“W-west, yes, west, and riding hell for leather—heaven protect her, she couldn’t scream for a hand over her mouth!”
Joshua didn’t wait to hear any more but ran outside, the cries of alarm filling the street making his gut clench.
Ingrid…no,no!
His paint stallion tied to the hitching post, he rushed toward the animal to grab the reins and jump into the saddle even as riders thundered past him.
Sheriff Braun and a pair of deputies as well as other men of the town who must have seen the commotion, Joshua veering Blaze into the street to join them.
“Bank robbers!” he shouted to his former deputy. “They’ve taken Ingrid!”
An agitated crowd stood outside the bank, someone fanning a woman who had fainted dead away. Other townspeople pointed to the west, the growing posse not stopping but heading straight out of town.
Past the hotel where more people stood wide-eyed and stunned, Kari and Anita holding onto each other while Caleb acknowledged Joshua with a grim nod and mounted a horse to ride after them.
Past Andreas, too, at the blacksmith shop two blocks from the hotel. His ashen face as he kicked a big bay into a gallop to join the posse told Joshua that he must have seen Ingrid in the clutches of her abductors.
Anguished fury swelled inside Joshua, but he forced it down. He needed to be steady, calm, and prepared to face whatever lay ahead.
He wasn’t a gambling man, but he would bet money on her captors’ identities. Only Cain and Connor Sutherland with nothing left to lose were crazy enough to pull such a stunt.
Rob a bank and head south to Mexico with the loot, except now they had Ingrid—
“Hang on, my love,hang on!” he grated out as the Sutherlands’ leering faces when she’d rushed into the jailhouse jumped to his mind to torment him.
God help them, if they so much as touched her…
* * *
“Don’t make a sound, do you hear me?”
Terrified, Ingrid nodded, the man’s hand pressed so tightly against her mouth making it hard to breathe.
Her captors had ducked under a low bridge over a dry creek bed, the wooden planks only a couple feet above their heads. Telling herself to try and stay calm though she’d never felt so helpless, Ingrid focused on breathing through her nose while her two captors drew their lathered horses closer together.
“Blast you, Cain, I didn’t know you were going to grab her! I thought you’d just shoot her dead when I told you who she was. An eye for an eye! Her life for Cormac’s! That would have set Logan back and her brother, too. Now the whole town’s probably coming after us!”
“Shut up! You’ve never been quick on your feet, Connor! She’s our insurance to get us to Mexico. Even if they manage to track us down, they’ll never shoot for fear they might hit her. We’re going to rest the horses for a few minutes more and then we’ll set out again. They can hunt us all they want to, but as soon as we cross the Rio Grande, they can’t do anything to us!”
Feeling sickened when Connor pulled her closer against him, his thumb just beneath the curve of her breast, Ingrid fought not to vomit right there.
“I guess we’ll be keeping you, then, darlin’,” he murmured against her ear, Cain waving his gun at his brother to be quiet.
“What’s that? Do you hear it?”
Ingrid knew Cain hadn’t spoken to her, but her eyes widening at the distant sound of hooves hitting the ground gave her away.
“You heard it, too, didn’t you? Don’t think you’re going to be rescued, far from it. They’ll never think we stopped so soon and they’re going to ride right over us. As soon as we can’t hear them anymore, we’ll cut south and go as far as we can until dark.”
Ingrid’s heart sinking, she tensed as the pounding hooves drew closer. Her captors’ horses bobbed their heads and shifted nervously.
Joshua was so near,so near! She could feel his presence as surely as his distress and worry, Ingrid never doubting for a moment that he would be among those looking for her…and maybe Caleb and Andreas, too.
Yet would it go as Cain had said and the riders pass right over them and keep on going? All hope fading, she struggled again to breathe as Connor clapped his hand even more tightly over her mouth and half covering her nose.
Dear God, was she going to suffocate while Joshua was so close he might be able to hear her if she somehow managed to scream? Desperately she began to pray as the riders thundered across the bridge, dust raining down upon them through the cracks between the boards as she begged for help, begged for a miracle—
Kick the horse, Ingrid, kick the horse hard!
