Pursuit

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  It was difficult to draw air into her suddenly constricted lungs.

  “We go to plan B.” Climbing the slope, he looked both ways, then sprinted across the road.

  “Plan B?” The echo was surprised out of her. She hadn’t known they had one.

  “Yeah.” His answer was short as he leaped another ditch, then forged through more tall grass. His body was growing warmer, the soap-tinged scent she was starting to associate with him more intense.

  Her reply was polite. “I’d love to know what that is.”

  “Would you, now?” A fleeting grin accompanied the glance he gave her. Even as tense as she was, the sight of it warmed her. This guy—Mark, and as his given name came automatically to mind she realized that the attempt she had been making to mentally keep him at arm’s length by continuing to think of him by his last name had just abysmally failed—was risking his life for her. It was kind of starting to make up for the fact that he had never so much as noticed her before the crash.

  “Yes, I would.”

  “We wing it.”

  Jess gave him a withering look, which she doubted that he saw.

  “You know, whoever that is back there might not have stayed with the RAV4,” she pointed out as they cut catty-corner through the woods and emerged at another road. This one, she realized, was the one the 7-Eleven was on. The one the RAV4 was on. They were on the other side of the intersection now. “They could be driving around looking for us. They could come this way.”

  “They could.” His tone told her that he’d already thought of that, too. “That’s why I want you to keep a look out for their headlights. We ’ll make better time if we take the road.”

  Jess’s heart lodged in her throat as he leaped the ditch and took to the pavement, his shoes slapping the asphalt loudly enough to make her cringe. Could anyone hear? Only if they were close enough, she told herself, which wasn’t exactly comforting. But they had worse problems. While they were in the woods, she realized, it had been growing lighter by the minute. The trail they had left in the grass wouldn’t be hidden by darkness much longer. Once it was seen, the hunt would be on for real. Clearly aware, Mark was moving faster, picking up the pace, jogging down the road toward the 7-Eleven, which, she judged, was just around the next bend. She kept a wary eye on the road behind them, but it remained deserted.

  So far.

  But they were getting close. If she listened hard she could hear the distant hum of traffic on 95—and a siren. Yes, she could definitely hear a siren. Make that multiple sirens. Were they heading their way?

  A sudden spurt of hope leaped inside her.

  “Do you hear that siren?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Clearly, if she could hear it he could, too, despite his heavy breathing. “Maybe somebody called the fire department. Or the police. About the burning car. If they come, we could—”

  “No, we couldn’t.” He cut her off, his speech a little ragged now. The gloom had faded enough so that she could see the color infusing his face and the fine sheen of sweat popping out on his forehead. But his arms around her were still sturdy and strong, and he was moving at a surprisingly fast pace. Of course, he could see that dawn was breaking, too. Heart hammering, Jess cast another searching glance back down the road. Still nothing. Which didn’t mean someone couldn’t already be following their path through the trees . . . “I could flash my badge and demand protection, and they would probably do their best, but the truth is they can’t protect you from these guys. They’re lethal. They’re playing for keeps, and they’re serious about making you dead. Now that they know we know they’re coming after us, they’re going to go at it full-throttle. Our best chance—hell, just about our only chance—is to hide until we figure out who’s involved. Then we ’ll know who isn’t, and that will be who we go to for help.”

  Jess felt a quick upsurge of nausea. “What if we guess wrong?”

  He didn’t answer, but his expression did. They would be dead.

  Jess looked at the tense, determined face so close to her own. “You know, they ’re not really after you. They ’re after me. You could leave me.”

  He gave a derisive huff. “Babe, I’m not leaving you. No way, no how. Put the thought out of your head.”

  “I’m just sayin’,” she said. But, reassured and more thankful than she even wanted to think about, she tightened her grip on his neck and curled a little closer into his warm chest as they rounded the bend that brought the 7-Eleven into view at last.

  “Did you happen to ask your reporter friend what kind of car he would be driving?”

  “A blue Saturn.” They were within shouting distance of the 7-Eleven now. Screaming distance, if it came to that.

  Feeling a rush of relief so strong she nearly went limp with it, Jess eagerly scanned the mix of vehicles parked in front of the store and re-fueling at the gas pump.

  It wasn’t hard. There were only four of them.

  “He’s not here.” Ryan had just completed the same visual scan she ’d been engaged in.

  Having already come to the same sickening conclusion, Jess looked around again.

  “He ’ll be here,” she promised a little desperately, casting another quick, precautionary look over his shoulder as she spoke. At what she saw, a thrill of pure fear shot through her.

  A car swept up the road from the intersection they had just skirted around. It was still too dark to tell a lot about it at that distance, but she could see the approaching headlights clearly through the trees.

  22

  Mark. Mark.” Jess’s stiffening like a board and stuttering his name almost in his ear gave him a split second ’s warning that more bad news was headed his way even before she laid it on him. “A car’s coming. I think it might be them. We’ve got to hide.”

  “Shit.”

  Casting a quick glance back, he took off, sprinting toward the store through the shadows blanketing the edge of the parking lot. Desperate to find an alternative solution, he scanned the parking lot as he ran. A 1990s maroon Escort, a gray ’05 or ’06 Jetta, and a green ’08 PT Cruiser were parked in front of the store, an open-twenty-four-hours type with a well-lit interior that allowed him to see customers and a single bored male clerk at the cash register inside. A white ’86 Silverado pickup with a long bed sat at the gas pumps. Just sat there, no gas hose connected to it. Nobody in any of the vehicles, nobody watching anywhere as far as he could tell. In a snap decision, he looked back at the Silverado. Already making the call in his mind, he veered toward the truck even as he continued to visually check it out. A couple of ladders bungeed together and some equipment sheltered by a blue tarpaulin were stowed in the back. The black plastic bed liner was worn and scarred. Clearly a work truck.

  Bingo. Just what they needed: a way out.

  The other choice, which involved hiding in the woods and waiting for the reporter to show up, had just gotten a whole lot riskier. As he’d told Jess, Lowell and company knew the guy was coming to the 7-Eleven, which might be why the car, if it was indeed a pursuing vehicle, was heading their way. Whoever was in it—much as he hated to think it, there was a good chance it was Fielding, Wendell, or Matthews, or some combination thereof—would park and wait for Jess and him to show up to meet the reporter. Letting Jess connect with a representative of the media was the very last thing they wanted to happen. They would stop it however they could.

  Under those circumstances, the best-case scenario would be if he and Jess were nowhere in the vicinity when the reporter showed up.

  “What are you doing?” Jess was trying to keep her cool, but her face was whiter than the truck in the purpling light of daybreak. She ’d obviously expected to take shelter inside the store.

  “Getting us out of here. Grab your stuff.” Mark skidded to a stop at the back of the truck, cast a final searching look all around—clear—and heaved Jess, shoes, purse, and all, over the side of the bed. “Get under the tarpaulin. Fast.”

  “What?” She sounded stunned. The truck rocked s
lightly as she landed. Despite her question, Jess apparently got the idea, because as soon as he let her go she dropped out of sight. There was the smallest of clatters, as if she had dropped something, probably one of her stupid-ass shoes.

  Mark sprang up himself. A foot on the bumper and a hop and then he was in, crouching low, glancing around. Just as he ’d suspected, her stray shoe was almost at his feet. He grabbed it. Couldn’t leave anything so obviously out of place to be found by the owner or anyone who might happen to look into the bed. The area around the pumps was relatively brightly lit, and a high-heeled shoe appearing out of nowhere was the kind of thing somebody might notice. Having already lifted the edge of the tarpaulin and currently in the process of scooting feetfirst beneath it, Jess looked at him wide-eyed. Her glasses were slightly askew, her lips were parted, her bare feet were pale against the black plastic, and the slim-cut skirt of her business-like suit was riding interestingly high on her slender, bare thighs. He was just noticing that when both of them saw the slice of headlights through the lightening gloom at the same time as a new vehicle—almost certainly the one they’d seen coming—bumped into the parking area. Mark felt his gut clench and forgot all about her skirt.

  Innocents arriving by chance, his buddies from the house on a search-and-destroy mission with him and Jess as targets, or the far deadlier possibility of a team of unknown assassins on their trail: The car could contain any of the three.

  “What happens if somebody looks in the truck?” Almost under cover now, Jess sounded panicky as the lights flashed over the truck bed before moving on toward the store.

  “We deal.”

  Lips tightening at what he had to admit wasn’t an especially helpful response, Jess slithered the rest of the way beneath the tarpaulin without another word.

  Keeping his head low, Mark reached for his holster as he crawled to join Jess. Unsnapping his Glock, he thrust Jess’s shoe at her, then shoved his legs under the tarpaulin, sliding in on his side beside her on the hard plastic so that they were lying chest-to-chest, the top of her head level with his chin, and her shoes and purse digging into his stomach. Pulling the tarpaulin over them both, breathing in the smell of paint—there were cans of house paint and various tools stored in an open plastic container behind Jess, and her back was pressed up tight against the container—he eased his pistol free. For the moment he kept it pressed against his thigh. The familiar smooth metal of the gun in his hand provided a modicum of reassurance. If push came to shove, he could shove back.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” she tilted her head back to ask. Her voice was a mere breath of sound.

  “I don’t know. Parking.”

  Hunting was the real answer, but no need to say that. The fact was, if the people looking for them found them, a firefight would ensue. Cornered now, with no place left to run, shooting it out with them was his only choice.

  As he contemplated plugging a bullet into Fielding, or Wendell, or even Matthews, his mind reeled. Could he do it? He felt Jess shiver against him. For her? Oh, yeah. He could.

  Just like they could plug a bullet into him.

  The whoosh of tires on pavement as the arriving vehicle passed nearby made Mark go tense with anticipation. Whatever was going to happen would happen very soon. His hand tightened on the Glock.

  Jess clearly heard the arriving vehicle, too. She shuddered and pressed so close against him that he could feel the pounding of her heart. Or maybe it was his own heart that was thumping away. Hard to tell.

  Straining to hear, he listened carefully, trying to pick up any and all sounds beyond the truck bed. He’d rarely felt so helpless in his life. With his field of vision confined to the blue cocoon in which he and Jess were wrapped, his ears were all he had left to use.

  The muffled one-two slam of car doors was his reward. The sound made Jess start. He could hear the hiss of her breath as she inhaled.

  There were at least two of them, then.

  He badly wanted to look out, to free himself from the damned constricting, blinding tarpaulin, to see what was going on with his own eyes. If this was one or more of the guys from his house, he wanted to confront them, to look them in the eye and ask them point-blank what the hell they thought they were doing, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He had Jess to consider.

  If they were here, they were no longer his friends. They were her enemies, and that’s how he had to think of them.

  A team of assassins was what he most feared. They would be black ops, under the radar, paid to handle problems like Jess, no fuckups, no mercy, cold as ice.

  He’d made his choice, thrown his lot in with Jess, so whoever was out there was his problem, too. The bomb—and damn Lowell or whoever for blowing up his car, which still had two years’ worth of payments to run on it—had made it clear they knew whose side he was now on. There was no going back for any of them: This was going to be a fight to the death.

  “How are we going to know when Solomon—the reporter—gets here?” Jess whispered.

  “We won’t. Shh.”

  He heard—or thought he heard—something nearby. A shuffle of footsteps, a rustle of clothing . . .

  Going still as a stone, barely breathing, his senses so attuned to what was going on beyond the tarpaulin that he felt like a single exposed nerve, he moved the hand holding the Glock to rest, very lightly, on Jess’s shoulder.

  If he was fast, he could spring up and snap off a few shots, maybe take one or more of them out before they realized what was happening.

  Yeah, and maybe he could walk on water, too.

  Silently he watched as Jess spotted the gun with a downward flick of her lashes and froze. Then she wet her lips.

  The gesture made his heart constrict. He knew she was terrified, knew by how still and stiff she was, by the rapid rise and fall of her chest against his, by the unevenness of her breathing, by the way her hand that was resting on his waist clenched into a fist. But she glanced up at him then and he saw that she was okay, keeping her head, keeping her composure, just as she had throughout this whole ordeal, and he realized he admired her a lot for that.

  The girl definitely had game.

  A click near at hand made them both quit breathing. The truck tilted and swayed. A door slammed.

  The driver had returned to the truck. He was in the cab. Even as Mark realized that, the sound of the engine turning over confirmed it.

  His whole body slumped with relief.

  “What about Solomon?” Jess’s whisper was urgent as the truck, with a couple of sputters just to ratchet up his anxiety level, slowly got going, curving around the gas pumps.

  “We can’t hook up with him here. It’s too late. They’re already watching for us. That’s why they showed up here so fast.”

  The ride came complete with so many rattles and squeaks and bangs that at least they no longer had to worry about being overheard. Jess acknowledged the probable truth of what he said with a silence that lasted until the truck left the parking lot with a hard bounce that made the tailgate drop open. Mark knew that was what the sudden loud clang was because he had lifted the edge of the tarpaulin just a couple of inches at about the same time to let in some badly needed air—and see if he could spot who was waiting at the 7-Eleven.

  The newcomer to the parking lot was a black BMW, Virginia tag BCW-248. Not Fielding’s Saab, which he had last seen parked behind his garage. Not a vehicle that he’d ever seen before. Which, he realized, didn’t mean a thing.

  First chance he got, he needed to check the tag. For now, speculating was all he could do.

  The paint smell was suffocating. His eyes were already starting to water. He figured Jess had to be about ready to expire, since she was snuggled so close up against him that he could feel her warm breath on his neck as well as the sharp heel of one of her shoes digging into his stomach and every curve and hollow of her sweet little shape that wasn’t displaced by the driver’s equipment.

  “At least no one ’s following us.” Jess’
s whisper was reedy. She craned her face toward the opening, too, clearly welcoming the influx of oxygen. He made it as large as he dared, then tucked the edge of the tarpaulin beneath his body so he wouldn’t have to hold it in place. The truck was on the ramp leading up to I-95 now. With the tailgate down, he could clearly see the road behind them almost all the way back to the 7-Eleven. The good news was, there was not a vehicle in sight.

  “Where do you think we ’re going?” Jess was looking out, too.

  The truck was heading north, picking up speed. The jolting was picking up, too. Mark plucked Jess’s shoes and purse from between them after a particularly vicious stab in the gut and shoved them down behind his legs out of harm’s way. “I don’t know. Toward D.C. We’ll see where we end up.”

  “They’re not going to give up, are they?”

  “No.”

  Restoring his gun to its holster now that, in his judgment, the immediate danger had passed, Mark did what he could to make himself and Jess as comfortable as possible. As soon as they were out of the truck, they would be on the run, probably on foot, and since he ’d gotten no sleep at all, grabbing a few minutes’ rest while he could would probably be wise. Not wanting to shift around too much lest the truck’s driver should spy suspicious movement in his rearview mirror and stop to check under his tarpaulin, or even call the police so they could check under his tarpaulin, he ended up whispering to Jess to roll over. Then when she complied he simply wrapped his arms around her so his body could maybe cushion her from the worst of the jarring ride, which he had no way to brace them against. With both their faces turned up toward the air, her back to his front, her head resting on his upper arm and her body plastered as close to his as peanut butter to jelly, he was surprised to find himself feeling any number of things. Comfortable, however, was not one of them. He had a quick flashback to how hot she had looked wearing nothing but a towel, then had to work hard to try to force the image from his head. She kept moving, kind of wriggling as if she was trying to get comfortable, which didn’t help. He distinctly remembered her kissing him repeatedly right after she’d thought he’d been blown up. At the time, shell-shocked as he had been, the soft little pecks she had planted on his face had barely registered, but now, in retrospect, they registered.