Stolen Moments

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Senator James Marshall McCord’s daughter! Seth still couldn’t believe it. As he paddled down the river in the cloud-veiled moonlight and fog, he tried to convince himself that it was some kind of terrible mistake. A case of mistaken identity. A glitch in paperwork. He couldn’t have snatched the wrong woman. His instructions had been too specific.

Exactly. His instructions had been too specific. There was no mistake. He was supposed to abduct the senator’s daughter. The question was why?

Only one person could answer that: Wally.

In Seth’s business, jumping to conclusions was dangerous. So he fought hard not to as the canoe drifted through the fog, the water lapping softly at the side, the air cold and wet with the promise of more snow.

Because right now the conclusion was that he’d been set up. Not just for the kidnapping but for the woman’s murder. And that dishonor was to have been awarded posthumously.

The problem was, he couldn’t believe anyone would go to this kind of trouble to frame him, let alone kill him. He just wasn’t worth it.

But Olivia McCord was, he reminded himself.

And, somehow, he had to keep her safe until he could get her back to her family and straighten this out.

So far he’d been going on gut instinct. He’d known something was wrong at the airstrip, when Wally hadn’t met them and instead had them choppered in to the cabin. At Wally’s cabin, everything had just felt...wrong.

Once the cabin had blown to smithereens—well, his instincts told him that straightening this out wasn’t going to be easy.

Olivia McCord. He studied her dark huddled form at the other end of the canoe as he let the craft drift, the fog rushing around it, the banks blurring by, white with snow, the water deep and dark and cold. The name didn’t suit her. Olivia was too soft a name, too womanly, too feminine sounding. That woman, the one he’d glimpsed in the glare of the car headlights, reminded him too much of Shanna.

But “Levi” fit the spitfire who’d drawn down on him with the loaded pistol. He shook his head, the difference between Shanna and this woman never more clear.

He remembered the day he’d tried to get Shanna to learn to shoot so she could defend herself. She’d finally handed the pistol back to him, more afraid of the gun than anyone who might want to harm her.

Seth blinked. No, Levi was nothing like Shanna when she had a .44 Magnum in her hand. But there was that other side of her. The soft, sexy, definitely female woman in the lavender dress. The one that reminded him of Shanna. The one he had to avoid at all costs.

He swore under his breath. It didn’t matter who Levi reminded him of, what he called her or how he cared to think of her, she was still the Texas senator’s daughter. And Seth Gantry was in a world of hurt.

“Excuse me.”

He blinked at the sound of her voice and realized she was staring at him, the same way he’d been staring at her.

“Sounds like a waterfall,” she pointed out.

He nodded. The roar of rushing water grew louder as the canoe floated through the fog toward it.

“We aren’t going over it, right?” She sounded more annoyed than worried, as if going over a waterfall would be the last straw.

“Don’t worry,” he said, thinking they had a lot more to worry about than simply drowning. “We’ll be getting out pretty soon.”

“Where exactly are we?” She sounded weary, as if some of the fight had gone out of her. He only wished. He had enough to fight without adding her to the list.

“On the Boulder River. In Montana.” He figured he owed her that much.

“Montana?” She made it sound as though he’d taken her to the North Pole. But even Montana was a long way from home for a Texas girl.

“About twenty miles south of Big Timber.” The canoe rounded the bend in the river, the waterfall a thunder ahead of them. He could feel the icy spray of the falls in the air and see it freezing on the rocks along the high bank, frosty-white.

He reached out to grab an eddy with his paddle and the canoe swung into a large washed-out cave in the rocks.

Levi didn’t take any urging; she was out the moment the canoe touched solid ground again. Did she think she was safe now?

“You’re from here, aren’t you.”

It wasn’t a question. Actually, it sounded more like an accusation. And she had to yell it to be heard over the thundering water.

He climbed out beside her, then let the canoe go. He watched until it disappeared into the fog, into the roar of the waterfall. “Yeah, I grew up around here.”

She nodded, studying him with eyes that saw too much. “They’ll know we didn’t go over with the canoe,” she said. She was close enough she didn’t have to yell; too close for comfort. “Now what?”

“Now we steal a vehicle.”

She raised a brow. “Just like that.”

He hoped. Steal a vehicle. Get to a phone. Call Wally. That’s as far as he’d thought it out. But he didn’t want to have to explain his lack of a real plan to this woman, so with an urgency that had nothing to do with whoever might be after them, he led the way out of the rocks, motioning for her to keep quiet. He stayed in the shelter of the pines, sneaking along through the trees and rocks.

The fog thinned as they left the river bottom, but the low-hanging clouds made the air smell wet. It hadn’t started to snow yet, but Seth knew it would. Soon.

At one point, he thought he heard a helicopter again, but he never saw its lights.

The old farmhouse sat back against a wall of tan bluffs and large pines. The house itself was probably still used in the spring, when huge flocks of sheep were herded up into the Absaroka and Beartooth wilderness to graze for the summer. But right now it sat closed up and empty.

Off to its right, a large once-red barn loomed out of the clouds, a black wide hole in the front where the double doors hung open. In the pitch blackness, something glittered dully. A bumper.

The bumper belonged to an ancient faded green International Harvester pickup. From the look of the cow manure and yellowed grass stuck to the tire wells, the truck had been used maybe as recently as early fall.

He watched Levi eye the pickup skeptically and him even more. He tried not to let it hurt his feelings as he popped the hood, hoping the rancher hadn’t taken out the battery for the winter. While looking a little corroded, the battery sat snugly in its corner, held in place with wire. He touched an end of wire between the two terminals and got a spark. They were in business.

Feeling lucky, he slammed the hood and swung around to the passenger side of the pickup to let Levi in. The door groaned as he dragged it open and offered her a seat. She looked cold. He hoped the heater worked.

Going around to the driver’s side, he shrugged out of the backpack, tossed it onto the seat and reached around the steering column, hoping to find the keys in the ignition. His luck wasn’t that good.

He could feel her dubious look as he lay down on his back on the floorboard under the steering column, the door open and his legs hanging out. He was glad for once that he’d picked up a few useful talents in his wayward youth.

As the engine rumbled to life, he shot Levi a glance, hoping to see grudging admiration in her face. Or at least a little respect.

Instead she gave him a look that said If you’re so smart, then why are people trying to kill you? Or maybe he was just thinking that himself.

He slid out of the truck, grousing at what a hard woman she was to impress, but before he could turn to get back in, he felt a boot connect hard with his butt. The unexpected momentum sent him sprawling headfirst onto the barn floor.

Behind him he heard the driver’s side door slam, the motor rev and the clutch pop. As the old truck roared backward out of the barn, he leaped to his feet and ran after it. Blamed woman!

She was frantically searching for first gear when he reached her side of the pickup. Just as he grabbed for the door handle, she slammed down the lock with her elbow. Damn her! She found first gear, popped the clutch again, but her inexperience driving on snow gave him a few seconds. He flung himself over the hood to the passenger side and jumped on the running board as the less-than-great rubber on the tires spun for a moment, then caught. He tried the door, not surprised to find it locked as well.

Clinging to the moving vehicle by the side mirror, he tapped on the glass. Levi glanced over at him. He mouthed the word stop. But she turned back to her driving, getting the pickup rolling along at a pretty good clip as she headed for the main road.

He held onto the mirror, quickly assessing the situation as he saw in the pickup’s headlights the row of low-limbed pine trees coming up on his side of the narrow road. He slammed an elbow against the side window. The window shuddered but didn’t break. He heard a shriek from inside the truck but she made no attempt to slow down. Big surprise.

Just as he’d figured, she drove close enough to the pines lining the driveway that the branches whipped him and did their best to knock him off the running board. This woman was starting to get to him.

Just past the last pine tree, she threw on the brakes. The change in momentum swung him around the mirror and smacked his hip into the fender, but he managed to get his feet back on the running board before she got the truck going again. She was getting better at driving on snow.

Tired of fooling with her, he elbowed the side window once more. This time the glass shattered, showering into the cab, bringing a satisfying oath from inside.

Quickly he reached in and pulled the door handle up. The door swung open and he leaped in, slamming it behind him before she had a chance to do anything more than shift gears.

He didn’t look at her. “Stop the truck.”

Not surprisingly, she didn’t jump to his quiet command. In fact, she didn’t even respond.

“Stop the truck now or so help me, Levi—”

She hit the brakes, almost putting him through the windshield. She flung open her door and jumped out at a run. He slid across the seat, slipping the truck into neutral to keep it from dying as it rolled to a stop, and went after her. In two long strides, he caught her by the collar of her coat.

“Are you crazy?” he demanded.

“I’m the one who should be asking you that,” she snapped, anger flashing in her eyes. Her breath came out frosty-white in the night. “I didn’t kidnap you.”

He let out a sigh. “If you could just let me get us to a phone, I could prove to you that I didn’t kidnap you.”

She mugged a face at him. “Why should I believe anything you tell me? You haven’t told me anything.”

“Excuse me. I’ve been a little busy trying to keep us alive.” She didn’t seem in the least appreciative and he wondered what it would take. “I told you my name.”

“Seth? Seth what?”

“Gantry.”

She raised a brow. “If Seth Gantry is even your name.”

“It is,” he replied indignantly.

They stood glaring at each other, breathing hard, eyeing each other with distrust. He could see doubt in her expression; she didn’t believe they were still in danger. Maybe she didn’t want to believe she’d ever been in danger—other than from him.

He tried to think of something he could say to gain her trust but gave up. He had to face it: she wasn’t going to go along with him anymore. At least not willingly. And he was in no mood to fight her.

“I hate to have to do this,” he said. Pulling the handcuffs from his coat pocket with one hand, he let go of her collar and grasped her right wrist.

She tried to struggle out of his hold. “You wouldn’t,” she said, giving him a haughty look when all else had failed.

“You’d be surprised what I’d do right now,” he muttered. He snapped one of the loops closed on her wrist. “You’re lucky I don’t take you over my knee.” He hauled her around to the passenger side. “Get in the truck.” She had the good sense not to cross him again. The moment she climbed in, he fastened the other loop to the seat frame.

From behind the pickup seat, he dug out a threadbare farm jacket and a chunk of old cardboard. He stuffed it into the broken side window as best he could, closed the door and went around to the driver’s side and slid in, only to find her searching through his backpack with her free left hand.

“The pistol isn’t in there,” he said. He closed the door and snatched the backpack from her before she decided to use the flashlight on him.

Once on the main road, a blacktopped two-lane, he headed north toward Big Timber, glad the low clouds and the darkness provided protective cover from any aircraft. Then the snow began to fall, large white flakes drifting lazily down, and he knew they stood a good chance of not being seen from the air. That still left the possibility of a roadblock though.

But he didn’t think that was likely since he didn’t believe the people after them were FBI or any other law enforcement group. Yet.

He felt better. But then he always felt better on the move—even when he had no idea where he was headed or what waited around the next bend.

“So what now?” Levi asked. “I assume you have a plan.”

He stared at the road. He couldn’t believe she expected him to devise an infallible plan while he was saving their lives, escaping killers and stealing wheels. “No reason to have a plan until you need one.”

“You don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re doing, do you?” she asked incredulously.

He glanced over at her. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here. I’m sorry if you have a problem with that, princess.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, but all the fight seemed to have gone out of her.

He felt a wave of guilt and searched around for something to say. When words failed him, he got the heater going, pleased to hear it hum and even more happy when a little warm air spit from it. Maybe a bit of heat would help her.

He happened to catch his reflection in the rearview mirror. No wonder she’d thought he was the crazy one. Between the dried blood on his temple and the dark stubble of a day’s growth of beard on his chin and the look in his eyes, he appeared crazed. Hell, he was crazed. He always felt that way when someone was trying to kill him.

He turned his attention to the highway. Ahead, the new snow melted the moment it touched the pavement; fog rose like lost spirits in the headlights. Inside the pickup, even with only a coat and cardboard stuffed in the broken window, it was starting to warm up and it felt good.

“Don’t you think you ought to at least tell me what I’m doing here?” Levi asked in a no-nonsense tone.

This was a woman used to giving orders. Too bad he wasn’t in the habit of taking them.

When he didn’t answer immediately, she snapped, “Look, you got me into this. You kidnapped me or whatever you’d like to call it, almost got me killed and you didn’t even know who I was. The very least you owe me is an explanation.”

Whew. Warm this woman up and she was instantly on the fight again. He shook his head, grinning to himself. He liked that she wasn’t down for the count. Through it all, she’d stayed pretty cool. He had to hand it to her, he didn’t think he would have been as calm in the same situation. Hell, he didn’t feel all that calm right now.