Which she didn’t mind at all. She could do without air. She couldn’t do without Christopher.
“I’ve got you, honey. I’ve got you,” she said, then couldn’t stop saying it. “I’m here, baby. Everything is okay.”
The sound of a chopper came, approaching rapidly. Her heart beat wildly, adrenaline rushing into her limbs all over again.
Then that first rush of fear hardened into resolve. She had her son back. Nobody was going to take him away from her this time.
“Get down.” Akeem was covering them with his own body as soon as she squatted.
But he stood again after a few moments, and she recognized the sound of this chopper, too, the F28F Falcon Flint sometimes used to herd cattle. Next to Christopher’s voice, it was the sweetest sound she’d heard in days.
“That would be your uncle Flint,” Akeem told Christopher and picked up his torch, grabbing her hand and leading them out into the open. “You are safe now. We are going home.”
The chopper circled, then began lowering to the ground, the noise of the rotors too loud now to speak and be understood, so she couldn’t thank him again.
But Akeem’s eyes caught hers for a moment over Christopher’s blond locks. And held.
Everything they’d gone through in the past three days was there in the air between them. Even the words they had left unspoken.
And she realized that maybe, just maybe, Akeem Abdul was better than all of her girlish fantasies. She had trusted her own life and her son’s to him. Maybe she could trust him with her heart.
Chapter Eleven
“So you think it’s all connected?” Flint asked after the police and Gary had taken off. Gary had stayed sober for his son’s return. Maybe there was hope for the guy yet. Dr. Hardin, the ranch’s very own physician, was gone now, too, having cleared Christopher and checked out Taylor and even Akeem, although he had resisted to the bitter end.
Taylor’s pleading had done him in. There wasn’t much in this world he could deny those cornflower-blue eyes.
“There was this guy in a chopper before Flint got there. He shot at us at first, but when I returned fire, he took off,” he told his friends.
“And?” asked Jack Champion, another member of the Aggie Four.
The three of them were together again, and like every time they gathered, Viktor’s absence was a tangible presence in the room, something they all thought of but none would speak about. They were sitting in the living room at Diamondback, the house quiet around them.
“Just didn’t seem like he was fighting all that hard for the money,” Akeem explained. “Or that they had been in a rush to get the money in the first place. The front men, Jake and the rest of those lowlifes, yes. But I almost feel like the boss, whoever the bastard is, was playing for time.”
“For what?” Flint asked. “What did time get him? He didn’t get anything.”
He gave that some thought, sitting in silence that was disturbed only by the faint whirring of the air conditioner. Suspicion built with each new thought. “If we’re right and the boss was directing not just his men on the ground, but also had some influence with the police, he could have sent the cops to bust up that first exchange at the boulders.”
“If he didn’t want an early exchange, why did he agree in the first place?” Jack asked. “Would have been a hell of a lot simpler just to say no when you asked.”
“He didn’t agree. I negotiated that with his guy on the phone.” Akeem rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow as he thought. “What did we miss out on in the past couple of days?”
“Other than the horse auction in Saudi you were so hell-bent on? How much potential profit did you lose on that?” Jack was somber, that famous smile of his that sent women swooning on a regular basis nowhere in evidence these days.
Akeem shrugged. His business mattered little when compared to Taylor and Christopher. But he would definitely look into that. He hadn’t advertised that he would be bidding, but neither had he kept it a secret. It would be easy enough to find out who won the horses he’d had an interest in. “I’ll do some research on that and let you know if something looks off there. What else?”
“I was supposed to go to Rasnovia.” Jack grew even more thoughtful. “Our latest venture there hit a snag. Antitrust stuff. It’s insane, just made-up charges that are coming out of nowhere. We’re not that big. I was supposed to testify.”
“Right.” Akeem remembered now. He’d meant to talk to Flint about that when he’d driven out to the ranch then forgot about everything but helping Taylor when she’d run through that front door and into his arms.
Rasnovia.
Now that had some potential. There’d been a lot of trouble there lately. Viktor. His thoughts darkened. He hated to keep secrets from his best friends, but he could not do otherwise this once, not after having given his word.
Soon.
He told himself to be patient. It wouldn’t take long before those secrets were revealed to all.
“I have to be back in Greece for an eight o’clock meeting in the morning. Then I have to make it over to Rasnovia to see what I can salvage from the antitrust hearing I missed.” Jack was standing already. He clapped Akeem on the shoulder affectionately as he walked by. “Good to have you back in one piece.”
“Thanks for rushing to the rescue,” Akeem said.
Jack’s choppers had been out there, too, combing the desert, going up in the air tonight against a police order. Having them around meant that they could divide the area up among them and Flint, which allowed Flint to find Taylor, Christopher and him that much sooner.
“Let us know what happens,” Flint called after Jack, then leaned forward on the couch as the screen
