Chapter Twelve #2
The car door opened. Cooper’s shadow fell across her face.
“Sharon,” he said, her name as hard as ice in his mouth. “Welcome home.”
Pain was the first thing Dusty registered as he clawed his way back to consciousness.
A dull, throbbing ache pounded at the side of his skull, each pulse sending fresh waves of agony through his head.
He groaned, lifting a hand to the tender spot.
His fingers came away wet and sticky and coated with red. Blood. His blood.
Memory returned in jagged fragments. The sound of tires on gravel. Lennox’s smug face. Sharon’s scream. The bullet striking his thigh. His helplessness as Lennox’s men held him. And then darkness.
“Sharon,” he croaked, his voice sounding foreign to his own ears.
Dusty forced his eyes open, blinking against the dim light filtering through the barn’s weathered boards. The empty barn. Where Sharon had been standing just moments, or what could have been hours ago, there was nothing but scattered hay and dust motes dancing in shafts of fading sunlight.
Cold dread seized his chest. They’d taken her. Lennox had Sharon. Which meant he was taking her back to Madison.
The crunch of gravel outside snapped him to full alertness. Someone was coming. Lennox returning to finish the job? Or worse, had he left his men behind to finish the job? Eliminate any possible witness to corroborate Sharon’s story?
His eyes frantically scanned the barn floor, spotting his gun lying halfway across the space.
Too far. But he had no choice. Ignoring the spinning in his head, his vision blurry, Dusty rolled to his knees, groaning in agony from the bullet wound in his thigh, and lunged for the weapon, every movement sending fresh bolts of pain through his skull.
The barn door creaked open just as his fingers closed around the grip.
In one fluid motion born of years of training, Dusty tucked into a roll, came up in a shooter’s stance, and pointed the weapon directly at the silhouette in the doorway.
Pain shot through his leg, but he gritted his teeth and stayed in his crouch.
“Whoa! Easy, Dusty! It’s us!”
Rafe Boudreau stood in the doorway, hands raised slightly, his familiar voice cutting through Dusty’s adrenaline-fueled haze. Behind him, Dane and Antonio flanked the entrance, weapons drawn but pointed toward the ground.
Relief flooded through Dusty as he lowered his gun. “Rafe,” he breathed, the single word carrying the weight of his gratitude. He only wished they’d gotten here sooner.
“Dude, you look like you’ve been fighting with a wildcat and lost,” Rafe said, holstering his weapon and crossing the barn in quick strides.
He crouched beside Dusty, examining the wound on his thigh before turning his attention to the gash on his head, his touch surprisingly gentle. “That’s going to need stitches.”
“Forget about me,” Dusty said, pushing himself to his feet despite the wave of dizziness that threatened to topple him. “They took Sharon. Lennox and his goons.”
“Lennox?”
“Troy Lennox. Top enforcer for Madison, according to Sharon.” Dusty moved to lean against the barn’s dilapidated wall before taking a deep breath. Dane checked the perimeter of the barn while Antonio secured the entrance.
“How long ago?” Antonio asked, his dark eyes scanning the area with the practiced efficiency of a federal agent.
Dusty checked his watch, trying to clear the fog from his mind.
“I don’t know. I was out cold. Maybe thirty minutes?
Could be longer. I’m not sure how much time passed after I called you.
” The realization that precious minutes had slipped away while he was unconscious twisted in his gut like a knife.
“Your 911 call came in just over two hours ago,” Dane said, returning from his sweep. “We got here as fast as we could.”
“The evidence,” Dusty suddenly remembered, staggering toward the stack of wooden crates where Sharon had hidden the bag with the flash drive and other evidence.
“She hid it before they got inside.” He dropped to one knee, ignoring the protest from his splitting headache and his thigh, still oozing blood, and reached under the bottom crate.
His fingers brushed against the small canvas bag, and he nearly sagged with relief as he pulled it out. “They didn’t find it.”
Antonio stepped forward, his expression grim. “That what I think it is?”
Dusty nodded, handing him the bag. “Everything Sharon managed to download from Madison’s laptop.
Account numbers, offshore holdings, blackmail material, proof of at least three murders.
She said it’s enough to put him away for multiple lifetimes.
” He met Antonio’s eyes. “Get this to Williamson at the FBI. See if you can call in Brian, too. No one else. Sharon says there are moles in the Chicago office on Madison’s payroll.
The one she gave the original files to betrayed her and gave everything to Madison.
That’s how he knew Sharon had stolen the information in the first place. ”
Antonio tucked the bag against his chest, cradling it like it was a precious infant. “I’ll make the call. Derrick’s a good man. He’ll know what to do with this.”
“We need to move,” Rafe said, helping Dusty steady himself. “This place isn’t secure, and you need medical attention.”
“No hospitals,” Dusty insisted. “I’m fine. Nothing a couple aspirin won’t fix. We need to get out of here. Sharon needs our help now.”
“And you need medical attention. Dane, grab the first aid kit and let’s get that leg wrapped, slow the bleeding until we can get it looked at.”
“We don’t have time—”
“We’ll make the time. You won’t be any good to Sharon if you’re laid up in the hospital with an infection or worse.
” Rafe crossed his arms and stared at Dusty, who knew it would take too much time arguing with him.
He’d get his way in the end anyway. And any wasted time meant Sharon got farther away, closer to Chicago—and Madison.
Dane made quick work of wrapping a makeshift bandage around Dusty’s thigh, and Dusty gritted his teeth, wincing at the bite of pain when Dane tightened the knot to hold the bandage in place.
“It’ll hold until we can get you help.”
Rafe exchanged a look with Dane but didn’t argue. “Let’s get back to Shiloh Springs, regroup at the ranch. We’ll figure out our next move there.”
If he could have, Dusty would have rolled his eyes. “You just want Ms. Patti to get her hands on me.”
Rafe simply grinned.
The ride back to Shiloh Springs passed in a blur of pain and fear. While Rafe drove and the others made calls, setting their network in motion, Dusty stared out the window at the passing Texas landscape, his mind filled with images of Sharon.
Their conversation from earlier replayed in his mind—her voice soft in the dim light of the barn, her walls finally coming down as she admitted what was growing between them was real. That maybe, just maybe, when this was all over, they could find out what they might become together.
“We’ll get through this,” she had said, her fingers interlaced with his. “And after…”
“After,” he had repeated, the word both a promise and a prayer.
He’d spent years avoiding attachments, keeping people at arm’s length, telling himself it was safer that way.
The one time he’d thought about getting married, it hadn’t been for love.
It had simply been because he and his then fiancée had grown close, and decided marriage was the next logical step.
Until she’d fallen in love with somebody else, had broken the engagement, and eloped the same day.
Nothing like having your engagement implode in a spectacular fashion to turn you against all thoughts of making another commitment.
Then Sharon had walked into his life with her fierce determination and vulnerable heart, and something had shifted inside him, making him rethink all the vows he’d made not to get involved emotionally with anybody again.
The truth he could no longer deny pressed against his chest: he had fallen in love with her. And now she was in the hands of the man she’d risked everything to destroy.
“We’ve got something,” Dane announced, ending a call. “One of my contacts at the airfield confirmed a private jet registered to one of Madison’s shell companies took off thirty minutes ago. Flight plan says Chicago.”
Dusty’s jaw tightened. “I’m going to Chicago on the next flight out.”
“We’re going to Chicago,” Rafe corrected, meeting Dusty’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “All of us.”
“This isn’t your fight,” Dusty said, though the protest sounded hollow even to his own ears.
Antonio turned in his seat to face him. “When Lennox took Sharon from that barn, he made it our fight. He is interfering with an official FBI investigation. Besides, we don’t leave our own behind.”
“She’s one of us now,” Dane added simply. “Has been since the moment Momma found her, gave her help and shelter. You might as well surrender to the inevitable. Sharon belongs in Shiloh Springs—with you.”
A lump formed in Dusty’s throat at their loyalty. These men had come running at his call, no questions asked, and now they were willing to face down one of the most dangerous men in Chicago for a woman most of them had barely spoken with.
Rafe’s voice was steady with conviction. “We’re going to get her back, Dusty. We’re going to bring her home to Shiloh Springs where she belongs.”
Home. The word resonated in Dusty’s chest with unexpected power. For the first time in years, it meant something beyond four walls and a roof. Home was becoming a place where Sharon would be. Where they might build something together, if they survived what was coming.
Dusty looked out at the Texas sunset bleeding crimson across the horizon. Somewhere far ahead, a plane carried Sharon away from him, back to the monster she’d been running from. But Dusty had never backed down from a fight, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“Hold on, Sharon,” he whispered to the gathering darkness. “I’m coming for you.”