by Katie Ruggle
Chapter 8
The car lurched over a bump and made a sharp right turn. The squeal of protesting tires could be heard over the wind, but then Kavenski wrestled the car back into a straight line and everything smoothed out. The rattle of gravel hitting the undercarriage disappeared as the road became blessedly even. It was strange to be grateful for asphalt, but Cara definitely was thankful for paved roads at the moment. The car picked up speed, and the wind caught at her hair. She shivered, huddling into a smaller ball to try to retain heat.
“You can sit up now,” Kavenski said. “Put your seat belt on.”
As Cara uncoiled from her spot in the foot well, she gave a pained grimace.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his gaze intense as it flicked from the road to her and back again. “Are you injured?”
“Nothing major.” Despite her words, she couldn’t hold back a grunt as she sat in the seat and straightened her legs, making him glance sharply at her again. “My muscles are just protesting being kidnapped and tied up and drugged twice, that’s all.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “That’s all.”
“Yep. Phone?”
He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her.
As Cara looked down at the screen, hope made her heart beat faster for just a second until she saw the No Service icon. She held it up and moved it to all the different spots that she could reach while buckled in, but no bars popped up. With a disappointed sigh, she lowered the phone to her lap.
“No reception,” she said. He didn’t look surprised.
With the useless phone in her lap, she twisted to look through the ruined rear window. The road curved behind them, partially blocking her view, but she couldn’t see any other cars. Turning back around, she looked through her side window, since the windshield was almost opaque from the extensive cobwebbing. They were climbing a slope that curved around a bluff, dotted with evergreens and aspen trees that were bright yellow with their autumn leaves. It would’ve been beautiful if the circumstances were different. If, say, she’d been taking a scenic drive in the mountains with her strong yet often silent boyfriend—who wasn’t a potential felon—rather than escaping for her life.
The thought reminded her of what she’d been too frantic to consider up until that point, and she turned away from the view to face him. “Why are you here?” Before he could answer, she added, “Not that I’m ungrateful for the assist, but what’s your involvement in this?”
His tight-lipped glance told her nothing. Her stomach squeezed as suspicion wormed its way back into her brain. It just made sense that he was after the necklace. Everyone who was even slightly shady had been breaking into their house and stalking them and lurking in the trees around their property. Why wouldn’t Henry Kavenski, a bail jumper mixed up with several shady criminals, want a piece of that multimillion-dollar prize?
“What’s wrong?”
She stared at his profile, as if his true motives were printed on the hard plane of his cheek. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that. She either had to trust him or not, let that worm of suspicion grow or squash it completely. The car slowed as it eased around a hairpin turn before speeding up again. Cara squeezed her eyes closed for a long moment, trying to get her muddled thoughts in order.
“Seriously, what’s happening in your brain? Are you still worried about your sisters?”
This was the first time he’d ever tried to get her to spill her thoughts, rather than the other way around, she realized. She seized on the excuse he’d given her so that she didn’t blurt out her suspicions. “Of course I am. Do you think the guys that were chasing us have gone back to the cabin?”
He darted a quick glance at the rearview mirror. “Doubt we’d be that lucky.”
Cara turned around again, but all she could see were the rocky outcroppings that bordered the road. Between those and the trees, it was impossible to see more than fifty feet behind the car. The idea that their pursuers were just around the last bend was unnerving, especially when she wasn’t sure whether she could trust the man right here with her.
“I don’t know if I’d rather they be following us or at the cabin in case Molly and Norah show up.”
“What about the other two?” he asked, steering the car around another hairpin turn.
Her brain was trying to go in so many directions at once that his question didn’t make sense. “Other two SUVs? I thought just the one stayed behind.”
“No. Sisters. Don’t you have four?” Kavenski didn’t look at her as he answered, focusing hard through his cracked side of the windshield. When Cara glanced out her window, she saw why he was so carefully watching the road. After the last sharp turn, the road straightened, running along the edge of a cliff. Only a measly, spindly guardrail separated their lane from the drop-off below. From Cara’s perspective, it looked like they were just inches from the edge, as if just a slight swerve could send them plunging down the sheer rock face to crash into the river that snaked so far below.
Dragging her gaze from the precipitous drop, she focused on Kavenski’s profile. Even though she knew he might be a villain, at least he was a pretty villain. Looking at him was as good a distraction as any. “How did you know how many sisters I have?”
Somehow, he managed to roll his eyes at her without taking his gaze off the road. “Everyone knows about the Pax sisters. I did even before you started following me around.”
“Ugh.” She made a face, pressing her cheek against the headrest so that she didn’t give in to the train-wreck temptation of looking at the vast emptiness beyond the guardrail. “There’s another thing I can thank Jane for—notoriety among Langston’s criminal element. Thanks, Mom!”
Kavenski followed the curve in the road, and Cara was forced to squeeze her eyes closed when it felt like they tilted toward the cliff edge. “No need to thank her. You were well known before she stole that jewelry and took off.”
His mention of the necklace hung in the air between them. Straightening her shoulders, Cara looked at him again, needing to see his expression when she asked her question. “Are you after the necklace, too? Do you have some criminal connection with my mom?”
Although his poker face didn’t reveal much, the slight widening of his eyes appeared to be from true surprise. “What would I do with a hot, recognizable piece like that?”
For a confused second, Cara thought he was referring to Jane, and a weird jolt that felt unnervingly like jealousy zipped through her. Then her practical brain clicked back in, and she understood that he was talking about a piece of jewelry, not a piece of… “Fence it, of course,” she hurried to answer before her thoughts could meander off too far in that inadvisable direction. “Don’t you have underworld connections?”
“Underworld connections?” Despite the tense cliff-edge driving, the corner of his mouth twitched up in an actual smile. In a flash, though, all hint of amusement was locked down, covered by his usual impassive mask. “Is that something that people actually say out loud?”
A huff of laughter escaped her. When she’d started following him, she’d never expected him to be funny. Everything about this man kept surprising her. “I don’t know. I’m usually in front of a screen, researching. I’m not out on the streets actually dealing with the underworld.”
Although his smile was still of the blink-and-miss-it variety, it clung a little longer than the last one. “First, quit calling it the underworld. Second, I have no interest in your mom’s necklace.”
His words felt true, but she had to be sure. The blunt method of questioning seemed to be working pretty well, and it was distracting her from the treacherous road they were traversing, so she blurted out her next thought. “If you’re not after the necklace, then why did you show up at the cabin? Why risk your life to save me if you’re not getting anything out of it? And how did you even know where I was being held—or that I’d been
kidnapped in the first place?”
This time, his mouth twitched down, holding the unhappy grimace for a beat longer than his sudden smiles. “Geoffrey Abbott called me.”
She blinked at his grim profile. After a few seconds of silence, she prompted, “Why did Geoffrey Abbott, the tax evader, kidnap me? And why did he tell you about it?”
He heaved a huge sigh, as if the explanation was both too tiring and painful to stand, and Cara almost apologized for forcing him to explain. Just in time, she caught herself before the words escaped. The very least he could do was tell her what was going on. After all, she was the one who’d been kidnapped.
“There’s a reason I warned you to stay away from him. I was supposed to meet him at one of his buildings in Langston. If I showed, he said he’d let you go.”
“But you didn’t go there.” Cara’s brain was working through the pieces as she realized she’d been putting together the wrong puzzle. From what he’d said so far, it didn’t seem like the necklace had anything to do with the kidnapping. “You came to the cabin. How’d you know I was being held there?”
“I didn’t.” One of his massive shoulders lifted in a partial shrug. “It was just my best guess.”
“Good thing for me that you were right,” she muttered under her breath. Although she wanted to know more about how exactly he’d figured out where she was being kept, there were more important questions to ask. “What did Abbott want from you?”
“Information.” For such an innocuous word, it sounded unnervingly ominous gritted through tight lips.
After a quick glance at his profile showed that she likely wouldn’t have much luck getting him to expand on that single-word answer, Cara moved on to a different subject. “If the necklace has nothing to do with this, why’d they grab me? You and I are…barely acquaintances.” That was the truth, even though it often felt as though she’d known him forever.
“They were given bad intel.” His features hardened as he glared ferociously through the cracked windshield, making Cara glad she wasn’t the cause of his anger.
As she considered his answer, she glanced out her window again and immediately wished she hadn’t when the open expanse made her dizzy. The sunny morning was beautiful, giving the cliff faces a golden sheen and lighting up the bright-yellow aspen leaves. The river snaked beneath them—way beneath them—a dark-blue stripe against the lighter rock. The car followed another sharp curve at Kavenski-level speed, and Cara’s right hand instinctively grabbed the door handle. It was silly, she knew that, and a handhold wouldn’t help her if the entire car plummeted off the side of the mountain, but it still felt a little reassuring to have a grip on something.
Forcing her attention off the view from her window and back onto Kavenski, she focused on the puzzle at hand. It was hard to understand why anyone would think the two of them were even casual friends, much less that she was important enough to be used as leverage against him. Perhaps Abbott had seen them sitting at the booth together that night, or witnessed him saving her from being run down just after. But even that didn’t seem like enough to make anyone think she was important to Kavenski, unless…
She groaned out loud when the answer hit her, so bright and obvious and ridiculous that it made her want to punch someone. “Stuart Powers. That little…” No epithet seemed horrible enough for the sneaky little worm who’d gotten her into this mess in more ways than one. Barney had warned her that Abbott liked to use college students as his minions, and it was no surprise that Stuart had been willing to sell his soul for a little bit of money. A glance at Kavenski told her that he’d arrived at the same conclusion. “He saw us together on campus and told Abbott that we were a thing.” It seemed monumentally unfair that she had to deal with all the bad parts of being in a relationship with an unnaturally attractive felon but didn’t get to experience any of the good bits.
Kavenski gave a slight tilt of his chin that she interpreted as a nod.
“So Stuart’s involved in this?” Since she already knew the answer, she kept talking. “The little weasel gets around. Is Abbott after the necklace, then?”
“Not specifically.” Rounding another curve too quickly for Cara’s comfort, Kavenski sped up even more as a straight section of road opened up before them. “If it fell in his lap, I don’t think he’d mind, but he’s more preoccupied with taking out his main rival right now.”
She checked the phone screen, but the No Service message stayed stubbornly in place. “What does Abbott—” She broke off as Kavenski tensed and the car jumped forward, pressing her back against her seat. Seeing his tight-jawed stare move to the rearview mirror for a fraction of a second, she whipped around in her seat. A black SUV had appeared behind them. It was still a quarter mile away, but it was gaining quickly.
A hopeful part of her wondered if it might be someone else behind them—a family out for a scenic drive, possibly. After all, there had to be loads of black SUVs in Colorado. Then a second, matching SUV came around the final turn into view, and that tiny hope was squashed.
“I’m pretty sure that’s Abbott’s people,” she said, barely able to hear herself over the wind screaming through their car and her heart pounding in her ears.
Although Kavenski didn’t respond, the tension in his grip on the steering wheel and his intent focus told her that he agreed. She didn’t know where to look, since every view was scarier than the last, so she focused on the phone in her lap, trying to will it to find reception. Even a single bar would help, but it remained disconnected to any hint of a signal.
Needing to do something besides sit there like a lump as they hurtled along on the cliff edge and the SUVs drew closer and closer to their rear bumper, Cara tapped out a text to Molly. Her fingers shook, making her clumsy, and it took three tries before she was able to enter her sister’s phone number correctly. Alive for now. Traveling through Field Cty. No signal. Will update when I know location. Love you!
Even though the text sat uselessly on Kavenski’s phone now, it would hopefully keep attempting to send and would go through as soon as there was a signal—if they managed to get out of this mountainous, receptionless wasteland. It wouldn’t give Molly much information, but it would at least let her know that Cara was alive and hopefully keep her sisters away from the guarded cabin.
“Hang on,” Kavenski gritted out. Shoving the phone into her hoodie pocket, Cara grabbed the door handle with one hand and braced her other against the dash.
How did my quiet, normal life turn into the scariest scene in an action movie? Glancing at Kavenski’s determined profile, she was glad that if she had to be in a high-speed chase on terrifying mountain roads, at least she was with him. “You know, hanging on isn’t going to help when the car goes over the cliff.”
He laughed—actually laughed—and she stared at him.
“Having a getaway driver who literally laughs in the face of death is not reassuring!” Her voice rose to a shriek at the end as he whipped around a turn. The tires squealed in complaint, and she couldn’t blame them. He’d just managed to straighten the car when the next turn loomed, and he swung the wheel to the right, the muscles in his forearms bulging as if he were keeping them on the road through sheer might.
Cara clenched her jaw, holding in a scream and a torrential mix of cursing and praying and unsolicited driving advice that wanted to pour out of her at the highest decibel possible. She knew it wouldn’t be useful and would only distract Kavenski when he was doing his best to keep them both alive. The scenery whipped past her window in a nausea-inducing blur, and she tightened her grip on the handle until her fingers went numb.
They swung into another turn, tires skipping sideways over the pavement, making Cara squeeze her eyes closed and swallow another scream. It was worse not knowing what was coming, though, so her eyes popped open again. Not daring to loosen her grip on the dash and door handle, she looked in the side-view mirror rather than t
urn around. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t given in to the impulse.
One SUV was right behind them, so close that she couldn’t see its left headlight. “How’d they catch up to us?” she yelled over the shrieking wind. Even that cacophony wasn’t enough to cover the rumbling of the SUV’s engine. Her skin crawled at their closeness, knowing that they could easily shoot her from this distance.
“Only the best and fastest for Geoffrey Princeton Abbott.” Kavenski sounded almost eerily calm, but Cara could see the strain in the tension of his body and the hard-held lines of his face.
“I’d like to point out that it’s really unfair I’ve been kidnapped and am being chased down by a guy I barely know, all because they think we’re dating, which we’re n—ot!” The last word turned into a startled yelp as they rounded a curve and the back of a station wagon appeared right in front of them. They flew up behind the other vehicle, rocketing toward the back of the slow-moving station wagon, and Cara clutched her handholds even harder. “Car! Car!”
Kavenski whipped the wheel to the left, and they swung into the other lane. Cara barely had a chance to suck in a gasp of relief before they’d shot past the car and darted back into their lane.
The SUVs followed closely, barely losing any ground as they passed the station wagon and closed in on Kavenski’s car again. Cara could only hope that the driver of the slower vehicle called the cops to complain about their unsafe driving.
They flew along the curved road cutting through the top of the pass, and a national forest information sign whipped past before Cara could read it. The back of their car slid toward the center line, the tires struggling to hang on to the asphalt in the sharp curve. Kavenski gripped the wheel with grim determination, the lines of his face sharp and hard with tension. Suddenly, there was a crashing sound, and the car lurched forward. Cara was thrown back against her seat from the force of the hit, her head jerking painfully.