If she went to jail, it was all over. The nanny, Lily Rose, would eventually start making calls to find out where she was. That would in turn lead the police to Lucas. Then Houston would take him.
But if she pretended to cooperate with Houston, it might buy her some time.
Gabrielle put on her seat belt and drove away from the ranch. Houston put on his belt, too, and then turned to face her.
“I figure you’re up to something,” he accused. “You’re trying to decide the best way to ditch me. That’s not going to happen, Gabrielle. I didn’t come up with this so-called plan to produce a baby, but the child exists now, and I won’t walk away from him.”
Gabrielle knew she should just shut up, but she
couldn’t make herself stop. “You might have to walk away when I prove you orchestrated this. I took a picture of the car that followed me, the one registered to you.”
He stayed quiet a moment. “Then why not just go to the police?”
“I considered it. But then I decided you’d have some kind of explanation, or enough cops in your pocket, that I’d be the one who ended up in jail.”
“I don’t own any cops, and there are several logical explanations. Someone could have used fake license plates. Or maybe the photo isn’t clear and you had your friend run the wrong numbers. Stating the obvious, again, but you could also be lying because you think I’ll give you a big payout for giving birth to Lizzy’s and my baby.”
Gabrielle huffed and took the turn to the farm road that would lead her to the highway. From there, she would take the interstate south, the opposite direction she’d need to go if she had any intentions of driving Houston to see Lucas.
“I didn’t lie,” she insisted, though she knew it wouldn’t do any good.
“How much money did you plan to ask for?” Houston wanted to know.
“None. Because Lucas is not for sale.”
Houston obviously ignored that. “How much? Because you know what? As much as this disgusts me, I’ll give you fifty million for him.”
She made a sound of outrage.
“Seventy-five million,” Houston countered.
That did it. Thankfully, there wasn’t anyone behind her because Gabrielle slammed on her brakes. Her tires squealed in protest, and she brought the car to a jarring
halt amid the fumes and smoke of the rubber burning on the asphalt.
Gabrielle grabbed him by his shirt, gathering up wads of fabric in her fists, to make sure they would have a face-to-face conversation and complete eye contact. “I didn’t have Lucas so I could sell him to you, or anyone else. I had him because I’ve wanted a baby my entire life, and I didn’t want to wait until Mr. Right showed up so I could have a traditional family. Lucas is my family now. Your late wife might be his biological mother, but I carried him for nine months. I gave birth to him.”
She fought it, but the emotion clogged her throat, making her voice a whisper. Tears sprang to her eyes. “He’s my baby, and I won’t let you take him.”
Houston opened his mouth, probably to return verbal fire, but he stopped and glanced behind them. When he didn’t bring his gaze to hers, Gabrielle looked to see what had captured his attention.
It was a black car.
And it had come to a stop about thirty yards behind them.
“Is that the same car that you said was following you, the one that belongs to me?” he asked.
Gabrielle turned fully in the seat so she could get a better look. Not that she needed it.
She recognized the black car with the heavily tinted windows. That tint made it impossible to see the driver or anyone else who might be in the vehicle.
“No. I told you that was a Range Rover,” she clarified. “The one behind us is a different vehicle, but I have seen it before.”
“When and where?” he snapped.
She fought through the fog in her head so she could remember. “The first time was the day I took Lucas home from the hospital.”
“The day you stole him.”
That should have given her another jolt of anger, but she was too concerned about that menacing vehicle behind them. “I didn’t steal him. After the hostage situation ended, the police had completed the DNA test on him, and I figured we were free to go. My mistake was in not telling the police that I used a donor embryo. Needless to say, I wasn’t thinking straight after being held at gunpoint for hours.”
“But you had something to hide,” Houston reminded her. “Because you went on the run.”
“Yes, because of that car back there. I thought it was following me, and I was afraid it might be someone involved with the hostage situation.”
“An accomplice?” he questioned.
She nodded. “I figured that was a strong possibility, so I asked for police protection. They didn’t have the resources to provide a round-the-clock guard, but they did say they would send an officer to patrol my neighborhood. I didn’t think that was enough.”
He made a sound that was possibly an agreement. If he’d lived through the hostage situation as she had, he wouldn’t have thought it was enough, either.
“I lost sight of the car that day,” she continued, “but it reappeared about a week later, outside the hotel where I was staying. That’s when I changed locations.” And why she continued to change.
The fear started to grow. That same fear that’d caused Gabrielle to be on the run for the past six weeks. “Please
tell me you know who’s in that car. Is it someone who works for you?” she asked, hoping.
“No.” And Houston didn’t hesitate, either. He took out his phone.
Gabrielle grabbed his wrist to stop him. “If you call the sheriff, he’ll take me into custody for questioning. Maybe he’ll even arrest me for what the cops think is an illegal surrogacy. If I’m arrested, you’ll never find Lucas.”
Houston volleyed glances between the car and her. The vehicle started to inch its way toward them. “You said you had Lucas hidden safely away?”
“Yes. Of course,” she answered, cautiously.
“Good. Because that’s not one of my vehicles back there, but it could belong to someone connected to the hostage situation.”
Her fear went up another notch, even though she’d already been through this mentally a hundred times. “But why follow me? If they want to eliminate a potential witness, why not just try to kill me?”
“Maybe because they haven’t had the right opportunity. Maybe they wanted to wait to kill you when they figured there would be no one around to see. Like now, for instance, when you’re on a deserted country road.”
Oh, God. He could be right.
“Start driving,” Houston instructed. “But keep your speed down.”
She glanced at the car, nodded and got her own vehicle moving. Thankfully, the black vehicle stayed put.
“If the gunmen did have an accomplice, would he have known that you had a child?” Houston asked her.
Gabrielle didn’t have to think long about that.
“Probably. Lucas was born in the hospital not long after the gunmen stormed the place. After I delivered him, the gunmen made the nurse take him and put him in the nursery because they wanted all the babies in one place.”
She shuddered and bit her bottom lip to keep those nightmarish memories at bay.
Houston cursed and shook his head. “Could this accomplice know that he’s my son?”
She started to say no, but the truth was, Gabrielle had no idea, because she didn’t know who these people following her were. She’d been a lawyer long enough to know that leaks happened. Information could be mis-directed. And people could be bribed.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Houston agreed. “There could be a good reason why the accomplice hasn’t already killed you. They might want you to lead them to Lucas. That way, they have you, Lucas and about a billion dollars they can demand for my son’s ransom.”
Gabrielle’s gaze flew to the rearview mirror.
The black car was coming right at them.
Houston wanted to curse. How the hell had he let this situation come to this?
He should have tackled Gabrielle when she ran from the barn, or else forced her to stay put while he made arrangements to go and get the baby. He damn sure shouldn’t be sitting on a backcountry road with would-be kidnappers who might be ready to pounce.
A billion dollars was lot of motive to get a potential kidnapper to force Gabrielle into revealing Lucas’s location. God knows what they would do to her to get the information they wanted.
Houston laid his phone on the dash so his hands would be free. “Do you have ammunition for this?” he asked, taking the Saturday-night special from the back waist of his jeans.
She gave a shaky nod but didn’t take her eyes off the black car behind them. “In the glove compartment.”
Houston jerked it open and started to load the gun.
“What should I do?” she wanted to know.
“Keep driving.” Not that he thought that would solve their problem. The car would probably continue to follow
them. But anything was better than just sitting there waiting for the worst to happen.
Houston finished loading the gun then he grabbed his phone.
“No!” she insisted. “You can’t call the sheriff. What if he’s in on this? If the DNA information was indeed leaked to the men following us, he might have been the one to do it.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Well, as a minimum, he told your father about Lucas, something you asked him to keep to himself.”
“True. But you don’t know my father. He can be a very persuasive man. He probably convinced the sheriff I was on the verge of suicide or something.”
Sheriff Whitley was decent and honest. But Houston didn’t know his deputies nearly as well. Or any of the people who worked in the sheriff’s office. One of them could be in on this, and Gabrielle was right—a call to the sheriff might be giving yet more information to the wrong people.
“I’ll hold off calling him for now,” Houston let her know. He angled the visor so he could use the attached vanity mirror to keep watch on the car behind them. As expected, it was still there. “But I need to talk to Dale, my foreman.”
“You can trust him?”
“If I couldn’t, he wouldn’t be working for me,” Houston said, assuring her. He scrolled through the names, hit the call button, and Dale answered on the first ring.
“You okay?” his foreman immediately asked.
“For now. But I got a problem and I need your help.
This stays between us, got that? Not a word of it to my father.”
“I understand. What do you need me to do?”
“First, I want you to get two ranch hands, ones you trust. Ones who are good with a gun and can keep a calm head. Have them take one of the trucks and drive out to Farm Road six six one, so they can follow me. I’m in Gabrielle Markham’s blue Ford. She’s the one who just drove away from the ranch. We’ve got someone who’s tailing us, and I’d like a chance to talk to that someone.”
Dale’s breathing was suddenly audible. So was Gabrielle’s, and she gripped on to the steering wheel so hard that she’d likely have bruises. She was scared and had good reason to be.
Hell, he was scared, too.
Not for himself. Not even for her. But for the son he’d just learned he had.
Later, he would have to come to terms with that. Later, he’d celebrate and file away all the emotions and old pain that was now right at the surface. Lizzy and he finally had the baby they’d always wanted, and that baby was at risk.
“Houston, are you okay?” Dale repeated.
“I will be when you get those ranch hands out here. Don’t call Sheriff Whitley yet. Instead, phone my old friend, Jordan Taylor, the security specialist in San Antonio, and have him run the license plate, VSM seven six eight,” he read from the black car that was following them. “And I need you to do one final thing.”
“Just say the word.”
In some ways, this would be the most unsavory request
of all. But it was a necessary one. “Check through the records of the ranch’s vehicles and see who last used the green Range Rover and when.”
“Will do,” Dale assured him. “I’ll call you when I have news, and I’ll get help out to you right away.”
Houston hung up and put the phone on the seat next to him so he could reach it in a hurry.
“Which way should I go?” Gabrielle asked, drawing Houston’s attention back to her. The sign ahead pointed to the turn for the highway.
“Stay on this road,” Houston instructed.
It was deserted, which meant there would be no one around to help if those guys started shooting, but he knew this road like the back of his hand, and Gabrielle and he might need to take one of the old ranch trails if necessary. That would be a last option, but Houston wanted to keep that possibility available.
“If that’s the gunmen’s accomplice back there and he’s really after Lucas, then he won’t kill us,” he tried to assure Gabrielle.
Not intentionally, anyway. But such an accomplice would likely want to keep Gabrielle alive only so they could get Lucas’s location.
Which she probably wouldn’t give up.
So they could indeed kill her, and then figure out another way to get the child. Houston was expendable, too, because they could always get the money from his father, who was wealthy in his own right. But Houston didn’t want to let things get that far.
Best to stop this now, so he could go about seeing his son.
Gabrielle sucked in her breath. “They’re speeding up.”
Because Houston had his attention nailed to the other vehicle, he noticed it immediately.
Gabrielle sped up, too.
That was all right for now; but within two miles or so, there were some deep curves, and Houston didn’t want her losing control of the car and slamming into the thick trees that lined the road.
Houston got the gun ready, just in case. He watched the black car come closer. And closer. It was closing in on them fast.
“Brace yourself,” Houston warned Gabrielle.
But the words had hardly left his mouth when the black car bashed into their rear bumper. The jolt tossed them forward, a fierce jerking motion that caused his teeth to hit together. He tried to steady himself and kept a tight grip on the gun.
“You’ll have to slow down ahead,” Houston warned her.
The car rammed into them again.
Houston heard the scream bubble up in Gabrielle’s throat, but she clamped on to her lip to stop the full sound. She was obviously terrified. So was he. If they both died right here, right now, what would happen to his son?
Gabrielle did as he asked and slowed down, which only made the next jolt even harder. The black car was bigger, and obviously, the driver wasn’t concerned about damage, because he bashed into them again. And again.
This time though, the car didn’t fall back to launch
another assault. It stayed pressed right against their bumper, and the driver sped up.
The SOB was trying to make them crash. And with those curves ahead, he just might succeed.
“Hit your brakes.” Houston had to yell over the sound of the metal grinding against metal.
Gabrielle did, and that kicked up a curtain of smoke and sparks. But they still didn’t stop. The black car kept propelling them forward, even though it was now a slow, creeping speed.
Houston quickly thought of the road that lay ahead, and just on the other side of the upcoming curve, there was a ranch trail to the right. It was wide enough for Gabrielle to turn onto safely.
He hoped.
Then, maybe she could get far enough ahead on the trail so that they could stop and try to protect themselves. If he could get some cover, like an outcropping of rocks or a cluster of trees, he’d be able to make a stand. Against who or what exactly, he didn’t know, and that bothered him. Houston had no idea if he was up against one or many, because it was hard to see through the tint on the windshield. It was also possible that some of the car’s occupants could have ducked down and out of view.
The smoke from the brakes and tires was so thick now that he could hardly see the car behind them, but he could feel it. The driver was trying to push them to the right, off the road. And for now, Houston would use that to his advantage.
“Turn onto that trail about fifty yards away,” he told Gabrielle. “It’s on the right.”
She shook her head. “I don’t see it.”
“You will,” he promised.
Houston wanted to remind her that his ranch hands were on the way, that they’d soon have backup. But backup might not arrive in time to do any good. Thankfully, there’d be enough tire treadmarks on the road that his men wouldn’t have any trouble finding them.
“There,” Houston told her, when he spotted the trail.
Since Gabrielle’s foot was already jammed onto the brake pedal, all she had to do was turn the steering wheel. The driver of the other car must have realized what was happening, because he made one last attempt to slam into them. Gabrielle took her foot off the brakes, and the momentum shot them forward on the dirt-and-gravel path.
“Hit the gas,” Houston instructed.
She did, and what was left of the tires kicked up rocks and gravel and spewed the debris back toward the black car. Houston saw their windshield crack, the broken safety glass webbing across the entire surface. However, what he still couldn’t see was the driver or any gunmen who might also be in the vehicle.
Gabrielle kept going, tearing her way through the trail that was little more than a path. Tree branches slapped against the car, and rocks battered like gunfire against the undercarriage.
“They stopped,” Houston mumbled. But he held his breath, waiting. Because maybe it was just temporary.
“Are they coming?” Gabrielle asked. She had her attention nailed to the trail ahead. Good thing, too, because she had to jerk the steering wheel hard to the left when a deer darted right in front of them.
Houston stared at the black car. “No. Stop up ahead by those rocks.”
“You want me to
stop?
Are you crazy? We’re getting away from them.”
“Yeah. And if we do that, it just means they’ll try this again. And again. It’s been my experience that people get pretty tenacious when there’s a lot of money involved.”
“Right,” she finally answered, and pumped her brakes to bring the car to a stop.
Once the dust settled, Houston had no trouble seeing the black car. It sat there like a jungle cat ready to attack. But Houston was ready, too. He opened the glove compartment so he could get to the extra ammunition, and aimed the gun at the vehicle.
No one got out. They just sat there. And the moments crawled by.
When Houston’s lungs began to ache, he realized he was holding his breath, so he forced himself to relax. He was a good shot—had even won some shooting competitions in his teens—and if necessary, he would kill these attackers if they came after Gabrielle and him.
But they didn’t come.
The black car’s engine roared to life, and the driver threw the vehicle into Reverse. He headed off the trail fast, and back toward the road.
“What should we do?” Gabrielle asked. Her voice was strained and practically soundless.
Houston considered going after them, but he had a better idea. He grabbed his phone and called Dale.
“How far out are the ranch hands?” Houston asked his foreman.
“They left a good five minutes ago.”
Then they’d be here soon. “Tell them to follow the black car I told you about. And they’d better not lose sight of it. I want to know where that driver goes. If the car stops anywhere, I want to know about it.” He didn’t want these SOBs going anywhere near Lucas.
Wherever that was.
“Hang on the line, and I’ll tell them,” Dale assured him.
Houston heard Dale make the call and give the ranch hands the instructions to follow. Good. The driver of that black car wouldn’t know that these men worked for Houston, and maybe, just maybe, he would soon have answers.
“You’re sure you have Lucas someplace safe?” Houston asked Gabrielle.
She nodded. “No one except the nanny and I know where he is.”
Gabrielle sounded confident enough, but Houston wasn’t willing to take that chance. If the car went near where Lucas could be, he’d have the ranch hands stop them, one way or another.
“I called your friend, Jordan Taylor,” Dale said, when he came back on the line with Houston. “The plates on that black car are bogus.”
That wasn’t a surprise. It was clear the driver had criminal intent on his mind, and he wouldn’t want to advertise his real identity.
“And I checked the computer records on the ranch’s vehicles. It only took a couple of seconds, because they’re all linked to a central GPS.”
That had been Dale’s idea, so he would know when
all the vehicles were scheduled for maintenance, and which were available for use at any given moment.
“And?” Houston said, when Dale didn’t continue.
Beside him, Gabrielle’s breath was gusting. She was mumbling what sounded like a prayer. But Houston kept his attention nailed to their surroundings, in case the black car returned.
“The green Range Rover’s only been taken out once in the past month, and that was three days ago,” Dale finally continued. But the man hesitated again.
Hell. Someone had used it.
And whoever it was had used it to follow Gabrielle, just as she’d said. What Houston wanted to know now was why the person had done that.
“And?” Houston snarled. “Who took the Range Rover off the ranch?”
Dale cleared his throat. “Your father.”