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Steffan didn’t know if Jensen was talking to him or his men, but they all paused. He peered through his night-vision goggles at a small, run-down cabin. He remembered this cabin. He and his brothers had found it and played around and in it as youths. It wasn’t very big.
The door was closed and there were no windows to see what was happening inside. Suddenly they heard a male voice yelling, but Steffan couldn’t make out the muffled words. There was a quiet thud, a screech, and then silence.
“Stay back,” Jensen cautioned Steffan with a hand on his chest as his men surrounded the cabin and tightened the circle, guns out.
Steffan glared at his friend. “No,” he whispered harshly. He wanted to be the one to rush in there and rescue Hattie.
“You’ll get her hurt,” Ray said from his other side.
That was a gut punch. His brother thought Steffan would hurt the woman he cared too deeply for because he wasn’t trained as a military man or a policeman.
He wanted to shove his brother and friend out of the way. Instead, he prayed for protection for Hattie and humility for himself. Jensen’s men were almost ready to bust the cabin wide open. What if they hurt Hattie? Made that crazy Franz stab her or hit her with a stray bullet?
The only thing he cared about was Hattie’s safety, even if it meant standing down and letting someone else step forward.
“Please,” Steffan whispered, staring at his brother who he trusted and loved. “Please save her for me.”
Ray nodded, serious as ever. He and Jensen pulled out their sidearms and rushed for the cabin, the men following their lead.
The front door of the cabin burst open and a medium-sized man staggered out. Older, distinguished-looking, in a ripped and rumpled suit. Definitely not Franz.
As Steffan stared at the man with the aid of his infrared goggles, recognition came like a smack to the side of the head.
It was William Rindlesbacher. Treven’s father. Nothing about that man being in the cabin or being here at this moment made any sense, but it did make terror explode in his gut. Everything was wrong right now. Hattie was in extreme danger.
“Help. Please help,” the man called. “Do you have a medic?”
“Hattie,” Steffan burst out. He raced past his brother, pushed through the police line, and dodged around William and into the small cabin.
Two forms were on the floor. Hattie was face-down on top of what had to be Franz.
“Hattie!” he yelled, rushing across the space to her. Franz had killed her. No! He dropped to his knees and frantically pushed her hair aside to feel for a pulse. It was there, and it was strong. “She’s alive!”
She stirred at his yell.
“I tried to stop her,” William said from behind him. “Franz begged me to meet him here, said the woman who’d killed Jane Presley was meeting him and he needed my help. Then she went insane and stabbed him. I knocked her out, but not before she killed him.”
None of the man’s words made any sense. Hattie wouldn’t stab Franz, and she hadn’t killed Jane.
Hattie rolled over and looked up at him. Her eyes were unfocused, pupils small.
“Steffan?” she whimpered. She struggled to sit up.
Steffan wrapped an arm around her and pulled her away from Franz. He cradled her protectively against his side. She was sticky with blood. Hers or Franz’s?
“Hattie, are you all right?”
“My head,” was all she said, clinging to him.
Jensen and Ray hurried to them and dropped to Franz’s side. A knife protruded from the man’s chest. Straight through his heart, if Steffan was any kind of doctor. Jensen rested his fingers against the man’s throat.
“He’s gone,” Jensen said quietly. Steffan could’ve told him that.
“She killed him,” William stated again, his voice full of emotion and anger. “They were arguing. He shouldn’t have stolen her money and credit cards and dragged her in here like he did, but that was no reason to stab him in the chest.”
“I didn’t stab him,” Hattie protested, staring at William and then at Franz. She shuddered in Steffan’s arms. “He had the knife and cut the recording device from my shirt. I tried to elbow him in the throat to get free. Then I felt somebody coming from my side, and I got knocked out. You have to believe me, Steffan.” She looked up at him so beseechingly. “I promise I didn’t kill him.”
Steffan was in shock. No way would Hattie stab a man. It wasn’t possible. Well, maybe in self-defense. She was feisty and brave, but William Rindlesbacher was part of the transaction, and that made everything suspicious in his mind. He claimed they were fighting. Had the man somehow killed Franz and framed Hattie just like his son had tried to frame her for Jane’s death?
