Bounty Hunter's Woman

Chapter 2

The police had already gone through Priscilla’s flat with a fine-tooth comb and released the place back to her landlord. Thanks to a call from Buck Wyatt, Donovan was able to get a spare key. He took one step inside and knew that at least two people were involved in her kidnapping.

And they hadn’t taken her without a struggle.

Staring at the broken lamp and an overturned dining room chair, Donovan clenched his teeth on the sudden angry curse that rose to his tongue. Bastards. He didn’t know Priscilla, didn’t know any more about her than her brother had told him, but he knew all he needed to know. She might be spoiled and headstrong, but she was still an innocent woman who’d done nothing wrong except inherit a ranch from a distant relative she’d never met. She had, no doubt, been terrified when she realized that she’d opened her door to an enemy, but the lady had put up a fight. And it was that gumption that just might save her life.

The clock was ticking, and every instinct Donovan had urged him to hurry. Forty-eight hours would pass in the blink of an eye, and he was wasting precious time. But he knew from past cases that success depended on doing his homework. If he was going to find Priscilla Wyatt, he had to first know how her kidnappers had gotten her out of the apartment without someone noticing.

Walking over to the window that overlooked the street below, he frowned. The neighborhood that Priscilla lived in was in an older section of London that was a mix of well-known restaurants, popular pubs and shops at street level, with old-fashioned flats above. Considering that, Donovan doubted that the streets emptied before midnight. Which meant, he thought grimly, that Priscilla’s kidnappers hadn’t walked out of her flat with her like they were going out to dinner. So how the hell had they managed to get her out of her flat without anyone seeing them?

He turned to study the living room again, and only just then noticed what looked like a line of fine powder on the floor. Puzzled, he squatted down to examine it and realized that the powder was actually shattered glass from the lamp. And the reason it was in a neat line was because when the lamp broke, it had, apparently, shattered at the edge of a rug. A rug which was, he thought in growing fury, no longer there.

They’d rolled her up in a damn rug and carried her out like a dead body. He didn’t care how gutsy she was; she must have been scared out of her mind.

Livid, he promised himself he was going to make the bastards pay for this. But first he had to find them.

His lean face carved in stern lines, he exited the apartment and made sure he locked the dead bolt. Then he went to work.

The neighborhood was quaint and full of atmosphere. The kind of place women loved, Donovan acknowledged…and a bitch to search. With the restaurants and pubs open late, people came and went at all hours of the day and night. God knew how many of them lived in the area or witnessed Priscilla’s kidnapping without even knowing it.

Muttering a curse, he headed for the pub across the street. The bar had wide, paned windows that overlooked the street and Priscilla’s flat. Surely a waitress or bartender or one of the regulars must have seen something.

But when he went inside, he was met with nothing but one negative response after another. Frustrated, he moved to the restaurant next door, then the bookstore on the corner and every other business up and down both sides of the street for three blocks. And the answer was always the same. No one had seen two men or anyone else moving a rug.

Walking out of the pizzeria two doors down from Priscilla’s flat, he swore softly as he realized that darkness had fallen while he was canvassing the street and he still didn’t have any leads to go on. And time was running out for Priscilla Wyatt.

It wasn’t often that he was at his wit’s end, and it infuriated him. He was better than this! His competitors claimed he had the nose of a bloodhound. So who the hell had taken Priscilla Wyatt?

Scowling, he stared down the street and watched the crowded sidewalks begin to empty as friends met friends for drinks or dinner and disappeared inside. The twilight was deeper now, the darkness nearly complete, and he realized that this was just about the time Priscilla must have been kidnapped. No wonder no one had noticed her kidnapping. The only streetlights were on the distant corners, and the people who were on the street were hurrying to get where they were going, not paying attention to anything but their own business.

Caught up in his musings, it was several long moments before he noticed the woman coming toward him, walking her dog. He started to look past her, only to glance at her sharply. Had she come by at the same time yesterday? People generally walked their dogs at the same time every day, didn’t they? Could she have seen Priscilla’s kidnappers in the dark and not even realized it? If she walked by without anyone else seeing her, the police wouldn’t have questioned her because they had no idea she existed. Even now, twenty-four hours later, the woman probably didn’t know that a kidnapping had taken place.

Striding toward her, he eyed her dog warily. A Doberman. Great, he thought irritably. He was usually good with dogs, but Dobermans could be damn protective. The last one he’d tangled with had taken a bite out of his hide. He wasn’t going there again.

“Nice dog,” he told the woman as he drew closer. “Does he bite?”

“When I tell him to,” she shot back. Stopping in her tracks, she tightened her grip on the leash. Just that easily, the dog was on guard. His golden brown eyes focused unblinkingly on Donovan, he growled low in his throat, daring him to take so much as one more step toward him and his mistress.

“Look, I’m not a threat to you,” he told the woman. “I just need to ask you some questions. A woman was kidnapped here last night, and her family has hired me to find her.”

“I didn’t hear anything about a kidnapping,” she replied, eyeing him suspiciously.

“The police didn’t learn about it until late last night, and it didn’t make the news until this morning,” he explained.

Studying him, she frowned. “I was running late this morning,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t heard the news all day.”

“Did you, by any chance, happen to walk this way last night?”

She didn’t commit one way or the other. Instead, she just lifted a brow and said, “And if I did?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he assured her. “I just need to know if you saw two men moving a rug out of the flat across the street.”

She didn’t say a word, but even in the darkness, he saw surprise flicker in her eyes. “So you did see something,” he said in satisfaction. “How many men were there? Two? Three? Did you get a look at them? What were they driving?” When she hesitated, he knew she didn’t want to get involved. It was too late for that. “There was a woman rolled up in that rug,” he said. “If the circumstances had been different, it could have been you. Are you really going to stand there and say nothing?”

For a moment, he thought she actually wasn’t going to answer him. Then tears misted her eyes. “I didn’t realize,” she whispered, horrified. “It just looked like a rolled up rug—”

“She’s still alive,” he told her quietly. “But only for forty-eight hours.”

“There were two men, both just a little taller than me. I didn’t get a good look at their faces, but they were both very thin, almost gaunt.”

“And their hair?”

“One was bald. And the other had a military cut. I think it was blonde.”

Donovan frowned. Military? That was a twist he hadn’t expected. “What were they driving?”

“A black van,” she answered promptly. “I didn’t get the plate number, but they didn’t go very far. Just over to Reynolds Street.”

Already trying to figure out how he was going to find two skinny, short bastards in a wrecked van, it was several seconds before her words registered. “What?” he said sharply. “How do you know that?”

“Because I saw the same van pulling out of an alley at Reynolds and Third when Precious and I were on our way home. Or at least I thought it was the same van,” she added. “The streetlight on the corner was out, so I couldn’t see very well.”

“Reynolds and Third? You’re sure?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “C’mon. I’ll show you. Though I don’t know what good it will do. The van pulled out of the alley and disappeared down the street.”

“That’s okay,” he replied. “It’s a place to start. Let’s go.”

Ten minutes later, they reached Reynolds and Third. “The van came out of that alley,” she said quietly, nodding toward the dark, narrow alley that disappeared between two buildings halfway down the street.

Studying the shadowy entrance to the alley, Donovan frowned. For the moment, he wasn’t concerned with where the van had gone. Instead, he found it curious that Priscilla Wyatt’s kidnappers had been in the alley to begin with. They hadn’t, in all likelihood, driven into the alley by chance. So what the devil had they gone in there for?

His mind jumping with several interesting possibilities, he said, ‘I’ll check it out. Thanks for your help.”

Tightening her grip on the Doberman’s leash, his companion grimaced. “I didn’t do much. I hope it helps.”

Wishing him good-night, she and Precious continued their walk, but as Donovan strolled down the street to the entrance to the alley and peered in, his attention was on the upstairs apartments that overlooked the dark, narrow cavern. There was only one window lit, and a ragged curtain was doing its best to block the faint glimmer he saw in the darkness. What was up there?

Later, Donovan lost track of how long he stood deep in the shadows, watching, waiting for some sign that Priscilla Wyatt was in the apartment halfway down the alley. He knew there was a good possibility that he was wasting precious time while the kidnappers spirited Priscilla farther and farther from London. With every passing second, the trail that led to her whereabouts could be growing colder. But he didn’t think so.

Something didn’t smell right, and it wasn’t just the rotting garbage in the trash can ten steps away from where he stood in the alley. It was the setup, he decided. The whole damn setup stank.

Lost in his musings, he almost didn’t see the movement of the ragged curtain shrouding the lit window. Then he saw a man peer out into the darkness…a man with a military haircut.

Bingo.

An hour later, Donovan parked in the dark alley and soundlessly shut the driver’s door of the small van he’d rented. Upstairs, there was no sign of the man he’d seen earlier, but the light was still on. If luck was with him—and he was feeling damn lucky!—Priscilla Wyatt was upstairs, waiting to be rescued, and her rescuers didn’t have a clue their bird was about to fly the coop with a little help from him. There was nothing he liked better than surprises, he thought with a grin.

Checking to make sure his pistol was loaded, he quietly slipped into the building stairwell after picking the lock to the steel door that opened onto the alley. Standing in the darkness, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the deep shadows that engulfed him. From upstairs, the muffled sound of voices drifted down to him, but none of them were feminine. Donovan was far too good a tracker to be sidelined by that. Her kidnappers might be feeling pretty cocky right now, but unless they were complete novices, they weren’t going to take any chances with her. Twenty-four hours after her kidnapping, they would still be watching her like a hawk so she couldn’t give them away.

The question now, he thought pensively as he started up the stairs in the dark, was…how the hell was he going to get her out of the flat without getting them both killed? Her captors would be armed and had the advantage of knowing the layout of the flat. He didn’t even know if Priscilla was bound, if he would have to carry her, if she would get hysterical when the bullets started flying. And there was no way to know until he burst through the door.

He was taking a hell of a risk, he silently acknowledged…and grinned wickedly at the thought. He’d always been a daredevil, which was what made him damn good at his job. If Priscilla Wyatt’s kidnappers thought they had pulled a fast one on the authorities and the Wyatts, they were in for a rude awakening. They were toast. They just didn’t know it yet.

Priscilla had never been so terrified in her life. The two thugs who had kidnapped her had removed the duct tape from her wrists and ankles, but they had other ways of keeping her captive. They’d made it clear that if she even moved toward the door or made so much as a sound, they would have one of her sisters or her brother killed.

And they could do it, she thought. They were ruthless—and in touch with someone in the States who was furious that her kidnapping hadn’t drawn the rest of the family away from the ranch to London, as planned. Her captors informed her that the orders they were given were crystal clear—her siblings would be burying her if they didn’t leave the ranch within forty-eight hours.

Her blood turning cold at the thought, she knew she had to get out of there. But her captors were in constant touch with their boss in the States. If she tried to escape, one of her siblings could be dead within the hour. How could she live with that on her conscience?

Suddenly furious, she decided right then and there that she wasn’t going to take their abuse anymore. She was in charge of her own destiny, and she wasn’t going to sit around on her hands and wait to die or let the bastards kill her family. She had to trust that Buck and her two future brothers-in-law, John and Hunter, would do everything they could to protect her sisters. In the meantime, she had to take care of herself.

Which meant, she decided resolutely, that she would kill her captors if she had to in order to keep herself and her family safe. The question was…how was she going to put them out of commission when they watched her like a hawk?

Lost in her musings, she didn’t notice her captors whispering among themselves until one of them asked, “Are you hungry?”

It was a simple question, but she only eyed them suspiciously. Of course she was hungry! She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, when one of the men had left and returned a short while later with some pastries and a small bag of groceries. She’d been warned then that the pastries would be the only meal of the day. Leaving the flat was too risky, so the groceries they’d bought would be saved for tomorrow. So why were they asking her now if she was hungry? What kind of game were they playing? If they thought they were going to surprise her into saying something so they would have a reason to kill Katherine or Elizabeth or Buck, they were wasting their time. She wasn’t saying a word.

“Who cares if she’s hungry or not,” the other kidnapper snapped. “My stomach feels like my throat’s been cut, and I’m not waiting until tomorrow to eat.” Sneering at Priscilla, he said, “Cook us something to eat, bitch. And don’t even think about trying anything fishy. We’ve already got orders to kill you tomorrow. We’d just as soon do it now as then, so don’t push your luck.”

Nodding silently, she kept her eyes down as she headed for the kitchen so he wouldn’t see the anger she knew was reflected there. If she acted meek and afraid, maybe they would drop their guard and relax enough for her to put something in their food. Surely there had to be some kind of pesticide or drain cleaner under the sink. Something…

Her eyes suddenly landed on the prescription bottle that one of her captors had set on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. She’d seen him take a couple of pills right after breakfast. What was he taking? Was it something that she could drug both men with?

Fighting the urge to hurry to the sink to check out the prescription, she reminded herself that her every move was being watched. So she headed for the refrigerator, instead, for the groceries that Baldy had deposited there, bag and all, that morning after he’d gone shopping.

Her heart pounding, she set the groceries on the kitchen counter and cast a quick glance at the prescription bottle that was less than three feet away. She only saw two words before she turned her attention back to the food, but it was enough. Blood pressure.

Elated, she almost laughed out loud. Yes! If she gave them enough, it would lower their blood pressure and knock them out, wouldn’t it? She could mix it with…roast beef?! Swallowing a groan, she blinked back tears. What was she supposed to do with canned roast beef and potatoes? At least there was tea, too. She could make it extra strong, then lace it liberally with the medication. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one she had. First, however, she had to get her hands on the medication without anyone noticing.

The opportunity came much quicker than she’d anticipated. She’d just found a saucepan and a can opener when what sounded like a shot exploded on the dark street down below.

“What the hell!” her bald captor swore and ran to the bedroom to check the view from there.

“What is it?” the other man yelled to his partner as he took up a position at the living room window. “Was that a shot? I can’t see anything for the fog.”

Taking advantage of the distraction, Priscilla grabbed the prescription bottle, popped the lid and sent up a silent prayer of thanks when she saw the bottle was nearly full. Hurriedly pouring pills into her hand, she pocketed them, capped the bottle and returned it to the windowsill in four seconds flat.

“I think a car backfired,” Baldy said in disgust. “It must have been amplified by the fog.”

Afraid to look over her shoulder to see if either one of the men had seen her, she tried to act as casual as possible when she found a can opener and opened the roast beef; but it wasn’t easy. Her heart was slamming against her ribs, her fingers were trembling and she was sure they only had to look into her eyes to know that she was up to something. She needn’t have worried, however. Her captors were too concerned with what was going on downstairs on the street to pay any attention to her.

Then, with no warning, there was a knock at the door.

Priscilla whirled to face her captor by the living room window, only to find him glaring at her like she was somehow responsible for the knock at the door. Pale, she took a step back. His expression furious, he made a sharp silencing motion, then strode over to the door.

The visitor knocked again, this time louder. “Mr. Smith? Are you in there?”

“You’ve got the wrong address,” Baldy growled through the closed door. “Go away.”

If the man on the other side of the door heard him, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he knocked loudly on the door again and shouted, “Mr. Smith? I’ve got a package for you. The postman delivered it to my place by mistake this afternoon.”

“I told you you’ve got the wrong place! Get the hell away from my door or—”

He never had a chance to finish the threat. A split second later, the door was kicked open and he found himself confronting a tall man with a ski mask pulled down over his face. Before Baldy could even think to yell for his partner for help, he was shocked with a stun gun and went down.

Donovan stepped over the man and took in the rest of the flat in a single, all-encompassing glance. Priscilla was in the kitchen and was pale as a ghost as her eyes met his. He didn’t have time to reassure her—not when the second kidnapper was already charging toward him, reaching for his gun. Donovan had two seconds, at the most. Rushing him before he could pull his gun completely free, Donovan hit him with the stun gun and sent him to the floor.