Larkspur Road Page 22

  “You’re in luck,” Ava said. “Tuesdays and Fridays are red velvet cake days. Deanna Mueller is another one who can’t get enough of ’em. You want a whole, a half, or a couple of slices?”

  “Whole,” Winny said. “I’ve never been one for half measures.”

  “That’s the truth.” Ava nodded, then grinned at Mia and Britt. “Way back in the day, all of us girls so wanted to wear our hair just like Jane Russell, but your aunt Winny was the only one who pulled it off every single day. I’ll never forget your beautiful waves and curls,” she told Winny. “It must have taken you hours. You had those long legs and a figure like she had, too. Everyone said you looked just like her. We were all so envious.”

  She seemed not to notice the shock on Winny’s face at the idea that anyone had been envious of her.

  Ava moved forward with the cake platter. “Seth will ring up that red velvet cake soon as you’re ready,” she called over her shoulder.

  Glancing at her watch, Mia realized they’d lingered too long at lunch. Now they’d have to hurry. Especially if they were making an extra stop. Travis and Grady were coming at two and she didn’t want to keep them waiting. “Time to make tracks,” she announced, pushing back her chair.

  Winny was quiet, lost in thought, as they drove toward Sweetwater Road, the roof on the convertible now up since clouds had begun tumbling in from the west. The sky had faded to a cool steel gray, and the first sprinkles of rain splashed against the windshield.

  It wasn’t until they were almost past the nearly invisible turnoff to Abner’s cabin that Winny shook herself out of her reverie and pointed urgently.

  “It’s right there, Mia, quick. On your left—the turnoff. There’s no sign, never has been. Abner’s always liked the idea of living on a road with no name.”

  Mia managed to twist the wheel just in the nick of time. The bumpy, twisting little side road leading to Abner’s cabin wasn’t in much better condition than Winny’s, she realized as the Mustang jolted down the narrow track. Apparently Abner Floyd and her aunt shared a love of isolated, hard-to-reach spots.

  But instead of perching on the shoulder of the mountain like Winny’s cabin did, Abner’s place boasted an old weathered barn and a thick wood and ravine winding behind it.

  Peering at the time again, Mia had to swallow a sigh. It was nearly two and there was no help for it. She was going to be late.

  She pulled out her cell phone to call Travis and let him know.

  “Wait here, Aunt Winny—I’ll run the cake in,” she ordered as she slid out of the car a few dozen feet from the cabin. Casting one more glance at the threatening sky, she tossed the cell down on the seat.

  Better to get the cake inside first, before the heavens opened up.

  But even as she raced around to the passenger side and grabbed the white bakery box from her aunt a damp wind gusted furiously down from the mountains, blowing her hair into her face.

  Winny had hobbled out of the car and after handing off the cake began fishing around in her knitted bag for the key.

  “Where is that damned thing?” she muttered as Britt hopped out of the backseat.

  “Why can’t a person ever find what they’re looking for? Ah, here it is. I knew I had it.”

  “Let me open the door for Aunt Mia. You get back in the car, Aunt Winny, before you get drenched.” Britt snagged the key and spun toward the cabin as rain began to pelt down.

  “Thank you, girls, both of you,” Winny called after them, ducking back into the Mustang as adroitly as she could with her cane.

  Mia and Britt sprinted toward the cabin as wind and rain shook the trees. Reaching the porch, they gasped with laughter as rain ran down their faces. Britt shoved the key in the door, then caught her breath as it suddenly swung wide open from the inside.

  Abner’s home early, Mia thought instantly with a jolt of surprise.

  Then she saw the man inside the cabin.

  Not Abner.

  It was a husky young man in a black tee and jeans, and he moved like lightning. Before Mia had time to blink, Wade Collins grabbed Britt by the hair and yanked her toward him.

  As Mia screamed he raised his other arm and pointed a gun straight at her face.

  Winny had shut the Mustang’s door and dragged her gaze off the sky long enough to watch Brittany push the key in Abner’s lock.

  When the door swung open and the man seized Britt by the hair, her heart nearly lurched out of her chest with fear.

  “Inside! Now!” she heard him shout, his voice bellowing shakily through the rain. Her blood froze as he stared toward the convertible.

  “You, too, Granny!” he yelled. “Outta that car! Get in here now. Or…or…I’ll shoot them both!”

  Horror ripped through her. Britt was sobbing, terrified, as he clamped her up tight against his chest. Mia stood in frozen shock, still holding the cake as the rain slashed down on her and she stared down the gun inches from her face.

  Winny couldn’t breathe. She clutched the dash of the car.

  Then he yelled at her again. Her hands shook as she groped for the handle to open the Mustang’s door.

  At the same time, Mia’s cell phone trilled on the seat beside her.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Mia? Are you there?”

  Travis distinctly heard someone pick up Mia’s phone. But instead of her voice, all he could make out was labored breathing. And then a muffled shout.

  It sounded like: Get your ass over here now!

  A male voice.

  “Mia. What’s happening?” This time his words were as sharp as blades. Every one of his senses was on edge. He’d been waiting on Mia’s front porch for her to get home. It wasn’t like her to be late.

  Inside her house, Samson was peering out the window, eager to come out and play. Across the street, Grady had joined Evan and Justin as they tossed a football beneath darkening clouds and spatters of rain that hinted at a downpour to come. A moment ago Ellis had appeared on her porch, inviting the boys to come in for hot chocolate.

  “Help…we need help.” A woman’s scratchy whisper reached his ears, hammering cold fear into his heart.

  “Who is this? Where are you?” His voice was taut, cool, steady. But his insides were churning.

  “Winny Pruitt,” she whispered. “We’re at Abner’s cabin. Call the sheriff…. He has them, that boy has them—Britt and Mia. And he’s got a gun….”

  She said something else, but the words were drowned out by another shout, more like a roar.

  “All right, give these old bones a minute,” Travis heard her call out. Her voice was shaky, more shaky even than it had sounded talking to him and he suddenly wondered if she was playing old and frail, stalling for time. “No need to yell,” Travis heard her say, a quaver in her voice—and then abruptly the connection went dead.

  He heard silence. Dead silence.

  Thunder boomed overhead even as he shot across the street like a linebacker headed for the goal line.

  “Grady, you stay here with Ellis! Ellis, keep the boys inside!”

  He pounded back to his Explorer without hearing the torrent of questions that followed him and vaulted in, gunning the vehicle down Larkspur Road, swearing under his breath even as he punched in Hodge’s number.

  “Teddy Hodge here; who’s this?”

  “Travis Tanner. Wade Collins is at Abner Floyd’s cabin. He’s armed and he has Mia and Brittany. Tell me where that fucking cabin is, Hodge! Now.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Let Brittany go.” Mia’s nails dug into her palms. “Please. You’re hurting her, Wade. I’m sure you don’t want to. Just let her go.”

  Collins stared at her, blinking rapidly. Panic and rage burned in his ocean blue eyes as if he weren’t sure how he’d gotten to this point, or what came next. One thickly muscled arm was wound like a noose around Britt’s throat, and he was holding her pinned against him as if he’d like to keep her that way forever. But Mia saw him swallow hard, and he look
ed pale beneath his tan.

  Perched on Abner’s old sofa beside Winny as rain drove against the cabin windows and thunder cracked across the sky, it was all Mia could do not to leap up and rush toward him. She needed to tear Brittany out of his grasp. The only thing stopping her was the gun. Collins had it pointed in the general direction of her and Aunt Winny. Anguished, she watched the terror mounting in her niece’s face.

  “I’m hurting her? You’re kidding me, right?” Collins’s voice rose a notch and almost cracked on the words. Nervous tension seemed to ooze from every pore of his beefy frame. “Let’s get this straight. She’s the one who hurt me, okay? Over and over again, she hurt me. I’ve done everything I can to show her how much I love her, but does she care? She refuses to listen. So I guess I have to prove it to her.”

  “Wade…I…I know you love me. I know you didn’t want to break up. I’m…sorry, really sorry. If you let me go, I won’t run. I p-promise. I’ll stay right here with you, and we can t-talk. If you let them go…just let my aunts go!”

  Britt had given up trying to wrench his arm from around her throat. At first she’d struggled—until he threatened to shoot Mia and Winny if she didn’t stop fighting him. She was trembling now uncontrollably, tears she couldn’t stop streaming down her cheeks as she pleaded with him.

  “I’ll stay here and we can talk. But…we need privacy, Wade. It needs to be just you and me—”

  “You and me? What about that other guy?” His face tightened. “The jerk I always see you with. At that party…at the movies. At the bakery. You think I don’t see you? Kissing him, letting him touch you—what’s his name?”

  “His name doesn’t matter—”

  “I want his name!” Collins shouted, and he fired a shot across the room that missed Winny by only a couple of feet. She ducked sideways instinctively and Mia’s body jerked in shock as the bullet slammed into the wall behind them.

  “Seth!” Brittany gasped. “His name is Seth!”

  “I knew that.” Collins’s furious expression gave way to bitterness. An agonized despair glimmered in his eyes. “I just wanted to see if you’d tell me the truth. And you should know, the next time I fire this gun, I won’t try to miss.” He spoke into Brittany’s ear with what sounded to Mia like forced bravado, but Britt seemed to shrink a little bit smaller with each word. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  “Y-yes. D-don’t shoot anyone. I’ll do whatever you say.” Fresh tears dampened her cheeks as she gasped out the words.

  Mia struggled to contain the fear rising in her chest. Stay calm, she told herself, taking deep breaths to keep panic at bay. When you make a move, it has to be the right one.

  She couldn’t focus on Britt’s terror. Or on that frighteningly erratic glint in Wade Collins’s eyes. He was nervous, on edge, and therefore dangerous. He looked as wretched now as if he were the one being held against his will. She knew as surely as she knew her own name that he’d shoot her or Winny or Britt without compunction if he lost it and acted on his amped-up emotions.

  Her gaze swept the cabin, looking past the cake box she’d set on Abner’s three-legged side table, past the old, faded furniture and the ancient television, trying to spot something—anything—she might be able to use as a weapon.

  From the condition of the cabin it was obvious that Wade had been squatting here, probably ever since Abner and his brother left on their trip. The sleeping bag rolled up on the floor, the open backpack stuffed with clothes, a flashlight, camping supplies, and the assortment of opened beer cans scattered on tables and across the old wood floor all told her he’d been here several days at least.

  But the only weapon in sight seemed to be the one in his hand.

  Then her gaze returned to the beer can lying squashed and empty on the round table beside her. It wasn’t much. But if she had a chance, any kind of chance, it would be better than nothing.

  How long had they been here now, listening to Collins yell at them how much he loved Brittany, how much she’d hurt him? Telling her how he’d been sleeping on the hard ground in the middle of nowhere for weeks, just to be close enough to stay near her, to keep an eye on her? How he’d probably lost his job for taking off after her, spending every waking moment trying to prove to her how much she meant to him?

  It felt like hours since she and Britt had run up to Abner’s door, but in all this time, she hadn’t found an opening yet to do something. Anything.

  She had to stop him.

  All she needed was an opportunity….

  “How did…you find me?” Britt gasped as he dragged her to the rocking chair a few feet from the sofa, sank down, and forced her to sit on his lap. Glancing uneasily back and forth between the two women on the sofa, he kept the gun trained on Mia.

  “Didn’t I tell you I’d follow you wherever you went? You’re my girl, I’d do anything for you.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, then scowled as she tried to pull away.

  “Finding you was easy peasy. All I did was pay my cousin Ralph fifty bucks. He’s a computer programmer, remember? He can hack into anything under the sun. Once I offered him the dough—and the added bonus that I wouldn’t tell his mom he smokes weed on the weekends and does a little dealing on the side—he got right to work. Didn’t take him long to track the location of the computer you used once you got to this dump of a town. Led me straight to your aunt’s pretty little house. Nothing’s too much trouble when it comes to you, baby.” He sounded defiant and more than a little desperate. “I thought you knew that.”

  Winny was holding tightly to her cane, her fingers rigid as she, too, watched Collins. Mia could almost sense the heat of her aunt’s fury.

  So she was surprised when Winny spoke in a voice that sounded unsteady.

  “Young man, I…have to use the bathroom.”

  His head jerked toward her. “No way. Stay where you are.”

  “Please. I…I’m scared and I…need to go. I’m an old woman and you’ve frightened me.”

  “Let her,” Britt begged softly, tilting her face toward him. “Please, Wade. She’s not in good health. Let her for me.”

  His skin darkened with an angry flush, but uncertainty hovered in his eyes. “Haven’t I already done enough for you? I gave up my job, I’ve been hanging around this dump of a town…I’ve done nothing but try to show you…” He stopped, swallowing down the tremble in his voice. Then he scowled at the pleading look on Winny’s face.

  “Hell, Granny, why not? Go ahead, use the can.” He stood up, clamping Britt to him again and training the gun on Mia once more. He was struggling now to keep his voice steady. “But you just remember—you do one thing I don’t like, make one little move, and I’ll have to shoot her. You got it?”

  “Y-yes. Th-thank you.” Winny’s voice sounded more frail than Mia had ever heard it. She didn’t sound like Winny at all. Mia’s heart began to thud. She braced herself for whatever was coming next as her aunt leaned heavily on her cane and began to hobble across the room.

  She limped past Collins and Brittany, moving more slowly than Mia had ever seen her move, and Wade turned slightly to keep her in his line of vision. For an instant, the gun no longer pointed straight at Mia.

  Suddenly everything happened at once. Winny slammed her cane with astonishing force at Collins’s knee. Even as he screamed in pain, Mia snatched the beer can and launched herself at him, ramming the can into his jaw, and at the same time, Britt drove her elbow backward into his rib cage. She lurched free of his grasp at the same moment Mia grabbed for the gun.

  Desperation fueled Mia as she used every ounce of her strength and will. Her fingers latched onto the cold metal with strength she never knew she possessed as pain suffused Wade’s face. Then Winny hit him again with her cane, and as he howled with the impact, Mia gritted her teeth and wrenched the gun from his fingers.

  Suddenly the front door flew open. Travis sprang into the cabin, soaked from the rain, water streaming down his taut face, his shirt clinging to his chest. Yet the Gl
ock in his hand was trained with cold, impervious efficiency on Wade Collins.

  “Freeze, Collins. Don’t move.”

  But Wade, his face bloodied, wheeled and took his chances, dodging for the back door like a wounded jackrabbit confronted by a mountain lion. Travis swore, his eyes narrowing as in that split second he chose not to shoot. An instant later, Collins was gone, fleeing into the rain.

  Travis reached Mia in two strides just as she set the gun down on the floor. His free arm caught her to him, holding her close as she clung to him. He searched her face, his throat so tight he couldn’t even swallow.

  “Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely. Finally the terror that had clamped hard and heavy on his chest during the endless drive to the cabin began to ebb. She was deathly pale and she looked shaken, but otherwise she was unharmed. Relief sagged through him. “He hurt you? Any of you?” he demanded.

  “N-not me. Travis, he hurt Britt.” Mia gulped back tears. “Britt, honey…” She whirled toward her niece, wanting to enfold the sobbing girl in her arms, then saw that Winny was already holding her, murmuring words of comfort. Aunt Winny was stroking the girl’s hair with a gentleness Mia had never seen in her before.

  “Stay here, all of you. Lock that door after me.” Travis fought against his own overwhelming sense of relief. The knowledge that he could have lost Mia today shook him to his core. He could have been too late….

  His voice was husky as he told them, “Hodge will be here any minute.”

  “Go, Travis, we’re fine. Go get him,” Mia urged as she joined Winny in hugging her arms around Britt.