But Mason stepped out. “She makes a lousy hostage,” Mason snarled. “She’s a good six inches shorter than you, and that means somebody out here has a good chance at a head shot.
Your
head.”
She felt Adam’s arm tense, and he crouched farther down behind her. Maybe Kade or one of the others was behind them, but that still didn’t mean there’d be a clean shot. After all, the bullet could go through Adam and into her.
“I’d make a better human shield,” Mason offered. He shrugged as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I’ll take her place.”
Part of her was touched that Mason would even make the offer, but she didn’t want to place Nate’s brother in even more danger. Apparently neither did Nate because he inched down the steps.
“What a dilemma, Lieutenant,” Adam mocked. He clucked his tongue. “Your brother or your lover. So, which one will it be?”
Oh, mercy. Darcy hadn’t thought this could get any worse, but she’d been wrong. It was sick to force Nate into making a choice like this.
“It’s okay,” Darcy insisted. “I’ll go with him.” Well, she would, but she would also try to escape. She wasn’t about to give up.
“No, you won’t go with him,” Nate said. “If Adam won’t take me, then Mason will go.”
Adam made a sound of amusement. “You’re choosing her over your own blood?”
Nate gave him a look that could have frozen Hades. “Mason’s a cop. Darcy’s a civilian.”
Mason just shrugged again and then nodded.
Adam didn’t respond right away, and she couldn’t see his expression. However, she could feel his muscles tense again. “No deal,” Adam finally said. “She’ll be a lot easier to control than either of you. Besides, Darcy knows if she doesn’t cooperate, I’ll just go after her son again.”
It took a few seconds for those words to sink in, and they didn’t sink in well. How dare this SOB threaten Noah again.
Her hands tightened to fists.
And that was for starters.
The slam of anger created a new jolt of adrenaline, and it wasn’t just her hands that tightened. The rest of her body did, too. Suddenly, she was primed and ready for a fight and needed someplace to aim all this dangerous energy boiling inside her.
She saw the anger—no, make that
rage
—go through Nate’s eyes, and she knew he was within seconds of launching himself at Adam. That couldn’t happen because Adam would shoot him. But maybe there was something she could do to improve Nate’s odds.
Darcy frantically looked around her. There was nothing nearby that she could grab. No shrubs, rocks or weapons. But the car was directly behind them, and Darcy watched. And waited.
Until Adam reached to open the door.
She used every bit of her anger and adrenaline when she drew back her elbow and rammed it into Adam’s ribs. He sputtered out a cough and eased up on his grip just enough to give her some room to maneuver. Darcy lifted her foot, put her weight behind it and punched her heel into his shin.
“Get down!” Nate yelled to her.
Darcy had already started to do just that, but Adam latched on to her hair. The pain shot through her, but she kicked him again. And again. Fighting to get loose from him.
She succeeded.
Darcy fell facedown onto the slick driveway, the rough, wet concrete grating across her knees and forearms. She immediately tried to scramble for cover behind the car.
But it was too late for that.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Adam lift his gun. Take aim.
And he fired.
Chapter Eighteen
Nate felt the searing pain slice through him.
Just like that, his legs gave way, and he had no choice but to drop to the ground.
Hell.
Adam had shot him.
That, and the pain, registered in his mind, and he maneuvered his gun so he could try to protect Darcy. He had to stop Adam from taking her.
Or worse.
The sound of another gunshot let him know that worse could have already happened.
“Darcy?” Nate managed to call out.
She didn’t answer, and he couldn’t see her, but there was the sound of chaos all around him.
Another shot.
Mason shouted something that was drowned out by the thunder, and suddenly there was movement. Footsteps. Some kind of scuffle. A sea of people—FBI agents and the ranch hands. All of them converged on Adam and took him to the ground.
“Darcy?” Nate yelled.
He had to make sure she was safe. He had to see for himself. If Adam had managed to shoot her… But he couldn’t go there. Couldn’t even think it. Because he was responsible for this.
No.
It was more than that.
Nate couldn’t lose her. It was as simple as that. He couldn’t lose her because he loved her.
He would have laughed if it hadn’t been for the god-awful pain searing his left shoulder. It was a really bad time to realize just how he felt about Darcy.
“Nate?” he heard someone say.
He lifted his head and amid that swarm of people, he saw her. Darcy. She had mud on her face and clothes, and he couldn’t tell if she’d been shot. But she was moving.
Or rather, running.
She hurried to him and pulled him into her arms. He saw the blood then and had a moment of rage where he wanted to tear Adam limb from limb.
But then he noticed that the blood was his.
Thank God. Darcy was all right.
“You’re hurt,” she said, her voice shaking almost violently.
Yeah, he was, but that didn’t matter now. “Are you okay?”
“No.” She made a sobbing sound, and her tears slid through the mud on her cheeks. “I’m not okay because you’ve been shot.”
Oh. That. The relief didn’t help with his pain, but it helped with everything else.
Darcy was okay.
Adam hadn’t managed to shoot her, after all.
“Can you stand?” she asked. “I don’t want to wait for an ambulance. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
Nate hated the worry in her eyes. Hated those tears. But he couldn’t refuse her offer. Even he wasn’t too stubborn to refuse a trip to the hospital—though he did want to first make sure that Adam had been neutralized. Nate glanced around, but he couldn’t tell. Because he couldn’t actually see the man who’d just tried to kill him.
However, he did see Mason.
His brother broke from the group and made a beeline for him. “Hurt much?” Mason asked. But he didn’t wait for an answer. With Darcy on one side of him and Mason on the other, they got Nate to his feet and headed toward his SUV.
“What about Adam?” Nate wanted to know.
“Kade is on him.” Mason glanced back at the huddle of activity. “Literally. He’s not going anywhere except to jail.”
Good. One less thing to worry about right now. Later, he would deal with his hatred for this SOB who’d nearly cost Nate everything.
Darcy pressed her hand to his shoulder, right where it was burning like fire, but he guessed she was doing that to stop the blood flow and not to make him wince in pain.
“Are you okay?” Darcy whispered as they hauled Nate onto the backseat of the SUV. Darcy followed right in beside him and crouched on the floor. Mason peeled out of the driveway, the tires of the SUV kicking up gravel and rain.
“I’m okay,” Nate tried.
“Are you really?” she questioned.
Since she sounded very close to losing it, Nate decided to give her some reassurance. He slid his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her to him and kissed her. He wasn’t surprised when it gave him some reassurance, too.
“Can’t be hurt that bad if you can do that to her,” Mason growled.
“I’m not hurt that bad,” Nate verified. And he was almost certain that was true. It was hard to tell through the blistering pain.
“You were shot,” Darcy pointed out. The frantic tone was back in her voice. “Adam could have killed you.”
“He could have killed you, too,” Nate reminded her.
But it was a reminder that cut him right across the heart. He would see Adam in his nightmares. Darcy would, too. And Nate would never forgive Adam for that and for placing Noah and Kimmie in grave danger.
“Adam got some blood on his hands tonight,” Mason said, his attention glued to the wet road. The wipers slashed across the windshield. “I’m the one who found Dent just a few seconds before he died from a gunshot wound to the chest. He told me Adam had called him to come to the ranch and said that he had proof it was Edwin who’d killed Sandra.”
Dent had been stupid to fall for that, but then Adam had probably convinced him that he’d be safe at the ranch with a cop, an FBI agent and a deputy sheriff.
“What about Ramirez’s partner?” Nate asked. “Someone needs to make sure he doesn’t try to help Adam.”
“He can’t help anybody,” Mason assured him. “Right before Adam grabbed Darcy, Kade found Ramirez’s partner—dead.”
Adam, no doubt. With Ramirez and Sandra Dent, that meant Adam had killed at least three, maybe four people. A lot of murder and mayhem all for the sake of money. But the high body count along with the kidnapping charges meant there was no way Adam could escape the death penalty.
“How much longer before we get to the hospital?” Darcy asked.
“Not long,” Mason assured her. “One of the ranch hands is calling ahead so the E.R. will be expecting us.”
She kept her hand pressed over his wound and kept mumbling something. A prayer, he realized.
“The pain’s not that bad,” he lied.
But more of her tears came, anyway, and they were followed by a heart-wrenching sob. “I should have held on to Adam’s arm. I should have kicked him harder.” Darcy shook her head. “I should have done something to stop him from firing that gun.”
“Hey, don’t do this.” Nate touched her chin and lifted it. “I’m the one who planned for us to be bait.”
“The plan worked,” Darcy reminded him, though she had to draw in a deep breath before saying it. “What didn’t work was that I allowed Adam to take me at gunpoint. That’s when things went wrong.”
He could have told her that things went wrong when Adam killed his mother, but Nate didn’t think Darcy would hear the logic. No, she was hurting and worried, and he was the cause of that.
Nate hoped he could also be the cure.
He pulled her back to him for another kiss. And another. And he kept it up until oxygen became a big concern for both of them. But he figured he might need her a little breathless for what he was about to say.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he let her know.
She shook her head, smeared the tears from her cheeks. “Adam isn’t a threat anymore. Nor Ramirez. We’ll be safe.”
Yeah. But that wasn’t where Nate was going with this. “I don’t want to lose you,” he repeated.
Darcy blinked. Shook her head again.
“Part of me will always love Ellie,” he explained. “But I can’t live in the past, and she was my past….”
“We’re here,” Mason announced, and he braked to a screeching halt directly in front of the E.R. door.
Nate choked back the pain that was blurring his vision and gathered his breath. He wanted to finish this now.
“Darcy, will you marry me?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Nothing.
And then the moment was gone.
Everything started to move way too fast. Two medics threw open the SUV’s door and hauled him onto a gurney. Nate got one last glimpse of Darcy’s startled, bleached face before the medics whisked him away.
D
ARCY WAS AFRAID
if she sat down, she’d collapse. So, she kept pacing and waiting. Something she’d been doing for nearly an hour. It felt more like an eternity.
“SAPD is booking Adam right now,” Mason relayed to her from the chair in the corner of the waiting room. He had his feet stretched out in front of him as if he were lounging, and he’d been on and off the phone—mainly on—since they’d arrived at the E.R.
Mason certainly didn’t seem crazy scared, like she did. But then, neither did Dade, who had his shoulder propped against the wall. He, too, was on the phone, with his fiancée, and from the sound of it, both Kayla and Grayson’s wife, Eve, were on their way to the hospital to see Nate. Kade was the only Ryland who showed signs of stress. He was seated, elbows on knees, his face buried in his hands.
“What about Marlene and Edwin?” Darcy asked. Because it occurred to her if Adam had killed Dent, his mother and Ramirez, he might have killed others.
“They’re safe and sound,” Mason answered. “Neither appears to have had anything to do with this. According to Mel, Edwin’s pretty torn up.”
Of course. His son would be facing the death penalty.
“Adam was chatty when he arrived at the sheriff’s office,” Mason went on. “He admitted to trying to make his father look guilty. He wanted the blame placed on anyone but him. Edwin might not be so torn up when he learns that sonny boy was willing to let him take the fall for murder.” Mason’s phone buzzed again.