“He called,” Xavier said, looking more than a little anxious now. “Told me you were in trouble, that you might come here. I’ve been looking out for you. Come, we have to go.”
“Where?”
He took Lauren’s arm and she didn’t fight him, but she looked over her shoulder the entire time that she half-walked, half-tripped along behind him.
“You okay?” he called back to her. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m…” She didn’t try to finish the thought. It was taking massive effort just to concentrate on keeping up with him and trying to figure out what to do next. “Accident,” she said. “I’m fine.”
She was huffing a little, and her vision was a tiny bit blurred, her head swimming a little as they pushed through another set of doors and found themselves back outside again. She looked back one last time, but most of her view of the interior of the airport lounge was blocked now. She had no idea where Melissa was. She swung her gaze around, then closed her eyes as her vision swam. She really needed to just sit down. Five minutes. Collect herself, take a quick stock of herself and this quickly changing situation.
“This way,” Xavier said, pulling her farther away from the main building.
Lauren wasn’t sure if she should just blindly follow the guy, but he didn’t have a gun. Which, at the moment, made him one of the good guys.
She heard a whine and a rumble. Xavier slowed and pulled her closer to the side of the hangar building they had just gotten to. “Sounds like he’s coming in.”
Jake? Here? Could it be true? She felt both intense relief and heightened fear. She didn’t need him anywhere in the vicinity of Melissa and her big gun. “Where is the—”
Xavier turned her just then and she saw the lit runway and the lights flashing up in the sky, just beyond the end of it.
Jake
.
She was keenly aware that her ten minutes were close to expiring. And anyone with eyes could tell Melissa what direction the crazy, banged-up woman had gone. She felt like any second it was all going to go terribly wrong. Jake landing, Melissa and her gun out there somewhere, Xavier with his hopeful, happy face, glad to play Good Samaritan. It was all too surreal…and too terrifyingly real.
“Just get on the ground,” she murmured under her breath. “Can we get any closer to where he’s going to end up? How soon can we take off again?” Once she was in the air, away from crazy Melissa, then she could breathe, then she’d be able to think straight.
“Not right away, but it’s okay, he’ll make things okay. Jake is good at fixing things.”
Can he make us all bulletproof
, she wanted to say, but forced her thoughts in a more positive direction. With another quick glance over her shoulder, she urged Xavier to keep moving.
They rounded the front of one of the hangars just as the small plane touched down.
“This way,” Xavier said. “He’ll come to find me as soon as he taxis over.”
Lauren saw Jake’s plane rolling toward another hangar about three down from where they were and picked up her pace until she left Xavier behind. She was running now, wanting nothing more than for that door to open and to see him step out of the hatch, but all she could think was “Melissa-gun, Melissa-gun,” and wanted him out of harm’s way as fast as was possible.
She had no idea how far behind her Xavier was now. Her gaze was fixed on that door. The plane had rolled to a stop long before she got there, and the hatch was opening just as she half-stumbled, half-ran across the final stretch of tarmac. The stairs took a lifetime and a half to lower, but when they did, she was already on the steps when Jake appeared in the open doorway.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, and a split second later, she was pulled tightly into his arms.
And that was when she burst into tears.
“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said, her face muffled against his chest. “I was fine. Handling it. Under control.”
Jake hugged her tightly. “I know you did. What happened? What in the hell happened?” He leaned back just enough to tip her face up to his. “Oh, baby, who did this?”
“That bad?” she asked.
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, so heartfelt it made her tear up all over again. “Whoever hurt you is going to feel the wrath of hell—”
“It’s Melissa, Jake. It’s—a long story.” Reality came crashing back in and she struggled in his arms until she could look behind her, across the tarmac, toward the airport buildings.
Xavier was standing by the open hangar door, waving. Jake lifted a hand in a salute back at him. “Melissa,” he said, not sounding entirely shocked. “Why the hell is she doing this?”
“We can’t be standing here like this, Jake,” Lauren said, the tension springing right back and making her feel sick all over again. “She’ll come after me. She has a gun, Jake.” She shuddered involuntarily. “A really big gun.”
Jake pulled her up the last step and they ducked down into the body of the plane.
“When can we take off? When can we leave? We shouldn’t just sit here like this. How in the world did you know where I was?”
He sat and pulled her down into his lap, stroking her hair. “Your phone. Ruby Jean and I alternated calling every other minute and at some point, your line opened up. I overheard you talking. I didn’t know who it was. Did she run the Jeep off the road?”
“Jake, I want to tell you everything, but we really need to get out of here.” Her heart was still pounding so hard it made it hard to breathe, to think. She wanted them as far away from crazy Melissa and her lethal bullets as she could get.”
“We will, we will, but—”
“So, everyone knows? About the Jeep?” She let her chin drop, then raised it again as more reality slammed into her still scrambled brain. “My mother! We have to—”
“She knows about the accident, and I had Ruby Jean call her and tell her I was flying out here. We didn’t know much more than that, but she knows, she’s fine, she—”
“No, she’s in danger, Jake. From Arlen. Melissa said they were just using her, using me now, too, for political gain, but then he was planning to make my mom vanish like he did his two other wives.”
“What?”
“I know, she’s like, totally insane. I don’t even know if that’s true, but we can’t take any chances. I want my mom as far away from Arlen as possible until all this is settled.”
“I heard you say your mom was in danger, on the phone. Ruby Jean is getting her away from the house, from Arlen. But…you really think that Arlen—”
“I don’t know what the hell I think. My head feels like it’s split half in two.”
“We should get you checked out, we—”
“We need to get the hell out of here and away from Melissa. I can tell you everything I know while we fly back to Cedar Springs. We can fly back, right? I mean, is the school equipped for night landings?”
“Yes, the strip is lit and the guys know I’m coming back. They’ll handle what needs handling, but—”
She climbed out of his lap. “I’ll feel better when we get in the air.”
Jake shifted his weight to the armrest and turned Lauren toward him, rubbing his hands up her arms. “You’re safe now. We’ll get back to Cedar Springs, call over to the clinic, see who’s on call tonight and get you looked at.”
“I’ll be okay.” She touched his face. The past few hours had been so surreal, it was hard to reckon all she’d just been through with where she was now. With Jake, in his plane, safe. Not tied up in the front of a car with some crazy person pointing a gun at her head. “I just need to get away from this, from here, make sure my mother is okay. Jake, this is serious, dead serious; we have to stop them.”
“We will. I’ll put a call in to O’Hara—he’s the police officer who responded to the scene of your accident—”
“I’m so sorry about your Jeep, I never even saw—”
“Shhh,” he said, pulling her close, between his legs so he could slide his hands around to her back. “Please. I was terrified, Lauren, when we couldn’t find you. Then we found out you’d packed everything and left your room but hadn’t checked out. I didn’t know what to think or where to look. Scared the ever-loving shit out of me. I couldn’t think straight—”
“I was coming to you,” she said, feeling immensely warmed by his concern, hating that he’d been put in that position. “I couldn’t stay in that room. It was giving me the creeps that someone had been there. That someone was Melissa, by the way.”
Jake stood and they crouched a little inside the small confines of the plane as he pulled her into his arms. “I thought I’d lost you,” he said, his gaze boring into hers. “I’ve never felt so—the thought of losing you—”
“You didn’t,” she said. “And I’m not going anywhere.” She framed his face with her hands and told him the one thing she was absolutely clear about. “I’m here, Jake. I’m staying here. I’m in. You were right. This is more. And I want it. I want you.”
His hands shook as he covered hers with his own, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her like a man taking his last breath. She knew just how he felt. Only here, in his arms, in this moment, did the terror subside. But for now, that moment had to end, and it did, all too soon. She pulled from his arms, tugging on his hands. “Come on, get me back home. There’s unfinished business. And I’m worried—really worried—about my mom.”
“I’ll put a call in to RJ. She and your mom should be up at my house. They’re okay, Lauren. But we’ll call; we’ll make sure. You can talk to her.”
Lauren finally started to feel like maybe they were really going to turn this around, figure it out, take action. And be safe. “I feel like I’m in the middle of some kind of nightmare.”
Jake smiled and gently pulled her bruised face in for another kiss. This one gentler, but no less profound in what it did to her. “We’ll get through it together,” he murmured, kissing the corners of her mouth, then her lips, so softly, then the corners of her eyes. So reverently, it made her eyes sting with tears.
He pushed the hair from her face. “We’re a team, you and me. Nothing is taking us down. We’ll take care of our loved ones. It’s all going to be okay. Better than okay. We’re going to get this resolved, then go back to being bloody amazing.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling stupidly shaky, but she’d hit the wall. “Can we go home now?”
“Home. I really like the sound of that.”
Unfortunately, the sound that immediately followed that pronouncement was the one made by the cocking of a gun.
J
ake immediately pulled Lauren behind him as he spun to face the intruder. “Melissa, hey,” he said, striving for conversational ease, but he was having a really hard time getting past the gun she was holding. “Let’s talk and get this worked out, okay? Why don’t you put the gun down—”
“Why don’t you all come down here,” a voice called from outside the plane.
Melissa turned, the gun waving dangerously in her hand. Jake started to make his move, but then she said, “Arlen! How did you know—”
“All of you,” he said, causing Melissa to frown and Jake to hold off. At least for the moment.
“But…I did this for you. For us. Don’t be upset with me.”
“Now,” he repeated, his voice cold and hard. “Don’t try my patience.”
Jake crouched down to spy out of one of the side porthole windows. Arlen stood on the tarmac, not too far from what appeared to be one of the resort’s private helicopters. But Jake was too busy looking at the sleek black gun in Arlen’s hand to spend much time wondering who had flown him in on the chopper.
He looked back to Melissa, who had all but forgotten about the two of them. Lauren tugged his hand and jerked her head toward Melissa, clearly thinking the same thing he was. He wasn’t sure what value Melissa was to Arlen, but if he could get to her, that was at least one less gun pointed in their direction. He squeezed Lauren’s hand back, gave her a brief nod, then started to make his move, only to have Melissa trot on down the stairs in that exact same instant. Dammit.
Jake steered clear of the open doorway, but both he and Lauren crouched down out of direct view but still able to witness the reunion through the side windows. There was no hug, no display of real affection. Melissa stopped a few feet short of Arlen, gun by her side. Arlen’s however, was not.
“She was figuring it out,” Melissa said. “They had the papers. About the fire. She was never going to stop digging. I just wanted her to go back and leave us alone.”
“Hand me the gun, Melissa,” Arlen said calmly, coldly.
“But—aren’t we going to do something about them? We’re a team. I’ve done everything for you. I even got Lauren to promise to help you with your campaign when she gets back to Washington.”
Arlen looked at her, his expression one of barely concealed disgust. “Now, why in the world would she be inclined to do that?”
“So we don’t hurt Charlene.”
Jake flashed a look at Lauren, whose poor, banged up face had gone pale again. “It’s okay,” he said quietly to her, even though, at that moment, things were far from okay. Every time Arlen or Melissa spoke, he had more questions and fewer answers.
“Why in the hell would I hurt Charlene?”
Melissa looked incredulous. “Because that’s the only way—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish her statement. Arlen reached out, snagged her elbow, and bodily yanked her next to his side. He didn’t threaten her directly with the gun, but he was holding her quite close, too close to hear what was being said unfortunately. But from the steely cold look in Arlen’s eyes, to the almost bug-eyed fear that was on Melissa’s, he didn’t imagine it was a welcome home, honey kind of thing.
When he was finished with his short, but apparently very effective, lecture, he took Melissa’s gun and directed her to stand off to one side. Then he looked back at the plane. “I ask the both of you to exit the plane now, if you would. There has been a terrible misunderstanding. I’m certain we can work everything out.” He lowered both hands, each holding a gun. “She’s of no harm to you, Lauren. And Jake, neither Lauren nor her mother are in any kind of jeopardy from me.”
“You’ll have to excuse me, Arlen,” Jake called out, “if I don’t take your word for that. You’re still packing some serious firepower there. Put the guns down, and we might be able to have a conversation. Lauren has been terrorized for the past several hours by your less-than-stable secretary. You both have a lot to answer for. I’m—we’re—more than willing to have a discussion, but it will have to take place back in Cedar Springs. Lauren needs her injuries attended to. So, if you’ll be so kind as to back away from the plane, we’ll be leaving now.”
Arlen lifted the guns. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I can’t allow these misunderstandings to compound themselves. We need to come to an understanding here and now. If you don’t mind.”
Jake turned to Lauren. “I want you to get in the far seat there,” he said, nodding to the seat behind her. “Strap in. I’m going to work my way closer to the hatch—”
“Jake—”
“—and try to crank the stairs up. If I can’t do that, then we’ll have to create some kind of diversion so I can get to the cockpit and get this bird moving.”
“With the stairs down?”
“We don’t have to take off, we just have to move. In a game of chicken, Arlen and Melissa are going to lose.”
“But what if they start shooting? What will keep him from just running toward the stairs and boarding?”
Jake could see she was holding it together at this point with a slim thread, and he couldn’t blame her. He had no idea what had gone on the past several hours, but none of it had been good, that much he knew. He banked the fury that had been simmering since he’d discovered who her captor was. Just looking at Lauren, normally so direct and in control, looking so beaten and scared…it made him want to do more than play chicken with a Cessna. “We’re going to get out of here.”
Lauren nodded but didn’t immediately move to take a seat. Jake started to move closer to the door.
“I’m losing my patience here, Mr. McKenna,” Arlen said.
“Wait,” Lauren whispered. “I’ll distract them; you get into the cockpit and start this baby up while I crank up the stairs. Just show me where the thingie is and how to pull them up.”
“The thingie? Lauren, we can’t risk—”
“I’m risking everything here tonight. My own safety and those of the people I care most for. My mother.” She captured his face in her hands. “And you. I can’t stand that you’re in this, that you’re in danger, because of me.”
“We’re in this together,” he told her, never more serious.
“Then prepare to run to the cockpit. On the count of three.”
“Lauren, wait, what are you—”
She pushed past him and moved directly into their line of vision—and target range. She motioned behind her back for him to move past her into the cockpit. “Arlen, I have no idea what has been going on. I assure you, my concern was, and is, only for the well-being of my mother. Melissa has some sort of delusional fixation on you. I get that; you get that. But I need to get back to Cedar Springs. We’ll talk there.”
Jake smacked the wheel next to the door and dove for the cockpit. Lauren immediately stepped clear of the door and began cranking it.
“He’s coming at us,” Lauren called as Jake rapidly went through the steps necessary to start the engines. He desperately wanted to look over his shoulder, but they hadn’t a second to spare if they wanted to pull this off. He couldn’t believe how strong Lauren was, how mentally tough. Well, that wasn’t true. He knew she was tough, but this…He did look over his shoulder then, in a quick glance, and saw her cranking the wheel with all her might to pull those stairs up, and allowed himself a brief smile. That was his woman, right there.
“He’s getting closer and the damn stairs are only a few feet up—”
“Hold it right there!” came yet another voice—a woman’s voice—from somewhere beyond Arlen. This was followed, not by the sound of a gun being cocked…but by a shotgun being ratcheted into firing position.
Lauren’s hands froze momentarily on the wheel as Jake spun around to see what was going on now.
“Mom?” Lauren said, a moment later.
“I have no idea how to use this thing,” Charlene yelled, “so that makes me plenty dangerous.”
“I do.” Ruby Jean stepped forward, took the hunting rifle from Charlene’s hands, and quite capably shouldered it. “You might want to drop the firepower, Mayor. And, by the way, I quit.”
Jake abandoned his seat and moved quickly to lower the steps again as Arlen shoved one gun into his pocket, grabbed Melissa by the hair, and pulled her in front of him, arm around her throat, pushing the other gun against her temple. “Not so quickly there, Ms. McKenna.”
“This is so not good,” Jake murmured.
“How in the hell did they get here?” Lauren asked.
“I’m not the only one in the family who can fly a plane,” Jake said, looking at his sister with a mixture of pride and abject terror. Now the whole family was in the line of fire. Great. Just great.
“The police have been summoned, Arlen,” Charlene informed him. “Sergeant O’Hara contacted the Holden office before we took off. They’ll be here any moment. In fact—”
Just then sirens sounded in the distance. Ruby Jean stepped forward and Jake’s heart leaped in his throat.
“Seriously. Put the gun down,” RJ demanded. “Both of them. You’re outnumbered. And, frankly, at this particular moment, given what she did to Lauren, none of us will be too heartbroken if you put a bullet in Melissa’s head.”
“RJ—” he warned, just as Lauren said, “Maybe not a bullet, but if he roughs her up a little…” She looked at Jake and he knew right then he was never letting her go. “I’m just saying.”
“Marry me,” he said.
She smiled at him as the police cars rolled in. He didn’t know how big the department was in Holden, but it looked like they’d sent pretty much the entire force. Police swarmed; guns were put down. Arlen’s hands went up in the air, and Melissa tried to claim she was a victim. Ruby Jean handed over the shotgun, and she and Charlene made sure Melissa was taken into custody, as well.
Jake turned back to Lauren. “Not exactly the way I’d intended to propose.”
Her eyes widened a little. “You intended to propose?”
“Eventually. When you’d gotten used to the idea of me being around forever.”
“I might be able to get used to that.”
Ruby Jean and Charlene stormed up the stairs just then and everything became a series of hugs, kisses, apologies, and revelations. The whole story came out later at the Holden police station. Not from Arlen, who’d called for his lawyer immediately and been close-mouthed since. Charlene contacted hers, too. To seek an annulment. Ruby Jean, Lauren, and Jake provided what little they knew. Melissa filled in most of the gaps, when she wasn’t alternately screaming invectives at Arlen and sobbing to the police about how horribly she’d been used.
“And to think, I used to avoid family drama,” Jake said as he and Lauren were dropped off, close to daybreak, back at the airstrip. Ruby Jean and Charlene were flying back in the other school plane. They weren’t really sure, as yet, what parts of Melissa’s claims were true, and what might be part of the delusional fantasy she’d constructed about her future life together with Arlen.
Whether or not Arlen had actually had a hand in his first wife’s death or his apparent ex-wife’s disappearance—Melissa had tried to hunt her down only to discover she didn’t apparently still exist—one thing had emerged from his personal secretary’s furious rants, and that was that Arlen had made a career out of choosing women for his own personal gain. Which generally translated into political gain, as that was how he gauged himself as a success. According to Melissa, he’d targeted Charlene the moment he’d met her in Florida, quite pleased when everything had fallen in line so swiftly. Lauren had been a side benefit he’d been happy to exploit, as well.
Arlen wasn’t corroborating any of that, of course; that would take months in court and some very expensive lawyers to sort out. But Melissa had known enough damning facts and truths from how he’d initially romanced Charlene that Charlene could corroborate, to make it pretty clear she at least had that much correct.
Charlene and Lauren had spent a long time sequestered in a room alone together at the police station, talking and coming to terms with what had happened. Jake didn’t know what exactly had been said, but when they emerged, the two were holding each other tightly and were very clearly a united front.
Jake reached across the space between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, taking Lauren’s hand before revving up the engines, when it would be harder to talk. She’d cleaned up a little at the police station, more than a little alarmed upon first seeing herself and just how banged up she was. Jake still thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“So…you give my heart-stoppingly romantic proposal any additional thought?” he asked. “Given as how we’ve had so much free time to consider it.” He’d been teasing, trying to lighten the bit of despondency he sensed after she and Charlene parted so RJ would have someone with her on the flight back. Lauren hated that her mom was suffering from the pain of betrayal. She was humiliated and embarrassed, too, and it would take some time before she worked her way through that, but Jake had promised Lauren they’d all be there for her. He suspected with the way the town had taken to Charlene, they’d be behind her, too, especially once the whole story came out. If it hadn’t already reached home already.
“Actually,” Lauren responded quite seriously, though she was smiling that crooked smile while she said it, “thinking about that proposal—and it was very romantic to me, by the way—is what’s getting me through this endlessly long night. Morning,” she added, noting that the sun was starting to come up.
“Lauren, don’t feel you have to—”
She leaned over and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him toward her for a kiss. Even despite the burn marks on her face from the air bag explosion, and the rapidly discoloring contusion on her temple, she kissed him passionately and fully, pouring more into that single connection than he’d felt from her ever before. Which was saying a hell of a damn lot.
“I am feeling so many things right now, and it’s going to take a long while for all of us to sort through this.” She framed his face with her hand. “But one thing I’m very, very clear on, is that I want to be beside you while I figure it out. So…if you’ll have me, dramatic family issues, no future prospects, and looking like roadkill, then I want a shot at being with you, too. How we do it, I don’t care. However long it takes for us to take whatever the next steps are…I want to figure all of that out with you.”