Wyoming Cowboy Sniper. Nicole Helm

you being here make anything okay, Delaney?” she demanded, her voice rough. She looked around wildly.

      “Just try to breathe. You fainted. Take your time to wake up. Then I’ll help you sit up as best I can.”

      She sucked in a breath then let it out, eyeing their surroundings. The back of the van was all metal, and though the windows were tinted completely black, enough light shone through that they could make each other out. She moved her gaze to him.

      “Fainted?” She tugged at the bonds on her hands as she moved herself into a sitting position—without his help—with a wince. “I’ve never fainted in my life.”

      “First time for everything. I’d imagine it had to do with—”

      “How the hell am I tied up with you of all people?” She looked around, her expression one of panic with a steely disgust instead of that ashen terror from before. It was some comfort. “Where are we?”

      “They took us both as hostages.”

      “Who’s ‘they’?” She pulled at the ties on her wrist again, then winced. She squeezed her eyes shut. “How did I get here? I can’t...”

      “What do you mean, ‘you can’t’?” He recalled that sometimes people with head injuries didn’t remember what had caused them. Added to that, she’d fainted and suffered a trauma. Maybe she didn’t even remember coming to see him at the bank. “You don’t remember?”

      “Remember what?” she snapped.

      “What’s the last thing you remember?”

      She flashed him an impatient look, then her eyebrows drew together. “Man, someone did a number on your face.” She seemed to finally understand he was tied up too.

      “Yeah, yeah. We can talk about that later. Vanessa, what’s the last thing you remember?”

      She blinked, frowned. “I don’t. Things are fuzzy around the edges. Fuzzy everywhere. I went to the grocery store this morning. Yeah.” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I’m not going to be sick,” she muttered to herself, as if saying it aloud would make it so.

      “That’d be preferable.”

      She frowned at him, but the confusion dominated her expression. “You look different. Your face is different.”

      “Must be the impressive bruising.”

      “No. You have lines.”

      “Lines?”

      “Around your eyes. Your mouth. And that’s some suit. Are we in Bent?” She tried to peer out the window, but she was still sitting and it was too black to see out of. “You’re supposed to be in college, aren’t you? Somewhere out east. Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

      “College?” Panic threatened. College. She was just a little confused. By over a decade.

      “A fancy one, right? I certainly remember your dad bragging all over himself about it when I went to the store this morning. Dylan this. Dylan that. For my benefit. As if I’d be impressed.”

      “Vanessa. God.” It was as jarring of a blow as the butt of the gun to his face had been. “What year do you think it is?”

      “What kind of question is that? It’s...” Her brow furrowed again, and she shook her head. “It’s... I’m sure it’s...” She looked up at him helplessly. “What’s wrong with me?”

      “You fainted. And you hit your head. Things are jumbled, but they’ll clear up.” He said it far more confidently than he felt it. She’d lost over a decade. That little trickle of panic turned into a full-on frantic clawing, but he ruthlessly shoved it down.

      She’d just woken up. She was disoriented. The past ten years would come back. Everything with the baby would be okay.

      It had to be.

      “Got a phone on you?” he asked, his last hope at getting a message to someone.

      “Why would I have a phone on me?”

      Dylan swallowed down the bubble of hysterical laughter that tried to escape. He wouldn’t panic and he wouldn’t be hysterical. She’d be fine. She’d have to be. Surely pregnant women fainted and were fine, even with a little memory loss. Women had survived life on the prairie and what-have-you and had had plenty of babies. Everything was going to be fine if he kept his mind calm, his body ready.

      He’d been a soldier once. He could be a soldier again.

      “Okay, no phone. Anything sharp?”

      “There should be a knife in my boot, but I can’t get it with my hands behind my back like this. Who took us? Why are we both tied up? I don’t—”

      “One thing at a time. Let’s get free and then I’ll explain everything.” Hopefully. Maybe she’d remember once she fully woke up. He had to hope there really was a knife in her boot, and she wasn’t remembering a knife in her boot from thirteen years ago. “Put your legs out.”

      She did as he instructed, straightening her legs out in front of her.

      “Which boot?”

      “Right. There’s a slot for it behind the outside of my ankle.” Dylan scooted forward, maneuvering himself so the hands tied behind him were close to her ankle. He’d have to kind of lean over her legs and brush up against her to get his hands anywhere near her boot.

      It was uncomfortable and awkward, but the most important thing was finding the knife, if in fact she had one down there in the here and now.

      She fidgeted just as he finally got his fingertips down the side of her boot. “This is weird,” she complained.

      “No weirder than what you don’t remember,” he muttered, concentrating on leaning this way and that and ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs where one of the goons had kicked him, and the fact his head was all but in her lap.

      It took a lot of time, a lot of contorting and a hell of a lot of pain every time the van went over a bump, but he managed to pull the knife out of her boot.

      He was sweating by the time it clattered to the floor of the van, but he didn’t wait around to catch his breath. The sooner he got them out of their bonds, the better. He leaned back, managed to grasp the knife. In a few swift movements, he cut the zip tie off his wrists.

      Sometimes military training did come in handy in the civilian world. He wouldn’t have guessed.

      He didn’t take a second to enjoy the feeling of freedom, however. He shook off the plastic and immediately cut the one around his ankle, and then freed Vanessa.

      “Well. You move...fast,” she said, as if that surprised her. “You better not have gotten me roped into this, Delaney.”

      “Quite the opposite.”

      “Figures. Always blame a Carson.” She rubbed at her wrists, then delicately touched her fingertips to the side of her temple. She winced. “Some blow to the head.”

      “You folded like a card table and hit the ground before anyone could do anything.”

      She scowled. “I find that story very hard to believe.”

      “Well, I didn’t knock you around and then tie us both up. But someone with guns did tie us up, so we need to be quick about getting ourselves out of this mess.” But before they could do what needed to be done, she needed to recall one very important thing.

      “You don’t remember why you came to see me?” he asked carefully.

      “I’m assuming these goons had a gun to my head, because that’s the only way I would ever voluntarily go to see you. Unless you were being tortured. And I was invited to watch.”

      “Nice.” Dylan sighed. This was going to make everything so much more difficult,