Ryan's Rescue Read online

  This was going to be a long day, Ryan thought wearily. But if be could just keep Christine talking...

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Karen Leabo

  KAREN LEABO

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Copyright

  This was going to be a long day, Ryan thought wearily. But if be could just keep Christine talking...

  Guilt squeezed his conscience again. Normally it didn’t bother him at all to gather information from an unwitting subject. But lying to someone as innocent as she was made him feel like slime.

  Wait a minute. Since when had she become innocent? He didn’t know anything about her, didn’t know whether or not to believe her story about kidnappers, but he knew she was involved in something unsavory.

  The truth was, she fascinated him. He couldn’t escape the feeling that she was a very complicated person and he was only scratching the surface.

  But then he looked around and shivered involuntarily. Right now, he had a bigger problem than his growing obsession with Christine Greenlow. They were being followed again....

  Dear Reader,

  A new year has begun, and in its honor we bring you six new—and wonderful!—Intimate Moments novels. First up is A Marriage-Minded Man? Linda Turner returns to THE LONE STAR SOCIAL CLUB for this scintillating tale of a cop faced with a gorgeous witness who’s offering him lots of evidence—about a crime that has yet to be committed! What’s her game? Is she involved? Is she completely crazy? Or is she totally on the level—and also the perfect woman for him?

  Then there’s Beverly Barton’s Gabriel Hawk’s Lady, the newest of THE PROTECTORS. Rorie Dean needs help rescuing her young nephew from the jungles of San Miguel, and Gabriel is the only man with the know-how to help. But what neither of them has counted on is the attraction that simmers between them, making their already dangerous mission a threat on not just one level but two!

  Welcome Suzanne Brockmann back with Love with the Proper Stranger, a steamy tale of deceptions, false identities and overwhelming passion. In Ryan’s Rescue. Karen Leabo matches a socialite on the run with a reporter hot on the trail of a story that starts looking very much like a romance. Wife on Demand is an intensely emotional marriage-of-convenience story from the pen of Alexandra Sellers. And finally, welcome historical author Barbara Ankrum, who debuts in the line with To Love a Cowboy.

  Enjoy them all, then come back next month for more excitement and passion—right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325. Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  RYAN’S RESCUE

  KAREN LEABO

  Published by Silhouette Books

  America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance

  Books by Karen Leabo

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Into Thin Air #619

  Midnight Confessions #734

  Framed #772

  Ryan’s Rescue #832

  Silhouette Romance

  Roses Have Thorns #648

  Ten Days in Paradise #692

  Domestic Bliss #707

  Full Bloom #731

  Smart Stuff #764

  Runaway Bride #797

  The Housewarming #848

  A Changed Man #886

  Silhouette Desire

  Close Quarters #629

  Lindy and the Law #676

  Unearthly Delights #704

  The Cop #767

  Ben #794

  Feathers and Lace #824

  Twilight Man #838

  Megan’s Miracle #880

  Beach Baby #922

  Man Overboard #946

  The Prodigal Groom #1007

  KAREN LEABO

  credits her fourth-grade teacher with initially sparking her interest in creative writing. She was determined at an early age to have her work published. When she was in the eighth grade, she wrote a children’s book and convinced her school yearbook publisher to put it in print.

  Karen was born and raised in Dallas. She has worked as a magazine art director, a free-lance writer and a textbook editor, but now she keeps herself busy full-time writing about romance.

  Chapter 1

  They were coming for her soon.

  Christine Greenlow, who forty-eight hours ago had been dressing for her father’s campaign dinner and worrying about seating arrangements and floral centerpieces, now sat on a filthy mattress in a hot, rat-infested tenement, worrying about whether she would live to tell about it.

  So far, she’d managed to avoid serious harm, but only because the radicals who’d kidnapped her were more interested in the money they would get out of her father than anything else. Also, several of the radicals were women. None of them had shown her the slightest kindness, but their mere presence had provided some measure of safety from the men’s more prurient interests.

  Now, however, it appeared that no ransom would be forthcoming, at least not immediately. The group that had been milling around in the other room, drinking and boasting and spending the ransom money ten times over, had thinned out. The women had gone home, and only two of the men—the meanest and ugliest, Christine feared—remained. They were restless, impatient and angry.

  Christine could hear them talking though the paper-thin door that separated her room from the rest of the apartment, and their ideas regarding her fate had gotten more suggestive and crude with each passing hour and each beer they drank.

  She had to do something. Thus far, she’d been as quiet and cooperative as possible, because she believed her father would ransom her quickly and she would be freed. But that faith had gradually shriveled. She didn’t know what had happened, but her captors hadn’t received the money. If they couldn’t get the money they were counting on, then her life wasn’t worth much. That was why she had to act.

  A man entered her room and flipped on the light. He was tall, gaunt, with greasy hair and a ravaged face. Not that she should criticize grooming at the moment. She hadn’t had a bath in two days.

  “You still with us?” the man asked.

  “No, I left for a fancy-dress ball,” she retorted. She was real tired of acting like a good girl.

  “Oho, getting cheeky on us,” he said with a toothy smile. “’Bout time you found some vocal cords. Hey, how about talking dirty to me?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Well, that’s a start, though not exactly what I had in mind.” He pulled up a metal folding chair and sat down. “We need your help, sweetcakes.”

  Christine sat leaning against the wall, her wrists tied behind her to a pipe. She kept her back erect, putting as little of her body as possible in contact with the disgusting mattress. Somehow she’d managed to sleep in that position, but only a couple of hours at a time. She stared up at the man, saying nothing.

  “Doesn’t look like your old man’s coming through for you,” he began. He pulled a Camel filter out of his T-shirt pocket and lit it with a match.

  Christine shrugged. “He’s not the type to kowtow to people like you.” And he wasn’t the type
to part easily with a million dollars, either. That was the amount she’d overheard.

  “Kowtow, huh? Nice word. Bet you learned all kinds of big words at that finishing school he sent you to, huh?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “So what’s it gonna take? What’ll send Daddy running for his checkbook? You know him best. Been like a wife to him since your mama died—that’s what they say.”

  “I don’t think anything will make him pay you a million dollars,” she said, fervently hoping she was wrong. “He’s a man of principle.”

  “Principle? He poisons our waters, our wildlife, our children , and you call that principle?”

  Christine had heard these shopworn arguments before. Her father had initiated a piece of legislation that lifted restrictions on certain kinds of chemical-waste disposal. The bill, signed into law a year ago, had applied only to a particular class of inert waste materials deemed harmless by the FDA. But that didn’t stop some of these left-wing environmental radicals from blaming every pollution problem on the law, including spills and waste disposal that had taken place a generation ago.

  “He’ll never give in to you,” Christine said calmly, “no matter what you do to me, no matter what I say to him.” Maybe if they thought it was a lost cause, they would let her go.

  “That so?”

  Christine stifled a gasp as he pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket and flicked it open. It made a deadly sort of snick that brought her stomach into her throat.

  “What if we started sending him body parts, one at a time?”

  Suddenly Christine didn’t feel calm anymore. She’d known these radicals were out in left field, borderline violent, but she’d never thought of environmental activists as vicious or bloodthirsty.

  “Or, even better, what if we sent him some pictures of his little girl having a good time with ol’ Denny, here? A real good time. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  Yes, she was afraid she did, and he wasn’t talking about dancing the hokeypokey. The man rose slowly from his chair and sauntered over with the knife. She gasped as he brought it close to her face, but in the end he used it to cut the bindings at her wrists.

  With a sigh of relief, she brought her hands in front of her and rubbed her bruised wrists. That felt so much better. But her relief was short-lived, because she realized the man wasn’t going away. He hovered over her, looking down the front of her torn, dirty dress.

  That was when she knew her time was up. She was about to enter hell. No sense going quietly.

  Without warning, she screamed—a long, loud, earpiercing shriek of fury that caused her captor to cuff her hard on the side of the head.

  “Shut up, woman!” he yelled at her.

  She screamed again, louder, and when he tried to hit her again, she grabbed his hand and bit him.

  He yowled in pain. While he was still off balance, she kicked one foot into his groin, hard. She was on her feet in a flash, heading for the window. She intended to break it with the folding chair. Then, if she couldn’t climb out and escape, she could at least call for help. They were in an urban area. She’d heard the sounds of cars and sirens outside. Someone would hear her.

  But the man grabbed her by the ankle and she fell down on her elbows.

  “What’s going on in here?” The other man, short and stocky, with a blond buzz haircut, burst into the room. “Denny?”

  “She’s outa control, man,” the tall one said in a wheezy, pain-riddled voice. “Get her. Do something with her. I’m hurt.”

  Christine screamed again. “Help! Help! Fire! Call 911!” She remembered hearing somewhere that to yell, “Fire!” would bring more attention than just yelling for help. She struggled to free herself from the steel grip around her ankle, kicking and clawing.

  “Shut up, shut up!” the tall one yelled. “Pete, do something! Shut her up before someone calls the cops!”

  She should have done this two days ago, Christine realized. She screamed until her throat was raw. The second man ran from the room. The tall man—Denny—recovering somewhat from her assault, dragged her by the ankle until he could reach her throat. He squeezed until she was forced to stop screaming.

  “Here, give her this,” said the shorter man as he raced back into the room holding a syringe.

  No, not again! Christine shook her head frantically, but it was no use. They were going to drug her again, as they’d done when they grabbed her at the front door of her father’s house. They’d posed as deliverymen to get through the front gates. She’d okayed it, because she’d been routinely accepting packages for weeks now—wedding presents. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid.

  The needle plunged into her arm. She had about ten minutes of fight left in her, she figured, before the drug took full effect and she became a drowsy, complacent idiot.

  Instead of continuing to fight, which she knew was useless, she went completely limp, letting her eyes roll back in her head.

  “Damn, that worked fast,” Denny said. He loosened his hold on her throat.

  “What’d you untie her for?” the second man complained. And he proceeded to remind Denny, in great detail, what his girlfriend would do if she found out her man had been messing with the hostage.

  Christine kept her eyes closed and forced herself to slow her breathing.

  “Tie her up again,” the man called Pete said. “There’s some more rope in here.”

  Denny stood. Christine watched him through her lashes. He nudged her with his foot, shrugged, and walked out of the room.

  She was on her feet in an instant. The room’s single window opened with only a whisper of noise. Christine looked down. They were on the second floor. She could do it, she told herself. Now or never. Do or die, perhaps literally. She climbed out, dangling from the sill for a heart-stopping minute before she let go and plunged fifteen feet into a huge bush.

  She was scratched and bruised, but otherwise unhurt. Clambering to her feet, she picked a direction and ran as fast as she could. She had perhaps another seven minutes before she lost control of her senses.

  She was in a run-down block of apartment buildings and boarded-up stores—not the sort of place a woman wanted to find herself after dark, or in broad daylight, for that matter. She ran. Two blocks up, she encountered an old man leaning against a wall, holding a bottle in a paper sack.

  He looked at her suspiciously as she approached him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said, breathing heavily. Her vision was getting a little blurry. “I need a phone. A phone? Telephone?” She mimed her request, in case he didn’t speak English.

  He shook his head in disgust. “Get away from me, girlie. Damn crack addicts get weirder every day.” He looked down at her feet, and she realized she wasn’t wearing any shoes. How strange that she hadn’t noticed until now.

  When the man made a threatening gesture, she started running again. Arbitrarily she turned left at the next corner. She saw lights up ahead, a few cars. Thank God! She was starting to feel dizzy. She slowed to a trot, then a walk. She couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen into her lungs. She had to hold on a little longer, just a little.

  She kept walking. A delicious languor began to invade her muscles. Neon lights flashed, forming brilliant patterns. She stopped and stared.

  “Hey, sister, wanna share some of that?”

  Horrified, she realized the comment was directed at her. Staring straight ahead, as if she hadn’t heard, she resumed her walk. A phone. She had to find a... Ah, something smelled good. Barbecue. She was starving.

  She wandered through a doorway. A sea of faces turned and stared at her. “Ah, I’m looking for a...” What was she looking for?

  “Hey, you can’t come in here without shoes,” a burly man informed her as he took her by the arm and turned her around. Under his breath he added, “Jeez, honey, what are you flying on?”

  Oh, well. It was a beautiful spring night, with just a hint of chill in the air. At least she thought it was spr
ing. She felt good. No worries. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been worried about something. Maybe before her mother died, and that was a long time ago.

  Shouldn’t she be somewhere? It seemed like she always had to be somewhere, meeting with caterers or fund-raisers or maintenance people, changing clothes, rushing to this function or that, putting a good word in this man’s ear or charming his wife. But for the life of her, she couldn’t remember where she was supposed to be right now.

  And she didn’t much care.

  A man began walking beside her down the cracked sidewalk. “Going my way, sweetheart?”

  She stopped and looked at him. He was just a teenager, but he was dressed all in black leather and had a ring in his nose, which gave her pause. “I don’t think so. You’re a little young for me, don’t you think?” She smiled.

  He laughed, not pleasantly. “Does that matter? Long as I got your price.” He grabbed her by the arm. “C’mon, I got a van parked a couple of blocks away.”

  Why did men keep grabbing her? she wondered blearily. “No, let go,” she pleaded ineffectually. “Don’t want to go wif you.”

  “I got drugs,” he whispered. “You know, coke? How ’bout ecstasy? I hear the girls love that stuff.”

  A couple of other young toughs came up.

  “What we got here?” one of them asked. The others whistled and jeered. Christine didn’t know what to do. These young men were ruining her cheerful mood. She crossed her arms, feeling suddenly chilled. “I’m not goin’ wif you,” she said, wondering why her words were so slurry, so hard to get out. She thought maybe she should be afraid, should scream, but when she opened her mouth, only a squeak came out. The teenagers around her closed ranks, smiling, showing bad teeth.