She spun back, her eyes wide. Her hand rose to her lips.
The gun-wielding showman jumped back in shock with a shout that turned into a nervous laugh. “Whoa! Lee, you getting this? Make sure you’re getting this!”
Jonathan unholstered his weapon. Disgust whelmed up inside him. These criminals were threatening Celeste at gunpoint and treating it as some kind of game, when a good man had just died protecting her. He leaped from the truck and raised his gun high with both hands. “Celeste! Get behind me!”
She ran for him, darting behind him so quickly she nearly slid and fell. Miller turned back.
“Who are you?” Miller shouted. Jonathan didn’t answer. No, he wasn’t about to announce who he was and flash his badge on camera until he found out what exactly they were caught up in. For now, being undercover suited him just fine. Miller jabbed the air with the barrel of his gun. “Look, I don’t want trouble. I just want the hacker girl. Let me take her and go.”
His voice shook. There was a whole lot of nervousness hiding behind the bravado, and desperation, too. Not that it made anyone safer. A determined and reckless amateur was every bit as dangerous as a professional.
“That’s not going to happen,” Jonathan shouted. “Put the gun down.”
Miller waited a long moment, eyeing him as if weighing invisible options. Jonathan stared him down and didn’t blink. The US marshal had no doubt what would happen if it came to a shoot-out, but still he was going to do anything in his power to stop it from happening. He could still remember vividly what it was like to fire a gun for the first time. For a young man coming from an Amish background, there’d been something so foreign about it. Now, as his eyesight narrowed, his shoulders relaxed and his fingers prepared to fire, it was as comfortable as if the weapon was an extension of him. He just prayed that today wouldn’t be the first day he took a life in the line of duty.
“Whatever, man!” Miller threw his hands up like an exaggerated shrug. “You win this round. I don’t care. I’m just in it for the money, and Lee here’s just got us probably a grand’s worth of footage. Poindexter’s got everyone with dark web access and the willingness to step up and make a few bucks out looking for her. So, you can take her now, but someone else is going to take her back from you later. That’s just how the game’s played.”
“What game?” Celeste’s voice came from behind Jonathan. “Tell me! How did you know where I was? Why does Poindexter want me taken alive?”
Miller didn’t answer. Instead, he turned back toward the car, gun still dangling from his fingers as he had a quick word with Lee outside of Jonathan’s earshot.
“Get in the truck,” Jonathan said without turning. “Keep your head low. The keys are in the ignition. If bullets start flying, gun the engine and don’t stop driving until you reach a police station.”
Please, Celeste, don’t argue with me. He heard the scuffle of her footsteps on the snow and the slam of the door closing. Thank You, Gott!
Miller nodded to Lee. Then he swung back. The gun rose in his hands. His finger flicked over the trigger. Jonathan dropped to one knee and fired, hearing Miller’s bullet fly past him into the trees a millisecond before his own bullet ripped through the arm now pointing a gun at him. Miller dropped the gun, grabbing his arm and collapsing to the ground as a scream flew from his lips. Lee turned his camera phone toward his writhing partner.
Jonathan bounded into the driver’s side as Celeste moved over to the passenger side to make room for him. He holstered his weapon, shut the door and slammed his seat belt on in one seamless move.
“Fasten your seat belt and hang on tight!” He glanced at Celeste. “It’s going to get rough.”
He heard her seat belt click. Jonathan’s truck surged backward, coming within a foot of hitting Miller before swerving sharply off the road to get around the criminals’ car. For a split second the entire scene played out before him in a glance. A howling and angry young man was down on the ground beside the car. Another bullet ripped from his gun that once again failed to meet its mark. The second young man bounded from the car and ran toward Miller, filming the scene with his phone as he did, and somehow Jonathan’s eyes managed to meet his and hold them for a split second. They were devoid of emotion. This wasn’t personal. It was just a payday for whatever criminal found her first. How was he supposed to protect Celeste against that?
Then he threw the truck into Drive.
“Hold on!” he shouted. “We’re about to spin!”
He hit the gas and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. The truck spun. Its wheels skimmed over the ice. He waited until the final moment, and tapped the breaks and yanked the wheel back. The truck righted. They sped forward, down the road as trees and the early-dawn sky flew past them in a blur of white, pale purples and grays. Gunshots faded in the distance. The sun crept over the edge of the horizon. He pulled off the scarf and hat, then glanced at Celeste. “Are you okay?”
Her smile was weak, but she seemed to be giving it her best shot. “That was some driving. Guessing you must’ve been tearing up the streets when you were a teenager.”
He shifted his gaze to the windshield ahead. The road spread ahead of him in an endless line of white. “Actually, I didn’t get my license until I was twenty.”
Before then it had just been horses driving the family buggy. It was funny. As a teenager, he couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of a car and drive. But when he had, he’d been surprised how impersonal it felt. It didn’t listen or respond. It was just a machine, like any other.
“Speaking of vehicles, our first stop is going to be switching this truck out for another one,” he said. “I do use the other truck when I can because it drives better. But the fact Lee was recording all that makes it more important that we do. Then it’s about a five-hour drive to the new safe house, which, as I believe you know, is set in an apartment complex in the suburb of Pittsburgh. We’ll stop for breakfast in about an hour, but there are some granola bars, apples and bottles of water in the cooler behind your seat. I’ve got to call my supervisor and let her know where we’re at.”
He reached for his earpiece, clipped it to his ear and turned on his phone. Celeste’s fingers brushed his arm.
“Wait, aren’t we first going to talk about what happened?” she asked.
He sat back. “I don’t know what went wrong, how those criminals found you or what they’re really after. Clearly, someone’s out to get you and trolling to rope in any criminal element they can find, from people with tactical weapons and smoke bombs, to idiots with cell phones. Hopefully, talking to my supervisor will help.”
He dialed the number.
“Louise Hunter.” His supervisor’s voice came on the line, crisp and clear. He had no idea how old Chief Deputy Hunter was, but both the streaks of gray in her jet-black hair and the stories she told led him to believe she was probably hovering somewhere on either side of sixty. She was the kind of woman who’d been married to the same man for forty years, had fourteen grandchildren and a career that spanned countless escaped convicts, national manhunts and hundreds of lives saved.
Jonathan gave her a heads-up that Celeste was sitting beside him in the truck and then filled her in on Rod Cormac’s death and the ambush at the safe house. As much as he hated briefing his boss in front of the person he was assigned to protect, time was of the essence and there weren’t that many options. Then she confirmed what he’d feared—this was the first update she’d received about the situation at the safe house since he himself had called for backup before going to find Celeste. Communications were still down at the farm. He could only hope Stacy and Karl were okay.
“Rod