Armoured Attraction. Janie Crouch
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Название: Armoured Attraction
Автор: Janie Crouch
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика
Серия: Mills & Boon Intrigue
isbn: 9781474039642
isbn:
Right before he left the shop, he texted her to let him know he was coming. ETA five minutes. Watch for me through the peephole and get out fast. Keep K’s head covered.
This was it. Either the hotel was under surveillance or it wasn’t. Regardless, now was when they were going to make their move.
Liam drove back to the hotel as if he wasn’t in any particular hurry. Still no sign of any tail. The moment he pulled up to the hotel, the door to the room opened and Vanessa flew out, her arm around Karine, her jacket draped over the girl’s head. She opened the back door to his SUV and they both piled into the backseat.
Liam was pulling out of the parking spot before Vanessa’s door even closed.
This time he did not drive leisurely. He didn’t drive fast enough to attract attention to them, but he got out of there with purpose.
The problem when trying to lose a tail in the Outer Banks was the lack of main roads. Highway 158 was the main four-lane drag, and that was about it. There was also Highway 12 that ran parallel to 158, but it was a two-lane and much slower. All Liam could do was take the back roads and cut-throughs that he remembered from his youth.
This wasn’t his first time trying to get away from the Outer Banks police without calling attention to himself.
Vanessa and Karine kept crouched in the backseat so it would look as if Liam was driving alone. If they did happen to pass anyone studying the drivers of vehicles, they wouldn’t be looking for him.
“Do you think anyone is following us?” Vanessa asked after a few minutes.
“No, I think we got out in time.” If someone was following them, he’d know it by now. The winding route he’d taken over the past mile would’ve made it obvious.
“What about my car?”
“I think it’s better to leave it there. Maybe it will buy us a few hours’ time if they think we’re still in the room. This car wasn’t parked near you, so hopefully Officer Atwood didn’t notice.”
“Okay. What are we going to do? I’m sure they’re still searching cars, right? We can’t make it off the islands.”
“No leave, Miss Vanessa,” Karine said. “Must help other girls. Must.”
The girl didn’t know a lot of English, but she knew what she wanted.
“It’s okay, Karine.” He glanced back at them in the rearview mirror. “We’re not leaving. We want to help them, too.”
“Can you call your DEA contacts in, Liam?” Vanessa asked. “Or the FBI or whoever handles cases like this? Obviously we don’t know who we can trust with the local police.”
“I’m not actually with the DEA anymore. Haven’t been for the past five years.”
“But I left a message for you with the DEA. How did you get it if you don’t work there?”
He glanced at her again. Confusion was evident on her face.
“I now work for an interagency task force called Omega Sector, in their Critical Response Division. I’m head of the hostage rescue team.”
He watched as her eyes widened and her mouth fell open before turning his gaze back to the road.
“Sounds like you’re pretty qualified to handle what’s going on here, then. You have people you can call in? People with big guns who can shoot the bastards responsible for this?”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Generally we arrest the bad guys unless they shoot at us first, but, yes, I can get a whole team here.”
“Then why haven’t you done that yet? Those girls are somewhere out there, trapped. Hurt and desperate.”
He glanced in the mirror again and saw Karine’s face growing paler. He caught Vanessa’s eye and gestured with his head toward Karine. Vanessa looked down at the girl and immediately slipped an arm around her.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay,” Karine whispered. “They need help.”
“And we will help them. We’ll get Liam’s friends here—people who help others all the time—and we’ll get the other girls out.”
Liam caught Vanessa’s eye in the rearview mirror again. “We’ll talk specifics later.”
She nodded, tugging Karine closer.
“Where are we going right now?” Vanessa asked.
“We’ve got to get off the streets. Once they figure out we’re not in the hotel, they’ll start searching again. I’m going to take you somewhere not related to you at all.”
“Another hotel?”
“No, that will always leave witnesses. A house.”
She shook her head. “A friend’s? Are you positive you can trust the person?”
“No. My grandmother’s house. I still own it.”
That silenced her.
He had a cleaning service come in once a month to clean, keep it in shape and take care of any repairs. He even paid for power and water each month, which wasn’t much because it was so small.
After his grandmother died, he hadn’t been able to sell it. He had said it was because she’d been his last living relative—the only roots he’d ever had—and he didn’t want to part with it if he didn’t have to. But he couldn’t deny the other part of that truth now.
He’d kept the house because it was the first place he and Vanessa had made love.
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