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

provide light for long, but maybe it would get her back to the road.

She half walked, half jogged, the light flickering from the stick as her sweater burned. It was not enough to keep her from stumbling, but she soldiered on in the direction of the main road. Bits of sweater now reduced to ash fell from the makeshift torch. How long would the fuel hold out?

Pushing onward, she held the light in front of her, ignoring the sting of smoke in her eyes.

Time was running out for Beckett. Hurry, Laney.

* * *

Beckett held the envelope and Irene stepped forward to take it, but she leaned out, making sure he could not lunge forward and grab her. The gun was aimed steadily as she pried the envelope open and peered inside.

“All right. Did you take anything out?”

“No.”

“I’m going to assume you’re telling the truth. You wouldn’t risk your wife and baby just to send me to jail.”

“You deserve to be there.” As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t.

“No,” she snapped. “I’m a good doctor, like I told your wife. She knows I am. I took excellent care of her and the baby.”

When you weren’t killing people and framing others for murder. This time he didn’t vocalize the thoughts. “Where’s Laney?”

Irene backed up several steps toward her car. “I’ll call you.”

Rage reared inside him like a runaway horse. “You’re not leaving here without telling me.”

She fired again. The shot would have taken his head off if he hadn’t dived to the side. He scrambled to his feet to run after her when Jude crested the nearest foothill. “Police! Freeze, Irene.”

She fired.

Jude returned fire. The bullet missed, but she recoiled backward, falling hard into the front of her car. Beckett heard the thunk of her skull against the metal bumper. She collapsed, unmoving.

He ran to her.

“Stay back, Beckett,” Jude shouted.

Irene lay on her side, breathing, but unconscious.

Jude elbowed him out of the way. “Ambulance and park rangers are already rolling.” He checked her pulse. “She’s alive.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Beckett panted, panic consuming him. “I don’t know where Laney is.”

“We’ll find her.”

He whirled away, running to the main road. The asphalt stretched endlessly in both directions. Behind him lay the network of wilderness, acres of desert. He turned in a helpless circle. Which way should he look?

Sirens wailed as the ambulance and park service vehicles roared up, personnel running to assist Jude with the fallen woman. Everything seemed so far off, removed from his stream of consciousness. His hands balled into fists and terror almost stopped his breathing. He couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. He was not even sure his heart still beat. Nothing mattered, nothing at all but Laney, his wife, his love, the mother of his baby.

“Laney!” His shout bounced along the road, echoing cruelly back at him.

What if she was lying hurt, suffering, afraid?

But a worse alternative presented itself to him that almost made his knees buckle.

Officers were moving toward him, he realized. They would start the search party, fan out and do what they did, as Jude said. What would they find?

“Laney,” he shouted one more time.

Only the wind replied.

His vision narrowed, gloom tunneling in, until a glimmer of light appeared on the road in the distance. It flickered and danced as if it was one of those tiki torches Laney insisted on at the hotel. He blinked. The glimmer remained, growing closer. Was he imagining it? He realized it was a torch, almost out, but with a weak glow that outlined a delicate arm holding it aloft.

His mouth fell open.

A hallucination?

But the figure drew close enough that everything stopped, his breathing, his movement, his power of speech, his ability to see anything around him except that God-given sight.

Laney walked closer, limping. Her clothes were torn and filthy. Then the paralysis ended and he launched himself along the road.

She dropped the strange torch she carried and it snuffed out. In less than a minute, he’d gathered her into his arms. For a moment, he could not make words, as he caged her in an embrace, his cheek pressed to her smoky hair, fingers feeling the heaving of her body as she cried.

“Are you injured?” he finally choked out, trying to move her to arm’s length.

She would not allow him to move her from his chest. “We are okay,” she sobbed. “Are you?”

He simply could not answer.

“Is Irene…?”

“Jude has her and the packet Rita hid. It’s over. It’s all over.” He said it as much to convince himself as her. The crimes were solved and his reputation might be shored up, but there was no room in his soul for anything but the most profound gratitude to God for saving Laney and the baby.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Laney insisted Beckett accompany her in the ambulance to the hospital. “Otherwise, I’m not going,” she announced to the paramedics. Jude gestured that he should be allowed. She could not stop crying, for some reason, as the medics took her vitals and checked her over. All her overextended muscles would hurt like gangbusters in the morning, she had no doubt. On the way, her mind was a jumble of fragmented thoughts.

Irene was in custody, and she would never hurt anyone again.

But it was too late for Pauline and Rita.

“Kenny…” she whispered through cracked lips.

Beckett stroked her hand. “He’s under arrest. Levi and Herm took care of things perfectly.”

“And…”

“And Willow is staying with Admiral so he won’t be alone tonight.” He kissed her fingertips. “You don’t need to be worried about anything, honey.”

“As long as the baby’s all right,” she finished.

He cast a longing glance at her blanket-covered tummy. Guiding his hand, she clasped it atop her belly, sandwiching it beneath hers. “But I think you’re right. Muffin is tough,” she said.

“Like her mother.”

“Or his.”

“Either one is fine with me.”

She looked sharply at him. “You still look sad. Why?”

He shrugged. “Nothing… I…” He exhaled. “Someone once told me sharing feelings is everything.” He cleared his throat. “I was wondering if any of this