The Millionaire's Marriage Claim

‘I do have a suggestion,’ she said slowly. ‘Not to do with how to escape, but I feel pretty sure they must have also removed…any indication it was Kin Can station from the main gate. Perhaps to confuse anyone looking for the place?’

He gave it some thought as well as tossing her a considering look.

‘Believe me,’ she said quietly, ‘that is why you found me on the back track.’

‘Hmm… You could be right.’ He shrugged. ‘The main problem now is—have they given up and gone away? Or, are they waiting to trap me somehow, even out searching for me?’

‘They don’t sound terribly well organized.’

He stood up, cast the blanket off and reached for his clothes. ‘Fate may have conspired against them, the weather certainly has, but they’re a dangerous duo—trio if Joe got through. One of them, at least, is using a mixture of drugs and alcohol to keep himself hepped up.’

Jo shivered and watched as he struggled into his damp jeans, T-shirt and jumper. ‘Did they offer you any violence? Other than tying you up?’

His lips twisted. ‘A kick in the kidneys, a wallop over the head—’ he searched his scalp through his dark hair and winced as he obviously found a bump ‘—and several others, but perhaps I gave them some provocation.’

‘You didn’t go quietly?’ she hazarded.

‘No, my dear, I didn’t.’

Something in the way he said it chilled Jo to the core. She had no doubt Gavin Hastings would be a bad man to cross.

‘As for the rest of it, they had the foresight to immobilize every other vehicle up at the house and they locked the dogs in the shed and threw away the key. The gun was a lucky break for me. Case, the foreman, must have forgotten to put it away in the gun cupboard in the shed. I nearly tripped over it.’

Jo collected the tin plates and empty mugs and stacked them on the floor next to the stove. ‘So your plan was to intercept the other Joe and…?’ She looked a question at him.

‘Force him to drive me to the nearest phone.’ He watched her as she swept some biscuit crumbs off the table with her hand, and she became aware that the lurking suspicion was back in his eyes.

‘Silver-grey Range Rovers are pretty common, you know.’

‘Perhaps. How about a Joe and a Jo?’

She hesitated. ‘I—’

But a crack of sound split the air and a bullet tore through one wall and buried itself in the opposite wall.

For a second they both froze, then Gavin Hastings leapt off the table and in a flying rugby tackle crashed her to the floor only just before another shot splintered the door around the bolt. Two minutes later the door had been kicked open and a man with a gun and wearing a balaclava was standing over them.