He leaned back and searched my face, worry filling his eyes. “How’d you get away?”

“Someone rescued me.”

“The people who brought me here?”

I nodded.

“They want something from you? Or from me?”

“Let’s just say we have a common agenda.” I pulled on his arm, leading him toward the two kitchen chairs in the middle of the room. “Sit down, and I’ll tell you everything.”

He resisted. “No, let’s try to get out of here. Based on the sounds I heard when I was walking into the cabin, I think we’re close to woods. If we can make it into the trees, we can lose them in the dark.”

I gave him a sad smile. “They’re watching closely. We can’t leave.” That was the truth. Even if I walked out that front door and told Skeeter I was finished, he’d never let me leave. Not until this was all said and done.

Mason let me lead him to the chairs, and we sat there together, his hand holding mine in a tight grip. “What happened, Rose?”

I told him about being kidnapped outside the bathroom in Jaspers, regaining consciousness in the back of the car, and being carried into the cabin and tied to a chair.

“Did they say anything?” he asked gently, but the fire in his eyes told me just how much this was affecting him.

“No. I told them you’d pay to have me released, but they didn’t answer. They left me in the bedroom, and about an hour or so later, I heard a commotion outside. They were dragging a man into the house. They brought him into the room where I was being held and tried to tie him to a chair too, but he wasn’t havin’ any part of that. He put up a huge fight.”

“Who was he?”

I decided to ease my way into this. “They found him in the woods, spying on the cabin. But like I said, when they started to tie him down, he lost it. He slammed the chair into one guy’s head and then tackled the other two. He wrestled a gun from one of the kidnappers, and when one of them pointed his gun at me, this man shot him. He saved my life.”

Mason’s hold on me tightened.

“He helped me get loose, and then they brought me here.”

“They? The guy who drove me here?”

“He’s one of them.”

“Who are they?”

My blood rushed through my head, giving me a dull headache. “Like I said, they want the same thing we do. To bring J.R. Simmons to his knees. And we have the perfect plan to do it, but we need your help.”

He stiffened. “We?”

I took a shallow breath. I had to be strong. I had to get him to go along with this. “I’ve agreed to help them.”

He stood, his mouth gaping open in disbelief. “Why would you do such a thing?”

I struggled to hold back my tears. “Because I’m the one who’s going to do it. I’m the one who’s going to get J.R. to confess.”

He shook his head and leaned forward. “Rose, sweetheart. I don’t know what they’ve told you to convince you of this, but there’s no way in hell it will work. J.R. Simmons is a dangerous man.” He stood upright. “I’d be shocked if he wasn’t behind your kidnapping tonight.” He pointed to the door, his voice rising. “How do you know these guys aren’t Part B of his scheme?”

“Because it’s my plan. My idea. I know it will work.”

Mason ran his hand over his face, looking like he was about to fall over from exhaustion. Skeeter was right. It might have been better to wait until the morning. I should have let Mason get a little sleep. But the risk would have been too great.

He took a breath and seemed to ponder something before he sat down next to me and took both of my hands in his, staring at me in earnest. “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve gotten mixed up in, but we can get out of this. Both of us. Just tell me exactly how they got you to agree to help them, and we’ll get this worked out, okay?” He gave me a soft smile, so full of hope that everything was going to be okay.

He was breaking my heart, and he hadn’t even left me yet.

I got to my feet and began to pace. “I’m sure J.R. is the moneyman backing Mick Gentry’s bid for Fenton County. There’s no way Gentry has the cash to do it on his own. He and his buddies robbed multiple places to get the money to make a bid at the auction on Thanksgiving Day, but he lost it all in the end. His strip club burned down. His drug operation in Big Thief Hollow has been knocked to the ground, and it’ll be a long time before it’s operational again. But Mick’s not the kind of man who believes in working his way up the ranks. He wants an instant power grab, so he found someone with deep pockets to help finance and support him.”

Mason gaped at me like I’d broken out in fluent Russian. “How do you know all that? I’ve been careful to keep as much of that mess as possible at the office.”

I ignored his question. “Who’s big enough to help and not afraid to get his hands dirty so long as he keeps lookin’ and smellin’ clean? J.R. Simmons has kept his hands out of the Fenton County pie, so there would be no reason for anyone to suspect him. But then I found out he hasn’t …” I swallowed my fear and continued. “He was in Fenton County twenty-five years ago. With the Atchison Manufacturing contract. So we know he’s been here before. He’s been looking for that journal, so he still has an interest in Fenton County. But even before I dug up this whole mess with Dora, J.R. had a master plan. One he’d been waiting to pull the trigger on for a while.”