cracked opened the door again and saw that it was just the one lawman, one, and while he looked capable and in charge, that meant they were still outnumbered and outgunned.
As Josh had done, this guy dropped his gaze to her belly before he glanced in at the other women. Jaycee wasn’t sure exactly what they wanted her to do, but she figured they had a minute at most before the guard would check to see why she’d reopened the door.
But she was wrong.
Not even a minute.
Just a couple of seconds.
The front door flew open, and the guard bolted inside. Not the one who’d come in earlier. This guy had a serious mean streak and had even slapped Blanca when she hadn’t in his opinion moved fast enough.
“Hands in the air!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, and he shifted the gun not toward her but to the stall where Josh was hiding.
Jaycee braced herself for the guard to move closer so he could do a thorough search.
But that didn’t happen.
The man pulled the trigger, and the shot blasted through the barn.
Chapter Three
The shot was deafening, and it roared through Josh’s entire body. The flashbacks started again, but he shoved them aside. No time for that now.
“Get down!” he shouted to Jaycee, but she was already dropping to the floor. From the sound of it, so were the other two women.
He had no idea if they were out of harm’s way because the harm just kept coming. The man fired another shot into the barn.
And then another.
Grayson threw open the back door just as Josh bellied out of the stall. Both of them fired at the shooter. Josh had no idea who’d taken down the man, but he fell, his rifle clattering to the ground.
“Let’s move,” Josh ordered the women.
Jaycee sprang up darn fast for someone who was pregnant, and she hurried to the other side of the barn to latch on to the two women. Josh stayed put, guarding the now-open front door where he was certain that it wouldn’t be long before the other guards responded and came in firing.
“Mason and Dade are covering the house,” Grayson let him know.
Mason and Dade were Grayson’s brothers. Both were experienced deputies, but covering the house would be next to impossible with the gunmen inside. Unless there was some way to get the captives out so the guards couldn’t use them as human shields.
Jaycee made it to the door, and Josh looked out, checking for those guards. By now they’d heard the shots, so why weren’t they running to the barn in order for Mason and Dade to pick them off?
“Go ahead,” Grayson insisted. “Get them out of here. I’ll cover you.”
Josh nodded, reached into his ankle holster to retrieve his backup weapon so he could give it to Jaycee. But it wasn’t there, of course. He hadn’t carried a backup since he’d left the FBI.
Big mistake.
But then, he’d never thought that he would run into something like this in the middle of nowhere.
With Grayson behind them and Josh in the lead, he maneuvered them out of the barn and to the corner away from the house. He glanced around first to make sure they weren’t about to be ambushed. No one in sight. However, that didn’t mean someone wasn’t there, hiding.
“Don’t use any of their vehicles,” Jaycee warned. “I’ve seen the guards rig them with explosives.”
Great. The guards had no doubt done that so the women couldn’t use them to escape, but that was exactly what Josh had had in mind. One of those vehicles would have been the fastest way to get them out of there. Now they had to hoof it a good quarter to a half mile away.
And each step could be a fatal one.
He refused to think about the pregnancy now. Refused to think about anything that didn’t involve survival.
“More backup’s on the way,” Grayson added.
They’d need it. Josh would have liked to have stayed with the women until they arrived because it was a risk to be outside like this. But staying put was just as much of a hazard as moving.
With his gaze firing all around, Josh led them to the front of the barn. No guards. But he spotted Mason and Dade on the hill where Grayson and he had been earlier. It was a good vantage point if anyone came out of the house, but no one appeared to be doing that.
The other two women were crying now, their breaths making hiccupping sounds with the sobs. Unlike Jaycee. She wasn’t crying, and if Josh hadn’t noticed her bleached-out color and jerky movements, he would have thought this was routine for her. But she also had one of her hands on her stomach.
Protecting her unborn child.
No, this wasn’t routine.
She was scared spitless. And so was Josh—scared that he wouldn’t get them safely out of there. He’d already faced death and made peace with it and his maker, but there’d be no peace if any of the women and their babies were hurt.
He glanced around at the position of the cars. There was a road and a heavily treed area on the backside of the hill.
“Have you ever seen guards in the surrounding woods?” Josh asked Jaycee.
“No. But sometimes replacement guards come in from the pasture on all-terrain vehicles. It’s not time for the shift change, and I don’t know where the replacement guards stay when they aren’t here.”
Later, that would need to be investigated, but they were a heck of a long way from the later point. For now, he just watched and made sure one of those ATVs didn’t come barreling up on them from behind.
“Stay close and let’s move,” Josh ordered.
They ran the ten yards to the first vehicle so they could use it for cover.
But not for long.
If the kidnappers had indeed rigged it with explosives, then they might have a remote detonator. Josh hurried them to the next vehicle, a truck. And then the third, the only one left that would give them any protection if the gunmen in the house started firing.
“Move fast and don’t look back,” Josh told them, and he did exactly that.
Grayson would keep watch behind them. Dade and Mason would do the same to the right side. Josh would need to cover anything else, and that included those woods ahead.
Lots of places for gunmen to hide in there.
One of the women stumbled, but Jaycee latched on to her and kept her moving without missing a step.
He hated that he had to put them through this—a blasted footrace. This kind of stress couldn’t be good for the
