Stolen Moments

Senator James Marshall McCord’s daughter! Seth still couldn’t believe it. As he paddled down the river in the cloud-veiled moonlight and fog, he tried to convince himself that it was some kind of terrible mistake. A case of mistaken identity. A glitch in paperwork. He couldn’t have snatched the wrong woman. His instructions had been too specific.

Exactly. His instructions had been too specific. There was no mistake. He was supposed to abduct the senator’s daughter. The question was why?

Only one person could answer that: Wally.

In Seth’s business, jumping to conclusions was dangerous. So he fought hard not to as the canoe drifted through the fog, the water lapping softly at the side, the air cold and wet with the promise of more snow.

Because right now the conclusion was that he’d been set up. Not just for the kidnapping but for the woman’s murder. And that dishonor was to have been awarded posthumously.

The problem was, he couldn’t believe anyone would go to this kind of trouble to frame him, let alone kill him. He just wasn’t worth it.

But Olivia McCord was, he reminded himself.

And, somehow, he had to keep her safe until he could get her back to her family and straighten this out.

So far he’d been going on gut instinct. He’d known something was wrong at the airstrip, when Wally hadn’t met them and instead had them choppered in to the cabin. At Wally’s cabin, everything had just felt...wrong.

Once the cabin had blown to smithereens—well, his instincts told him that straightening this out wasn’t going to be easy.

Olivia McCord. He studied her dark huddled form at the other end of the canoe as he let the craft drift, the fog rushing around it, the banks blurring by, white with snow, the water deep and dark and cold. The name didn’t suit her. Olivia was too soft a name, too womanly, too feminine sounding. That woman, the one he’d glimpsed in the glare of the car headlights, reminded him too much of Shanna.

But “Levi” fit the spitfire who’d drawn down on him with the loaded pistol. He shook his head, the difference between Shanna and this woman never more clear.

He remembered the day he’d tried to get Shanna to learn to shoot so she could defend herself. She’d finally handed the pistol back to him, more afraid of the gun than anyone who might want to harm her.

Seth blinked. No, Levi was nothing like Shanna when she had a .44 Magnum in her hand. But there was that other side of her. The soft, sexy, definitely female woman in the lavender dress. The one that reminded him of Shanna. The one he had to avoid at all costs.

He swore under his breath. It didn’t matter who Levi reminded him of, what he called her or how he cared to think of her, she was still the Texas senator’s daughter. And Seth Gantry was in a world of hurt.

“Excuse me.”

He blinked at the sound of her voice and realized she was staring at him, the same way he’d been staring at her.

“Sounds like a waterfall,” she pointed out.

He nodded. The roar of rushing water grew louder as the canoe floated through the fog toward it.

“We aren’t going over it, right?” She sounded more annoyed than worried, as if going over a waterfall would be the last straw.

“Don’t worry,” he said, thinking they had a lot more to worry about than simply drowning. “We’ll be getting out pretty soon.”

“Where exactly are we?” She sounded weary, as if some of the fight had gone out of her. He only wished. He had enough to fight without adding her to the list.

“On the Boulder River. In Montana.” He figured he owed her that much.

“Montana?” She made it sound as though he’d taken her to the North Pole. But even Montana was a long way from home for a Texas girl.

“About twenty miles south of Big Timber.” The canoe rounded the bend in the river, the waterfall a thunder ahead of them. He could feel the icy spray of the falls in the air and see it freezing on the rocks along the high bank, frosty-white.

He reached out to grab an eddy with his paddle and the canoe swung into a large washed-out cave in the rocks.

Levi didn’t take any urging; she was out the moment the canoe touched solid ground again. Did she think she was safe now?

“You’re from here, aren’t you.”

It wasn’t a question. Actually, it sounded more like an accusation. And she had to yell it to be heard over the thundering water.

He climbed out beside her, then let the canoe go. He watched until it disappeared into the fog, into the roar of the waterfall. “Yeah, I grew up around here.”

She nodded, studying him with eyes that saw too much. “They’ll know we didn’t go over with the canoe,” she said. She was close enough she didn’t have to yell; too close for comfort. “Now what?”

“Now we steal a vehicle.”

She raised a brow. “Just like that.”

He hoped. Steal a vehicle. Get to a phone. Call Wally. That’s as far as he’d thought it out. But he didn’t want to have to explain his lack of a real plan to this woman, so with an urgency that had nothing to do with whoever might be after them, he led the way out of the rocks, motioning for her to keep quiet. He stayed in the shelter of the pines, sneaking along through the trees and rocks.

The fog thinned as they left the river bottom, but the low-hanging clouds made the air smell wet. It hadn’t started to snow yet, but Seth knew it would. Soon.

At one point, he thought he heard a helicopter again, but he never saw its lights.

The old farmhouse sat back against a wall of tan bluffs and large pines. The house itself was probably still used in the spring, when huge flocks of sheep were herded up into the Absaroka and Beartooth wilderness to graze for the summer. But right now it sat closed up and empty.

Off to its right, a large once-red barn loomed out of the clouds, a black wide hole in the front where the double doors hung open. In the pitch blackness, something glittered dully. A bumper.

The bumper belonged to an ancient faded green International Harvester pickup. From the look of the cow manure and yellowed grass stuck to the tire wells, the truck had been used maybe as recently as early fall.

He watched Levi eye the pickup skeptically and him even more. He tried not to let it hurt his feelings as he popped the hood, hoping the rancher hadn’t taken out the battery for the winter. While looking a little corroded, the battery sat snugly in its corner, held in place with wire. He touched an end of wire between the two terminals and got a spark. They were in business.

Feeling lucky, he slammed the hood and swung around to the passenger side of the pickup to let Levi in. The door groaned as he dragged it open and offered her a seat. She looked cold. He hoped the heater worked.

Going around to the driver’s side, he shrugged out of the backpack, tossed it onto the seat and reached around the steering column, hoping to find the keys in the ignition. His luck wasn’t that good.

He could feel her dubious look as he lay down on his back on the floorboard under the steering column, the door open and his legs hanging out. He was glad for once that he’d picked up a few useful talents in his wayward youth.

As the engine rumbled to life, he shot Levi a glance, hoping to see grudging admiration in her face. Or at least a little respect.

Instead she gave him a look that said If you’re so smart, then why are people trying to kill you? Or maybe he was just thinking that himself.

He slid out of the truck, grousing at what a hard woman she was to impress, but before he could turn to get back in, he felt a boot connect hard with his butt. The unexpected momentum sent him sprawling headfirst onto the barn floor.

Behind him he heard the driver’s side door slam, the motor rev and the clutch pop. As the old truck roared backward out of the barn, he leaped to his feet and ran after it. Blamed woman!

She was frantically searching for first gear when he reached her side of the pickup. Just as he grabbed for the door handle, she slammed down the lock with her elbow. Damn her! She found first gear, popped the clutch again, but her inexperience driving on snow gave him a few seconds. He flung himself over the hood to the passenger side and jumped on the running board as the less-than-great rubber on the tires spun for a moment, then caught. He tried the door, not surprised to find it locked as well.

Clinging to the moving vehicle by the side mirror, he tapped on the glass. Levi glanced over at him. He mouthed the word stop. But she turned back to her driving, getting the pickup rolling along at a pretty good clip as she headed for the main road.

He held onto the mirror, quickly assessing the situation as he saw in the pickup’s headlights the row of low-limbed pine trees coming up on his side of the narrow road. He slammed an elbow against the side window. The window shuddered but didn’t break. He heard a shriek from inside the truck but she made no attempt to slow down. Big surprise.