“There’s a homing device in here. How the hell do you think I found you?” He tore something from the zipper compartment and, taking a step forward, hurled it into the fire. Speechless, Jess watched the button-sized device arc into the flames. “Where ’s your phone?”
He was already pawing through the larger compartment.
“What? No . . .”
Too late. He tossed her phone into the fire, then followed it with his own.
“We can be tracked anywhere with those.” He thrust her purse back at her. “Here. Let ’s go. We need to get out of here before they show up.”
They.
The word was even more galvanizing than the idea of a bomb. It made her heart jump.
He grabbed her hand and was pulling her across the pavement in the direction she had been going to begin with when she happened to glance past the flames up the road in the direction of his house.
What she saw sent a stab of terror through her.
Round white lights flickered through the trees, small because they were still distant but moving toward them far too quickly.
A car.
Jess stared, electrified.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be them. . . .
At this time in the morning? Who are you kidding? Who else would it be?
“Headlights,” she gasped, tugging on his hand and pointing. “A car’s coming.”
“Shit.” His gaze followed hers. He was just starting down the slope while she still stood at road level close enough to the fire to feel its heat radiating through her jacket to warm the skin on her back. Plunging on, he pulled her down to the bottom of the slope with him. She barely felt the sharpness of the gravel on her cold, bare feet this time. With what she considered great presence of mind, she grabbed her shoes as she passed them. The heels were a problem, but she had already figured out the hard way that bare feet were worse. “Come on.”
At the bottom she stumbled and would have fallen to her knees if he hadn’t caught her. Making an impatient sound, he snatched her up in his arms and bolted toward the woods with her.
“You don’t have to carry me.”
“Baby, I want to live.”
Okay, he had a point. Clearly, in this moment of emergency, he was going to be far faster at getting them both out of the reach of danger than if she tried to run on her own. Her shoes were useless, and the ground was tearing up her feet. Her legs already ached from her previous efforts, and her lower back throbbed. She spared a momentary longing thought for the pain pills in her purse, but there was no time. Tucking her shoes in close to his body, balancing her purse on her stomach, Jess gave in to expediency, twining her arms around his neck and curling close to his chest and hanging on for dear life, watching dry-mouthed over his shoulder as the approaching headlights closed in.
He was just bounding from the grass into the deeper darkness of the woods as the headlights slowed and then stopped a few yards behind the burning car.
An icy shiver of fear shot up her spine.
“Mark.” It was an urgent whisper delivered almost into his ear. She could just see the denser outline of his profile against the backdrop of tree trunks and hanging vines. Glancing back, she saw a quick flash of light as the interior light came on, but then as he kept going more trees obscured her view before she could see anything else, like someone emerging from the stopped vehicle, which she guessed was what was happening. “There they are. At the car.”
The tangle of undergrowth beneath the trees had caused him to slow down. He was no longer running but, rather, forcing a path through prickly branches that reached as high as her bent legs and hanging vines that occasionally smacked her face like cold, damp hands. The earthy smell of vegetation gone wild was strong. Here in the trees, the insect chorus was loud enough to all but block out the now-distant roar of the fire. Holding her higher against his chest in a near-futile attempt to protect her from the scratchy things all around them, turning to maneuver through a particularly dense patch of undergrowth, he cast a quick look back, but he didn’t stop, or even slow down. He couldn’t see anything anyway, she realized as she followed his gaze, except two frosty white beams of light pointing toward the bright orange glow that had been his SUV.
“If we’re lucky, for the next fifteen minutes or so they’ll think we’re inside the car.”
“What happens if we’re not lucky?”
“They’ll come looking sooner.”
Jess’s stomach knotted. She took a deep breath to try to stay calm.
Plan. Plan. What’s the plan? Aha, she had one.
“Whoever you were talking to on the phone was right: I did call a reporter. Marty Solomon from the
Post.
I’m supposed to meet him at the 7-Eleven just up the road. He should be there now. If we can get to him before . . .”
She let her voice trail off, because the “before” was obvious. Before they were caught.
“Didn’t I tell you going to the press was a bad idea?” He was starting to sound breathless. She could feel his body growing progressively warmer through the thin cotton of his shirt. Good thing the guy was muscular, because no matter how petite she was, she was still a solid armful under the circumstances. Her calves began to cramp, and she unobtrusively tried to stretch. “I bet you used your own phone, didn’t you?”
“I sure wasn’t going to use the phone in your house.”
“Well, guess what? Your calls were being monitored. When you called this reporter, somebody was listening in. They heard every word you said.”
“And you knew about this?” Jess’s voice, though still scarcely louder than a whisper, went shrill with indignation.
He didn’t answer. Instead, his mouth twisted. And that, for her, was answer enough.
“You did. You knew!”
“Yeah, I knew.”
“You put a tracking device in my purse! You knew they were listening to my phone calls! You lied about the results of the IV testing! You agreed to take me back to your house where you know as well as I do I was going to be killed! And I’m supposed to believe you’re on my side?”
“In case it’s escaped your notice, I’m also lugging your ass through a fucking jungle and my car just got blown up with me almost inside it. I think you’re pretty safe in assuming I’m trying to keep you alive.”
Okay. Good point.
“Anyway, I think you’re missing the important thing here,” he continued. “That being that if you made the arrangements to meet your reporter friend at the 7-Eleven on your cell phone, anybody listening in heard that, and if they have half a brain they’ll guess that’s where we ’re headed.”
Jess felt her stomach tighten.
“I did,” she said in a small voice.
“Figured.” He sounded more disgusted than alarmed. “The good news is, we’ve got a little time. Whoever’s calling the shots is still hoping the bomb worked. When the people on the ground figure out it didn’t, they still have to call the bad news in, and whoever’s listening to your conversations has to remember about the 7-Eleven. So if the reporter’s there and we’re quick, we ’ve got a shot at getting away before they put it all together.”
Jess digested that.
“Who were you talking to, anyway?”
There was a pause, as if he were debating answering. “Harris Lowell.”
Jess’s jaw dropped. “The White House Chief of Staff?”
“That’s the guy.”
“Oh my God.” Her world rocked on its axis. “At least tell me you believe me now about the Secret Service being involved.”
“Looking that way.”
“And one of your agent friends from the house attacking me in the hospital.”
“That way, too.”
It wasn’t a ringing endorsement of everything she ’d told him, but for the moment it would have to do, because just then they reached the outer edge of the woods. The terrain before them was awash in moonlight. It seemed hideously open compared to the darkness and heavy cover they were leaving behind. Jess realized that she could see it all clearly: another strip of tall grass about thirty yards wide, a narrow ditch, and then the road that intersected the one the RAV4 was still burning on. On the other side of the road was more tall grass leading into more woods. The intersection was up to the left. Jess couldn’t see it from where they stood. The road that led to the 7-Eleven—a continuation of the road the RAV4 was on—could be just glimpsed as a solid black strip cutting through the trees across the road.
Moonlight wasn’t the reason she could see so much, Jess realized about as soon as Mark went plunging into the grass, and suddenly she had to work a little harder to breathe. Cold little curls of fear twisted through her insides. It was no longer quite as dark as it had been. The deep charcoal of night was slowly fading into a paler shade of gray. Dawn would break soon. . . .
Jess’s breath caught as a terrible thought occurred.
“If they don’t know it already, they’ll know we ’re not in the car as soon as it gets light. They’ll be able to see our trail through the grass.”
“Yeah.” Mark didn’t sound like this revelation came as a surprise. Clearly, it had already occurred to him. “As much as I think your little chat with the reporter was a bad idea in principle, that’s what we’re banking on now. You better pray he ’s there, because we ’re running out of time.”
“What happens if he’s not?” she asked, anxiety making her voice catch as he reached the ditch and, gathering himself, jumped across. She hung on, her arms tightening around his neck even as his grip tightened on her, then cast a scared glance back the way they had come. Through the trees, she realized she could still see the orange glow of the fire—but not the dark outline of the car parked behind it. Should she be able to see it? Had she ever been able to see it? God, she couldn’t remember.
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.”