“Get on your radio,” Ski Mask growled. “Tell ’em they better clear us out. Otherwise I’m gonna start putting bullets into people, and since I need you to drive, it looks like it’ll have to be blondie, here.”
C.J. nodded and picked up his CB mike. His mind was clear and calm, and he was pretty sure the guy in the ski mask wasn’t going to kill Caitlyn-not yet, anyway. Considering he’d been paid to bring her back alive and in a fit condition to tell what she knew about the whereabouts of Vasily’s daughter, Emma, and that the last hired hand to put Caitlyn’s life in danger had wound up dead a short time later. So, it was a fairly safe bet that if Ski Mask did put a bullet in her it wouldn’t be in a critical place. Not that that made a big difference to C.J.
Dialing in channel nine, he thumbed on the mike and spoke into it. “Uh…channel nine emergency, this is Blue Starr Transport driver requesting assistance…over.”
After a tense pause, a woman’s voice, calm and professional but at the same time typically, informally Southern, replied, “Yes, Blue Starr, we read you. How’s ever’ body doin’ in there?”
“Doin’ okay so far.” C.J. glanced over at Caitlyn. Her gaze was fastened on him with that strange silvery intensity, as if she were trying to talk to him with her eyes. Ski Mask made an impatient gesture, and, heart pounding, he turned back to the mike. “We have a, uh…situation here, though. I have a, uh…couple passengers, guy with a hostage. He has a gun, which he says he’s gonna use if he doesn’t get clear road outa here. Any chance you could, uh…help me out on that?”
There was another pause, longer and even more tense. C.J. waited, his heart thumping against the constriction of his seat belt. Finally, “Okay, Blue Starr, which way you headed?”
C.J. glanced at Ski Mask this time, and chuckled darkly. “Quickest way outa town, would be my guess. I’m thinkin’ the interstate?” He looked at Ski Mask, who nodded confirmation.
“Tell ’em they better not follow us, either,” he added in a low growl. “I so much as see a cop I’m gonna start shootin’.”
“They’re never gonna go for that. You think they’re gonna let us just drive away?” C.J. said in an incredulous hiss.
“You better hope they do” was Ski Mask’s reply.
Grinding his teeth, C.J. passed on the demand and the threat. After the usual pause the calm voice responded, “Okay, Blue Starr, we’re gonna give you some room.” Another, gentler pause. “You be careful, now…” And then silence.
With a grunt of surprise C.J. hung the mike on its hook and gave his full attention to driving.
Cramped and uncomfortable, wedged unpleasantly against the gunman’s legs, Caitlyn closed her eyes and listened to C.J.’s voice, talking in that drawling monotone truckers use on their CB radios…the police dispatcher’s voice calmly answering. As the truck growled in stops and starts, twists and turns, the gunman took out a cell phone and punched in a number. She listened to his low-voiced conversation and felt cold, clammy relief wash over her. He was talking to his boss, obviously, telling him about the glitch in their plans…the change of getaway car. Something about a rendezvous point. Everything else, it seemed, was still on track.
For her, too. It’s going to be all right, she told herself, riding on the crest of a wave of improbable optimism. It can still work. And then, plunging into a trough of utter despair:
The FBI’s plan had taken everything into account-except this. Maybe it had been a mistake, after all, not to tell him. He would have tried to keep her from taking part in it, of course he would have, but at least he wouldn’t have stumbled-no, not stumbled-come charging into the middle of things, magnificently, heroically, like some gallant knight on his great blue and silver steed.
Vasily wouldn’t kill her, she was sure of that, not until he had Emma back in his clutches. And long before that happened, the FBI would have him in theirs. But C.J. Oh, God, they wouldn’t hesitate to-and almost certainly would-kill him once they had no more need of him and his truck. How she would stop them, she didn’t know; she only knew she had to.
The images of her nightmare came back to her…the people she loved most in the world lying dead in pools of blood.
Once he’d made it to the interstate, C.J. began to breathe easier. The cops were evidently taking Ski Mask’s threat seriously. The way through town had been wide-open, and he hadn’t seen any overt signs of pursuit in his mirrors so far-not that that meant the cops weren’t out there somewhere, following at a safe distance, waiting to see what developed. In fact, C.J. had been wondering what Ski Mask hoped to accomplish with what had undoubtedly been a spur-of-the-moment desperation gambit. Surely he didn’t think the cops were just going to stand by and let them drive off into the sunset, free and clear!
That was before he’d heard part of that cell-phone conversation with the bossman. After that he’d understood-especially when Ski Mask instructed him to take the exit for the scenic highway that ran north up into the mountains. They were heading for a “rendezvous,” probably with another vehicle. Which meant all they needed was to get far enough ahead of the nearest pursuer to make the switch unseen. The way those little roads wound around up there in the mountains and met themselves coming and going, the cops wouldn’t have any way of knowing what vehicle they were in or which way they’d gone.
More important to C.J., with a new car and a new driver, they weren’t going to have any further use of the driver they now had-namely him. He didn’t have any illusions about what that meant in terms of his future.
Which meant, since he didn’t have any way of knowing exactly where this rendezvous was supposed to take place, that he was going to have to make his move as soon as possible. All he had to do was figure out what move to make-preferably one that wasn’t going to get him or Caitlyn killed in the execution.
As the Kenworth churned along the two-lane highway through rolling pastureland dotted with farmhouses and cattle grazing in the chilly drizzle, C.J.’s mind was churning, as well, spinning as fast as those eighteen wheels; discarded scenarios hurtling off the vortex of his consciousness like chunks of mud flung from the truck’s tires. His heart pounded and the steering wheel grew slick in his hands. The closer to the looming blue haze of the mountains they came, the faster his mind whirled. They were running out of time. He had to do something.
They passed sedately through a small town, and shortly after that the road began to curve and climb. That quickly they were in the mountains. And most likely out of time.
It was raining harder now; the cold front lay draped along the shoulders of the Blue Ridge like a feather boa. The road was shiny in the truck’s headlights, and wisps of fog sifted through the tops of trees still thick with yellow leaves. The road twisted and turned and climbed steadily higher…and higher. There were few other cars; the rain had evidently deterred the sight-seers who would normally have clogged the mountains roads this time of year.
Any minute now, C.J. thought. Around the next bend we could come to that rendezvous…
He could feel his heart beating, like the ticking of a clock counting down the final seconds of his life. And Caitlyn’s. What would become of her after they killed him? Vasily would have her then. Would the FBI rescue her in time? Had they figured
His mind careened backward to the first moment he’d laid eyes on Caitlyn Brown, there in that rainy interstate rest stop. He remembered the fist-in-the-belly shock when she’d pulled that gun out of her pocket. How could he ever have imagined that six months later he’d be fighting to save her life-and the future lives of his unborn children?
Adrenaline hit him, jolting him so hard he almost let go of the steering wheel.
Calm settled over him. A glance at his passengers, disguised as a check of his right-hand mirror, confirmed what he’d already observed without realizing it: whether he’d forgotten in his haste to get himself and his prisoner into the truck, or hadn’t wanted to risk restricting his gun hand, Ski Mask had neglected to fasten his seat belt. And Caitlyn was wedged securely into the space between the seat and the dash, her head resting on folded arms. Snug as a babe in a car seat.
He could do it. Just like before. If he could get up some more speed…
“That next turnoff up there, take a right,” Ski Mask said.
C.J.’s heart pounded harder. “Right,” he said.
