Danica Winters - Mr Taken

“What took you so long?” she asked as he climbed down from the tractor and laid the chains over his shoulder.

He didn’t know what was worse: the heaviness of the chains that dug into his skin or the disgust that tore through him from her gaze. He hadn’t been gone more than a couple of minutes, yet he understood more than anyone that when there was an emergency, time seemed to slow down. Minutes turned into millennia, and those were the kinds of minutes which had a way of driving a person to madness.

He smiled, hoping some of the contempt she must have been feeling for him would dissipate. “I guess I could have put the tractor in third gear, but the way I see it, that dog ain’t going nowhere.”

She shook her head and turned away from him. Yeah, she hated him. She looked back and reached out. “Hand me the chain. We need to get the dog out of here before it gets hypothermic.”

“Here,” he said, handing her one end of the chain. “Hook this to the tractor’s bucket. I’ll get the guard.”

She took the chain and did as he instructed while he made his way over to the cattle guard and peered in at the little dog. It looked up at him and whimpered. The sound made his gut ache and he wrapped the chain around the steel so that when he raised the bucket on the machine, it would lift the gate straight up and away from the dog. He’d have to be careful to avoid hurting the animal. Something like this could get a little hairy. One little slip, one weak link in the chain, and everything could go to hell in a handbasket in just a few seconds.

He secured the chain and made his way back to the tractor. In one smooth, slow motion he raised the tractor’s bucket. The chain clinked and pulled taut, and he motioned to Whitney. “Ready?”

She gave him a thumbs-up.

He lifted the bucket higher, and the tractor shifted slightly as it fought to bring up the heavy grate that was frozen to the ground. With a pop of ice and the metallic twang, the grate pried loose from the concrete and the tractor hoisted it into the air. He rolled the machine back a few feet, just to be safe in case the chain broke. No one would get hurt, not on his watch.

He ran over to the dog and lifted it up from its den of ice. The pup was shivering and panting with fear. He ran his fingers down the animal, trying to reassure the terrified creature.

Whitney stood beside him and looked at him for a moment and smiled. There was an unexpected warmth in her eyes as she looked at him and then down at the dog. As he sent her a soft smile, she looked away—almost too quickly, as though she was avoiding his gaze. She reached down and opened up the buttons of her Western-style red shirt. “Here, let me have her,” she said, motioning for the animal.

“You’re a good dog,” he said, handing her over to Whitney.

Ever so carefully, as though she were handling a fragile Fabergé egg, she moved the dog against her skin; but not before he caught a glimpse of her red bra, a red that perfectly matched the color of her plaid shirt. His mind instinctively moved to thoughts of what rested beneath her jeans. She was probably the kind of woman who always wore matching underwear. He closed his eyes as the image of her standing in front of him in only her lingerie flashed through his mind. His body coursed to life.

It was just lust. That was all this was. Or maybe it was just that she seemed so far out of his league that he couldn’t help wanting her.

“Hey,” she said, pulling him from his thoughts.

“Hmm?” he asked, trying to look at anything but the little spot of exposed flesh of her stomach just above the dog where, if she moved just right, he was sure he could have seen more of her forbidden bra.

“Want a beer?” She pointed to something resting in the snow not far from the other side of the cattle guard.

He jumped over the gaping trench and leaned down to take a closer look. There, sitting in the fresh snow, was a green glass Heineken bottle. Jammed into the opening was a cloth, and inside was liquid. Picking it up, he pulled the cloth out and took a quick sniff. The pungent, chemical-laced aroma of gas cut through his senses like a knife.

He stuffed the rag back into the bottle and stared at the thing in his hand for a moment as Whitney came over to stand by his side.

He shouldn’t have touched it. He never should have picked the dang thing up. Now his fingerprints were all over it.

“What is it?” she asked.

He glanced over at her and contemplated telling her the truth, but he didn’t want to get her upset over something that may turn out to be nothing. Yet he couldn’t keep the truth from her forever. It couldn’t be helped.

“Unfortunately, it ain’t beer,” he said, lifting it a bit higher. “What it is is what we call a Molotov cocktail.”

Her jaw dropped and she moved to grab it, but he pulled it away. If he was right, her fingerprints didn’t need to be anywhere near this thing.

“You can’t be serious. Why...? Who?” She stared at the bottle, but let her hands drop to her sides.

His thoughts moved to the guy in the blue truck. He hadn’t seen the man drop anything out of the window, but that bottle hadn’t been there long. Or maybe Colter was wrong and someone else had come, chickened out and left the flammable grenade as a warning.

Either way, it looked as though someone had planned to act against the ranch. More, someone had wanted to hurt the place and the ones he loved.

Chapter Three

Whitney wasn’t the kind who got scared easily, but seeing that bottle in Colter’s hand had made every hair on her body stand on end. There were any number of people, thanks to the news of the deaths and the kidnapping, who had a bone to pick with Dunrovin; yet it just didn’t make sense to her that someone would come here with the intention of making things worse. Why throw a bomb? Why harm those who worked here? None of the people who currently worked or lived on the ranch were guilty of any wrongdoing.

Well, at least any wrongdoing when it came to the ranch. She couldn’t think about her past, not when it came to this. She bit the inside of her cheek as she mindlessly petted the dog that was safely tucked into her shirt.

“Do you think we should call the police?” she asked, tilting her chin in the direction of the dangerous object.

Colter sighed. “We probably should, but I’m not sure that having any more police out to the ranch is a great idea right now. Maybe this is nothing. Maybe it was just something someone had in the back of their pickup and it just bounced out as they drove over the cattle guard. Maybe it’s just spare gas or something, you know.”

His feeble attempt to make her feel better didn’t work. She could hear the lie in his voice. They both knew all too well this wasn’t just some innocuous thing. This was someone’s failed effort to cause damage.

Yet to a certain degree she agreed with him. The last thing the place needed was more negative press. Even though his brother Wyatt was a deputy for the local sheriff’s office, it didn’t mean they would be able to keep this thing under wraps. If they called 911, everyone in the county would hear about the latest development in the melodrama that the ranch was becoming. But if they didn’t inform the police, there wouldn’t be a record of it, and if something else happened...

She swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat.

Nothing else would happen. They had gotten the person responsible for the murders. They might have had a bad track record, and a bit of a target on their backs, but that didn’t mean the entire world wanted to take them down. Maybe it was just someone’s spare gas.

“Is there oil in it?” she asked, motioning to the green Heineken bottle.

He glanced down at the bottle and swirled it around, the green glass looking darker, almost as if the liquid inside had a slight red hue. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”