“I don’t like this,” Sam said and Marco looked around at her. Their eyes met. Stupid to feel like he was somebody she could count on now, when fear and indecision were running rampant inside her. When she didn’t know anything about him, really. When he was the one who’d been in the custody of U.S. Marshals, who’d been nearly murdered by criminals, and who was being taken back into custody now.
“Stay cool,” he told her as his door was jerked open. “Just do what they—” He broke off as the men reached in to grab him. Yelping “Hey, watch the leg!” Marco was hauled ungently out of the truck.
Sam’s stomach twisted into a pretzel.
“Open the door, please.” The tapping on her window morphed into an aggressive knocking accompanied by the impatient jiggling of her door handle. Sam’s head whipped around to check it out: the first guy, who she now registered had a blond buzz cut and a pugnacious expression, was trying to get in her door. Just beyond his shoulder, the other guy, tall and thin and bald as a billiard ball, glared in at her. With her peripheral vision, she watched Marco on the ground, his arms draped around the shoulders of the two men who’d pulled him out of the truck, being hustled away in a fireman’s carry toward the car blocking the truck in from the front.
“You! Open up,” Blondie boomed. His tone made it clear: he was in charge. Sam’s heart thumped. The underlying message was: she had no choice but to do what he told her.
No. But she didn’t say it out loud.
They’ll take me into custody, too. What’s going to happen to Tyler?
“I’ll go around to the other side,” the second guy said.
Blondie nodded, and the other guy started walking toward the front of the truck. Watching him, Sam’s breathing suspended. Her heart thumped like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest.
To hell with this.
That thought sprang fully formed into her consciousness, stiffening her spine, sending warm darts of courage to penetrate the cold fear that held her in thrall. Sam made up her mind just like that: she wasn’t giving herself over to these guys, U.S. Marshals or not. She was going to take care of herself, and her son, in her own way.
I’ve got to get out of here.
How?
The solution came to her in the blink of an eye. Big Red might not be able to outrun the cars. But there was another way . . .
Grabbing for the seat belt, she yanked it around herself and clicked it into place.
“Hey.” Blondie rapped the window, scowling through the glass at her. The other guy was almost even with the front of the truck. “You’re just making this hard on yourself.”
It was now or never.
Her hands still clutched the wheel. She still stood on the brake.
Taking a deep breath, Sam moved her foot, slamming it down hard on the gas. The engine roared. There was a moment’s lag time; jaw tight with determination, she stared straight ahead, concentrating on her target. With her peripheral vision she saw Blondie’s eyes widen. Baldie’s head whipped around. Then the transmission caught, and the truck hurtled forward. Slow and cumbersome, it was also big and heavy as hell. Big and heavy enough to do what she needed it to do. The men half carrying Marco to their car—it was parked maybe two yards away from her front bumper—leaped out of the way in the nick of time, nearly dropping Marco on his butt in the process. Even as she registered their wide-eyed, slack-jawed expressions, Sam closed her eyes. She just had time to brace herself before the truck slammed into the side of the sedan.
Boom! The sound of the crash was as loud as an explosion. Flung violently forward, she was grabbed by the seat belt—the truck was too old for air bags—and held fast before she could hit anything damaging. Her eyes popped open. The Taurus flew sideways, the shiny black metal crumpled like a squashed Coke can with both front and rear doors caved in.
Yes! Sam yanked the gearshift into reverse even as she reoriented herself in the seat. Then, looking over her shoulder at her second target, she stomped the gas again. Outside, the men, Marco included, yelled threats and curses. Sam didn’t even try to understand the specifics of what they were saying. Three of the suits started running toward her, shouting and raising their guns like they would open fire, while the fourth one stayed where he was, supporting Marco. Sam registered all this in a split second as her head whipped around to watch where she was going through the rear windshield. She held on tight to the wheel as the truck shot backward, slamming into the car behind. Boom! Metal crumpled. The car bounced up on its two passenger-side wheels. Sam watched wide-eyed as the sedan tilted onto its side before rolling over onto its hood. As a bonus, the door Marco had left open on the truck had slammed shut on its own.
The noise from the men watching jerked her gaze forward again.
Three of them were running toward her, closing fast. Behind them, Marco, his arm still around the fourth guy’s shoulders, shouted something Sam was too agitated to understand. Her attention was all on Blondie, who was aiming his gun right at her.
Sam’s heart leaped. She ducked. Then she put the pedal to the metal and kept on going, staying in reverse as she skirted the overturned car and zoomed away. If Blondie or any of the others fired, there was no bang and no bullets hit the truck. Almost sure that neither of the cars she was leaving behind was up to mounting anything approaching a high-speed chase, she felt a rising tide of excitement as she realized that she was on the brink of actually getting away.
The sounds of the crash were still ringing in her ears as she shifted into drive and peeled rubber out of the parking lot.
CHAPTER NINE
Sanders drove. Danny, in the backseat, center, with his injured leg stretched out through the gap between the front bucket seats, a bulky, grim-faced marshal on either side of him, was doing his best to stay in the game for as long as he could. Light-headed as all hell, sick and dry-mouthed, he wasn’t about to slide gently into the beckoning oblivion of unconsciousness if he could help it. There were too many loose ends left to be tied up. Like retrieving Sam. Which Sanders was flat-out refusing to even attempt.
In reply to Danny’s demand to know where they were going, Sanders said, “Scott Airfield. Until we figure out what the hell went wrong tonight, I’m not taking any chances.”
With Supervisory Deputy Marshal Bruce Sanders, everything was strictly by the book, which, Danny was discovering, wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Thirty-something, dark brown hair with a military cut, six feet tall with the stocky build of a former football player and the arrogant features of a first-rate asshole, Sanders tonight wore the hunted look of a man who feared that he was hovering on the brink of having his career go down the toilet. An operation that he was in charge of had just blown up in his face, costing the lives of two of his men. Any more risk he was not prepared to take.
“I gave ’em a heads-up that we were on the way in,” Groves, who was wedged in to Danny’s right, told Sanders. The heads-up had been over secure radio: Danny knew that because he’d seen Groves, who had a blond buzz cut above a baby face, talking into it, although, since he’d been busy arguing with Sanders at the time, he hadn’t been paying attention to what was being said. Groves still held the radio.
“Which we are,” Sanders emphasized.
So frustrated that he would have jumped out of the car and gone after Sam on his own if it had been possible, Danny all but leaned forward to smack Sanders in the back of the head. “We’re not going anywhere without—”
A blare of music interrupted: “Here’s my number, so call me, maybe?”
Coming out of nowhere as it did, the bubbly song was so unexpected that all five men in the car, including Danny, froze. The incongruously lighthearted tune repeated itself one more time before Danny realized that what they were hearing was a ring tone.
“Is that a fucking cell phone?” Sanders demanded with outrage. “Didn’t I say no phones? Didn’t I say?”
That must have been before he joined them, Danny reflected. They were in the black Taurus that hadn�
�t just been flipped on its hood. Damaged but still drivable despite Sam’s mind-blowing assault on it, it had just pulled out of Miss Kitty’s parking lot and was racing for the expressway. With his mobility severely limited by his leg and other injuries, his authority nonexistent because in the eyes of these jokers he was a protected witness cum prisoner, and any chance he had of breaking free and going to Sam’s rescue himself further hampered by being the only unarmed one of the lot, all Danny had to work with was words. He might be having an inner meltdown over Sam’s safety—Veith and his surviving thugs would almost certainly come across her in the course of their search for him, and if they found her it was a foregone conclusion that they would torture and kill her in an attempt to wring his whereabouts out of her—but rushing to her rescue on his own was impossible in his current state. He had to persuade Sanders that saving her life was worth the effort, and so far Sanders wasn’t persuaded.
“. . . call me, maybe?”
“Is that you?” Sanders glared at him through the rearview mirror. On either side of him, Groves and O’Brien were staring at him, too. Even Abramowitz, who was riding shotgun, had turned around to look.
That’s when Danny made the connection: it had to be Sam’s phone, which he had pocketed after calling Sanders, bebopping away.
“Oopsy,” Danny said. Wincing at the pain involved in moving, Danny pulled the phone out of his pocket. O’Brien and Groves frowned at it.
“You want me to confiscate it, boss?” Groves sounded just a hair too eager. His shoulder jostled Danny’s. On Danny’s other side, O’Brien tensed like he was just waiting for the word. Both of them radiated aggression. The three of them were crammed into the backseat together because Sam’s escape had left the other car totaled. A clean-up crew was already on its way to deal with the mess they’d left behind, but Sanders, afraid of being overtaken by another Zeta assassination squad before he could get the government’s star witness—that would be him, Danny, or rather, Rick Marco—to safety, had refused to wait. Having been swiftly bundled into the car as Sam had hightailed it out of the parking lot, Danny had been demanding that they go after her ever since while his rescuers had alternated between affixing blame for the night’s series of debacles anywhere it would stick and flat-out refusing to do what he was telling them to do. Their mandate was to ensure his safety and no one else’s, Sanders told him, and that, as Danny knew from his own experience with orders from on high, was a hard nut to crack.
“Touch this phone and I’ll break your faces,” Danny said, meaning it. “Keep your mouths shut, all of you. I’m answering this.” He frowned at the incoming number in the glowing little box on the phone’s case. The name on the caller ID—Cindy Menifee—meant nothing to him. The fact that whoever was on the other end was calling Sam at this hour did. It seemed like a pretty safe assumption that the caller had to know her well. He briefly considered the possibilities: maybe this person could get a message to her for him, warning her again about what she was facing, reminding her how thin was the thread by which her life now hung, telling her someplace she could meet up with him. Or maybe it was Sam herself, realizing that he had her phone, borrowing a phone to call him. Maybe she had figured out what a mistake she had just made, or . . . something.
Okay, his thinking was admittedly a little bit fuzzy. The wonder was that he was still thinking at all. He was dizzy and in pain, and if ever the adrenaline coursing through his system wore off he figured he would crash like a freight train with no brakes. But right now he had to do what he could to save the girl who had saved him, because he owed her and because she was an innocent bystander who didn’t deserve to be caught up in this. Also, because he liked her. Plus she was a woman, and pretty, and—well, he wasn’t prepared to let her get herself killed if he could help it, that was all. First he was going to answer her phone and then he was going to wing it, depending on who was on the other end and what they said, figuring out the best way to use the contact as he went along.
“Anyone finds us through that phone and I’ll kill you myself before the Zetas can do the job,” Sanders threatened as Danny flipped the phone open. Making his thumb and forefinger into a pseudo gun, Sanders glanced around to point it at Danny. “Like this: boom, shot to the head.”
Danny ignored him.
“Mm-hmm,” Danny said into the phone, his voice a little higher pitched than normal. He didn’t want to give away immediately that it wasn’t Sam who was answering, just in case whoever it was had no interest in talking to him or anyone who wasn’t Sam.
“Mom?” The voice on the other end was soft and quavery, kind of. A kid’s voice. Jesus, it had to be Sam’s kid. Whispering. Danny sat up straighter, and to hell with the pain. “Mom, where are you? Some men are here.”
Danny racked his brain. It was a piss-poor time for it to be shrouded in layers of fog, but there was nothing to do but . . .
“Mom?” The kid’s voice was even smaller. And definitely scared. “They broke in the kitchen door. They’re in there with Mrs. Menifee. They’re hurting her. What should I do?”
Danny’s blood ran cold.
“Tyler.” The kid’s name popped into his head just like that. It was like he could hear Sam’s voice saying it. “Shh. You want to be real quiet. Don’t let them see or hear you.”
“Who are you? Where’s Mom?”
“I’m a friend of your mom’s, okay? She isn’t here right now.” He hoped, no, he prayed, that she wasn’t there, either. But he knew as well as he knew the sun would rise in the morning that she’d been heading home for her kid. Had she made it? Was she there, too, somewhere?
The possibility scared the bejesus out of him.
There was a sniffle. The sound made Danny’s stomach twist.
“Are you Carl?” the kid asked.
“Shh,” Danny warned again. He had no idea who Carl was, but he wasn’t going to claim to be him. The name Rick stuck in his throat. Anyway, to give him that much information would be to put the kid in more danger than he was in already. He sure as hell couldn’t tell the truth, either. “I’m Trey.” A nickname bestowed on him at Texas A&M, where he had been the sixth man on the Aggies basketball team whose specialty had been three-point shots.
“Are you a stranger?” The kid sounded wary. Danny supposed Sam had drummed the “stranger danger” bit into his head. Danny was familiar with it from his own nephews. Important information, but definitely not helpful now.
“No. I’m a friend of your mom’s, remember?”
“I don’t know if . . .”
A woman’s scream in the background interrupted, sending the hair on Danny’s nape shooting upright. His heart leaped. Sam? was his immediate, gut-wrenching reaction. But he didn’t say it. Not to her kid. Anyway, it couldn’t be her, or the kid would be having a cow. It had to be that Mrs. Menifee the kid had been talking about.
“No! Please, please, I don’t . . .” The woman’s voice was shrill with terror. The rest of her plea degenerated into unintelligible syllables. Listening, Danny gritted his teeth, consumed with his own helplessness. He knew what was happening. They were trying to force his—or maybe Sam’s—whereabouts out of her.
“They’re hitting Mrs. Menifee,” the kid whispered, his stranger-danger problem clearly having been overridden by events. “With their fists. They shouldn’t do that.” He sounded angry now as well as scared. “Mrs. Menifee is nice.” Danny found that his hand was clenched so hard around the phone that he had to consciously ease his grip or risk breaking the plastic. “I need my mom to come home. I need her right now.”
That was the last thing any of them needed, but Danny didn’t tell the kid that even as he prayed that Sam stayed far, far away.
“Don’t let them see you,” Danny warned.
The kid didn’t answer.
“Tyler—”
“Mrs. Menifee’s crying.” It was the merest breath of sound. “They’re tying her up in a chair now. One of them’s got a big knife.”
Telling the kid to
hang up and call 911 sprang to the tip of his tongue, only to be instantly dismissed. For the kid’s sake, he absolutely needed to keep the phone connection going. He said, “Whatever you do, don’t hit the end-call button. You hear?”
“Uh-huh.” The kid’s barely there voice had a catch in it. Danny thought he might be holding back a sob.
“We’re coming to get you, Tyler. Where are you? Do you know the address?”
“It’s 237 C-Clark Street.” Danny could hear a kind of slithering noise that he couldn’t identify.
He asked, “Tyler, what are you doing?”
“Hiding under the bed.”
“Good plan.” Danny’s pulse hammered. The kid was obviously frightened out of his gourd. Danny could almost feel the icy pulse of his terror through the phone. He was only four years old. For how long would he be able to keep quiet and out of sight? “Okay, 237 Clark Street. I got it. Hold on. Stay real quiet.”
Danny covered the mouthpiece and looked at Groves, who was frowning as he listened in. Danny could no longer hear the woman in the background, which wasn’t a good thing for many reasons.
“Groves. Get on the fucking radio and tell whoever’s on the other end to call 911,” Danny said. “Tell them to send the cops to 237 Clark Street. Do it right now.” The harsh growl of his voice was a testament to how much the idea of a little boy falling into the hands of the Zetas terrified him.
“What the fuck?” Through the rearview mirror, Sanders looked at Danny like he’d just grown a second head.
“The woman in the truck. This is her kid on the phone. The Zetas are there where the kid is, looking for me. Trying to torture information out of another woman. The kid’s there, too, scared out of his mind.” At the expression on Groves’s face, Danny barked at him, “Goddamnit, man, do it.” He would have snatched the radio out of Groves’s hand and done it himself except he had a damaged finger on one hand and Sam’s phone in the other, quite apart from the fact that in his present condition he was almost certain to lose the fight that such an action would start. Just managing not to shout, he looked at Sanders again. “We need to head for 237 Clark Street. Fast.”
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