Relentless Protector. Colleen Thompson

of the tires on the rutted pavement like an endlessly repeating song.

      When she could endure it no longer, she asked, “Would you like a soda?”

      “Yeah, sure—or better yet, one of those sports drinks. And you should try to eat and drink, too.”

      “Forget that,” she said as she passed him a chilled bottle. “I’ll have something as soon as we find Tyler.”

      “You need to fuel up now so you won’t keel over.”

      The idea turned her stomach, but she took out a couple of wrapped ham sandwiches, passing one to Cole. Rowdy licked her hand, then softly snuffled, reminding her that he was hungry, too.

      She groaned, her stomach pitching.

      “Are you okay?” Cole asked.

      “Tyler asked me for fast food.” Her vision hazed with moist heat. “I told him no, that I’d make dinner. I should have bought him something, should never have told him no.”

      “I don’t know much about you, Lisa,” Cole said softly. “But everything I’ve seen tells me one thing. You’re a good mom.”

      The kindness in his voice was nearly her undoing. She didn’t want his compassion, didn’t need his understanding. She wanted to hate him, to have someone to blame as much as she blamed herself.

      “Before my husband left for his deployment, I told him not to worry about Tyler. I said I would take care of our son so Devin could focus on taking care of himself. I promised. ”

      Cole speared her with a look. “What happened today,” he said, his gray eyes troubled, “is wrong. It’s as evil as anything I’ve seen in wartime. But get this in your head, Lisa. It isn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do.”

      As his words sank in, they triggered a memory that pushed beyond the aching in her temples. The memory of asking Evie if the abduction was because of something she herself had done.

      “The thing is... Remember how you asked if I knew them? Well, I think I do know her,” Lisa blurted. “The woman who kidnapped us.”

      “Are you sure?” Cole asked. “Where do you know her from?”

      She shook her head. “I can’t—I can’t remember. She called herself Evie LeStrange, but it was obviously a fake name. When I thought I recognized her, I tried to ask, to find out if I’d somehow done something to offend her. That’s when she hit me with her gun.”

      “Tell me what she looked like, in as much detail as you can remember. Maybe that’ll help to jog your memory.”

      Nodding, Lisa described the hacked, blue-streaked hair and the cruelly thin face, the blue eyes, the black clothing and the sneer. The more she recalled, the more convinced she became that something familiar lay behind the dark facade. “I’m sure of it now,” she erupted in frustration. “If only I could remember.”

      “Could the name have some significance? Maybe it’s a reference to something. Have you ever known anyone named Eve, Eva, Evita...?”

      Lisa shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

      “What about LeStrange? Could it mean anything?”

      She tried to focus, but nothing came to her. When Rowdy whined, she absently pulled out a second sandwich and clumsily unwrapped it, then fed him small pieces. “There’s something about her, but the harder I try to think,” she said, “the further it slips away.”

      “Then quit trying,” Cole suggested, “and maybe it’ll pop into your head a little later.”

      As they drove on, Lisa wondered how much longer he would be willing to keep driving, how much more he would risk for a fight that wasn’t his. And how long it would take him to notice that earlier she’d pulled his gun from beneath the seat and slipped it into her bag in case he changed his mind.

      * * *

      T HEY ’ D GOTTEN DAMNED LUCKY at the last stop, Cole realized, just as they’d been fortunate when Lisa had spotted the dog.

      But luck was like that sometimes, lulling the man who counted on it into the false sense that the breaks would always fall his way.

      Cole wasn’t such a man, and he knew better than to believe, as Lisa seemed to, that all their problems would be over once they caught up with the Explorer. On the contrary, he feared that would be by far the most dangerous part of the equation.

      He slid a look to Lisa, who was trying to force down a bite of sandwich while the little dog wagged his tail and stared plaintively, his front paws on her knee. He should have left both of them back there, where the kind people from the store could have gotten her help. Where she would be out of harm’s way while he did whatever he had to.

      But her stake in this was so high, he hadn’t had it in him to deny her need to be here. That didn’t mean, however, that he would brook any interference with the rescue of her son.

      “When we catch up with them,” he told her, “we’re not going to engage. Not until the authorities catch up.”

      She put down the sandwich and glared at him. “You have to be kidding. We haven’t gotten this far just to follow them. Heaven only knows what they’re doing to my—”

      “Do you want him back alive?” He spoke sharply, meaning to shock her. Judging from the devastation in her eyes, it had worked. “If we try to chase them, they might kill him. Or we might, if we make whoever’s driving wreck the vehicle.”

      She chewed her lower lip, her eyes brimming. “Then what do we do?”

      “Try to maintain visual contact without arousing their suspicions, and let the authorities know where they can find us.”

      Pulling the phone from her bag, she looked down at it. “No bars at all. No signal.”

      “Keep checking. We’ll get one eventually, or, if we’re lucky, the sheriff’s deputies will find us first.”

      “And if they don’t?”

      “We wait for an opportunity. A chance for me to take out one or both kidnappers.” He leaned forward, hunching over the wheel and staring at a flickering glow on the horizon, dark smoke billowing above it. “Look. Look up ahead. What the hell is that?”

      Images roared up from his past: a crowded marketplace, the terrified, dark eyes of a woman in her clean white burka, a split second’s hesitation, then the distant concussion as the scene—along with Lisa’s husband and a dozen innocent civilian shoppers—erupted into flame.

      But this was not Afghanistan, he knew, so he shunted the painful memory aside and rounded the curve, already feeling the horror tightening in his gut. Already smelling the smoke as the rear end of a burning vehicle, its nose down in a roadside ditch, came into view.

      “That’s my car!” screamed Lisa, though only the blazing trunk was visible. “Oh, my God, Tyler could be in there! He might be locked inside!”