Desert Ice Daddy by Marton, Dana (pocket ebook reader .TXT) 📕

for now if we kept our distance from the police.” He slid to the ground. “We don’t want the kidnappers to see us anywhere near the cops.”

“Where are we going?” She followed him to the back where he was unloading some serious gear: two large duffel bags.

He grabbed the first-aid kit from the backseat and shoved it into one of them. “Back to the boulders.”

“Are we going to spend the night out here? What’s in those bags?” she asked.

“Supplies I usually carry when I ride out to camp. I put them in this morning—I didn’t even know why I was putting them in at the time.” He shook his head.

Camping. He did that now and then, rode out to Hell’s Porch for days at a time. Flint had told her that. She wondered if he missed the times he’d spent with his grandfather in the desert, although he’d always been tight-lipped about those years. He’d never forgiven his grandfather for the way the old sheik had treated his mother.

“So, how well do you know this place?”

“I know some of it.” He swung the bags over his shoulders. “It’s too vast to be thoroughly known by any one man.”

She could certainly believe that. “Won’t the police come to the boulders, too?” she asked after a moment, surprised that they weren’t there already. Probably still following the pickups.

“Probably, but I want to take another look at the tracks. We need to be going in some direction, might as well follow one of the tracks and at least have a chance of ending up somewhere close to Christopher.”

That made sense. She could almost forgive him for keeping her from Christopher back there. Almost. “I’ll carry something, too,” she offered.

“The money.”

He handed her the briefcases, and she grabbed them, ignoring when their fingers brushed together.

She couldn’t think of anything else on the way back to the boulders but of the shootout, of Christopher, of how close they’d been and how scared he must be. She didn’t cry. Energy expended on crying would be much better used for fighting for her son when they reached him again.

“He probably wasn’t in the first pickup,” Akeem said once they reached the boulders and he’d dropped the bags. He was walking around in a wide circle. “They knew a chopper would take off after that.”

“And I doubt he was in the last,” she said. “They knew we would be staying here, waiting.”

“The first truck went this way.” He pointed. “The last pickup drove that way.”

“And the one that went the way we came passed right by us. It didn’t have Christopher.”

“Right.” Akeem nodded. “And it wasn’t driven by Jake Kenner. I have a feeling he would stick with the boy since Christopher knows him. He’d have the easiest time getting Christopher to do what they wanted.”

She bit her lips at that. “So that leaves us with two sets of tracks.” After the fight she’d been looking for nothing else but a chance to find Christopher’s shoe prints in the dust. Now she registered the shells and the bullet holes drilled into the boulders all around them.

And the blood. But not where Christopher had stood. She gave God thanks for that.

She nudged a spent shell with the tip of her shoe as the realization came, and she took her time digesting it, accepting it. Akeem hadn’t been holding her back from Christopher. He’d been saving her life.

“We have a fifty-fifty chance. Either this way, or that.” He circled back and hooked his bags over his shoulders again. “You choose. But we better get going before the cops get here.”

HER ARMS WERE BREAKING, but Taylor wouldn’t have let go of the briefcases for anything. They meant Christopher’s life.

Akeem carried the duffel bags without complaint, dragging a large sagebrush behind them to cover their tracks. If the cops found them, they could mess up the exchange once again. She didn’t think she would get another chance from the kidnappers.

As if by unspoken agreement, they talked about things unrelated to the current situation. Not that she could shut her mind off from obsessing over every second of the failed exchange, or over what would happen when the next call came in.

“So you like it at Diamondback?” Akeem asked. “Settling in?”

“I don’t want to get too settled in. I want to get my own place eventually, but I’m loving it.”

“Flint loves having you there.”

“Flint wants to wrap me up in cotton and keep me in a velvet box.” She gave a wry smile. She couldn’t blame her brother, really. She’d messed up with her marriage pretty badly. But the solution was not to trade Gary’s obsessive need to control her for Flint’s obsessive protection, or any other man’s. Her goal was to make it on her own, stand on her own two feet and show the world, herself and her son that she was done being a victim. Taylor McKade was a strong, independent woman.

“Nothing wrong with Flint wanting to take care of you and look out for you,” Akeem was saying.

“Spoken like a true sheik.”

He gave her an unreadable look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How many wives did your grandfather keep locked away in his harem?” she teased.

“I’m not my grandfather.” His voice had an edge all of a sudden.

It made her do a double take. Touchy subject? “I know. I didn’t mean that.” She stopped and set the briefcases down to rest her arms for a second. “You never talk about him.”

He shrugged and dropped the sagebrush. They were coming into an area that was all stone and little dirt, the track barely visible this close up. Nobody would be able to pick it out from a helicopter. They were safe unless the police brought dogs. “He’s dead.” His voice was toneless.

“Flint says you refused your inheritance.”

He said nothing to that, just swung both duffel bags over his right shoulder and picked up the two briefcases with the left and began walking again.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“He didn’t have a harem,” he