by Cindy Dees
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Nobody,” she answered quickly. Too quickly.
He swore under his breath. He’d lay odds that had been her father. What had they been talking about? Had the guy been threatening her? Demanding that she give back his financial records? Or perhaps, were they working out the details of an ambush to finish off what they’d started ten years ago?
Why in the hell couldn’t she just be straight with him and not put him in this blasted position of not knowing?
He braked hard just beyond a big curve and crawled along until the blue car careened around the hairpin turn, skidding behind them and barely missing rear-ending the Jeep.
He said tersely, “Don’t turn around. Use the mirror in your sun visor to look back at the car behind us. Can you get a look at the people inside it?”
She peered into the mirror for a moment and then visibly jumped. “It’s them!” she gasped. “Two of the guys from the ski resort! How did they find us out here? Oh God. What are we going to do?”
How did they find her, indeed? Hell of a good question. Especially in light of that phone call. How much to believe? Had that call actually scared the hell out of her?
He cut across her building panic, real or otherwise, by stating mildly, “The first thing we’re going to do is stay calm.”
She sat back in her seat.
“The next thing we’re going to do is use the power of this Jeep to put some distance between us and them.” To that end, he leaned on the accelerator and picked up the vehicle’s speed significantly, even though the roads were starting to get slick. The blue car was already dropping back. He’d bet the driver had to clean out his pants after that near miss back there.
Over the next few minutes, he gradually sped up until the Jeep was going near the speed limit once more. Fortunately, its four-wheel drive and snow tires held the road. He pushed the speed some more.
“Don’t you think we should slow down a little?” Julia suggested nervously.
He glanced over at her grimly. “Nope. I’ve got to get far enough ahead of these guys so I can lay a trap for them.”
“A trap?” she asked in surprise. “What kind?”
“I’ll know it when I see it.” He didn’t say more because the car was really becoming a handful. The wind buffeted them, and the road was a strip of featureless white. Worse, dark was falling prematurely, and these roads weren’t anywhere near adequately enough marked to be safe at night in a snowstorm. The good news was they’d climbed up into the high elevations where the Jeep’s robust engine could really show its superiority to that of the car following them.
On the downhill slopes, he punched the accelerator, putting on extra bursts of speed to keep their pursuers from making up lost ground. They were flying down one such hill at a suicidal pace when Dutch nearly lost control of the Jeep. It began to slide toward the empty space of a drop-off, and there was no guardrail to stop them. Praying hard, he yanked his foot off the accelerator and stopped his impulse to go for the brakes. That would’ve done them in for sure. Thankfully, the antiskid system kicked in and the tires caught traction once more. He straightened out the car carefully and steered back onto his own side of the road.
Surely he’d bought them a few minutes’ lead by now. He began to keep his eye out for a good spot to ambush the blue car, and in the meantime, kept the pedal to the metal. He’d need every second he could buy to pull off the plan taking shape in his mind.
It took about five minutes and two more hair-raising rises and falls of the road before he found what he was looking for. A switchback turn on a steep downhill part of the road in a heavily forested area. Hell, he’d barely made the turn himself. He stopped carefully and backed up the couple hundred feet to the curve.
“Stay in the car,” he ordered Julia.
He grabbed his coat and shrugged into it as he stepped out into the storm. He guessed it would be dark in another ten minutes. Perfect. In the gray dusk, he searched the sides of the road until he found what he’d glimpsed on the way around the bend. A medium-size, freshly fallen tree with most of its branches intact.
He grabbed the top of it and dragged it around until it lay perpendicular to the road. Then he put his back into it and heaved, pulling it up toward the road. It moved about twelve inches. Again. Inch by inch, he worked it out into the road. But it was taking too long. And the left lane was still open. A person could swerve around the tree. The blue car would be here any second.
And then a movement beside him. Julia put her hands on one of the branches and leaned into the tree with him. Together, they were able to move the thing a few feet. Two more big heaves and they had it all the way across the road just beyond the curve. The blue car would come around blind and have no chance to stop.
He was sick of these jerks picking up his and Julia’s trail over and over as if he were some rank amateur who couldn’t shake a tail. A few hours sitting out here in a blizzard should cool their jets. The sound of an engine coming down the mountain caught his attention.
“Run!” he shouted at Julia. They took off down the hill, slipping and sliding toward the Jeep. They weren’t going to make it. At the last second, he yanked her down behind a bush at the side of the road.
The blue car careened around the corner the way he had, barely holding the road. It didn’t stand a chance. The tree popped up in front of it completely without warning. The driver swerved and slammed on the brakes, but he plowed into the tree, driving it and the car toward the ditch on the side of the road. The tree’s round trunk rolled under the car’s front wheels and sent its front end flying into the air. The vehicle did a half revolution and came to a sickening halt on its roof, half buried in snow.
“Julia, get in the driver’s side of the Jeep. If I don’t come back to it alone, leave. You hear me?”
She nodded, but hesitated. He gave her a little push toward the vehicle, then turned and ran back up the hill. Now was his chance to find out exactly who these guys were. He pulled out his pistol and approached the flipped-over car cautiously. In the failing light, he made out two men hanging upside down in their seat belts. Deflated air bags draped around them both.
They looked unconscious. He ordered them to show their hands, and neither moved. The driver’s-side window was broken but visible, while the passenger’s door was completely buried in snow. He eased closer slowly. And nudged the driver’s shoulder with his foot. No response. He crouched down and looked across the car. A big bruise was starting to form on the passenger’s forehead. But he was breathing.
Holding his gun to the driver’s temple with his left hand, he searched the guy’s coat with his right hand. He pocketed the Glock pistol he found. He reached between the guy’s rear end and the seat and pulled out the dude’s wallet. He wanted a name. He came up with a cell phone instead. On a sickening hunch, he punched the menu and brought up its most recent outgoing call.
And stared in shock at the name and number displayed.
Julia Ferrare.
This guy had made that phone call to Julia a little while ago! She was in direct contact with Ferrare’s men? This chase was all a ruse! To dupe him into another trap. Son of a bitch!
It sure explained how these guys kept popping up over and over when any normal thug would have been way out of the picture by now. No wonder he couldn’t shake the bastards. Great. Just freaking great.
He stabbed his hand behind the guy’s back and grabbed his wallet this time. He slipped the warm leather into his own pocket and backed away from the car.
He stormed toward the Jeep and the oh-so-innocent-seeming woman inside it. The second they got out of this damn blizzard, he and Julia were going to have a little talk. And this time she was damn well going to tell him exactly what was going on—if he had to wring it out of her with his bare hands.
He opened the driver’s-side door. She took one look at his face and all but leaped over the center console to her seat.
He growled, “When we get to t
he top of the next mountain and have clear cell-phone reception, call nine-one-one and report the accident. Be vague about the exact location.”
He started to drive. She must have picked up on his tightly controlled fury, because she did as he ordered without any questions.
The snow continued to fall, and he pressed on in stony silence. Drifts began to form across the road. Even the sturdy Jeep struggled to punch through the deepening snow. Like it or not, they had to get off the road soon and find someplace to wait out the storm.
He kept an eye out for a driveway or a mailbox, anything to indicate that a house might be nearby. He drove at a bare crawl, peering into the blackness. The snow was falling so thickly in the headlights that he could hardly see the road, let alone the side of it.
He thought he glimpsed a break in the trees. He stopped and backed up carefully to the spot. It looked like a driveway sloping down away from the road. But it was buried in snow. He’d probably be able to make it down the lane, but they’d never make it back up. If he was wrong and it led nowhere they’d be stranded.
What the hell. He was too mad to feel anything but reckless, and the roads were beyond impassable. He pointed the Jeep at the gap in the trees.
“Hang on,” he bit out.
He punched the engine and blasted through the first snowdrift. The narrow lane must have gone on for several hundred yards, but it was hard to tell, given that he could only see a few feet of the thing at any one time. And then, without warning, it came to an end. Just like that. A wall of trees surrounded them on all sides.
He pushed the car door open, moving aside a hefty pile of snow in the process. He got out of the vehicle and waded out into a good three feet of snow to take a look around. There. Tucked back into a stand of towering pines. A dark, low shape. Rectangular like a cabin.
He busted a path to the front door of the log structure. Holding his flashlight in his teeth, he stripped off his gloves and picked the door lock. His fingers were clumsy with cold, but he managed to force the thing open. He felt around on the wall inside the door and found a light switch. He flipped it on. Nothing. Damn. The power was either out from the storm or cut off for the winter. No help for it at the moment, though.
He trudged back to the Jeep to collect Julia and their gear. His footsteps were already half-full of snow. What a blizzard. The way snow was accumulating on the roof and hood of the vehicle, he wasn’t going to have to worry about hiding the Jeep from view. It would be buried before long.
Julia followed on his heels as he slogged to the cabin. He dropped their supplies inside the front door and thrust his flashlight into her hands. “Have a look around while I try to find some firewood,” he ordered.
Any self-respecting cabin in this part of the world had a good-size woodpile that was kept stocked at all times. It was a matter of survival. Sure enough, around back he found another door and a big stack of split wood buried in snow beside it. He brushed off enough snow to grab a huge armload of the stuff. Right about then, the door opened. Julia poked her head out.
“Good timing,” he grunted under the pile of wood.
She helped him maneuver it inside, and he dumped it in the little mudroom attached to the cabin’s main room. Julia had found and lit a lantern. A soft, golden glow filled the space. He had a quick look around. The one-room cabin was well equipped, snug and neat, albeit freezing cold at the moment. But it would keep them dry and out of the wind, and after he built a big fire in the stone fireplace, they’d be warm enough.
While he laid the fire, Julia poked around in the cupboards and supplemented their food stores with some canned baked beans and fruit cocktail. Not exactly gourmet fare, but a far sight better than going hungry. The tinderbox beside the fireplace was fully stocked with dry twigs and resin-soaked fatwood, and in no time, he had a thriving fire crackling.
It took about an hour for some canned stew to get hot and ready to eat. The air was still bitingly cold. It would probably take all night for the stones in the fireplace to heat up enough to take the chill off the room. Again, not ideal, but a hell of a lot better than freezing to death in the car. They ate, wearing their coats, seated in a pair of bentwood chairs near the fire.
Dutch bided his time until Julia set aside her empty plate. He did the same. But then the infuriated soldier within him could be patient no more.
He leaned forward, skewering her with a saber-sharp stare. He spoke with cold precision. “We need to talk. Or rather you need to talk. Why don’t you start with why your father’s men were calling you. You can finish with telling me what in the hell is going on. All of it.”
Chapter 11
The noose that had been tightening around her neck gave one final yank. And from the looks of him, he was about to kick the chair out from under her feet.
That call this afternoon had put her off balance, and now Dutch was calling her bluff. This day kept getting better and better. Maybe she should bolt out the door and disappear into the blizzard. It would solve everyone’s problems. Except Carina’s, of course.
She sighed. It always came back to her little sister. That’s what she got for loving someone. Her feelings for Carina tied her down, locking her into an inevitable course of action. No wonder Dutch had never fallen in love. Guys in his line of work couldn’t afford the vulnerability and limitations that emotional attachments placed on them.
She shuddered as she recalled the voice of her father’s hired killer trying to disguise his snarl as charm this afternoon. Eduardo must have given the man her cell-phone number. She just didn’t buy the goon’s offer to let her live if she gave her father his money back immediately.
She’d been evasive in response to his demand, of course. With Dutch sitting right beside her, she couldn’t very well engage in a negotiation for Carina’s freedom. She’d made it clear to the thug that she couldn’t talk right now and that he or her father should call her back later.
Had the guy gotten the message? Would his orders change when he delivered the message to Eduardo that she’d refused to return his thirty million? Were the thugs in that blue car chasing her with an eye to killing her? If not now, then they would be soon.
She’d been profoundly relieved when Dutch flipped over her pursuers’ car. Lord, they’d been close. Literally on her heels. Even with Dutch’s formidable skill, he was barely managing to stay ahead of these killers.
Time was running out. As much as she wanted to delay the inevitable, heck, just to stay alive a few more days, it was time to launch the endgame. Time to show her cards to Dutch and face the fallout. Dutch wanted to know everything, did he? Fine. Then that’s exactly what he’d get.
She took a deep breath. “Here’s the problem. Someone else is at risk. I can’t afford for you to do anything to jeopardize their safety.”
Dutch replied tersely, “Tell me who this person is so I can take their safety into account as I make decisions.”
He didn’t have any idea what he was promising, but she wasn’t above holding him to it. “Do you swear you’ll do whatever’s necessary to keep this person safe?”
“Is he an innocent?”
“Yes,” she answered firmly. “Absolutely.”
He shrugged. “Then I promise.”
She stared at him doubtfully. Did she dare hang Carina’s life on his word? She might be willing to put her own life on the line that way, but her sister’s?
He added, “Honest. On a stack of Bibles. Just tell me who he is.”
She nodded slowly. It wasn’t as if she had any choice at this point. She would have to trust him not to take revenge by hurting her sister. Her father’s men were practically on top of them. She had to have Dutch’s help to stay away from them until she could finish this. “It’s not a he. It’s a she.”
“Who is she, then?”
“My sister. Carina. My father has kidnapped her and is holding her hostage until I return the copies of his financial records.”
“And what makes you think she’s in danger?”
“He told me he’d kill her unless he got the records back.”
“Why hasn’t he killed her already, then?” Dutch demanded. She could swear there was a trace of suspicion in his voice.
“Because I took something of his to make sure he wouldn’t kill her.”
“What did you take?”
She sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I transferred thirty million dollars in cash out of his checking account and into another bank account he knows nothing about.”
Dutch went perfectly still. Like a carved block of ice. He asked flatly, “And you’re hoping to do what? Trade the financial records and the thirty million for Carina’s freedom?”
“Yes.”
He gritted out, “So you never had any intention of handing over Eduardo’s financial records to me? This was all a ruse to get me to keep you alive until you could blackmail your old man?”
She flinched. Put that way, it made her sound like the worst sort of self-serving human being. “I have multiple copies of the financial records. I was planning to give a set to you. That way I can keep my word to both of you.”
“How’s your father supposed to be assured that you haven’t made copies?”
She looked Dutch square in the eye. “He’s just going to have to trust me.”
Dutch snorted. “Fat chance. He won’t buy it for a second.”
She shrugged. “It’s not like he has any choice. I have thirty million reasons for him to take me at my word, whether he likes it or not.”
He shook his head. “It’s a risky gambit.” He sprang up out of the chair with unnatural energy, but gave no other hint of his agitation. “I have to make a phone call.”
She’d bet he did. She closed her eyes briefly. She’d barely climbed aboard, and already this train was out of control, careening toward a spectacular wreck. Dutch hit the speed dial on his satellite cell phone.