Trouble in Texas
highlight_author
Barb Han
highlight_reads
16.8K
highlight_chapters
24
Chapter One
Even the slightest movement caused Reese Hayes’s muscles to scream as she tried to rally herself awake and sit up. The sound of muffled voices penetrated the darkness. Did she know one of them? A sense of familiarity was followed by bone-penetrating terror. She had a headache so fierce she feared her brain might splinter.
Questions were hammering against the backs of her eyes. What happened? Where was she? Who was there?
The feeling of icy fingers wrapping around her brain made it next to impossible to think. A fog thicker than a San Francisco morning felt like a weighted blanket, pinning her to a hard, cold concrete floor. Groggy, Reese couldn’t recall the events that had gotten her here...wherever here was.
Trying to move at all was as productive as spitting on a lawn and expecting the grass to stay green over a long summer with no sprinkler. The tight grip of claustrophobia seized the air in her lungs. Understanding the gravity of the situation, Reese mentally pushed aside her panic. She needed to focus—not on the fact that she was in a blacked-out room lying on a hard surface, unable to move without head-piercing pain, but she needed to mentally lock on to something she could control and hold onto for dear life.
Reese concentrated on her breathing. She listened to the voices, trying to make out whom they belonged to or, at the very least, get some information as to why she was there. Any hint of where she was would be welcomed, because she had no clue. She felt like an out-of-focus camera lens trying to zoom in on a target while multiple things were going on. The only thing she remembered was that she’d been outdoors and there’d been some kind of red building in the background, which made no sense under her current conditions. A staticky sound, like when Granny fell asleep without turning off the TV years ago, caused her muscles to tense.
Breathe. The idea was so much easier than the execution. She winced as she tried to feel around and gain her bearings. The voices became more distant until they almost faded completely. She listened for other sounds—a vehicle engine, the sound of water, anything. The wind whipped outside and when she really concentrated, she could hear rain droplets tapping against a windowpane. Good to know there could be an escape route nearby. She tried her best to ignore the nausea that was causing bile to burn the back of her throat. There was nothing she could do about that now.
For a split second, she prayed this wasn’t happening, that this was a nightmare. But the pain confirmed that it was very much real.
Survival instincts kicked in. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She attempted to roll onto her back.
Not much happened. The reason suddenly dawned on her. Her hands were tied behind her. Now that the shroud was lifting, she could feel her body better. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, too. And her senses were sharpening.
She tried to kick and immediately noted that her ankles were bound together. Was there something around that she could use to free her hands?
Squirming, she went headfirst into a wall. So much for ignoring her headache. Undeterred, she tried to feel around but there was nothing except for air behind her.
She heard the whisper of a male voice. He was close.
Reese strained to listen. She couldn’t make out his words. There was nothing familiar about him. Was he the mastermind behind her kidnapping or just a willing accomplice?
What was the motive?
She had no real money to speak of other than a small amount that she’d saved up after working for the past ten years. She didn’t own the kind of business that would warrant an abduction for extortion or revenge purposes. She didn’t work in law enforcement. Her job in the Dallas fashion industry, which she’d started straight out of high school, wouldn’t cause anyone to tie her up and leave her in an abandoned building.
Were there others here besides her? She was afraid to speak. Wouldn’t she have heard something by now if there were others in here? There would have been breathing, or the sound of someone trying to move. Right?
The idea of being alone sent a cold chill racing up her back. She’d been a target. At twenty-eight years old, would she be too old for human trafficking? Since this couldn’t be work-related and she had no idea what she’d been doing when the abduction had taken place, her thoughts snapped to things she’d read about. No one would take her for ransom. Hold on a minute, she might not personally have enough money to garner attention, but her family did. She was a Hayes and her grandfather, who’d been the patriarch of the family for as long as she could remember, had recently passed away.
Reese had been asked to come home to Cider Creek to discuss the ranch. Had she recently inherited boatloads of money? That would certainly draw attention.
Wouldn’t she be the first to know? Or was someone hedging a bet? While her mother was still alive, Reese highly doubted she was about to inherit the ranch. Sometime down the line, she would most likely be given a piece of the family legacy along with her siblings. She had no idea how well the place was doing. She’d left right after high school, just like her brothers and sister. Since their grandfather ran a tight ship and had built the business from scratch, she assumed all was well.
At this point, she guessed this could have to do with a possible inheritance she had yet to learn about, or it came down to being a random occurrence. One might keep her alive. The other could make her dispensable if she created too much of a problem.
At least she was beginning to get some of her wits back. This was good. She could come up with a plan to get herself out of here and to safety. She had no idea where her purse might be, so that was an issue. She always carried two cell phones with her. One for A-list work clients and another for people like suppliers when she was helping put together an event. Those were B-level calls. Her A-list cell phone included VIPs in the industry, fashion magazine editors, top-level models who were hard to book, etcetera.
Most of the time, she had a cell glued to her palm. Where had hers gone? Because her A-list cell kept an almost constant buzz going. Even with an assistant, Reese had to handle the most important clients herself. She did well for herself but she was by no means a millionaire.
Why was it that she could remember what she did for a living, her family and the fact she had two cell phones, but couldn’t for the life of her remember what she’d been doing to end up in a place like this? Trauma?
Reese might have been from the small town of Cider Creek originally, but she’d been living and working in downtown Dallas long enough to take necessary precautions. Safety measures that included locking doors and arming the alarm in her apartment every night. She knew better than to walk alone in an empty parking lot day or night, and had read enough warnings to remember that most abductions happened during the day. She was aware of her surroundings whenever she went out.
The sounds of some kind of commotion broke into her thoughts. A chair scraped across the concrete against the backdrop of mumbled curses and hurried footsteps.
A shot rang out before an engine roared and then tires spit gravel. Suddenly, one set of heavy footsteps filled the space. It was decision time. Reese could yell for help or stay quiet.
“Hello?” The familiar male voice and blast from the past sent momentary shock reverberating through her.
Darren Pierce?
“HELP ME. PLEASE.”
Three words were all it took for time to warp and Darren Pierce to be transported back to the last day of high school. What the hell was Reese Hayes doing here? Even after all these years, he would recognize that voice. The desperation cut straight through his question—and his heart—as he made a beeline toward her.
The jerks who’d been squatting on his property had run off fast. But how had she gotten here?
Before his brain had time to come up with a response, he opened the door to a shed inside the old equipment building that he probably should have torn down years ago. The shutters had been closed and too little light came in from the building. The electricity had been knocked out in the last storm. He flipped on the flashlight app as Reese said his name. He flashed the light against the back wall and saw her. The second his gaze caught hers, all those old feelings surged, along with a threat to derail common sense. She’d walked out on their future, not just her family and the town. But, right now, she was in danger and he couldn’t hold the past against her. Besides, if life had turned out differently, he never would have had the twins. Those girls were everything to him.
Darren closed the distance between them in two strides. He took a knee and ran the light the length of her body.
“Where does it hurt?” he asked.
“The back of my head feels like someone tried to drive a nail in it,” she said in the voice that used to bathe him in warmth and light a dozen fires inside his chest. Now? He shoved aside those thoughts as he took stock of the situation. Her hands were behind her back. Her ankles were bound. The kind of anger that he might have acted on as a teenager if someone set him off pushed to the surface.
Darren immediately began ripping the electrical tape to free her hands. He moved to her feet next and freed them in a matter of seconds. Even in this light, she was still beautiful. Reese had a thick mane of dark-roast hair and espresso-colored eyes to match. Olive skin didn’t hide the flush to her cheeks when she smiled or got nervous. He remembered the way her face flushed a second before their first kiss in the biology lab, when they’d been forced to stay after to help clean up. The teacher disappeared down the hallway and a moment had happened between them that had replayed in his thoughts far too often over the years.
As far as kisses had gone, theirs might have been innocent. Not much more than her cherry lips pressed against his own. But the effect had been a lasting imprint and the kiss he’d compared all others to. Then again, his first would always hold a special place in his heart. He’d written it off as to be expected, rather than go down the route of being irreplaceable.
The minute she could sit up, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held tight. “Thank you.”
“No need for thanks,” he reassured her. She didn’t need to feel indebted to him. He did, however, have a growing list of questions. Her body was trembling—from fear, he expected, causing more anger to surface. Right now, he needed to get her out of there. “Can you walk?”
“I think so,” she said as he lifted her to standing. Her knees almost immediately buckled. He steadied her, looping his arm around her. “Guess that’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be.”
“My horse isn’t far,” he said. He needed to get her out of this building, since he had no idea if those jerks were coming back or if they would bring friends. He’d spooked them away. His initial thought had been poachers. He ran into them from time to time on his small property. Growing up on a cattle ranch, he knew what to look for.
There’d been something different about this group, though.
“I might not be able to make it on my own,” she said, flexing and releasing her fingers a few times, as if she was trying to bring back the blood.
“I already called the law to investigate, but I can’t risk sticking around. We need to go. I can carry you,” he said. “I’ll give you my weapon in case they come back. You keep watch and buy us some time if anyone surprises us.” Normally, he would be fine with sticking around for a fight, but the crown of her head was caked with blood. He wouldn’t have moved her at all if there was a way around it.
She nodded.
He handed over his Colt .45, then scooped her up in his arms, ignoring the electrical currents that vibrated in his body. He chalked up the feeling to muscle memory as he bolted toward the door.
“Do you know what day it is?” he asked as he exited the old equipment building. He’d moved the shed inside to keep it out of the elements while he figured out what to do with both.
“Monday,” she said with a whole lot of uncertainty in her voice. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. At least she had the day of the week right. She knew his name, too, so that was another good sign she might not have a concussion. “What about the month?”
“December,” she said, sounding a little more confident this time.
“Right again,” he said. There was a good chance she would be okay. He would still call in the doctor. “Do you know the people who ran off?”
“No,” she said hesitantly.
“Any idea what that was about?” he asked as he approached the tree line, where he’d left Blaze, his mare.
“I have no clue,” she said as she watched their backs while he sprinted through the woods toward his horse. Working on a horse ranch kept him fit. Plus, there were the extra workouts, which had to be temporarily suspended while he had the twins. He needed to be in shape to chase after those little angels.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, glancing at her and seeing the physical pain that her trying to answer seemed to create. Her face twisted. Even in pain, she was more beautiful than he remembered.
But he also recalled how she’d stomped on his heart and never looked back, so he intended to keep his guard up.
