Christmas Bodyguard (18 page)

He stood in the middle of the large, almost bare room layered with dust and cobwebs and swung around in a full circle, noting the empty table and two chairs, a cupboard with a missing door, a dirty rug over part of the floor. “I'm here. Show yourself. You've got what you want. Me.”

Silence.

He hadn't heard a bomb go off, so he prayed that meant Abbey was still alive. He backed away from the entrance, moving deeper into the shadows.

“Are you too scared to show yourself? Or, are you going
to continue to hide behind all these little games you've played?”

“On the contrary, I'm right here, and relishing every minute of this.” Cindy stood in the doorway to the cabin with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other. “I've been thinking about this moment ever since my father, Jay Wilson, killed himself. He couldn't face going to prison if he was convicted. His life became a living nightmare. I decided to make yours like that so you'd know how it feels to have things totally out of your control.”

He wanted to laugh at that statement. He'd learned long ago his life wasn't in his control. And now he had to place it in the Lord's hands because he didn't know how he would get out of this alive.

Cindy gestured with her gun to her right. “Pick that detonator up.”

Slade did, his hand shaking as he held it.

“If you set off the detonator, your daughter dies but you live. I'll walk away and never bother you again. You control your daughter's destiny. So what will you do?”

 

The sounds of voices back along the shoreline, following her path, filtered to Elizabeth. She waved her flashlight in the air to show them where she was, then returned to searching for Abbey. Each second could be the child's last one, and she was determined to find her before she was harmed.

Up ahead, about ten yards away, she saw something that looked like a person sitting against a large pine. Running, praying it was Abbey, Elizabeth covered the short distance in seconds. Her light illuminated the frightened, wide-eyed expression on Abbey's face. A gag stuffed in her mouth, a rope circling the teen and tree and a bomb strapped to the girl's chest sent terror through Elizabeth. She allowed
herself a moment of that emotion before she shut it down. She had to remain calm and keep Abbey calm.

Kneeling in front of the girl, Elizabeth loosened the cloth around Abbey, who then spat out the rag in her mouth. “Don't move. I don't know what triggers this bomb. Joshua will be here in a minute. He knows all about these things. Understand?”

Tears trickling from her eyes, Abbey said, “Yes.”

Her raw, shaky voice worried Elizabeth. “Remember, stay calm. Don't move. I won't leave you.”

“Where's Daddy?”

 

Cindy pointed the gun toward her left. “Pick up that detonator, too.”

Slade saw it in the glow of his light on the floor a few feet from him. He bent over and grasped it. Ice seemed to replace the blood in his veins.

“You have a choice.” She backed away from the doorway. “You can either detonate the one that you just picked up and blow yourself up, or you can detonate the other and blow up your daughter. I'll give you two minutes to make the decision, and don't think about leaving the cabin. I've nailed shut the windows. This door is the only way out, and I'll be covering it.” Clicking off her flashlight, she slid on night-vision goggles and took another step away. “I have a second remote for your bomb, and I'll make the choice for you if you don't choose in two minutes. You control your destiny one last time.”

The sound of the door slamming jolted Slade. He stared at it, his mind totally blank for a precious moment. Then he began to quake as he looked down at the devices in his hands. Left, he was dead. Right, Abbey was. If he could believe Cindy.

Lord, there's no choice.

 

Joshua worked to defuse the bomb strapped to Abbey. It had been a while since he'd done this, but Elizabeth knew her uncle kept up all the skills he'd acquired over the years.

“Elizabeth, I've got this covered. I'm almost done. You need to take some of the men and head to the cabin. Abbey will be fine, and I'll be right behind you as soon as I finish up here.”

“Cabin?” Abbey mumbled.

“Your dad is there.” Joshua took his wire cutters out of his pocket while a guard trained a heavy-duty flashlight on the bomb.

“Why?”

Joshua glanced back at Elizabeth, his mouth pinched into a frown.

She stooped down next to her uncle. “I believe you need to know the truth, but remember you have to stay calm. Your dad traded himself for you.”

“No, he can't. She'll kill him. She wants him dead.”

“She? Who?”

“Jake's wife, Cindy. She's crazy. She laughed about how no one knew she could shoot so well or build explosives. Her dad taught her. Kept going on about how Dad killed her father, so she was gonna even the score.”

Elizabeth rose. “I'll do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen.”

Jake stepped forward. “Cindy is behind this?”

Abbey stared up at him, fear mingling with anger. “Yes. She used you. Even Brody. She laughed about that, too.”

Elizabeth motioned to three guards. “Let's go.”

“I want to come.” Jake moved into her path.

“I think you should stay here.”

“No. I know the fastest way to the cabin. Time is of the essence.”

The fury on the man's face convinced Elizabeth she had to take the risk and let him come. “Fine.” But she would keep a sharp eye on him.

With the three security personnel and Jake, Elizabeth left her uncle and the one guard working on defusing the bomb and headed northwest from the lake.

Jake directed them to the west. “The terrain is easier this way.”

Did she make a mistake trusting the man?

Five minutes later Jake ran up an incline. “It's not far.” At the top he pointed toward a dark area with lots of trees.

As Elizabeth hurried down the small rise, an explosion blasted the night.

T
he loud boom rocked Elizabeth as a glow lit the night. Smoke billowed from the tops of the trees—a gray cloud in the midst of the dark. She was too late. She went to her knees. For a few seconds she allowed despair to ravage her.

Slade!

His name screamed through her mind as she scrambled to her feet and rushed into the grove surrounding the cabin. Through the trees, she saw the mound of rubble from the blast.

As she approached, she scanned the area. Where was Cindy? The thought that she was out here somewhere constricted Elizabeth's stomach into a knot. She slowed her step and motioned to the others to spread out and surround the cabin.

Glock in hand, Elizabeth proceeded forward, trying not to think of what she would find. Behind her, she heard more people coming over the last incline. The cavalry. Too late.

At close range, that realization grew even firmer in her mind when she spied the extent of the damage in the clearing. Smoke from the blast hung in the air. There was no
fire that she could see in the dim light, but the destruction was still unmistakable.

Surveying what she could see of the remains reinforced in her mind that Slade couldn't have survived the explosion. Her heart broke. Earlier he'd told her he was in love with her, and she couldn't tell him she was falling in love with him. She'd been too scared to say the words. Now she would never be able to. Tears of fury and overwhelming sadness inundated her, and yet she had no time to cry—not with all that needed to be done.

Joshua disengaged from the sheriff and two of his deputies and came up to her side, settling his hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

No, never again. She started to nod her head but couldn't. Instead she murmured, “No. Why did this happen?”

“I don't know why. We may not know what happened here until morning.”

An eternity to leave Slade buried among the debris while Cindy got away. “We've got to find Cindy.”

“The sheriff's got that covered with his deputies. At least the bomb didn't set off a fire. With these trees surrounding the cabin we would have had a problem.”

“I don't see much silver lining in this situation.” The pressure in her chest trapped each breath in her lungs. She had to force herself to breathe, but it did little to relieve the constriction. “Where's Abbey?”

“I had the guard take her back to the house. She doesn't need to see this.”

No one did. She had to do something, or she would fall apart. “I'm gonna look…” Her throat closed around the last word in the sentence.

She finally holstered her Glock and started toward what was left of the cabin.

“You should stay back,” one of the security guards said.

“The sheriff has the fire department on its way.”

Elizabeth ignored the man. She didn't care. She needed to find Slade. See with her own eyes that he was dead.

 

Abbey screamed at the top of the incline when she crested the mound and looked down on the scene below. A guard, probably the one who was supposed to escort her back to the main house, came up beside the teen and took her arm. She jerked free and raced down to the cabin, not stopping until she saw Elizabeth.

Abbey hugged Elizabeth and sobbed. “He can't be dead. He can't be.”

For a few seconds her arms hung loosely at her sides, numb with grief.
This is why I don't want to love someone. It hurts too much.
But slowly the sounds of Abbey's crying pulled her back to the present, a present where Slade's daughter needed comfort.

“I'm so sorry, Abbey.” She wound her arms around the girl and held her tightly, trying to infuse what solace she could when she had so little.

Suddenly Abbey leaned back, her face wet with tears. “Maybe he hid in the storm cellar.”

For just a second, hope flickered within her. “Storm cellar? Where?”

“Under the cabin.” Abbey whirled around and pointed toward the northeast corner of the place. “We discovered it once when we were exploring the ranch. When my mom was alive. It's kinda creepy, but Dad said it was built to protect the people who lived here from tornadoes. There's a way in from the cabin and from the outside on the east side.”

Elizabeth suppressed her excitement that Slade might
have survived. But she grabbed Abbey's hand and tugged her forward. “Show me.”

Abbey hurried toward the east side of what was left of the cabin. “There.” Pieces of blown-up wood lay haphazardly over the area where the girl pointed.

“I need people over here to help me,” Elizabeth shouted and began tossing the debris away from the spot.

Sheriff McCain, Joshua, Jake and a couple of the guards came to help.

“One of my deputies notified me that he picked up Cindy. He's taken her into custody.”

Elizabeth peered at Jake, and even in the dim light from the various flashlights she could see the anger that tensed his face. She knew the look of betrayal and the pain he would go through because of Cindy. But she couldn't worry about that just now. Finding Slade was all that mattered.

Minutes later the last piece of wood was flung away from the storm cellar's opening. Elizabeth reached out a trembling hand and pulled on the latch.
Please let him be alive, Lord.

Taking her flashlight, she went first down the ladder. The eerie quiet wrapped about her as though it were a shroud. What if he hadn't remembered the cellar? What if…

Her sweeping light as she moved forward in the narrow tunnel fell upon a mound of dirt and debris that collapsed from one wall and part of the ceiling of a small room. Trapped beneath it lay Slade, eyes closed, part of his body still visible.

She rushed forward as Joshua and the sheriff came down into the shelter. Kneeling as close to Slade as possible, she placed her fingers at the side of his neck. The beating of his pulse was an answer to her prayer.
Thank You, Lord.

“He's alive. Let's get him out of here.” Elizabeth tore at the debris that held him captive.

 

In Slade's hospital room hours later, Elizabeth stood back, leaning against the wall while Abbey hugged her father, tears streaming down her face.

“I'm so sorry I left my room to meet Brody. I didn't think anything like this would happen.” She gulped in a deep breath. “I never imagined Cindy…” The rest of her sentence faded into the silence as the teen swiped the wet tracks from her cheeks and stepped back.

“Honey, I thought our place was safe. Although you and I will talk about the fact that you sneaked out of the house to meet a boy, I'm just glad it's over.”

With a few cuts and bruises on his face and one nasty bump on his head, he looked exhausted but wonderfully alive to Elizabeth. The doctors had insisted he stay the rest of the night for observation before they let him go home tomorrow—she glanced at her watch—correction, later this morning.

“Dad, I've never been so scared in my life. I—” Abbey snapped her mouth closed, tears slipping from her eyes again.

Slade took her hand. “Me, too. All I wanted was to make sure you were all right.”

“You—” Abbey paused “—traded yourself for me—I love you, Dad.” She threw her arms around him again and kissed him on the cheek.

“I love you, hon. No matter what.”

Mary came forward. “I don't know about you, Abbey, but I'm ready to go home and get some sleep. Besides, your dad needs to rest because now that everything is back to normal, I intend to have the Christmas open house after all.”

Slade groaned, but a grin plastered his face.

“We'll be back to pick you up.” Abbey gave her father another kiss, then started for the door. She stopped in front of Elizabeth and said, “Thank you for everything you did for me. I'm alive because of you.” Abbey embraced Elizabeth, then left the room.

Elizabeth swung her attention to Slade, knowing he was looking at her. She felt the caress of his gaze deep in the marrow of her bones. She shoved herself from the wall and covered the space between them. “I'd better be going, too.”

He grasped her hand before she turned away. “Don't. Earlier, before your dog—who's getting a big steak, by the way—interrupted us, I told you I love you. When you didn't reply to that, I let it go for the time being. But after what nearly happened tonight, I'm not letting another minute go by without talking to you about how I feel and seeing where we stand. Life's too short. I found that out tonight when I was faced with dying.”

And she'd faced his death tonight, too. She never wanted to go through that again, especially when she hadn't told him how she felt earlier. “I agree.” Cupping her other hand over his, she moved as close to him as possible. “I don't know if I would have said anything earlier, because for the longest time I've been afraid of loving another person after my dad and Bryan. The risk just seemed too much. Then I almost lost you tonight, and I knew it would be far worse to not grab hold of the gift you'd given me for fear of what might or might not happen. Even if my father never calls, I tried and I've forgiven him. I need to move on.”

He started to say something. She placed her finger over his lips. “With you. I love you, Slade Caulder. You're nothing like Bryan, but then I'm not like I was when I married him. I know how important it is to stand up for myself, to
be me, not some vision someone else has of me. Can you accept me as I am?”

His eyes lit with a silver fire. “That's the only way I'd accept you. I don't want you any other way. I love the woman I've gotten to know—strong, independent and caring.”

“What about my job?”

“I'm not going to kid you and say I'd be ecstatic to have you protecting others, putting your life on the line, but we can work something out. God didn't bring you into my life without a plan for us to be together. He'll never abandon me.”

She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “We're two smart people. I think we can come up with a compromise.”