Chapter Twenty-Two
“What did she say?” Jase asked again, his voice rough and his patience shot.
“She asked about Claude and that’s it,” Heath said. “Why would I lie to you?”
“She didn’t say where she was staying?”
“Why would she tell me that, man?”
He was grasping at straws. It was the only thing he had. She’d completely rejected him out on the highway. And despite the fact that he still didn’t agree with her returning for a damn signature when, in reality, he could pay for her mother’s care for the next twenty years and never blink an eye, he’d been clawing the walls to see her. Hell, he’d been on constant Cassie patrol since Kyle’s visit to his office. But he hadn’t been prepared for how badly it had burned seeing her fly past him as if he’d never existed.
“I’ve got to go,” he told Heath, not bothering with an excuse. He couldn’t change the fact that she’d returned. But he needed to get a lock on her.
Marian was a small town. He’d find her.
And then what? he asked himself.
He asked himself that same question again and again over the next few hours as he searched for her. He was a recon man, dammit. If he couldn’t spot that fancy car of hers in this Podunk town, he had no business calling himself a Marine. And to answer his own question, he’d start with offering her an apology. An on-his-knees-and-groveling apology. Then he’d ask about her mother and present her with the receipt in his pocket. Then he’d…yell at her for coming back?
Smash her lips to his?
Run her out of town after dragging her to the nearest motel and doing very, very dirty things for two days straight?
Fuck! Where was she?
On his third lap through town, his phone rang, startling him out of his corrupt thoughts.
Clint.
“Hello?”
“You need to get over here,” his brother said. “Right now. Cassie’s in trouble.”
She was a magnet for that. It didn’t change the fact that his blood had turned to ice and his vision swam as he spoke to Clint. “Tell me everything you know.”
“I know you better hurry. A skinny-ass, scared as shit landman just showed up over here saying he escaped from the Neelys, where your girl was shot at. She lost control of the car and slammed into a tree.”
“And he left her?” he roared so loudly Kyle had to have heard him through the phone.
“Hold on, Jase. She was hurt bad and told him to go for help.”
“Who shot at her? Neely?”
There was a long silence, during which Jase’s entire world shrank to one thing. Cassie.
“You need to keep your head when I tell you—”
“Just tell me,” he ground out, his pulse pounding so hard he could hear it.
“Kyle said a man named Coy Martin was there, that he’d shown a—”
Another voice cut in from the background. “Disturbing interest! He showed a disturbing interest in her!”
“Yeah, that,” Clint said.
“Let me talk to him,” Jase said, his gas pedal to the floor as he tore out of town.
“That guy wanted to play with her,” Kyle said frantically as Jase’s darkest fears clawed to the surface. “My Spanish isn’t great, but I swear to God that’s what he said. They told us to come back tomorrow to discuss the lease, but I guess they changed their minds.”
“What?” he croaked out. Why had she felt the need to go after that lease? But it didn’t matter, not now. He had to put the anger aside and focus on the battle in front of him. “Kyle, how badly is she hurt?”
“Pretty bad.”
“Details.”
“I think she hit her head. There was a lot of blood.” Kyle’s voice hitched. “Oh God,” he whispered before quickly getting it together. “So, um, the airbag deployed, but she was so out of it, I don’t even think she knew. I didn’t want to move her but when they started coming for us, I tried. She was like deadweight. Never even opened her eyes.”
“But she told you to go?”
“They started firing again, and she told me to go for help.”
“She told you to find me?”
Kyle paused. “Not specifically.”
He had to ignore it. “Is she shot?”
“No.”
“How do you know? You said you booked it when they started shooting again.” He was almost to the turnoff to the ranch. Which meant he was about to pass the Neely’s. No way was he passing her by, even for reinforcements. “Kyle! How do you know she isn’t shot?”
“I’m not even halfway done,” he said softly.
Jase’s stomach heaved so violently, he thought he might become ill. “Tell me.”
“I ran. I ran right through that thorn wall dividing their property from yours—”
“His hands are all fucked up,” he heard Clint say in the background.
“—but I didn’t run away. I hid. And they didn’t look for me very hard, thank God, so I followed on foot when they drove to the house. She’s there, Jase. She’s in one of the bedrooms. I saw them tie her to a bed.” Kyle’s voice caught again. “She’s on the bed. She’s—”
“That it?” he ground out.
“Yeah, um, here.”
Before he could thank Kyle for the invaluable information, Clint was back on the line. “I’m going in,” he told his brother.
“Not alone,” Clint said. “Not with that leg.”
“It’s fine. Meet me at their gate. Five minutes, and I’m going in.” It had already been an eternity. He ended the call before Clint could protest.
This was it. Oscar had to die now. Whether he killed Cassie or not, the son of a bitch had to die. And if he did kill her, he’d die slow. A huge piece of Jase would die with him. He knew that in the deepest part of his soul.
He parked his truck opposite the Neely tract, holstered his weapon and said a quick prayer that Clint was already halfway to him with more firepower. He checked his watch. He couldn’t wait any longer and went in on foot, keeping to the trees. Clint would approach from the east.
Jesus, how had he let this happen?
There was a fear pushing him now that he’d never taken into battle before. It was a deeply personal fear, and not for himself. This kind of fear got men killed, and he urged Clint on in his head. Come on, man. Come on. His bum leg was already flagging, and he knew he needed his brother. That part kind of pissed him off, and he latched on to that instead of the fear. The well of anger was deep, beginning with himself for ever letting her go in the first place. He gritted his teeth, eased up on his bad leg, and pressed farther into the darkness of the Neely property.
A rustling ahead had him on the ground before he considered his leg. Wincing, he watched as Clint blundered through the underbrush.
That’s not Clint.
Instead of alarm, all he felt was relief that his brother wasn’t the dumb-ass in his line of vision. For a split second, he even felt sorry for the guy, like maybe he was a little slow or something. What else would explain a grown man dragging a shotgun behind him while kicking random bushes and calling out, “You in there?”
He assumed the burly figure to be Joel Neely, Jr., though he didn’t remember him being so strange.
“Come ouuuuuut.”
Right. Either he was still looking for Kyle, or Cassie had escaped. It didn’t matter. The man knew something. What he didn’t know was that he only had seconds to live if he didn’t tell Jase what he wanted to know.
“Jase.”
Reinforcement. And Clint wasn’t alone. Kyle’s eyes were so wide, Jase could see the whites even in the dark. He was certain Kyle’s knuckles were just as white because that shotgun trembled in his hands. Jase gladly relieved him of it.
“They have her!” Kyle whispered. “I—
Jase cut him off with a hand gesture. That’s all he needed to know for now. He nodded to Clint and they both shot forward, leaving Kyle in the brush.
They had Neely on the ground and disarmed so effortlessly, Jase hadn’t even bothered with the shotgun. They dragged him into a patch of moonlight and Jase pressed the foot of his good leg firmly into Joel Neely, Jr.’s groin. “Talk, motherfucker.” he hissed. “Where did he take her?”
“Ughhhhh… I don’t knooooow!”
“He’s lying,” Kyle said. “She’s in the house. That’s where they took her.”
“There you are, you little shit!” Neely spat up at Kyle before gasping anew as Jase applied more pressure to his groin. “Fuck,” the man cried, flinging spittle all over the place.
Clint racked a bullet into the 9mm he’d had pointed at Neely since they’d dragged him, sweating and wheezing from the brush, and slammed the barrel into the man’s fleshy forehead.
“I don’t know where he is!” Neely wheezed. “He told me to find this one. And I…I think he said something about moving her to, uh, to some special location. A secret place.”
“You’re lying.” And he was terrible at it, too. “Tell me the truth or you’re going to die,” Jase said, pressing so hard into the soft flesh between Neely’s legs that the man’s knees jerked up and tried to come together.
“I don’t know shit!”
“Was she alive and lucid the last time you saw her?” he asked, bending at the waist and trying to control his voice.
“He…fuck! I don’t know what that means. What you just said. All he kept saying was that he wanted to…to…what do you think he wants to do to her?”
Jase ground his foot, eliciting a high-pitched scream from the man at his feet.
Dropping down, mostly because his leg was about to give out, he grabbed Neely by the hair and wrenched the man’s face close to his. The man wasn’t simple. He was just a lazy, self-preserving idiot. “Tell me everything, every detail, or I swear to God I’ll finish what your father started thirty years ago.”
Neely bared his teeth. “Your daddy’s sister was a whore. She got what she deserved.”
Jase slammed his fist into Neely’s face. “Your father was a rapist,” he snarled. “Runs in the blood, doesn’t it? You’re fucking lucky you didn’t get the chance to lay a hand on my woman.” He punched Neely in the face again. And again.
“Jase!”
Again.
“We have to go!” Clint hissed.
He dropped Neely’s head and looked up. A moon-faced Kyle stood shaking beside Clint. “Jase, leave him. Cassie needs you.”
He rose to his feet and winced.
“He tied up my mama!” the man on the ground sobbed.
Clint jerked Neely to his feet. “You’re coming with us.”
Jase nodded in agreement. The slobbering idiot was their ticket in.