“Run, Tyler!” she shrieked, and with her heart in her throat watched him scramble to his feet and bolt even as she shot to her feet and started to run herself. The bear mace in her pocket: remembering it, she grabbed for it, fumbled to pull it out. But the man—it was a man, stocky and strong—caught her too soon, grabbing a handful of her shirt even as she tried to get her finger on the nozzle, tried to whirl and spray him. He knocked it from her hand before she could get it into position, then yanked her back against him. Going into instant, instinctive self-defense mode, Sam slammed an elbow back into his rib cage—“Ummph!” he said—and directed a potentially knee-cap-shattering kick backward. Before it could land her assailant dodged, then wrapped an arm around her throat in a chokehold that abruptly cut off the scream that had been tearing out of her lungs. Clawing at the arm around her neck, still kicking and fighting despite the pressure on her windpipe that felt like it would crush it and that had her choking and coughing and gasping for air, she watched with burgeoning terror as a white paneled van with some kind of writing on the side barreled over the grass toward her.
It screeched to a stop just feet away at the same time as she felt the cold barrel of a gun jam hard against her temple.
Her captor yelled, “Stay back!” Then, to her, he growled, “Make another move, and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
She was no fool: the gun at her head meant instant compliance. She immediately stopped fighting and stood perfectly still in his hold. She could barely breathe, and she couldn’t talk; the arm around her neck was too tight.
“I said, stay back!”
The warning was directed at Marco. Sam’s terrified gaze slewed around to find him on his feet aiming his pistol at the man holding her. He was maybe fifteen feet away now, two-handing his gun, only slightly favoring his bad leg as the crutch lay forgotten at his feet. He’d clearly been rushing her assailant, and had just as clearly stopped when the gun had made contact with her head. Now, despite the weapon in his hand, he was as helpless to help her as she was to help herself. As she realized that, her blood turned to ice. Her heart thundered. Her pulse raced.
“Let her go!” Marco never faltered. His eyes stayed fixed on the man holding her. But Sam knew, and she very much feared her captor knew, that he would never fire as long as that gun was at her head.
Sam’s attention was jerked away by the sound of the van doors opening. White’s Irrigation—that’s what the lettering on the side said, in big dark letters. Camouflage for the van’s real purpose, Sam thought with a sickening certainty as a man jumped out of the passenger seat and another came around the front of the van. A loud rattle—the sliding door in the van’s side being opened—made her glance that way again. The passenger seat guy had done the honors; the van’s black interior yawned like a hungry mouth.
“Drop your weapon, Marco. You’re outgunned.” That voice—it belonged to the guy who’d come around the front of the van. Sam recognized it instantly. A thrill of horror ran down her spine. The man in her house—the one who had stepped into view in her kitchen as poor Mrs. Menifee’s life had drained away—the one who had called her by name—it was him. She would never forget his voice for as long as she lived. Average height, average weight, completely ordinary looking, and to her, now, totally unmistakable. Cold sweat washed over her in a wave. He had a gun in his hand. It was aimed at Marco. The passenger seat guy had a gun pointed at Marco, too. Behind them, the van doors were open and the engine was running, although the van itself appeared to be empty. There was a reason, and the only reason Sam could come up with—she was about to be forced into the van—was horrifying. Terror chilled her blood. Her stomach churned. The orange glow of the raging fire gave everything a hellish aspect, elongating shadows, distorting faces. The roar of it blocked out any sounds from farther away. Hot flakes of ash floated earthward like a flurry of black snow.
“You want to take me on, Veith? Even if I only got one shot off, I’d make sure it drilled right through your skull. You want to live, let the girl go.” Marco’s voice was hard. His weapon was aimed at Veith now.
“You fire a shot, and she’s dead. And you know it.” Veith gave a jerk of his head, which, from the tightening of the arm around her throat, Sam deduced was a signal to the man holding her. Clinging to his arm, she fought to suck in air. In the distance, the barely audible wail of a siren gave her a flicker of hope. They were in an empty lot at the very end of the street, blocked off from seeing much of anything except the raging fire by the fence and the van, which also kept them from being seen. But people had to be spilling out of the neighboring houses. With the explosion and fire, help in the form of police and firefighters had to be on the way. And Sanders and Groves and O’Brien—where were they? God, were they even alive? Casting desperate glances in every direction, Sam searched for help: nothing. She searched for Tyler. He was nowhere to be seen.
Thank God he got away.
Veith said, “Here’s how this is going to go down, Marco. Either you drop your weapon and come with us like a good boy, or we’ll leave you here and just take the girl. And the next time anybody sees her, she’ll be chopped up into so many pieces she’ll look like fish bait.”
“Back up, bitch.” The low voice in her ear was accompanied by the grinding pressure of the gun barrel against her temple.
Sam’s heart slammed against her rib cage as the man holding her started to pull her backward. She tried to resist, but with his arm crushing her windpipe and a gun to her head there wasn’t a whole lot she could do other than be clumsy and drag her feet, which earned her a quick, vicious tightening of the arm around her neck. She choked, gasping for air. Her eyes fastened despairingly on Marco. His expression was impossible to read, but his stance hadn’t changed, and his weapon remained fixed on Veith.
“Let her go and I’ll come with you,” Marco said. Dread twisted Sam’s insides into knots as she recognized the desperation that underlay the offer. It was the sound of fear, of defeat, of knowing that they had him and he couldn’t win. Hearing it beneath the studied calm of Marco’s voice rammed the almost unthinkable truth home for her: on this terrible night, both of them were probably going to die.
“No.” Dragging her heels, Sam managed to gasp the word out even as she was forced right up to the side of the van, right up to the open sliding door.
It was an instinctive protest, made because she loved him. She couldn’t bear the idea that he would sacrifice himself for her. For Tyler’s sake, if it came right down to it maybe she would have let him, but she knew, and she was sure Marco knew, too, that the bargain he was trying to make just wasn’t going to happen. They weren’t going to let her go no matter what he did, so the best thing he could do was stay out of their reach and save himself.
“Goddamn it, Veith, let her go!” Marco’s gun tracked Veith. “You want me, not her.”
“I want you both,” Veith said, confirming what Sam already knew. “But I’ll just take her if I have to.”
“Get in,” said the voice in her ear, and when she wouldn’t, when she refused to climb into the van, the gun jabbed harder into her temple and the arm around her neck tightened so viciously that she choked and gagged and went instantly light-headed. Then, without ever removing the gun from her head, he stepped up into the van and she had perforce to step up behind him or be strangled to death. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the van was configured with two front seats, a small, empty cargo area in the middle where she and her captor were positioned, and four bucket seats in the rear. The floor was carpeted, and there were three doors, all of them open.
Veith made a gesture. Then he and the other man started backing away from Marco, keeping their weapons trained on him but moving toward the van.
“You coming, Marco?” Veith asked.
In a semicrouched position just inside the big open doorway, her captor’s arm still around her throat and the gun still at her head, Sam saw Marco’s focus slip from Veith, whom he’d been tracking like a preda
tor, to her. For a split second their eyes met. Then she watched in horror as Marco abruptly raised both hands in the air in the age-old gesture of surrender.
“I’m coming,” he said. “Just let me get my crutch.” Still keeping the gun up where they could see it, he bent down to get his crutch, then wedged it into place beneath his arm and started moving toward the van.
“Get his gun.” Veith ordered the other man as they converged on Marco. Sam was shoved into the back, forced into a seat. Seconds later, Marco threw his crutch into the van, stepped in himself, then had his hands secured behind his back. Heart in her throat, Sam realized that she was witnessing the man she loved putting his life on the line for her.
He could have saved himself, could have left her. But here he was.
Their eyes connected. His were hard and dark and absolutely unreadable. Hers, she felt, probably had her heart in them.
Then Veith, who had entered behind him, clouted him over the head with his gun. The thud was so loud Sam felt it like a physical blow. Marco dropped like a stone.
Sam cried out, started to rise. She was roughly forced back into her seat.
“Good to see you again, Samantha Jones.” Veith smiled at her as the thug who’d been holding the gun on her secured her hands behind her with a zip tie, then locked her in place with a seat belt. It was an absolutely evil, terrifying smile. Her pulse rate soared. Her mouth went dry. “Pity we couldn’t bring the little boy along, isn’t it?”
She hated him then, hated him with such magnitude that for a moment the force of it almost wiped out her fear. An angry reply surged to her lips. But then she looked into his eyes, and realized that a reply was what he was hoping to provoke her into. He was going to hurt her; that was a foregone conclusion. But hurting her while she was defying him? That would just add to his fun.
So she clamped her lips together and said nothing.
The door rattled shut as the third man closed it from the outside. Seconds later he was behind the wheel and the van took off.
As it bounced across the grass and then sped away down the street, Sam caught a glimpse through the windows of the milling crowd that was starting to accumulate in front of the blazing town house. She wanted to bang on the van windows; she wanted to scream for help. The first one she couldn’t do; the second one she knew better than to attempt. But she looked out at the huge, shooting flames stretching toward the sky, and willed someone to notice the fleeing van, then scanned the crowd hopefully to see if anyone did. The fire made the area around the front yard almost as bright as day. Among the crowd—yes, that was Groves. His blond buzz cut was unmistakable. With Groves was Sanders, who was crouching while he talked to—Tyler. Oh, what a relief! That brief sighting of her son’s small, slender frame and black hair imprinted itself on her heart. Why? Because it just that moment hit her that she might never see him again. Even as her heart shattered into a million pieces at the thought, Sam felt a surge of thankfulness that he was out there rather than in here.
He’s safe. Tyler’s safe.
But the hard truth was that she and Marco were not. As the van, carefully observing the speed limit now, drove past onrushing fire trucks and police cars, Sam looked down at Marco, still sprawled unconscious on the floor, and at the thug in the seat across from her, and at Veith, sitting with a smug smile on his face and his gun pointed at Marco’s head, and tried not to think about what these criminals had done to Mrs. Menifee.
But she couldn’t help it. The image of the woman’s severed fingertip, and the blood running across her kitchen floor, became lodged in her head. By the time the van stopped some fifteen minutes later, she was sick with terror.
She didn’t pray much, because she had figured out a long time ago that if God really was up there, as her grandma had sworn he was, and if he really was in the answering-prayers business, which her grandma had sworn was true, the only answer she was going to get from him was no.
But now she prayed so hard that if God didn’t hear her he had to be deaf.
Please, God. Please. I just want to see Tyler again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Fear was not something Danny experienced often. Handling dangerous situations was what he did for a living. He had been in so many life-or-death spots that they were pretty much par for the course for him, just another day at the office, so to speak.
But he was afraid now. And the reason he was afraid had nothing to do with the distinct chance that he wouldn’t live through the next hour. What it had to do with was the silky-skinned, smart-mouthed, tender-hearted, gorgeous girl whom he’d just fucked into next week.
If Veith had been willing to blow up the town house to kill them, with all the attention that was sure to attract, he wanted them dead now. No more torture time, no more questions about money. Just dead. As in, a bullet to the head as soon as they were in a suitable place.
Danny would have told Veith the truth about his identity, and to hell with the assignment, if he had thought it would do any good. But the terrible fact of the matter was, as undercover FBI Special Agent Daniel Panterro, he had no value to Veith or the Zetas at all. With no reason to keep him alive, Veith would kill him instantly. And Sam, too.
Telling the truth would be tantamount to signing his own, and Sam’s, death warrant.
The thought made his gut clench. Cold sweat beaded his brow. His mind kept wrestling this thing around and around, which wasn’t good. He kept getting the feeling that he was missing something, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what, and wasting time worrying about it wasn’t what he needed to be doing. What was important at the moment was to stay coldly focused, but he was having trouble getting there.
Because of Sam.
If he hadn’t stepped up, Veith would have taken Sam, and he would have killed her. Danny had no doubt about that whatsoever. The bastard would have done exactly what he had threatened, and enjoyed himself doing it. He would have tortured her, done God knows what to her, and in the end he would have cut her up just like he had said he was going to, and left the remains somewhere where they would be found. That was how Veith operated.
Just thinking about Sam with Veith made Danny want to kill the bastard. It was his newest, most pressing ambition. He only hoped that he would be afforded the chance. If not, well, he was going to save Sam. Or die trying.
At this point he was perfectly willing to give his own life if that was what it took to protect Sam, and Tyler, too. They meant something to him, something personal. Something special. In giving up his weapon and turning himself over to Veith, Danny had done what he had to do, following the devil into hell in hopes of maybe being able to bring Sam out again.
Not that success was looking likely.
When the van stopped, every muscle in Danny’s body tensed. Adrenaline flooded his system. His instincts went on red alert. This might very well be it.
The van door opened. Hands reached in to haul him out.
In the rear seats, the thug guarding Sam stood up, unsnapped her seat belt, wrapped his arm around her throat, and stuck a gun to her head.
Even in the dark, he could tell her eyes were on him. They looked wide and scared.
It killed him that there was nothing he could do or say to reassure her. But any attention he paid her just gave Veith more reason to think that he could use Sam to get to him.
“Let’s go,” Veith said, shoving Danny with his foot.
Danny groaned, and let himself be hauled out of the van. The object was to pretend to be still groggy from the blow, and a lot more hampered by his leg wound than he was. If he had to put up a fight, the element of surprise was always good. Having free hands was even better, and he couldn’t use a crutch with bound hands. The crutch was the key: he really needed to keep the crutch with him. He was out the gun—Veith had taken it—but the phone Crittenden had provided was still inside the crutch. The phone could be tracked, and by now Crittenden should be tracking it. Rescue was what Danny was hoping for, either by Sanders and
company or by Crittenden, although he figured that the chances that it was going to happen were dicey.
During the van ride, while he was mostly feigning unconsciousness, he had hit on a workable plan to keep at least Crittenden on their trail: Danny was a big guy, and if he couldn’t walk, somebody was going to have to help him get from place to place, maybe even carry him. The phone was why he had stopped to pick up his crutch before getting into the van with Sam. He hoped the memory of him needing that crutch enough to stop for it would resonate with Veith now. With only two men and himself, Veith didn’t have the manpower to spare for hauling Danny around, not and keep a gun on him and deal with Sam at the same time. Easiest thing to do would be to free his hands and let him walk with the crutch to wherever Veith was taking them.
If he were taking them anywhere. Danny had a bad feeling that whatever was getting ready to go down would go down now.
But no, as it turned out Veith apparently had a different killing field in mind.
Which was the good news.
The bad news was that, hands bound behind her, Sam was being hurried along ahead of him at gunpoint, the better to keep him docile, he knew. Still, Veith was taking no chances: Danny had a gun pointed at him, too, every step of the way.
The other good news was, Danny was hobbling to wherever they were going on his crutch.
The other bad news was, he had no idea where that might be, although he had a pretty good idea about what was going to happen when they got there.
The long, low, white building that the van was parked beside looked like an airplane hangar, Danny saw as he and Sam were hustled past it. A faded sign on the side of the building confirmed that. It said Hayfield Airport, but if this was an airport it was a long-abandoned one. The place was deserted. Because of the cloud cover, the night was dark as pitch. The only light to be seen was a yellow bug light beside the hangar’s garage-type door. That made it hard to be sure, but aside from the hangar, and a paved parking area surrounding it, he got the impression that there was farmland all around. The smell of crops and fertilizer blew past him on the breeze.
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