The Getaway

by Hope Anika

  “No. We were…childhood friends. It’s a long story.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Another heavy sigh. Definitely regret. “It was a long time ago—Jesus, the feds just walked in. I have to go. She’s in a ’78 blue Chevy Nova, headed northwest on US84. Call me when you have her—and thanks.”

  The dial tone sounded in his ear.

  Goddamnmotherfuckingshit.

  Sam squeezed his phone and valiantly fought the urge to smash it against the pavement. He should have never answered the fucking thing, but Fieldstone was still in intensive care, and he couldn’t afford to miss any news that might come his way—good or bad. He’d spent the last three months undercover, protecting the worthless ass of a drug runner who’d reluctantly agreed to testify against the cartel that employed him, and because they’d hopped around every few weeks like a damned jackrabbit, they’d managed to stay under the cartel’s radar.

  Until Baja. When all hell had broken loose.

  And now, when he was finally back on US soil, when he could finally take the break he so badly needed, there was this: a runaway nanny and her kidnapped charges. And not just any charges—no, they just had to be the two sons of international businessman Donovan Cruz, Las Vegas gazillionaire and budding politico heavyweight.

  Double fuck.

  Sam was tempted to call Tony back and tell him forget it. This shit was the last thing he wanted to deal with. He was totally burnt out, fried to the edges of his desiccated soul. He felt as if he were turning to dust.

  He wanted his hammock, his Rainier view and a six-pack. He wanted three months of sleep in an empty alpine meadow and his fly fishing pole. He wanted, if only for a small space of time, some fucking peace and quiet.

  He needed it. Or he wouldn’t be any use to the Marshal Service, or to the witnesses he was sworn to protect.

  He wouldn’t be anything but dead.

  An old friend.

  Fucking perfect. An old friend—an old childhood friend, at that. One who’d pitted herself against a man who could crush her like a bug.

  Why? Because she truly believed he was abusing his children? Or because she was the abuser and hoped to shore her defense by becoming the apparent champion?

  Just what kind of abuse were they talking about?

  Not that Sam cared. Not really. He supposed he should; his lack of regard for the entire situation only proved how badly he needed to step away from the world at large and forget. If only for a little while.

  For a long while. He didn’t want to do this. This was Tony’s problem, not his. This was the feds’ problem, not his. Donovan Cruz’s problem—not his.

  He looked over to the Flying J where he’d been headed for breakfast and felt the acid in his stomach bubble like a frothy hot tub. He wanted chicken fried steak and eggs, a cup of strong, hot coffee and a cigarette.

  He glanced at his watch. 9:23.

  So, was he going to call Tony back? Or was he going to park his ass at the next pull out and wait for a blue 1978 Chevy Nova to pass by?

  Son of a bitch. He should have just flown home. But he’d thought—mistakenly, idiotically—that the drive would do him some good. What were the odds, he wondered darkly, that his chosen route would intersect with the path taken by Tony’s runaway?

  Christ, his head hurt. Like someone had taken an ax and buried it in his temple. He shouldn’t be going anywhere but home. He knew that.

  So why was he hesitating? What the fuck was his problem?

  Tony would recover. He had other contacts, other people he could call for help. Other people he trusted.

  But Tony was a friend, and for a man like Sam, who didn’t have any family, the handful of friends he could lay claim to were precious and few. Not to mention that Tony had saved his ass on more than one occasion.

  I just need her intercepted. Stopped, the kids secured. Held until I can get there. Easy as pie.

  How much trouble could it really be? But the hair at his nape was still bristling, always a bad sign.

  A portent of things to come.

  Still, he was a Deputy U.S. Marshal, grizzled and lean from his work in the field, armed with a Glock, a twelve-inch serrated combat knife, and, at the moment, a bad fucking attitude. Lucia Sanchez was a runaway nanny driving a thirty-seven-year old beater, too foolish to realize she couldn’t outrun the law, or a man like Donovan Cruz.

  The odds were in his favor. Hell, she didn’t stand a chance.

  Sam reached down and started the Land Rover.

  Chapter Two

  Boom!

  Lucia thought it was a gunshot.

  The steering wheel jerked in her hands, and the Nova swerved violently toward the ditch that lined the right side of the road. A startled cry sounded in the backseat, and even though she wanted to slam her foot down onto the brake, she forced herself to downshift into neutral instead, which made the Nova lurch in protest, throwing her against her seat belt. Immediately they began to slow, bobbing like a boat in rough water as she wrenched on the wheel and fought to keep them from the ditch.

  The car rolled to a sluggish stop on the side of the freeway. Lucia sat for a long moment, her hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel, her heart hammering in her chest. Rain beat down against the roof in a torrent. The clear sky that had dawned just a handful of hours ago was gone. In its place was a line of churning thunderheads, and a cold rain that hit the Nova’s metal roof so hard it sounded like a spray of bullets.

  Ay, yai, yai. Further proof of your stupidity.

  Because as getaway vehicles went, the Nova left much to be desired. The fact that the old relic—her sole inheritance from her mother—was barely roadworthy had not been an issue on the rare occasions she drove it. Biking was her preferred method of travel through the city in which she lived, and the only reason she’d even driven the vehicle to work the day before was because her bike had a flat.

  As the Nova now had. Which was almost funny.

  Almost.

  “Awesome,” was Alexander’s derisive murmur from the back seat.

  But Lucia had not expected to flee into the night with the aging car. That, however, was little excuse for the situation in which they now found themselves. Muy estupido!

  What else could go wrong?

  Do not ask such a foolish question. Because the Universe would surely answer.

  “I don’t suppose there’s a spare?” the boy inquired scathingly.

  Lucia met his cold, pale gaze and fought the urge to make a face. Next to him, Ben sat up, rubbing his eyes, looking around in interest. “What happened?” he wanted to know, yawning hugely.

  “Flat tire,” Alexander told him. “This car is a piece of shit.”

  Lucia couldn’t argue, so she only took a deep, steadying breath and eyed her mirrors. Still no police. No Ivan. Who was surely behind them somewhere, as inescapable as the tide. Still, they’d made it nearly two states away from the city they’d fled with no sign of trouble, which—considering she’d absconded with the two male heirs of one of the most influential and wealthiest men on the planet—was nothing short of miraculous. But she knew it was only a matter of time before her free-fall ended.

  Gravity was an inevitability.

  “I needs me some grub,” Ben announced.

  Lucia’s belly growled in agreement, but Alexander said nothing. She knew he was hungry, too, but the boy never complained, stoic in the face of every circumstance: hunger, pain, fear. He was completely self-contained, as though he had no human needs. She’d finally come to understand he construed such things as weakness, and he wouldn’t allow himself any weakness—not even hunger. He was determined to endure.

  She understood that fear lay at the root of that control, that Alexander believed giving into those things which might undermine him could undo him entirely. But he was not alone in that, and she found it bitterly ironic, that it had taken her so long to understand the simple, gut-wrenching truth that lay beneath the cold, caustic bearing he so carefully cult
ivated. A shroud she had seen before, one she should have known instantly.

  One she should have recognized.

  “I will change the tire, and then we will eat,” she told Ben. She met his curious brown gaze and tried to smile. Sweet Ben. He was the smartest, funniest, most charming five-year-old she’d ever met, the very antithesis of Alexander, which told her he had been spared his brother’s fate. So far. But she had no hope such a blessing would continue, and neither did Alexander.

  Or he never would have let her take them.

  “Can we have some McDonalds?” Ben asked, excitement lighting his features.

  “Sí, monkey.” Lucia glanced out her window at the downpour and sighed. If we can get to one.

  A big if, dependent upon many things, the first of which was the existence of a spare tire. Because her mother, a woman who hadn’t known oil from antifreeze, had rarely driven, and in all of the years Lucia had owned the Nova, she’d never paid much attention to the state of its tires—Idiota!—and she had a feeling that the likelihood of a decent spare being on board was right up there with bovine flight. But she wouldn’t know until she looked, so she turned on her hazards and, bracing herself, stepped out into the rain.

  The wind blew ferociously; in an instant she was soaked through. Passing traffic sprayed her with waves of dirty, stinging water as she strode back to the trunk and opened it. Their backpacks sat nestled in one corner; her tent, first aid kit and two old sleeping bags were shoved into the other. She pushed everything to one side and lifted the lid of the spare tire compartment and found deliverance: bald, black and beautiful.

  A Goodyear miracle.

  “Hot damn,” she said, simultaneously both relieved and hotly furious with herself.

  Because this was her fault. She was not the stupid, rash, thoughtless, crazy woman she’d been behaving as for the last ten hours, but there was no evidence of that to the contrary. Not in this rickety old car and its warped, treadless spare tire. Not in the state of their current condition, which was stuck on the side of the freeway as the skies opened above them and released a deluge of icy, punishing rain…dios mío. Her fault. For finally snapping completely; for allowing her rage and terror and the past she’d never escaped full, disastrous reign. Such agonizing fury that her common sense had fled, her brain had shrunken to the size of a pea, and she’d done everything—everything—wrong.

  So much stupid. You should get a prize, chica.

  A big, gleaming idiot award to replace her now defunct medical degree.

  Because it was not what she’d done—something she refused to regret, no matter the consequences—but how she’d done it that would determine her level of success. And so far the only thing she’d done right was, apparently, head in a direction no one thought she would go. Everything else was a big, fat fail.

  As Alexander continued to point out.

  She sighed and reached down to lift the spare out, stumbling a little beneath the weight. It was a regular tire, not a donut, but it looked serviceable—so long as they didn’t go far. The jack stand was there, too, along with a rusting tire iron. She leaned the tire against the car and removed the stand and iron and tried to remember the fundamentals of tire changing.

  The rain was cold, big, fat drops that slapped her like angry words. Traffic flew past, making the Nova sway. She set up the jack, put a couple of large rocks in back of the front tires and managed to get the car several inches off the ground. But when she tried to loosen the lug nuts with her tire iron, the tire simply spun, making it impossible to remove them.

  She stared at the tire through the thickening rain, shivering, fury at herself growing.

  Mierda! She should know how to change a damn tire. Why had she never learned such a basic skill? It was not rocket science, and yet it might as well be. And she supposed she deserved this—moron!—but the children did not. She had been foolish and impulsive—blinded by rage—and now here they were. Worse, she couldn’t figure out what she was doing wrong, and they didn’t have time—

  A large black Land Rover suddenly pulled up behind the Nova.

  Lucia watched it slow to a halt, her grip tightening on the tire iron. It had California plates—not Ivan, not the police—but her heart kicked into overdrive anyway, and unease spread through her like a stain. She waited, motionless, as the driver’s side door swung open, and a large man climbed out. He strode toward her, seemingly unconcerned with the rain that instantly soaked his black t-shirt and faded jeans.

  She rose from her crouched position, the tire iron heavy and cold in her hold. There was an old .22 stuffed into her purse, but her purse was in the front seat of the Nova, and there was no hope of reaching it before he did her. Not that she truly needed the weapon; she’d learned long ago how to put a man down, and they never expected it of her: petite, fragile, female. Still, it was not a skill she particularly cared to put into practice unless absolutely necessary, and there was nothing to say she would need to do so, nothing but her own chilling, rampant paranoia, born of blood and experience.

  Perhaps he just stopped to help.

  But chivalry had been dead a long time.

  The man halted before her, water slicing down the hollows of his jaw. Startlingly bright, blue-green eyes met hers, as luminous and translucent as the Caribbean waters they resembled. “Trouble?”

  Lucia stared at him through the rain. He towered above her, the width of his shoulders easily twice her own. His voice was deep, rasped from the depths of a broad chest, and the sodden t-shirt he wore clung to the rope of muscle that covered him. The faint golden beard that lined his jaw did nothing to soften the sharp bones that carved his face into hard angles and planes. A wicked looking scar cut his left eyebrow in two.

  “No,” she said, watching him. “No trouble.”

  He looked at the jacked up car and scowled. “Looks like trouble.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” she told him.

  He transferred that scowl to her. “You need help.”

  “No,” she said again.

  He snorted and held out his hand, presumably for the tire iron she held, but Lucia didn’t hand it over. He was a very big man and a stranger—something she never trusted—and the dark look on his face…he appeared annoyed. Angry. Which was a mystery she didn’t understand, didn’t care to solve, and was not about to arm with a large steel tool.

  “I can help,” he said shortly and motioned impatiently with the hand he held out. “Give me the tire iron.”

  But Lucia only stared at him, unmoving, her grip on the iron tightening.

  “Let me change the tire for you.” He ground out the words as if she were a village idiot, something for which he clearly had no patience. A muscle leapt in the hard, bristled line of his jaw, and in his gaze she saw something she didn’t understand: contempt.

  The rage within her suddenly burst to life. Lucia tried to talk it down; this man, he was no one. Not worth the effort. But the disdain in his startling eyes abraded her, rousing the anger she was trying so hard to contain.

  “Thank you for stopping,” she bit out. “But I have it under control.”

  The man’s features drew into an ominous visage, and her heart fluttered. His scar whitened, his mouth thinned, and he took an aggressive step toward her. “I can do it, or you can wait until the Highway Patrol comes along, and they can do it.”

  Her heart fluttered again, stronger. Because this man was an unknown, and part of her thought that clobbering him over the head with the tire iron was a good idea. Safer than accepting his help. But that was not a reasonable solution, and her saner self heard his words—or you can wait until the Highway Patrol comes along—and thought, no, she really couldn’t. Because if the police found her, this entire misadventure would have been for naught, and she wasn’t willing to give up. Not even for this man…this unpleasant and inexplicable angry man…from whom she wanted nothing. And yet he was right. If she could not get the tire free, eventually the police would find them—

&nbs
p; “Goddamn it,” the man growled and reached abruptly for the iron, catching one end to pull rudely against her hold. “Give it to me.”

  But Lucia didn’t let go. She simply couldn’t. He was glaring at her through the rain, his unhidden dislike a brutal slap in the face. Perhaps she should be frightened, but she wasn’t. She was furious.

  Maldito cabrón! What the hell was his problem?

  Because she hadn’t asked for him to stop. To help. And while she might have appreciated some advice—like a clue as to why the damn tire wouldn’t come off—she had no need of his wrath.

  “No, thank you,” she repeated—hissed—and pulled futilely at the tire iron. “I will get it off myself.”

  “Just let me help you,” he snarled in return.

  “You do not want to help me.” Lucia tugged at the iron, irate. “You want to growl at me like an angry dog.”

  He blinked and reached up to scrub his free hand down his face, sluicing the rain away. “No.”

  “Yes,” she argued. “You are confrontational and belligerent.”

  He stared at her, unspeaking.

  “Please let go of my tire iron,” she said through clenched teeth.

  That luminescent gaze narrowed on her. “Stubborn.”

  “Rude,” she countered.

  His brows rose. He looked at the tire, and his grip on the iron seemed to tighten, tugging her infinitesimally closer. “Did you loosen the lugs before you lifted it?”

  “Should I have?” she demanded, trying not to yell.

  “Only if you want to get the tire off.”

  She yanked again at the iron, unimpressed with his sarcasm. “Then you have solved my problem. Gracias. You may go now.”

  “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

  The urge to kick him was very tempting. “You—”

  “Those nuts are rusted on,” he continued, talking over her. “No way you’re getting them off.”

  Which Lucia took as a personal challenge. She was going to get them off if it was the last thing—

  Lightning shattered the sky above her, a blinding flash followed by a violent crack of thunder that shook the ground beneath her feet. Her heart leapt, and her grip slipped, and before she could protest, the man was yanking the tool from her and moving to crouch before the tire.