Page 23 of Operation: Unify

“Then you’d better go. I just finished talking to Brendon. You should know that within the last hour, someone broke Viceroy out of jail. The men who did it were heavily armed, and ithappened during a routine transfer to bring him closer to the court where he was supposed to stand trial.”

“So, I need to leave, and Viceroy is loose. Half the people here are supposed to testify against him, giving him a huge motive to kill everyone here. Now I have to choose whose needs I meet and whose I don’t.” He gripped his bag tightly and felt the draw to Lacy pulling him toward the door.

Teddy shook his head. “Not true. All your men here are capable. We’ve fought this guy before.” Teddy rubbed his shoulder where he’d been shot. “And some of us even have a little bit of payback that is due.”

Connor wasn’t going to tell him that paybacks weren’t really Christian, his father knew that. Protecting those around him was though. “I trust you. It’s just that this is my home, and I don’t like that I’m leaving all of you to protect my home.”

Dad gripped his shoulder. “When God created man’s hierarchy, the home wasn’t part of it. Protect your wife.Sheis your family.”

“But I told her she wasn’t my wife anymore.” Yet he wanted more than anything to bring her back to Wayside and ask her to never leave his side again.

“Have you ever treated her like she was anything but your wife?” Dad asked.

“Except for our divorce, no.” Other than the intimate relationship that came with marriage, they still acted much the same as when they were married. He’d even joked for a long time that they were better friends than lovers, but that was more to staunch the pain in his chest from needing his wife, the woman he loved, and knowing it was his own fault she wasn’t his wife anymore.

“Then don’t start treating her like she isn’t now. Go. The ranch will still be here when you return. Nadine is the bestsecurity force you could hire. Your men are capable and willing to protect this place and the people here.”

He nodded, knowing what his father said was true. There were none better than the crew at Wayside. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I know.” Dad clapped him on the shoulder one more time.

Each of the guys came over and gripped his hand, giving him a man hug and encouragement to bring Lacy home. There was nothing more that he wanted to do.

Lacy paced backand forth in the living room. She had left the message on the bathroom mirror and had called the police. She’d told them that Melina’s husband couldn’t be trusted and that he wanted to kill her. She was sure that message was left by him.

The officers who’d come to collect her statement hadn’t seemed convinced. One of them even told her that the issues was ‘a domestic’ and they tried to stay as far away from those as possible. If Melinda went with her husband, that wasn’t a kidnapping.

The undercurrent of disbelief had her raging, but so did the threat against her. He’d threatened her too and that didn’t seem to matter to the police. Both of them had shrugged off the threat as actually being against the wife, which somehow made it okay in their eyes. They’d been in the house for thirty minutes before she was left alone again.

Now, she had to wait. Hours. There was no way Connor could get there quickly. Even driving like a complete maniac would take him most of a day. She turned toward the back side of thehouse to pace in the other direction when someone knocked on the front door.

Even knowing Connor couldn’t possibly get there that fast, she ran to check who it was through the peep hole. Randy stood just outside with his hands shoved in his pockets. His jeans were so oversized that they hung halfway down his hips, showing a wide stripe of his boxers between the top of his jeans and his shirt. This was not the kind of guy she usually allowed into her life.

She had gone outside and pulled her car into the garage while the police had been there. That was the only thing she’d done against what Connor had said, but she’d figured it was safe while they were in the house.

Randy knocked again and she held her breath. If she didn’t answer, he might think she was gone and then she wouldn’t have to tell him she couldn’t let him in after he’d helped her. Even though Connor was right, there was reason to hold off on trusting him, telling him she couldn’t trust him felt very uncomfortable after the way they met.

He lumbered down the front steps, looking over his shoulder at the front of the house. A few seconds later, she heard the garage door opening. Lacy held her breath. He would know now that she was there and hadn’t answered the door. Her ears waited for any sound to indicate what he was doing in the garage. There hadn’t been anything in there when she’d pulled her car in.

The door handle jiggled, and she held in a scream. Why was he trying to get in? A second later, the distinct sound of a key sliding into the lock forced her back a few steps. What could she do now? If she left the house, Connor couldn’t find her. If she stayed, she might be in danger.

Randy opened the door and looked up at her. He seemed as surprised as she was as his eyes widened. “You didn’t answer the door.”

“You came in a locked house.” She turned the accusation back at him.

“My dad owns it,” he countered.

“But I’m renting it. You can’t just come in when someone is here.” Her lungs needed air, but her breathing didn’t seem to work no matter how hard she tried to suck in a stable breath.

“Where’s Melinda?”

“How did you know she wasn’t here?” She could have been napping in the other room. Was he the real kidnapper? She’d assumed Tod had done it, but was he innocent?

“You just can’t stop thinking I’m out to get you.” He closed the door, sighed, and headed for the sofa, flopped down onto the end furthest from her and leaned his head back, then covered his face with his hands. “Look, my dad is friends with my boss. That’s how I got the job at the hotel. I heard my dad talking about Tod’s wife and how she was out of line to run away. I assumed that meant something happened, so I came back here to check on you as soon as it was safe. I couldn’t just walk out the second I heard, or my dad would know I know what’s going on.”

“How did Tod know we were here? Did he have a key? We had barely gotten comfortable when he showed up and took her. Did your dad say something and why didn’t you tell me that your dad was connected to the man we were trying to avoid? That seems like a pretty big thing to keep from me.” She started pacing again.

“I didn’t want you to turn me down. Where else could you go? There’s only one other hotel within an hour and it’s infested with bed bugs. You’ll get a room, because everyone local knows to avoid it, but you’ll wish you hadn’t. Since Melinda’s name wasn’t on the booking, I thought it was safe.”

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