Rocky Mountain Showdown. Victoria Austin W.
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his life.
Seth looked back out the window. The men were holding their position. For now. They were not firing their weapons. For now.
Laura was still clutching her daughter, who seemed to have snuggled up on Laura’s chest. Seth just stared. It was rude and this was definitely not the time, but he couldn’t help himself. The child looked...well, little. Seth tried to remember what his nieces had looked like before he left his hometown. The girl in Laura’s arms seemed about the same age Beth had been when he last saw her. That would make her around three years old. Beth wasn’t three anymore. And he had missed it.
Laura murmured something else to the girl, though Seth couldn’t make it out. The tone was comforting and reassuring. She looked at him, indicating the girl with her chin. “This is my daughter. Abigail. Abby.”
Seth moved from the window, trying not to be offended by the way Laura tightened her hold on Abby and shifted away from him as he approached. He walked past Laura and Abby to see what the situation was in the bedrooms. There was a window in each one, but no door. Looking out the bedroom window, he tried to make his voice low and calm. But he wanted to keep Laura informed.
Plus, he needed her. The public, including rangers, had not been welcome up here for decades. Old Man Grant excelled at keeping people off his land. Laura knew this mountain, and she knew what resources they had available inside the cabin. They were going to need her expertise to get out of this.
“I don’t see anyone else—just the two men out front. How many men did this Mahoney guy have with him?”
Laura’s dark eyes were serious and she kept one hand moving in a steady circle on Abby’s back. “Eight maybe? I was more focused on him and the gun he had pointed at Abby.”
“Why are they trying to kill you?” He looked at Abby, not wanting to frighten her. But he had to know, and the situation was beyond urgent. “Why did they leave you unconscious on the floor only to try to shoot you later?”
Laura’s voice was a sound of anguish. “I gave them what they wanted. I gave them the key. Then he said he wanted our deaths to look like an accident. He hit me. I don’t know how this happened.”
What key was she talking about? Every instinct Seth had was screaming at him to quit talking and start acting. But he’d seen more than one mission go sideways because of bad information. Getting the details correct was often the difference between life and death. “I need you to back up. Start at the beginning.”
“I found a safe-deposit key last week. This Mahoney came up the mountain today. With a lot of armed men. He said he wouldn’t hurt us if we gave him the key.”
“But he lied.”
Laura actually rolled her eyes at him. “Clearly.” Her voice was dry. Sarcastic.
“What’s in the safe-deposit box?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“How do you not know?” This was not the time for Laura to keep details to herself.
“I didn’t even know the box existed. My husband, Josh, was killed eighteen months ago. I just boxed all his stuff up when we came back here. Last week was the first time I opened them. That’s when I found it.”
Seth had heard that Old Man Grant’s daughter had moved back home. She’d stayed even after Grant had died.
Seth quickly walked to the front windows and tried to look out without being seen. The two men were still there, not moving or talking. Assault teams were very good at waiting. He made his way to the windows in the back of the cabin. Nothing but typical Colorado mountain terrain. Two men out front in plain sight. Nothing visible anywhere else. Seth’s clenched stomach tightened even further. Those men had a plan and Seth knew he wasn’t going to like it.
“Laura, we still need a plan. If we can’t call for assistance, then we have to figure out some other way of getting it. Some other way to communicate that we are in trouble. We need help. Backup. More people with guns on our side.”
Laura held her daughter closer to her body and shrugged her shoulders in an almost desperate manner. “I don’t have any way to call for help. Believe me, if I did, I would have used it when the shooting started.”
Seth blew out an angry breath. He hated this feeling. This trapped and useless sinkhole that he somehow found himself back in. His voice was harsh, but getting shot by the two men out front would definitely be harsher. “Well, think. You said you gave them what they wanted? So they just left? Then why are they back?”
Seth sounded accusatory. Too bad. It needed to be asked and being nice was going to get them killed if they didn’t figure out how to get out of this situation.
Laura’s voice was almost stiff. “They knew I had the key to the safe-deposit box. They said if I gave it to them, they would leave. I did.” Her voice became even more brittle. “They lied. They said they had to kill us but it needed to look like an accident.”
The fire. It had to be the fire. Seth had been completely surprised at the fire when he came across it while out patrolling. He’d assumed it was started by careless campers. Now he knew.
Laura wasn’t done. “They said the smoke from the fire would kill me and Abby long before the actual flames. I panicked. They hit me, and the next thing I knew was you were there waking me up.”
Seth exhaled deeply. He had asked and now he knew. The men must have been watching from somewhere safe to make sure the fire actually consumed the cabin. The cabin with an unconscious woman and a three-year-old little girl inside.
Seth looked out the window again. The men were still waiting. The more the men outside stayed still, the more Seth felt like he needed to be doing something. Standing and waiting for someone else to act did not sit well with him. He wouldn’t—no he couldn’t—play the victim and wait to see what his fate would be.
He wondered if something had gone wrong with the fire. While it was certainly healthy when he’d come across it, it wasn’t moving terribly fast. It had run horizontally, blocking the road back down. And it would eventually reach the cabin and probably burn it down. But it wasn’t going to do so in the next few hours.
This Mahoney must have started the fire far away from the cabin so it wouldn’t look deliberate. But he’d miscalculated. And now it seemed that Mahoney would settle for Laura and Abby dying even if it didn’t look accidental.
Seth really wanted to know more about this Mahoney and how Laura found herself in this situation. But not now—right now, Seth wanted a satellite phone and an extraction team. He wasn’t going to get either. He needed to be smart and deliberate. And quick. He doubted the men would wait much longer.
Laura was just looking at him. Her hand was still making that steady circle on Abby’s back. Her other arm must be hurting from supporting all of Abby’s weight, but Laura wasn’t showing any signs of stopping. The little girl was resting her head on her mother’s shoulder, breathing into Laura’s neck. One tiny fist clutched a stuffed yellow duck. She looked warm and sleepy. Safe. Seth glanced at the back door. The clear path into the forest. They could make a run for it, but it wouldn’t work.
Laura spoke, her eyes also on the back door. “We won’t make it, will we?” It wasn’t really a question. Seth wanted to puff out his chest, flex his muscles and tell her that he would keep her and her daughter safe. That he could pick them both up and run them out that back door. Run them to safety. But Laura deserved honesty more than false assurances.
“No. If there are two men out front, then someone has to be watching the back. Even if they aren’t, the men out front would hear us. Chase us. And we—”
Laura finished for him. “Have Abby. We’re trapped.”
Trapped. They