Chapter 17
NOELLE
Later, she’d hear them telling her that the shot went wide.
But after the gun went off, she couldn’t hear much of anything.
The loud noise that sounded like a canon she’d heard at a Revolutionary War Reenactment she’d been to for a school field trip. This time, it was more deafening and infinitely more frightening. At least on the field trip the canon fire was meant for education and entertainment.
This?
This was terrifying.
She pushed at him, trying to throw him off balance or at least direct the gun up instead of out.
Noelle tried to keep a hand around his arm.
She didn’t want to be close to him, but she wanted to try and keep control of his arm as much as possible.
The other option?
Letting him have control?
Letting him continue to shoot?
Her heart was leaping in her chest.
Pounding.
Somewhere, someone was screaming.
And Noelle’s head was ringing with the sound.
“Let go.”
She felt Tony try to shake her off, but she held on with every ounce of strength she had.
“Let me fucking go.”
No.
She shook her head.
No.
One thought popped into her head.
McCrae.
He was out there somewhere.
She just had to hold on.
* * *
DUVAL
When they pulled into the parking lot, it took everything he had in him not to push past everyone between him and the building and try to launch himself through the fencing around the garden center.
He knew that the others on the team understood.
He felt it in the way West’s hand clamped down on his shoulder.
“We’ll get her out, Duval.”
All he could do in response was nod.
He didn’t trust himself to speak. He barely trusted himself to breathe.
“McCrae!”
He turned his head and saw his mother pushing through the crowd.
His mother, Katie, Tracy… all of them.
Everyone except Noelle.
The moment Ciela saw him, she burst into tears and reached for him.
Her hands grasped over and over as tears streamed down her face.
He met Patricia at the edge of the group and took Ciela into his arms.
The way she held onto him, wrapping her arms and legs around his torso, stole his breath. “Mama!”
He nodded and tried to take in a full breath. “I know, baby. Mama’s going to be okay.”
And he meant the words.
He fucking prayed that they were true.
Ciela leaned in, putting her cheek to his and he found that the tears on her cheeks were hot against his skin.
“Sweetie,” he heard Patricia’s voice and felt her gentle pats on her grand-daughter’s back, “we need to let McCrae do his job.”
Ciela went a little wild, her feet scrambling against his chest, her arms squeezing around his neck. “No… no…” She shook her head, kicking her feet, landing some good, solid kicks to his mid-section and one or two dangerously close to his nuts.
“Don’t go.” She gasped in a breath that sounded more like a cry. “Don’t go!”
The way she clung to him spoke volumes and he felt her terror all the way down to his bones.
He rubbed her back and rocked her side to side, aware that his team was assembling at the edge of the parking lot.
West hadn’t even given him a look, likely knowing that Ciela needed comfort.
Hell, he did, too.
He wasn’t going to tell that to the little girl.
She needed him to be strong and determined.
The second? He had in spades.
The first?
He’d never been so shaken before.
“Baby?”
Ciela’s eyes were squeezed shut as she sobbed.
“CeeCee?” He managed to lean her back a little and wipe her face with the handkerchief that someone shoved into his hand. “Look at me, honey.”
He couldn’t believe it when she opened one eye and then another to look at him.
“I need to go. You need to stay with Abuela. Okay?”
She looked at him as if she had suddenly become a wizened woman decades older than she was.
“I’m going to go get mommy, okay?”
Duval didn’t know what to expect.
Ciela put her little hands on both sides of his face and looked into his eyes in a way that he saw Noelle in her.
But the grief looking back at him, the sadness in her gaze?
That was the little girl who’d lost her father.
“Come back safe.”
Those words.
Fuck.
What was he going to say to that?
“Baby? I’m going to do everything I can to do that and bring Mommy back, too.”
When she hugged him, her arms around his neck, he felt like there was nothing else he could do than exactly that.
Come back safe.
* * *
NOELLE
She watched the manager struggling to hold his hand against his bloody wound. The children and their mother were huddled together behind the tables with the plant displays and were still irritating everyone in the garden center.
She wanted to be kind, but she was scared, on the verge of terrified.
The only thing holding her together was the fact that her family and friends were outside.
This she could face alone.
She wouldn’t risk exposing her daughter to the pain of watching her mother…
“What are you doing?”
Noelle turned her head toward Tony, frowning at his words.
He was looking at her.
“Doing what?”
He turned his gaze to her hands. She looked down and realized that she’d been inching closer to the manager.
She didn’t have much in the way of first aid skills.
She doubted that the baby CPR class would have much effect on a full-grown man.
A man who wasn’t suffering from a heart attack.
“He needs help. Medical help.”
“Bastard deserves worse,” Tony snarled. “Thinks he’s so much better than everyone else.”
Well, she grumbled in her head, he is the manager.
She kept it to herself but couldn’t keep her thoughts from running together. She was fighting down the panic rushing through her veins.
“Let me help him.”
“Why?” The cold tone of his voice crawled across her skin.
“You don’t want him to die. That… that’s a murder charge.”
As soon as she said the words, it hit her.
Those words wouldn’t help.
Tony smiled at her. “What’s one more when you know they’re going to put the blame on me… for her.”
She wanted to say more, but she knew how dangerous that would be.
“And I saw the news…” he took a step in her direction, “you were trying to find me.”
“I was asked to give you a face. So they could know what you look like now.”
“The pictures they posted on the news?” He smirked at her. “They weren’t even close.”
She wanted to argue with him.
But he was the one with the gun.
And he was angry.
Obvious concerns, but that didn’t make them any less true.
“I’ve spent years… years,” his voice rose with the repetition, “keeping out of the light and you… you tried to drag me into the public eye. For what? A lonely bitch?”
Noelle’s hands fisted and she bit into her cheek.
She’d never met Aracely, but she felt like she knew her.
She knew women like her.
And his words…
They made her angry.
“You need to let someone help him,” she gestured toward the manager. “It’s better for you if you do. You’ll show that you’re-”
“That I’m what? Innocent?” He snorted, a sound that rattled her more than it should. “I know that they’re going to convict me no matter what.”
“You can show that you’re human,” she countered. “You can show that you can do the right thing.”
Tony lifted his arm, pointing the muzzle of the gun at her face. “Why start now?”
* * *
DUVAL
He stood helplessly by as he stared at the feed from the security cameras that were visible on the monitors in their Bearcat vehicle.
Fox held the phone to his ear waiting for the gunman to pick up the phone in the garden center.
They’d all seen the reactions on the screen when the phone started to ring.
Noelle tensed, her head turned to look at the cashier stand.
The man with the gun pointed at her head didn’t move.
He stood still, focused.
And Duval wanted to put a bullet in his head for that alone.
The phone rang again. They could all hear it over the speakers.
“Pick up, asshole.”
Duval slanted a glance to Jack at his side.
The look on her face was murderous.
Dally stood on Duval’s other side, breathing so deep in his chest it sounded like a snarl. “Come on… pick up.”
When Tony Coolidge moved toward the phone, he kept his gun pointed at Noelle’s face. The cashier stand was just a few steps away, but he didn’t lower the weapon as he went.
His hold was steady and the look on Noelle’s face was as calm as it could be.
She even lifted her chin, likely to meet his gaze.
Duval was proud of her.
Of her courage.
But he also wished that she didn’t hold his gaze like she was.
He was afraid… so damn afraid that her courage might provoke the man.
The damage to Aracely’s bones showed that the man had anger brewing inside him.
He’d broken nearly half a dozen bones in her body. Big bones. Strong ones.
He was dangerous.
And he was too damn close to Noelle.
“Bastard.”
Duval heard the word in his own voice and his jaw tightened as he saw Tony deliver a swift kick to the man on the ground a moment before he picked up the phone.
The man was cruel.
And cruel made them all dread the rest of this operation.
Someone who could be cruel like that?
They could lash out at anyone.
Just for fun.
Duval closed his eyes for a moment and murmured a prayer under his breath.
“Who’s calling?”
“I’m Kelly Miller. I’m the Ranger who is going to get everyone through this, sir.”
“Ranger?” He scoffed. “A Texas Ranger.”
“Yes, sir.”
Duval had never appreciated Fox’s calm tone so much before.
Calm.
Easy.
“What can we do to resolve this, Tony?”
He turned his head back toward Noelle and Duval drew a breath in through his nose, his jaw tightening.
Tony’s gun hand didn’t waver as he spoke.
“The only thing I want is to walk out of here and disappear. So how does that happen?”
“We’ll work with you, Tony-”
“Don’t waste my time, Kelly.” The man’s voice was more than a little mocking. “I have a handful of hostages, Ranger. I hold the cards here. And right about now. All you have to look forward to is a bunch of body bags and a black eye in the press.”
“We’ll find a way to work through everything, Tony. But right now, why don’t you take a breath and relax a little.”
Tony turned his head in one direction and then the other.
Before he was finished, he turned his whole body and looked up at the camera above and behind him.
He gave the camera a smile and pulled the hammer back on the pistol in his hand. “I know you’re watching. You’ll have a front row seat to what I’m doing in here. So why don’t we skip to the meat of the problem. How you’re going to get me out of here before I decide to take everyone down with me.”
Kelly turned his head and West nodded when their gazes met.
West stood up from his chair and gestured for the others to follow him out of the back of the Bearcat.
It took seconds for them all to drop to the ground and surround him.
Every gaze was focused and ready to listen.
West addressed them all in a few words. “He’s not going to do this the easy way.”
Duval nodded and saw his team doing much the same.
West’s assessments had never been wrong.
It was the reason they put him in charge of the team.
The reason they would follow him blindly and without question.
“Dally?”
Dally nodded. “Yeah?”
“Show us the plans. We’re going in.” West let out a deep exhale. “Quickly.”
Duval felt his whole heart expanding in his chest along with his lungs.
West looked at Duval. “I need to know that you’re going to follow orders and the plan.”
Duval narrowed his eyes at West, knowing that his friend had to ask.
“I’ll follow the plan and bring Noelle home.”
West clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms against each other. “Alright, Dally. Show us what we’re working with.”