Tara grabbed his arms and helped him to a sitting position. “Are you all right?”
He rubbed his side, reassuring himself that nothing was broken. “I’m okay—” He broke off, aware that something had changed suddenly.
The engine. He no longer heard the engine noise, or felt the vibration beneath them.
The van had come to a stop.
Most of the haziness left in her brain from the ether disappeared in a snap when Tara heard the van’s engine shut off.
“We’ve stopped.” She looked up at Owen, wishing he wasn’t just a shadowy silhouette in the gloom. Sometimes just the sight of him, so controlled and serious, could make her feel as if everything in the world would be okay. At least she could hear his voice, that low Kentucky drawl that had always steadied her like a rock, even in the midst of the craziness life had a habit of throwing her way. “What are they going to do to us now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.” He didn’t sound confident.
She reached across the narrow space between them and grabbed his hands. “We need a plan.”
“We don’t have anything to fight with, Tara.”
“Yes, we do.” She squeezed his hands and pushed to her feet, heading for the corner where he’d buried the pillowcase inside the remains of her skirt. She grabbed the whole bundle and brought it to where Owen waited.
She saw the faintest glimmer in his eyes when he looked at her, just a hint of light in the darkness. “You are brilliant, sweetheart.”
“There were two of them. One who came to get me, telling me there was a package waiting for me, and one standing by the van. I think he was the one who put the pillowcase over my head.” She kept her voice low, in case their voices carried outside the van. “They think we’re still tied up. At least, we’d better hope they do.”
“It’ll still take two of them to get us out, so we won’t have an advantage. Except surprise.”
She grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Surprise can go a long way. So, first one through the door gets the ether pillowcase over his head.”
“And we shove him back onto the second guy while he’s off guard.”
She looked at Owen, wishing she could see him more clearly. “Think this has a chance of working?”
“No clue, but it’s all we’ve got. So let’s make it work.” He reached across and gripped her hands briefly. Then he unwrapped the pillowcase from the dress skirt.
The sickly sweet odor of the ether made Tara’s stomach twist, but with a little effort she controlled her nerves. She had one job—to fight with every ounce of strength and will she had to get out of this dangerous spot.
At least she wasn’t alone. Owen was with her, and if there was one thing in her life she knew completely, it was that Owen would do everything he could to keep her safe. He’d been doing that for her since high school.
The back door of the van rattled, and Tara’s heart skipped a beat. She sneaked a quick look at Owen and found him staring at the door, his focus complete.
He’d undergone training at Campbell Cove Academy, which was part of the security company where he now worked, but Tara hadn’t really given much thought to what that training entailed. After all, Owen was a computer geek. Computer geeks didn’t have much need for ninja skills, did they?
He’d been teased as a child because his skills and talents lent themselves to academic pursuits instead of sports. Even his own father had undermined Owen, calling him weak and inept because he wouldn’t try out for the football team in high school.
Tara wished some of those people could see Owen right now, ready to take on two possibly armed men in order to protect her.
The door to the van opened, and light invaded the back of the van, blinding Tara for a long panicky moment, until a rush of movement from Owen’s side of the door spurred her into motion. Her vision adjusted in time for her to see Owen jamming the pillowcase over a man’s head and giving him a push backward. The man fell over like a bowling pin, toppling the other man who stood right behind him.
Owen grabbed Tara’s hand. “Jump!” he yelled as he jerked her with him out the back door of the van.
She saw the two men on the ground struggling to right themselves. It wouldn’t be long before they did, she realized. The thought spurred her to run faster. Thank God she’d opted for low-heeled pumps for her wedding, she thought as she ran across the blacktop road and into the woods on the other side, her hand still firmly clasped in Owen’s.
The pumps proved themselves more problematic once they hit the softer ground of the woods. Behind her, the men they’d just escaped started shouting for them to stop, punctuating their calls with a couple of gunshots that made Tara’s blood turn to ice. But, as far as she could tell, none of the shots got anywhere near them.
“Come on,” Owen urged, pulling her with him as he zigzagged though the woods. It took a couple of minutes to realize there was a method to his seemingly mad dash through the trees. They were moving from tree to tree, finding cover from their pursuers.
What was left of her wedding dress was a liability, she realized with dismay. The white fabric stood out in the dark woods like a beacon. At least Owen’s tux was black. He blended into the trees much better than she could hope to do.
“You go without me,” she said as they took temporary cover behind the wide trunk of an oak tree. “I’m the one they’re after. I stick out like a hooker in a church in this dress. You could find help and send the police after the van. You could tell Robert what happened.”
Owen looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I am not leaving you,” he growled.
The sudden urge to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him caught her off guard. She’d set aside those nascent feelings of attraction to Owen a long time ago, valuing his loyal friendship far more than she valued any sort of sexual attraction she might feel toward him. To have it come back now, in this awful situation, was confounding.
“Now!” Owen growled, and he tugged her with him through the underbrush to their next bit of cover.
Behind them, the sound of their pursuers was close enough to spur their forward movement. But the men following them weren’t any closer, Tara realized. So far, she and Owen seemed to be staying ahead of the danger pursuing them.
But what would happen if they ran out of woods?
A brisk breeze had picked up as they ran, rustling the leaves overhead. Thank heaven for spring growth; two months ago, these woods would have been winter bare and couldn’t have provided them with nearly enough cover. But even here in the Kentucky mountains, the woods couldn’t go on forever, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. If they managed to find a well-populated town around the next copse, they’d be safe.
But if they ran into a clearing with neither cover nor the safety of numbers to protect
