Chapter 21
21
W atching Tansy leave the hall was the worst sort of torture, and suddenly, Jake couldn’t deal with the lies anymore.
“Tansy—” he called, but the door slipped closed as he finished. “I love you.”
If he thought the crowd had offered a roar earlier, now they were a raging storm. Heads turned and there were smiles and shouting and waving hands as everyone told their neighbour what had just happened at high volume.
The entire floor of the hall turned into bedlam.
Malachi Fields stepped next to Jake. “You hanging out here for any particular reason, son?”
“That’s not?—”
“Explain later.” Malachi gestured for him to get a move on. “I know my daughter. When she’s hightailing it like that, you’d better catch her sooner than later.”
Thank God. Jake jumped off the stage and headed through the chairs for the exit door Tansy had escaped through.
Behind him, Malachi must have gotten to the microphone, because as Jake struggled forward, Malachi’s booming laugh rang out, comforting and contagious at the same time. “That’s a twist I never saw coming. Never thought your first day on the job would be this exciting, did you, Chance?”
Behind him, Chance responded. “No, sir. Seems as if we have one bachelor in a hurry to collect his date. Let’s get him out of here as quick as we can, shall we?”
Thank God Chance had said something, because it seemed the crowd had all leaned into Jake’s path instead of out of the way.
“Misunderstanding,” Jake shouted, not caring how foolish it made him seem. “I love her.”
“Then go get her.”
One of the men in the crowd leapt to his feet and threw a fist into the air. “Don’t mess this up, man.”
“Tansy deserves the best,” someone else called.
“I love her,” Jake repeated, still fighting his way toward the door.
“Tell her, not us,” some card in the far corner of the hall shouted.
“Tansy rocks,” another voice cried, and the sentiment was greeted with applause and cheering.
If he wasn’t trying to get away as fast as possible, Jake would have found it rather enchanting to know exactly how many people were Team Tansy.
He tried calling her phone the entire way to the ranch but kept being sent to her voice mail. “Dammit, Tans. Making it harder to find you than usual isn’t nice.”
Fine, he’d start with logic. Home first.
Dust flew as he braked in front of the main house. There was no sign of her SUV, but he still hurried out just in case.
A note fluttered on the front door of the High Water ranch house.
I don’t feel safe here anymore. That Tansy is nothing but trouble, so before she does something to hurt me, I need to get away. I don’t know where I’m headed yet, so I’ll leave Jeffrey with you for now. Take care of our baby for me, darling, until I find a way to come back to you both.
XOX Melissa
Shit. Melissa had been at the house? Was that why Tansy had left?
He tried the door, but it was locked. He raced over to the apartment Melissa had used, but it too was shut up tight.
He stood in the yard and tried to call Tansy again as Petra and Aiden pulled up to the porch, poured out of their truck, and raced toward him.
“We got here as fast as we could. Is Tansy here?”
“No sign yet, but Melissa was.” Jake handed his brother the note.
Aiden swore softly. “She’s clearly out of her mind.”
“Oh, she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s setting up an alibi for down the road when she returns and claims to have been doing the best thing for her son.” The chill from the frozen spot in the middle of Jake’s chest seeped into his words. “Where’s Jeffrey?”
“The barn?” Aiden turned to Petra. “Can you track Melissa? Or Tansy?”
“How about both? I’m on it.” Petra had her phone out, fingers flying.
Jake and Aiden raced for the barn. “Declan wasn’t at the auction. He should be here,” Aiden said breathlessly as they pushed through the door.
“Shit.” Jake shot toward the crumpled form lying on the ground outside one of the horse stalls. He rolled his brother carefully, cursing harder as blood slicked his fingers.
But Declan’s eyes fluttered open and he swore softly. “Fucking Melissa.”
That answered that question. “Sorry, bro. We’ll get you fixed up, but do you know where Jeffrey is?” Jake demanded.
His brother shuffled to a sitting position, one hand cradling the lump on his head as he pointed. “He was there. Standing at the end of the hall. I came out of the stall and he was there, but when I went toward him, Melissa must have brained me. The last thing I remember is his face.”
“Jeffrey’s?”
“Yeah.” Declan pulled his hand from his head and examined the blood. “The kid was pissed, and I don’t mean at me.”
“Good. Maybe?—”
“Jake, I got a bead on Tansy,” Petra shouted from where she hung on the barn door. “And the she-witch. They’re both at the Heart Falls lookout.”
Christ. “Come on, Deck. We’ll get you to the house?—”
His brother waved him off. “I have my phone. I’ll message Sydney to come rescue me. Go find Tansy. She needs you right now.”
Jake squeezed Declan’s shoulder then hightailed it for the truck, Petra and Aiden on his heels.
Minutes earlier…
Speeding at the maximum allowable before the RCMP would pull her over, Tansy put all her attention on keeping ZenBaby on the road. It had been a long winter and a busy spring, and her poor SUV needed a tune up in the worst way possible. She’d kept putting it off, and now she was regretting it with every fiber of her soul.
At least the dangerous trip kept her mind on the road and not on the crazy she was headed to meet. Leaving when she had might have been foolish, but she didn’t see any other way around it.
Ten minutes later, when her phone started going off with a series of text messages from Jake and Petra, followed by insistent phone calls, she ignored all of it, both for safety’s sake and so she didn’t cave and tell them exactly how foolish she was being.
Besides, she was nearly there. Nothing anyone could do to stop her at this point.
The final turns up the forestry service road to the lookout were extra tricky, and the undercarriage seemed to shimmy harder than usual. Tansy fought with the wheel and finally convinced it to head in the right direction.
At the top of the hill, the road leveled out to a slight incline instead of the steep slope it had been to that point. Melissa’s familiar black car was parked past the usual pullover spot, nose down toward arriving traffic.
Tansy manoeuvered to the left, off the road and facing uphill. Hand brake on, wheels locked. God, she hoped the beast didn’t decide to give up the ghost right now.
As she slipped from ZenBaby and approached the other car, Melissa stepped into view. She snatched Jeffrey off the ground and balanced him on a hip, and the plan Tansy had to rush the other woman vanished. They were too close to the escarpment on the eastern road edge, and Tansy knew Melissa would drop Jeffrey in an instant to save her own skin.
Melissa grabbed a tire iron out of the open trunk of her car. Great. That was a potential problem.
Still, it was time to focus on the part she was in control of. Tansy was close enough now to check Jeffrey. “Hey, kiddo.”
“Don’t talk to him,” Melissa ordered. “Throw your phone over the edge.”
Tansy sighed. “Really? That sucks. I just put a new case on it. Also, not very environmentally friendly.”
The other woman’s nostrils flared, but she held onto her anger by a thread. She waited until Tansy had done as ordered before speaking again. “Here’s the deal. I’ll leave Jeffrey with Jake if you get in the trunk of my car.”
What the hell? It wasn’t much of a threat—not in Tansy’s books. Trunks could be gotten out of fairly easily. “You’re not serious.”
Melissa raised a brow. “Either you get in, or I throw him in and leave for good. Which will it be?”
Maybe trying to overpower Melissa was worth the risk, but fear Jeffrey would get hurt held Tansy back. Whatever else happened, the kiddo needed to have the chance for a better life. That couldn’t start with him in the trunk, vanishing from Heart Falls.
Good thing she and the little tyke were both thieves and sneaks. They spoke the same language.
Tansy looked Jeffrey straight in the eye. “People who don’t make Dixie smile get something else, don’t they?”
Her attention elsewhere, Tansy couldn’t move fast enough to dodge. Melissa had dropped the iron and slapped her hard with an open palm. “Stop spewing nonsense and get in the damn trunk.”
Climbing into the enclosed space wasn’t an ideal situation, but then again, Tansy had some options not available to the average person. She knew better than most how to get out of a trunk, so while it was a bad idea, it was better than any of her other current options.
In fact, it was one way to guarantee Tansy could get the jump on Melissa.
Tansy made eye contact with Jeffrey again. The kiddo was tight-lipped, with eyes wide as saucers, but he was also hyper-focused.
“No puppy smiles,” he whispered, and Tansy bared her teeth in her best Dixie impression.
“Shut up,” Melissa ordered, shaking Jeffrey as she stepped closer to the car.
“Cool your jets, I’m going,” Tansy offered, setting a foot into the back. She needed to move fast and smart and not leave her fingers in vulnerable positions. Just in case Melissa slammed the trunk shut before Tansy was all the way in.
She’d barely ducked her head when the lid crashed closed.
A second later, Melissa screamed. A thump sounded, followed by a scramble of rocks.
Cursing rang for a full minute before Melissa got herself together. “What the hell? The little asshole bit me.”
Good for Jeffrey. Tansy hoped he escaped along the path to the lake. There were a ton of places for someone with his skills to hide along the way, and it was a warm enough day. He’d be safe until Jake came and found him.
“You taught him to have that shitty attitude. Fine, Jake can have him, but he can’t have you as well.”
“Someone needs to up her meds,” Tansy sang out. She peered around for the emergency trunk latch releases. The car was new enough it had to have them. Somewhere close to her should be a glow-in-the-dark latch.
“ Bitch .” Overhead, metal rang like a kettle drum as Melissa slammed something on the trunk. The tire iron? “You messed everything up.”
“Tell me about it. Oh, wait, maybe don’t. You’re nothing but a liar, and a thief, and far too stupid to have any sort of long-term plan. Do you even know your right hand from your left? Crazy bitch.”
Crude insults, and not very politically correct, but Jake had said a mad Melissa made unwise choices. Maybe she’d get close enough Tansy could open the trunk suddenly and smack her in the face.
Maybe she’d stand there beating on the metal until the cops arrived. Because by now Jake had to be looking for Tansy, which meant Petra as well, and there was no way her bestie didn’t have some kind of tracker to follow.
“Fuck you,” Melissa screamed, “I was brilliant . You ever wonder how I knew where to find him? I sent Jake a bunch of letters. I’d lost track of him and had no idea where he was anymore other than southern Alberta, and for some reason, his past employers wouldn’t give me his forwarding address.”
Because you’re clearly not mentally stable? Which didn’t matter at this point because as long as Melissa kept talking, she wasn’t going after Jeffrey. Tansy spotted the glowing catch release for the trunk. One problem solved. “How does that mean you showed up on his doorstep?”
“He answered back.” Melissa gloated. “I sent one letter a month until I got a response. That narrowed it down to two different towns, and as soon as I got here, people were more than happy to talk about the gorgeous Skye brothers and them taking over the animal rescue and running their retreat house. Ad nauseum.”
Mentally unstable, but slightly smart. Tansy clapped slowly then went back to feeling for the other release that should be close, just as a backup. “Well done. You could get a job with the police force, except for the fact you’re a thieving, cheating, psycho bitch.”
The screaming that followed was drowned out by the deafening volume of Melissa beating the hell out of the trunk with the tire iron. With every blow, the metal over Tansy’s head dented more until she figured it was possible the trunk latch would no longer open.
Tansy gritted her teeth against the racket, adjusted position, and found the second release pull. The one that when she decided to tug it, half the back seat would flip down and let her access the passenger space.
If Melissa took off now, getting access to attack her directly would be risky but still the safest possible solution. Surviving a car going off the road, especially if Tansy could time her escape to be in town when they were at lower speeds, was far better than whatever the hell else the woman had in mind.
The banging stopped and quiet fell, but Tansy’s ears still rang as she listened for a clue of what Melissa was doing. Headed to the driver’s door? Heading out to find Jeffrey?
If Mellissa walked away from the car, Tansy could be after her in seconds.
But what she heard was a low, menacing laugh. “You know what else? I went to your cheesy little café. Found out all about the Heart Falls lookout. How this is where sweethearts often meet. I figured you came here sometime with Jake, so this is where you get to stay. Maybe they’ll put up stuffed animals in memoriam for you.”
The car rocked suddenly then slowly began to roll.
“You should have left him alone,” Melissa taunted. “He’s mine.”
Crap. The nose of the car had been pointed down the hill toward the sharp U-turn corner. The only things at the edge of the road were rosebushes and scraggy little trees. Beyond that, it was a cliff all the way down to the heart-shaped pool at the base of the falls.
The car picked up momentum, rocks under the tires loud as Tansy scrambled to free herself. She jerked the glow-in-the-dark release cord.
Nothing happened.