Chapter 34
Bear
We crash into the driveway I never knew was even here, and Cam puts a quick hand out to stop me.
“Stop here,” he hisses.
Like we’re already on some sort of top-secret mission.
I come to a quick stop, but not because I want to. “Why?” I snap. “Where’s the house? I doubt they have her in the fucking forest.
He casts me a glance that says he thinks I’m an idiot and expected better of me than this, and I realize that the kid has changed in the last week. He used to hide his thoughts like they were national intelligence that only he was allowed to read, his face cold and blank no matter what you said.
Now he’s actually using expression.
For me.
Or not for me, I amend quickly. Probably only because of Sammy.
But still, the idea that he just showed me some emotion feels too big to handle. Too important to really consider.
So, I put it down and turn back to the question of why we’re stopped where the driveway meets the main road, instead of hauling ass to the house where they’re probably holding our girl.
“Because,” Cam says quickly, “once you turn this corner there’s no shelter. Whoever’s in that house will be able to see us approaching. And if that person has kidnapped Sammy–”
“They’ll be watching to see if anyone comes after her,” I agree. I throw the truck in reverse and shoot backwards into the trees, narrowly missing several pines. “And we don’t want him knowing we’re coming. You know this house?”
Cam nods. “Some rich asshole owns it. We delivered a piece to him once. Ordered something very specialized, had lots of demands.” He pauses, then closes his eyes once. “He demanded that Sammy deliver it by herself. I refused.”
The wheels in my head turn quickly on that piece of information. “Think that rich asshole is Duane Price?”
Cam’s forehead creases as he tries to remember.
“He didn’t give us his name. Just said he wanted it delivered to the house, asked for Sammy alone, paid in cash.
He barely even looked at the installation when we delivered it.
Wouldn’t... God, he wouldn’t stop staring at Sammy.
I didn’t even clock it until right now.”
“What did he look like?”
“Dark hair, dark eyes, sort of rounded face? Tall, but not as tall as me.”
Not enough information, but Cam’s never been trained for this sort of thing. “Did he look like Sammy?”
That brings him to a halt and he gives me a quick glance. “No.”
Right.
Neither did the Duane Price I knew. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t actually Sammy’s father.
And honestly, that doesn’t matter. Because the asshole kidnapped our girl, and that’s not exactly a good look. I don’t care who he is–her dad, some stranger, or the king of fucking France.
He’s got Sammy, and I’m getting her back.
“So, what’s the plan?” Cameron asks, checking his phone again.
I’m already getting out of the truck, my mind moving a hundred miles a minute as it deals with that exact question.
“Easy,” I say quietly. “We get to the house. We deal with whatever security he has in place. And we get our fucking girl.”
Cameron shows up at my side like a ghost, quick and quiet, and breathes out a huff that could have been a laugh in any other situation. “Right. Of course. Let’s go.”
We move quickly, sticking to the tree line as we creep up the driveway and making sure no one in the house can spot us.
I run from tree to tree, pausing behind each one and keeping my eye on the road, waiting for someone to show up.
How long is this fucking driveway, and how big is the house?
The forest is heavy here, and old, so there’s a lot of underbrush and the trees are tall enough to hide whatever’s ahead of us, but it the house has multiple stories that might not batter.
Even worse if there’s an opening in the trees that I don’t know about, or if the house is actually buried inside the trees.
I don’t know what the situation is, but I don’t want them knowing I’m coming. Surprise is a gift in a situation like this, particularly when I don’t know how many men we’re dealing with.
If this is the Duane Price I think it is, he didn’t come alone. He would have bought men more capable than he is.
Then again, he probably didn’t expect Sammy to be well-guarded.
He never was good at planning for a range of possible eventualities. He got one idea in his head and kept it, incapable of thinking outside the box.
That was what almost got him killed.
I run through a particularly open spot, crouched as close as I can get to the ground, and pull up behind another tree, counting on Cam to follow. The kid appears moments later, his eyes on the road and his chest barely moving with how quietly he’s breathing.
God, the kid would have been good in the military.
Except for that mop of hair. The inability to follow rules. The willingness to flout authority if it served his purposes.
Come to think of it, he’s a lot like I was at nineteen. Just out of high school and in love, willing to do whatever it took to keep my girl at my side. Getting married when I should have been thinking about how I was going to support a family.
Signing with the Marines without telling anyone I was doing it, and leaving my little family behind with barely a thought, because I didn’t see any way around it.
My heart cracks a little at the memory and I put it to the side. Now’s not the time for a walk down memory lane. I have a girl to save and a son to keep safe during the mission.
My memories don’t matter.
Not right now.
Three minutes of ducking and dodging later we come to a bend in the driveway, and I can see the house in the distance.
It’s a palatial thing, all soaring rafters and pitched roof, and I hiss.
This is exactly the sort of house we hate up here: The kind of place that a millionaire has built for a vacation house and comes to only in the summer.
They show up in town with their expectations and holier-than-thou attitudes and throw their weight around like they have any right to it.
The fact that this guy has this house makes me hate him even more.
I glance around, though, trying to gather intel, and realize that this might not be as hard as I thought. Because there’s only one car in the driveway–a black sedan of some sort–and though I search for several seconds, I don’t see anyone else.
I sure as hell don’t see any security.
And if he’s up here on his own, it’s going to make this rescue mission a whole lot easier.
I scan the whole driveway again, then the front of the house, trying to figure out what we’re up against. Where’s Sammy? Where’s Duane? What’s going on inside the house, and has that girl finally gotten herself into a situation she can’t get out of?
My mind shies away from that idea, unwilling to accept it, and my eyes slant to the right of the house, where a detached garage sits closed and evidently locked. Closed and locked means no one’s in there.
Unless he’s got her locked in there.
Shit.
I’m about to head back to the truck to find something large and metal, preferably a hammer, to try to break that lock when a flash of movement to the right of the garage catches my eye.
I pause and look back, trying like hell to sharpen my vision.
It’s thick brush right there, lots of ferns and small saplings, and it takes me a long time to separate the greenery from the thing that caught my eye.
I thought it was a bird, or maybe a fox, but when I focus in on it, I see it’s none of the above.
It’s a tiny girl with black ringlets that look like they’ve been through a tornado, her gray eyes enormous as they stare right back at me.
Sammy.
She’s gesturing sharply with her hand, though I have no idea what she thinks she’s doing. She keeps making different gestures with her fingers like she’s speaking some sort of sign language, but it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.
Is she having a stroke?
When Cam appears at my side, his eyes on the girl, I turn to him, ready to ask what’s wrong with her. But he’s already opening his mouth.
“Three guys,” he says quickly. “They’re in the forest behind the house, looking for her. She got out but she’s afraid to move in case they find her.”
He pauses and turns his eyes to me, a touch of humor around his mouth.
“She says she’s glad we’re here and what the fuck took us so long.”
I almost laugh before I remember we’re supposed to be hiding–and then realize that he just had a whole conversation without speaking.
“What are you doing, reading her mind?”
He snorts. “No, she’s using the sign language we made up when we were little.” He gives me a considering look. “You’d know that if you’d been here.”
The statement hangs in the air for several long moments, laden with symbolism, before he adjusts it.
“Now that you’re back, I guess we’ll have to teach you.”
My heart immediately melts in my chest, because my son has just offered to teach me sign language he made up with his best friend while I was too busy living my own life to remember that they existed.
And I put it away, because right now we need to save that best friend. I’ll have an existential crisis later, when I don’t have a girl in danger on my hands.
“Right,” I say. “Three guys in the forest behind the house. Assume one of them is Duane. They know she’s missing and are actively searching for her. How long has this been going on?”
Cameron does something complicated with his hands and then shakes his head. “About five minutes. It took her awhile to get out of the house and away from him.”
“Took her awhile. God.”
I go through three plans in quick succession, each more unlikely than the last, and finally come to a skidding halt. Why the fuck am I going through plans? The girl is right fucking there and the men are somewhere else.
I don’t need to distract them. I need to extract the girl and get the fuck out of here.
“So, get Sammy and run?” Cameron asks.