It had hurt her heart to see Tanner’s expression when she’d walked out of Marty’s office. It looked like he wanted to kill Trisha with his bare hands.
If she kills me, then I might be okay with that.
No, I don’t want him to go to jail. He needs to be a parent to Amanda.
How many times had Maddie or Tanner given their daughter a lecture about safety? Dozens of times. And here she was the one with a gun pointed at her.
See? Just think about pleasant things. Don’t think about the gun. Don’t think about death.
It had been more than twenty years since Maddie had been on this end of a firearm. She’d been much younger then, but not surprisingly it wasn’t any more enjoyable now. If anything, she was more scared. Back then she hadn’t been a wife or a mother. There were so many things she still wanted to do. She had so much to say to Amanda. So many things she needed to teach her daughter. She wanted to be there when Amanda got married or had a baby. She wanted to grow old with Tanner.
And that’s just what she was going to do.
If Trisha had taken Maddie because she thought she’d be a pushover compared to Tanner, then she’d miscalculated. She’d do whatever she had to do to make sure she came out of this alive.
Maddie and Trisha had been gone less than three minutes when Tanner was finally able to extricate himself from the scarf that tied him to the chair. Maddie had tied him as loosely as she’d dared. He tossed the scarf aside and immediately grabbed his phone to call Sam who said that he would send out the cavalry. The real question was where?
Frankly, an out-of-the-way airstrip wasn’t specific enough to be able to nail down an actual location. He could only hope that Trisha would be stopped while she was still in town, but he didn’t know which way they’d headed. There were airstrips going east, west, and north.
Which one?
Sam said he would send a unit to each airfield, and he would also call in Dare, Seth, and Griffin to see if they could lend a hand. Between all of them, they should be able to cover the possibilities.
But that didn’t decide where Tanner was going to go. He wanted to guess correctly. He wanted to be in the right place to get Maddie away from Trisha and to safety.
No, he needed to be there. As much as he needed to breathe. It was a physical pain in his heart simply knowing that his wife was out there with no one to protect her.
If anything happened to Maddie…
He wasn’t going to allow himself to think that way. He was going to stop Trisha and save Maddie. There was no alternative.
The choice of airfields still hung over him, making his mind dart from place to place without making any concrete decision. If he didn’t guess correctly, and he wasn’t at the right airstrip, he knew his friends would do whatever needed to be done. He trusted them with his life, and with Maddie’s, too. These were men he could count on when the shit hit the fan - Seth, Griffin, Dare, Jared, Logan, Jason, Evan.
Thinking about his friends had him thinking of someone else.
Seth. Presley. Shit, could it be?
The airstrip. The one where Seth picked up Presley all of those years ago for witness protection.
Long enough for most airplanes to take off and land but tucked out of the way so it was private as hell. If the Marshal Service chose it, then it must be a good one for stealthy entrances and exits. They’d been building around there for the last few years, but it was still extremely remote yet not a far drive.
That’s where I’m going to go.
He was going to trust his gut. He picked up his phone a second time as he drove his vehicle toward the main road out of town.
Seth picked up on the first ring. Hopefully, he’d already talked to Sam.
“The airstrip,” Tanner said before his friend could get a word in. “The one where you picked up Presley from Evan. That’s where I’m headed.”
“I’m actually pretty close,” Seth said. “I’m in my truck. I’ll make a turn and meet you there. You got a good feeling about this?”
“I do. I don’t know why, but I think that’s the one.”
“Then that’s where we’re going. I’ll see you there. I’ll call Sam and let him know.”
Sam would probably think Tanner had lost his mind, trusting something as important as Maddie to a gut feeling. This was one he couldn’t shake. The more he thought about it, the more sure he was.
Hold on, Maddie. I’m coming for you.