Page 13 of The Risk

He needed time outside today. To think. He’d tried to get Chantal to talk to him after the police interviews that day. He’d hiked over to the Fieldses' place that evening—to check on her—but she had put him off a bit. Watched him warily, mostly.

Her hair had been down. Long and straight and bright red, it reached halfway to her waist. He hadn’t realized it was that long or thick or... beautiful. It had shone in the light. His fingers, roughened from years of ranch work, had flexed—he’d wished he could bury his fingers in that hair. To see if it was as soft as it looked. Or if it would burn a man like fire.

She’d just stared at him on her father’s front porch, as she told him her parents were sleeping. And was there something specific he wanted that she could get for him?

It had slammed right into him as he’d just looked at her.

Yes. There was something he’d wanted, all right. It was damned specific, too.

Her.

The woman had been wearing shortie cotton pajamas in lilac that revealed long, toned legs and dipped real low up top. She hadn’t been wearing a bra, either. Chantal was not a young girl any longer. She was most definitely a woman. And that was obvious. He’d almost stopped breathing for a moment there.

He stood there next to the fence, remembering just how she had looked. And what he should probably do next, where she was concerned.

Yes, she was the sexiest woman he’d seen in a long time—but she was the kind of woman who deserved a far better kind of man than him. Maybe Gunn, even. His brother was the minister at the church Chantal went to; he thought Genesis had said Chantal went with her every Sunday, when Genesis took Calvin to Sunday school and stuff.

And... his mother had said before that Gunn had taken Chantal with him to some denominational get-togethers for the local Hope Life ministers. Of course Gunn had. Chantal was right there, and they’d known her forever, and she liked his brother just fine.

Maybe they would end up dating.

That soured his stomach a little. Just thinking about it.

He yanked the wire free of the fence line, hard enough to cut his hand a little. He was just wiping off the blood when he heard a woman scream.

From just over the small hill that looked out over the Fieldses' main pasture.

Gene just ran.

There would only be four possible women out here now. Three of them would be his sisters. The fourth?—

He saw brilliant red hair, and he knew.

Chantal.

10

Gene had his pistol;he’d carried it with him since the day those bastards had tried to take his sisters fifteen years ago. He only had a handful of bullets. And where the men had Chantal now, he risked hitting her.

He knew how to handle himself with a gun. Charlie had shown him years ago. Showed him more than his own father had—which was saying something, as George Hiller Senior’s boys all knew how to handle a weapon better than most in this county.

He stayed right where he was until one of the guys came outside again. They’d dragged her off—right in front of him. Thank God they hadn’t seen Gene out there. Gene stayed low, behind a pile of scrap wood his own brother Grady had left there when he’d repaired the door on the old cabin a month ago, as the guy drove off.

Thank God.

That left just one inside.

Gene peered through the window, checking where the asshole was again.

The man had a gun, and he was saying something to Chantal. Looming over her. Taunting her. It was on the bastard’s face.

Gene would never forget her eyes. The fear on her beautiful face. There was no hope. Whatever the bastard was saying to her was terrifying her. Gene was going to get the bastard and rip him to shreds.

He just had to think.

Gene just wasn’t going to do anything stupid.

Even if it meant staying right where he was, until the right moment. He wasn’t about to leave Chantal alone with her abductor. If he got himself killed, that was exactly what would happen to her. If something happened to him, he couldn’t get Chantal out.