Page 76 of Harrison Hyde and the Runaway Bride

Ten years back, Uncle Garrett had a big picture window put in. Hyram and Lily were standing in front of it, looking out. The window faced the sunset, which was in progress, vivid orange,and painting the ground in brushstrokes of every shade from peach to red. Hyram said, “This place is…”

“It is, isn’t it?” Lily slid a hand over her dad’s shoulder.

Neither of them knew Harry was going to put his life on the line that night, and he’d asked Maria not to tell them.

Willow was taking all sorts of precautions, but Maria couldn’t shake the sense of a dark shadow lurking over them all.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MIDNIGHT

“Ihate this,” Maria whispered. She was face down on the hard, dry ground lying under a desert camouflage net. Bubba was beside her, and they were under orders to stay put and not get shot. They were both armed, but only for self-defense, as they’d been reminded a dozen times.

Willow and rest of the deputies were at strategic locations around the area. Uncle Garrett and Maria’s dad were directing things. Agent Hofstadler, Detective Wynn, and other officers were a part of the mix. The brown boulder known as Lone Wolf Rock was shaped like an upright, howling canine in an otherwise flat, brown landscape. Tufts of scrub brush dotted the area like the scattered toys of a giant’s child.

Harry stood out there. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest underneath his shirt, and it made him look twenty pounds heavier. He was wearing the hat she’d got him. She found it sexy as hell on him, because it was such a contrast, a cowboy hat onthe head of a scientist. It emphasized his uniqueness. Maybe that was why she loved him.

She’d pretty much made peace with the fact that she loved him. It wasn’t as if she could do anything to change it.

She looked around the area and then at her phone. “It’s two minutes after midnight,” she whispered.

“I know.” Bubba’s tone was as deep and low as an elephant’s subsonic rumble.

“He was s’posed to be here at midnight.”

“I know.”

“He can’t bring Lily to trade, like he said he would. We know that.”

“Yep.”

“He plans to kill him.”

“Shhhhhhhhh.”

The way he shushed made her think something was happening, and she shifted her focus from Harry to the area around him. The only places for a shooter to hide would be those patches of sage brush.

Wait, was something out there moving? There was a shadow in motion behind a patch of brush! Maria exploded out from under her tarp and tackled Harry flat to the ground just as gunshots exploded. He rolled over beneath her then saw it was her and rolled again, putting himself on top. Around her, the ground exploded in small, desert-brown puffs as bullets landed. It was chaos. Gunfire, people shouting, then roaring motors. Large black vehicles, jacked up with huge tires invaded, and one was about to run them over. It came so close she screamed, but it stopped almost on top of them, and its door opened. She tried to draw her gun, but Harry was on her arm, and then he wasn’t. Someone was pulling him right off her and into the vehicle. “Harry!”

“Maria!” Their eyes locked in a frozen moment and everything he felt for her showed there in his gaze. He struggled and was bashed in the head with the butt of a gun. Then the car door slammed and the vehicle sped away. Other identical SUVs joined it, flinging desert dirt behind them, before they all sped off in different directions.

When he came to, Harrison was in the seat of a big vehicle. He looked around, disoriented, worried about Maria. But she wasn’t with him. And this wasn’t the same vehicle he’d been pulled into. It was a Limo-style SUV. He was in the furthest back seat, leaned sideways against the door.

On the seat beside him… “Carrie! You’re alive!”

“More alive than ever, to be honest with you, Harrison.”

He blinked. “What are you… what happened to you? Are you okay?” Again, he looked toward the front of the vehicle. The only other person inside was the driver, a large man who kept his attention focused dead ahead.

And then slowly, understanding dawned. He frowned and looked at his friend again. “Carrie?”

“Look— I was hired by a company to?—”

“Beckett Oil?” he blurted, and then he wondered if he should’ve let on that he knew.

Her thin eyebrows, arched in surprise. “Where’d you hear that name?”

“His employees have been tilting at windmills all over west Texas. Literally.”

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