding her close as she clung to him. He searched her face, his throat so tight he couldn’t even swallow.

“Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely. Finally the terror that had clamped hard and heavy on his chest during the endless drive to the cabin began to ebb. She was deathly pale and she looked shaken, but otherwise she was unharmed. Relief sagged through him. “He hurt you? Any of you?” he demanded.

“N-not me. Travis, he hurt Britt.” Mia gulped back tears. “Britt, honey…” She whirled toward her niece, wanting to enfold the sobbing girl in her arms, then saw that Winny was already holding her, murmuring words of comfort. Aunt Winny was stroking the girl’s hair with a gentleness Mia had never seen in her before.

“Stay here, all of you. Lock that door after me.” Travis fought against his own overwhelming sense of relief. The knowledge that he could have lost Mia today shook him to his core. He could have been too late….

His voice was husky as he told them, “Hodge will be here any minute.”

“Go, Travis, we’re fine. Go get him,” Mia urged as she joined Winny in hugging her arms around Britt.

“No fears, baby.” He shot her a grim, gentle smile that belied the deadly look in his eyes when he’d entered the cabin. “That bastard’s as good as got.”

Then he was gone, pounding into the storm after Wade.

Mia cradled Brittany in her arms, rocking her as the girl began to hiccup with her sobs. Gently, Winny stroked Britt’s hand.

“It’s okay, honey,” Mia said firmly. “You’re safe now. We all are. Travis will get him. You won’t ever have to worry about Wade Collins hurting you again.”

Over the wind and the thunder nearly shaking the cabin Brittany clung to her as the shriek of police sirens suddenly filled the air, screaming down the road with no name.

Travis tore through the trees, ignoring the rain slamming like bullets into his face, soaking his clothes. Collins was zigzagging wildly through the woods, moving fast with adrenaline and fear despite the injury to his knee. But Travis was gaining on him. Gaining fast.

No slipping away this time, asshole,
he thought as he leaped across fallen branches and plowed toward his quarry. Collins was less than twenty yards ahead—fifteen. Travis could practically hear the kid’s chest heaving.

He couldn’t let himself think about what Collins had done to Mia and Brittany and their aunt. He forced himself to focus solely on pursuit as he single-mindedly bore down on him. He was drawing closer…and closer. His own breath was coming fast but he wasn’t winded. Collins stumbled and Travis gained another yard.
Two
. The wind tore at his face and he blinked the rain from his eyes, jumped over a tree stump in his path, and saw Collins start down an embankment.

No, you don’t, pal
. Travis pumped up his speed, calculated, and leaped at the kid in a flying tackle that had brought down far tougher men. He hit him with a sickening thwack and then they were both rolling down the grassy embankment, over rocks and twigs, twisting and grunting. He managed to get in one good punch before they reached the
bottom. Collins tried to fight, to land a blow, but Travis pinned him easily to the ground and slugged him again.

Blood streamed from the punk’s nose as he screamed, “Britt! I love you, Britt!”

“Shut up,” Travis said. Turning his head quickly, he saw Teddy Hodge and Zeke Mueller behind him, tearing down the embankment. “The only time you’re ever going to set eyes on Brittany again is in the courthouse—right before they send you away.”

And then as Collins tried once more to kick and twist, Travis hit him again and this time the punk slumped, his head rolling to the side, the fight going out of him like a whoosh of air from a deflated balloon.

“Good…job…Travis!” Hodge called, huffing as he reached the bottom and stalked toward them, grim faced.

Mueller got there before the sheriff. As Travis stood, the deputy flipped the dazed kid over and snapped on the cuffs.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Mueller began, but Travis didn’t hear the rest. He was already running back up the embankment. Back to the cabin.

Back to Mia.

“Sure you’re all right?” Travis asked that night when the police had finished with their questions, when Collins was locked behind bars, when Brittany had let everything out in a two-hour crying jag and then gone out with Seth for ice cream—and he and Mia were finally alone.

Travis had left Grady at the ranch with Rafe and Sophie so he could come back to Larkspur Road to check on her.

Mia lay nestled in his arms on her living room sofa wearing clean jeans and a pink tank top, her feet bare. Her freshly showered skin glowed in the lamplight.

“I’m good,” she assured him. “A little shaky still, but…thank God you got there when you did!”

“If anything had happened to you—” His voice was so thick he suddenly found he couldn’t even finish the sentence. He’d never forget that godawful drive out to Abner’s place. Knowing all the while that Mia, her niece, and her aunt were trapped there with Collins and that the kid had a gun and was plenty unstable enough to use it.

Raw terror the likes of which he’d never known had gripped him during that drive. Terror of losing Mia. Of her being hurt in any way…

He wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

Every muscle in his body tight, he pressed a kiss to her cheek and she turned in his arms so she was lying in his embrace, her beautiful face uplifted to his.

“You reached us just in time.”

“If it hadn’t been for your aunt answering your cell phone I wouldn’t have known. No one would have—”

“Shh.” Mia touched her finger to his mouth. “We’re all okay, Travis. You got him. Now all of us—me, Aunt Winny, and most of all Britt—we’re safe.”

“You’re the one who got the gun away from him,” he reminded her, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’ll have nightmares for years thinking about how
that
could have gone wrong.”

“Hey, there were three of us fighting back. We had it in the bag. Unless, of course, he’d gotten the gun away from
me
….”

Her voice trailed off and Travis felt her shiver.

His arms tightened around her.

“It’s over,” he said quietly. “You’re safe. He’ll never get near any of you again.”

With a smile she reached up, pulled his head down toward her, and kissed him. A long, soul-stirring kiss that soon had them both lying on the sofa, as close as two people could be, thinking how grateful they were to be alive and together, alone in this house except for Samson, who was snoring gently on the hall rug.

“Um…Brittany and Seth…they could be back soon. They only went for ice cream….”

“Then I guess we’d better hurry.” Travis grinned. He was off the sofa in one swift, smooth lunge, reaching down and scooping her into his arms. He loved the sound of her laughter as he carried her into the bedroom and kicked the door shut with his foot.