Bounty Hunter′s Woman
Bounty Hunter's Woman
Linda Turner
Born-and-bred Londoner Priscilla Wyatt was shocked at how much she loved the Colorado ranch mysteriously bequeathed to her family.But enemies were determined to drive the Wyatts away–and innocent Priscilla was their next pawn. Donovan Jones made it his mission to find his man–or woman–at any cost, but retrieving Priscilla from her abductors was just the first hurdle. Now he had to keep his feisty charge safe.Even the solitary Donovan couldn't help but be captivated by his one-of-a-kind client as they evaded their foes. Before long, the bounty hunter was in danger of stealing her heart…and losing his own!
“Are you always a pest or do I just bring out the worst in you?”
Donovan only laughed. “Me? A pest? You must be joking. Everyone knows I’m a sweetheart.”
“Uh-huh,” she said dryly. “And I’m Snow White.”
“No, you’re Sleeping Beauty. And you know what happened to her.”
Confused, she frowned. “The wicked witch got her?”
“No. The prince kissed her until she woke up.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “Don’t even think about going there, mister. You’re no Prince Charming.” The second the words were out of her mouth, she knew that she’d made a mistake. He wasn’t the kind of man who ignored a challenge.
“Too late,” he chuckled, and reached for her. A heartbeat later, she was in his arms.
Dear Reader,
This is the first time I’ve done a series in which the mystery isn’t solved until the end of the fourth book, so I was naturally a little nervous when I started writing Bounty Hunter’s Woman. There was a lot to bring together, and only a limited number of pages in which to do it. But then Donovan Jones came to Priscilla Wyatt’s rescue, and the rest, as they say, is history. I loved the sparks that flew between Donovan and Priscilla. He’s a man who can’t resist a woman in trouble, and she’s up to her ears in bad guys. Donovan thinks she’s spoiled and stubborn…and no one’s more surprised than he when she turns out to be perfect for him. Don’t you just love surprises? Enjoy.
Linda Turner
Bounty Hunter’s Woman
Linda Turner
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LINDA TURNER
began reading romances in high school and began writing them one night when she had nothing else to read. She’s been writing ever since. Single and living in Texas, she travels every chance she gets, scouting locales for her books.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Prologue
Moving gingerly, the incision from her surgery twinging in protest, Priscilla Wyatt stepped through the front door of her London flat and found herself blinking back tears. Over the course of the last week and a half, while she was in the hospital recovering from injuries incurred in a car accident and the emergency surgery that had saved her life, she’d begun to wonder if she was ever going to sleep in her own bed again. When her doctor had finally told her she was being released, she hadn’t known whether she wanted to laugh or cry.
Watching her as the last of her strength gave out and she sank down onto the couch, her brother, Buck, frowned in concern. “I don’t know what the doctor was thinking, releasing you so soon after your surgery. Look at you. You’re as weak as a kitten.”
“I just need to rest for a few minutes, and I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, right,” he retorted, scowling. “In case you’ve forgotten, you had a hell of an accident. You could have been killed—”
Hovering at the door, his wife, Rainey, frowned warningly. “She’s aware of that, Buck. You don’t have to keep reminding her.”
“Apparently, I do,” he growled. “She’d still be in the hospital if she hadn’t pressured the doctor to release her.”
“I can recover better here,” Priscilla replied. “No one gets any rest in the hospital. You know that.”
“What I know is that you had major surgery. You lost your spleen, dammit. This is serious, Cilla. You’ve got no business being here by yourself.”
“Why don’t you come home with me and Buck?” Rainey suggested. “Let us take care of you.”
“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “The ranch isn’t home. This is. London is.”
Buck could understand her feelings. When Hilda Wyatt, a distant American relative from the States, had left the Broken Arrow Ranch in Colorado to him and his sisters, the place had felt nothing like home even though it had been in the Wyatt family for nearly a hundred fifty years. That was before the ranch came under attack, however. The first time he picked up a gun to defend the Broken Arrow, the land of his ancestors became his.
Not that he and his sisters could claim it outright just yet, he reminded himself. Hilda had wanted the ranch to go to the last of the Wyatts, but she’d still left it to them with strings. One of them had to be at the ranch at all times for the period of one year. If there was no Wyatt at the ranch for two nights in a row during that year, they lost the Broken Arrow and it went to an unnamed heir. No one, however, knew who the unnamed heir was. His or her name was in a sealed envelope that would only be opened in the event that the English branch of the Wyatts was disqualified.
And it was that clause in the will that had caused countless problems for him and his sisters, Buck thought in disgust. Once the terms of the will became common knowledge, everyone in Willow Bend seemed to think they were the unnamed heir and all they had to do to inherit the ranch was drive Buck and his sisters away.
The attacks began almost immediately and had been going on for months, always coming from a different direction. And they hadn’t stopped at the property lines of the ranch…which was why he and Rainey were in London.
“You’re not safe here,” he told Priscilla flatly. “Your accident wasn’t an accident.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” she argued. “Just because someone ran a stop sign—”
“All the witnesses said the driver could have easily avoided the accident,” he cut in. “He didn’t. We can’t prove it, but my gut tells me the jackass was hired by someone in Colorado to hurt you and draw the rest of us away from the ranch. If that’s the case, this is only the beginning. Whoever hired the man who hit you will try again.”
When she shivered, hugging herself, he said huskily, “I’m not trying to scare you, Sis. But we’re all worried sick about you. You’re here alone, and you’re so weak you can’t possibly protect yourself if someone decides to come after you. If you’d just come home with me and Rainey until you’re stronger, I promise I won’t say a word to stop you when you’re ready to come back here to London. I’ll even help you pack.”
If her stomach hadn’t been in knots at the thought of someone stalking her, trying to hurt her, she would have laughed. “Yeah, right. The second I even bring up the subject of going back to London, I’m going to get grief from the entire family, and you know it.”
Not bothering to deny it, he only grinned. “And your point is?”
“You’re terrible.” She laughed…and gave in. “Okay, I’ll go. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. I will go home as soon as I’m feeling better.”
“We’ll talk about it then.” He chuckled and strode over to the phone to call the airline and book their tickets.
Chapter 1
There was, Priscilla decided, nothing like the scent and colors and sounds of harvest. Sitting on the tailgate of the old Ford pickup that was used for work on the ranch, she watched, entranced, as Buck and her soon-to-be brothers-in-law, John and Hunter, cut and baled the alfalfa that had been planted last spring in the lower pastures. A gentle breeze caught the dust from the fields and sent it swirling, and in the long shadows of the late afternoon, the air turned golden.
Wishing she’d brought her camera, Priscilla couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such peace. She’d been at the Broken Arrow for nearly two months, and in all that time, there hadn’t, thankfully, been a single attack against the ranch. She’d had time to heal…and to grow to appreciate the land of her American ancestors. And without quite knowing how it had happened, Colorado had become home.
She couldn’t, however, stay any longer. She had responsibilities in London she needed to get back to, and she was stunned to realize how much she hated the idea of leaving. How her brother and sisters would laugh when she told them that, she thought ruefully. She’d been the last to leave England, the lone holdout in the family who’d been so positive that she wanted no part of living in the wilds of Colorado. And now just the thought of leaving made her want to cry.
“You’re awfully quiet,” her sister Elizabeth said as the men called it a day and started across the field toward where the women of the family waited under the lone tree at the edge of the field. “Are you all right? Maybe you should have stayed at the house.”
“I’m fine.”
“The doctor said you were supposed to take it easy,” Katherine reminded her. The closest sister to her in age, Katherine looked just like their mother when she frowned at her in concern.
“It’s been two months since my surgery,” she replied. “I’m completely healed. Really.”
Studying her shrewdly, her sister-in-law, Rainey, said, “The removal of a spleen’s not something you get over in a week or two. And you have been helping out a lot around the ranch lately. Maybe you need to pace yourself more.”
Joining them in time to hear his wife’s comments, Buck shot Priscilla a sharp look. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Everyone thinks that just because I’m not talking much, I’m not feeling well. I’m fine. I don’t need to take it easy. I just have a lot on my mind.”
“You want to go back to London, don’t you?” Elizabeth guessed, studying her with shrewd blue eyes. “You’re homesick.”
“She is not!” Katherine retorted before she could answer. “She’s still having nightmares about the accident, and she should be. It wasn’t an accident! Someone tried to kill her. If I were her, I’d never step foot in England again.”
“She has to finish her internship,” Rainey reminded Katherine. Turning to Priscilla, she frowned. “I thought you were going to wait until the probation period on the ranch was up, then go back to London after Christmas.”
“That was my plan,” she admitted. “But I have some things that need to be taken care of now. I can’t just keep putting them off.”
“No,” Buck said firmly.
“I’ve been paying for a flat that I haven’t used for two months,” she argued. “And I don’t want to be in London anymore. I need to give up the lease, but I can’t just abandon my things. I have to go back, make arrangements for movers—”
“You can do that from here,” Katherine pointed out.
“True,” she agreed, “but I also need to talk to Jean Pierre…”
“So call him,” Elizabeth said.
“No, I need to meet with him face-to-face. I’d like to finish my internship from here, if possible, and I’ll have a better chance of talking him into that if I can sit down with him and explain my plan.”
“You’re safer here,” Buck insisted. “Wait until after the ranch is ours and we’ll all go back for awhile. I want to show Rainey where we grew up—”
“That’s another month,” she argued. “And I still don’t think my accident was anything but that—an accident!”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do! No one’s attacked the ranch since I’ve been here. If someone really tried to get to me in London, why wouldn’t they do it here?”
“Because we’re all here together,” he replied. “No one’s going to take on all four of us together. It’s when we’re apart that we’re vulnerable.”
“I’m not going back to stay,” she pointed out. “I’ll just be in London for two or three days at the most. And no one but the family even has to know I’m gone. I’ll fly out of Denver in the dead of night. No one will see me leave, and if you casually mention around town that we’ve all been staying home because a stomach bug has been working its way through the family, no one will suspect a thing.”
When he just looked at her, unconvinced, she played her trump card. “You told me in London that if I would come home with you to the ranch to recover, you wouldn’t offer a word of protest when I was ready to go back to London. I expect you to keep that promise.”
She had him, and they both knew it, but this wasn’t about winning points off each other. Over the course of the last eleven months, when they’d inherited the ranch and then found themselves under attack by the faceless enemies who were after the Broken Arrow, the four of them had grown closer than ever. She needed him and her sisters to support her decision and trust her judgment.
“I’ll be careful,” she told Buck. “I promise.”
He hesitated, his eyes searching hers, only to sigh in defeat. “Okay. But you call in every hour once you land just so we’ll know you’re safe. Understood?”
“Every hour,” she promised, hugging him. “I’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Less than thirty-six hours later, she walked into her flat in London and found it just as she’d left it. Automatically locking the door behind her, she made a quick tour and wasn’t surprised to find the plants on her kitchen windowsill dead and the food in her refrigerator molded and sour. She hadn’t exactly had time to clean things out before she’d left. The second she’d been released from the hospital, Buck had given her ten minutes to throw some clothes and personal items into a suitcase before he’d rushed her to the airport and the States.
She’d thought about her flat often over the course of the last two months and wondered how she would feel when she returned. Would she be scared? Nervous? Happy to finally be home? Frowning, she realized, she didn’t feel any of those things. Instead, the stale air of her flat seemed to close in on her, and she found herself longing for the fresh, clean air of the ranch. Outside, London traffic rushed by, but all she wanted to hear was the low call of the cattle grazing in the pasture and the whisper of the wind through the pines.
Loneliness tugged at her heart, and she almost reached for her phone to call home. But she’d spoken to Buck the second she’d landed. He’d be worried if she called him now—less than thirty minutes later. She had things to do, anyway. She had to pack, notify the landlord that she was moving out, find a place to store her things. But first she had to call a mover.
Settling at the kitchen table with the phone book, she started making calls. She soon discovered, however, that finding the right person for the job—as well as a storage unit she could afford—took longer than she’d expected. Three precious hours later, she finally found a mover who could pick up her furniture by the end of the week. Her lease wasn’t up until the following Monday, but she’d hoped to find someone who could come while she was still there to oversee the move. Obviously, that wasn’t going to be possible. She’d promised the family that she’d be back in three days, and she was standing by her word. She’d just have to give the key to the landlord and trust him to supervise things. Resigned, she started packing.
Later, she never knew where the rest of the afternoon went. One minute, the sun was high in the sky, and the next time she looked up, the day had given way to the darkening shadows of twilight. Surprised, she glanced around and discovered the flat was littered with dozens of boxes that were packed full of books, dishes, the contents of her kitchen cupboards, not to mention the bathroom and the front closet. And she hadn’t even touched her bedroom yet!
Exhausted, she plopped down on the couch. How was she going to get everything packed and still have time to meet with Jean Pierre before she left to fly home? She didn’t want to put her internship—and her degree in fashion design—on hold, but what choice did she have? She wasn’t safe in London.
Suddenly, without warning, there was a sharp knock at the door. Startled, she jumped, her heart slamming against her ribs. She wasn’t expecting anyone. No one even knew she was there except her family. So who was knocking on her door?
Her blood turning to ice at the possibilities, she hugged herself and sat as quiet as a mouse right where she was. Whoever was on the other side of the door didn’t know she was there. When she didn’t answer, he would assume no one was home and leave.
“Miss Wyatt? Are you in there? Open up. This is the police. I need to speak to you. I have some bad news about your family in the United States.”
“Oh, God!” Panic suddenly squeezing her throat, she jumped up and ran to the door. She reached for the dead bolt, only to hesitate, horrified by a sudden thought. What if this was a trick? What if whoever was after the ranch somehow found out she’d gone back to London? Could they have found out where she was already?
“Who did you say you were?” she asked, wincing at the quiver of fear she clearly heard in her voice. “I need some identification.”
“I’m Officer Hastings,” he replied and held up his badge to the peephole in the door.
Priscilla took one look at it and sighed in relief. Lightning quick, she flipped the dead bolt and jerked open the door. “Come in—”
She didn’t have time to say another word, let alone scream, as two masked men with guns rushed through the door and grabbed her. Gasping, she tried to scream…only to have duct tape slapped over her mouth. Frantic, she clawed at the tape, but they were ready for her. In the next instant, her wrists were taped together, then her ankles. Trussed up like a turkey, there was nothing she could do as they picked her up and laid her on the floor. Before she could even begin to guess their intentions, they rolled her up in the living room rug.
Just that easily, fear took on a new name. Terror.
When Donovan Jones caught his secretary on the phone with her boyfriend for the fifth time in two days, he was in no mood to cut her any slack. He’d already warned her numerous times that she was there to work, not visit with her lover, and she’d completely ignored him. She was the third secretary he’d hired in three weeks…and the third one who seemed to think she could do whatever the hell she wanted. She was wrong.
“You’re fired,” he growled. And leaning across the desk, he pushed the disconnect button on the phone.
Sputtering, she surged up out of her chair in anger. “What the hell?!”
Not the least bit impressed with her indignation, he growled, “Get your purse and get out. Now! I’ll put your paycheck in the mail tomorrow.”
He didn’t give her time to argue but simply grabbed her purse from where she insisted on leaving it on top of a file cabinet and strode over to the door. Jerking it open, he waited. She was so furious, steam was practically coming out of her ears. Cursing, she jerked her purse out of his hand and stormed out, slamming the door so hard that she nearly knocked it off its hinges.
“Good riddance,” he muttered. “I don’t need you anyway. I can find my own files.”
But when he stalked over to the filing cabinet, the file he needed for a meeting he had scheduled in fifteen minutes wasn’t where it should have been. Swearing, he went through the entire drawer to make sure it hadn’t been misfiled, but it was nowhere to be found.
Which meant, he thought grimly as his gaze landed on the secretary’s desk, it had to be somewhere in the mountain of paperwork that completely covered the top of the desk. She’d been there a week, he thought, irritated. What the hell had she been doing? He’d been on a case and had to leave the office in her hands. Apparently, she hadn’t done a damn thing except talk on the phone to her boyfriend.
Next time, he told himself, he was going to avoid the young chicks like the plague and hire a little, old, gray-haired grandmother instead. Someone who would appreciate the job, he decided, and not take advantage of the fact that he was hardly ever in the office. Someone who—
When the outer office door suddenly opened behind him, he stiffened. If the little witch had come back to plead for her job, she could forget it, he thought. She was history. Pivoting sharply, ready to tell her just that, he found himself confronting a stranger, instead.
Frowning—had he forgotten an appointment?—he lifted a dark brow. “May I help you?”
“I’m looking for Donovan Jones.”
“You found him,” he retorted. “But I’m in a hell of a rush. I’ve got an appointment across town in fifteen minutes, and I’m going to be late as it is. Leave your name and number,” he said, pushing a steno pad across the desk to him, “and I’ll call you the first chance I get.”
“No,” the man said in the clipped regal way that only the British could do. “I need your help now.”
Donovan wasn’t a man who men often said no to. Straightening, he studied the hard look of determination in his visitor’s eyes and the set of his jaw and recognized desperation when he saw it. “What’s your story?” he demanded.
“I’m Buck Wyatt,” he said. “I need you to find my sister.”
Surprised, Donovan blinked. “I’m a bounty hunter, Mr. Wyatt. Is there a bounty out on your sister?”
“No. She’s been kidnapped.”
“How do you know that? Have you received a ransom demand?”
His mouth compressed in a flat line. “No. There won’t be any ransom note. I already know what the kidnappers want.”
Donovan knew he shouldn’t have asked. He hadn’t been lying about his meeting. He was going to be late, and it was important, dammit! But there was something in the fury in Buck Wyatt’s eyes, something in the cold, controlled outrage in his voice that Donovan knew he wasn’t going to be able to walk away from.
Resigned—and more than a little annoyed with his own curiosity—he motioned for Wyatt to pull up a chair. “You’ve got ten minutes,” he said. “Make it good, because after that I am going to my meeting.”
He didn’t have to tell him twice. Too restless to take a seat, Buck Wyatt stood, instead…and paced. “My three sisters and I inherited a ranch in Colorado eleven months ago from an American cousin we didn’t know we had,” he said stiffly. “One of the stipulations of her will was that one of us had to be at the ranch at all times for a period of one year. There was no restriction on how many single nights we could be absent from the ranch, but if no member of the family is present for two nights running, the ranch goes to an unnamed heir.”
Donovan lifted a brow at that. “How many people know about that little stipulation?”
“I would imagine just about everyone in the state of Colorado.”
Donovan whistled softly. “And no one’s run you off yet? You and your sisters must be damn tough.”
A muscle clenched in Buck’s jaw. “So far, we’ve managed to weather one attack after another…as long as they were against the ranch. Now they’ve gone after Priscilla a continent away.”
“And you’re sure your sister’s kidnapping is related to the ranch? When’s the year up?”
“Next month.”
Donovan frowned. That changed things. “Are you even sure that she’s really been kidnapped? What’s her history? Is she the type to stage this kind of thing?”
“God, no! She’s the baby of the family and damn stubborn sometimes about getting her way,” he admitted honestly, “which is why she’s in London to begin with. When she insisted on coming back to close up her apartment, we talked about her accident and how she could be walking right back into the same kind of danger as before, but she intended to be back in Colorado before anyone even knew she was gone. Obviously, that didn’t happen.”
“Whoa, back up,” Donovan said sharply. “What accident?”
Buck quickly told him about the hit-and-run driver who’d nearly killed her. “She spent the last two months at the ranch, recuperating, and during that time, there wasn’t a single attack against any of us because we were all together. Then, less than six hours after she arrives in London, someone grabs her.”
“But how do you know that for sure? Maybe she just decided to go visit some friends before she left.”
“She knew how important it was to get in and out as quickly as possible,” Buck argued. “According to the London police, her landlord found the door to her flat standing wide-open and she was nowhere to be found. She appeared to be packing when someone apparently talked their way into her apartment. There were signs of a struggle and she left her purse behind.”
Studying him through narrowed eyes, Donovan should have told him he couldn’t help him. It would have been the wise thing to do. He was up to his ears in cases and couldn’t even find the time to hire a decent secretary. He didn’t have room on his calendar for another case.
And even if he had, he silently acknowledged, Priscilla Wyatt was not the kind of woman he wanted to go looking for. He’d read between the lines of what her brother had said about her, and she was obviously headstrong and spoiled and determined to have her way. Kidnapping her back from her kidnappers sounded like a headache waiting to happen.
But she was a woman in trouble. And unless he totally missed the mark, Buck was right. Her kidnapper was, no doubt, planning to use her as the pawn that drew her family away from the ranch. He would hurt her if he had to. Time was running out on the Wyatts’s trial period, and whoever thought they were the unnamed heir had to be getting desperate. Priscilla Wyatt was in a hell of a mess…and in more danger than her family probably realized.
Silently swearing, Donovan pulled out his cell phone. Surprised, Buck Wyatt frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Canceling my appointment,” he retorted. “I’ll take the case.”
Over the course of the next hour, Donovan asked Buck every question he could think of about Priscilla, her flat, where she might go if she was able to escape her kidnappers, how gutsy she was, her strengths and weaknesses. She’d been kidnapped. Would she fight or dissolve in tears? Panic or use her head? If he was going to save her, he had to know how she would react under duress.
“She’ll use her head,” Buck assured him. “Initially, she’ll be scared out of her mind, but once she gets her fear under control, she’ll start looking for a way to escape. She’s smart,” he added, “and damn creative. She won’t take this lying down.”
“That’ll work in her favor as long as she doesn’t let her kidnapper know what’s going on in her head,” Donovan replied. “The more helpless she acts, the better chance she’ll have of taking the bastard by surprise. Has she ever taken any karate or self-defense classes?”
“No, not that I—”
His cell phone rang then, surprising them both. Scowling at the number on the face of the phone, he looked up sharply at Donovan. “It’s a private number.”
“It could be the kidnapper,” Donovan warned. “Don’t let him know you’re in London. And listen to background noises that might give you an indication of where he may be.”
His expression grave, Buck nodded, then flipped open his phone. “Hello?”
“You have forty-eight hours to leave the ranch for good…or your sister dies.”
“Who is this—”
Just that quickly, the line went dead. “He hung up,” Buck said in disgust, and repeated word for word what the caller had said. “There weren’t any background noises, and the bastard was definitely disguising his voice.”
“Give me your cell phone number,” Donovan told him. “I’ve got a friend who might be able to trace the caller’s location when he made the call. I’ll get back with you as soon as I know something.”
“I’m going with you.”
“The hell you are.”
“Priscilla is my sister, dammit! I have a right—”
“Then find yourself another bounty hunter,” he said curtly. “I work alone. If you really want to help your sister, go back to Colorado and help protect the rest of the family and your ranch. I’ll take care of Priscilla.”
“If she’s still alive.”
“Oh, she’s alive,” Donovan assured him. “She’s got forty-eight hours. After that, all bets are off.”
Chapter 2
The police had already gone through Priscilla’s flat with a fine-tooth comb and released the place back to her landlord. Thanks to a call from Buck Wyatt, Donovan was able to get a spare key. He took one step inside and knew that at least two people were involved in her kidnapping.
And they hadn’t taken her without a struggle.
Staring at the broken lamp and an overturned dining room chair, Donovan clenched his teeth on the sudden angry curse that rose to his tongue. Bastards. He didn’t know Priscilla, didn’t know any more about her than her brother had told him, but he knew all he needed to know. She might be spoiled and headstrong, but she was still an innocent woman who’d done nothing wrong except inherit a ranch from a distant relative she’d never met. She had, no doubt, been terrified when she realized that she’d opened her door to an enemy, but the lady had put up a fight. And it was that gumption that just might save her life.
The clock was ticking, and every instinct Donovan had urged him to hurry. Forty-eight hours would pass in the blink of an eye, and he was wasting precious time. But he knew from past cases that success depended on doing his homework. If he was going to find Priscilla Wyatt, he had to first know how her kidnappers had gotten her out of the apartment without someone noticing.
Walking over to the window that overlooked the street below, he frowned. The neighborhood that Priscilla lived in was in an older section of London that was a mix of well-known restaurants, popular pubs and shops at street level, with old-fashioned flats above. Considering that, Donovan doubted that the streets emptied before midnight. Which meant, he thought grimly, that Priscilla’s kidnappers hadn’t walked out of her flat with her like they were going out to dinner. So how the hell had they managed to get her out of her flat without anyone seeing them?
He turned to study the living room again, and only just then noticed what looked like a line of fine powder on the floor. Puzzled, he squatted down to examine it and realized that the powder was actually shattered glass from the lamp. And the reason it was in a neat line was because when the lamp broke, it had, apparently, shattered at the edge of a rug. A rug which was, he thought in growing fury, no longer there.
They’d rolled her up in a damn rug and carried her out like a dead body. He didn’t care how gutsy she was; she must have been scared out of her mind.
Livid, he promised himself he was going to make the bastards pay for this. But first he had to find them.
His lean face carved in stern lines, he exited the apartment and made sure he locked the dead bolt. Then he went to work.
The neighborhood was quaint and full of atmosphere. The kind of place women loved, Donovan acknowledged…and a bitch to search. With the restaurants and pubs open late, people came and went at all hours of the day and night. God knew how many of them lived in the area or witnessed Priscilla’s kidnapping without even knowing it.
Muttering a curse, he headed for the pub across the street. The bar had wide, paned windows that overlooked the street and Priscilla’s flat. Surely a waitress or bartender or one of the regulars must have seen something.
But when he went inside, he was met with nothing but one negative response after another. Frustrated, he moved to the restaurant next door, then the bookstore on the corner and every other business up and down both sides of the street for three blocks. And the answer was always the same. No one had seen two men or anyone else moving a rug.
Walking out of the pizzeria two doors down from Priscilla’s flat, he swore softly as he realized that darkness had fallen while he was canvassing the street and he still didn’t have any leads to go on. And time was running out for Priscilla Wyatt.
It wasn’t often that he was at his wit’s end, and it infuriated him. He was better than this! His competitors claimed he had the nose of a bloodhound. So who the hell had taken Priscilla Wyatt?
Scowling, he stared down the street and watched the crowded sidewalks begin to empty as friends met friends for drinks or dinner and disappeared inside. The twilight was deeper now, the darkness nearly complete, and he realized that this was just about the time Priscilla must have been kidnapped. No wonder no one had noticed her kidnapping. The only streetlights were on the distant corners, and the people who were on the street were hurrying to get where they were going, not paying attention to anything but their own business.
Caught up in his musings, it was several long moments before he noticed the woman coming toward him, walking her dog. He started to look past her, only to glance at her sharply. Had she come by at the same time yesterday? People generally walked their dogs at the same time every day, didn’t they? Could she have seen Priscilla’s kidnappers in the dark and not even realized it? If she walked by without anyone else seeing her, the police wouldn’t have questioned her because they had no idea she existed. Even now, twenty-four hours later, the woman probably didn’t know that a kidnapping had taken place.
Striding toward her, he eyed her dog warily. A Doberman. Great, he thought irritably. He was usually good with dogs, but Dobermans could be damn protective. The last one he’d tangled with had taken a bite out of his hide. He wasn’t going there again.
“Nice dog,” he told the woman as he drew closer. “Does he bite?”
“When I tell him to,” she shot back. Stopping in her tracks, she tightened her grip on the leash. Just that easily, the dog was on guard. His golden brown eyes focused unblinkingly on Donovan, he growled low in his throat, daring him to take so much as one more step toward him and his mistress.
“Look, I’m not a threat to you,” he told the woman. “I just need to ask you some questions. A woman was kidnapped here last night, and her family has hired me to find her.”
“I didn’t hear anything about a kidnapping,” she replied, eyeing him suspiciously.
“The police didn’t learn about it until late last night, and it didn’t make the news until this morning,” he explained.
Studying him, she frowned. “I was running late this morning,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t heard the news all day.”
“Did you, by any chance, happen to walk this way last night?”
She didn’t commit one way or the other. Instead, she just lifted a brow and said, “And if I did?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he assured her. “I just need to know if you saw two men moving a rug out of the flat across the street.”
She didn’t say a word, but even in the darkness, he saw surprise flicker in her eyes. “So you did see something,” he said in satisfaction. “How many men were there? Two? Three? Did you get a look at them? What were they driving?” When she hesitated, he knew she didn’t want to get involved. It was too late for that. “There was a woman rolled up in that rug,” he said. “If the circumstances had been different, it could have been you. Are you really going to stand there and say nothing?”
For a moment, he thought she actually wasn’t going to answer him. Then tears misted her eyes. “I didn’t realize,” she whispered, horrified. “It just looked like a rolled up rug—”
“She’s still alive,” he told her quietly. “But only for forty-eight hours.”
“There were two men, both just a little taller than me. I didn’t get a good look at their faces, but they were both very thin, almost gaunt.”
“And their hair?”
“One was bald. And the other had a military cut. I think it was blonde.”
Donovan frowned. Military? That was a twist he hadn’t expected. “What were they driving?”
“A black van,” she answered promptly. “I didn’t get the plate number, but they didn’t go very far. Just over to Reynolds Street.”
Already trying to figure out how he was going to find two skinny, short bastards in a wrecked van, it was several seconds before her words registered. “What?” he said sharply. “How do you know that?”
“Because I saw the same van pulling out of an alley at Reynolds and Third when Precious and I were on our way home. Or at least I thought it was the same van,” she added. “The streetlight on the corner was out, so I couldn’t see very well.”
“Reynolds and Third? You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “C’mon. I’ll show you. Though I don’t know what good it will do. The van pulled out of the alley and disappeared down the street.”
“That’s okay,” he replied. “It’s a place to start. Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, they reached Reynolds and Third. “The van came out of that alley,” she said quietly, nodding toward the dark, narrow alley that disappeared between two buildings halfway down the street.
Studying the shadowy entrance to the alley, Donovan frowned. For the moment, he wasn’t concerned with where the van had gone. Instead, he found it curious that Priscilla Wyatt’s kidnappers had been in the alley to begin with. They hadn’t, in all likelihood, driven into the alley by chance. So what the devil had they gone in there for?
His mind jumping with several interesting possibilities, he said, ‘I’ll check it out. Thanks for your help.”
Tightening her grip on the Doberman’s leash, his companion grimaced. “I didn’t do much. I hope it helps.”
Wishing him good-night, she and Precious continued their walk, but as Donovan strolled down the street to the entrance to the alley and peered in, his attention was on the upstairs apartments that overlooked the dark, narrow cavern. There was only one window lit, and a ragged curtain was doing its best to block the faint glimmer he saw in the darkness. What was up there?
Later, Donovan lost track of how long he stood deep in the shadows, watching, waiting for some sign that Priscilla Wyatt was in the apartment halfway down the alley. He knew there was a good possibility that he was wasting precious time while the kidnappers spirited Priscilla farther and farther from London. With every passing second, the trail that led to her whereabouts could be growing colder. But he didn’t think so.
Something didn’t smell right, and it wasn’t just the rotting garbage in the trash can ten steps away from where he stood in the alley. It was the setup, he decided. The whole damn setup stank.
Lost in his musings, he almost didn’t see the movement of the ragged curtain shrouding the lit window. Then he saw a man peer out into the darkness…a man with a military haircut.
Bingo.
An hour later, Donovan parked in the dark alley and soundlessly shut the driver’s door of the small van he’d rented. Upstairs, there was no sign of the man he’d seen earlier, but the light was still on. If luck was with him—and he was feeling damn lucky!—Priscilla Wyatt was upstairs, waiting to be rescued, and her rescuers didn’t have a clue their bird was about to fly the coop with a little help from him. There was nothing he liked better than surprises, he thought with a grin.
Checking to make sure his pistol was loaded, he quietly slipped into the building stairwell after picking the lock to the steel door that opened onto the alley. Standing in the darkness, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the deep shadows that engulfed him. From upstairs, the muffled sound of voices drifted down to him, but none of them were feminine. Donovan was far too good a tracker to be sidelined by that. Her kidnappers might be feeling pretty cocky right now, but unless they were complete novices, they weren’t going to take any chances with her. Twenty-four hours after her kidnapping, they would still be watching her like a hawk so she couldn’t give them away.
The question now, he thought pensively as he started up the stairs in the dark, was…how the hell was he going to get her out of the flat without getting them both killed? Her captors would be armed and had the advantage of knowing the layout of the flat. He didn’t even know if Priscilla was bound, if he would have to carry her, if she would get hysterical when the bullets started flying. And there was no way to know until he burst through the door.
He was taking a hell of a risk, he silently acknowledged…and grinned wickedly at the thought. He’d always been a daredevil, which was what made him damn good at his job. If Priscilla Wyatt’s kidnappers thought they had pulled a fast one on the authorities and the Wyatts, they were in for a rude awakening. They were toast. They just didn’t know it yet.
Priscilla had never been so terrified in her life. The two thugs who had kidnapped her had removed the duct tape from her wrists and ankles, but they had other ways of keeping her captive. They’d made it clear that if she even moved toward the door or made so much as a sound, they would have one of her sisters or her brother killed.
And they could do it, she thought. They were ruthless—and in touch with someone in the States who was furious that her kidnapping hadn’t drawn the rest of the family away from the ranch to London, as planned. Her captors informed her that the orders they were given were crystal clear—her siblings would be burying her if they didn’t leave the ranch within forty-eight hours.
Her blood turning cold at the thought, she knew she had to get out of there. But her captors were in constant touch with their boss in the States. If she tried to escape, one of her siblings could be dead within the hour. How could she live with that on her conscience?
Suddenly furious, she decided right then and there that she wasn’t going to take their abuse anymore. She was in charge of her own destiny, and she wasn’t going to sit around on her hands and wait to die or let the bastards kill her family. She had to trust that Buck and her two future brothers-in-law, John and Hunter, would do everything they could to protect her sisters. In the meantime, she had to take care of herself.
Which meant, she decided resolutely, that she would kill her captors if she had to in order to keep herself and her family safe. The question was…how was she going to put them out of commission when they watched her like a hawk?
Lost in her musings, she didn’t notice her captors whispering among themselves until one of them asked, “Are you hungry?”
It was a simple question, but she only eyed them suspiciously. Of course she was hungry! She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, when one of the men had left and returned a short while later with some pastries and a small bag of groceries. She’d been warned then that the pastries would be the only meal of the day. Leaving the flat was too risky, so the groceries they’d bought would be saved for tomorrow. So why were they asking her now if she was hungry? What kind of game were they playing? If they thought they were going to surprise her into saying something so they would have a reason to kill Katherine or Elizabeth or Buck, they were wasting their time. She wasn’t saying a word.
“Who cares if she’s hungry or not,” the other kidnapper snapped. “My stomach feels like my throat’s been cut, and I’m not waiting until tomorrow to eat.” Sneering at Priscilla, he said, “Cook us something to eat, bitch. And don’t even think about trying anything fishy. We’ve already got orders to kill you tomorrow. We’d just as soon do it now as then, so don’t push your luck.”
Nodding silently, she kept her eyes down as she headed for the kitchen so he wouldn’t see the anger she knew was reflected there. If she acted meek and afraid, maybe they would drop their guard and relax enough for her to put something in their food. Surely there had to be some kind of pesticide or drain cleaner under the sink. Something…
Her eyes suddenly landed on the prescription bottle that one of her captors had set on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. She’d seen him take a couple of pills right after breakfast. What was he taking? Was it something that she could drug both men with?
Fighting the urge to hurry to the sink to check out the prescription, she reminded herself that her every move was being watched. So she headed for the refrigerator, instead, for the groceries that Baldy had deposited there, bag and all, that morning after he’d gone shopping.
Her heart pounding, she set the groceries on the kitchen counter and cast a quick glance at the prescription bottle that was less than three feet away. She only saw two words before she turned her attention back to the food, but it was enough. Blood pressure.
Elated, she almost laughed out loud. Yes! If she gave them enough, it would lower their blood pressure and knock them out, wouldn’t it? She could mix it with…roast beef?! Swallowing a groan, she blinked back tears. What was she supposed to do with canned roast beef and potatoes? At least there was tea, too. She could make it extra strong, then lace it liberally with the medication. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one she had. First, however, she had to get her hands on the medication without anyone noticing.
The opportunity came much quicker than she’d anticipated. She’d just found a saucepan and a can opener when what sounded like a shot exploded on the dark street down below.
“What the hell!” her bald captor swore and ran to the bedroom to check the view from there.
“What is it?” the other man yelled to his partner as he took up a position at the living room window. “Was that a shot? I can’t see anything for the fog.”
Taking advantage of the distraction, Priscilla grabbed the prescription bottle, popped the lid and sent up a silent prayer of thanks when she saw the bottle was nearly full. Hurriedly pouring pills into her hand, she pocketed them, capped the bottle and returned it to the windowsill in four seconds flat.
“I think a car backfired,” Baldy said in disgust. “It must have been amplified by the fog.”
Afraid to look over her shoulder to see if either one of the men had seen her, she tried to act as casual as possible when she found a can opener and opened the roast beef; but it wasn’t easy. Her heart was slamming against her ribs, her fingers were trembling and she was sure they only had to look into her eyes to know that she was up to something. She needn’t have worried, however. Her captors were too concerned with what was going on downstairs on the street to pay any attention to her.
Then, with no warning, there was a knock at the door.
Priscilla whirled to face her captor by the living room window, only to find him glaring at her like she was somehow responsible for the knock at the door. Pale, she took a step back. His expression furious, he made a sharp silencing motion, then strode over to the door.
The visitor knocked again, this time louder. “Mr. Smith? Are you in there?”
“You’ve got the wrong address,” Baldy growled through the closed door. “Go away.”
If the man on the other side of the door heard him, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he knocked loudly on the door again and shouted, “Mr. Smith? I’ve got a package for you. The postman delivered it to my place by mistake this afternoon.”
“I told you you’ve got the wrong place! Get the hell away from my door or—”
He never had a chance to finish the threat. A split second later, the door was kicked open and he found himself confronting a tall man with a ski mask pulled down over his face. Before Baldy could even think to yell for his partner for help, he was shocked with a stun gun and went down.
Donovan stepped over the man and took in the rest of the flat in a single, all-encompassing glance. Priscilla was in the kitchen and was pale as a ghost as her eyes met his. He didn’t have time to reassure her—not when the second kidnapper was already charging toward him, reaching for his gun. Donovan had two seconds, at the most. Rushing him before he could pull his gun completely free, Donovan hit him with the stun gun and sent him to the floor.
There was, after that, no time to waste. Lightning quick, he handcuffed first one man, then the other. Then he slapped duct tape over their mouths and tied their feet together. That would hold them long enough for him to get Priscilla out of London, where he could keep her safe until he was able to hand her over to her brother.
But when he turned to grab her and hustle her out of the apartment, she was gone and the door to the flat was standing wide open.
“Son of a bitch!”
Running after her, he practically threw himself down the stairs, taking them two at a time in the darkness and nearly breaking his neck in the process. He couldn’t lose her, dammit! If she disappeared into the streets of London at this time of night, he’d have a devil of a time picking up her trail again.
The second he took the last step, he hit the steel door that opened onto the alley and burst outside, only to stop in his tracks as fog slapped him right in the face. “What the—”
The fog had slipped in like a thief in the night while he was waiting in the stairwell, sliding down alleys and streets and into darkened doorways, and with no effort whatsoever, he could imagine himself in Victorian London, when Jack the Ripper walked the streets. Visibility was down to fifty feet, and if Priscilla Wyatt was out there somewhere, there was no sign of her.
When he got his hands on her, he was going to give her a piece of his mind. But first he had to find her, and his task had just become nearly impossible. Where the hell could she have gone? The van he’d rented blocked one end of the alley, but squeezing past it would have slowed her down. Making a snap decision, he turned and ran in the opposite direction.
Sounds carried in the fog, and as he reached the cross street at the end of the alley, a car screeched to a stop half a block away. He turned sharply…just in time to see someone dart right in front of an oncoming car that suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere. In the watery light of the vehicle’s headlights, he caught just a glimpse of a woman running like the hounds of hell were after her. Almost immediately, she was swallowed by the fog again, but not before he recognized Priscilla Wyatt.
“Dammit, where is she going?” he said as he tore off his mask and took off after her.
Darting across the street, he just barely missed being flattened by a taxi. The taxi driver swore at him and laid on his horn, but he didn’t spare the man a glance. Instead, his eyes were locked on the spot where Priscilla had disappeared into the thickening fog. There was a streetlight on the corner and then nothing but darkness for at least two blocks. He only had seconds to catch her or he’d be chasing shadows in the dark.
Suddenly, the fog shifted eerily in front of him like a living thing. For the span of a heartbeat, Priscilla was just three steps in front of him. That was all he needed to grab her.
The hand that came out of the darkness to snare her wrist stopped Priscilla’s heart in mid beat. Terrified, she screamed even as she turned on her kidnapper like a woman possessed. “Let go of me, you bastard! My husband will kill you!”
“I’m not going to hurt you!” her attacker growled. “Shut up before you get us both killed!”
Shut up? He was kidnapping her and he expected her to shut up?! The hell she would! Digging in her heels, moaning as his fingers threatened to crush the bones in her wrist as he jerked her toward him, she screamed, “Help! Somebody help me! I’m being kidnapped!”
Chapter 3
Across the street, a woman who was just getting out of a taxi stepped onto the curb, only to freeze at Priscilla’s cry. Frowning in their direction, she tried to see them in the shifting fog. “Who’s there?” she called. “Are you all right?”
“Help me! I’m being kidnapped!”
“No, she’s not,” Donovan called out quickly as he hauled her close and clamped his hand over her mouth. “She’s a thief!”
Outraged, she bit him…and regained the freedom of speech when he swore and jerked his hand free. “I am not! Let go of me, you bastard!”
“Not on your life, sweetheart,” he said, fighting to control her. Damn, she was strong! And quick. She kicked him before he even guessed her intentions, then somehow managed to evade his efforts to haul her against him and stifle her cries. “She stole a pair of diamond earrings from Thompson’s Jewelry Store,” Donovan told the woman. “I’m an undercover security officer for the store. I saw her take the earrings and stroll out without batting an eye. And they were five hundred pounds!”
He came up with the story on the spot, and it was a damn good one. Thompson’s Jewelry Store was two blocks over, not far from Priscilla’s flat, and the woman Priscilla was appealing to for help obviously knew that. She bought the story lock, stock and barrel. “I’ve got no use for thieves,” she retorted coldly. “Haul her ass off to jail. She deserves it.”
Outraged, Priscilla tried to protest, but all she could manage was a muffled cry as Donovan started to drag her away into the fog…and darkness. “C’mon,” he said roughly, “you’re going to show me where you ditched the earrings, then you’re going to have a nice long chat with the police.”
Helpless, overpowered, but still struggling, Priscilla couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d escaped her kidnappers, only to fall into the hands of another one? No! Somebody had to help her. There were still people out on the street, cars passing by. Surely someone would step forward…
But no one did. The fog swallowed them whole, and just that quickly, she was alone with a stranger who suddenly dragged her into an alley…the same one she’d run down when she’d escaped from her kidnappers. Was he taking her back? Or did he have more sinister plans for her? The alley was pitch black, deserted. And he could do anything he wanted to her…hurt her…rape her…kill her.
Panic pooled in her mouth at the thought. No! She couldn’t just go meekly along with him. If he thought he would overpower her without a fight, he was in for a rude awakening. She’d gouge his eyes out—
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he growled in a low whisper that didn’t carry past her ears. “Your brother sent me.”
If he hadn’t had his hand clamped over her mouth, she would have laughed. Her brother?! Yeah, right. Did he really think she was stupid enough to buy that story? The only way he could know she had a brother was if he was hired by the same man who sent the first set of kidnappers after her. The same man, she thought, blanching, who’d ordered her to be killed if her family didn’t leave the ranch in forty-eight hours.
Clawing at the hand that pinched her mouth to keep her quiet, she knew her new kidnapper wasn’t going to wait forty-eight hours. He was going to kill her now and get it over with.
Terrified, she kicked and clawed and silently called him every filthy name she could think of. For a moment, she thought she was making progress when the heel of her hand connected with his nose. He grunted…and locked his fingers around her wrists like a set of handcuffs. In the next instant, he jerked her hands behind her, and before she could do anything but gasp, she was chest to chest with him and totally helpless.
Caught in the trap of his steely blue gaze, she froze…and heard the roar of her blood in her ears. Suddenly, she was aware of just how strong he was, how close, how hard. Her mouth went dry, and she should have been scared out of her mind. Instead, she’d never been so furious in her life. How dare he manhandle her! “Let go of me, you slimy piece of—”
In the darkness, his eyes narrowed, but he only snapped, “Watch your mouth. I’m trying to help you, but if you insist on doing this the hard way, you’ll be the one who suffers.” And with no more warning than that, he jerked open the driver’s door of the van she’d seen in the alley earlier and pushed her inside.
He released her for just a second so he could climb in after her, but that was all the time she needed. Sobbing, she threw herself across the van and jerked open the passenger door.
Run. Run. RUN! a voice screamed in her ear, but her feet never had a chance to hit the pavement. An arm snaked around her waist, snaring her, and she was hauled, kick and screaming, back into the van and tossed into her seat like a sack of potatoes.
“Bastard! Jerk! You’re not going to get away with this! Do you hear me? My brother will hunt you down like the miserable scumbag you are and make you wish you’d never laid eyes on me. Let go of me!”
“No problem,” he snarled, and hit the door lock, making it impossible for her to escape. She was still cussing at him when he jerked out his phone and punched in a number. When the caller came on the line, he held the phone out to her. “It’s your brother,” he told her coldly.
Stunned, she grabbed the phone. “Buck?”
“Are you all right?”
Tears welled in her eyes at the sound of her brother’s familiar voice. “I thought I was being kidnapped again.”
“You were,” he said gruffly. “It was the only way I could think of to get you back. Did they hurt you?”
They both knew he was asking if she’d been raped. “No,” she choked. “They were more interested in killing me in forty-eight hours.”
“I knew the minute I met Donovan, he’d find you. He’s a bounty hunter,” he added. “You’re in good hands, Sis.”
“I’m sorry I insisted on coming back,” she said tearfully. “How did anyone know I was here?”
“I don’t know—I’m still trying to figure that out. For now, though, you’re safe,” he assured her. “That’s what’s important. Now we just have to keep you that way. Let me talk to Donovan again.”
“You mean the Neanderthal?”
He chuckled. “Be nice. He’s your new best friend.”
“Yeah, right,” she sniffed, and handed the phone to the man who was grinning at her smugly. “Buck wants to talk to you.”
Taking the phone, he said, “Yes, sir?”
“I owe you.”
“No, you don’t,” Donovan said easily. “I was just doing my job. So what’s next? Where are you? I’ll drop her off wherever you’re staying.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Buck said, “but plans have changed. I need you to keep her with you for the next month.”
Donovan nearly dropped the phone. “You must be joking.”
“It’s the only way to keep her safe.”
“The hell it is!” he retorted. “She’ll be a hell of a lot safer in Colorado. She can be back with her family at the ranch by this time tomorrow.”
“She’ll never get that far,” Buck said soberly. “They know she couldn’t have gone far. Whoever arranged this is probably already turning the city upside down looking for her. She’s in danger until the ranch is ours. She needs you. We need you.”
Donovan didn’t doubt for a second that he could protect her, but was he prepared to spend a month with her? The lady was a handful—and she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. If he was dumb enough to do this, he knew she’d make his life a living hell.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m not a babysitter. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“You’ll be doing a hell of a lot more than babysitting,” Buck told him. “I don’t have time to go into everything right now—my flight back to the States has just been called—but the bastards who kidnapped her are bound to be watching the airports, hoping to get their hands on her a second time. And if they do, they’ll kill her this time. That’s how badly they want the ranch.”
“Which is why you need to get her out of the country as soon as possible,” Donovan pointed out.
“I realize that, but it’s not that easy, dammit. I’ve dealt with this for nearly a year, and it’s like trying to catch a ghost. We don’t know what the enemy looks like. It could be anyone, including the baggage clerk at the airport, which means Priscilla’s not safe anywhere…except with you.” He exhaled. “You’re damn resourceful—you found her when no one else could. You’ll be able to keep her safe until you can find a way to get her out of England. I don’t know anyone else who can do that.”
At a loss, Donovan hesitated. Did Buck know what he was asking of him? “I don’t know, Buck…”
“I’ll double your fee.”
Donovan liked to think he wasn’t a fool, especially when it came to money. A job was a job. And he could handle little Miss Priss. “All right,” he said. “But you can tell her. She’s not going to be happy about it.”
“I can’t,” he said. “We’re about to take off—we’ve just been told to turn off all electronics. Tell Priscilla I love her and I’ll see her in a month. Keep her safe. I’m counting on you.”
“Wait a minute. What if—” That was as far as he got before the line went dead. Swearing, Donovan snapped the phone shut and tossed it into a cupholder. “Great! This is just great!”
Beside him, Priscilla eyed him suspiciously. “What is? What am I not going to be happy about? What did Buck say?”
“He’s pretty sure the airports are being watched,” he said bluntly, “so leaving the country, at least for now, is out of the question. He thinks you’ll be safer with me, anyway.”
“What?! Oh, no. I’m going home.”
“Not right now you’re not,” he informed her. “He just hired me to watch over you for the next month.”
“The hell he did!”
A grin propped up one side of his mouth. So the fireworks were about to begin. “He doubled my fee, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “Like it or not, it looks like you’re stuck with me.”
“For a month? You’re out of your mind. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a child.”
Appreciation glinted in his eyes. “Oh, I noticed, all right.”
She gave him a withering look. “Stuff it, Mr.—” Trying to remember his name, she frowned. “What the devil is your name? Dirk? Darryl?”
“Donovan Jones,” he said with a grin. “But you can call me Mr. Jones.”
“In your dreams,” she snorted. “Keep this up and I’ll call you—”
“Wonderful…studly…Superman—”
“Irritating…obnoxious—”
“George.”
Surprised, she blinked. “George?”
“Clooney.”
Caught off guard, she laughed. “You must be joking.”
For a moment, she thought she’d insulted him. Something that looked like hurt flashed in his steely blue eyes. Then she saw his lips twitch, and alarm bells went off in her head. He was, she realized, far more dangerous than she’d first suspected. He was one of those men who was far too sure of himself, who knew how to set a woman’s heart pounding with just a smile and a twinkle in his eyes. And she had to spend a month with him? No way!
“I’m calling Buck,” she told him, snatching up his phone. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
“You’d have a better argument if I hadn’t just rescued you from those two thugs,” he pointed out dryly, “but go ahead and call him. It’s not going to do you any good. He’s already on a plane back to the States.”
She didn’t believe him. Lightning quick, she punched in Buck’s cell phone, but it never rang. Instead, it went straight to voice mail. Swearing, she hung up. “How much is he paying you?” she demanded. “Whatever it is, I’ll double it.”
He grinned. “Really? What is it with you people? First your brother, now you. You do realize, don’t you, that you’re quadrupling my original fee without even knowing what it is?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “I’ll come up with the money someway. Are you accepting my offer or not?”
“It depends on what you want me to do,” he said simply.
“Take me to Heathrow.”
“Forget it!” he said quickly. “That’s out of the question.”
“Then take me to Bristol or Liverpool.”
“Nope. It’s too dangerous.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The hell I don’t. Buck told me all about the problems your family is having in Colorado. Someone wants the ranch, sweetheart, and it sounds like they’re willing to commit murder to get it. In case you missed who their intended victim is, it’s you.”
A cold shiver skated down her spine. Hugging herself, she stared out the van’s passenger window as they raced across London in the fog at a frightening speed. “Oh, no,” she said huskily. “I knew. I was hoping they were just trying to scare me.”
“Did it work?”
Her throat dry, she nodded. “That’s why I ran when you broke in. I knew it was the only chance I was going to get.”
“And you still want me to take you to the airport? Are you crazy, girl? Buck was right—they’ll be watching the airports. You’d be running right into a trap.”
“Not if we got there before they did,” she pointed out. “They don’t know where we’re going—”
He laughed without humor. “Of course they know where we’re going! It’s the only way back to the States, sweetheart, unless you’re going to take a slow boat to China.”
“But we left them back at the flat. We’ve got a head start.”
He couldn’t believe she was serious. “Yes, we do, but how do you know the clowns I tied up back at the flat are the only ones after you? The bastard who sent them after you appears to have a hell of a long reach. Do you really think he wouldn’t have a backup in place in case you were able to escape?”
Horrified, Priscilla felt her heart drop into her stomach. “You mean we’re being followed? Oh, God! Where—”
He checked the rearview mirror for the tenth time in two minutes, but the fog that surrounded them was all encompassing. “Relax,” he told her. “Nothing short of a bloodhound’s following us in this fog. By the time it lifts, we’ll have left London far behind. Not that anyone needs to follow us,” he added. “All your kidnappers have to do is watch the airports…and the Paris tunnel. Those are the only two ways to get off this island, which is why we’re avoiding them.”
“Then where are we going?”
“I’m still working on that. Buck caught me off guard,” he admitted. “But don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
After everything she’d been through, trust was no longer something she gave easily. Eyeing him warily in the dim glow of the dash lights, she lifted a delicately arched brow. “Really? I’m supposed to trust you, just like that? How do I know you’re not working with my kidnappers and taking me back to them?”
“You talked to Buck,” he reminded her. “He told you himself that he hired me.”
“But how did he get your name? You’re a bounty hunter. Why didn’t he hire a private investigator instead? Who recommended you to him?”
He shrugged. “That’s something you’ll have to ask him.”
“I can’t. He’s on a plane for the next ten hours.”
Not the least disturbed, he said, “That’s your problem, Miss Priss. Some things you just have to take on faith.”
“No, I don’t,” she said sharply. “Not when my life is on the line.
“Your life won’t be on the line as long as you do what I say,” he reminded her. “So from now on, you don’t ask questions, you don’t hesitate, you don’t argue. Understood?”
Lifting her chin, she gave him a cool look. “Not in a million years. I’m not one of the low-life criminals you make your living catching, so save your little speech for someone who needs a keeper. Believe it or not, I have a brain under all this strawberry-blond hair, and I don’t need you to tell me I’m in danger. I was the one who was kidnapped, remember?”
“And the one who opened the door to your kidnapper,” he reminded her mockingly. “So tell me again about the brain under all that blond hair.”
“Go to hell.”
He only grinned. “I’ve already been there and back, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Fuming, she was tempted to smack him, but she wasn’t that kind of woman. “He told me he was a cop,” she said stiffly. “He had a badge—”
“I can’t believe you fell for that,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “That’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. I’ve used it myself.”
“Trust me—I won’t make that mistake again. I felt like a fool.”
“Good. There’s hope for you yet. Don’t trust anyone—I don’t care what badge they’re flashing or what story they tell you. As far as you’re concerned, everyone you see and talk to is after you.”
She lifted a delicately arched brow at him. “Including you?”
He grinned. “I don’t go after the chicks in my custody. Afterward…” He shrugged. “Give me a call, sweetheart. We’ll talk about it.”
“In your dreams,” she sniffed.
When she lifted her pert little nose in the air, Donovan laughed. So he wasn’t good enough for her, huh? They’d see about that. The day would come when he would make the lady purr just to prove he could. But not now. Not when they were practically shackled and stuck with each other for the next month. For now, he had to come up with a plan to keep her safe.
His phone rang then, shattering the silence that had fallen between then. Looking at the caller ID, he swore. Tim Elliot. He was a snitch with a taste for scotch who knew more about what was going on in the back alleys of London than just about anyone Donovan knew. And he didn’t call unless he had a lead he knew Donovan was willing to pay for.
His timing couldn’t have been worse, but Donovan knew he couldn’t afford to ignore the call. If Tim was in need of a drink, he’d go to the perp himself and give Donovan up without a thought for a bottle of scotch.
Snatching up the phone, he barked, “What?”
“I just had a drink with Leo Guardino.”
Donovan clenched his teeth. Leo Guardino was one of the biggest prizes out there—wanted for murder and drug smuggling, he had a 20,000 quid price on his head. Rumors had floated around for the last year that he was dead, but Donovan knew better. There’d been times when he’d been so close to the bastard that he could smell him, but he’d always managed to disappear like smoke in the wind. How the devil had Tim found him?
“Where?”
“The Pirate’s Cove.”
Donovan knew the pub well. It was a dive on a dark, ancient street in the heart of London where no decent person would step foot. The patrons there dealt in drugs and weapons and every kind of contraband known to man, and few, if any of them, remembered what it was like to have a soul. Even the cops didn’t go there if they could avoid it, and Donovan couldn’t blame them. It was a sinister place.
“You didn’t give me up, did you, Tim? You wouldn’t do that to a friend, would you?”
“No. No! No way, man! You know me better than that. I work with you all the time. You can trust me.”
Donovan could practically feel him sweating through the phone. Trust him? Not in a million years. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said coolly. “I would hate like hell to think you would betray me after everything I’ve been through with you. You know, like that incident at The Royal Arms, when you—”
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Linda Turner
Born-and-bred Londoner Priscilla Wyatt was shocked at how much she loved the Colorado ranch mysteriously bequeathed to her family.But enemies were determined to drive the Wyatts away–and innocent Priscilla was their next pawn. Donovan Jones made it his mission to find his man–or woman–at any cost, but retrieving Priscilla from her abductors was just the first hurdle. Now he had to keep his feisty charge safe.Even the solitary Donovan couldn't help but be captivated by his one-of-a-kind client as they evaded their foes. Before long, the bounty hunter was in danger of stealing her heart…and losing his own!
“Are you always a pest or do I just bring out the worst in you?”
Donovan only laughed. “Me? A pest? You must be joking. Everyone knows I’m a sweetheart.”
“Uh-huh,” she said dryly. “And I’m Snow White.”
“No, you’re Sleeping Beauty. And you know what happened to her.”
Confused, she frowned. “The wicked witch got her?”
“No. The prince kissed her until she woke up.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “Don’t even think about going there, mister. You’re no Prince Charming.” The second the words were out of her mouth, she knew that she’d made a mistake. He wasn’t the kind of man who ignored a challenge.
“Too late,” he chuckled, and reached for her. A heartbeat later, she was in his arms.
Dear Reader,
This is the first time I’ve done a series in which the mystery isn’t solved until the end of the fourth book, so I was naturally a little nervous when I started writing Bounty Hunter’s Woman. There was a lot to bring together, and only a limited number of pages in which to do it. But then Donovan Jones came to Priscilla Wyatt’s rescue, and the rest, as they say, is history. I loved the sparks that flew between Donovan and Priscilla. He’s a man who can’t resist a woman in trouble, and she’s up to her ears in bad guys. Donovan thinks she’s spoiled and stubborn…and no one’s more surprised than he when she turns out to be perfect for him. Don’t you just love surprises? Enjoy.
Linda Turner
Bounty Hunter’s Woman
Linda Turner
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LINDA TURNER
began reading romances in high school and began writing them one night when she had nothing else to read. She’s been writing ever since. Single and living in Texas, she travels every chance she gets, scouting locales for her books.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Prologue
Moving gingerly, the incision from her surgery twinging in protest, Priscilla Wyatt stepped through the front door of her London flat and found herself blinking back tears. Over the course of the last week and a half, while she was in the hospital recovering from injuries incurred in a car accident and the emergency surgery that had saved her life, she’d begun to wonder if she was ever going to sleep in her own bed again. When her doctor had finally told her she was being released, she hadn’t known whether she wanted to laugh or cry.
Watching her as the last of her strength gave out and she sank down onto the couch, her brother, Buck, frowned in concern. “I don’t know what the doctor was thinking, releasing you so soon after your surgery. Look at you. You’re as weak as a kitten.”
“I just need to rest for a few minutes, and I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, right,” he retorted, scowling. “In case you’ve forgotten, you had a hell of an accident. You could have been killed—”
Hovering at the door, his wife, Rainey, frowned warningly. “She’s aware of that, Buck. You don’t have to keep reminding her.”
“Apparently, I do,” he growled. “She’d still be in the hospital if she hadn’t pressured the doctor to release her.”
“I can recover better here,” Priscilla replied. “No one gets any rest in the hospital. You know that.”
“What I know is that you had major surgery. You lost your spleen, dammit. This is serious, Cilla. You’ve got no business being here by yourself.”
“Why don’t you come home with me and Buck?” Rainey suggested. “Let us take care of you.”
“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “The ranch isn’t home. This is. London is.”
Buck could understand her feelings. When Hilda Wyatt, a distant American relative from the States, had left the Broken Arrow Ranch in Colorado to him and his sisters, the place had felt nothing like home even though it had been in the Wyatt family for nearly a hundred fifty years. That was before the ranch came under attack, however. The first time he picked up a gun to defend the Broken Arrow, the land of his ancestors became his.
Not that he and his sisters could claim it outright just yet, he reminded himself. Hilda had wanted the ranch to go to the last of the Wyatts, but she’d still left it to them with strings. One of them had to be at the ranch at all times for the period of one year. If there was no Wyatt at the ranch for two nights in a row during that year, they lost the Broken Arrow and it went to an unnamed heir. No one, however, knew who the unnamed heir was. His or her name was in a sealed envelope that would only be opened in the event that the English branch of the Wyatts was disqualified.
And it was that clause in the will that had caused countless problems for him and his sisters, Buck thought in disgust. Once the terms of the will became common knowledge, everyone in Willow Bend seemed to think they were the unnamed heir and all they had to do to inherit the ranch was drive Buck and his sisters away.
The attacks began almost immediately and had been going on for months, always coming from a different direction. And they hadn’t stopped at the property lines of the ranch…which was why he and Rainey were in London.
“You’re not safe here,” he told Priscilla flatly. “Your accident wasn’t an accident.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” she argued. “Just because someone ran a stop sign—”
“All the witnesses said the driver could have easily avoided the accident,” he cut in. “He didn’t. We can’t prove it, but my gut tells me the jackass was hired by someone in Colorado to hurt you and draw the rest of us away from the ranch. If that’s the case, this is only the beginning. Whoever hired the man who hit you will try again.”
When she shivered, hugging herself, he said huskily, “I’m not trying to scare you, Sis. But we’re all worried sick about you. You’re here alone, and you’re so weak you can’t possibly protect yourself if someone decides to come after you. If you’d just come home with me and Rainey until you’re stronger, I promise I won’t say a word to stop you when you’re ready to come back here to London. I’ll even help you pack.”
If her stomach hadn’t been in knots at the thought of someone stalking her, trying to hurt her, she would have laughed. “Yeah, right. The second I even bring up the subject of going back to London, I’m going to get grief from the entire family, and you know it.”
Not bothering to deny it, he only grinned. “And your point is?”
“You’re terrible.” She laughed…and gave in. “Okay, I’ll go. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. I will go home as soon as I’m feeling better.”
“We’ll talk about it then.” He chuckled and strode over to the phone to call the airline and book their tickets.
Chapter 1
There was, Priscilla decided, nothing like the scent and colors and sounds of harvest. Sitting on the tailgate of the old Ford pickup that was used for work on the ranch, she watched, entranced, as Buck and her soon-to-be brothers-in-law, John and Hunter, cut and baled the alfalfa that had been planted last spring in the lower pastures. A gentle breeze caught the dust from the fields and sent it swirling, and in the long shadows of the late afternoon, the air turned golden.
Wishing she’d brought her camera, Priscilla couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such peace. She’d been at the Broken Arrow for nearly two months, and in all that time, there hadn’t, thankfully, been a single attack against the ranch. She’d had time to heal…and to grow to appreciate the land of her American ancestors. And without quite knowing how it had happened, Colorado had become home.
She couldn’t, however, stay any longer. She had responsibilities in London she needed to get back to, and she was stunned to realize how much she hated the idea of leaving. How her brother and sisters would laugh when she told them that, she thought ruefully. She’d been the last to leave England, the lone holdout in the family who’d been so positive that she wanted no part of living in the wilds of Colorado. And now just the thought of leaving made her want to cry.
“You’re awfully quiet,” her sister Elizabeth said as the men called it a day and started across the field toward where the women of the family waited under the lone tree at the edge of the field. “Are you all right? Maybe you should have stayed at the house.”
“I’m fine.”
“The doctor said you were supposed to take it easy,” Katherine reminded her. The closest sister to her in age, Katherine looked just like their mother when she frowned at her in concern.
“It’s been two months since my surgery,” she replied. “I’m completely healed. Really.”
Studying her shrewdly, her sister-in-law, Rainey, said, “The removal of a spleen’s not something you get over in a week or two. And you have been helping out a lot around the ranch lately. Maybe you need to pace yourself more.”
Joining them in time to hear his wife’s comments, Buck shot Priscilla a sharp look. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Everyone thinks that just because I’m not talking much, I’m not feeling well. I’m fine. I don’t need to take it easy. I just have a lot on my mind.”
“You want to go back to London, don’t you?” Elizabeth guessed, studying her with shrewd blue eyes. “You’re homesick.”
“She is not!” Katherine retorted before she could answer. “She’s still having nightmares about the accident, and she should be. It wasn’t an accident! Someone tried to kill her. If I were her, I’d never step foot in England again.”
“She has to finish her internship,” Rainey reminded Katherine. Turning to Priscilla, she frowned. “I thought you were going to wait until the probation period on the ranch was up, then go back to London after Christmas.”
“That was my plan,” she admitted. “But I have some things that need to be taken care of now. I can’t just keep putting them off.”
“No,” Buck said firmly.
“I’ve been paying for a flat that I haven’t used for two months,” she argued. “And I don’t want to be in London anymore. I need to give up the lease, but I can’t just abandon my things. I have to go back, make arrangements for movers—”
“You can do that from here,” Katherine pointed out.
“True,” she agreed, “but I also need to talk to Jean Pierre…”
“So call him,” Elizabeth said.
“No, I need to meet with him face-to-face. I’d like to finish my internship from here, if possible, and I’ll have a better chance of talking him into that if I can sit down with him and explain my plan.”
“You’re safer here,” Buck insisted. “Wait until after the ranch is ours and we’ll all go back for awhile. I want to show Rainey where we grew up—”
“That’s another month,” she argued. “And I still don’t think my accident was anything but that—an accident!”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do! No one’s attacked the ranch since I’ve been here. If someone really tried to get to me in London, why wouldn’t they do it here?”
“Because we’re all here together,” he replied. “No one’s going to take on all four of us together. It’s when we’re apart that we’re vulnerable.”
“I’m not going back to stay,” she pointed out. “I’ll just be in London for two or three days at the most. And no one but the family even has to know I’m gone. I’ll fly out of Denver in the dead of night. No one will see me leave, and if you casually mention around town that we’ve all been staying home because a stomach bug has been working its way through the family, no one will suspect a thing.”
When he just looked at her, unconvinced, she played her trump card. “You told me in London that if I would come home with you to the ranch to recover, you wouldn’t offer a word of protest when I was ready to go back to London. I expect you to keep that promise.”
She had him, and they both knew it, but this wasn’t about winning points off each other. Over the course of the last eleven months, when they’d inherited the ranch and then found themselves under attack by the faceless enemies who were after the Broken Arrow, the four of them had grown closer than ever. She needed him and her sisters to support her decision and trust her judgment.
“I’ll be careful,” she told Buck. “I promise.”
He hesitated, his eyes searching hers, only to sigh in defeat. “Okay. But you call in every hour once you land just so we’ll know you’re safe. Understood?”
“Every hour,” she promised, hugging him. “I’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Less than thirty-six hours later, she walked into her flat in London and found it just as she’d left it. Automatically locking the door behind her, she made a quick tour and wasn’t surprised to find the plants on her kitchen windowsill dead and the food in her refrigerator molded and sour. She hadn’t exactly had time to clean things out before she’d left. The second she’d been released from the hospital, Buck had given her ten minutes to throw some clothes and personal items into a suitcase before he’d rushed her to the airport and the States.
She’d thought about her flat often over the course of the last two months and wondered how she would feel when she returned. Would she be scared? Nervous? Happy to finally be home? Frowning, she realized, she didn’t feel any of those things. Instead, the stale air of her flat seemed to close in on her, and she found herself longing for the fresh, clean air of the ranch. Outside, London traffic rushed by, but all she wanted to hear was the low call of the cattle grazing in the pasture and the whisper of the wind through the pines.
Loneliness tugged at her heart, and she almost reached for her phone to call home. But she’d spoken to Buck the second she’d landed. He’d be worried if she called him now—less than thirty minutes later. She had things to do, anyway. She had to pack, notify the landlord that she was moving out, find a place to store her things. But first she had to call a mover.
Settling at the kitchen table with the phone book, she started making calls. She soon discovered, however, that finding the right person for the job—as well as a storage unit she could afford—took longer than she’d expected. Three precious hours later, she finally found a mover who could pick up her furniture by the end of the week. Her lease wasn’t up until the following Monday, but she’d hoped to find someone who could come while she was still there to oversee the move. Obviously, that wasn’t going to be possible. She’d promised the family that she’d be back in three days, and she was standing by her word. She’d just have to give the key to the landlord and trust him to supervise things. Resigned, she started packing.
Later, she never knew where the rest of the afternoon went. One minute, the sun was high in the sky, and the next time she looked up, the day had given way to the darkening shadows of twilight. Surprised, she glanced around and discovered the flat was littered with dozens of boxes that were packed full of books, dishes, the contents of her kitchen cupboards, not to mention the bathroom and the front closet. And she hadn’t even touched her bedroom yet!
Exhausted, she plopped down on the couch. How was she going to get everything packed and still have time to meet with Jean Pierre before she left to fly home? She didn’t want to put her internship—and her degree in fashion design—on hold, but what choice did she have? She wasn’t safe in London.
Suddenly, without warning, there was a sharp knock at the door. Startled, she jumped, her heart slamming against her ribs. She wasn’t expecting anyone. No one even knew she was there except her family. So who was knocking on her door?
Her blood turning to ice at the possibilities, she hugged herself and sat as quiet as a mouse right where she was. Whoever was on the other side of the door didn’t know she was there. When she didn’t answer, he would assume no one was home and leave.
“Miss Wyatt? Are you in there? Open up. This is the police. I need to speak to you. I have some bad news about your family in the United States.”
“Oh, God!” Panic suddenly squeezing her throat, she jumped up and ran to the door. She reached for the dead bolt, only to hesitate, horrified by a sudden thought. What if this was a trick? What if whoever was after the ranch somehow found out she’d gone back to London? Could they have found out where she was already?
“Who did you say you were?” she asked, wincing at the quiver of fear she clearly heard in her voice. “I need some identification.”
“I’m Officer Hastings,” he replied and held up his badge to the peephole in the door.
Priscilla took one look at it and sighed in relief. Lightning quick, she flipped the dead bolt and jerked open the door. “Come in—”
She didn’t have time to say another word, let alone scream, as two masked men with guns rushed through the door and grabbed her. Gasping, she tried to scream…only to have duct tape slapped over her mouth. Frantic, she clawed at the tape, but they were ready for her. In the next instant, her wrists were taped together, then her ankles. Trussed up like a turkey, there was nothing she could do as they picked her up and laid her on the floor. Before she could even begin to guess their intentions, they rolled her up in the living room rug.
Just that easily, fear took on a new name. Terror.
When Donovan Jones caught his secretary on the phone with her boyfriend for the fifth time in two days, he was in no mood to cut her any slack. He’d already warned her numerous times that she was there to work, not visit with her lover, and she’d completely ignored him. She was the third secretary he’d hired in three weeks…and the third one who seemed to think she could do whatever the hell she wanted. She was wrong.
“You’re fired,” he growled. And leaning across the desk, he pushed the disconnect button on the phone.
Sputtering, she surged up out of her chair in anger. “What the hell?!”
Not the least bit impressed with her indignation, he growled, “Get your purse and get out. Now! I’ll put your paycheck in the mail tomorrow.”
He didn’t give her time to argue but simply grabbed her purse from where she insisted on leaving it on top of a file cabinet and strode over to the door. Jerking it open, he waited. She was so furious, steam was practically coming out of her ears. Cursing, she jerked her purse out of his hand and stormed out, slamming the door so hard that she nearly knocked it off its hinges.
“Good riddance,” he muttered. “I don’t need you anyway. I can find my own files.”
But when he stalked over to the filing cabinet, the file he needed for a meeting he had scheduled in fifteen minutes wasn’t where it should have been. Swearing, he went through the entire drawer to make sure it hadn’t been misfiled, but it was nowhere to be found.
Which meant, he thought grimly as his gaze landed on the secretary’s desk, it had to be somewhere in the mountain of paperwork that completely covered the top of the desk. She’d been there a week, he thought, irritated. What the hell had she been doing? He’d been on a case and had to leave the office in her hands. Apparently, she hadn’t done a damn thing except talk on the phone to her boyfriend.
Next time, he told himself, he was going to avoid the young chicks like the plague and hire a little, old, gray-haired grandmother instead. Someone who would appreciate the job, he decided, and not take advantage of the fact that he was hardly ever in the office. Someone who—
When the outer office door suddenly opened behind him, he stiffened. If the little witch had come back to plead for her job, she could forget it, he thought. She was history. Pivoting sharply, ready to tell her just that, he found himself confronting a stranger, instead.
Frowning—had he forgotten an appointment?—he lifted a dark brow. “May I help you?”
“I’m looking for Donovan Jones.”
“You found him,” he retorted. “But I’m in a hell of a rush. I’ve got an appointment across town in fifteen minutes, and I’m going to be late as it is. Leave your name and number,” he said, pushing a steno pad across the desk to him, “and I’ll call you the first chance I get.”
“No,” the man said in the clipped regal way that only the British could do. “I need your help now.”
Donovan wasn’t a man who men often said no to. Straightening, he studied the hard look of determination in his visitor’s eyes and the set of his jaw and recognized desperation when he saw it. “What’s your story?” he demanded.
“I’m Buck Wyatt,” he said. “I need you to find my sister.”
Surprised, Donovan blinked. “I’m a bounty hunter, Mr. Wyatt. Is there a bounty out on your sister?”
“No. She’s been kidnapped.”
“How do you know that? Have you received a ransom demand?”
His mouth compressed in a flat line. “No. There won’t be any ransom note. I already know what the kidnappers want.”
Donovan knew he shouldn’t have asked. He hadn’t been lying about his meeting. He was going to be late, and it was important, dammit! But there was something in the fury in Buck Wyatt’s eyes, something in the cold, controlled outrage in his voice that Donovan knew he wasn’t going to be able to walk away from.
Resigned—and more than a little annoyed with his own curiosity—he motioned for Wyatt to pull up a chair. “You’ve got ten minutes,” he said. “Make it good, because after that I am going to my meeting.”
He didn’t have to tell him twice. Too restless to take a seat, Buck Wyatt stood, instead…and paced. “My three sisters and I inherited a ranch in Colorado eleven months ago from an American cousin we didn’t know we had,” he said stiffly. “One of the stipulations of her will was that one of us had to be at the ranch at all times for a period of one year. There was no restriction on how many single nights we could be absent from the ranch, but if no member of the family is present for two nights running, the ranch goes to an unnamed heir.”
Donovan lifted a brow at that. “How many people know about that little stipulation?”
“I would imagine just about everyone in the state of Colorado.”
Donovan whistled softly. “And no one’s run you off yet? You and your sisters must be damn tough.”
A muscle clenched in Buck’s jaw. “So far, we’ve managed to weather one attack after another…as long as they were against the ranch. Now they’ve gone after Priscilla a continent away.”
“And you’re sure your sister’s kidnapping is related to the ranch? When’s the year up?”
“Next month.”
Donovan frowned. That changed things. “Are you even sure that she’s really been kidnapped? What’s her history? Is she the type to stage this kind of thing?”
“God, no! She’s the baby of the family and damn stubborn sometimes about getting her way,” he admitted honestly, “which is why she’s in London to begin with. When she insisted on coming back to close up her apartment, we talked about her accident and how she could be walking right back into the same kind of danger as before, but she intended to be back in Colorado before anyone even knew she was gone. Obviously, that didn’t happen.”
“Whoa, back up,” Donovan said sharply. “What accident?”
Buck quickly told him about the hit-and-run driver who’d nearly killed her. “She spent the last two months at the ranch, recuperating, and during that time, there wasn’t a single attack against any of us because we were all together. Then, less than six hours after she arrives in London, someone grabs her.”
“But how do you know that for sure? Maybe she just decided to go visit some friends before she left.”
“She knew how important it was to get in and out as quickly as possible,” Buck argued. “According to the London police, her landlord found the door to her flat standing wide-open and she was nowhere to be found. She appeared to be packing when someone apparently talked their way into her apartment. There were signs of a struggle and she left her purse behind.”
Studying him through narrowed eyes, Donovan should have told him he couldn’t help him. It would have been the wise thing to do. He was up to his ears in cases and couldn’t even find the time to hire a decent secretary. He didn’t have room on his calendar for another case.
And even if he had, he silently acknowledged, Priscilla Wyatt was not the kind of woman he wanted to go looking for. He’d read between the lines of what her brother had said about her, and she was obviously headstrong and spoiled and determined to have her way. Kidnapping her back from her kidnappers sounded like a headache waiting to happen.
But she was a woman in trouble. And unless he totally missed the mark, Buck was right. Her kidnapper was, no doubt, planning to use her as the pawn that drew her family away from the ranch. He would hurt her if he had to. Time was running out on the Wyatts’s trial period, and whoever thought they were the unnamed heir had to be getting desperate. Priscilla Wyatt was in a hell of a mess…and in more danger than her family probably realized.
Silently swearing, Donovan pulled out his cell phone. Surprised, Buck Wyatt frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Canceling my appointment,” he retorted. “I’ll take the case.”
Over the course of the next hour, Donovan asked Buck every question he could think of about Priscilla, her flat, where she might go if she was able to escape her kidnappers, how gutsy she was, her strengths and weaknesses. She’d been kidnapped. Would she fight or dissolve in tears? Panic or use her head? If he was going to save her, he had to know how she would react under duress.
“She’ll use her head,” Buck assured him. “Initially, she’ll be scared out of her mind, but once she gets her fear under control, she’ll start looking for a way to escape. She’s smart,” he added, “and damn creative. She won’t take this lying down.”
“That’ll work in her favor as long as she doesn’t let her kidnapper know what’s going on in her head,” Donovan replied. “The more helpless she acts, the better chance she’ll have of taking the bastard by surprise. Has she ever taken any karate or self-defense classes?”
“No, not that I—”
His cell phone rang then, surprising them both. Scowling at the number on the face of the phone, he looked up sharply at Donovan. “It’s a private number.”
“It could be the kidnapper,” Donovan warned. “Don’t let him know you’re in London. And listen to background noises that might give you an indication of where he may be.”
His expression grave, Buck nodded, then flipped open his phone. “Hello?”
“You have forty-eight hours to leave the ranch for good…or your sister dies.”
“Who is this—”
Just that quickly, the line went dead. “He hung up,” Buck said in disgust, and repeated word for word what the caller had said. “There weren’t any background noises, and the bastard was definitely disguising his voice.”
“Give me your cell phone number,” Donovan told him. “I’ve got a friend who might be able to trace the caller’s location when he made the call. I’ll get back with you as soon as I know something.”
“I’m going with you.”
“The hell you are.”
“Priscilla is my sister, dammit! I have a right—”
“Then find yourself another bounty hunter,” he said curtly. “I work alone. If you really want to help your sister, go back to Colorado and help protect the rest of the family and your ranch. I’ll take care of Priscilla.”
“If she’s still alive.”
“Oh, she’s alive,” Donovan assured him. “She’s got forty-eight hours. After that, all bets are off.”
Chapter 2
The police had already gone through Priscilla’s flat with a fine-tooth comb and released the place back to her landlord. Thanks to a call from Buck Wyatt, Donovan was able to get a spare key. He took one step inside and knew that at least two people were involved in her kidnapping.
And they hadn’t taken her without a struggle.
Staring at the broken lamp and an overturned dining room chair, Donovan clenched his teeth on the sudden angry curse that rose to his tongue. Bastards. He didn’t know Priscilla, didn’t know any more about her than her brother had told him, but he knew all he needed to know. She might be spoiled and headstrong, but she was still an innocent woman who’d done nothing wrong except inherit a ranch from a distant relative she’d never met. She had, no doubt, been terrified when she realized that she’d opened her door to an enemy, but the lady had put up a fight. And it was that gumption that just might save her life.
The clock was ticking, and every instinct Donovan had urged him to hurry. Forty-eight hours would pass in the blink of an eye, and he was wasting precious time. But he knew from past cases that success depended on doing his homework. If he was going to find Priscilla Wyatt, he had to first know how her kidnappers had gotten her out of the apartment without someone noticing.
Walking over to the window that overlooked the street below, he frowned. The neighborhood that Priscilla lived in was in an older section of London that was a mix of well-known restaurants, popular pubs and shops at street level, with old-fashioned flats above. Considering that, Donovan doubted that the streets emptied before midnight. Which meant, he thought grimly, that Priscilla’s kidnappers hadn’t walked out of her flat with her like they were going out to dinner. So how the hell had they managed to get her out of her flat without anyone seeing them?
He turned to study the living room again, and only just then noticed what looked like a line of fine powder on the floor. Puzzled, he squatted down to examine it and realized that the powder was actually shattered glass from the lamp. And the reason it was in a neat line was because when the lamp broke, it had, apparently, shattered at the edge of a rug. A rug which was, he thought in growing fury, no longer there.
They’d rolled her up in a damn rug and carried her out like a dead body. He didn’t care how gutsy she was; she must have been scared out of her mind.
Livid, he promised himself he was going to make the bastards pay for this. But first he had to find them.
His lean face carved in stern lines, he exited the apartment and made sure he locked the dead bolt. Then he went to work.
The neighborhood was quaint and full of atmosphere. The kind of place women loved, Donovan acknowledged…and a bitch to search. With the restaurants and pubs open late, people came and went at all hours of the day and night. God knew how many of them lived in the area or witnessed Priscilla’s kidnapping without even knowing it.
Muttering a curse, he headed for the pub across the street. The bar had wide, paned windows that overlooked the street and Priscilla’s flat. Surely a waitress or bartender or one of the regulars must have seen something.
But when he went inside, he was met with nothing but one negative response after another. Frustrated, he moved to the restaurant next door, then the bookstore on the corner and every other business up and down both sides of the street for three blocks. And the answer was always the same. No one had seen two men or anyone else moving a rug.
Walking out of the pizzeria two doors down from Priscilla’s flat, he swore softly as he realized that darkness had fallen while he was canvassing the street and he still didn’t have any leads to go on. And time was running out for Priscilla Wyatt.
It wasn’t often that he was at his wit’s end, and it infuriated him. He was better than this! His competitors claimed he had the nose of a bloodhound. So who the hell had taken Priscilla Wyatt?
Scowling, he stared down the street and watched the crowded sidewalks begin to empty as friends met friends for drinks or dinner and disappeared inside. The twilight was deeper now, the darkness nearly complete, and he realized that this was just about the time Priscilla must have been kidnapped. No wonder no one had noticed her kidnapping. The only streetlights were on the distant corners, and the people who were on the street were hurrying to get where they were going, not paying attention to anything but their own business.
Caught up in his musings, it was several long moments before he noticed the woman coming toward him, walking her dog. He started to look past her, only to glance at her sharply. Had she come by at the same time yesterday? People generally walked their dogs at the same time every day, didn’t they? Could she have seen Priscilla’s kidnappers in the dark and not even realized it? If she walked by without anyone else seeing her, the police wouldn’t have questioned her because they had no idea she existed. Even now, twenty-four hours later, the woman probably didn’t know that a kidnapping had taken place.
Striding toward her, he eyed her dog warily. A Doberman. Great, he thought irritably. He was usually good with dogs, but Dobermans could be damn protective. The last one he’d tangled with had taken a bite out of his hide. He wasn’t going there again.
“Nice dog,” he told the woman as he drew closer. “Does he bite?”
“When I tell him to,” she shot back. Stopping in her tracks, she tightened her grip on the leash. Just that easily, the dog was on guard. His golden brown eyes focused unblinkingly on Donovan, he growled low in his throat, daring him to take so much as one more step toward him and his mistress.
“Look, I’m not a threat to you,” he told the woman. “I just need to ask you some questions. A woman was kidnapped here last night, and her family has hired me to find her.”
“I didn’t hear anything about a kidnapping,” she replied, eyeing him suspiciously.
“The police didn’t learn about it until late last night, and it didn’t make the news until this morning,” he explained.
Studying him, she frowned. “I was running late this morning,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t heard the news all day.”
“Did you, by any chance, happen to walk this way last night?”
She didn’t commit one way or the other. Instead, she just lifted a brow and said, “And if I did?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he assured her. “I just need to know if you saw two men moving a rug out of the flat across the street.”
She didn’t say a word, but even in the darkness, he saw surprise flicker in her eyes. “So you did see something,” he said in satisfaction. “How many men were there? Two? Three? Did you get a look at them? What were they driving?” When she hesitated, he knew she didn’t want to get involved. It was too late for that. “There was a woman rolled up in that rug,” he said. “If the circumstances had been different, it could have been you. Are you really going to stand there and say nothing?”
For a moment, he thought she actually wasn’t going to answer him. Then tears misted her eyes. “I didn’t realize,” she whispered, horrified. “It just looked like a rolled up rug—”
“She’s still alive,” he told her quietly. “But only for forty-eight hours.”
“There were two men, both just a little taller than me. I didn’t get a good look at their faces, but they were both very thin, almost gaunt.”
“And their hair?”
“One was bald. And the other had a military cut. I think it was blonde.”
Donovan frowned. Military? That was a twist he hadn’t expected. “What were they driving?”
“A black van,” she answered promptly. “I didn’t get the plate number, but they didn’t go very far. Just over to Reynolds Street.”
Already trying to figure out how he was going to find two skinny, short bastards in a wrecked van, it was several seconds before her words registered. “What?” he said sharply. “How do you know that?”
“Because I saw the same van pulling out of an alley at Reynolds and Third when Precious and I were on our way home. Or at least I thought it was the same van,” she added. “The streetlight on the corner was out, so I couldn’t see very well.”
“Reynolds and Third? You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “C’mon. I’ll show you. Though I don’t know what good it will do. The van pulled out of the alley and disappeared down the street.”
“That’s okay,” he replied. “It’s a place to start. Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, they reached Reynolds and Third. “The van came out of that alley,” she said quietly, nodding toward the dark, narrow alley that disappeared between two buildings halfway down the street.
Studying the shadowy entrance to the alley, Donovan frowned. For the moment, he wasn’t concerned with where the van had gone. Instead, he found it curious that Priscilla Wyatt’s kidnappers had been in the alley to begin with. They hadn’t, in all likelihood, driven into the alley by chance. So what the devil had they gone in there for?
His mind jumping with several interesting possibilities, he said, ‘I’ll check it out. Thanks for your help.”
Tightening her grip on the Doberman’s leash, his companion grimaced. “I didn’t do much. I hope it helps.”
Wishing him good-night, she and Precious continued their walk, but as Donovan strolled down the street to the entrance to the alley and peered in, his attention was on the upstairs apartments that overlooked the dark, narrow cavern. There was only one window lit, and a ragged curtain was doing its best to block the faint glimmer he saw in the darkness. What was up there?
Later, Donovan lost track of how long he stood deep in the shadows, watching, waiting for some sign that Priscilla Wyatt was in the apartment halfway down the alley. He knew there was a good possibility that he was wasting precious time while the kidnappers spirited Priscilla farther and farther from London. With every passing second, the trail that led to her whereabouts could be growing colder. But he didn’t think so.
Something didn’t smell right, and it wasn’t just the rotting garbage in the trash can ten steps away from where he stood in the alley. It was the setup, he decided. The whole damn setup stank.
Lost in his musings, he almost didn’t see the movement of the ragged curtain shrouding the lit window. Then he saw a man peer out into the darkness…a man with a military haircut.
Bingo.
An hour later, Donovan parked in the dark alley and soundlessly shut the driver’s door of the small van he’d rented. Upstairs, there was no sign of the man he’d seen earlier, but the light was still on. If luck was with him—and he was feeling damn lucky!—Priscilla Wyatt was upstairs, waiting to be rescued, and her rescuers didn’t have a clue their bird was about to fly the coop with a little help from him. There was nothing he liked better than surprises, he thought with a grin.
Checking to make sure his pistol was loaded, he quietly slipped into the building stairwell after picking the lock to the steel door that opened onto the alley. Standing in the darkness, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the deep shadows that engulfed him. From upstairs, the muffled sound of voices drifted down to him, but none of them were feminine. Donovan was far too good a tracker to be sidelined by that. Her kidnappers might be feeling pretty cocky right now, but unless they were complete novices, they weren’t going to take any chances with her. Twenty-four hours after her kidnapping, they would still be watching her like a hawk so she couldn’t give them away.
The question now, he thought pensively as he started up the stairs in the dark, was…how the hell was he going to get her out of the flat without getting them both killed? Her captors would be armed and had the advantage of knowing the layout of the flat. He didn’t even know if Priscilla was bound, if he would have to carry her, if she would get hysterical when the bullets started flying. And there was no way to know until he burst through the door.
He was taking a hell of a risk, he silently acknowledged…and grinned wickedly at the thought. He’d always been a daredevil, which was what made him damn good at his job. If Priscilla Wyatt’s kidnappers thought they had pulled a fast one on the authorities and the Wyatts, they were in for a rude awakening. They were toast. They just didn’t know it yet.
Priscilla had never been so terrified in her life. The two thugs who had kidnapped her had removed the duct tape from her wrists and ankles, but they had other ways of keeping her captive. They’d made it clear that if she even moved toward the door or made so much as a sound, they would have one of her sisters or her brother killed.
And they could do it, she thought. They were ruthless—and in touch with someone in the States who was furious that her kidnapping hadn’t drawn the rest of the family away from the ranch to London, as planned. Her captors informed her that the orders they were given were crystal clear—her siblings would be burying her if they didn’t leave the ranch within forty-eight hours.
Her blood turning cold at the thought, she knew she had to get out of there. But her captors were in constant touch with their boss in the States. If she tried to escape, one of her siblings could be dead within the hour. How could she live with that on her conscience?
Suddenly furious, she decided right then and there that she wasn’t going to take their abuse anymore. She was in charge of her own destiny, and she wasn’t going to sit around on her hands and wait to die or let the bastards kill her family. She had to trust that Buck and her two future brothers-in-law, John and Hunter, would do everything they could to protect her sisters. In the meantime, she had to take care of herself.
Which meant, she decided resolutely, that she would kill her captors if she had to in order to keep herself and her family safe. The question was…how was she going to put them out of commission when they watched her like a hawk?
Lost in her musings, she didn’t notice her captors whispering among themselves until one of them asked, “Are you hungry?”
It was a simple question, but she only eyed them suspiciously. Of course she was hungry! She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, when one of the men had left and returned a short while later with some pastries and a small bag of groceries. She’d been warned then that the pastries would be the only meal of the day. Leaving the flat was too risky, so the groceries they’d bought would be saved for tomorrow. So why were they asking her now if she was hungry? What kind of game were they playing? If they thought they were going to surprise her into saying something so they would have a reason to kill Katherine or Elizabeth or Buck, they were wasting their time. She wasn’t saying a word.
“Who cares if she’s hungry or not,” the other kidnapper snapped. “My stomach feels like my throat’s been cut, and I’m not waiting until tomorrow to eat.” Sneering at Priscilla, he said, “Cook us something to eat, bitch. And don’t even think about trying anything fishy. We’ve already got orders to kill you tomorrow. We’d just as soon do it now as then, so don’t push your luck.”
Nodding silently, she kept her eyes down as she headed for the kitchen so he wouldn’t see the anger she knew was reflected there. If she acted meek and afraid, maybe they would drop their guard and relax enough for her to put something in their food. Surely there had to be some kind of pesticide or drain cleaner under the sink. Something…
Her eyes suddenly landed on the prescription bottle that one of her captors had set on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. She’d seen him take a couple of pills right after breakfast. What was he taking? Was it something that she could drug both men with?
Fighting the urge to hurry to the sink to check out the prescription, she reminded herself that her every move was being watched. So she headed for the refrigerator, instead, for the groceries that Baldy had deposited there, bag and all, that morning after he’d gone shopping.
Her heart pounding, she set the groceries on the kitchen counter and cast a quick glance at the prescription bottle that was less than three feet away. She only saw two words before she turned her attention back to the food, but it was enough. Blood pressure.
Elated, she almost laughed out loud. Yes! If she gave them enough, it would lower their blood pressure and knock them out, wouldn’t it? She could mix it with…roast beef?! Swallowing a groan, she blinked back tears. What was she supposed to do with canned roast beef and potatoes? At least there was tea, too. She could make it extra strong, then lace it liberally with the medication. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one she had. First, however, she had to get her hands on the medication without anyone noticing.
The opportunity came much quicker than she’d anticipated. She’d just found a saucepan and a can opener when what sounded like a shot exploded on the dark street down below.
“What the hell!” her bald captor swore and ran to the bedroom to check the view from there.
“What is it?” the other man yelled to his partner as he took up a position at the living room window. “Was that a shot? I can’t see anything for the fog.”
Taking advantage of the distraction, Priscilla grabbed the prescription bottle, popped the lid and sent up a silent prayer of thanks when she saw the bottle was nearly full. Hurriedly pouring pills into her hand, she pocketed them, capped the bottle and returned it to the windowsill in four seconds flat.
“I think a car backfired,” Baldy said in disgust. “It must have been amplified by the fog.”
Afraid to look over her shoulder to see if either one of the men had seen her, she tried to act as casual as possible when she found a can opener and opened the roast beef; but it wasn’t easy. Her heart was slamming against her ribs, her fingers were trembling and she was sure they only had to look into her eyes to know that she was up to something. She needn’t have worried, however. Her captors were too concerned with what was going on downstairs on the street to pay any attention to her.
Then, with no warning, there was a knock at the door.
Priscilla whirled to face her captor by the living room window, only to find him glaring at her like she was somehow responsible for the knock at the door. Pale, she took a step back. His expression furious, he made a sharp silencing motion, then strode over to the door.
The visitor knocked again, this time louder. “Mr. Smith? Are you in there?”
“You’ve got the wrong address,” Baldy growled through the closed door. “Go away.”
If the man on the other side of the door heard him, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he knocked loudly on the door again and shouted, “Mr. Smith? I’ve got a package for you. The postman delivered it to my place by mistake this afternoon.”
“I told you you’ve got the wrong place! Get the hell away from my door or—”
He never had a chance to finish the threat. A split second later, the door was kicked open and he found himself confronting a tall man with a ski mask pulled down over his face. Before Baldy could even think to yell for his partner for help, he was shocked with a stun gun and went down.
Donovan stepped over the man and took in the rest of the flat in a single, all-encompassing glance. Priscilla was in the kitchen and was pale as a ghost as her eyes met his. He didn’t have time to reassure her—not when the second kidnapper was already charging toward him, reaching for his gun. Donovan had two seconds, at the most. Rushing him before he could pull his gun completely free, Donovan hit him with the stun gun and sent him to the floor.
There was, after that, no time to waste. Lightning quick, he handcuffed first one man, then the other. Then he slapped duct tape over their mouths and tied their feet together. That would hold them long enough for him to get Priscilla out of London, where he could keep her safe until he was able to hand her over to her brother.
But when he turned to grab her and hustle her out of the apartment, she was gone and the door to the flat was standing wide open.
“Son of a bitch!”
Running after her, he practically threw himself down the stairs, taking them two at a time in the darkness and nearly breaking his neck in the process. He couldn’t lose her, dammit! If she disappeared into the streets of London at this time of night, he’d have a devil of a time picking up her trail again.
The second he took the last step, he hit the steel door that opened onto the alley and burst outside, only to stop in his tracks as fog slapped him right in the face. “What the—”
The fog had slipped in like a thief in the night while he was waiting in the stairwell, sliding down alleys and streets and into darkened doorways, and with no effort whatsoever, he could imagine himself in Victorian London, when Jack the Ripper walked the streets. Visibility was down to fifty feet, and if Priscilla Wyatt was out there somewhere, there was no sign of her.
When he got his hands on her, he was going to give her a piece of his mind. But first he had to find her, and his task had just become nearly impossible. Where the hell could she have gone? The van he’d rented blocked one end of the alley, but squeezing past it would have slowed her down. Making a snap decision, he turned and ran in the opposite direction.
Sounds carried in the fog, and as he reached the cross street at the end of the alley, a car screeched to a stop half a block away. He turned sharply…just in time to see someone dart right in front of an oncoming car that suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere. In the watery light of the vehicle’s headlights, he caught just a glimpse of a woman running like the hounds of hell were after her. Almost immediately, she was swallowed by the fog again, but not before he recognized Priscilla Wyatt.
“Dammit, where is she going?” he said as he tore off his mask and took off after her.
Darting across the street, he just barely missed being flattened by a taxi. The taxi driver swore at him and laid on his horn, but he didn’t spare the man a glance. Instead, his eyes were locked on the spot where Priscilla had disappeared into the thickening fog. There was a streetlight on the corner and then nothing but darkness for at least two blocks. He only had seconds to catch her or he’d be chasing shadows in the dark.
Suddenly, the fog shifted eerily in front of him like a living thing. For the span of a heartbeat, Priscilla was just three steps in front of him. That was all he needed to grab her.
The hand that came out of the darkness to snare her wrist stopped Priscilla’s heart in mid beat. Terrified, she screamed even as she turned on her kidnapper like a woman possessed. “Let go of me, you bastard! My husband will kill you!”
“I’m not going to hurt you!” her attacker growled. “Shut up before you get us both killed!”
Shut up? He was kidnapping her and he expected her to shut up?! The hell she would! Digging in her heels, moaning as his fingers threatened to crush the bones in her wrist as he jerked her toward him, she screamed, “Help! Somebody help me! I’m being kidnapped!”
Chapter 3
Across the street, a woman who was just getting out of a taxi stepped onto the curb, only to freeze at Priscilla’s cry. Frowning in their direction, she tried to see them in the shifting fog. “Who’s there?” she called. “Are you all right?”
“Help me! I’m being kidnapped!”
“No, she’s not,” Donovan called out quickly as he hauled her close and clamped his hand over her mouth. “She’s a thief!”
Outraged, she bit him…and regained the freedom of speech when he swore and jerked his hand free. “I am not! Let go of me, you bastard!”
“Not on your life, sweetheart,” he said, fighting to control her. Damn, she was strong! And quick. She kicked him before he even guessed her intentions, then somehow managed to evade his efforts to haul her against him and stifle her cries. “She stole a pair of diamond earrings from Thompson’s Jewelry Store,” Donovan told the woman. “I’m an undercover security officer for the store. I saw her take the earrings and stroll out without batting an eye. And they were five hundred pounds!”
He came up with the story on the spot, and it was a damn good one. Thompson’s Jewelry Store was two blocks over, not far from Priscilla’s flat, and the woman Priscilla was appealing to for help obviously knew that. She bought the story lock, stock and barrel. “I’ve got no use for thieves,” she retorted coldly. “Haul her ass off to jail. She deserves it.”
Outraged, Priscilla tried to protest, but all she could manage was a muffled cry as Donovan started to drag her away into the fog…and darkness. “C’mon,” he said roughly, “you’re going to show me where you ditched the earrings, then you’re going to have a nice long chat with the police.”
Helpless, overpowered, but still struggling, Priscilla couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d escaped her kidnappers, only to fall into the hands of another one? No! Somebody had to help her. There were still people out on the street, cars passing by. Surely someone would step forward…
But no one did. The fog swallowed them whole, and just that quickly, she was alone with a stranger who suddenly dragged her into an alley…the same one she’d run down when she’d escaped from her kidnappers. Was he taking her back? Or did he have more sinister plans for her? The alley was pitch black, deserted. And he could do anything he wanted to her…hurt her…rape her…kill her.
Panic pooled in her mouth at the thought. No! She couldn’t just go meekly along with him. If he thought he would overpower her without a fight, he was in for a rude awakening. She’d gouge his eyes out—
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he growled in a low whisper that didn’t carry past her ears. “Your brother sent me.”
If he hadn’t had his hand clamped over her mouth, she would have laughed. Her brother?! Yeah, right. Did he really think she was stupid enough to buy that story? The only way he could know she had a brother was if he was hired by the same man who sent the first set of kidnappers after her. The same man, she thought, blanching, who’d ordered her to be killed if her family didn’t leave the ranch in forty-eight hours.
Clawing at the hand that pinched her mouth to keep her quiet, she knew her new kidnapper wasn’t going to wait forty-eight hours. He was going to kill her now and get it over with.
Terrified, she kicked and clawed and silently called him every filthy name she could think of. For a moment, she thought she was making progress when the heel of her hand connected with his nose. He grunted…and locked his fingers around her wrists like a set of handcuffs. In the next instant, he jerked her hands behind her, and before she could do anything but gasp, she was chest to chest with him and totally helpless.
Caught in the trap of his steely blue gaze, she froze…and heard the roar of her blood in her ears. Suddenly, she was aware of just how strong he was, how close, how hard. Her mouth went dry, and she should have been scared out of her mind. Instead, she’d never been so furious in her life. How dare he manhandle her! “Let go of me, you slimy piece of—”
In the darkness, his eyes narrowed, but he only snapped, “Watch your mouth. I’m trying to help you, but if you insist on doing this the hard way, you’ll be the one who suffers.” And with no more warning than that, he jerked open the driver’s door of the van she’d seen in the alley earlier and pushed her inside.
He released her for just a second so he could climb in after her, but that was all the time she needed. Sobbing, she threw herself across the van and jerked open the passenger door.
Run. Run. RUN! a voice screamed in her ear, but her feet never had a chance to hit the pavement. An arm snaked around her waist, snaring her, and she was hauled, kick and screaming, back into the van and tossed into her seat like a sack of potatoes.
“Bastard! Jerk! You’re not going to get away with this! Do you hear me? My brother will hunt you down like the miserable scumbag you are and make you wish you’d never laid eyes on me. Let go of me!”
“No problem,” he snarled, and hit the door lock, making it impossible for her to escape. She was still cussing at him when he jerked out his phone and punched in a number. When the caller came on the line, he held the phone out to her. “It’s your brother,” he told her coldly.
Stunned, she grabbed the phone. “Buck?”
“Are you all right?”
Tears welled in her eyes at the sound of her brother’s familiar voice. “I thought I was being kidnapped again.”
“You were,” he said gruffly. “It was the only way I could think of to get you back. Did they hurt you?”
They both knew he was asking if she’d been raped. “No,” she choked. “They were more interested in killing me in forty-eight hours.”
“I knew the minute I met Donovan, he’d find you. He’s a bounty hunter,” he added. “You’re in good hands, Sis.”
“I’m sorry I insisted on coming back,” she said tearfully. “How did anyone know I was here?”
“I don’t know—I’m still trying to figure that out. For now, though, you’re safe,” he assured her. “That’s what’s important. Now we just have to keep you that way. Let me talk to Donovan again.”
“You mean the Neanderthal?”
He chuckled. “Be nice. He’s your new best friend.”
“Yeah, right,” she sniffed, and handed the phone to the man who was grinning at her smugly. “Buck wants to talk to you.”
Taking the phone, he said, “Yes, sir?”
“I owe you.”
“No, you don’t,” Donovan said easily. “I was just doing my job. So what’s next? Where are you? I’ll drop her off wherever you’re staying.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Buck said, “but plans have changed. I need you to keep her with you for the next month.”
Donovan nearly dropped the phone. “You must be joking.”
“It’s the only way to keep her safe.”
“The hell it is!” he retorted. “She’ll be a hell of a lot safer in Colorado. She can be back with her family at the ranch by this time tomorrow.”
“She’ll never get that far,” Buck said soberly. “They know she couldn’t have gone far. Whoever arranged this is probably already turning the city upside down looking for her. She’s in danger until the ranch is ours. She needs you. We need you.”
Donovan didn’t doubt for a second that he could protect her, but was he prepared to spend a month with her? The lady was a handful—and she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. If he was dumb enough to do this, he knew she’d make his life a living hell.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m not a babysitter. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“You’ll be doing a hell of a lot more than babysitting,” Buck told him. “I don’t have time to go into everything right now—my flight back to the States has just been called—but the bastards who kidnapped her are bound to be watching the airports, hoping to get their hands on her a second time. And if they do, they’ll kill her this time. That’s how badly they want the ranch.”
“Which is why you need to get her out of the country as soon as possible,” Donovan pointed out.
“I realize that, but it’s not that easy, dammit. I’ve dealt with this for nearly a year, and it’s like trying to catch a ghost. We don’t know what the enemy looks like. It could be anyone, including the baggage clerk at the airport, which means Priscilla’s not safe anywhere…except with you.” He exhaled. “You’re damn resourceful—you found her when no one else could. You’ll be able to keep her safe until you can find a way to get her out of England. I don’t know anyone else who can do that.”
At a loss, Donovan hesitated. Did Buck know what he was asking of him? “I don’t know, Buck…”
“I’ll double your fee.”
Donovan liked to think he wasn’t a fool, especially when it came to money. A job was a job. And he could handle little Miss Priss. “All right,” he said. “But you can tell her. She’s not going to be happy about it.”
“I can’t,” he said. “We’re about to take off—we’ve just been told to turn off all electronics. Tell Priscilla I love her and I’ll see her in a month. Keep her safe. I’m counting on you.”
“Wait a minute. What if—” That was as far as he got before the line went dead. Swearing, Donovan snapped the phone shut and tossed it into a cupholder. “Great! This is just great!”
Beside him, Priscilla eyed him suspiciously. “What is? What am I not going to be happy about? What did Buck say?”
“He’s pretty sure the airports are being watched,” he said bluntly, “so leaving the country, at least for now, is out of the question. He thinks you’ll be safer with me, anyway.”
“What?! Oh, no. I’m going home.”
“Not right now you’re not,” he informed her. “He just hired me to watch over you for the next month.”
“The hell he did!”
A grin propped up one side of his mouth. So the fireworks were about to begin. “He doubled my fee, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “Like it or not, it looks like you’re stuck with me.”
“For a month? You’re out of your mind. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a child.”
Appreciation glinted in his eyes. “Oh, I noticed, all right.”
She gave him a withering look. “Stuff it, Mr.—” Trying to remember his name, she frowned. “What the devil is your name? Dirk? Darryl?”
“Donovan Jones,” he said with a grin. “But you can call me Mr. Jones.”
“In your dreams,” she snorted. “Keep this up and I’ll call you—”
“Wonderful…studly…Superman—”
“Irritating…obnoxious—”
“George.”
Surprised, she blinked. “George?”
“Clooney.”
Caught off guard, she laughed. “You must be joking.”
For a moment, she thought she’d insulted him. Something that looked like hurt flashed in his steely blue eyes. Then she saw his lips twitch, and alarm bells went off in her head. He was, she realized, far more dangerous than she’d first suspected. He was one of those men who was far too sure of himself, who knew how to set a woman’s heart pounding with just a smile and a twinkle in his eyes. And she had to spend a month with him? No way!
“I’m calling Buck,” she told him, snatching up his phone. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
“You’d have a better argument if I hadn’t just rescued you from those two thugs,” he pointed out dryly, “but go ahead and call him. It’s not going to do you any good. He’s already on a plane back to the States.”
She didn’t believe him. Lightning quick, she punched in Buck’s cell phone, but it never rang. Instead, it went straight to voice mail. Swearing, she hung up. “How much is he paying you?” she demanded. “Whatever it is, I’ll double it.”
He grinned. “Really? What is it with you people? First your brother, now you. You do realize, don’t you, that you’re quadrupling my original fee without even knowing what it is?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “I’ll come up with the money someway. Are you accepting my offer or not?”
“It depends on what you want me to do,” he said simply.
“Take me to Heathrow.”
“Forget it!” he said quickly. “That’s out of the question.”
“Then take me to Bristol or Liverpool.”
“Nope. It’s too dangerous.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The hell I don’t. Buck told me all about the problems your family is having in Colorado. Someone wants the ranch, sweetheart, and it sounds like they’re willing to commit murder to get it. In case you missed who their intended victim is, it’s you.”
A cold shiver skated down her spine. Hugging herself, she stared out the van’s passenger window as they raced across London in the fog at a frightening speed. “Oh, no,” she said huskily. “I knew. I was hoping they were just trying to scare me.”
“Did it work?”
Her throat dry, she nodded. “That’s why I ran when you broke in. I knew it was the only chance I was going to get.”
“And you still want me to take you to the airport? Are you crazy, girl? Buck was right—they’ll be watching the airports. You’d be running right into a trap.”
“Not if we got there before they did,” she pointed out. “They don’t know where we’re going—”
He laughed without humor. “Of course they know where we’re going! It’s the only way back to the States, sweetheart, unless you’re going to take a slow boat to China.”
“But we left them back at the flat. We’ve got a head start.”
He couldn’t believe she was serious. “Yes, we do, but how do you know the clowns I tied up back at the flat are the only ones after you? The bastard who sent them after you appears to have a hell of a long reach. Do you really think he wouldn’t have a backup in place in case you were able to escape?”
Horrified, Priscilla felt her heart drop into her stomach. “You mean we’re being followed? Oh, God! Where—”
He checked the rearview mirror for the tenth time in two minutes, but the fog that surrounded them was all encompassing. “Relax,” he told her. “Nothing short of a bloodhound’s following us in this fog. By the time it lifts, we’ll have left London far behind. Not that anyone needs to follow us,” he added. “All your kidnappers have to do is watch the airports…and the Paris tunnel. Those are the only two ways to get off this island, which is why we’re avoiding them.”
“Then where are we going?”
“I’m still working on that. Buck caught me off guard,” he admitted. “But don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
After everything she’d been through, trust was no longer something she gave easily. Eyeing him warily in the dim glow of the dash lights, she lifted a delicately arched brow. “Really? I’m supposed to trust you, just like that? How do I know you’re not working with my kidnappers and taking me back to them?”
“You talked to Buck,” he reminded her. “He told you himself that he hired me.”
“But how did he get your name? You’re a bounty hunter. Why didn’t he hire a private investigator instead? Who recommended you to him?”
He shrugged. “That’s something you’ll have to ask him.”
“I can’t. He’s on a plane for the next ten hours.”
Not the least disturbed, he said, “That’s your problem, Miss Priss. Some things you just have to take on faith.”
“No, I don’t,” she said sharply. “Not when my life is on the line.
“Your life won’t be on the line as long as you do what I say,” he reminded her. “So from now on, you don’t ask questions, you don’t hesitate, you don’t argue. Understood?”
Lifting her chin, she gave him a cool look. “Not in a million years. I’m not one of the low-life criminals you make your living catching, so save your little speech for someone who needs a keeper. Believe it or not, I have a brain under all this strawberry-blond hair, and I don’t need you to tell me I’m in danger. I was the one who was kidnapped, remember?”
“And the one who opened the door to your kidnapper,” he reminded her mockingly. “So tell me again about the brain under all that blond hair.”
“Go to hell.”
He only grinned. “I’ve already been there and back, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Fuming, she was tempted to smack him, but she wasn’t that kind of woman. “He told me he was a cop,” she said stiffly. “He had a badge—”
“I can’t believe you fell for that,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “That’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. I’ve used it myself.”
“Trust me—I won’t make that mistake again. I felt like a fool.”
“Good. There’s hope for you yet. Don’t trust anyone—I don’t care what badge they’re flashing or what story they tell you. As far as you’re concerned, everyone you see and talk to is after you.”
She lifted a delicately arched brow at him. “Including you?”
He grinned. “I don’t go after the chicks in my custody. Afterward…” He shrugged. “Give me a call, sweetheart. We’ll talk about it.”
“In your dreams,” she sniffed.
When she lifted her pert little nose in the air, Donovan laughed. So he wasn’t good enough for her, huh? They’d see about that. The day would come when he would make the lady purr just to prove he could. But not now. Not when they were practically shackled and stuck with each other for the next month. For now, he had to come up with a plan to keep her safe.
His phone rang then, shattering the silence that had fallen between then. Looking at the caller ID, he swore. Tim Elliot. He was a snitch with a taste for scotch who knew more about what was going on in the back alleys of London than just about anyone Donovan knew. And he didn’t call unless he had a lead he knew Donovan was willing to pay for.
His timing couldn’t have been worse, but Donovan knew he couldn’t afford to ignore the call. If Tim was in need of a drink, he’d go to the perp himself and give Donovan up without a thought for a bottle of scotch.
Snatching up the phone, he barked, “What?”
“I just had a drink with Leo Guardino.”
Donovan clenched his teeth. Leo Guardino was one of the biggest prizes out there—wanted for murder and drug smuggling, he had a 20,000 quid price on his head. Rumors had floated around for the last year that he was dead, but Donovan knew better. There’d been times when he’d been so close to the bastard that he could smell him, but he’d always managed to disappear like smoke in the wind. How the devil had Tim found him?
“Where?”
“The Pirate’s Cove.”
Donovan knew the pub well. It was a dive on a dark, ancient street in the heart of London where no decent person would step foot. The patrons there dealt in drugs and weapons and every kind of contraband known to man, and few, if any of them, remembered what it was like to have a soul. Even the cops didn’t go there if they could avoid it, and Donovan couldn’t blame them. It was a sinister place.
“You didn’t give me up, did you, Tim? You wouldn’t do that to a friend, would you?”
“No. No! No way, man! You know me better than that. I work with you all the time. You can trust me.”
Donovan could practically feel him sweating through the phone. Trust him? Not in a million years. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said coolly. “I would hate like hell to think you would betray me after everything I’ve been through with you. You know, like that incident at The Royal Arms, when you—”
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Linda Turner
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Born-and-bred Londoner Priscilla Wyatt was shocked at how much she loved the Colorado ranch mysteriously bequeathed to her family.But enemies were determined to drive the Wyatts away–and innocent Priscilla was their next pawn. Donovan Jones made it his mission to find his man–or woman–at any cost, but retrieving Priscilla from her abductors was just the first hurdle. Now he had to keep his feisty charge safe.Even the solitary Donovan couldn′t help but be captivated by his one-of-a-kind client as they evaded their foes. Before long, the bounty hunter was in danger of stealing her heart…and losing his own!