Cedar Cove Collection

“Come with me,” she said, leading him into the kitchen. Christie poured a cup of coffee and then spooned in sugar, stirring it briskly before she handed him the mug.

“What’s going on?” he asked again, ignoring the coffee.

Bobby began to explain, but his version was confusing, and Christie’s attempted corrections didn’t help, and then Teri added her voice to the melee.

“Hey!” Bruce whistled loudly. “One at a time.” He pointed at Bobby. “You first.”

Bobby simply shook his head. “I can’t. All I know is that Teri’s safe. I’m sorry this happened to Rachel because of me.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Teri said, reaching for her husband’s hand. She chafed his cold fingers.

Finally Teri described the events of the night, insofar as she knew them.

“I’m going to the sheriff’s,” Bruce said. He got up immediately and tore out of the house.

“I am, too,” Christie said, following Bruce.

“We’ll wait here,” Teri shouted after them. Sheriff Davis had said he’d call the house, which was a good reason to stay. Besides, Teri doubted she and Bobby could contribute much to the investigation at the moment. The sheriff would have more questions for them later.

As soon as they were alone, Bobby stood and walked into the living room.

“Bobby!” Teri said, hurrying after him.

Then she was in his arms, and he was holding her and kissing her as if he never intended to stop. “I can’t do this anymore,” he whispered between kisses.

“Do what?”

“Risk losing you and our baby.”

“Bobby, we can’t let Vladimir blackmail you into giving up your title.”

“I’ll throw the match,” he declared. “I don’t care. Winning isn’t important anymore. I won’t put you at risk again.”

“Bobby, please.”

“No, Teri, the decision’s already been made. I’m going to play Vladimir. That’s what he wants. That’s what this whole kidnapping was about. He wanted to force my hand. And he did.”

Thirty-Five

Cold and shivering inside the sheriff’s office, Rachel clutched the thin blanket a deputy had draped over her shoulders. James had been immediately transported to Harrison Hospital. Another deputy had talked to him briefly en route.

“I didn’t really see anything,” Rachel reiterated. “The men—there were two of them—swarmed the car when James drove into the service station. It was dark and rainy and everything happened really fast.” Gathering the blanket more closely around her, she said, “They dragged me out of the car and blindfolded me, then threw me in the backseat.”

The sheriff was taping her as she spoke. “At what point did they realize you weren’t the person they wanted?” he asked.

Rachel couldn’t be sure. All she remembered was that there’d been a flurry of raised, angry voices. “They weren’t speaking English,” she said. “Russian, maybe. That’s what James told me later.” She bit her lip, trying to recall any details that might help. “When they did speak English, they had quite heavy accents.”

“Did you talk to them?” the sheriff asked next.

“No.” Rachel doubted she could’ve uttered a single word. Terror had gripped her from the start. James was the one who’d put up a struggle.

“Is he okay?” she asked urgently. “James? Bobby Polgar’s driver?”

“I haven’t received an update yet,” the sheriff told her.

“He tried to protect me,” she said, feeling bad that she hadn’t thought to ask about him sooner. Although she’d been blindfolded, she’d heard their captors hitting James, heard the thud of fists on bone, his grunts of pain. One of the kidnappers had been driving the car, the other riding shotgun. James had been bound and blindfolded, too, and shoved onto the floor in the back, at her feet. She’d been aware of the two men arguing, and then it had apparently been decided that she and James would be set free. Soon after that, they’d been pushed out, close to the freeway. She’d torn off her blindfold and helped release James from his bonds. He’d used his cell phone and called Bobby’s house—the call Sheriff Davis had taken.

She’d lost her phone in the scuffle at the garage and, in retrospect, she was astonished that he still had his. She supposed it went to show that these kidnappers were amateurs—thugs and bumblers.

James had been so calm and professional, whereas she shook so badly that, despite his injuries, he’d had to support her as they stumbled to the restaurant. They weren’t at the Dairy Queen more than two minutes when the patrol car pulled up. One of the deputies called the aid car for James; the other escorted Rachel to the station.

A commotion erupted outside the sheriff’s office, and Rachel recognized Bruce’s voice.

“Bruce.” She jumped up from the chair and looked pleadingly at Sheriff Davis. “Can I speak to him? Please, I need to see him.”

The sheriff nodded. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Take it easy, now.”

When she opened the door, she saw Bruce in the hallway, arguing with a deputy. “You don’t understand,” he was saying with barely controlled impatience. “I don’t—”

“Bruce.”

Their eyes locked, and without another word they were in each other’s arms. His embrace was almost suffocating, but Rachel didn’t care. She needed to be held and comforted and loved. She’d been so frightened, and that whole time, the one person she’d thought about was Bruce. Not Nate. Bruce. With a dirty rag covering her eyes, sprawled in the back of a speeding car, her life in danger—that was when she’d known beyond any doubt that she loved him.

Why hadn’t she figured it out earlier? Nate was charming, she was fond of him, but he wasn’t the man who’d moved into her mind and refused to leave. The man she thought about when she might have been on the way to her death.

Now she needed to tell both men her feelings….

“Are you hurt?” Bruce stepped back just far enough to study her. With gentle hands, he brushed the hair from her bruised forehead and gazed deeply into her eyes. Whatever he was searching for he must have found, because he drew her back into his embrace with a sigh of relief.

“Thank God you’re all right,” he whispered over and over again. “Thank God.”

In Bruce’s arms, the trembling subsided, the bruises stopped hurting and she finally began to feel warm.

“Tell me what happened,” he said, still holding her close.

She told him what she knew but the “why” of it remained a mystery.

“They were after Teri,” she explained.

“Yes,” he said. “They botched the kidnapping when they took you by mistake.”

She’d worked out that this whole mess had to do with Bobby, but what the thugs had hoped to achieve she could only speculate. Right now, none of that mattered. Because Bruce was with her.

He continued to hold her, murmuring encouragement as they stood in that drafty hallway.

It suddenly occurred to Rachel to ask, “How come you’re here?”

“I phoned Teri. You weren’t answering your cell and I thought she might know where you were.” She felt his shrug. “I wanted to talk to you about … something, but this isn’t the time.”