Game On

by Nancy Warren

  * * *

  MADDIE HOWE TORE her gaze from the big man sitting next to her and looked beyond the parking lot to where Interstate 80 stretched away into the distance, until it was finally swallowed up by the mountains beyond. Heat shimmered in waves over that narrow ribbon of tarmac, and the plains on either side were scorched brown from the unrelenting heat of the July sun.

  “Just head west toward Reno until I tell you different,” she replied, shifting her gaze back to him. To her dismay, the man made no move to put the truck into gear, although one hand rested on the stick shift. He was watching her, and she thought his dark eyes held compassion.

  “You sure you want to do this?” His voice was low, compelling.

  Maddie swallowed nervously What if he simply refused to drive? He couldn’t do that to her, she thought in near desperation. She had already come this far; had irrevocably altered her life, maybe even ruined it. For her, there was no turning back. She was committed to the course she had chosen, even if it meant ditching him and finding another driver. For her, there were no other options.

  “I’m sure,” she finally said, her mouth dry. Her hands tightened around the gun and she lifted it fractionally higher. “Please, just drive.”

  His expression told her clearly he was disappointed, but he shifted the big truck into gear and then they were pulling out onto the interstate and heading west toward the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Maddie spared one swift glance back at the diner, expecting what, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if anyone in the place was even aware that she’d just committed a crime. The whole thing had been too easy. There was no discernible activity in the parking lot, and the rest area grew smaller and smaller as they sped away. Finally, she allowed herself to relax back into the seat.

  The man beside her was silent. Maddie didn’t know whether to be thankful for that or not. She watched him covertly from beneath her baseball cap. He was a big man, tall and lean with broad shoulders. He’d startled her half to death when he’d confronted her in the diner. Her first impression had been of height and width and dark eyes that had focused on her with an intensity that missed nothing.

  Then he had spoken, and his voice was like a lifeline in a world that was suddenly tilting out of control. This was the kind of guy who could talk a suicide jumper down off a ledge, she decided. His voice had a quality to it that both calmed and inspired trust. It was low, and sort of rough around the edges, with a bare hint of a drawl that made you want him to keep on talking. Because when he did, you felt like he really cared. Only that was crazy, Maddie thought, because he didn’t even know her. Never mind that she had kidnapped him at gunpoint.

  She watched him now as he drove, his hands relaxed on the wheel. Maddie noticed he didn’t wear a wedding band. She hadn’t had a chance to really look at him in the diner, but now she let her eyes travel over him, lingering on his profile.

  He was dark, his skin burnished to a warm copper. His black hair was cropped short in a style that was almost military. He had slashing black brows and a hawklike nose above lips that were wide and generous. Despite his chiseled cheekbones and clean, square jaw, there was an aura of toughness about him that she recognized. She was willing to bet the ladies lined up for a chance to be with him. She guessed he was at least partially Native American. Altogether, he was overwhelmingly male. He wore a black T-shirt paired with blue jeans, and it seemed his entire body was layered with muscles. Even his thighs beneath the worn denim appeared muscular.

  As if sensing her scrutiny, he slanted a sideways glance at her, one black eyebrow arched in question. Maddie felt her face grow warm. What would she do if he tried to overpower her? There would be no contest. She’d be dough in his hands. She groaned inwardly. What had she been thinking to involve this man in her madness? Truth be told, she hadn’t been thinking. She hadn’t actually had a single coherent thought since she had received the threatening note early the previous morning, followed by the phone call. A call that had chilled her and then galvanized her into panic mode.

  Her younger brother, Jamie, was in trouble. Serious trouble. He’d lost a staggering amount of money at the poker tables in Reno. Money that hadn’t been his to lose. Money that the lenders now wanted back. More money than she had, despite the fact she’d emptied both her savings and checking accounts, sold her car for far less than its worth and cashed in the precious few bonds she owned.

  There hadn’t been nearly enough time to remortgage her little condo or apply for a bank loan. The men who were holding her brother said they would hurt him if they didn’t have the money within the next seventy-two hours. And they warned her that if she involved the police, they would just kill him outright and be done with it.

  Maddie believed them.

  Why wouldn’t she? After all, she’d seen what had happened to her father. She knew firsthand about the seamy, dark side of gambling, and what really went on in the back rooms of the casinos. But her brother was only twenty years old, just finishing up his last year of college. He’d been too young to remember what had happened to their dad, though Maddie did all too vividly.

  She wouldn’t let that happen to Jamie, although there was a part of her that wanted to kill him herself for having gotten into this mess. How many times had she preached to him about the dangers of gambling? She’d made him promise that he would never, under any circumstances, go to the casinos, and certainly not with money that wasn’t his. But she understood the lure of turning a quick buck; of beating the house and winning huge sums of cash. Now Jamie’s luck had run out, and unless she acted quickly, his life was in danger.

  Frantic, she had stashed what cash she had into her backpack and boarded the first bus for Reno. She’d left a voice mail at the town office where she worked as a senior accountant, telling her boss that she had a family emergency and needed to take several days off. She had a telephone number to call once she reached Reno.

  She had spent the first hundred fifty miles of the westbound bus ride tolerating the shoot-’em-up antics of the little boy in the seat in front of her. But after nearly three hours of watching him pretend to shoot her with his toy gun, her nerves had been stretched taut.

  When they pulled into the rest area in Lovelock, she had spied the toy weapon lying on the seat and had quickly snatched it up, shoving it under her T-shirt and into the waistband of her jeans. She’d promised herself she would “find” the toy for the child once they reached Reno. And in the meantime have some peace and quiet.

  But as she had watched the cashier at the diner laughingly ring out a customer, and glimpsed the money in the drawer, something had caught at her. Something dark and desperate, and she’d become agonizingly aware of the toy gun pressing into her stomach. Whether or not she would actually have worked up the nerve to rob the diner was something, thankfully, she would never know. What she had done was bad enough. She could scarcely believe she’d had the nerve to take this man hostage; could scarcely believe he’d been duped by the fake gun.

  “Do you have a name?” the stranger was asking her, a small smile tilting the corners of his generous mouth. “Or should I just call you Bonnie?”

  Maddie blinked at him. How could he be so relaxed? As far as he knew, she was pointing a loaded gun at him. And he wanted to make jokes? In the short time they’d been driving, she had tried to decide where he should drop her. The trip to Reno would take a couple hours. Being silent and surly wasn’t going to make the journey any more enjoyable, and what did it matter anyway if
he knew her name? Once she had her brother safely back, she intended to turn herself in to the police. At which point everyone would know who she was.

  “Madeleine,” she answered shortly, not adding that people generally called her Maddie.

  “I’m Colton Black,” he drawled. “I’m real sorry we couldn’t have met under different circumstances.”

  To Maddie’s horror, he extended a hand to her across the seat. It was large and tanned, with lean fingers tapering to neat nails. She raised her gaze to his, keeping her expression blank. He was watching her carefully, while keeping an eye on the almost empty road.

  Did he really believe she was that big of a fool? She knew what would happen if she shook that hand. He’d haul her across the seat and wrest her miserable excuse for a weapon from her nerveless fingers. No, thank you.

  But he only grinned and pulled his hand back. “Okay,” he murmured, as if talking to himself. “That’s okay. You’re not ready to be sociable yet. I understand. But here we are, just you and me.” He gave a wry smile. “At least we’re heading in the right direction.”

  Maddie blinked. “Excuse me?”

  He slanted a swift look at her. “I was headed up to Paradise Valley for a couple of weeks of fishing. I’ll drop you wherever it is you want to go, and maybe I can still reach my cabin before it gets too late.”

  Maddie stared at him in disbelief. “I can’t let you go. You know that.”

  He kept his gaze straight ahead. “Why not? I promise you, darlin’, you sure as hell don’t want the kind of trouble I’ll bring you.”

  Was that a threat or just a general comment about the hazards of taking hostages? Maddie pressed herself closer against the passenger door. “Look, I really don’t want any trouble. I—I just need to do something, okay? Once it’s done, I’ll let you go.”

  “Oh, yeah?” A small smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “What’s so important that you’d risk your life, huh? Why were you going to hold up the diner? Is it drugs?” His gaze swept over her, sharply assessing. “Or do you need to pay off a bookie?”

  Maddie blanched at his words, but he’d turned his attention back to the road and didn’t see her sudden panic. She glanced out the window at the desert rushing past. As soon as he’d mentioned his cabin in Paradise Valley, she’d known exactly what she needed to do. Her grandfather had a cabin in the hills, and he’d once said that he had a fortune hidden there. She had no idea if that was true, but she needed to check it out, although it required turning off the main road. But she couldn’t afford to have her focus diverted by this man. She needed to unload him and get on with her mission. If she ditched him here, on the main road, he’d have a better chance of hitching a ride with someone. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to leave him in the foothills, where a day’s hike without sufficient water could mean death in these temperatures.

  “Pull the truck over.” Her voice sounded low and strained, even to her own ears.

  Colton gave a disbelieving laugh. “What?”

  Maddie jabbed the gun in his direction. “You heard me. I said pull over.”

  His lips compressed as he steered the truck off the road and onto the soft shoulder in a cloud of billowing dust. He thrust the vehicle into Park, but didn’t turn off the engine.

  “Now what?” He turned his head slowly and gave her a level look. “You tell me to get out and I start hiking across the desert?” He shook his head. “Ain’t going to happen, lady. Besides, I thought you said you couldn’t let me go.”

  Maddie frowned. “I’ve—I’ve changed my mind. I don’t need you, just your truck.” She made a motion with the gun, willing her hands not to tremble. “Get out. You don’t have to walk across the desert or anything, you just have to get out. Someone will come by eventually, and you can hitch a ride.”

  She watched, stunned, as he laughed softly. He turned to her, still grinning. She tried to ignore the mesmerizing dimples that appeared in either lean cheek.

  “No way, ma’am. Absolutely no freaking way am I getting out of this truck.”

  Maddie stared at him. “What are you, crazy?” She gestured threateningly with the toy gun. “I could shoot you right now.”

  He spread his arms wide. “Well, then, you go right ahead, darlin’, because the only way I’m leaving this truck is if I’m dead.”

  Maddie blinked, appalled. “You’re not serious.”

  “I sure as hell am.” He slapped the dashboard. “This baby is brand-new. I worked damned hard for her, and there’s no way I’m giving her up. You want her, you gotta shoot me first.”

  This couldn’t really be happening. Maddie swept a trembling hand across her eyes, trying to hide the panic she was feeling. She couldn’t afford to have this man involved, didn’t want him involved. She glanced again at the seemingly endless expanse of desert that stretched away to the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Even if she chose to leave the truck, she’d never make it across those heat-baked plains on foot.

  She turned her attention back to the man beside her. He was staring out the window, drumming his fingers against his thigh in tune to some internal melody, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if she wasn’t capable of shooting him.

  Which she wasn’t, because her gun was nothing more than a child’s toy. He might not know that, but somehow he intuitively knew she didn’t have what it took to commit cold-blooded murder.

  She blew out her breath in frustration and sagged back against the seat, making no protest when he shifted gears and pulled the truck back onto the highway.

  “Fine,” she conceded, trying to sound as if she still maintained control. “You leave me no choice but to take you with me.”

  He flashed her a swift grin. “No kidding. So where to?”

  “Take the next turnoff, and follow the signs to Spotted Canyon.”

  “Okay then,” he murmured, almost to himself. “This could still work out okay. We’re still headed in the general direction of Paradise Valley. I’ll just drop you off wherever it is you’re going, and then I’ll head to my cabin.”

  Maddie almost choked on the spurt of semihysterical laughter that burst forth before she quickly composed herself. She couldn’t believe he was still preoccupied with reaching his cabin. She didn’t respond, but instead stared resolutely through the windshield, determined to ignore him.

  “So,” he continued conversationally, “what’s a nice girl like you doing in a situation like this?”

  Maddie slanted him one look of warning before turning her attention back to the road. She pointed to a turnoff that was barely discernible in the distance.

  “Take this next right.”

  Colton looked at her in surprise. “You sure it’s this one?”

  It was a dirt road, surrounded on either side by brush and rocky terrain. Maddie knew that it wound steadily upward into the foothills. It had been several years since she’d traveled it, but there was no doubt in her mind this was the correct road.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Now do you mind if we don’t talk, and just drive?”

  “Sure.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief when they turned onto the dirt road, one of hundreds of narrow, rutted routes that twisted their way through the hills.

  When she had first boarded the Greyhound bus back in Elko, she had planned on traveling straight through to Reno. She would figure out how to get her brother back once she got there. But then, of course, she’d made the stupid, stupid mistake of taking this man hostage. She’d been
formulating a plan on how to come up with the cash she needed, and it involved gambling, but she couldn’t very well waltz into one of the casinos with this man strapped to her side. She’d been in near despair as to what her next course of action should be, when he’d mentioned a cabin in Paradise Valley.

  It was then that she knew what she had to do.

  Copyright © 2014 by Karen Foley

  ISBN-13: 9781460325490

  GAME ON

  Copyright © 2014 by Nancy Warren

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