by Angie Martin
Besides, Logan didn’t want her. He barely looked at her and held her at arm’s length at all times. Sure, he had comforted her and let her sleep next to him, but it was only because the circumstances called for it, not because he wanted to be that close to her. Now that her father had his friends killed, she doubted he would ever want anything to do with her. She was nothing more than a bad reminder of the horrible things her father had done.
Afraid to let her thoughts continue to fill the silence, she said, “I haven’t had granola bars since I was a kid. I didn’t remember how good—”
Logan held up his hand to silence her. Eyes narrowed, he leaned forward, his ear pointed to the opening of their camp.
Sara jumped at the snap of a tree branch not far away from their location. She looked at Logan for guidance. He opened his bag and motioned for her to put everything in there. He lifted his gun and crawled to the entrance. After a moment, he turned to Sara and waved at her to follow him. She picked up his bag and handed it to him once they were out of the shelter.
He secured it on his back and turned to her. “We have to move slow,” he whispered. “Just follow me.”
She nodded and started behind him. Ten steps into their escape, a large man emerged from behind a tree and punched Logan in the jaw. Sara stifled a scream and watched Logan hit the man several times.
With his arm around the man’s neck, Logan yelled at Sara. “Run!”
Sara didn’t hesitate. Unsure of which way to go, she took off toward the path they traveled the night before. As she crossed over to the other side of the path, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Logan followed. Not seeing him, she turned her head in time to see another man jump out at her. His arms encircled her and Sara screamed.
“There you are,” he said. “Just come with me, sweetheart, and all will be good.”
He took hold of her arm and Sara backed up half a step. Her knee flew up into his crotch and he doubled over with a loud cry. She balled up her hands and brought them down on his back twice, but it didn’t seem to hurt him. She ran a few steps before he caught up with her again.
His strong hand pushed her and she smashed into a tree. Sara fell to the ground and scurried away, but he caught up to her before she got too far. He grabbed her by the arms, pulled her to her feet, and pushed her against a nearby tree.
Sara lashed out at him with her fists. He grabbed at her hands and, one at a time, he wrestled her arms away from him and stopped her attack.
“No, no, no!” She struggled against him, but his tight grip kept her from hitting him again.
He pinned both of her hands over her head with one hand and raised his other hand to strike her. “You stupid—”
A gunshot rang out and she screamed again. The man fell at her feet and she jumped to the side.
A hand grabbed her arm and she whirled around. She threw out her fist again, but the new man caught her wrist before it connected with his body. Only then did she see Logan’s face. Her shoulders dropped and she took in a deep breath.
Logan cupped her face in his hands and looked her over. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m sorry that I—”
“Don’t worry about it.” He released her. “There are going to be more of them and they would have heard the shot. Can you run again?”
“Yeah.”
Though sore and tired, adrenaline coursed through her veins. Her legs moved without thought and she followed Logan’s lead. They raced down the path, hugging the left side where the trees acted as cover from anyone on the ledge above them. Despite the burning in her lungs, Sara kept her pace up to match Logan.
Thoughts swirled through her mind and she tried to process everything that happened. The man falling down dead in front of her and the assumption that Logan killed the other man, too. No matter how gruesome the thoughts, she kept coming back to the idea that Logan would go to any lengths to keep her safe. She wanted him to kill every last one of them.
Chapter Thirty-three
“I need to stop.”
Logan stopped walking and glanced at Sara. One hand rested on her chest, which heaved with shallow breaths, and the other one on her hip. They had walked for a little over three hours without finding anywhere they could safely stop for a phone. The temperature rose substantially during their journey, slowing Sara down the hotter it became. He had encouraged her to keep going all morning and they were close to a rest stop, but the fatigue on her face told him she couldn’t make it much further, not in her present condition.
“Let’s rest for a bit,” he said.
He led the way to a nearby tree and dropped his bag to the ground. Sara placed both palms on the tree and rested her head down on the backs of her hands, but made no move to sit.
“Do you need your inhaler?”
She nodded, but didn’t look at him.
Logan helped her sit and crouched down beside her. Handing her the inhaler, he grew concerned at her pale color. She had finished her water bottle off a couple of hours into their trek, so he gave her his water to drink.
“It’s only going to get hotter,” Logan said, once her breathing seemed to get back under control. “We need a car.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“No, we’re going to get one.”
“If we’re trying not to reveal ourselves to anyone, how are we getting a car?” She paused for a moment and her eyebrows shot up. “We’re going to steal one?”
“I’m going to steal one from the rest stop. You’re going to hide.”
“Logan, we can’t steal someone’s car. That’s not right.”
“No, it’s not right, but what choice do we have?” He recognized the conflict on her face. “Listen, whatever we do wrong will be made right. We’ll find a phone, I’ll give Schaffer the details. Someone will pull up the police report, contact the owners, tell them they’re with some governmental agency, and spin a tale as to why their car was stolen. If for some reason we can’t return their car in the same condition we took it, they’ll get a new car, fully loaded and fully paid. No matter what, they’ll receive a large amount of hush money. It may not seem like it at first, but whoever’s car I steal is about to have one of the best days of their life.”
“Since you put it that way,” Sara said, standing up.
“Where are you going?”
She pointed in the direction they were heading. “To the rest stop so you can steal a car. The quicker we get there, the quicker we get to enjoy the air conditioning.”
Logan got to his feet and put her inhaler back in the bag. They continued walking for another twenty minutes, stopping in a good location near the rest stop. With the trees in front of them, they could hide in plain sight while still scoping out the parking lot for the perfect car.
“Which one are we going to take?” Sara asked, as she sat next to the tree.
“One that’s as close to us as possible, but far enough away from any of the other cars. It might take some time to find the right one.”
She shrugged and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I guess I have nowhere else to be right now.”
Logan settled onto the ground and stared at the parking lot. Though he saw several cars he’d like to take, the bustling rest stop didn’t provide the opportunity to do so without getting caught.
“How did you get started doing this?” Sara asked.
“Stealing cars? Schaffer taught me.”
“No, how did you get started doing whatever it is that you do?”
“That’s a long, tedious story.”
“It’s not like we don’t have time. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just curious.”
He didn’t have anything to hide, but very few people knew about his past. He glanced at Sara, who waited anxiously. He figured it wouldn’t hurt to tell her a bit about his life, and it could go a long way in getting her to trust him and feel more comfortable around him. Waiting in silence would leave his thoughts to wander to his team and t
he great loss he had suffered. With that came the blame game, the same one he played every time he thought about Karen. He preferred conversation over tormenting himself.
Logan sighed. “I guess the quick version is my mom was a prostitute who dropped me off in front of a hospital when I was 4-years old with a backpack and a note saying she didn’t want me anymore. I have no idea who my dad is, but I assume he was one of her johns.
“I was shifted around from foster home to foster home, and finally ran away when I turned nine because I was tired of one of the older boys there beating me up all the time. I ended up across state lines and in another foster home. Every time I ran away, I’d get caught, stuck in a juvenile hall for some petty crime, then I’d go back into foster care.
“The last foster home I was in, I took off when I was 13 and got pretty far away. I found some other kids on the streets and they taught me the ropes. I survived out there for two years, until I was caught burglarizing a home. That’s when Schaffer found me and recruited me for his program, and here I am.”
“That’s awful,” Sara said, her hand half covering her mouth.
“You didn’t ask for a happy story.”
“I’ll remember that next time. What was it like living on the streets?”
“There was a whole different set of rules out there. People stuck to their own kind. The drug dealers all hung together, the prostitutes, the gang bangers. I didn’t belong to any of the groups, so even though I knew some of them, I stayed with the other kids that didn’t fit in anywhere. One of the older kids taught me how to pickpocket and shoplift, so that’s what I did.”
“Were they all kids?”
“All of them. The adults stayed in different areas than we did and they also went to shelters, which we didn’t do. None of us wanted to end back up in the system, so we stayed away from places like that.”
“What about that car?”
Logan followed her extended finger to a white Prius that pulled into a parking spot closer to them and far away from some of the others. He considered it for a moment, but then a black Escalade pulled up next to them.
“Damn it,” Sara said.
“And that’s why we wait. One will come along soon.”
“Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Your job. You had a horrible start to life. No one seemed to show you kindness until Schaffer came to you, so why do you go and help others out? Why are you risking your life to help me?”
Logan kept his mouth shut and scanned the parking lot. He had never been so honest with someone outside of Schaffer and Karen. The idea of opening up to someone new terrified him. If he revealed his weaknesses to others, they could exploit them.
Yet telling Sara about his childhood happened without concern, as if he already trusted her completely. The woman had been in his life for a few days and already she had broken through his cement walls. Then, in a few days or less, it would end and Sara would be nothing more than a wisp of beauty who floated into his life on a summer breeze, only to vanish into a faded memory.
None of his thoughts stopped him from answering her question. “There was a girl on the streets with us. She was only 14 and a prostitute, but we got along well. We’d hang out from time to time and since I was 15 at the time, I thought maybe there was something to it. But she had a mean pimp—he called himself her ‘manager’—who ruled his lot of kids with an iron fist. If any of them stepped out of line, he beat the crap out of them.
“I went off with Schaffer to pursue my new life and all these kids I knew were left behind. I suddenly had a purpose for being alive, where they didn’t. I wasn’t complaining, but I’d often think about them and wonder what happened after I left.”
“Did you ever find out what happened to the girl?”
“A couple years later, I talked to Schaffer about her. I wanted to find out where she was so we could somehow set her life straight. He warned me against it, but I was on a mission to save her. I found out that just a few months earlier, she’d been knocked up by someone. Her pimp forced her to have a back alley abortion, after which he put her right back to work. Didn’t take but a day for her to die from internal bleeding.”
Sara wiped at the dampness in her eyes, but didn’t speak.
He took a deep breath and smothered the anger that always came when he thought about his past. “I spent the next month thinking if I had just gone looking for her sooner, I could have saved her. I could have pulled her out of that life and shown her a better way. Who the hell knows if I could have done all that, but you asked why I do this. I do it for the ones out there who can’t save themselves, exactly as Schaffer did for me.”
Sara lowered her eyes and her voice. “You saved me. I couldn’t save myself, but you saved me, even if I didn’t want you to at first.”
“And that’s why I do it.” He jetted his head forward a bit to catch her attention. She looked up at him, a pained look on her face. “I’m going to keep you safe, Sara. I promise no one will hurt you.”
Her forehead creased. “But what if they hurt you first?”
He laid his hand on her forearm. “No one is going to hurt you.”
She gave him a quick smile and nod, but then turned her head to look at the rest stop.
Logan took his hand off her skin and let his eyes drift back to the parking lot. The Prius and Escalade had both left. After a moment, an older model Escort pulled into the spot closest to them. A young couple climbed out of the car and ambled toward the scenic trees behind the restrooms, hand-in-hand, while the man swung a camera by its strap in his free hand.
“That’s our car,” Logan said, pointing at the Escort.
Sara took a deep breath and blew it out. “So what’s the game plan?”
“I’m going to go hotwire the car. Get a good look at the couple. I want you to walk around the back of the restrooms and toward the rest stop exit. Keep your eye on them for me. If they start heading back before you’re past the restrooms, find a way to stall them, but only if you have to. Don’t let anyone see you unless absolutely necessary.”
“Where do I find you?”
“At the exit. I’ll pick you up there. Be ready to jump in and go.”
She nodded, but still stared wide-eyed at the car.
“Can you do this?”
Glancing at him, she said, “Absolutely.”
The strength in her voice convinced him she would do fine. “Give me a quick head start before you leave.” He got up and hurried toward the car, keeping an eye out for the couple and anyone else that might take notice of him.
Chapter Thirty-four
Sara watched Logan walk in the direction of the car for a moment before she gathered the courage to move. Her heart slammed against her rib cage with each beat and she wondered if others could hear her fear.
As Logan had instructed, she moved around the back of the restrooms, keeping her pace even and steady. She tried not to think about Logan and if he would be successful in hotwiring the car. If someone caught him and he didn’t get away, he could end up in jail, leaving her all alone. It had been hard enough with just the two of them. If Logan disappeared, she would never survive.
She smiled at a woman and child passing by, then returned her eyes to the couple Logan told her to watch. The woman was sitting down under a tree, while the man snapped pictures of her. Sara wasn’t sure how much time Logan had, but it didn’t appear the couple would leave soon.
Picking up her pace, Sara shifted her direction when she passed the restrooms and headed toward a tree near the rest stop exit. She turned her head to look for Logan and the Escort, but the many cars and trucks in the parking lot blocked her view.
When she reached the pavement, she shoved her hands in her jean’s pockets and sauntered along the side of the on ramp. A diesel truck whooshed by her, making her heart jump into her throat. Only then did she worry about how long Logan was taking to hotwire the car. She didn’t know the timeframes involved with something like th
at, but she had assumed it would be quicker than this.
The Escort pulled up next to her. Logan shouted to her through the open window and she raced to the door. She had barely pulled her feet inside when he took off again. She slammed the door shut and turned to look out the back window. The couple ran into the parking lot, screaming and waving their hands, but they quickly disappeared into the horizon.
Sara put her seatbelt on and laid her head back on the headrest. “They’re probably calling the cops right now.”
Logan held up a black cell phone. “They probably are, but only if one of them still has their cell phone with them.” He chucked the phone out the window and rolled it up.
“Couldn’t you have used that to call Schaffer?”
“Can’t risk it. We need a good old fashioned pay phone.”
“What happens if the police catch up to us?”
“They won’t,” he said, his voice much calmer than Sara could ever be in the situation. “There are a few highway interchanges ahead, which we’ll use to put some distance between us. Then we’ll move onto some back roads. The highway patrol will probably stick to the interstates and highways to search for us, but they’ll give up soon enough.”
“I feel so bad for them.”
“Don’t,” Logan said. “They’ll be well taken care of.”
“I know that, and I believe you, but I don’t know how you do this.” She shook her head. “Too much excitement for me.”
“Trust me. I prefer my jobs much quieter than this one’s been.”
Sara twisted her neck and stared out the window, as Logan took an onramp onto another highway. No cars followed them onto the new stretch of road. “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked, turning back around.