Page 63 of Soul Of A Villain

“Whadda we do about him?” The owner of that voice was the man who did not sound quite as mean as the one who had struck her.

“Not a goddamn thing. Franklin isn’t forcing us to do anything other than get the girl. AndI’mnot going to be the one to put a bullet in his skull, are you?” More doors slammed as the two men got into the front seat of the cruiser. “I don’t want or need the trouble that would come with that. He’s fucking connected, dude, and if you think he’s a bad motherfucker, you don’t want to meet his older brother. The two of them are fucking savages. We got what Franklin wanted, and now, we leave the guy where he is. Do you think he’s gonna care that much that we stole this chick from him? Guys like that get pussy anytime they want of all varieties, all shapes and sizes. This one is a nobody, so why create trouble with the Winters if we don’t have to? The way I see it, we do this, and Franklin has no reason to turn us into GBI.”

Londyn cried silently. These men were operating on Sheriff Franklin’s orders. They were abducting her with the sole intention of taking her to Colorado. Her mind frantically worked at putting it all together. She knew that whatever connection existed between the sheriff and Diamond Lake Ranch would soon come to light.

Oliver, please wake up. Please don’t be badly hurt. Please don’t let them sell me again. Please come for me and rescue me from this nightmare.

ChapterThirty-Five

Oliver

“Oliver!”

The terrible screams woke him.

Shrill and frightened, the high-pitched cries rang in his ears as he hung immobilized, caught in the car’s seatbelt. Everything was dark, the only light coming from the dashboard’s instrument panel. Various indicators flashed silently, and the stench of gasoline stung his nostrils. A sharp pang stabbed his shoulder, and he closed his eyes against it.

“Londyn...” he groaned.

“Hang on… I’m working on unlatching your seatbelt.” The voice seemed to come from a million miles away.

Oliver’s eyes flew open, focusing on the broad shoulders of the man working to release him from the car. It was Lawson. Why was the man working on him instead of Londyn? Did this mean she had escaped serious injury? Or did her absence indicate something far worse? The excruciating pain of that thought sent daggers stabbing through his entire body.

“Where is my wife?” The question came out in a weak groan. “Where is she?”

Lawson did not answer but continued working. When Oliver slumped into the car’s cabin seconds later, the ex-Marine pulled him free of the wreckage, helping him squeeze through the narrow opening of the mangled door.

“Easy now. You’ve got a laceration on your temple, a possible concussion, and I suspect your shoulder is dislocated,” Lawson rattled off, forcing Oliver to sit on the back bumper of the upended sportscar. With battlefield medical training, he quickly assessed Oliver’s injuries and began cleaning the head wound, sanitizing it, and applying surgical strips to the gash.

“Where is my fucking wife, Lawson?” Fighting the dizziness swamping him, Oliver used his uninjured arm to shove the man. The attention to his wounds irritated him when he had no idea of Londyn’s condition. “And if you value your life, you’d better say you took care of her first, and she’s in your SUV waiting for me.” He tried standing but the agonizing pain in his shoulder made him sway on his feet.

“Fuck, Oliver,” Lawson swore, guiding Oliver so that he was once again half-leaning and half-sitting on the bumper. “They took her. I pulled up less than two minutes ago, and they were already gone. Looks like there were two of them. My guess is one was driving the car there that T-boned you, the other in the patrol car I saw at the nursing facility.” Lawson cursed again under his breath, obviously frustrated by the situation. “No way to know which direction they were headed if they took a side road. I passed no one while driving here, so I doubt they would have returned to town. There’s an intersection a few miles ahead between this point and the airfield. It’s possible they took one of the two roads headed either east or west, or they could have continued northward toward Atlanta.”

Terror welled inside Oliver. It roiled and built into a crushing crescendo that was drowning him. “I can hear her screaming,” he grimaced, “like, right now.”

Lawson’s head tilted. “That’s probably the concussion. Or maybe the trauma of the crash? Regardless, stand up so I can do something about that shoulder right now.”

Grabbing Oliver’s arm firmly, Lawson placed the palm of his other hand against Oliver’s shoulder and gave the arm a quick jerk.

There was an audible pop, and the pain instantly melted away. Oliver could think more clearly, and although he was still dizzy, he knew he must move quickly. His focus, his only thought, was rescuing Londyn. When he walked through the front door of Diamond Lake Ranch, he planned on slaughtering anyone in his wayandthe men responsible for abducting his wife.

“My guess is they’ve headed north to any one of the smaller airfields surrounding Atlanta. They’ve got to get her in the air as quickly as possible.”

“You think they’ll show up in Colorado?” Lawson asked, already pulling his cell out. He dialed the other half of the security team on standby near Diamondhead Lake Ranch.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I think.” Oliver fought off another wave of dizziness as he turned back to the mangled Bentley. “This must have been planned out in advance. I think they were just waiting for the opportunity to grab her, hoping she would come back here on her own or that I would be goddamn stupid enough to bring her myself, which I was.” He reached down into the car, grabbed his phone, and sent up a silent prayer that it still worked. His first call would be to Kingston. He needed an army of bloodthirsty men, and his brother would not hesitate to assemble them. He would also notify his crew from other locations around the country. Poised to dial his brother’s number, he hesitated when a blue sparkle caught his attention. Digging into the open console, he plucked two rings from the wreckage.

Holding the priceless gem to the light streaming from Lawson’s headlights, Oliver’s heart faltered, the air evaporating from his lungs as though it’d been sucked out by a huge vacuum. It was the blue diamond and matching band of diamonds. He’d slid that set of rings onto Londyn’s hand just twenty-four hours earlier. He remembered how she stared up at him in dazed adoration in the judge’s living room, repeating her vows in the softest, sweetest voice.

A wave of shame washed over Oliver at the memory. He had no right to marry her like that nor to use her in such a heartless, brutal manner over the last month. Londyn deserved the best of everything he could give her. He should have been offering her the moon, the stars, his entire fucking fortune on a silver platter. His knees buckled before he braced himself with a hand against the wreckage of the car.

I should have given her laughter. Embraces. Sweet kisses and whispers for our future. Instead, I gave her nothing but pain. Sorrow. Heartache.

Something was building inside him. A wave of regret and contrition overwhelmed everything he’d once thought important. Money. Power. His brutal reputation. His cruelty. None of it meant anything anymore the longer he stared at the ring in the palm of his hand. The platinum was caked with blood, the sparkling diamonds dulled by it.

Blood.

Londyn’s blood.

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