by Elle James
“Try to stay calm. You know you called the right person,” Grace said. “Charlie’s guys will help. Where are you now?”
Emily glanced around, for the first time aware that she hadn’t headed anywhere in particular, just away from trouble. “I’m on 395. I don’t know where,” she said. “Wait, there’s an exit sign.” She gave Grace her location and then glanced in her mirror once more. “Crap! There he is again,” she said.
“I’m going to text you a map coordinate,” Grace said. “It’s the address of my new employer. Go straight there, I’ll have somebody meet you at the gate.”
A beep sounded on her cell phone. Emily took her eyes off the road long enough to select the coordinates for her map on her phone to follow. She’d slowed just enough that the dark sedan behind her was quickly catching up. While her map application calculated the directions, she again weaved in and out of traffic, trying to lose her tail.
“Stay on the phone with me, Emily,” Grace said. “I have a team of people here at Charlie’s place. They can help you. You just have to get here.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Emily promised.
She thought she’d been doing well and had lost her tail when she’d finally pulled off the main parkway onto a smaller road. But as soon as the traffic thinned, she looked behind her.
The dark-tinted vehicle was there and speeding up, closing in on her. The road she traveled now was lined with gated driveways. Besides the gates and the driveways, there was nothing else around. No cars. No people. Just her and the sedan that was quickly catching up.
“Are you still with me, Emily?” Grace asked.
“I’m here,” she said. This time when she glanced in her rearview mirror the vehicle behind her was racing toward her back bumper. Emily pressed her foot to the accelerator, shooting her little car forward. Her speed increased from fifty to sixty to seventy miles per hour. A caution sign on the side of the road indicated an upcoming curve, with a recommended speed of twenty-five miles per hour.
Afraid the vehicle behind her would rear-end her and send her flying off the road, Emily didn’t dare slow down. She gripped the steering wheel and raced into the curve at breakneck speed. As she navigated the radius, the rear end of her vehicle fishtailed and swung around. She almost went into a 360-degree spin, was able to correct her direction, but not soon enough to avoid the vehicle following her.
The car behind her slammed into her left rear fender, sending her back into the spin.
Out of her control, her car slid toward the edge of the road.
Emily squealed and held tight to the steering wheel as her vehicle bumped onto the shoulder, down into a ditch and up an embankment, slamming into a fence post. Upon impact, the airbags deployed, forcing her back against her seat, stunning her for a few precious seconds. Emily rubbed the dust out of her eyes and looked around. The fine powder of the airbag coated her skin and clothes and the dash of the vehicle.
In her rearview mirror, she could see the road behind her and the dark sedan parked at the edge. A man dressed in black, with a black ski mask pulled over his head, got out of the driver’s side and stood on the shoulder, staring down at her vehicle.
Emily didn’t move, praying her attacker would think she was unconscious and leave.
When he moved toward her, she couldn’t sit still, she had to get away.
Emily shifted her vehicle into Reverse and hit the accelerator. The rear tires spun, gaining no traction. She couldn’t go forward because of the fence post. She tried turning the steering wheel sharply to the left and hit the accelerator again. The back tire spun, shooting mud up behind her, but the vehicle didn’t budge.
“What’s happening, Emily?” Grace’s voice said over the phone. “What was that noise? Are you okay?”
“No, no, I’m not. I’ve crashed,” Emily managed to croak out as she struggled with what to do. “I have to... I’m getting out...” She couldn’t waste time talking. Escape was her only option.
The man on the side of the road scrambled down into the ditch, moving purposefully toward her. Emily tried to open her door to get out, but the door was jammed. She fumbled with the catch on her seat belt and finally got it loose.
Her pulse pounding loudly against her eardrums, Emily crawled across the console to the other side of the vehicle and pulled the door handle. When the door swung open, she fell out onto the ground, rolled onto her side, bunched her feet and knees up beneath her and rose.
When she raised her head above the car, she could see the man in black standing there, his hand rising, a gun held in his grip.
Emily’s heart leaped to her throat. She ducked back down behind the car as a shot rang out. Glass shattered, raining down from the window above her as Emily lay flat against the earth. The scent of gasoline, tire rubber and the mud beneath her nose filled her senses. But she couldn’t lie there for long. If her pursuer came any closer, he could easily pick her off with his handgun.
Unwilling to die that day, Emily rose onto her hands and knees. Keeping low to the ground, she crawled for the fence, slipped beneath the bottom rail and continued on toward the trees, praying she could find a place to hide until the crazy man following her gave up and went away. Or until Grace’s friends arrived to rescue her.
Chapter Two
Frank “Mustang” Ford’s cell phone rang through to the Bluetooth in his truck. Declan O’Neill’s name appeared on the dash screen.
Mustang thumbed the button on his steering wheel to answer. “What’s up, Declan?”
“Are you on your way to the Halverson Estate?”
“Roger,” he confirmed. “Five miles away. Why? Need me to stop and pick up some milk or bread?” He chuckled.
“No. I have a mission for you.”
“Really?” Mustang sat straighter. “Must be a short deadline if you can’t wait until I get to Charlie’s place.”
“It is,” Declan said, his tone clipped. “Be on the lookout for a red Toyota Camry. Grace’s friend is en route to Charlie’s and has a tail following her. She reported three vehicular attacks since leaving the DC area. She might be in trouble.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for her. The road out this way appears pretty deserted.”
“Then it shouldn’t be hard to find her. Let us know when you catch up to her.”
“Roger.” As he increased his speed, Mustang gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.
A mile or more later a yellow caution sign indicated a sharp curve ahead. Mustang applied his brakes, his gaze scanning the sides of the road and the ditches. If someone was trying to harm Grace’s friend, running her off the road in the middle of a curve was the perfect place to do it. Dusk was settling in, causing shadows to merge, making it more difficult for Mustang to distinguish between shadows and objects on the sides of the road.
As soon as he entered the sweeping curve, he spied a dark vehicle parked barely off the shoulder. The driver’s-side door hung open and, as far as Mustang could tell, no one was inside or around the vehicle. He slowed, pulled over to the side of the road and off onto the shoulder, giving the vehicle in front of him plenty of space. He shifted into Park, grabbed his flashlight from the center console and pulled his handgun from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
Mustang slipped down out of his truck and closed the door quietly. As he rounded the hood and edged toward the dark sedan he spied another vehicle on the other side of the ditch crashed against a fence pole. It, too, seemed abandoned and, from what he could tell, it was red. The front bumper was smashed into the fence post and the driver’s-side window was shattered with what looked like a bullet hole at the exact position that would have hit the driver, had the driver been sitting in the seat.
Adrenaline shot through Mustang’s veins. Crouching low, he eased toward the abandoned vehicles, dropped down into the ditch and climbed up the embankment to the disabled vehic
le where he discovered the passenger door was open. He prayed that whoever had been in the car had escaped. All he could assume at the moment was that whoever had arrived in the dark sedan had been the one to run the other vehicle off the road and to fire the shot that had put the hole in the driver’s-side window. That led Mustang to believe the driver of the disabled vehicle was on the run, being chased now by whoever had attacked her.
With his gun held at the ready, he pointed his flashlight with his other hand into the front seat of the disabled vehicle. He was glad to discover there was no blood on the seats or the dash. The airbags had deployed and the vehicle was empty, meaning the driver had escaped. But how long would she last on the run from somebody trying to kill her with a gun? She could be injured. The question was, what direction had she gone in?
He tried to think like a person running from somebody determined to kill her. She would have made for the safety and concealment of the tree line. That meant that she would have slipped beneath the fence into the forest. She might only have seconds before her pursuer caught up to her.
Mustang ran the rest of the way up the embankment, braced his hand on a fence rail and vaulted over the metal railing. As his feet hit the ground, a shot rang out. He raced in the direction he thought the sound had come from, determined to reach the woman before her attacker finished her off. He hoped he wasn’t too late.
Mustang raced as fast as he could, leaping over branches, pushing past bushes and trees. His muscles strained and his lungs burned, and still he didn’t see anyone ahead of him.
It had been dusk when he’d pulled to the side of the road. Within the canopy of the trees, darkness had descended. He couldn’t see every little branch and tripped over one. He got up and kept moving, arriving finally at the edge of a glen where a little bit of dusk light illuminated a dark figure standing over a lump on the ground. From the man’s silhouette, Mustang could tell he was pointing a gun at the figure on the ground. Mustang raised his weapon and fired. The dark figure ducked. When he straightened, he pulled the person up from the ground and held her in front of him.
“Come another step closer and I will shoot her,” a voice said in a thick Russian accent.
Mustang took cover behind a tree. “You shoot her and I’ll hunt you down and kill you. I will show you no mercy.”
Though he spoke with force, Mustang could not help the shaky feeling he felt inside. What he witnessed before him was so similar to the last operation he and his team had conducted in Afghanistan. In that scenario, their bogey had used the bride in a wedding couple as the shield to get him out of a village. That Taliban leader’s ploy and Mustang’s team decision to spare the bride had cost them all their careers in the marines. And, as had been the case then, he couldn’t take the shot now. If he attempted to kill the bad guy, he’d have to go through the body of an innocent victim.
“Okay. I won’t shoot,” Mustang shouted. “But I reiterate, if you kill the woman, I will kill you. And I will make certain that you suffer in the process of dying.”
The man holding the hostage inched backward, dragging the woman with him. He made a wide circle, heading back in the direction of the road and the vehicles abandoned there.
Mustang had no recourse but to wait for the man to pass him and continue on his path to the road. At one point Mustang thought he heard the woman sob and, possibly, a softly spoken plea. Help me. His heart contracted, squeezing tightly in his chest. He vowed to himself that he’d get her out of her attacker’s grasp.
Mustang followed, keeping a safe distance but close enough that he could see what was going on in the shadowy darkness of late dusk. At one point he got too near.
“Do not come closer,” the attacker said. He fired a shot.
Mustang ducked low and behind a tree.
Thankfully the woman remained on her feet, still dragged alongside her kidnapper. They closed the distance between them and the vehicles on the side of the road.
Mustang knew he had to stop the kidnapper before he got the woman into the car. If he had been bent on running her off the road and shooting at her inside her vehicle, he would kill her as soon as he got her away. Mustang couldn’t let that happen. He had to stop the kidnapper.
Mustang eased through the woods, moving shadow to shadow, inching closer as quietly as he could. When the other two reached the fence, Mustang knew he had to make his move. The kidnapper shoved the woman to the ground and said something to her in Russian. She rolled beneath the fence.
“My finger is on the trigger,” the Russian called out. “If you shoot me. I shoot the woman. I might die, but the woman will die, as well.”
With the man in his sights, Mustang hesitated.
The woman, who had managed to get beneath the fence, kicked out a foot, catching her kidnapper in the shin with a hard smack.
Mustang took his chance and pulled the trigger at the same time the Russian yelled and bent over.
The woman on the ground rolled and kept rolling past the fence and down the embankment, out of sight of Mustang. Her attacker climbed over the top of the fence and dropped down on the other side.
Mustang left the concealment of the tree and raced for the fence, vaulting over and landing on the other side. He immediately dropped to his belly on the ground.
A shot rang out.
The woman had managed to roll to the bottom of the ditch, get up and start running from the Russian.
Her attacker rose and pointed his weapon at her.
Mustang aimed and fired, hitting the man’s hand, knocking the gun from his grip.
Clutching his injured hand to his chest, the Russian ran for the dark sedan on the roadside.
Mustang glanced from the assailant to the woman. He wanted to stop the Russian from making another attempt on the woman’s life. But first he needed to ascertain what injuries the woman might have sustained. Headlights shone in the curve on the road above as the dark sedan sped away with the Russian inside. Meanwhile the woman hadn’t stopped. She kept running, tripping over bushes and bramble in the ditch. If she didn’t stop soon she’d injure herself even more.
“Mustang,” a man shouted. “You out there?”
Mustang breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of Declan’s voice.
“Do you need help?” Declan called out.
“Call 9-1-1, get an ambulance out here.” Mustang didn’t wait for Declan’s response. He raced after the woman scrabbling through the ditch. Because of the recent rain the ditch contained pools of standing water and mushy soil.
The woman stumbled and fell into the mud.
Mustang splashed through the water. “Hey!”
His shout seemed to galvanize her and she pushed to her feet and resumed running. Her breathing coming in ragged gasps and sobs.
Mustang increased his speed.
Apparently the woman didn’t realize that he was one of the good guys. She had to be so frightened that she was beyond reason. She struggled up the incline toward the road. If Mustang didn’t catch up to her soon, she could be hit by an oncoming vehicle as soon as she emerged from the ditch.
The headlights shining on the road above made Mustang kick up his pace and he charged after the woman. Just before she reached the road, he caught her with a flying tackle, sending her sprawling onto the gravel. He pulled her beneath him and rolled her to the side, away from the oncoming car. After the vehicle had passed, he pushed up on his arms and stared down into the shadowy face of the woman. Her features were blurred in the looming darkness, but he could tell she had a scrape on her chin and her eyes were wide and frightened.
She fought, kicking and screaming something in Russian.
Mustang used the weight of his body to hold her against the ground.
When he didn’t shift off her, she switched to English. “Let go of me.”
Mustang pinned her wrists to the ground to keep her from scratch
ing his eyes out. “Hey, lady. I’m just here to help you.”
Her struggle slowed and finally came to a halt. She stared up at him. “If you’re here to help me, let me go,” she said.
He chuckled. “Sweetheart, I’ll let you go when I’m sure you’re not gonna run out into the traffic.”
She dragged in a long, shaky breath and let it out. “I promise, I won’t run out into the traffic. And I’m not your sweetheart.”
For a long moment Mustang stared down into her face, wishing he could see the color of her eyes in the darkness. Finally he sighed and rolled over, releasing her wrists. “Okay. But I’ll tackle you again if you try to get out onto the highway.”
She sat up, rubbing her wrists where he’d held them so tightly.
“Grace sent us,” Mustang said.
The woman’s head jerked up and she stared into his eyes. “Are you some of Charlie’s men?”
“If you mean do I work for Charlie Halverson, then yes.” Mustang pushed to his feet and extended his hand.
She hesitated a moment before placing her hand in his and letting him pull her to her feet.
“Are you okay?” His gaze raked her body from head to toe, his eyes straining in the darkness. He’d lost the flashlight in his chase to catch her.
She nodded. “I think so. A little banged up and bruised from the car wreck and from being tackled.”
“Sorry about that,” Mustang said.
A smile quirked at the corners of her lips. “I guess I should thank you for keeping me safe from running out into the middle of the road.”
Footsteps sounded on the pavement behind the woman. Declan raced toward them. “Mustang? Emily?” He ground to a halt and shook his head. “An ambulance is on the way. And I called the sheriff’s department and the police department and have them looking out for a dark sedan with no license plate.”
Mustang shook his head. “The dude will be long gone before anybody gets out here.”
Declan stepped up to Emily and held out his hand. “Grace sent us. You must be Emily.”
