She glanced over her shoulder. He looked back, too. The Buick wasn’t far behind them now.
“And those men?” he enquired.
She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She looked over at Zack. “Who are those guys?”
He shrugged, too. “They said they were friends of my birth mother’s.”
She raised a brow as she looked at the boy.
Will wished she’d keep her eyes on the road. Not that she didn’t seem capable of doing any number of things while driving. “Where exactly are we headed?” he asked, as the flat landscape flashed by in a blur and he realized they’d left Wolf Point far behind.
“Seattle, eventually. Right now—” she glanced into her rearview mirror “—anyplace where they aren’t,” she said, indicating the Buick gaining on them.
Seattle? He thought about telling her that Seattle didn’t fit into his plans. But what she did next made him lose the thought.
He watched her reach under the seat, pull out a handgun and lay it across her sun-browned thighs. He told himself he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. How could he have been so wrong about a woman?
He wondered what Jennifer Finley was doing right now.
“You can just drop me off when you get the chance,” he said—not that she seemed to be listening. “Anywhere would do.” He noted that the Firebird was pegged at over a hundred miles an hour and that the Buick was right behind them.
“See that box on the floor at your feet?” she asked.
He looked down to see a cardboard box about eight inches square. “Yes?”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d pick it up.”
Amazingly, it didn’t seem like such a strange request, all things considered.
He rattled the handcuff. “I’m not sure I can do it locked to your dash.”
She shot a look at him. “Oh, I think you can handle it.”
He wasn’t sure that was a compliment. Worse, it appeared she wasn’t ready to uncuff him.
He lifted the box from the floor with his free hand. It was much heavier than he’d expected. “What’s in here—iron?”
She didn’t answer.
He turned back the cardboard flaps on the box. At first it looked like a box full of children’s jacks, the kind his sister used to play with. Only these jacks were huge. But as he looked closer he saw that the box was packed with sixteen-penny nails welded together and ends sharpened to make large, ugly-looking multi-sided spikes.
He looked at her askance. He was in the construction business but had no idea where anyone would buy something like this, or let alone have it made. Or why anyone would want to.
As she took a curve to the left, she rolled down her side window, grabbed the box from him and hefted it out the window.
Stunned, he swung around just in time to see the box explode as it hit the blacktop. Spikes pelted the Buick’s windshield. An instant later, the Buick’s front tire blew and the car began to rock, then swerve. The Buick hit the ditch in a cloud of dust, burrowing into a small dirt hillside.
“Wow,” the kid said. He’d unbuckled his seat belt and now stood looking back as the dust settled over the Buick. “Awesome.”
Will pulled Just Zack down and got him buckled in again as Samantha slowed. She smiled down at the boy and gave him a high-five. The kid was grinning from ear to ear. This woman was not a good role model.
“I’m Samantha but most people just call me ‘Sam.”’
Just Zack turned shy.
“And this is—” her gaze shifted to Will “—Will, an acquaintance of mine.”
Passing acquaintance, he thought. What was going on? Why had she grabbed this kid? And who were those men? And more to the point, who was this woman?
He realized he was getting a headache just trying to figure it all out. And what was the point? Obviously, she was all wrong for him.
Absently, he considered what he might be doing right now if he’d listened to his sister’s advice. He glanced down at his left wrist to check the time. His watch was gone! How was that possible? He’d just had it.
“My watch—”
“Give it back, Zack,” Samantha ordered, not even looking at the boy.
Zack let out a long-suffering sigh, reached into his jacket pocket and extracted the watch.
Samantha snatched it from the kid and handed it to Will. “Sorry. I should have warned you.”
Will stared down at the boy, then at Samantha. They both looked so…innocent.
Samantha turned off the highway onto a dirt road.
“There is a good explanation for all of this, right?” he asked, sounding pathetically hopeful. He glanced over at her when she didn’t answer.
She no longer had the gun resting on her thighs. The late-afternoon sun slanted into the car, turning the wisps of hair around her face golden as she slowed the Firebird to an almost legal speed and glanced over to meet his gaze.
“There is always an explanation. I’m just not sure it’s one you’re going to like.”
Chapter Three
A fork in the road loomed ahead. Left would take her to the nearest town where she could get rid of Will. Right would put some distance between her and the kidnappers and take her to someplace safe for the night.
Relatively safe, she amended. Being around Will made her feel anything but. He reminded her too much of her girlhood dreams of love, marriage, babies and happily ever after. All the things she didn’t want to be reminded of, especially right now. That’s why she’d like nothing better than to take Will into town and be done with him.
“Just out of curiosity, how many men have you handcuffed to your dash?” he asked, jerking her from her dilemma.
“Not that many,” she said, sounding defensive even to herself. Most males gave her a wide berth. Her mother said it was because she intimidated men. “Act helpless,” her mother advised. “Men like that. Look at your cousin Shelly. Men just flock to help her. Have you ever met a more helpless woman?”
The truth was, she was no Shelly. She didn’t even think she could act that helpless.
As she slowed for the fork in the road ahead, she felt Will studying her like a bug in a mason jar.
You should never have kissed him!
Oh? What would you suggest I should have done? Get us both killed?
You could have told him the truth after the kiss.
Oh, come on, give me a break. I thought I was never going to see him again. And anyway, I liked the kiss—
“Hello?”
She blinked and glanced over at him. He was looking at her oddly. She stared out over the hood and saw that she’d stopped in the middle of the road at the fork.
“Well?” he asked, looking worried.
She glanced down at Zack. He looked worried, as well. She smiled at him and winked as if to say, No problem here. But even as she hit the gas, she wasn’t sure she was making the right decision. That alone scared her.
She took the fork to the right, heading for the hills. Will Sheridan be damned. She had to hide out for a while until the dust settled. Until she figured out what was going on. There was little doubt in her mind that something