Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(40)
Author: Bella Andre

She wasn’t sure she believed anything he was saying, but it didn’t stop Dianna from sending up a silent thank-you that he was here with her. She’d need to siphon off his strength until she could relocate her own.

They stepped beyond the fence and the thick vegetation and Dianna was surprised to find that the commune was extremely clean and orderly. Neat rows of fruit trees and plots lush with vegetables grew to the west of the low-roofed barns. There was even a white house with a porch at the top of the meadow, which looked down on the land below.

Even more surprising, there was a faded baby stroller at the entrance of one of the many huts that cropped up along the edges of the meadow where the tall trees began again. She heard laughter and saw children playing with a cute little puppy who was lying on its back while they rubbed its belly.

Had April been telling her the truth when she’d said it wasn’t a bad place?

“This is the Farm,” the girl said, waving her arms across the rolling open hills.

It was an incredibly beautiful valley, surrounded by high mountains on all sides. A low, distinctly nonhuman sound bellowed at them and she jumped in alarm. Sam motioned to his left and she realized they were standing beside a sheep’s pen. Pigs and goats were in separately fenced sections, and even though she had no livestock experience whatsoever, the animals’ pens looked pretty darn tidy.

And yet, a chill passed through Dianna that had nothing to do with the light breeze rustling the leaves on the tall aspen trees. She’d grown up in a dark and scary place, and although her eyes couldn’t find anything scary about the bucolic scene before them, the fact that her sister was missing kept the same dark presence hovering over it all.

Crossing between vegetable patches, they followed the girl over to a small shack, no bigger than a ten-by-ten garden shed.

“This is where she lived?” Dianna asked, instantly aghast at the lack of heat, running water, kitchen, or toilet.

“We live as simply as we possibly can. April really embraced it.”

Was that true? Would April have embraced a surrogate “family” even though she’d pushed her own flesh and blood away?

The shed was clean and simple and yet, almost as soon as she stepped into the building, Dianna found that she couldn’t spend another second inside April’s primitive room.

Ever since moving out of her mother’s trailer for good, she’d never done well in small spaces and absolutely hated feeling trapped, which was why she’d bought a condo with floor-to-ceiling windows, and every room had a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It made her feel like she could escape at a moment’s notice, gave her the illusion of not being held down, of not being trapped.

In so many ways, even though it was much cleaner, this little cabin felt like the trailer she’d grown up in. She’d sworn she and April would never live like this again.

How could her sister have made this choice? Especially given all of the opportunities that Dianna had worked her butt off to provide?

If only she and April had been able to see eye to eye. Then maybe none of this would have happened.

She pushed past Sam to get back outside and he gave her a look that seemed to say, “Everything is going to be okay.”

But she wasn’t sure that it would be, especially not when she saw three men—two so huge they looked like giants flanking the third—waiting for her outside April’s shed.

———

Sam heard Dianna cautiously call his name.

Damn it, he chastised himself as he walked back outside and saw that Dianna was standing in front of three men. What had he been thinking to take his eyes off her for even a second?

Moving quickly to her side, he slid his hand through hers. Touch her and die was the message he wanted to come across loud and clear to their new friends.

“And who are you?” the regular-sized man said to him.

“Sam MacKenzie,” he replied, not bothering to hold out his hand in greeting.

“My name is Peter Cohen.”

The man didn’t bother to introduce his two large friends, whom Sam quickly deduced were the palace guards, which seemed to mean that Peter was the man in charge.

“As I just said to your friend, Dianna, welcome to my Farm.”

Sam knew he and Dianna weren’t the slightest bit welcome. They were intruders. But he’d come here to find April. He wasn’t going to let some smarmy cult leader get in his way.

Cutting any further bullshit off at the pass, he said, “April’s disappeared. Do you know where she’s gone?”

Peter’s expression didn’t change, save for a shifting of his dark eyes, which were too intelligent for Sam’s liking. Sam felt like he’d known men like this before, men who had volunteered to be hotshots for a summer, not to save trees and houses and lives, but simply for the chance to be called a hero.

Sam was going to watch Peter Cohen very carefully. If there was any chance that he had staged April’s kidnapping for his own profit—or to try to get at Dianna, who was both famous and rich—Sam was going to stop the motherfucker before he could make it to the next square on the board.

Without answering Sam’s question, Peter commanded, “Come with me.”

They followed Peter and his guards past the rows of crops, across an open field where children played, and up a set of stairs to the attractive white house that overlooked the commune’s many acres.

Moving silently, a woman in Peter’s house filled three cups with something hot and set the cups before them before backing silently out of the room.

Sam had no intention of drinking whatever it was and he sent a silent signal to Dianna that she shouldn’t either.

“Before I tell you what I know about April, I want to know more about both of you.” He turned to Dianna. “April said you have a TV show and that you are quite famous. Does anyone know you are here and how did you find us?”

Considering how upset she’d been inside April’s shack, she barely blinked an eye as she said, “April told me enough about the Farm for us to locate it on a map.”

Sam’s respect for her—already in full measure after the way she’d come back from a near-drowning to transcend her fear of heights, all in the same day—grew yet again. She’d deftly sidestepped Peter’s first question without giving away Will’s part in getting them to the commune.

Seeming satisfied with her response, the man turned to Sam. “And who are you?”

“I already told you my name,” Sam said.