Harlequin Love Inspired Suspense March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Dana Mentink (novels to improve english txt) 📗

clearly hear him advancing, heavy steps crunching into the soil on the shoulder of the road, his breathing noisy. She let him close the gap even more, sending up a silent plea to the Lord for her and her child. Closer he came. The hair on her neck prickled.

Closer.

Still he hadn’t said a word.

She allowed him two more steps before she whirled around, holding the canister chest high. Perhaps he would think it was pepper spray or mace.

The man, she now saw, was heavily bearded, long hair snaking to his shoulders. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of his late sixties, she thought. He did not look startled that she’d spoken, nor interested in the weapon she held. “Who are you?”

“Kenny’s uncle, Leonard.”

“What do you want?”

“You know.” He paused and spit on the ground.

“My husband didn’t kill Pauline,” she blurted.

He let out a hard laugh. “Course you’d lie for him.”

“I’m not lying, and neither is Beckett.” She forced steel into her tone.

He went silent then. Goose bumps stood up along her skin.

She kept the spray aimed at him. “What do you intend to do, now that you’ve caught up with me?”

“Come to fetch you, while Kenny keeps your hubby busy.”

She gulped. Kenny’s attack at the borax works had been a ruse…so he could carry out his plan. Kill her, then Beckett.

Her blood went icy and she fought the shivers. She tried to keep from clutching the spray trigger too hard and accidentally deploying it.

“You’re not taking me anywhere.”

He smiled then, no words needed to convey the malice in his heart. There was no warmth, no compassion, nothing in his expression but hatred. Was he close enough? Did she have the nozzle of the spray aimed correctly?

One chance…

He shoved his hands in his pocket and pulled out a cord.

She bit her lip. “You’re going to strangle me?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I’m going to take you back to Kenny and let him do it. That’s justice. Beckett killed Pauline. Kenny kills you. It’s proper.”

She swallowed the brick in her throat. “That won’t work. I can’t walk all the way back. You can’t carry me. I’m too heavy.”

“True,” he said. “Gonna knock you out, tie you up and roll you off the road and out of sight, pile some sand over you, maybe. We’ll be back with the car. You’ll keep just fine…like a side of beef I got in my deep freeze.” He laughed.

“I’ll keep running and fighting.” She thought of Beckett. “It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”

He grinned. “Like I tell Kenny, difficult things are the most rewarding.” He took the final step forward. She squeezed the trigger. The stream of liquid arced out in a silver thread from the nozzle. The spray did not hit him squarely in the eyes as she’d hoped, but it was close enough. He clawed at his face, reeling back, coughing and spluttering. She advanced, kept on spraying until there was nothing left in her canister.

He cried out and collapsed to his knees. She didn’t wait any longer, whirling off along the road, sending another text as she went.

Help me.

And then it was pure persistence, one bloody foot in front of the other, in the direction Willow had taken. Each step was agony. “Only a little farther,” she whispered to the baby. “We’re gonna make it—you’ll see.”

Surely by now, Willow or Jude had gotten the message and alerted the National Park Service rangers. Help was on the way, for her and Beckett. Her shins ached and the pain in her feet felt like she was walking on razor blades. After a few yards, she risked a look over her shoulder.

Time stood still. Her mind whirled. A sound reflected off the road, a desperate keening moan. It took her a moment to realize it was her own cry, as she watched Uncle Leonard rise to his feet and come after her.

* * *

Beckett crested the slope down which he’d tumbled. He wasn’t sure if he would be running right into the point of Kenny’s knife, but he couldn’t wait. Laney’s scream rang in his memory and flooded him with adrenaline.

He had to get to the van, to get to her.

There was no sign of Kenny as he plowed through the ruins, stumbling and banging his knees, scrambling up again, tripping, falling, rising, until he finally made it to the entrance point. Below, Kenny’s car was still there in the parking lot, lights on, engine running. Beckett didn’t take time to puzzle it over. He thundered down the slope, just as Kenny slammed the driver’s door.

He fired a mirthless grin at Beckett as he peeled out of the lot in a shower of gravel. The sedan turned left, the direction Laney had taken. Fear punched him squarely in the gut.

He ran to the van and leaped into the driver’s seat, cranked the key.

The engine throbbed, coughed and died.

He banged on the steering wheel. “Come on, come on.” How many times had they thought about replacing the old vehicle and how many more times had another expense been deemed more important? Beckett’s cousin Austin was an excellent mechanic, and he’d kept the old van going with spare parts and sheer persistence.

He cranked the key again. Same result.

He heard Laney’s voice from a long-ago memory. “Vannie is sensitive. Be gentle.”

“It’s a car, Laney.”

“So is a Rolls-Royce, but you’d treat that better than Vannie, wouldn’t you?”

Her fanciful notions of how to treat a hunk of metal and gears amused him at the time, delighted him, as had most things about his imaginative wife.

Forcing in three calm breaths, he tried once more, turning the key with more delicacy than before. It started up, easy as pie. “Yes,” he hollered, pulling the van away from the broken-glass pile on the ground. The rear doors were hopelessly mashed, welded ajar by the impact of Kenny’s fender.

He jammed his foot on the gas, stopping abruptly when he heard the beeping of his cell phone. He snatched it up. He had