they were Tasered. Shelby didn’t remember being drugged, but she did recall someone stepping around them in those moments after the initial attack. She’d also felt a stinging sensation in her arm, perhaps from someone injecting drugs into her.
“The person had on boots,” she said.
Seth nodded. “And green cargo pants. I didn’t get a look at his face because he was wearing a gas mask, but it was definitely a man. He had beefy hands.”
Shelby didn’t recall the hands part or the gas mask, but something else popped into her head. “I don’t think he was alone.”
“He wasn’t.” Seth’s forehead bunched up as if he was trying to recall the details through the fog that the stun gun and drugs had created. “I think someone came in through the back exit.”
That made sense because it wouldn’t have been easy for just one person to move two adults. Especially Seth. He was at least six foot three, and solid. Plus, while unconscious, Seth and she would have been dead weight.
Sweet heaven. What else had their captors done to them?
Seth began to yank at the ropes, but he didn’t have any better luck getting out of them or snapping the wood than she had. He struggled several more seconds and then patted his jeans’ pockets. The ones he could reach anyway.
And he shook his head.
“No phone. What about you?” he asked.
Shelby’s head was still so foggy that she hadn’t even considered making a 9-1-1 call. She couldn’t reach her jeans’ pocket, but she leaned her hip to the side so she could feel it when she pressed down onto the floor. But she also had to shake her head.
“My phone’s gone,” she answered. “Flashlight and car keys, too.”
So the person behind this wasn’t just a killer but a kidnapper and a thief, as well. Of course, he’d probably taken the flashlight and keys so she couldn’t use them as pseudo weapons. Whoever was behind this also would have taken their phones to prevent them from calling for help.
And it’d worked.
“I have a small knife all the way in the bottom of my front pants’ pocket,” Seth said, moving around. “I guess they didn’t find it when they searched us. Any chance you can reach it?”
She had more room between the rope and her hands than Seth did, but still it wasn’t enough to reach all the way back to him. Not with a foot of space between them. So Shelby started inching back on her butt while Seth maneuvered himself toward her.
They collided. Her head bopping into his face. It stung, but at least they were closer now.
Seth levered himself up to his knees, as far as he could go, and he thrust his hip in the direction of her hand. She could barely reach the pocket so she kept twisting and turning until she could get her fingers inside.
“Sorry,” Shelby said when her fingers slipped in the wrong direction. She definitely hadn’t wanted to touch him there.
He dismissed it with a manly sounding grunt, but their gazes met. She saw the discomfort in his cool blue eyes. Of course, there were a lot of reasons for his discomfort other than just her touch, but the unwanted effect from the physical contact certainly hadn’t helped matters.
Shelby finally located the knife and tried to clamp her fingers around it. The surface was smooth and it slipped a few times, but she worked it out of his pocket. She nearly dropped the darn thing, but she trapped it against Seth’s stomach with her hand.
He took over from there even though it involved yet more touching.
Now Shelby was the one who grunted when the back of his hand collided with her breast. No apology. He just kept working, and he used his thumb to pop out the blade.
“I’ll have to try to free you first,” he insisted. “The angle’s wrong for me to cut through my own rope.”
Suddenly, the little two-inch pocketknife blade looked as big and sharp as a switchblade, but Shelby held out her hands. Seth didn’t waste a second. He started sawing while he fired glances all around them. No doubt looking for any sign of their captors returning.
It took a team effort. Seth sliced the knife back and forth while Shelby rocked in rhythm to the blade so that it would do the job faster. She was certain time wasn’t on their side.
Finally, the knife cut through, and Shelby nearly toppled over as the rope fell from her wrists. She quickly righted herself, took the knife from Seth and started to cut him loose.
“I guess you aren’t behind this?” he asked.
It took her a moment to realize exactly what he was asking. “You think I murdered someone in the warehouse and then stun gunned, kidnapped and drugged myself?”
He lifted his shoulder. “I was Tasered and kidnapped, too,” Seth reminded her. “I know you want my mother convicted of killing your father and would do pretty much anything to see that happen. I also know you hate me.”
She couldn’t argue with the part about wanting Jewell to be punished for what she’d done to Shelby’s father. But the second part? Well, Shelby could take some issue with that.
“I don’t hate you,” she corrected. “But you’re not somebody I feel warm and fuzzy about.”
Except for all that touching. That had certainly felt a little warm. Something that she’d carry to the grave, because Shelby had no intentions of admitting it to anyone. Especially Seth.
“I suspect you have the same non–warm and fuzzy feelings about me,” Shelby added.
He didn’t agree or disagree with that. He made a sound that could have meant anything or nothing. “I just want to make sure that neither you nor the trial had anything to do with this.”
That evaporated any trace and memory of a warm feeling from the touching. Yes, he was talking to her as if she was a suspect.
“I can’t speak for the trial, but I had nothing to do with this,” she said through clenched teeth. “Did you?”
He gave her that flat look, the one only an FBI agent could manage. “I’m the law,” he reminded her.
“And the stepson of the woman you’d like to see out of jail.”
There. If he was going tit for tat, then she’d remind him that he had as much motive for this fiasco as she did.
Which wasn’t much of a motive at all.
Good grief. She’d had a few verbal run-ins with Seth in the past seven months since he’d moved to the Sweetwater Ranch to be near his mother for the upcoming murder trial. But during those run-ins, he’d never accused her of multiple felonies.
“I’m an investigative reporter,” she snapped. “Not a criminal like your stepmother.”
That probably stung. Had to. Because from all accounts Seth loved Jewell, and some members of her family, Seth included, were likely getting desperate with the trial just days away. Well, Shelby was getting
