you were trying to help me out back there by killing two men.”
“You shot them first, baby doll.”
“I had no choice! You were right, they were going to kill me! And you.” She shot him a furious look. “I saved your ass. And look at the thanks I got: you’re kidnapping me!”
The slight quirk at the corner of his lips almost could have been the beginnings of a smile. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“What can I say? Shit happens.”
“Shit happens?” Her voice quivered with indignation. “We’re talking about my life here. And my son’s life. Those two men are dead. They can’t identify me. You’ve got to let me go.”
“Can’t.” He shook his head. “Now that I’ve had time to consider it, I don’t think those two jerk-offs being dead is going to be enough to get you off the hook. I grant you that they’re looking for me, but what do you think the odds are that somebody didn’t see you hooking your truck up to the BMW to tow it away? Then there are always surveillance cameras. Google Earth, even. They’ll be moving heaven and earth to find me,and the smart money says they’re going to stumble across you in the course of the hunt. I wouldn’t want to bet against it.”
Sam went cold with fear as she remembered the partying going on across the street from where she had picked up the Beemer. As noisy as Big Red was, it was more likely than not that somebody had noticed what she was doing. And Google Earth—there was no escaping Google Earth.
She almost wailed, “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know anything.”
“Yeah, well. These guys aren’t the type to take a chance on that. They’re big believers in scorched earth. Pull in here. This should work.”
They were behind the service station now, approaching an empty lot that already held the chassis of an eighties-era Impala riding on cement blocks where its wheels had once been. He indicated the lot with a gesture. It was dark, shadowy, strewn with trash. A gravel parking area just off the alley at the front of the lot was overgrown with weeds. Scrub bushes grew tall against a broken-down privacy fence at the rear. A single-story building that Sam took to be a garage shielded the near side of the lot from view, while what appeared to be a metal storage shed squatted on the other side. The backs of various three- and four-story brick buildings crowded together across the alley. All the structures were dark and seemingly deserted, forming a wall of dense black rectangles that looked like uneven teeth getting ready to take a chomp out of the star-sprinkled charcoal of the sky.
“Turn off the lights,” he directed, and she did. The nightswallowed them. Sam immediately felt safer: at least no one chasing them down Story would be able to look over and see where they were.
Of course, the bad guys didn’t need to see them to find them, she reminded herself grimly. They had the Beemer’s GPS.
Wincing a little as Big Red rumbled noisily into the lot, she steered it around in a circle so it was facing forward again, haunted by the fear that they might need to make a quick exit. Knowing that at that exact moment a gang of killers might very well be tracking the Beemer’s every movement alarmed her to the point where the only thing she wanted to do was get away from it. Braking, praying the resultant sounds weren’t as loud as they seemed to her, she couldn’t slam the gearshift into park and get out of the door fast enough.
“Hang on.” Quasimodo grabbed her wrist again even as she wrestled with the damned uncooperative door latch.
“What?” Yanking against his hold in a futile attempt to free her wrist, she glared at him. If he were weakening, his grip showed no sign of it. His fingers were warm and strong. Except for a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead and maybe an increased degree of tightness around his mouth, he looked no different than when she had first set eyes on him. “Let go of me. Let’s get this
“You shot them first, baby doll.”
“I had no choice! You were right, they were going to kill me! And you.” She shot him a furious look. “I saved your ass. And look at the thanks I got: you’re kidnapping me!”
The slight quirk at the corner of his lips almost could have been the beginnings of a smile. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“What can I say? Shit happens.”
“Shit happens?” Her voice quivered with indignation. “We’re talking about my life here. And my son’s life. Those two men are dead. They can’t identify me. You’ve got to let me go.”
“Can’t.” He shook his head. “Now that I’ve had time to consider it, I don’t think those two jerk-offs being dead is going to be enough to get you off the hook. I grant you that they’re looking for me, but what do you think the odds are that somebody didn’t see you hooking your truck up to the BMW to tow it away? Then there are always surveillance cameras. Google Earth, even. They’ll be moving heaven and earth to find me,and the smart money says they’re going to stumble across you in the course of the hunt. I wouldn’t want to bet against it.”
Sam went cold with fear as she remembered the partying going on across the street from where she had picked up the Beemer. As noisy as Big Red was, it was more likely than not that somebody had noticed what she was doing. And Google Earth—there was no escaping Google Earth.
She almost wailed, “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know anything.”
“Yeah, well. These guys aren’t the type to take a chance on that. They’re big believers in scorched earth. Pull in here. This should work.”
They were behind the service station now, approaching an empty lot that already held the chassis of an eighties-era Impala riding on cement blocks where its wheels had once been. He indicated the lot with a gesture. It was dark, shadowy, strewn with trash. A gravel parking area just off the alley at the front of the lot was overgrown with weeds. Scrub bushes grew tall against a broken-down privacy fence at the rear. A single-story building that Sam took to be a garage shielded the near side of the lot from view, while what appeared to be a metal storage shed squatted on the other side. The backs of various three- and four-story brick buildings crowded together across the alley. All the structures were dark and seemingly deserted, forming a wall of dense black rectangles that looked like uneven teeth getting ready to take a chomp out of the star-sprinkled charcoal of the sky.
“Turn off the lights,” he directed, and she did. The nightswallowed them. Sam immediately felt safer: at least no one chasing them down Story would be able to look over and see where they were.
Of course, the bad guys didn’t need to see them to find them, she reminded herself grimly. They had the Beemer’s GPS.
Wincing a little as Big Red rumbled noisily into the lot, she steered it around in a circle so it was facing forward again, haunted by the fear that they might need to make a quick exit. Knowing that at that exact moment a gang of killers might very well be tracking the Beemer’s every movement alarmed her to the point where the only thing she wanted to do was get away from it. Braking, praying the resultant sounds weren’t as loud as they seemed to her, she couldn’t slam the gearshift into park and get out of the door fast enough.
“Hang on.” Quasimodo grabbed her wrist again even as she wrestled with the damned uncooperative door latch.
“What?” Yanking against his hold in a futile attempt to free her wrist, she glared at him. If he were weakening, his grip showed no sign of it. His fingers were warm and strong. Except for a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead and maybe an increased degree of tightness around his mouth, he looked no different than when she had first set eyes on him. “Let go of me. Let’s get this
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