Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

She pulled on the handcuff attached to the pipe – really yanked, with all the strength she had left – and bit back the cry that threatened to erupt when the hard metal bit into her flesh.  Oh it hurt.

Biting down to distract herself from the pain, Casey kept yanking until blood ran.  Its slick metallic warmth brought bile rushing into her throat, but she choked it down and pulled and pulled and pulled.

Chunks of flesh scraped off the bone, but Casey stifled her sobs. This agony was nothing compared to a bullet.  Like an animal desperate enough to gnaw its paw off to escape a trap, she would do whatever it took to get out of there.

Finally, tears streaming down her sweaty face, dizzy from a combination of pain and drugs and hunger, she managed to yank her mangled hand free, collapsing in a ball of anguish.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.  It hurt so bad she thought she might pass out.

But she just knew that if she did, she might never awaken.

Mustering every bit of will that she had left, Casey lifted her head and looked toward the bathroom window.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE hand on her shoulder gently shook Tate into waking.

Webs of confusion clouded her brain, making it difficult to get her bearings.  Something told her to just slip back into unconsciousness and let it all fade away.

But something even stronger drew her forward.  Some reason that she needed to be up and functioning.

“Max.”  She sat up suddenly, rubbed the grit from her swollen eyes.  Oh God, her baby was missing, and she’d actually allowed herself to sleep.

When she opened her eyes her uncle was there. The look on his face made hope bloom, then just as quickly shrivel up and die.  He knew something, and she didn’t think it was good.

“Max?” she said again, fear turning his name into a question.

Patrick Murphy laid an awkward hand on his niece’s arm.  “They found him,” he said, and Tate’s heart turned over in her chest.  “Your, uh… friend, Agent Copeland, Clay…he, um, did whatever it is that he does and they figured out where to find Max.  It’s pretty amazing, really, when you think about it.”

“Uncle Patrick,” Tate’s voice was tremulous, as she laid her own hand over his.  “Is Max…”

She couldn’t bring herself to say it.  She simply couldn’t put Max and dead into the same sentence without imploding.

Patrick’s eyes widened and he blew out a nervous burst of air.  “Oh no, honey.  Lord, I’m so sorry.  I should have just come right out and said it.  Max is alive, Tate.  They’re sure that he’s alive.  But the problem is that the man who took him is holding him hostage.”

Oh, the joy.  The joy that crashed into her took her breath.  If her baby wasn’t dead then there was hope.  Tears of relief streaked down her face.  She’d been so afraid of what her uncle would say.

“Okay.” She used the heel of her hand to dry her cheeks.  The rush of relief gave way to worry.  “And so he wants what… money?”  Like she had big piles of it lying around.  She wondered if someone had taken Max by mistake.  But then her frazzled mind processed some of what Patrick said.  “I thought Kathleen said that he’d been abducted by an old woman.”

Patrick sighed, admitting his own confusion.  “Apparently it was a man in disguise.  Your boyfriend could probably explain the whole thing better, but the woman who called – Agent O’Connell – said that Clay thinks you might know the man.”  He pulled the composite from his shirt pocket.  “She asked me to show you this.”

Tate took the paper, unrolling it quickly, beside herself that someone she knew would have done something this… unthinkable.  But as she looked at the composite – noticing it was almost certainly Josh Harding’s work – she tried to reconcile the image of the light-haired, light-eyed man with someone she should recognize.  After several tense moments, she admitted she couldn’t do it.

“I don’t know him,” she told her uncle, wondering if that was good or bad.  “Should I know him?”  She looked at the composite again.  “I mean if this man took Max, and I’m supposed to know why…”  She shook her head, because that made no kind of sense.  “Can I borrow your cell phone?”

She needed to call Clay, to understand what was happening.  But then she looked out the window, out at the pure cerulean of the sky.  The sky under which a man she didn’t recognize was holding her son hostage.  “On second thought,” she threw back the covers and climbed shakily from the bed, “I think that maybe I’d better borrow your car.”

“HEY.”  Clay answered his phone almost casually, but Tate could hear the tremor in his voice. It made her own nerves fray even further.  “I’m sorry we had to wake you up.”

Working against the clog in her throat, Tate made a noise of despair.  “Don’t be,” she said fiercely.  If I’d held it together better, Justin wouldn’t have had to give me that sedative, and I wouldn’t have been sleeping at all.  Sleeping, when Max needs me.” Her breath caught on a sob. “What kind of mother am I?”

“You can’t be beating yourself up about that, Tate.  And we’ll talk about that later.  I guess your uncle and your cousin struck out, or else you wouldn’t be calling.  Did you, uh, have a chance to look at that composite?”

“I did.  Oh, Clay, you think that this is the man who has Max?”

“We’re pretty certain.” He cleared his throat, and his voice emerged stronger.  “You don’t recognize him, sugar?  He’s not someone you know?”

In her uncle’s car, Tate used her free hand to hold the composite against the steering wheel as she drove.  He was handsome, blond… and totally didn’t ring any bells.

“Not that I can recall,” she told Clay, raising her eyes to gage her distance from the car