Chapter 44
The man was on Jenna before the sound could leave her lips. A gloved hand sealed over her mouth. An arm banded across her like iron, and the scream died against his palm.
She didn’t freeze. She’d promised herself she’d never freeze again.
Instead, she drove her heel into the man’s instep and threw her elbow back into his ribs.
The man grunted, and for half a second his grip loosened.
The distraction was enough to twist out of his grasp. Enough, maybe, to scream.
But the kids . . . they were forty feet away in the car.
If she screamed, Luke would come. He’d run toward a dangerous man holding a gun. If things turned violent, the children might see everything. And this man . . . he might fire at Luke.
Jenna couldn’t let that happen.
She swallowed her scream instead.
Just then, Freya launched out of the shadows, a snarling streak of brown. The dog hit the man’s forearm and clamped down.
The man cursed and swung, and the dog yelped as he flung her into the side of the garage.
The man turned back, already reaching for Jenna again. There was nowhere on this property she could run where he couldn’t drag her back.
But Freya was up again, low and shaking, gathering herself for action. This man would kill the dog. She couldn’t let that happen.
“Go!” Jenna screamed at the dog. “Freya—go!”
For one heartbeat the dog hung there, every wary instinct hauling her two ways at once.
Then she broke and tore across the yard, toward the house, toward the men, toward the only help left on the whole burning place.
A hand clamped down across her throat again. The motion crushed the air out of her.
Then something cold and chemical pressed over her nose and mouth, and the smoke and the orange began to smear at the edges of everything.
Leave a sign. Leave anything. Make them able to find you.
She let her foot drag, worked her heel until the shoe slid free and dropped into the grass.
It was small. It might be nothing.
But it was all she had.
“Where are you taking me?” she whispered.
“Somebody wants to see you.” The man didn’t slow.
His grip dug into her arm as he steered her toward the trees—toward the heat, toward the orange climbing higher through the woods than it had any right to.
“Fire road’s the only way out that isn’t watched.
You should be flattered. He came a long way for this. ”
So that was it. The fire wasn’t in their way. It was the plan. Every eye on the property was on those flames, and no one was watching the back gate.
She let her foot drag one more step.
The last thing she heard was Freya’s barking, growing smaller and more frantic behind her, carrying its one message toward the house.
Luke had the gap half-won when Freya hit him at a dead run.
She came out of the smoke alone.
Just the dog, barking in a way he’d never heard out of her, driving her shoulder into his shin and wheeling back toward the side yard. Wheeling, barking, wheeling again.
Asking him to follow.
The cold reached him before his mind did.
“Caleb.” He shoved the hose into his brother’s hands without looking. “Take it.”
Then he was moving, the dog ahead of him, the fire forgotten at his back.
The SUV sat at the foot of the drive, headlights cutting the smoke, doors still open. He reached it and did a quick count.
His mother was behind the wheel. Naomi and the kids in the back.
But someone was missing.
“Where’s Jenna?” he rushed.
His mother turned in her seat. “She’s not—she went—”
“She went to get Freya.” Cora informed him. “Freya got lost in the smoke, and Mama said she’d get her. She said thirty seconds.”
Freya was at his feet, her coat gray with ash as she barked toward the dark side of the house.
The dog had come back.
Jenna hadn’t.
His pulse raced at the thought.
His gaze locked with his mom’s. “If the fire gets closer, you need to leave. Promise me you will.”
“I will.” His mom’s voice cracked.
With that, he turned and followed Freya.
Freya led him around the corner of the house, into the black gap between the garage and the porch where the headlights didn’t reach and the fire’s glow barely touched.
She stopped at the edge of the dark and barked at the ground.
Luke crouched.
Jenna’s shoe lay in the flattened grass. A drag line ran from the corner of the garage, across the side yard, and into the trees . . . into the woods, toward the fire where the orange flames were climbing higher and the wind was carrying it deeper every second.
Jenna was in there. Someone had taken her.
Luke had to find her . . . before either the fire or her abductor ended everything.