The Texas Lawman's Last Stand (19 page)

Mattie reached for the door handle. Her captor was driving fast, and the car was shaking from the now-flat tire, but she couldn’t wait and hope that he would slow down. She had to get out of there now before he managed to get her away from Bo and the safe house.

“Move and I’ll shoot,” the man growled. She heard him but didn’t recognize his voice. Of course, he could be disguising it. “If I have to kill you, I’ll go back for your kid.”

Mattie froze. She couldn’t stop herself from reacting to that threat. Maybe because her adrenaline and anxiety levels were through the roof. Logically, she knew that Bo would do whatever it took to keep this goon from getting anywhere near Holly.

But Bo could die trying to protect her daughter.

She’d caught a final glimpse of Bo before the gunman sped away. He looked enraged. Mattie was furious, too. How had this man gotten close enough to kidnap her in broad daylight?

Her head was pounding now, and the sound of the tire slapping against the asphalt didn’t help. She needed to think clearly, but instead she was a mess. Her eyes and throat were on fire, and she couldn’t pull in a decent breath.

“Who are you?” she asked, but even saying just those few words caused her to cough almost uncontrollably.

“That’s not your concern. Right now, the only thing you have to do is sit there and shut up.”

No. She needed to do a lot more than that. Bo would try to come for her, Mattie was certain of that, but she couldn’t count on him or anyone else reaching her in time. She had to save herself.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded. Mattie looked all around her to see if there was anything inside the vehicle that she could grab and use as a weapon. Her purse was on the floor. She might be able to hit him with it.

“I said shut up,” he snarled.

He ripped off his gas mask and tossed it onto the back seat. Mattie got a good look at him then. He had dark brown hair and eyes.

And he was a stranger.

He’d been hired to kidnap her. Maybe even to kill her.

Mattie’s heart sank. If this had been Kendall, Ian or Cicely, she could perhaps reason with them. Perhaps even with Tolivar. But how did you reason with a man who was likely doing this for money?

“Whatever you’re being paid, I can pay you more,” she tried.

The man jammed the gun against her head. “I said shut up.”

So much for her attempt to bribe him. Mattie cleared her throat after another round of coughing and kept watch, waiting for a chance to escape.

He drove out of the subdivision and took a right on the main highway. She knew it would eventually lead them to the interstate, where there’d be lots of traffic. Certainly someone would see the gun pointed at her head or the flat tire and report it to the cops. There was also the fact that they were in an unmarked police car.

It probably had GPS tracking.

The relief flooded through her. Bo would be able to find her. But she still wasn’t giving up on her own attempts to escape. She would just need to wait until the driver was distracted. A few seconds was all she needed. And she could open the door and jump out. He would fire at her, of course, so that meant she had to pray that she wasn’t injured in the fall. She would need to be able to run.

Each second that he drove clicked off in her head, and she finally saw the sign for the interstate.

But he didn’t take it.

The gunman drove right past it and took a right turn. He drove about a mile before he came to a stop behind a dark blue truck. This wasn’t a residential area but rather a street lined with warehouses that were spaced far apart. There wasn’t another person in sight.

He turned to her and jammed the gun even harder against her head. “I’m only going to say this one time. Cooperate or you die. I get paid whether I deliver you dead or alive.”

Mattie had no idea if that were true, but if his boss didn’t mind her dead, then why hadn’t he just killed her in the garage? He certainly had had the element of surprise and could have fired a couple of shots before she even knew what hit her.

So, who wanted to keep her alive?

And why?

“Come on,” the gunman insisted. “We’re getting in that truck.”

Oh, God. If he managed to get her in that vehicle, then there might not be any way for Bo and the cops to track where he was taking her.

“I said come on,” he growled.

He latched on to her hair again and dragged her across the seat toward him. The pain shot through her. So did the fear. He was a lot bigger than she was. Stronger, too. Plus, he had a gun, and she didn’t. But Mattie knew she couldn’t give in to that fear.

She had to do something now.

She’d had some martial arts training when she became a P.I., and she would rely on that. She prayed it would be enough. If she could just get away and run back to the main highway, someone would be able to help her.

With the gunman still pulling at her, Mattie went limp.

Because he had hold of her and because he was so strong, she went flying at him. Mattie lowered her head and aimed for his chest. She rammed into him, sending them both crashing to the rain-slick pavement.

She tried to get up, but he used his strength to keep her pinned to the ground.

“Stop it,” he growled right against her ear. “Or I make one phone call. Just one. And a sniper will start shooting in the safe house. He won’t stop until he’s killed everyone inside. Got that?”

Mattie stopped struggling. Yes, she wanted to live. She wanted to raise her daughter, but she couldn’t risk Holly, Jacob and Rosalie’s safety so that she could live. That’s the reason she had walked away from the hospital thirteen months ago. She hadn’t waited this long only to put her baby right back in danger.

“That’s more like it.” He got up and jerked her to her feet.

The rain whipped at them. It was coming down harder now, and she hoped that would slow him down a little. It didn’t.

He didn’t waste any time. With a firm grip on her, he hurried to the truck. It was unlocked, so he opened the door and crammed her inside. The moment he was in, he pressed the button to engage the locks. That’s when Mattie noticed she didn’t even have a lock on her side of the truck. The lock button and the door handle itself had been ripped off.

She was trapped.

The gunman started the engine and jammed his foot on the accelerator. The truck bolted forward, the tires digging into the mud on the soft shoulder. But that barely slowed him down. He raced down the side street and past the warehouses.

Mattie watched the side mirror as they sped away. When the unmarked car was no longer in sight, she knew her chances for rescue had just gone from slim to none.

Chapter Seventeen

The wipers slashed across the windshield, clearing the rain that was coming down hard now, but it wasn’t clearing it fast enough for Bo. He needed to hurry, and the rain and slick roads were slowing him down.

So was the GPS tracker.

He was getting the tracking feed from a computer at headquarters, and it was being transmitted to his phone. But it seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace. The red blip on the screen was cruising along, only to disappear for a few seconds. When it popped back up, it was blocks ahead of where he’d been on the previous image. If the transmission had a delay at the wrong time, he might miss a turn and have to double back.

His heart was pounding hard enough to hurt his ribs. The tear gas was still giving his eyes and throat some problems. But those were all minor annoyances. The only thing that mattered now was getting to Mattie in time.

From the moment he’d seen the gas-masked goon driving off with her, Bo had had a split-second debate with himself. Part of him wanted to rush after Mattie, but he also knew he had to keep the children safe. He couldn’t be sure this wasn’t a trick to draw him away from the house. That’s why he’d taken the time to call for other officers, not for his own backup, but he wanted a team of detectives guarding the house. When he was certain they were on their way and only minutes out, he’d jumped into the officer’s unmarked patrol car and sped after the gunman and Mattie.

He had to get to her in time.

God knows what this kidnapper had in mind, but Bo didn’t think the outcome would be good for Mattie.

Was Kendall or Ian behind this? Or Cicely? Maybe they planned to hold Mattie captive so that she would agree to have Holly tested as a bone marrow donor. That seemed extreme, but these were people who had dealt in extremes before.

Bo cursed when the blip disappeared again. His chest was pumping now, and every nerve inside him was primed and ready for a fight. What he needed was his opponent, and for that to happen he had to see where the gunman was taking Mattie.

The red blip jumped back onto the screen, and Bo saw the getaway car’s turn. Hell. He had to slam on his brakes and then hope like the devil that he didn’t go into a skid. He’d be of no help to Mattie if he crashed. He took the turn on what had to be two wheels, and fought with the steering wheel to regain control.

Then his phone rang.

That cut the tracking feed images.

He saw the captain’s number appear on the screen, but Bo only wanted it to go away so he could get back to finding the car.

“I need you off the line,” Bo said, answering the call.

“I know. Because you’re getting the GPS coordinates. But I can give them to you while I see if I can talk you into waiting for backup.”

“Not a chance. I’m finding Mattie.”

“That’s what I figured you’d say, but I had to try. Keep going straight. The car’s just ahead.” The captain paused. “It’s not moving, Bo.”

That nearly knocked the breath right out of him. If the car wasn’t moving, that meant God knows what could be happening to Mattie.

The gunman could be trying to kill her.

Bo slammed his foot on the accelerator and spotted the car on the side of the road. He tried to see what was going on inside, but the rain made that impossible. He pulled up behind the car, slamming on his brakes, and he jumped out before his vehicle even stopped moving.

He drew his gun, took aim and approached the car.

His heart dropped.

Because the car was empty.

Empty!

He hurried back to grab his cell phone. “She’s not here. No one is.” Bo glanced around at all the warehouses. There were dozens of them, and the gunman could have taken her in any one of them.

Except why would he park back here, a good twenty yards from the nearest one? Why not just park closer?

“I have officers on the way there to look for her,” the captain told Bo.

Bo heard him but didn’t respond. That’s because something caught his attention. Something off on the shoulder of the road, dug into the mud.

Tire tracks.

And they were very recent, because the rain hadn’t washed them away yet.

The gunman had ditched the unmarked car and moved her to another vehicle. Bo cursed. There was no way to follow her now.

Or was there?

The road was just two lanes and fairly narrow, so he hurried to the other side. No tracks there, which meant the gunman hadn’t made a U-turn and gone back out to the highway. He’d driven straight ahead.

“Get the officers out to Industrial Road,” Bo told the captain. He raced back to his car, got inside and gunned the engine. “And see if you can get any kind of surveillance feed from one of these warehouses. Based on those tire tracks, I think we’re looking for a heavy vehicle, probably an SUV or truck.”

“We’re on the way,” the captain assured him. “But we’ll do a silent approach. All unmarked cars. We don’t want this guy panicking.”

Neither did Bo. Because that was the fastest way to get Mattie killed.

“Where does this road lead?” Bo asked.

“Nowhere. It’s a dead end. But there are two smaller roads that feed off it. One is about a half mile up on your right. The other, about a mile to your left. The one on the right just leads to more warehouses, but the one on the left will take you back to the highway.”

And the gunman could be on either.

If Mattie’s attacker planned to kill her right away or hand her over to someone else, that could happen in one of the more remote warehouses. However, if he wanted to get her out of the area, then he would head back to the highway because that in turn would take him to the interstate. If the gunman made it that far, it would be next to impossible to find Mattie.

Bo shoved his phone in his pocket so he could concentrate on the drive and so he could keep his gun ready. He flew past the warehouses, taking notice of each of the parking lots. There were some semis, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t looking for that type of vehicle.

He slowed down when he approached the turn on the right. The turn that would lead to more warehouses and a dead end. It wasn’t the turn he thought the gunman would take.

But Bo saw the dark blue truck.

It was the right size to have made those tire tracks in the mud, and it was parked at an odd angle in the side parking lot of one of the warehouses. Next to it was a black car.

His gut told him Mattie was in one of those vehicles.

Bo didn’t slam on his brakes because it would make too much noise and possibly alert her kidnapper. Instead, he came to a stop and backed up so he could turn into the road. He didn’t speed, though it was next to impossible to keep himself from doing just that. Bo wanted to make it look as if he were headed there on business. Maybe as a worker at one of the warehouses. He wanted the element of surprise on his side.

As Bo approached the truck, he kept his focus straight ahead, but he studied the truck from the corner of his eye.

Mattie.

He was both relieved and terrified to see her in the cab of the truck. She was alive, but the guy had a gun jammed against her head.

It took everything inside Bo to keep driving. If he stopped now, the gunman would likely just shoot her point-blank. Bo had to figure out a way to stop that from happening.

He turned into the parking lot of the next warehouse. He couldn’t see the truck from that angle, which was good, because it meant the gunman couldn’t see him. Bo jumped out of his car and started running toward the back of the warehouse. His best bet was to try to sneak up on them.