Chapter Five

      The world around them was moving so fast, but James couldn’t help feeling as if they were moving as slow as dirt. It didn’t help that not one or two but at least six men were closing in on the house from the backyard alone. It also didn’t help that the only hiding place he could think of was hard as the dickens to get to. At least, when that hiding place was the attic and you were hopped up on adrenaline and trying to get a beautiful woman in a slinky dress up into that attic.

      With no ladder.

      As soon as he pulled the string down and the door opened, James had Suzy by the waist and was shimmying her upward. Under different circumstances, he might have taken a beat to appreciate the way her body felt beneath his hands. Just like Suzy might have, under different circumstances, had some words to say when his hands cupped her backside with vigor, pushing her up until she could pull herself the rest of the way. As it was, they both kept their mouths clamped shut.

      The moment Suzy cleared the opening, she spun around and held out her hand. James was already one step ahead of her. He jumped, thanked his lucky stars that he was a tall man and managed to grab the lip of the opening. Before he could start pulling himself up, a sound he’d been hoping not to hear until he was hidden exploded through the house.

      Someone had kicked the front door off its hinges.

      James pulled all the way up, once again was thankful that one thing he’d kept from his Air Force days was his workout routine. Suzy grabbed his back and then his belt. Then it was his backside she was cupping.

      Another bang sounded as what was left of the back door was opened with force.

      James grabbed on to the closest beam and pulled with all of his might. The moment his feet cleared the opening, Suzy reached through the space and grabbed for the string attached to the door. James twisted around and put his arms around her waist in time to keep her from falling out. After two swipes she got it, and together they closed it as quickly and quietly as they could.

      With absolutely no time to spare.

      No sooner was the door in place than a series of voices could be heard in the room beneath them. James and Suzy didn’t dare move. He didn’t even release his hold around her middle, and she didn’t complain.

      “Check the closet and bathroom,” one man barked.

      “If they’re in here, we got them already,” said another. His drawl was pure syrup. “Nobody can take that much lead.”

      “They can if you’re crap with your aim,” said another man. The voice was a higher pitch than the other two. Younger. “You should have let me do the shooting, and not Ryan and skunk for brains here.”

      “I was fifty-fifty on killing him or keeping him alive,” the first man said. “Either outcome I can work with.”

      “No one’s in here,” the person with the Southern drawl called from the bathroom. “The house is empty.”

      “So, whose truck is that, and where are they?” It was the third man who asked, and something in the back of James’s mind rattled around at his voice. It sounded familiar. If only he could see the three people beneath them.

      “It could have been Sully’s boy who got free earlier,” the first said. “Came out here to warn Hank that we were coming and left on his bike. Might explain how they got away before we got here.”

      James couldn’t help but tense up. He felt Suzy turn her head enough to look at him. A lot of good that did in the dark. While there might have been more than a few Hanks in Alabama, James knew of only one who would be tangled up with his brother. If Hank had been at the house, then there was no doubt Gardner had once been there, too.

      “Well, what do we do now?” the drawler asked. “We got all the boys here and no one to question.”

      The sigh was so loud, James heard it as though the man was in the attic with them.

      “Looks like we’ll just have to hunt down Hank and make him tell us where he hid the boy before anyone else finds out Gardner Todd’s son is out there missing.”

      If James tensed at the mention of Hank’s name, he turned into a statue at this new information.

      Gardner had a son?

      He had a nephew?

      Suddenly everything fell into place. The urgency to meet in person. The secret he’d been trying to tell James.

      Gardner had a son.

      A son who was in trouble now.

      Rage, pure as pollen in the spring, filled James so quickly that he had half a mind to open the attic door and bring down a heap of pain on the men in the bedroom. Had they been the ones who had ordered Lester to kill his brother? Why were they after the boy? What were they planning on doing with him after they found him?

      Every question pushed adrenaline into James’s muscles.

      In the darkness of the attic, all he saw was red.

      And then that red cooled.

      Suzy moved her hand onto the arm he had around her stomach. Her fingers delicately wrapped his forearm. Then, in the smallest of movements, she brushed her thumb across his skin.

      The rage in him quieted, and sense returned to him.

      Jumping out and taking on the unknown number of armed men would only get him killed, and her, too. And then his nephew would still be in danger.

      James squeezed her side to let her know he’d gotten the message.

      “Go get Zach and the boys, and tell them to go ahead and hit the road,” the first man said. He must have been the one in charge at the moment. James committed his voice to memory. “Keep your phones on,” he called as one of the men’s footsteps went back into the living room.

      “What do you want me to do?” the third man asked. Not the guy with the Southern accent. Again, James felt like he could almost place the man’s voice. “I mean, do we even know where Hank is?”

      “No, but Sully does.”

      “I thought he was gone. In the wind.”

      “Doesn’t mean we can’t get him back. The sorry SOB has a lot of problems, but his worst one is how he feels about his people. We find that boy he took a bullet for, and I bet we could smoke him out.”

      “If Sully hasn’t already bought a one-way ticket to the great fire pit in the ground.”

      The first man laughed. It sounded like nails against a chalkboard.

      “He may be soft, but Sully isn’t about to let a bullet do him in.”

      Car doors shut in the distance. An engine turned over.

      “And what if he doesn’t know where Hank is? Heck, what if Hank is already on his way out of the state with the boy?”

      Zach, the boys and the man with