The Ranger and the Runaway Read online

  “I gotta coupon,” the woman at her register declared. Sandy couldn’t think about the weird guy anymore; she was distracted by a crumpled coupon that was out of date and was for a product completely different than the one the customer was attempting to purchase.

  The evening passed fairly slowly, until nine p.m. when the store closed and she got to walk home. The manager and other checkout staff drove, but the store was only ten minutes from Mrs. Brown’s place.

  She stepped into the cool evening air, turned a corner, and immediately a pair of male arms wrapped around her. At first she thought it was Travis surprising her. Then she realized that Travis didn’t usually smell like a meth lab.

  “Remember me?”

  His voice triggered the memory of that night. The night she’d been attacked. This time though, there was no bar full of people nearby. There was only the empty streets and nothing but blind panic.

  “So, slut,” he breathed into her face. “This time, you’re not going to get away. This time, we’re going to have a lot of fun with you. Going to take you somewhere real nice.”

  Her heart pounding, Sandy tried to fight her way free. The attempt didn’t go any better this time than it had the first. He pulled her into the back of a dirty old van and threw her down in the back of it.

  “Let me go, asshole!” Sandy struggled up. “Help!”

  “Shut up,” he said, his hands trembling. He seemed overwhelmed, shaky… a little too energetic. Drugs. Definitely some kind of drugs were at play here. “Shut up, you slut.”

  He slammed the door shut, plunging her into darkness. Sandy heard the motor start and realized that he was taking her somewhere. Somewhere remote, probably. Somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Forcing down feelings of revulsion and loathing and fear, Sandy tried to get a grip on herself. She had to get out as quickly as possible. She tried opening the back door from the inside, but the handle was broken. There were windows, but they’d been painted out and there was nothing in the van to break them with. There was just a dirty old mattress that smelled like skunk.

  This was bad. This was really bad.

  * * *

  Travis knocked on Mrs. Brown’s door at ten p.m. It was late, but he wanted to surprise Sandy. He thoroughly expected a dressing down from Mrs. Brown, but he’d brave that to put a smile on Sandy’s face. She’d seemed bored and a little sad at work, and he didn’t blame her.

  The door opened to reveal Mrs. Brown’s unsmiling, worried face. The moment he saw the expression in her eyes, he felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. Something was wrong.

  “I’m sorry, Travis, but Sandy isn’t back yet from work. She should have been back almost an hour ago, I called her supervisor, and he said she left as normal…”

  “You think she ran away again?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Mrs. Brown said. “I know she didn’t like her job at the grocery store, but that was only ever supposed to be temporary… she seemed happy here. She was looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. I know that much.”

  “Well maybe she tried to come out to see me,” Travis said. “I’ll check along the way to the store, and if I don’t see her out there, I’ll check the woods.” He scribbled down his cell phone number on a card and handed it to Mrs. Brown. “Call me if she shows up in the meantime.”

  He was damn near certain that she probably had tried to come out and see him again; maybe this time she’d run into trouble of some kind. Travis spent the next three hours combing all possible routes to and from the base. She wasn’t anywhere along the way and as time passed, the gnawing feeling in his stomach began to grow.

  He made his way back to Mrs. Brown’s place to see if Sandy had returned. She hadn’t. Kurt was there, filling out a missing person’s report.

  “I can’t file this until tomorrow at nine p.m.,” Kurt said. “That’s when she will have been missing for twenty-four hours.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “Well, then she’ll be officially missing and we’ll have units notified to keep an eye out for her.”

  That wasn’t good enough. If something bad had happened to her, and he was almost certain it had, keeping an eye out wasn’t going to be good enough.

  “Kurt, I think you and I should start a search. Now.” He didn’t know Kurt, but he didn’t really need to. He knew the type of man he was. Solid small town police officer. Nice guy, probably not too bright, but the sort of person who could be depended on.

  “She might have just run off to another town,” Kurt said. “She always was kind of flighty.”

  “We had a date. She wouldn’t have left town without at least leaving a note for me. She wouldn’t have left town straight from work without coming back here to pick up her things. Sandy has been running into trouble since I met her. I reckon she’s run into more. I’m going to look for her.”

  Travis went and looked all night. He found nothing. Nothing at all. Nobody had seen any sign of Sandy. Nobody had heard anything about her. He asked every patron in Wolfie’s, every late-night gas station attendant, every person he found on the streets.

  By the time daylight broke, he was back at the base. He intended to stop for some food and send a few information requests through, hoping that there might be a clue there. He was so worried about Sandy he’d forgotten about what was waiting for him back at the base—Rawlins.

  Rawlins was a tall, broad man in his fifties with gray hair but more energy than most men half his age. When Travis laid eyes on him about fifty yards inside the main gate, Rawlins was a particular shade of human puce.

  “Where the hell have you been, Travis?”

  Rawlins never used Travis’ last name. The base was a small unit, a close-knit team and Travis had known Rawlins since he’d joined the service, near enough. As a result there was usually a certain informality between them.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I was assisting with a missing persons case in town. I did leave a message with…”

  Rawlins’ bushy white eyebrows drew together. “Since when does your job entail going MIA in town?”

  “It doesn’t, but this was an emergency.”

  “A missing local isn’t your concern, Travis. Local PD will be on it. Let them do their job. You do yours.”

  “You don’t understand,” Travis said. “She’s not some local girl. We’ve been seeing each other.”

  “Is she your wife?”

  “No…”

  “Then I’m sorry that your local girl got snatched up, but we have real work to do here. She’ll turn up, or you’ll find another one.”

  Sexist wasn’t really the word for it. Rawlins was old school, the kind that figured a woman only mattered if she had a ring on her finger and was otherwise disposable. He was a damn good officer, and most of the time he was a fine man, but he did have some glaring blind spots in his world view.

  Rawlins apparently considered the discussion to be over; he was already on his way, apparently thinking that Travis would just forget about the girl he loved. Before Travis could set him straight on that, his phone rang. He answered it swiftly, hoping it was Sandy.

  “Hey, Travis?”

  It was the bartender down at Wolfie’s, the bar he’d first met Sandy outside of.

  “Thought you might like to know those gang guys you fought the other week, they came in after you left. Actually, they just got hauled out of here by the cops.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Anyway, they were talkin’ and I noticed that one of them was missing. Their friend. He’s taken one of their vans and headed out somewhere. They were accusing one another of stealing it, until they worked out that their friend was missing too.”

  “You overheard all of this?”

  “Well, they were standing right at the bar threatening to crack each other over the head with empty bottles and screaming at the top of their lungs, so it was hard not to overhear. Anyway, once they worked out their buddy was missing, they started wondering if he’d done what he
was planning to do… I don’t know, Travis, just felt like it might have something to do with that missing girl. I showed them the flyer and they started laughing real nasty.”

  “Right,” Travis said grimly. “Got it. Do you know where these guys live?”

  “Well, right now they’re in the drunk tank down at the cells, so…”

  “Got it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sandy was hungry, tired and thoroughly freaked out after hours in the back of a van. Her captor had driven her up to an abandoned mine in the hills and spent the rest of the night getting drunk and hurling curses at her.

  She was tied to a tree, watching him stumble around in and out of coherency. At times he hated her and screamed abuse. At others, he sat down and began to mutter about sins of the past and confessed a whole lot of wrongdoing to her.

  “Ish not your fault,” he slurred. “I wash always bad. Born bad they said. I’m shorry about wash going to happen to you.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  She didn’t get an answer. He muttered something under his breath and shambled off to swear at a tree.

  As erratic as the guy was, it was pretty obvious that there was some greater plan at play. The guy who had her had barely laid a finger on her aside from to tie her up. He was waiting for something. Sandy didn’t know what, but a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she didn’t want to find out.

  The whole night long she watched him stumble around, ranting, raving, drinking, and smoking out of a glass pipe. She was utterly terrified, not knowing if at any moment he’d decide to turn on her. Sometimes he seemed completely unaware of her presence, as if he’d forgotten she was there.

  Escape was the only thing on her mind. She spent the hours slowly working her wrists free, getting herself untied to the point that she could have gotten away. There wasn’t any point running while her captor was stumbling around though; she had to bide her time, be patient until finally the drink overpowered whatever stimulant made him grind his teeth and grunt ferociously and he passed out next to the fire at around midday.

  When she was sure he was completely out of it, Sandy made for the van. He’d left the keys in it and Sandy soon sent the van spinning out of the old mine and back down the mountain roads to the safety of civilization.

  She was hurtling along when she saw another vehicle approaching in the opposite direction. As it went past, she looked into the driver’s side and to her surprise, saw Travis looking at her with a stunned expression.

  They both hit the brakes at the same time and came skidding to a halt in the middle of the road. Sandy tore out of the van and ran to him, throwing herself into his arms.

  “Sandy!” He caught her up and held her close. “Are you alright?”

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she assured Travis quickly. “He just screamed and ranted and drank a whole lot. He’s not a very good kidnapper. How did you find me?”

  “Tracking people down is what I do,” he said, pressing a kiss to her nose.

  Sandy smiled and pressed her head to his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It was a reassuring sound that made all the tension and fear slide away.

  He nuzzled her gently, and pressed a kiss to her lips that deepened into something more passionate, their tongues entwined in embrace.

  “I was worried about you,” he murmured.

  “No need to worry about me,” she smiled up at him. “I’m hard to kidnap, you know.”

  “I know how hard it is to get you to stay where you’re supposed to be,” Travis agreed with a little chuckle. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  “He barely even touched me, except to tie me up,” Sandy reassured Travis. “He was way too high for anything else. But I think…”

  What she thought, she never got a chance to say. There was a sudden rumbling and around the corner came three pickup trucks, each one of them stuffed with gang members wearing leather vests over shirts that had seen better days.

  “Oh, god…” Sandy gasped in dismay as all three pulled to a skidding halt, kicking up clouds of dirt and dust.

  “Don’t worry,” Travis murmured in her ear. “Just stay calm and follow my lead.”

  They stood and watched as the gang disembarked from their vehicles; the leader was a dark-haired man with a handlebar mustache and leather chaps over jeans. He was armed. They all were.

  Travis didn’t say a word as the man approached them, gun held casually by his side.

  “Like rats in a barrel,” he said with a guttural laugh.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be fish?” Sandy whispered the question to Travis. She didn’t get a response. Travis’ cool gaze was locked on their would-be assailant.

  “Now this is where the fun starts,” the man continued.

  When Travis still didn’t say anything, he seemed put out and went on to explain further. “See, we set what you call a trap. Got Mark to get the girl, then take her up here where there’s nobody to help you and put on a play for that bartender. Knew you’d come looking for her. Now there’s eight of us and two of you. Hand the girl over.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Travis said calmly.

  His refusal made the gang members laugh and leer. It also made their leader raise his gun. “Do it, or I’ll shoot you.”

  “I doubt you could hit a barn at twenty paces,” Travis shrugged.

  “Oh, yeah?” The man strode forward and pressed the barrel of the gun to Travis’ head. “You think I’ll miss from here?”

  Travis didn’t answer. He moved. He ducked to the side, his hand whipping out to take hold of the barrel of the gun. Sandy didn’t see what happened next; it was all too fast. What she did know was that in what seemed like less than a second, Travis had the gun pointed at the back of the ringleader’s head as the man kneeled on the ground.

  “Put your weapons down. Now!” He barked the order at the others with such aggressive authority that almost as one, they obeyed. Travis kept the gun on their leader.

  “You all come out here to get revenge on some girl?”

  “We came out here to get revenge on you, asshole,” their leader snarled. “You put our boys in the hospital, we’re going to put you in the dirt.” He spat onto the ground, emphasizing his disdain for Travis.

  “Hasn’t really worked out that way, has it?” There was a note of cold triumph in Travis’ voice, and something else, something that excited and scared Sandy at the same time. She’d known from the beginning that Travis was capable of calculated violence that left men broken. Now she was getting a hint of the notion that he might actually be enjoying the situation on some level. His hand holding the gun was perfectly steady. He wasn’t panicked or worried in the slightest. They might as well have been attacked by mayflies for all he seemed to care.

  “Let’s go,” Sandy said, tugging at Travis’ free arm. “I don’t want to be out here anymore.”

  “Yeah,” Travis agreed. “Let’s go.”

  They circled around toward one of the running pickup trucks. At Travis’ orders, Sandy scooted inside it quickly; Travis worked his way around to the driver’s side and got in. They had about two seconds to get away. The moment he no longer had the gun trained on them, the gang picked up their weapons and started firing.

  Travis and Sandy headed down the trail at breakneck speed with bullets slamming into the bodywork. Apparently not one of those in pursuit had learned their lesson. They’d piled into two remaining trucks and were giving the sort of hard chase only a bunch of people entirely divorced from reality could.

  “Get down,” Travis ordered, shoving Sandy toward the passenger foot well. Just as he did, a bullet punched through the back of the seat, sending foam and fabric flying. Sandy wasn’t sure how on earth they were going to survive the assault; lead was screaming through the air, tires were squealing, and amid it all the bloodthirsty shouts of the gang made her blood run cold.

  “Are we going to die?”

  “Not today,” Travis replied with
so much confidence she actually believed him.

  The chase seemed as if it would only end once they reached Lamford, or someone crashed, but as they rounded another corner in the road, Sandy realized with glee that the gang members weren’t the only people capable of setting traps. There, on the road, were no fewer than five police cars—every single mobile unit in Lamford. She and Travis drove through the gap that had been left between two cruisers, and just as their rear tires cleared the blockade, a spike strip was deployed. In quick succession both gang vehicles blew through the block, each shredding their tires in the process. What followed was a lot of cursing and complete surrender from the gang, who were tough when it came to outnumbering an unarmed couple, but not quite so brave when surrounded by police.

  Nestled in the comfort and security of Travis’ arms, Sandy had the extreme pleasure of watching the gang be arrested and taken away.

  Kurt was on the scene and once he’d ensured all guilty parties were in custody, he turned his attention to her and Travis. “Follow us to the station if you don’t mind,” he said. “We’ll have some questions for you, and then we’ll have you checked out at the hospital, Sandy.”

  “I feel fine,” she protested.

  “It’s just protocol,” he replied. “Make it easy on me, would you?”

  Sandy agreed to make it easier on Kurt. It was the least she could do after he’d called out the cavalry. She and Travis went back to the Lamford station to make their statements. Unfortunately for Travis, the civilian police were not the only ones there. Two MPs were also at the station, apparently waiting for Travis.

  Upon seeing them, Sandy was instantly suspicious. “What are they doing here?”

  The MP on the left answered the question for her. “You’re under arrest, Travis. Sorry to have to do this, but Rawlins insists. He’s really piss… teed off you disobeyed orders to go get the girl. He’s talking court-martial.”