being summoned. It was also obvious that he didn’t have the courage not to come when called.
He looked sullenly at the intruder, then at the man who had called him. “Yeah?”
“Why don’t you play the Good Samaritan and see if you can help this bloke with his car.” The man sounded almost genial. But his voice was flat and unreadable as he added, “Says it’s dead. Go check it out.”
The man probably asks his mother for an ID, Joshua thought.
Ken’s sullen expression deepened. “Why the hell should I?”
“Because I said so,” the man bit off. Then he looked at the man on his right. “Ken here can fix anything, can’t you, Ken?”
Ken’s answer was given under his breath and addressed to his shoes as he shuffled onto the front porch. He turned up the collar of his dark shirt against the rain, as if that would make a difference. “Where is it?” he wanted to know.
Joshua pointed north. “About a mile or so down the road.”
Ken cursed roundly, then told the man in the doorway, “I’m taking the van.”
In response, the first man pulled a set of keys out of his pants pocket.
“Take my car instead,” he instructed in a firm monotone that allowed for no argument.
Ken grudgingly accepted the keys and trudged off to the tan car parked over to the extreme right side of the front yard.
Joshua nodded his thanks at the man in the doorway and quickly followed behind Ken. In a move that would have made a magician proud, he’d already shifted his weapon to the side to avoid having it detected as he walked away.
Fifteen minutes later, Joshua was back at the house. This time, however, he didn’t knock on the front door. He approached the farmhouse from the rear. He’d left the sullen Ken bound, gagged and unconscious in the front seat of the now disabled tan vehicle. Cars didn’t go very far without their distributor caps.
One down and he wasn’t certain how many more to go, but at least there was one less gun to face. He had Ken’s tucked beside his own. The metal chafed his skin.
Above him, a lightning bolt flashed. Thunder exploded loudly not more than thirty seconds later.
Close, he thought.
The world had gone crazy. There was no other explanation for the kind of weather they were having this summer.
The storm had descended and it was interfering royally with his cell phone’s reception. He glanced at the cell’s screen. There was no signal coming in at all. Joshua frowned. His cell phone was temporarily useless and that left him dependent solely on his own ingenuity.
He’d been in worse situations.
His boots sinking into dirt now rendered to mud, Joshua gingerly tried the window. Locked, it didn’t budge. Quickly stripping off his shirt, he wrapped it around his arm, then swung it, breaking the glass with his elbow just as another crack of thunder resounded.
Despite the cover of thunder, the woman in the chair abruptly turned her head in his direction.
Joshua lost no time reaching in and unlocking the window. Raising the sash, he slipped into the dust mote laden room.
Her eyes were green, he noted. And huge as they watched and absorbed his every move.
Huge, but not frightened.
Good. The last thing he wanted was a hysterical woman he couldn’t reason with on his hands. Even if she was gorgeous.
Oh, God, now what? Pru thought, her breath backing up into her lungs. They’re coming out of the woodwork, or at least through the windows.
Her adrenaline kicked into overtime at this latest threat. She’d been working on her ropes now for God only knew how long, ever since that cretin in the baggy clothes had come in with a tray of what looked like recycled table scraps. He’d had the audacity to offer to feed her with the promise of a “special dessert if you behave yourself.”
The laugh that followed had made her skin crawl.
As he came toward her, she’d managed to twist and bump into him, knocking the tray out of his hands. It, the plate of food and the dirty glass of water had crashed to the floor. The latter had shattered.
Just as she’d hoped.
Cursing her, her kidnapper had picked up the pieces. All but the one shard she’d covered with her sneaker and drew beneath her chair, leaving her foot over it.
It had taken time and patience, patience when she wanted nothing more than to flee, but she’d counted off thirty minutes. Thirty minutes before she executed the second part of her plan. Rocking back and forth, she’d finally succeeded in tipping over her chair. When she crashed to the floor, she’d felt the impact reverberating in her teeth, not to mention through her shoulders.
The crash had brought her kidnappers running, then cursing, then finally laughing at her. She assumed that they thought she was attempting to break the chair and then escape. They’d called her stupid and told her not to try anything like that again, then left. She hardly heard them, aware only of the shard of glass she’d secured and now held locked in her closed fist.
The moment the door was closed, she went to work.
It was slow, tedious and painful. Pru worked the shard like a tiny, jagged glass saw, drawing it back and forth across the thick hemp that held her prisoner, feeling a sticky trickle of blood at her wrist. She’d just managed to cut through the ropes when this miscreant had come through the window.
A new face. Another one of the kidnappers?
She wasn’t sure how many there were and only knew two by actual sight. His coming through the window made no sense, unless he didn’t want the others to know what he was doing.
Every muscle in her body tensed.
She pretended to still be bound as the stranger came toward her. The element of surprise was all she had.
He put his finger to his lips, as if the dolt thought she could scream beneath the duct tape. If she could have screamed, she would have done so a long time ago. Loud and long.
He crouched down beside her. He was going to rape her, she thought, banking down the surge of panic and turning it into fury. He damn well might try, but he was going to lose a few vital organs in the process.
“This is going to hurt,” he warned her, taking the edge of the duct tape covering her mouth in his fingers. He yanked it quickly and a line of fiery pain zigzagged along her lips.
The next second, she propelled herself forward, lunging at him. He wound up on the floor, flat on his back, with her on top of him, pinning him down.
“This’ll hurt more,” she declared fiercely, her face inches from his.
Her heart pounding wildly, Prudence began to scramble to her feet, intent on grabbing the weapon she’d seen go flying from his waistband. But he caught her wrists with his
