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“You shouldn’t have come here at all, old man,” Junior whined. The young hotshot poked the jagged edge of the bottle at the old man who must be Eddington. Mustache Man pulled back his jacket and reached for his gun. “Accusing me of stuff you know nothin’ about.”
As Junior lunged forward, Jason grabbed him from behind, lifting him off his feet and trapping his arms at his side, shaking him until his grip popped open and he dropped the bottle. Jason kicked it aside and set Junior down. The kid reeked of beer and smoke, like he’d just come in from camping. Jason shoved him back and pointed a warning finger at him. “You need to sober up and calm down.”
Junior smacked his hand away. “Get out of my face, Jase.”
“Who are you supposed to be?” Mustache Man sneered from behind him. “The cavalry? We got this covered.”
Jason turned on him next, unused to looking men straight in the eye, but not fazed by the man’s size, either. He nodded to the gun in his hand. “You need to put that away.”
“And he needs to back off,” Mustache Man warned.
“These boys aren’t armed.” No telling how many rifles and shotguns Junior and his buddies had stowed in their trucks outside. But Jason figured Mustache Man already knew that. This guy was a pro, former military if not a trained bodyguard for the old man and Blondie. Like Jason, he probably even knew about the revolver Kitty kept behind the bar for protection and to break up fights like this melee. But that didn’t mean Jason would allow him an unfair advantage over a group of young men who were too plastered to think straight. “I said put it away.”
“You ain’t fightin’ any fights for me, Jase.” Jason heard Junior squirming against the restraining grip Marty and one of the twins had on him. “I ain’t afraid of you, Eddington, or your peacekeepers you brought with ya.”
“Dante.” The silver-haired man in the pricey suit put a hand on Mustache Man’s shoulder. “Put the gun away.” But his eyes were fixed at a point beyond Jason’s shoulder. “I’ve been watching you for two years now, Mr. Cordes, and I’ve been content to keep my distance. As far as I’m concerned, justice was served the day of your father’s execution. But if you’ve done anything to my daughter, I will make it my business.”
Junior’s lips buzzed with a beer-fueled curse. “Justice, my ass.” He elbowed Marty in the gut, freeing himself. “You here to take my land, too? The way you took my daddy’s?” He charged the older man. “You’ll see how we do justice around these parts.”
Dante was definitely Eddington’s protector. The big man moved forward to block Junior. With barely a twitch of his mustache, he twisted Junior’s arm behind his back, pushing him into the dark-stained pinewood bar and smashing his face down onto the polished bar top.
One of the twins lunged forward to help his buddy. But he pulled up short, raising his hands in surrender as Mustache Man pulled his gun and aimed it squarely at the young man’s face.
“Back off,” Mustache Man warned.
Enough. Jason pulled the young man out of harm’s reach and stepped forward to take his place. The gun was now pointed at his chest, but it didn’t waver as Mustache Man’s dark eyes narrowed.
“Take a deep breath, mister,” Jason stated in a calm voice. The other suit had pulled his gun, too. An MK-23. He hadn’t seen a laser-sighted pistol since his last deployment. Didn’t know why any man would need hardware like that stateside. These two meant business.
Mustache Man pushed a little harder on Junior’s skull to keep him pinned to the bar. The damn gun didn’t move. “You are outmatched, my friend. There are two of us, and you’re not armed. I am Dante Pellegrino, owner of Pellegrino Security.”
“Good for you.” Jason wasn’t impressed by the posturing.
“Yo, Jase.” Marty Flynn materialized at Jason’s side, dusting off his cap and plunking it backward on his head. “This is Jason Hunt, Mr. Eddington. The guy I told you about. Served with him in the Corps.”
“Dante.” Like a superior officer, the bulldog who answered to Mr. Eddington spoke to his man in a tone that said he expected him to listen. “Let Cordes go. I need to talk to this man. Put your gun away. Brandon, you, too.”
With a deliberate chomp on the gum or chew he held in his cheek, Pellegrino released Junior and holstered his weapon. His sidekick did the same. When Junior sprang toward Pellegrino, Jason tripped him and shoved him out of harm’s way, warning him to walk away from the fight before Jason chose a different side.
“You, too, Kitty.” Jason’s tone was a little more indulgent with the barkeep, since she reminded him of the mother he hadn’t spoken to in two years.
“Jason Hunt, if you didn’t look so much like your daddy...” With some noisy grousing about people telling her what to do in her own place, she circled back behind the bar and put the revolver away in its drawer. “Cathy, get the broom and dustpan out of the back room.” The young waitress eagerly hurried off to do her boss’s bidding. “Wash your face while you’re back there, too.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Only after the weapons were all accounted for did Jason take his eyes off Pellegrino. He glanced over to where Junior was downing a surviving shot of some dark liquor and grinning like an idiot. “Go on home.” He nodded to his cohorts who were already gathering their jackets and hats. “One of you sober enough to drive?”
One of the twins—Orin, he thought—nodded. He’d been the one with the gun shoved in his face. He shrugged into a lined denim jacket. “Yes, sir.”
But Junior had been the son of a fiercely independent militia leader. In addition to inheriting his father’s rebellious attitude toward all things authoritarian, he was a little too drunk to choose keeping his mouth shut and leaving as the wiser course of action. He adjusted his stained and twisted cowboy hat over the crown of his head. “You owe me, Eddington. You owe my family. You don’t know who you’re messin’ with.”
Kitty circled around the bar with a tray and wet rag to clean the messy table. “Please, Junior, just go. Drinks are on the house. Whatever beef you’ve got with these people—”
“You don’t need to do me any favors. I ain’t so broke that I can’t pay my debts.” He tossed a couple of bills onto the table before turning to volley one last shot. “You took my daddy from me, Eddington. You watch out or I’ll take something from you.”
“Damn you, Cordes.” The older man surged forward. “If you’ve harmed my daughter in any way... I’ll give you the money right now if it means getting her—”
“You can’t give him the cash.” Pellegrino moved to intercede, but Jason hooked his arm around Pellegrino’s shoulder to stop him from turning this argument into another fight, especially when Kitty would be caught in the middle of it. Pellegrino sloughed off Jason’s hold and bounced a warning glare from his dark eyes.
Kitty stepped in front of the older man. “I told you, Junior has been here all night, playing cards. He couldn’t have taken your daughter.”
Taken? That word left a very bad taste in Jason’s mouth. What had Marty gotten him into?
“I’m goin’, Kitty. I’m goin’.” With his posse urging him toward the door, Junior put on his jacket. He paused when he brushed past Jason’s shoulder, looking up as though seeing him for the first time. “I could have taken him, you know.” No, he couldn’t. Not with the buzz on that clouded his judgment and coordination. Not against firepower like Pellegrino and his man were carrying. “You talk to your daddy recently? You’re lucky you still can. I heard Nolan’s been to see the doctor a couple of times this last month. You ought to call home sometime, instead of spending all your days building that cabin up in the woods. Or interferin’ with my business.”
A flash of concern that Jason’s father, Nolan Hunt, was facing some kind of health scare he didn’t know about blindsided Jason for a split second. He was equally steamed that Junior had chosen to make his screwed-up life his business, just because his pride was wounded. But Jason quickly shoved both emotions back where they belonged, relaxing the fist at his side. There was a reason Jason was out of the loop on family matters, a reason why he chose the wide-open space of the mountains over life in Jackson, Wyoming, where his parents lived. And no taunt from a drunken kid was going to make him forget that reason.
“Good night, Junior. Stay out of trouble.”
After the door swung shut on Junior and Orin, the older gentleman in the three-piece suit stepped up to shake his hand. “Mr. Hunt. I’m Walter Eddington. Thank you for coming on such short notice. What’ll you drink?”
Kitty scooped up her tray and headed back to the bar. “I’ll get a fresh pot of coffee brewed for you, Jase, and bring you a cup.”
He nodded his thanks and followed Marty and Eddington to join the blond man who’d left the fight to make a call at a large, stained table at the far side of the bar. He hung back when Dante Pellegrino and his sidekick flanked him, refusing to come any closer until they gave him the space he needed. Pellegrino smoothed his thumb and forefinger over the curves of his mustache, sending Jason a very clear message that he was used to calling the shots around his employer. But with Jason not budging, Walter Eddington muttered a choice word and ordered Pellegrino to take a seat. Before obliging his employer, he shifted his gaze to his hireling and nodded toward the bar’s front door. “Metz. Check outside to make sure Cordes and his boys drive away and don’t come back. I don’t want any surprises.”
“Yes, sir.” As the younger man buttoned his suit jacket and jogged toward the door, the ladies’ room door opened in the back and the drama of the evening took a turn into Circus Land.
Two women who looked as out of place in this beer-scented joint as daisies in a patch of weeds came out of the ladies’ room. A twenty-something blonde in a shiny silver dress wheeled out a duffel-shaped overnight bag, while an older, equally dolled-up version of sophisticated beauty murmured something dismissive into the cell phone at her ear. The older woman met Jason’s assessing gaze before ending her call. While Marty pulled out a chair for the young woman, the mature blonde sat next to Eddington at the head of the table. “I’m assuming it’s safe to bring the money back out now that Mr. Cordes and his unpleasant friends are gone?” She squeezed his hand. The proprietary gesture and white gold band of diamonds on her hand told Jason they were husband and wife. “Are you certain they have nothing to do with Samantha?”
“I’m not certain of anything anymore.” Eddington pulled her hand to his lips to kiss it. She reached over to brush a strand of silver hair off his forehead with a lacquered fingernail. The tender gesture drew attention to the older man’s weary expression. His skin had been ruddy with emotion during that standoff with Cordes, but now his face had a gray quality to it, as if the toughness he’d summoned for that confrontation at the bar had faded away. “Mr. Hunt, this is my wife, Joyce. My younger daughter, Taylor. And I don’t believe you met Kyle Grazer. He works for me at the Midas Hotel Group. He was supposed to become my future son-in-law tonight.”
“Supposed to?” Grazer paused in the middle of pulling out a chair beside the younger woman. “Nothing has changed in my plans for Samantha. They’ve only been delayed.” He picked up the heavily packed duffel bag and dropped it into the middle of the table, rattling every glass and earning a glare from the older man. “This isn’t even what they asked for. Screw your principles. If we do what they tell you, we’ll get her back. Otherwise—”
“Kyle.” Joyce Eddington shot him a look that forced the young man into his seat. Clearly, the woman was very protective of her husband. But the outburst triggered a gasp and a sniffle from the young woman. Joyce tutted a reprimand behind her teeth, but put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. Jason suspected that one reason for the trip to the bathroom had been for Taylor Eddington to apply a fresh coat of makeup to mask the puffiness around her red-rimmed eyes. “Taylor, dear, I need you to be stronger than this. Kyle, we need your handkerchief.”
When he hesitated, Marty pulled a blue bandanna from the pocket of his jeans and held it out to the petite blonde, sliding into the empty chair across from her. The young woman slid a quick glance up to Grazer’s glaring expression before softly thanking Marty and dabbing at the moisture on her face. “I’m all right, Mother. I’m just worried about how Samantha is doing. She must be so frightened. And we’re still sitting here, talking about what we should do when she might already be—”
Joyce squeezed her hand, shaking her head to keep her daughter from finishing that sentence.
Before anyone else snapped or glared or cried, Jason reached over the table to unzip the bag. He didn’t have to open it very far to see the bundles of cash packed inside. Ransom. A far cry from a cache of high-tech weaponry and intelligence info, but the bargaining chip was the same—a woman’s life.
His blood scalded like acid in his veins at the vivid memories he couldn’t escape. He wasn’t sure he could do this again. Marty thought they were going to make some easy money. He had no idea what he’d signed them up for. How much it could cost them if they failed.
But once a Marine, always a Marine. Jason was hardwired to be mission-oriented, and a shot at redemption was as tempting as it was unsettling. He closed the bag and pulled out a chair, swinging it around to straddle it beside Walter Eddington. “Who’s been taken?”
“Straight to the point. I like that. I’m a military man myself. Served a stint in the Army back in Vietnam.” For a brief moment, Walter Eddington looked truly old. But with a deep breath that expanded his barrel chest, he pulled out his phone and slid it across the table in front of Jason. “This was texted to me at midnight. My older daughter, Samantha.”
Eddington turned away, unable to watch the screen. He pulled a silver chain from his jacket pocket, running his thumb over every link as if he was counting rosary beads. That wasn’t a good sign. Jason’s jaw tightened as he took the phone and played the video message.
Hands that belonged to unseen men plucked a black hood off a woman’s head. She put her bound wrists up to her face and squinted against the sudden brightness of the lights shining on her, lights that also obscured her captors and their surroundings. Long ash-blond waves tumbled down one side of her neck while straighter strands still caught beneath hairpins floated upward with static electricity. When the gloved hands pulled her arms away from her face, she winced, but didn’t cry out.
An off-camera voice muttered something unintelligible and she blinked open big green eyes. She ran her tongue across her full bottom lip and cleared her throat, as if she was thirsty and struggling to speak. “I can’t even see the camera without my glasses, much less read that scrawl of yours.”
“Give ’em to her,” the muffled voice ordered.
She glanced blindly about until the gloved hands reappeared and thrust a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses onto her face. As Samantha Eddington blinked the world into focus, she whispered a soft “Thank you.”
Jason fought the urge to bolt. This was Kilkut all over again. The hair and eye color might be different, but with those glasses, she looked too much like... The memory of a bullet hole through the shattered lens of a woman’s glasses superimposed itself over Samantha Eddington’s face. He curled his fingers into a fist, fighting off the past and focusing squarely on the present reality of those big green eyes.
“Say it.” The harsh voice wasn’t muffled now.
Samantha nudged her glasses into place and looked into the camera. “Dad? Um, I got myself into some trouble here. Never should have left that stupid party. I’m so sorry. Is Brandon okay? He tried to help. I know you’re thinking about Mom right now. I felt like I needed to get away before I exploded, but I never thought any of this—”
“Cut the sentimental crap and read it.”
“Will you take me to use the outhouse if I do? My bladder’s about to bust.”
Her answer was the distinctive sound of a bullet sliding into the firing chamber of an automatic handgun. “Read it.”
Her green eyes widened and locked on to someone off camera beside her, no doubt holding a gun on her. Samantha Eddington was pale, scared, dressed in some nonsense fancy dress that curved over her generous breasts and left her visibly shivering. Or maybe that was fear. But other than the edge of a bandage peeking out beneath the flowery strap over her left shoulder, at least she didn’t appear to be injured.
She turned her focus to something at the right of the camera and started reading. “We—these men, of course, not me—want five million dollars. Wow. That’s a million dollars apiece. You must think—”
“Stop ad-libbing.” The barrel of the Sig Sauer pointed at Samantha entered the camera shot, inching closer to her caramel-blond hair. “Word for word.”
Although this was hard to watch, Jason was learning more about the situation in the few seconds he watched the nearsighted socialite on camera than he’d learned in the previous few minutes with the rest of her family and employees. At least five men, armed with pricey hardware, were holding her someplace that had an outhouse. So not in town, and not anyplace where a military-grade weapon like that would be noticed. There were snowflakes dotting the black camouflage material on the arm holding that weapon. Snow meant they were at a higher elevation. Samantha Eddington was smart—maybe a little too clever for her own good if her kidnappers caught on to all the clues she was dropping and punished her for it.
With a jerky nod, she lowered her gaze to the script. “If you don’t pay us the money, you’ll lose your daughter...” She hesitated, twisting her lips into a frown, blinking back tears before reading on. “...just like you lost your wife. I’m sorry, Dad. I know how hard this is for you. If anything happens to me, promise me you won’t blame—”
“Read it!” The gun ground against her temple and she froze.
Tilting her head away from the gun, she continued. “We’ll call tomorrow morning at eight with an account number where you will deposit the money. Once the deposit has cleared and we’re out of the country, we’ll call again and give you Samantha’s location. If the money isn’t there by noon, all you will find is her body.” A delicate muscle rippled down her throat as she swallowed again. “Unless...the scavengers find her first.” She shook off the terror that threat must engender and read on. “No cops. No FBI. Don’t send your fancy security force after us. It’s time to pay up. Five million for your daughter’s life.” Her green eyes darted toward the camera. “I tried to fight them, Dad. But my toes are freezing up here. Remember when you tried to teach me how to hunt? I wish I had that gun now—”
“Shut her up.”
The gloved hands whisked the glasses off her face. “Please, don’t. I read what you wrote. You don’t understand what my father’s been through. He won’t pay—”
“He damn well better.”
She was struggling with her captors now. And losing. The men pushed her down to the floor and the camera followed.
“Stop! Please... No!”
“We’ll kill her if you don’t cooperate, Eddington,” an off-screen voice promised.
Another pair of hands pushed her loose hair off her face, exposing her long, creamy neck to the syringe they held. She grimaced when the needle pricked her skin. Her words were already slurring as she looked toward the camera. “I love you, Dad.”
The screen went black before a cue icon beckoned Jason to replay the disturbing images. But he’d already memorized any useful intel he could get off the video. His blood simmered as experiences from the past were already painting a dark outcome for Samantha Eddington’s future. He’d put his fist through the table if he watched it again. If he couldn’t block these emotions, he’d be no use to anybody. And clearly, Samantha desperately needed somebody’s help. His kind of help.
But Jason wasn’t sure he was mentally fit to handle this kind of dark ops rescue mission anymore. He handed the phone back to Samantha’s father. “You got five million dollars?”
“I do.”
“Pay the ransom.” He rose from his chair, giving the best advice he could, even as he tried to save his sanity and make an exit.
“I won’t give in to their threats.” Eddington was sentencing his daughter to death on some kind of principle? The older man stood to block Jason’s path to the door. “You may not know who I am, Captain Hunt, but this isn’t the first time I’ve gone through this. I paid a million dollars to Richard Cordes and his militia for my wife Michelle twenty-two years ago. The kidnappers killed her, anyway.”
Twenty-two years ago, Jason had been a middle-schooler, discovering girls weren’t icky, counting the days until his father returned from his latest deployment and not paying attention to the news. But even now, he had a glimmer of a memory about the dead woman who’d been found in a gully outside Cordes’s militia compound. He glanced over to the table where Richard Jr. had been playing cards. “You came here to accuse Junior of taking your daughter?”
“Yes. He and I were both there the day his father was executed for Michelle’s murder. He said things... I know he blames me for his father’s death. He thinks I cheated his family when I bought the militia’s land to build a ski resort. Of course, they didn’t own it. They were squatters who’d taken over government land. I had a legal deed and I paid a fair price for every acre. But I’m sure that’s what his father preached to him his entire life. I didn’t want to argue with him. I just wanted—”
“Samantha back.” Joyce rose beside her husband as his shoulders sagged. She took over the conversation when Walter couldn’t immediately continue. She dragged the duffel bag across the table. “I told Walter we should come prepared to make a deal. He scraped together over a hundred grand in cash. But Mr. Cordes was insulted by the offer. Of course, he was also drunk and hitting on my daughter.”
“Mother.” Taylor Eddington seemed embarrassed to be any part of this conversation.
Kyle Grazer, however, didn’t seem to have any problem making himself heard. He pounded the table with his fist. “Pay the damn ransom, Walter! All of it. Your stubbornness is going to get her killed.”
The accusation galvanized the older man. His cheeks flushed with anger as he pushed his wife aside and met the younger man nose to nose. “You have no say in this. If you had stayed by Samantha’s side tonight—”
“I’m the one who tried to stop her from leaving.”
Taylor burst into tears and dashed off to the bathroom while Joyce Eddington urged the two men to behave like gentlemen and Pellegrino inserted his shoulder between them and forced Grazer back a step. The younger man tipped his chin up to the mustachioed bodyguard and swore. But, as Jason suspected he would, Grazer backed off.
Pellegrino’s dark eyes never left Grazer’s as he put the microphone on his wrist up to his lips and called his man back inside. “Metz? If the coast is clear, I need you in here to walk Mr. Grazer out to the limo.”
“Save your damn escort,” Grazer whined. “You can afford to lose five million, Walter. Can you afford to lose anyone else you love? If anything happens to Samantha, it’s on your head.” He pulled out his cell phone and stalked toward the bar’s swinging door, exchanging a sour glance with Brandon Metz on the way out as the younger bodyguard came in.
Metz shrugged in confusion, but joined them at the table when Pellegrino waved him over. “Grazer can walk it off.” He reached for the duffel bag of cash. “I need you to secure this.”
“Yes, sir.”
But Eddington was taking charge again. He pulled the duffel bag from Pellegrino’s hands and shoved it into Jason’s chest. “Mr. Flynn says you’re the best. Consider this a down payment. I’ll give you the five million if you bring Samantha home alive.”
Pellegrino immediately intervened, taking the bag back into his custody. “Whoa, Walter. I said my men and I would go after Samantha. This guy will be our guide. You can’t pay some stranger to rescue her.”
“The message said specifically not to send you. No cops, no FBI.”
Mrs. Eddington wasn’t about to be left out of the argument. “I think Kyle is right. We should pay the ransom. Make sure Samantha is safe. Then worry about bringing these men to justice.”
Walter raised his voice. “I want her home before the next phone call. Before it’s too late.”
Jason shot a look across the table, catching the wry apology on Marty Flynn’s face. Damn Marty for getting him involved with this. But he couldn’t walk away. He couldn’t live with another Elaine Burkhart on his conscience.
“I’ll do it.”
His nostrils flared with a deep breath as he summoned the years of training in both the military and search and rescue that lived inside him. Those skills triggered the muscle memory and do-or-die mind-set that turned him into a man he didn’t want to be anymore. But he had to become that man to do this job, to salvage his conscience, to save an heiress with pretty green eyes so he’d be able to sleep at night. “I need to know everything about your daughter’s abduction, and an explanation for those clues she was feeding us on that video.” Jason felt a clock ticking now. Whatever needed to be done would have to happen within the next few hours, before the 8:00 a.m. deadline. “Did you take Samantha hunting? Stay at a cabin with an outhouse?”
“She didn’t have the right shoes on that trip.” With Jason’s urging, Eddington processed the information from the video. “When she was twelve, I took her up past Marion Lake and showed her how to use a gun. She didn’t want to aim at any of the birds we were after, but she’d shoot at a paper target. She liked the mechanics of the weapon. My girl always did like to tinker with gadgets and fix things. Sammie spent more time taking her rifle apart and cleaning it than she did with any actual hunting. I’d rented a cabin for the weekend. She was tucked in and asleep by the fire before I realized she’d worn her tennis shoes instead of the boots I’d got her. Her feet were soaked and her toes like ice before I got her warmed up.”
