Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
C onnor rushed to fish his phone from his pocket as he sat down to lunch. Without a word of hello to his men in the cafeteria that was more of a large dining room, he stuck the phone to his head. “Connor.”
“I need you,” Lacy’s voice shook like she was crying.
“I’m on my way. Pin your location and send me a text. Don’t go anywhere or leave until I get there. Lock all the doors.” He headed for the area to dump his full tray.
Lacy interrupted him. “He got her. He somehow got in here when I went to take a shower. I don’t know how he knew or how he got in. There doesn’t seem to be a forced entry. She wouldn’t have let him in, would she?” Now Lacy sounded frantic, the sound devastated his nerves.
“I don’t know. Lacy, you know as well as I do that women who have been abused never feel like they have full control, and they don’t learn how to take it back for a long time. We don’t know what he said. I wonder how he found you so quickly though. Is it possible he was following you? You told me he jumped on your car. You have a WY license plate, so that makes you pretty easy to spot.”
“I suppose you’re right. Should I park my car somewhere and rent one?”
He wanted to be there and pull her to his chest and tell her he’d protect her. He wanted to tell her everything would be fine. Instead, he was hours away and feeling more helpless than a newborn calf. “No. Stay right where you are. Lock the doors. Don’t let anyone in. Not anyone. You don’t know who to trust. Understand?”
She made a small um-hum noise of agreement. “What about Randy? He helped me twice today.”
Who was Randy? Why was this Randy helping his wife? “And he could be the reason you were found so quickly. Like I said, don’t open the door for anyone but me.”
“Okay. Hurry.”
He glanced down the line and handed his full tray to Junior who was waiting his turn with his wife, Gabby. They were about to have their first child. “I need to go. No time to eat. Edwyn and Teddy are in charge.”
Junior stalled him for a second. “Is your dad healed enough to do the work? If not, I’ll help him without saying that I am.”
“Thanks. Keep an eye on him. He’s not above doing more than he should because he feels he has to. I’ll check in soon.”
He headed straight for his room and threw a few items into a duffle bag, then slung it over his shoulder. As he jogged down the stairs, Dad met him at the foot. “Edwyn sent me a text. He said he heard you talking to Lacy on the phone, and it sounded serious.”
“I’ll have to thank him later for listening in.” But that was for another day. “Lacy needs me. She’s in trouble.”
“Then you’d better go. I just finished talking to Brendon. You should know that within the last hour, someone broke Viceroy out of jail. The men who did it were heavily armed, and it happened during a routine transfer to bring him closer to the court where he was supposed to stand trial.”
“So, I need to leave, and Viceroy is loose. Half the people here are supposed to testify against him, giving him a huge motive to kill everyone here. Now I have to choose whose needs I meet and whose I don’t.” He gripped his bag tightly and felt the draw to Lacy pulling him toward the door.
Teddy shook his head. “Not true. All your men here are capable. We’ve fought this guy before.” Teddy rubbed his shoulder where he’d been shot. “And some of us even have a little bit of payback that is due.”
Connor wasn’t going to tell him that paybacks weren’t really Christian, his father knew that. Protecting those around him was though. “I trust you. It’s just that this is my home, and I don’t like that I’m leaving all of you to protect my home.”
Dad gripped his shoulder. “When God created man’s hierarchy, the home wasn’t part of it. Protect your wife. She is your family.”
“But I told her she wasn’t my wife anymore.” Yet he wanted more than anything to bring her back to Wayside and ask her to never leave his side again.
“Have you ever treated her like she was anything but your wife?” Dad asked.
“Except for our divorce, no.” Other than the intimate relationship that came with marriage, they still acted much the same as when they were married. He’d even joked for a long time that they were better friends than lovers, but that was more to staunch the pain in his chest from needing his wife, the woman he loved, and knowing it was his own fault she wasn’t his wife anymore.
“Then don’t start treating her like she isn’t now. Go. The ranch will still be here when you return. Nadine is the best security force you could hire. Your men are capable and willing to protect this place and the people here.”
He nodded, knowing what his father said was true. There were none better than the crew at Wayside. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I know.” Dad clapped him on the shoulder one more time.
Each of the guys came over and gripped his hand, giving him a man hug and encouragement to bring Lacy home. There was nothing more that he wanted to do.
Lacy paced back and forth in the living room. She had left the message on the bathroom mirror and had called the police. She’d told them that Melina’s husband couldn’t be trusted and that he wanted to kill her. She was sure that message was left by him.
The officers who’d come to collect her statement hadn’t seemed convinced. One of them even told her that the issues was ‘a domestic’ and they tried to stay as far away from those as possible. If Melinda went with her husband, that wasn’t a kidnapping.
The undercurrent of disbelief had her raging, but so did the threat against her. He’d threatened her too and that didn’t seem to matter to the police. Both of them had shrugged off the threat as actually being against the wife, which somehow made it okay in their eyes. They’d been in the house for thirty minutes before she was left alone again.
Now, she had to wait. Hours. There was no way Connor could get there quickly. Even driving like a complete maniac would take him most of a day. She turned toward the back side of the house to pace in the other direction when someone knocked on the front door.
Even knowing Connor couldn’t possibly get there that fast, she ran to check who it was through the peep hole. Randy stood just outside with his hands shoved in his pockets. His jeans were so oversized that they hung halfway down his hips, showing a wide stripe of his boxers between the top of his jeans and his shirt. This was not the kind of guy she usually allowed into her life.
She had gone outside and pulled her car into the garage while the police had been there. That was the only thing she’d done against what Connor had said, but she’d figured it was safe while they were in the house.
Randy knocked again and she held her breath. If she didn’t answer, he might think she was gone and then she wouldn’t have to tell him she couldn’t let him in after he’d helped her. Even though Connor was right, there was reason to hold off on trusting him, telling him she couldn’t trust him felt very uncomfortable after the way they met.
He lumbered down the front steps, looking over his shoulder at the front of the house. A few seconds later, she heard the garage door opening. Lacy held her breath. He would know now that she was there and hadn’t answered the door. Her ears waited for any sound to indicate what he was doing in the garage. There hadn’t been anything in there when she’d pulled her car in.
The door handle jiggled, and she held in a scream. Why was he trying to get in? A second later, the distinct sound of a key sliding into the lock forced her back a few steps. What could she do now? If she left the house, Connor couldn’t find her. If she stayed, she might be in danger.
Randy opened the door and looked up at her. He seemed as surprised as she was as his eyes widened. “You didn’t answer the door.”
“You came in a locked house.” She turned the accusation back at him.
“My dad owns it,” he countered.
“But I’m renting it. You can’t just come in when someone is here.” Her lungs needed air, but her breathing didn’t seem to work no matter how hard she tried to suck in a stable breath.
“Where’s Melinda?”
“How did you know she wasn’t here?” She could have been napping in the other room. Was he the real kidnapper? She’d assumed Tod had done it, but was he innocent?
“You just can’t stop thinking I’m out to get you.” He closed the door, sighed, and headed for the sofa, flopped down onto the end furthest from her and leaned his head back, then covered his face with his hands. “Look, my dad is friends with my boss. That’s how I got the job at the hotel. I heard my dad talking about Tod’s wife and how she was out of line to run away. I assumed that meant something happened, so I came back here to check on you as soon as it was safe. I couldn’t just walk out the second I heard, or my dad would know I know what’s going on.”
“How did Tod know we were here? Did he have a key? We had barely gotten comfortable when he showed up and took her. Did your dad say something and why didn’t you tell me that your dad was connected to the man we were trying to avoid? That seems like a pretty big thing to keep from me.” She started pacing again.
“I didn’t want you to turn me down. Where else could you go? There’s only one other hotel within an hour and it’s infested with bed bugs. You’ll get a room, because everyone local knows to avoid it, but you’ll wish you hadn’t. Since Melinda’s name wasn’t on the booking, I thought it was safe.”
Lacy collapsed into an overstuffed chair, unable to keep up the pacing any longer. She’d been awake for hours and the lack of sleep with the adrenaline crash was getting to her. “I appreciate your help, but can you see this from my perspective? I was trying to keep my friend safe and now she’s back in the same predicament as when I got here. Worse, maybe, because now he knows she wants to leave. She probably had to endure worse than she usually does because I took her away. He’ll be ready for anything I try to get her back out.”
He shook his head slowly and frowned at her. “I didn’t try to do anything to hurt you or her. I wanted to help.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Guess I messed that up too.”
“What do you mean? Do you feel like you’re always messing up?” He’d said something similar before.
“Dad thinks I’m pretty useless. I didn’t go to college right out of high school. I took a gap year to save money so I wouldn’t have to take out so many loans. Well, with the online school, I have enough to pay for tuition as long as I keep working while I’m taking classes. I won’t have much saved when I’m done, but I’ll be qualified to earn more than I do at the front desk of a hotel. At least, I hope so. Dad doesn’t think online college is real, so he thinks I’m getting scammed too. He keeps asking when I’ll get my Kracker Jack degree.”
“That’s horrible.” Her parents had never encouraged getting a degree, though at the time she hadn’t wanted one. “I think it’s great that you’re planning to do this in a way that you won’t have debt when you get out of school. It’s really responsible.”
“Thanks.” He frowned slightly. “I’m sorry Melinda is back with him. Anything I can do?”
She snorted. While he had absolutely helped her so far, his help could also lead her to a worse situation. He was too close to the source of her worry. “I don’t think so. I’ve called in the cavalry, and he’ll be here in a few hours.”
Randy’s eyebrows rose. “The cavalry, huh? That’s pretty big.”
“Connor is big. I’m hoping that having him here will scare Tod into letting Melinda go.” Though she doubted it would be that easy. More than likely, he’d be afraid, but twist the facts to make Connor look like the aggressor. Because Connor was an outsider, the police would probably believe Tod.
Randy gave her a doubtful look. “I hope you have more of a plan than that, ‘cause I don’t think it’ll work.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Now that you’ve checked in on me, was there anything else you needed?” Connor had told her to keep everyone out and she didn’t want to explain to him that Randy was naive and harmless. He’d probably played a few too many computer games instead of having people interactions, which made him really good at formulating the plan with the sprinkler system, but hadn’t thought ahead when it came to staying at this house.
“No. I wanted to check on you and I didn’t have anything else to do until my shift, if I even have a shift. I already slept some.” He glanced at the fridge. “Mind if I grab a drink?”
As much as she wanted him to go quickly, being alone while she thought about every possible issue that could crop up had made her more than a little jumpy. “Go ahead. I just don’t want you to be here when Connor gets here. I don’t think he’d like that you’re here.”
Randy snorted. “One of those guys, huh?” He tugged open the fridge and pulled out an energy drink.
“What do you mean?” She’d never considered that a guy who was protective might be seen in a bad light.
“They aren’t much different from Tod, at least in feelings. They act like they own you and tell you where you can and can’t go. They treat you like property, which is why they are so protective. They don’t think you’re capable of doing anything.” He cracked open the can and took a long drink.
Lacy took a deep breath and thought about her words. This was a young man who had to have seen some relationships like that for him to have that mindset. “Connor couldn’t be less like that if he tried. He is protective, but not because I’m his. We’re actually divorced. He just loves me and doesn’t want to see me get hurt. As far as doing exactly what he says, that too, is a huge no. He didn’t want me to come here, but he wasn’t going to stop me. No one but God owns me.”
He seemed surprised by her last comment. “What do you mean that God owns you? He’s just air. There’s nothing that proves He exists.”
She was far too frazzled to have a coherent conversation about God with someone who didn’t believe. “There are lots of things that prove He exists and has always existed. If you want something scholarly to prove it, there are thousands of non-religious texts that prove the accuracy of the Bible. As far as how does God own me, because I have given my life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit is within me. That means I was bought with the blood of Jesus. I know that might sound confusing, but it’s the easiest way to put it.”
His brow furrowed as he took another long drink from the can. He glanced away. “I don’t even know where to start with that, so I won’t say anything. It just sounds weird.”
To someone who hadn’t grown up in the church, she was sure it did. “Anyway, I just want you to know Connor is nowhere near similar to Melinda’s husband. He’s the opposite. Where Tod wouldn’t cross the road to help Melinda, Connor would cross a continent for me.” Even if he’d asked her for a divorce.
“Then why are you divorced? If he loves you so much, that makes no sense.” Randy finished his comment and took another drink. She got the feeling he wasn’t as thirsty as he was looking for a way to give himself time to process what she said.
“I know. It really doesn’t. It was a time of a lot of stress in our lives. We’re older now and working on fixing what was broken when he got out of the military. And before you jump on the military, it wasn’t that. He had family issues.”
Randy chuckled. “Saw that accusation coming, did you?”
“You don’t seem like the type to be pro-military, though I’ve recently found that my gauge for determining what people are supposed to be like can be wrong.”
He laughed, acknowledging her mistake about him. “Yeah, but I’m not an easy one to read. I’m not pro-military, but I’m not against it either. I just didn’t want to be a part of it. I could tell you that I’d never make a good soldier so having to sign up for the draft was stressful. I’m glad your cavalry is coming, though, and I’m glad I was wrong about judging him too.”
“It’s easy to do.” She bit her lip as she looked at her phone. If only Connor were already there.