He looked like he wasn’t sure he wanted to let her go.
“Two seconds. That’s all it’ll take. I’ll be right back.”
She took off past the rows of checkout counters without another word, made it to the produce section just that quick and chose the biggest and ripest Beefsteak tomato she could find. She dropped it into a plastic bag, twist-tied the thing and turned to head back.
Only to run right into a chest the size of the Great Wall of China.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m so…”
The “sorry” part froze in her throat as an acrid stench blasted her nostrils.
That stench.
His stench.
The man who stole her security. The creep who ripped her life out from under her.
Her heart hammered as she looked up in to a pair of sinister, unsettling eyes. Those sinister, unsettling eyes.
The stench of him combined with seeing his steely glare in person once again triggered a full-body reaction. Every muscle inside her shook as she was held hostage by his irate stare.
His left eye was an ordinary brown. But the right? The iris of the right glowered back at her, opaque and useless. Lifeless, like this man’s soul.
God, it was really him.
He wasn’t concealing his face this time. He was here, blatantly standing in front of her in the middle of the flipping produce department, staring her down without a scarf or a hat to hide behind. Here, in broad daylight, the scar dissecting his eyebrow, eyelid and part of his cheek below it taunted her. It dared her to remember everything he’d done to her.
His head had been recently shaved, which left a dirty shadow where his hairline naturally receded into severe widow’s peak at the top. More scars ran across his scalp, cutting a trench down the side of his face to end in a deep gouge millimeters away from the bottom of his right ear.
She wanted to scream. To Tye. For Tye. For anyone. She tried. Just like before, she tried. But no sound would come. No breath. No fucking thought.
“You think you’re safe?” he growled, blowing the even stronger stink of his breath into her face. “You think Sheriff Blowhard has what it takes to protect you?”
He paused, like he expected her to answer. The tomato fell from her hand and plopped onto the floor. Her stomach dropped to her feet and melted into the cold concrete underneath her. She couldn’t move. She wasn’t sure she should even try.
“He can’t, you know. Not him or the other one, either. No one can.” He side-winded around her, closing in behind her and freaking her the fuck out. He didn’t touch her, he only leaned in closer.
It was then that she saw Tye. Thank God. He stepped out from the end of the check-out line. Scanned the area. Met her eyes. Then looked past her shoulder.
Rage tore across his face.
“Tell your hero goodbye, slut,” the creep bit out next to her ear. “Because, one way or the other, I’m going to end you like the whore you are. And I’m going to do it soon. Very soon.”
Tye didn’t shout out to her. He didn’t bellow for the man behind her to freeze. He didn’t yell for someone in the store to call 9-1-1. Instead, he dropped into a dead run toward her. But the man behind her was fast, faster than his sturdy size let on. And he was closer to the door. He made it out and away before Tye had the chance to reach her.
“Jesus H. Are you okay?” he shouted, skidding up to her.
“That was him. That was him.” Adrenaline sped through her body, making her heart race and her hands shake. “I could smell him. Tye. God…”
“What the fuck.” Tye was practically seething. He didn’t give her the chance to say anything more before he glared out the door. “Don’t move. Stay here,” he ordered her.
His command snapped her out of her disjointed thoughts. She grabbed his wrist and held on tight. “What? No! You’re not leaving me.”
The look she gave him said that no matter what, she wasn’t going to sit idly by. No way in hell. He clenched his jaw, his hands. “Shit,” he ground out, then took off for the automatic door.
She didn’t hesitate. She followed after him. “There.” She pointed to a black panel van tearing out of the parking lot at the far end. Fueled by her rage, by her fear, she bolted toward Tye’s truck. He was right on her heels, yelling. “Laine, stay here. Damn it. Laine.”
“He’s getting away.”
“Plates. Get the number on the plates.”
“He’s too far away.” She was yelling now, too. “Unlock the doors! We have to follow him.”
Tye knew they did. What he didn’t like was the idea of going after this guy with Laine in the truck beside him. But if he wanted to catch the guy, he didn’t have a choice, not with her stubbornness. He unpocketed the truck’s key fob and hit the unlock button just as they reached the vehicle. After scrambling inside, they both belted themselves in.
“Hold on,” he said as he started the truck and slammed the gearshift into drive. There were no other cars parked in front of him and only a handful of gawkers congregating by the store’s front entrance, so he had a clear shot. He double-pedaled it, stomping on the gas with one boot while hovering over the brake with the other. He cranked the wheel to the right, tearing from his parking space and steering the truck out of the lot to head in the direction the slippery son-of-a-bitch had gone.
The road they sped down was more country than suburban, thank God. Less traffic, soft shoulders and plenty of flat passing space. Tye caught a glimpse of the black van up ahead, but it was too far gone to get a good visual on the plates.
“My phone,” he said, steering around—goddamn it—pothole after fricking pothole, all while trying to dig into his front jeans pocket for his phone. “Here, take it. Find Mac’s number. Call him. Tell him to use the phone’s GPS to track our location.”
She took his phone with one hand and gripped the oh-shit handle above the door with her other as he weaved around another crater in the street. Despite being strapped in, they bounced in their seats like gravity was just an idea and didn’t really exist.
“Mother fu—”
He was out of his ever-loving mind for going this fast on this bad of a road, but he didn’t want to slow down. He couldn’t slow down, not if he wanted to stay on the dude’s tail. He couldn’t lose him. Not the first lead they’d had. Not the actual man himself.
He’d never felt terror like what shot through him when he saw the perp looming over Laine’s shoulder. And he’d known it was him. There hadn’t been a single doubt in his mind. Not with the way the sick bastard had stared back. Not with the fuck you look he’d shot across the store, aimed straight in Tye’s direction.
Tye wanted to kill him. To wrap his hands around his meaty throat and watch as he gasped his last breath. There’d be no guilt afterward, no remorse. Only a sense that justice had been served, and served well. Served with finality.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Laine lift the phone to her ear. “Mac! He found us. We stopped at that little store in Springhaven. He was there, but he ran. He ran.” A pause. “Yes… Oh God. We’re following him.” Another pothole hit. Another bounce sky-fucking-high. But she never lost focus, not even for a second. God love her. “Tye said to track his phone.”
“Tell him to make it quick.”
“He knows,” she said, chinning the mouth piece of the phone. “He’s on it.”
Just as Tye started earning some ground—hell, he had to be less than five hundred feet away from the van—a wicked shimmy tore through the front-end of the truck and jerked through to the steering wheel. Only this wasn’t a pothole shimmy. This was worse.
Way worse.
His first instinct was to let off the gas, but no. If he did, he’d lose the perp. He’d lose the chance to end this and give back to Laine the control over her own life she so craved. The control she deserved.
The front-end vibration ramped up with shocking intensity. As the shuddering in the steering wheel buzzed through his hands, he clutched it tighter. But he was los
ing control. Damn it, he had to hold on.
He had to.
Another pothole swerve served up the answer he dreaded. The truck pulled hard to the right, and he was helpless to steer it the other way. He put all of his weight behind the wheel, but it didn’t matter. The truck shook violently. The right front-end bottomed out with a deafening, metal-on-concrete screech. He and Laine were thrown forward against the restraints of the seatbelts. He looked out the windshield a fraction of a heartbeat later. The tire that had once been attached to his truck now bounced around willy-nilly on a trajectory all its own.
But it was what he saw beyond the wayward tire that made Tye’s eyes widen. Holy shit, they were headed straight for the drainage ditch. They were going in headfirst, and they were going to hit hard. Unable to do anything else, he slammed his foot on the brake as he let go of the steering wheel and pitched sideways, grabbing onto as much of Laine as he could to pull her closer. He covered her body with his, putting his full weight on top of her to hold her down against the seat.
They crashed nose-first so hard that the bed of the truck lifted off the ground, hung in midair for a breath, then slammed back to the surface. The impact rattled his teeth along with every other bone in his body. Laine screamed, and the sound tore into his very soul. The seatbelt across his lap restrained his lower body as the shoulder strap dug into his side from leaning sideways. His knee smashed into the steering column, but he didn’t care. He had her. He was protecting her. Despite her screaming, Laine was safe. As far as he could tell, she was safe and secure underneath him.
“Are you okay?” He lifted off her, shouting, this close to crossing over into frantic territory. “Say something. Laine. Say something.”
He skimmed his hands over her body. She wasn’t bleeding, nothing appeared cut, broken or maimed.
She moaned, pushing herself up on her elbows, still half sideways on the bench seat. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
“Let me see.” He had to see. He had to look in her eyes. He nudged her chin until she looked up at him. “God. Baby.” The flood of relief barreling through his body at the terrified yet lucid flash in her eyes nearly stopped his heart cold. He kissed her. Once. Twice. Hell, he did it again just for good measure. “I lost control. The tire fell off, and I couldn’t hold it. I lost control.”
“It’s okay. We’re okay.” She pushed herself up further, palming the passenger window as she sat up to get a good look at where they’d landed.
“My phone. Where is it?” He spotted it on the floorboard, in the farthest corner. He hit the latch on his seatbelt and dove for the phone. Unbelievably, the line was still open. He could hear Mac shouting orders on the other end. “Mac?”
“Tye. What the fuck happened?”
“He got away. We crashed into a ditch, but we’re fine. We’re all right.”
“I’ve got backup on its way, ETA less than three minutes. I’ll call for an ambulance, too. Just in case.”
Yes, good. He wanted Laine checked out, no matter how she might want to fight him on that.
“I’m headed out, too,” Mac said over a loud rustling on his end of the line.
“She saw him, Mac. I did too. Ugly fucker. Tall. Built like a brick shithouse. Bald, with a scar running from his forehead, down through his eye and into his cheek, just like Laine said.”
“I’ll call in Marcia Cook. She’s the best damn forensic artist we have. Were you able to get a plate?”
“No.” Tye ran a hand over his head. “We never got that close. But she’d called it. It was a black panel van. Chevy. Old, like a ’78 or ’79. Rust all over the thing. How the hell he kept that piece of shit on the road, I’ll never know. You guys need to do some serious street repairs in this county.”
“Explain that to the bureaucrats.”
Hell, Tye understood how that worked.
“Get her out of the truck, Tye. I’ll be there in ten minutes, tops.”
When Mac disconnected, Tye pocketed the phone and helped Laine unfasten her seatbelt. “Don’t move. Let me come around to your side.”
After two tries, he shouldered his door open and nearly fell out. The truck was on a forty-five degree angle, the bumper and grill playing kissy-face with the far rise of the ditch. He jumped across the standing water and stirred-up muck at the bottom of the trench, climbed up the five-foot rise and rounded the hood of the truck to slide down the other side. With the tire gone, the front quarter-panel had a good-size crinkle in it, going all the way back to where it lined up with the door.
A few strong-armed tugs, and he was able to yank the passenger door open all the way. “Easy, now. Careful.” He had her by the elbows until he could get in close enough to lift her all the way out. As he carried her up the ditch’s incline to the graveled edge of the street, a Samson County Sheriff’s vehicle skidded to a halt on the other side.
He set her on her feet, raised a hand to the deputy exiting his car to let him know they were all right, then drew her fully into his arms. She was trembling, and when he held her tighter, she hissed.
Goddamn it.
“Where does it hurt,” he asked, pulling back a fraction.
She shook her head, closing back in on him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “I’m fine. It’s just sore where the seatbelt cut across my side.”
Yeah, he felt that too. They’d be feeling that and more for the next few days.
He ran his hand gingerly up her back. In her ear, he whispered, “We’ll have to compare bruises later.”
That got him at least the pretense of a smile. And he was good with that. It told him she really was okay, physically anyway.
He dug his fingers into her hair to hold her head against his chest as he finally got a chance to take a good look up and down the street. The van was long gone by now, which pissed him the hell off. Damn it, they’d been so close.
After assuring the deputy they didn’t need any additional assistance, the young man went about lighting flares and setting them further down the road to warn oncoming vehicles. Just as Tye walked Laine across the way toward the patrol car, the ambulance arrived. And just as he’d anticipated, she stiffened in his arms.
“Mac called them. It’s precautionary,” he said, hoping to head off any argument.
“I don’t need to go to the hospital. I need to stay here with you.”
He couldn’t help but feel a little, well, pumped by her comment. Still didn’t make him any less willing to not have her checked over. “No one said you had to go anywhere. All I ask is that you let them take a look at you.”
Her hesitation went on longer than he was comfortable with. Finally, after a nudge of his finger under her chin, she relented. “Okay,” she said, looking up into his eyes.
“Okay,” he echoed. He kissed her gently, reassuringly, as the paramedics made their way over to them. “We’re good. Just banged up a little,” he told the two men just as Mac pulled in and parked behind his deputy. “Look her over for me.” He kissed her again, just as tenderly as before. “I’m going to check in with Mac. I’ll be right over there,” he said to her.
“Tell him that following the creep was my idea. He ought to love that.”
Tye huffed out a chuckle. “No doubt.”
A weird pang zapped him in his heart as well as tackling him a bit lower when she headed off with the paramedics. Her wit, even in a humorless situation, carried the perfect amount of distracting sarcasm. It wasn’t as if she was trying to make everything around her better, just somehow a little less worse. He knew that she understood how real shit had just gotten. How close they’d come to…
Fuck.
He tore away from watching her and followed Mac across the street and up the other side of the ditch. They made their way over to a line of trees twenty feet or so past where his incapacitated truck had landed to where the tire had ended up. Mac crouched in front of the tire and worked the hubcap loose using a good-sized pocket knife, obviously giving the same two shits Tye did that the tires, rim
s and caps had all been custom made for his truck. After Mac pried the hubcap off, he dropped his head and slumped his shoulders.
“That bastard,” he swore, setting the hubcap aside and stabbing the sharp end of the knife into the thick of the grass beside it. “You two are lucky,” Mac added as Tye squatted next to him.
Lucky? Tye didn’t feel very lucky. “How so?” he asked.
Mac plucked up two lug nuts from where they’d landed along the inside of the rim from the spinning tire’s centrifugal force and held them flat in the palm of his hand. “Looks like you’re missing a few.” If they’d all been there to start out with, there should have been six.
“Son of a bitch,” Tye spit out.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“We weren’t inside the grocery store more than fifteen minutes.”
Mac stood, bouncing the two lug nuts in his hand. “So he was being conservative. With that kind of time, he could’ve loosened more than just this one tire.”
But if he’d done that, Tye would’ve felt the truck steering oddly right off the bat. The guy had counted on being followed. The asshole had counted on them crashing as well, which stoked Tye’s ire even further.
“And to add insult to injury, we’ve got company,” Mac said, hitching his chin back toward the street.
A Channel 8 van, complete with a satellite uplink rack, came to a roaring halt behind all the other vehicles. Out popped Haven Sims from the passenger side with a microphone in hand as Matt climbed out of the sliding door shouldering a video camera.
Fucking perfect.
Mac pocketed the lug nuts as he and Tye headed over to cut them off. Mac held out his arms to his sides and put a scowl on his face before Haven and Matt could get around the back end of the TV van. “Sorry. No press allowed past this point.” Mac called out to the deputy heading over to them. “Block off the road at each end and re-route traffic. Let’s keep an eye out for any other rubberneckers, too. I want this area to stay clear.”
His order was followed immediately, much to Haven’s chagrin. She pouted, but only for a second before stepping back and pouring on the charm. “No need to throw up a blockade on my account, Sheriff McKay. We just heard the call come through the scanner and knew it was one we couldn’t pass up, that’s all. I’ll be good. Promise,” she said with a wink before turning her attention to Tye. “Sheriff Carter. We meet again. And at such an opportune time.”
My Tye Page 20
