Three.
She counted again. Just to be sure.
Three lights. Three people.
She tripped for the second time, her ankle twisting under her.
Sam pulled her against his side, whispering in her ear, “Careful. If you get hurt, I’ll have to carry you out. That will slow us down.”
She nodded and kept moving, ignoring the throbbing pain in her ankle and the hollow pulse of fear in her veins. She had to stay focused and play things smart.
The people behind them probably had weapons, and she didn’t want to find out what they planned to do to her or to Sam. If what he’d said was true, he was an innocent bystander, an FBI agent who’d stepped in to help and who could lose his life because of it. Because of her. She didn’t want that. She wanted both of them safe, but if only one of them survived, she’d rather it be him. She didn’t want to live knowing that he’d died helping her.
She shuddered, wishing she could close her eyes, open them and find out the last couple of weeks had been a nightmare.
Actually, she’d be happy to learn that the past seven years had been a nightmare.
Voices carried through the darkness. Her pursuers weren’t being subtle. They seemed to want her to know they were coming.
Maybe intimidation was the point.
Maybe they wanted to terrify her into surrendering or scare her into running deep into the wilderness. It would be easy to get lost there. Sam had been right about that. Just as he seemed to be right about staying silent and moving slowly. She didn’t think their pursuers had any idea how close they were. Panicking and racing through the trees, breaking branches and making noise would have given away their location.
And it’s exactly what she still wanted to do.
Run as fast as she could for as long as she could and pray they didn’t catch her.
Sam pushed through thick undergrowth, pulling her up a ravine and out into a field of tall grass. A house had once stood in the center of it. She could see the crumbling foundation, an old fence and an outbuilding. She could also see the road—a gray slash in the lush landscape.
They stepped onto the cracked asphalt. She’d have preferred to return to the woods. At least there she felt hidden, protected by the thick tree canopy and dense foliage.
Sam didn’t seem bothered by the lack of cover. He’d picked up his pace. First to a slow jog and then to a quicker run. He was moving fast, his longer legs eating up the ground at a speed Ella could barely match. Her lungs burned, her chest heaved, but she didn’t dare ask him to slow down.
She felt the danger like she felt the cold air and the hard thump of her heart. It was there. Right behind them. Every nightmare she’d ever had and all the ones she hadn’t.
“This way,” Sam said, yanking her toward the edge of the road.
She was certain she heard feet pounding on the pavement behind them. She didn’t look. She was afraid of what she’d see.
A shot rang out, the sound reverberating through the stillness. A bullet slammed into a tree near her head, bits of bark flying into her face and hair.
She didn’t have time to react. Sam dragged her into the foliage, pushing through brambles like they were air.
Another shot rang out, whizzing past somewhere to her left.
“Get down,” Sam said, his voice clipped and hard as he swung around and pulled a gun from a belt holster. Smooth. Practiced. Effortless. As if he’d done it hundreds of times before.
She dropped to the ground as he fired three shots in rapid succession.
He dragged her up and into an all-out run before the sound faded away. He veered right, and she finally saw what they’d been running toward—an old Chevy truck tucked behind trees and bushes and hidden from the road.
“Let’s go!” Sam opened the passenger door, and she slid in, every nerve in her body alive with fear and adrenaline.
Seconds later, Sam climbed behind the wheel and turned on the engine, his gun hidden again. He drove through undergrowth and sapling trees and pulled onto the road. Three people were standing in the center of the road. No flashlights. Just dark figures against the gray-blue landscape.
“Get down!” Sam commanded as he forced the truck into a one-eighty and accelerated. The back window shattered, and she ducked, pebbles of glass falling onto the bench seat beside her.
* * *
His truck had been seen. That meant his cover had been blown. Sam wasn’t going to regret it. His priority was to help civilians—innocent women, men and children who’d done nothing to deserve the trouble they found themselves in. Catching the people who preyed on them was always secondary to ensuring their safety.
Of course, he was assuming that Ella was an innocent civilian. He knew nothing about her other than what she’d shared. For all he knew, she was a member of The Organization and had become a liability the higher-ups couldn’t afford to keep. Even if she was that, he’d have helped her. No matter her story, he couldn’t let her die.
Justice should only ever be served by the court system or by God. Individuals playing judge and jury were prone to quick and regrettable action. That had been drilled into Sam’s head when he was a rookie cop in Houston. His partner and mentor, Mitch Daley, hadn’t appreciated some of Sam’s rougher edges. He’d helped smooth them out. Mitch was one of the good guys. Currently retired, he and his wife were spending their golden years cruising and camping and visiting their four kids and fifteen grandchildren.
“Are they gone?” Ella asked, lifting her head and glancing out the shattered back window.
“Yes.” For now. Hopefully, for a while.
“That should probably make me feel better, but it doesn’t.” Bits of glass shimmered on her arm and shoulder, and he was glad she’d had his coat for extra protection. As it was, the bullets had come way too close to finding their mark. A second later arriving at the truck, a minute later escaping, and he and Ella might not have been so fortunate.
“The Organization isn’t filled with people who want to make others feel better,” he replied, accelerating around a curve in the road, putting more distance between them and the danger behind them.
“You keep mentioning The Organization. Why?”
“Because the man who transported you here was a member.”
“I don’t remember being transported, so I have no idea who he is.”
“His name is Mack Dawson. He works as an orderly at the clinic—helping nurses, transporting patients from place to place.”
“Okay.”
“The name doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“Nothing about anything you’ve said means anything to me. I’d never heard of The Organization until tonight. I don’t remember meeting Mack Dawson.”
“Do you remember why you were at the clinic?”
“I was planning to clean out my cousin’s office. The door was locked, and I asked for a key. I was waiting for it. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“Your cousin worked at the clinic?” That seemed to be the center of syndicate activity. He knew of at least half a dozen people who worked for the clinic and The Organization.
“She had an office there. She was employed by the county.”
“To do what?” he asked, pushing for more information despite her apparent reluctance to offer it.
He needed to know everything if he was going to help her.
“She was a social worker. She ran drug rehab groups and helped recovering addicts get back on their feet. She arranged haircuts and job interviews. She even drove people to appointments. Anything to get them away from their addictions.”
“She sounds like a great lady.” She probably had been, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t also been part of The Organization.
“She was,” Ella responded softly, her words barely carrying over the whistle of wind through the shattered back w
indow.
She was still looking in that direction, her left hand resting on glass that littered the bench seat. She had no visible tattoos. No rings. No jewelry of any kind. Not the normal Organization operative he’d met. He wasn’t sure about the others. He assumed they were polished. Sophisticated. Well-educated. Well-dressed. Well-spoken. The kind of people who could easily convince others to do what they wanted. They had to be. They entered places like Newcastle and set up legitimate businesses that eventually served as covers for their illegal operations. They hired people living on the fringe of society to do their dirty work, destroying families, homes, lives without a second thought. They were the people Sam wanted to bring in. Low-level thugs like the ones who’d kidnapped Ella didn’t know enough about the inner workings of The Organization to help shut it down, but he’d be just as happy to toss them in jail, too. First, though, he needed to understand how Ella had gotten where she was—in the crosshairs of a crime syndicate that seemed to want her dead.
“Is it possible, Ruby was—”
“No,” she cut him off.
“You didn’t let me finish the question.”
“You were going to ask if she could have been part of The Organization.”
True. He had been. “Lots of good people get caught up in not-so-good things.”
“Based on the fact that I was kidnapped, and we were both shot at, I’d say The Organization is a lot worse than not-so-good.”
“What I’m trying to say—” Badly, apparently. Which was why he generally didn’t conduct interviews with victims. It was why he preferred working undercover in very dangerous situations to interacting with people like Ella—people who’d been hurt, who were afraid, who needed sympathy and understanding. “Is that your cousin might have gotten involved in something that was much more dangerous—”
“And illegal and wrong than she thought? Not Ruby. She played by the book. Always.”
“Okay.” He’d broached the subject. Now, he’d let it drop.
“What does that mean?”
“It means okay. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Really?”
“I believe you believe what you’re telling me. That being the case, there’s no sense in discussing the subject.”
“In other words, you think Ruby was part of a crime syndicate and that’s why I was kidnapped?”
“In other words, I want the truth. Whatever it is, and whatever it means.”
“There is no FBI field office is Newcastle, Sam. I don’t think there’s one in Maine,” she said.
“There’s not.”
“I want the truth, too. Who are you really? Why are you here? How did you just happen to arrive on the scene in time to help me?”
“I didn’t just happen to do anything. I was working undercover as an IT specialist hired to run the clinic’s network system. I was leaving work for the day and saw you being wheeled into the parking garage. Something didn’t seem right, so I followed the vehicle you were being transported in.”
“You’ve left a lot out of that story,” she said, finally shifting so that she was facing forward again.
“I gave you the truth. It’s what you wanted.”
“You said you’re working undercover—”
“I was working as an IT specialist, taking payoffs from The Organization to manipulate certain computer systems at the clinic. The goal was to maintain my cover and gather evidence that would identify and lead to the arrest of top-tier operatives. Now, I’m working on keeping you safe.”
“You don’t have to keep me safe. You can drop me off at a police station and go back to what you were doing.”
“No. I can’t. First, because you’re not going to be safe until you’re far away from here. Second, because my cover was blown the moment this truck was seen.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be. My job requires that I protect and serve. I would have done this for anyone.”
“I’m still sorry. What you were doing was important. Now, you can’t do it anymore.”
“We’ll still bring The Organization down. We’ll just have to go about it in a different way.”
She nodded, her fingers tapping against the pieces of glass on the seat.
He lifted her hand, set it on her thigh. “I don’t think you’ll want to pick glass out of your fingers later.”
“I don’t want to be here, either. But, I am.”
“Where would you rather be?”
“Home,” she said, so simply and with so much longing he glanced at her way.
“That’s in Charlotte, right?”
“Outside of it. Up until three years ago, Ruby and I lived a block away from each other.”
“Is that when she moved here?”
“She got the job first. She’d been working as an addiction counselor at a Charlotte hospital, and she was ready for an adventure.”
“You didn’t want her to go?”
“I wanted her to be happy. Whatever that meant and wherever it led. Now, I wish I’d fought a little harder to get her to stay.”
“You can’t blame yourself for what happened to your cousin.”
“Sure, I can.”
“You shouldn’t.”
She laughed, the sound hollow and devoid of humor. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“How was old was your cousin?”
“Thirty-two.”
“So a few years older than you?”
“Yes.”
“And perfectly capable of making her own decisions?”
She didn’t respond.
“How did she die?” he continued, and she stiffened, her back going ramrod straight, her gaze jumping from the road ahead to him. He could feel the intensity of her stare, and he wondered what nerve he’d hit and why she’d reacted so strongly.
“A drug overdose,” she finally responded tersely, and he thought she’d prefer the subject to be closed.
Too bad, because he planned to keep it open. Eventually. For right now, he’d let things lie.
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw distant headlights. This was a mountain road that served a rural community. No one had been on it when he’d followed Ella’s kidnappers in. He’d had to stay back and turn his headlights off to keep from being spotted. He found it difficult to believe that anyone other than the gunmen were traveling it now.
He accelerated, anxious to get off the two-lane road and onto the highway. It would be safer there. More traffic. More room to maneuver. More exits and entrances and ways to escape.
“What’s wrong?” Ella asked, looking out the back window again. “Is that them?”
“Probably.”
“They’re catching up.”
She was right. The distance between the two vehicles was narrowing. The old Chevy the FBI had assigned him for the undercover job wasn’t fast. That hadn’t mattered, until tonight.
He floored it anyway, racing toward the entrance ramp to the state highway.
The car was still gaining on them.
“Get down,” he said, speeding around a curve, the exit ramp just ahead. Headlights streamed into the Chevy, their pursuers edging closer. He thought they might slam into the bumper, try to force him off the road. Instead, someone leaned out the window and fired a shot. He felt the quick tug of a blown tire, fought to keep the truck under control as he flew onto the ramp, rubber burning, the Chevy still shimmying.
He didn’t ease up on the accelerator.
He couldn’t risk having the other vehicle pull up beside him. A hundred yards ahead, an emergency turnaround split the wide median between the north and southbound lanes of the highway. He didn’t brake, just spun onto the road, bounced across the median and sped in the opposite direction.
The other driver missed the turn, his brake lights flashin
g as he tried to stop. It would take a few minutes for him to recover and backtrack. Unlike the rural route they’d been on, the state highway wasn’t empty. Several big rigs zoomed past and a few RVs meandered along. The other driver wouldn’t want to call attention to himself. By the time he found a place to turn without being noticed, Sam would be off the highway, the crippled Chevy hidden from view.
That was the plan.
Of course, he’d learned a long time ago that the best-laid plans didn’t always work out. His relationship with Shelly was a prime example. He’d had it all figured out—how long they’d date, how long they’d be engaged, how big the wedding would be. She’d been in complete agreement. Until she’d met someone else and walked away.
He couldn’t say he’d been devastated. Shelly had been smart and driven, energetic and funny. She was everything he’d thought he’d wanted in a life partner. She’d worked as an ER nurse at a hospital in Houston, and they’d met while he was having a knife wound stitched up. People had said they were the perfect couple, but she’d wanted a lot more than he ever had. More rooms in the house they’d buy one day. More expensive cars. More clothes, shoes and jewelry. After spending nine years in his father’s home, all Sam had ever really wanted was peace.
The Chevy thumped along the highway, the thudding flat making speed impossible. He needed to get off the road, and he needed to do it before the other vehicle caught up. He took the next exit ramp, thumping off the highway and onto a more rural road.
He had to find a safe place to pull off, and then he needed to make a call. Not to the local or state police. He had no idea if there were Organization operatives working for either. He’d call Wren. She could put a team together and be in the area in a few hours. That would push the odds of survival in his favor.
All he had to do was make sure he and Ella survived until then.
THREE
She didn’t know where they were, but Ella didn’t think it was far enough away from the people who were chasing them. A handful of ramshackle houses lined the narrow road they were traveling, lights shining from a few porches and seeping beneath several closed window shades. She assumed it had been a thriving community at one time. Now it looked old and tired.
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