Wyoming Cowboy Sniper
- -
- 100%
- +
Not everyone in town took the feud between the Carson and Delaney families as seriously as she did, and not everyone in town believed the old tale that if a Carson and Delaney ever fell in love, the town itself would be cursed to destruction.
A story passed down from generation to generation since the Carsons had accused Delaneys of stealing their land back in the eighteen hundreds.
Enough people believed it to make it a thing.
The fact Bent hadn’t immediately crumbled or been struck by lightning didn’t soothe the most superstitious. They were still waiting for it. As for Vanessa, she was more of a take-life-as-it-comes type of girl. She’d deal with a curse if there was one, and she wouldn’t be surprised if life went on as it always had.
“I know you’re not here for the view. Or a repeat performance,” Dylan said, shocking her out of her reverie.
Repeat... She clamped her jaw shut so it wouldn’t drop. No one ever turned her off-center like this.
It was the baby softening all her edges. Which was fine and dandy, once she’d done her business. She was determined to be a good mother—the kind hers had never been—where her kid came first and foremost. And not one man was going to ruin that for her kid. She’d soften every last edge, sand off her tattoos and cut out her own swearing, drinking, idiot tongue if it meant giving this baby the kind of idyllic childhood she’d never had.
Which meant no strife with the father of the baby, even if Vanessa didn’t plan on him being involved.
The best way not to have any strife was to be quick and to the point. She took a deep breath in and let it out, forcing herself to meet Dylan’s dark, imposing gaze.
“I’m pregnant.”
* * *
THE WORDS LANDED like a blow, the kind that had your ears ringing and your eyes seeing stars. Even as Dylan’s brain scrambled to make sense of those two simple words, he desperately held on to his composure.
In business, composure was everything.
This wasn’t business.
Pregnant. Baby. She was telling him she was pregnant and that meant...
He opened his mouth to speak, though he wasn’t sure what it was he meant to say. No words or sound came out, anyway.
“I’m not asking you for anything,” she said clearly. Her gaze was calm, direct, but he saw the way she clutched her hands together in her lap. For a woman like Vanessa she might as well have been shaking in her boots. “I’d rather—”
“Yes, I can imagine all you’d rather,” he muttered. He glanced at her stomach where her hands were clutched. There was no evidence a child grew there, but one did and it was his.
His.
His heart squeezed as if gripped by some iron outside force, a mix of panic and awe. Mostly panic, he assured himself.
“But if I didn’t tell you, you’d figure it out and assume. So I’m telling you. You don’t need to worry or do anything. I’ll keep your part in this a secret and raise this baby myself.” Her hands squeezed harder, and he couldn’t seem to bring himself to lift his gaze from them to meet hers.
“Yourself,” he repeated stupidly.
“Yes. I’m capable. Maybe I don’t look like the most maternal—”
“I’m not challenging you, Vanessa,” he snapped, looking away from her hands. Her eyes were storms of a million things. Things he didn’t want to consider.
But she was pregnant with his child. His child.
Hell.
“Regardless,” she said, sounding surprisingly prim. “I wanted to be clear that I’ll be taking care of everything. As long as you don’t yap, we’ll be fine.”
“Fine,” he echoed. Fine. This was not fine.
She began to stand.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Home. I told you what I had to say and—”
“And you think I’d just step back and ignore the fact I have a child? You honestly thought you’d make your little announcement and that would be it?”
Her eyes went cool, the nervousness in her clutched hands gone as they came to rest on the arms of the chair. “Obviously, I considered you’d be obnoxious, but I held out hope you’d understand that yes, that’s it. Because it’s a Carson child.”
He stood, pressing his hands to the shiny surface of his desk in an effort to center himself and leash his anger. “Half Delaney.”
She folded her arms across her chest and gave him one of those patented Vanessa Carson, you-are-a-bug-to-be-scraped-off-my-boot looks. “Are you suggesting we cut the baby in half?” she asked dryly.
“I’m not suggesting anything. You’re not giving me time to suggest anything. You’ve dropped your bomb and now seem to think you’re going to waltz out of here and leave me to deal with the fallout.”
“I believe that’s usually how bombs are dropped,” she replied. She was back to herself. Sharp, dismissive and oh so sure she was better than him.
But she hadn’t been for a few minutes, and she was carrying his baby. His child.
A living, breathing human being.
He sat back down. The weight of it floored him. “I can’t... How long? It’d be...” He did the math. “You’ve been sitting on this for a while.”
She shrugged. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Heavy black boots. Even with her tattoos covered, she looked like trouble. She always had. He didn’t know why he’d think pregnancy would change it.
He focused on her. On the gleaming silver skull ring on her thumb. The way her hair seemed all that much blacker against the fair, freckled skin of her cheeks. Sharp edges with surprising hints of vulnerability.
And she was carrying his child.
She sighed heavily. “Look, I don’t know what you think sitting there staring at me is going to accomplish, but this is how things are going to be. I have the kid, tell people the father’s some random out-of-towner. I live my life and you live yours.”
“Knowing your child is mine.”
“Consider yourself a sperm donor.”
“I will not,” he said, managing to keep his voice as even as hers. It was a hard-won thing. “I don’t know if you’re trying to be difficult or if it just comes naturally, but this is not a small thing. It’s a huge, bomb-sized thing.”
“You seem pretty calm and collected to me,” she muttered.
“Years of practice,” he said through clenched teeth. The lies he’d told and the things he’d seen. Yes, he’d had years of practice in how to appear calm when he was anything but. In control of a world that would not bend to his will—here in Bent or out there where he’d lived his secret life.
Now this. He wanted to be angry, but every time it spurted up, this strange weight settled over him. Calm wasn’t the right word for it. There was something like a flash of her, from that night. Something he should remember and couldn’t. A softness. A rightness.
He shook it away, but he couldn’t shake away the realization he didn’t have a choice here. She thought he could walk away, turn his back on his own child, and he wouldn’t in a million years.
Which meant he had to find common ground with the one person in this whole town—and possibly world—he wasn’t sure he could.
There had to be common ground here though, whether he liked it or not. They had to find a compromise.
Something had changed that night, and not just the life it had created. The animosity between him and Vanessa had dulled. Or maybe it was watching Laurel and Grady these past few months. No matter how much grief they got from the town or Dad, they laughed and smiled and...didn’t care. Something had changed inside of them so they didn’t care.
Dylan had made a child. It was time to not care. “Vanessa.”
The distinct sound of a gun being fired jolted them both. It had come from the front. Dylan was on his feet in seconds.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
“Stay here?” Vanessa repeated incredulously. “You can’t... Was that a gun?”
But he was already striding out of his office. He made it not even halfway down the hall before he heard footsteps behind him.
He whirled on Vanessa. “I told you—”
“Was that a gun? We should call someone! Why are you running toward it?”
He didn’t have time to explain, but she could call. “Go back to my office, lock the door from the inside and dial 911. Tell them you heard two shots fired in the lobby. One employee inside, not sure about customers. Go.”
He nudged her back toward the office.
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“I have to make sure Adele—”
Two masked men slammed through the door from the bank lobby. It was a robbery. Possibly the stupidest of all crimes in this day and age. Surely Adele had hit the alarm and these two men would be caught before they even tried to leave.
Dylan glanced down at the assault rifles they each carried. Unless they’d shot her first. He felt the horror move through him, but quickly pushed it aside. Compartmentalized and assessed the situation.
Two armed robbers in front of him. The Carson woman, pregnant with his baby, behind him.
And he’d thought it was going to be your average Monday.
Chapter Two
Vanessa tried to think, but unfamiliar panic tickled the back of her throat. Masked men with guns. She’d faced a lot of bad crap in her life, but this was a first. Fear had turned her body to lead.
“Office,” Dylan said under his breath. He didn’t look back at her, just ordered her to move.
But she couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot by a mind-numbing panic that barely allowed her to suck in a breath. The guns. She wasn’t usually rendered useless by the sight of guns. She’d shot her fair share, sometimes even carried one, and had been in the presence of them her whole life.
But these were so big, and they looked more military than recreational. She was sure she and Dylan were dead where they stood, and all the fight she was so certain she had in spades deserted her.
“Who are you?” one of the men demanded, gesturing his gun toward her. “Supposed to be one,” he muttered to the other man. “Boss promised us it’d be one.”
“What have you done to Adele?” Dylan asked.
Dylan’s calmness was downright creepy. He didn’t shake or seem panicked. Vanessa managed to keep a decent mask of not freaking out on the outside, but Dylan didn’t seem to be acting. Easily, he stepped toward the two men, even as they aimed their guns at him.
Vanessa tried to swallow down the labored breathing that threatened to make too much noise in the quiet hall. She tried to move, but her body was still lead weight.
“Put the guns down and we’ll make sure this ends well for everyone,” Dylan said, still moving toward them, even as their fingers curled around the triggers. “Now, what have you done with my employee?”
Vanessa couldn’t catch a breath. She and Dylan were going to die here in this hallway. Not just them, but their baby too. Her balance swayed and she had to squeeze her eyes shut and lean against the wall to find it again.
“Take them both?” one man asked the other.
The other seemed to consider it. “Only set up for one.”
“Tricky business. Shoot her?”
Some awful sound escaped her throat, and she couldn’t open her eyes or breathe. She was going to die. Her baby was going to die. Dylan was going to die.
Fight. You have to fight.
“Boss’s got space. Rather take them both than get any blood on our hands till we know we can get away with it.”
“Wasn’t supposed to be two here. Boss’s fault if we have to kill her.”
Vanessa opened her eyes. She was still unaccountably dizzy, but she had to fight. For her baby. For herself. Dylan. “Are you seriously discussing whether or not to kill someone in front of said someone? What kind of criminals are you?” Vanessa demanded.
“Yeah, we’ll take her,” the bigger one sneered.
“Over my dead body,” Dylan seethed, moving forward.
“I can arrange that,” the sneering man said, jabbing the barrel of his gun right into Dylan’s chest.
Vanessa went cold all over, even as she couldn’t work out why Dylan was trying to save her. Just the baby, she supposed. Her teeth were chattering now, and she berated herself for being such a coward, but that didn’t help give her the strength to push off the wall. To do anything. She could only stand here, shaking, falling apart, wondering why everything was spinning around her.
Except Dylan’s profile. Something clicked off in his expression. It wasn’t fear that overtook him, even though this huge, monstrous weapon was pressed to his heart. It was...determination.
“You should leave her. She’s pregnant. You don’t want to mess with that. I’m the son of the bank president. Think of the ransom you could ask for. You don’t need her, and you don’t need to hurt her.” Then Dylan did the damnedest thing. He smiled.
“Dylan,” Vanessa managed. The hallway seemed to be getting dim, and she thought maybe she was going to throw up. She tried to say something, warn somebody that it wasn’t going to be pretty. But the world was moving. The walls. The floor.
“Pregnant, eh?” One of the men eyed her and she had to close her eyes again. She had to think of the baby. If she could get her brain to stop being a jumbled mess, get the panic to stop freezing her, she could barricade herself in Dylan’s office and call 911.
These men would be able to shoot through the glass door though. She’d left her cell phone in her car. Did Dylan have his on him? He seemed like the type who wouldn’t be parted from it. She opened her eyes, trying to study his pants to see if there was the hint of a phone in his pocket.
“She’s a liability,” Dylan said, still so damn calm while she was shaking. Had the lights gone out? Everything seemed so dark. “Any harm you cause her would come back on you tenfold. It’s one thing to kidnap and demand ransom, another to harm a woman and her unborn child.”
“Only if we get caught,” the other man said, his smile going so wide half his mouth was hidden behind his black face mask.
Vanessa thought she could all but read Dylan’s thoughts from the simple murderous expression he gave the man: oh, you’ll be caught.
She’d never given Dylan much credit for bravery or having a backbone, but watching him face down two goons with giant guns, she realized she had to reassess her opinion of him.
“We need to get going. We should have been gone ten minutes ago. Stick to the plan, or the boss—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The man holding the gun to Dylan’s chest pushed him with it. “You’re coming with us.” He gestured toward the back door Dylan had led her through not that long ago. Dylan started moving toward it, the gun now to his back.
He didn’t even look at her as he passed.
“We can’t leave her, pregnant or not. She’s seen too much. We have to take her with us. Come on, little girl.”
The man not pushing Dylan reached out for her, but she flinched away. She wanted to deck him, but she couldn’t manage to move her arms. She couldn’t move, period. Bile rose in her throat.
“I’m going to...” But the room was something like black, and she wasn’t on her feet anymore. Then something crashed against her head and painful stars burst in her vision, but it wasn’t light. She heard Dylan say her name, but she couldn’t seem to do anything but stay still—and then float away.
* * *
DYLAN’S FACE THROBBED in time with his heavy beating heart. He should have been able to fight them off, but he’d been trying to get to Vanessa to make sure she was all right.
Now his hands were zip-tied behind his back, and he was pretty sure his shoulder was dislocated from trying to fight that off. It was possible his jaw was broken from the butt of the gun being smashed into his face, but since he could move it, he’d hope for just a severe bruise.
He’d never be able to break the bonds on his hands or feet, or even loosen them, but he kept feeling around the back of the van, trying to find something sharp.
Trying to keep his mind off the fact Vanessa was unconscious on the floor of the van and carrying his baby.
They’d been in the back of the vehicle for at least fifteen minutes by his count, and Vanessa was still out cold. She was so pale. So...vulnerable.
He’d save her. He had to. His skills at survival had dulled somewhat these past few years of playing dutiful banker and protégé to his father. But he’d remember them. He’d bring them all back, and he and Vanessa would escape this mess.
Poor Adele. He hoped she was all right. Surely she’d have hit the alarm, even if they’d hurt her. But the two morons who’d abducted them had certainly taken their time getting out of the bank, and no one had shown up.
Well, someone would notice him missing. A Carson would surely notice Vanessa missing. Someone would notice she didn’t come home and that her shop wasn’t open. They’d see her car in the bank lot and know something was very, very wrong.
If he assured himself of those facts, he could concentrate on how they were going to escape. Because they were going to escape.
A quiet, gasping sound came from Vanessa’s direction. Dylan scooted toward her. He wished he could maneuver himself to grab her hand, feel her pulse, but there wasn’t enough room on the floor of the van.
“Vanessa.”
She groaned this time, moving her head and then groaning again.
“Vanessa. Come on, sweetheart. Wake up.” He tried nudging her with his elbow, but he couldn’t lean that way without falling at every bump.
“Wh-what...?” She jerked at her arms, her legs thrashing wildly.
“Calm down. It’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay.”
She jerked her gaze to him, all vicious anger hiding a little flash of fear. “Why would you being here make anything okay, Delaney?” she demanded, her voice rough. She looked around wildly.
“Just try to breathe. You fainted. Take your time to wake up. Then I’ll help you sit up as best I can.”
She sucked in a breath then let it out, eyeing their surroundings. The back of the van was all metal, and though the windows were tinted completely black, enough light shone through that they could make each other out. She moved her gaze to him.
“Fainted?” She tugged at the bonds on her hands as she moved herself into a sitting position—without his help—with a wince. “I’ve never fainted in my life.”
“First time for everything. I’d imagine it had to do with—”
“How the hell am I tied up with you of all people?” She looked around, her expression one of panic with a steely disgust instead of that ashen terror from before. It was some comfort. “Where are we?”
“They took us both as hostages.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” She pulled at the ties on her wrist again, then winced. She squeezed her eyes shut. “How did I get here? I can’t...”
“What do you mean, ‘you can’t’?” He recalled that sometimes people with head injuries didn’t remember what had caused them. Added to that, she’d fainted and suffered a trauma. Maybe she didn’t even remember coming to see him at the bank. “You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?” she snapped.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
She flashed him an impatient look, then her eyebrows drew together. “Man, someone did a number on your face.” She seemed to finally understand he was tied up too.
“Yeah, yeah. We can talk about that later. Vanessa, what’s the last thing you remember?”
She blinked, frowned. “I don’t. Things are fuzzy around the edges. Fuzzy everywhere. I went to the grocery store this morning. Yeah.” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I’m not going to be sick,” she muttered to herself, as if saying it aloud would make it so.
“That’d be preferable.”
She frowned at him, but the confusion dominated her expression. “You look different. Your face is different.”
“Must be the impressive bruising.”
“No. You have lines.”
“Lines?”
“Around your eyes. Your mouth. And that’s some suit. Are we in Bent?” She tried to peer out the window, but she was still sitting and it was too black to see out of. “You’re supposed to be in college, aren’t you? Somewhere out east. Yeah, that’s what I heard.”
“College?” Panic threatened. College. She was just a little confused. By over a decade.
“A fancy one, right? I certainly remember your dad bragging all over himself about it when I went to the store this morning. Dylan this. Dylan that. For my benefit. As if I’d be impressed.”
“Vanessa. God.” It was as jarring of a blow as the butt of the gun to his face had been. “What year do you think it is?”
“What kind of question is that? It’s...” Her brow furrowed again, and she shook her head. “It’s... I’m sure it’s...” She looked up at him helplessly. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You fainted. And you hit your head. Things are jumbled, but they’ll clear up.” He said it far more confidently than he felt it. She’d lost over a decade. That little trickle of panic turned into a full-on frantic clawing, but he ruthlessly shoved it down.
She’d just woken up. She was disoriented. The past ten years would come back. Everything with the baby would be okay.
It had to be.
“Got a phone on you?” he asked, his last hope at getting a message to someone.
“Why would I have a phone on me?”
Dylan swallowed down the bubble of hysterical laughter that tried to escape. He wouldn’t panic and he wouldn’t be hysterical. She’d be fine. She’d have to be. Surely pregnant women fainted and were fine, even with a little memory loss. Women had survived life on the prairie and what-have-you and had had plenty of babies. Everything was going to be fine if he kept his mind calm, his body ready.
He’d been a soldier once. He could be a soldier again.
“Okay, no phone. Anything sharp?”
“There should be a knife in my boot, but I can’t get it with my hands behind my back like this. Who took us? Why are we both tied up? I don’t—”
“One thing at a time. Let’s get free and then I’ll explain everything.” Hopefully. Maybe she’d remember once she fully woke up. He had to hope there really was a knife in her boot, and she wasn’t remembering a knife in her boot from thirteen years ago. “Put your legs out.”
She did as he instructed, straightening her legs out in front of her.
“Which boot?”
“Right. There’s a slot for it behind the outside of my ankle.” Dylan scooted forward, maneuvering himself so the hands tied behind him were close to her ankle. He’d have to kind of lean over her legs and brush up against her to get his hands anywhere near her boot.
It was uncomfortable and awkward, but the most important thing was finding the knife, if in fact she had one down there in the here and now.
She fidgeted just as he finally got his fingertips down the side of her boot. “This is weird,” she complained.
“No weirder than what you don’t remember,” he muttered, concentrating on leaning this way and that and ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs where one of the goons had kicked him, and the fact his head was all but in her lap.
It took a lot of time, a lot of contorting and a hell of a lot of pain every time the van went over a bump, but he managed to pull the knife out of her boot.
He was sweating by the time it clattered to the floor of the van, but he didn’t wait around to catch his breath. The sooner he got them out of their bonds, the better. He leaned back, managed to grasp the knife. In a few swift movements, he cut the zip tie off his wrists.
Sometimes military training did come in handy in the civilian world. He wouldn’t have guessed.
He didn’t take a second to enjoy the feeling of freedom, however. He shook off the plastic and immediately cut the one around his ankle, and then freed Vanessa.
“Well. You move...fast,” she said, as if that surprised her. “You better not have gotten me roped into this, Delaney.”
“Quite the opposite.”