Read Online Willing Hostage by Marlys Millhiser - Free Book Online

story off the wires but we were too late. Now, Joe wants you to—”
    â€œYou can tell Joe to take a flying.… Here.” She pushed the money at him and opened the door. “I’m taking the Vega because you took my car, but I’m not taking the job. I’m not going to Oak Creek. You can tell that to your Joe.”
    â€œBut.…” He followed her out to the Vega.
    Leah slid in, threw her purse on the seat beside her, and put the key in the ignition.
    But Brian Kruger held the car door open. “Wait, listen, you mustn’t come back to Walden. We’re leaving right away and we don’t have enough people to keep a watch on you here.”
    â€œDon’t worry. If I never see Walden again, it’ll be—” A dark tail, unmistakably feline moved rhythmically along the motel wall above a line of low shrubs.
    â€œGoodyear!” Leah struggled out of the low car and pushed Brian aside. “Kitty, kitty.” The tail turned the corner by the office and Leah followed. “I’ll even go to the café and beg you some breakfast if—”
    A large black torn with yellow eyes emerged from the shrubbery and sauntered off toward the filling station next door.
    Leah turned back to the Vega. How could she miss a cat she didn’t want? When she didn’t even like cats?
    Brian still stood by the car. “Listen, I wish you’d change your mind about—”
    â€œGood-bye, Mr. Kruger.” Leah got in, slammed the door in his face, and backed out into the street.
    A sign at the edge of the desolate cemetery read STEAMBOAT SPRINGS 62 , and a lonely road stretched west. Why not?
    Brian Kruger watched her from the parking lot of the Shangri-La Motel. Leah headed the Vega across the valley for Steamboat Springs. It had the same four-on-the-floor shift as the Volks and even a working radio. But she heard a repeat of the newscast she’d watched on television the night before, complete with more rain for the high country and a Chicago woman kidnapped near Cameron Pass. She turned it off.
    She missed the cat. Had the big Siamese found a new home already? Cats were independent. Leah was independent. Her mother had depended on cats when she was in trouble. Leah might well be in trouble now. But Leah would depend on Leah. She checked the scarf over her hair. If a blonde in a yellow Volkswagen was in danger, who would notice a girl in a scarf and a blue Vega?
    She would look for a job in Steamboat Springs. Maybe it was bigger than Walden. Anything was bigger than Walden.
    Leah’d had a vague impression, perhaps from school maps, of the Rocky Mountains as one jagged barrier running north and south along the western end of the United States, the impression that one drove through them as she had in getting to Walden and then came soon to California and the sea. But more mountains rose across the treeless rolling plain ahead of her, and from what she could remember of the map, still in the Volkswagen, there was a lot more Colorado after Walden.
    The expanse of sagebrush and fence posts, the infinite view of distances, the empty road added to her loneliness. She could be attacked by an airplane here and no one would ever know.
    Why hadn’t the newscast mentioned the plane? It had given away everything else.
    As she left the valley floor and rose again onto a tortuous mountain road, Leah finally admitted to herself that she’d made a mistake. She was running from guilt and failure and she had run to the wrong place. Just as her sisters and brothers-in-law had warned her.
    The harsh and stunning beauty all around her was the kind that should be viewed on television from the safety of an easy chair—like the surface of the moon. This was no place for Leah Harper, born and bred to the city.
    Even if she hadn’t met an attacker on her first night in the Rocky Mountains, the strangeness of this country would have added one more element to her