* * *
THEY’D GOTTEN DAMNED LUCKY at the last stop, Cole realized, just as they’d been fortunate when Lisa had spotted the dog.
But luck was like that sometimes, lulling the man who counted on it into the false sense that the breaks would always fall his way.
Cole wasn’t such a man, and he knew better than to believe, as Lisa seemed to, that all their problems would be over once they caught up with the Explorer. On the contrary, he feared that would be by far the most dangerous part of the equation.
He slid a look to Lisa, who was trying to force down a bite of sandwich while the little dog wagged his tail and stared plaintively, his front paws on her knee. He should have left both of them back there, where the kind people from the store could have gotten her help. Where she would be out of harm’s way while he did whatever he had to.
But her stake in this was so high, he hadn’t had it in him to deny her need to be here. That didn’t mean, however, that he would brook any interference with the rescue of her son.
“When we catch up with them,” he told her, “we’re not going to engage. Not until the authorities catch up.”
She put down the sandwich and glared at him. “You have to be kidding. We haven’t gotten this far just to follow them. Heaven only knows what they’re doing to my—”
“Do you want him back alive?” He spoke sharply, meaning to shock her. Judging from the devastation in her eyes, it had worked. “If we try to chase them, they might kill him. Or we might, if we make whoever’s driving wreck the vehicle.”
She chewed her lower lip, her eyes brimming. “Then what do we do?”
“Try to maintain visual contact without arousing their suspicions, and let the authorities know where they can find us.”
Pulling the phone from her bag, she looked down at it. “No bars at all. No signal.”
“Keep checking. We’ll get one eventually, or, if we’re lucky, the sheriff’s deputies will find us first.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We wait for an opportunity. A chance for me to take out one or both kidnappers.” He leaned forward, hunching over the wheel and staring at a flickering glow on the horizon, dark smoke billowing above it. “Look. Look up ahead. What the hell is that?”
Images roared up from his past: a crowded marketplace, the terrified, dark eyes of a woman in her clean white burka, a split second’s hesitation, then the distant concussion as the scene—along with Lisa’s husband and a dozen innocent civilian shoppers—erupted into flame.
But this was not Afghanistan, he knew, so he shunted the painful memory aside and rounded the curve, already feeling the horror tightening in his gut. Already smelling the smoke as the rear end of a burning vehicle, its nose down in a roadside ditch, came into view.
“That’s my car!” screamed Lisa, though only the blazing trunk was visible. “Oh, my God, Tyler could be in there! He might be locked inside!”
Chapter Six
“Stay in the truck,” Cole ordered as he parked the vehicle as close to the fire as he dared. “Don’t you move from this spot, and I mean it.”
Maybe it was his tone, and maybe it was shock, but Lisa froze where she sat, her gaze locked on the hungry flames consuming the car.
It was altogether possible the fuel tank would blow at any minute. And altogether probable that no living child was inside. But he had come this far already, had become—no matter how he’d tried to steel himself against it—emotionally invested. There was no way he could live with himself if he simply sat and watched the car burn.
He didn’t have an extinguisher, but the toolbox he’d been using earlier to fix up old bikes for the children of deployed soldiers was still in the back of the truck. He found a hammer to break out a window and then took off at a run, his body bent as low as he could manage.
As he approached the blaze, the heat was so intense, he instinctively shielded his face with his jacket-clad arm to protect it. Jumping across the ditch some thirty feet distant, he approached the sedan’s nose-down front end, which appeared to be less heavily involved. He choked on the acrid black smoke and pressed forward, his eyes and nose streaming from the fumes. By the time he made it close enough to see that the front door had been left wide open, he felt intense heat on his exposed hand and smelled the distinctive stench of burned hair. It had to be his own.
Knowing he could ignite at any moment, he forced himself another few steps forward, his breath held to spare his lungs from the hot gases that would sear them. It was almost impossible to see, with smoke and fire pouring from inside the vehicle, and he could barely force his eyes open wide enough to make out anything at all.
Finally there was an instant where the flames twisted and the smoke billowed and he clearly saw that the required car seat wasn’t in the vehicle. The kidnappers must have moved it, along with the child, into the SUV they’d stolen.
Dark as it was, he made out one other detail: the firelight reflecting off a candy wrapper lying in the grass beside the car. Then the heat and smoke forced him back to where he coughed and choked, resting his hands on his knees for support. He thought of making a second run at the car, but it was hopeless, and getting himself killed would serve nobody’s interests.
“Cole, your jacket—you’re on fire!” Lisa warned, coming up behind him and beating out the flames on his sleeve with the army blanket she’d brought from the truck.
When he could manage it, he peeled off his jacket, then dropped it on the ground and stamped the smoldering fabric with his boot.
Ignoring it, he told Lisa, “There’s nobody inside. No car seat, either. You did have one for him, right?”
“What about the trunk?” she asked.
“It must have popped open in the crash. I didn’t see anything inside.”
She nodded, eyes closing. “Thank God, and thank you, Cole. I won’t forget you risked your life. Are you all right?”
“Come on,” he said, his voice hoarse from the smoke. “Back to the truck. Burning cars don’t blow up often, but it’s not a chance we need to take.”
He picked up the jacket and took it with him. Partially burned sleeve or not, he didn’t rule out the possibility that he might need it later.
Inside the truck, he backed a safe distance down the road, then put the transmission back into Park and dragged in several deep breaths between fits of coughing.
“Here.” Reaching past the quivering dog, Lisa handed him some water and the first-aid kit he’d left on the floorboard earlier. “Maybe there’s some ointment. Your hand and arm are red, and those are blisters coming up.”
He spared the burns a glance and did a quick assessment. They hurt like hell, but in this case, that was a good thing, meaning that the nerves remained intact. “It’s only first-degree,” he said, though he knew the blisters indicated second. “I’ll deal with it later.”
“So, why are we stopping? You said yourself, they can’t be far ahead.”
He shook his head. “Deputies’ll be here soon. Dark as it is out here, the light from that fire will be visible for miles.”
She shook her head. “No, we can’t wait for them. Every second we delay puts us farther behind.”
“You need to listen to me, Lisa. The sheriff’s department knows this county, and they have the resources to head off those people, maybe even call out a chopper from the state or bring the feds in on this. And if it comes down to a hostage negotiation, they’re far better equipped than two injured civilians.”
“You’re not a civilian,” she challenged. “You’re a Ranger.”
“An ex-Ranger,” he corrected, the admission twisting like a knife in his chest. “A failed Ranger.”
“Really? Well, the way you played the hero at the bank, I don’t buy the failed part for a second. You could do this if you wanted to. You could save my son.”
He winced at the reminder of everything that his misguided heroics had cost them. A fresh start with the U.S. Marshals in his case. A five-year-old son
in hers. The botched bank robbery had been the Afghan market in Lashkar Gah all over again, only this time it hadn’t been his hesitation but his rash act that had cost Lisa Meador a member of her family.
You should tell her who she’s dealing with. Tell her everything.
But his C.O.’s words came back to haunt him, and he told himself she had more than enough to contend with already. Unable to meet her eyes, he looked away, in the direction of the fire. In the time it took to mark her swift movement in his peripheral vision, she managed to pull a gun from her straw bag.
His Glock. When in hell had she had the time to pull it out from under his seat? And even as desperate as she was to get to her son, did she really have it in her to shoot him and drive off in his truck?
* * *
“IF YOU DON’T want to help me, you can wait here alone for the deputies,” Lisa told him, her voice as hard as she could manage to make up for the shaking of her left hand. “Now, either drive or get out, and I’ll take it from here.”
The look that flashed across his features was incredulous. “You’re kidding, right? One minute you’re beating out a fire to keep me from burning and telling me you won’t forget what I did, and now you’re pulling my own gun on me?”
“With or without your help, I’m going to find Tyler,” she said, ignoring the dog’s nervous whining. She understood the animal’s fear—her heart was jumping around in her chest like a terrified jackrabbit—but she couldn’t allow anyone or anything to stop her.
“You’ll get yourself killed. And maybe Tyler, too.” Cole studied her intently, his gray eyes reflecting the fire ahead. “Are you willing to live with that risk, Lisa? And the consequences? Because I can tell you, that kind of regret’s the real hell. One that’s a million times worse than getting yourself shot down.”
She hesitated at his questions, at the sense of loss, the torment, that radiated from his voice. But finally she nodded. “When my husband died, there was nothing I could do about it. No way to go back in time to warn him about the suicide bomber, or even to give him one last kiss before he went out to patrol that marketplace. It’s been thirteen months, and I still have the same nightmares, where I’m flossing a patient’s teeth or buying groceries, clueless, while on another screen in my head, he’s dying with those other people. I can’t—I won’t—live with thinking I might have those same dreams about our son. With knowing I might not be there when he needs me most.”
He looked directly into her eyes, and she would have sworn that she felt some kind of connection, the shared understanding that both of them had suffered a loss so catastrophic it forever shattered the world as they had known it. For a moment she thought that shared bond might make a difference, until he looked away.
So that was it. He wasn’t going to help her. Disappointment overwhelmed her. And then he spoke again.
“All right, Lisa,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat. “We’re going. But only if you put away that damned gun before you hurt somebody.”
She leaned over to drop it in her bag—which he snatched away from her so quickly that Rowdy yipped in alarm.
He shoved the gun into the well on the door, well out of her reach, then handed back the bag and cut her a look that brimmed with masculine irritation. A look that assured her that her rash act had cut off their still-fragile connection at the knees.
“Pull that sort of stunt on me again—” he spat out the words, scowling “—and I’m shoving your ass out of the truck and leaving you to fend for yourself. You understand me?”
Terrified as she was, she couldn’t swallow, much less respond in any way. Couldn’t even breathe until he put the truck back into gear and drove off in the direction the kidnappers must have taken.
* * *
SO FAR, SO GOOD, thought Deputy Trace Sutherland as he and his wife—no, his ex-wife—sped toward the interstate. After coming to a fork in the road, he and Jill had managed a stiff but still-professional discussion before agreeing that Cole Sawyer would have wanted to bypass the frequent speed zones along the smaller roads. Whether he was heading due west or meant to turn south to cross the border into Mexico, as Trace thought likely, he was clearly in one hell of a hurry.
They had long since left Tuller County and the reach of their radio far behind, so Jill called in to Dispatch the moment she realized that she had cell phone reception. After a brief conversation, she covered the receiver and said, “They’re patching me through to the sheriff.”
“Put the phone on Speaker, will you?”
Her expression soured in an instant. “Give me a little credit, will you, Sutherland? I was just about to do that.”
Her use of his last name—a name that they’d once shared—stung worse than the criticism.
“Thanks, Jill,” he murmured.
Once he would have risen to the bait, would have sarcastically tossed back her newly reclaimed maiden name to inflict his fair share of damage. But in the eight months since that dark day their divorce became final, he’d lost his taste for that particular blood sport. Mostly because he’d been the one left bleeding.
He wondered if Jill still cared, even a little, or if she had eased her suffering with another man yet. Painful as the thought was, he was well aware that her tall blond good looks and outsize personality had always attracted admiration. But if she had a boyfriend, no one had dared mention it to him, and he rarely saw her since he’d transferred to another shift. He’d moved across town, too, from the house they had once shared. The house that had been a home until the day a drunken fool named Jimmy James Barlow almost killed her.
Sheriff Hank Stewart came on the line. As usual, he got straight down to business. “What’s your twenty, Keller?”
“We’re nearly at the ramp onto Interstate 10,” Jill said.
“You need to turn around right now and get over to the Texas Two-Step in Coffee Creek.” He gave them directions, naming the state road they had passed up.
“Got it.” She scowled, and Trace grimaced, remembering the sign they’d bypassed.
With no other cars in sight, he made a quick three-point turn on the narrow road.
“Just got a call from the Farris County sheriff,” Stewart went on. “Our suspect and the injured female came in with some wild story about a carjacking. Claimed the kidnappers took off with the woman’s five-year-old kid.”
“So the silver Camry they were chasing is hers?” Trace’s gut tightened at the news. True or not, the possibility of a child abduction took this pursuit to a whole new level. What he couldn’t figure out was how that story fit in with the botched bank robbery.
“A local deputy just radioed in to Dispatch,” their boss told them. “According to the sheriff, his deputy found the vehicle burning over on County Road...something or other. I’ve got it written down here somewhere.” They heard papers shuffling, and then he gave the number, which Jill quickly jotted on the pad she’d pulled from her breast pocket.
“So you think our suspect caught up with these alleged kidnappers and dealt some homegrown justice?” Trace asked.
“Can’t say for sure, since the deputy can’t get close enough to check for bodies, but I doubt it,” the sheriff answered. “Some fella at the Two-Step got his vehicle stolen just before our suspect, who it turns out really is an ex-Ranger by the name of Cole Sawyer, and the injured woman came into the store. The woman claimed the car thief’s description matched that of her carjacker.”
“Do you have the stolen vehicle’s description?” Jill asked.
“Four-year-old dark blue Ford Explorer.” He rattled off the plate number but had to repeat it when static broke up his words, since they were traveling farther away from the closest cell tower. “The woman at...Two-Step may have...information for you. Go...interview...before...decide how to proceed.”
Trace opened his mouth to acknowledge the order before they lost the signal, but, as usual, Jill was quicker on the draw.
“Wouldn’t we be better off letting Farris County han
dle that and continuing our pursuit of the bank robber? After all, we have to be a heck of a lot closer than they are, and if there’s really a kid somewhere in all this, time is of the essence.”
Trace winced, almost certain that the sheriff—always quick to anger when he thought his orders were being questioned—was about to blast her. But the only thing that came through before they lost the connection was a garbled version of “Proceed as...”
“You think he meant proceed as ordered?” Trace asked, thinking, from the tone of their boss’s voice, that they’d probably missed out on a few expletives.
“Oh, noooo.” When Jill grinned in his direction, for just a moment, he felt as if he had his gung-ho, risk-
anything-for-results wife back, as if Jimmy James Barlow, the arguments and the divorce had never happened. And he would swear, she’d never been more beautiful, more alive, than she looked now. “I’m positive that he meant we should proceed with my idea. We can catch them, Trace. We can bring them in.”
If he had any sense at all, he would have backtracked until they got a signal, or out-and-out ignored her ridiculous suggestion. But because she’d used his first name this time, though he had never been one for pissing off the sheriff who’d taught him so much, he decided he was going along for the ride.
He had to, with his instincts screaming like a thousand sirens that in this case, on this night, there were far more important things than his career at stake.
Chapter Seven
Still floating from a fresh high, Lee Ray pictured the car as it had gone up, the barbecue starter fluid making a loud whoosh as it ignited, the flames billowing and the black smoke rolling as thick as his relief. He’d been scared as hell, his guts churning, when Evie pulled the plastic bottle from her “bag of tricks,” as he thought of her duffel.
Just as she’d demanded, he had gotten the Explorer, then met her on this godforsaken stretch of road. But his obedience didn’t guarantee she wouldn’t suddenly douse him and light him up with a casually flicked cigarette—and it sure as hell wouldn’t protect the boy still sleeping in the backseat.
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