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And into the Pacific.
His stomach sank faster than a car in the ocean.
The van on the right was edging closer to them, while the one on their left held its position, keeping Zach from an evasive maneuver. Braking hard wasn’t going to work either. Not with the third van right on their six.
Kristi gasped and covered her eyes, then nearly lunged for the backseat. “Cody.”
Zach gave her a push until she was facing the front. “Sit down. Keep your belt on.”
It was terse and a bit sharp. And all he could manage at the moment.
The van to the left pulled ahead while the one on the right veered into their lane. Zach didn’t have another choice. He had to pull into the vacancy, even as the lumbering black beast on his right kept pressing them closer and closer to the divider. If they hit it just right, the front end could crumple in on them. Or they could flip over the divider into oncoming traffic.
He had to get out of there.
He had to get his family to safety.
Find the opening. Find the exit strategy.
His instructors had drilled it into him. There was always a way to escape. He just had to wait until it presented itself.
It took half a second to see it. He didn’t pause to analyze. He just floored it. They shot ahead of the van on the right, which couldn’t keep up with the lighter sedan. Zipping behind the semi and into the far lane, they shot forward into the clear. The vans tried to catch up, but the end of the bridge was in sight.
As soon as they were on land, he veered off to a side street, searching for a pursuit that didn’t come.
Kristi’s chest rose and fell rapidly, her panting breaths filling the otherwise silent car.
Zach narrowed his gaze and stared into her pinched features.
“You want to tell me what exactly I came home to?”
Zach eased Cody into the bottom bunk and pulled the covers under his chin. The little guy had slept through the whole ordeal on the bridge and even through the tense drive back to the town house. But now he let out a loud yawn, and his eyes blinked open.
“Is it nighttime?”
Zach leaned over Cody and shook his head. “Nope. But for now, you should get some rest. Have a good na—” he pulled himself up short “—sleep.”
Cody yawned again and snuggled beneath the red blanket covered in classic Corvettes. “Okay.”
Kristi watched everything from the doorway, and when he sneaked past her, she stayed put, her head never turning away from Cody’s face. It glowed in two low beams, the headlights of a red ’57 Chevy night-light.
After several long seconds, she followed Zach down the stairs toward the kitchen, tripping on his duffel, which he’d dropped by the front door.
This wasn’t a good sign. He never left things lying around, but one quick trip up the stairs with the kid, and he’d already forgotten his usual routine.
“Sorry.” He grabbed the bag and carried it through the kitchen before shoving it into the laundry room, which now housed a metal shelf between the washer and dryer and more types of laundry detergent than a grocery store aisle.
What else had she changed while he’d been gone?
But there were more pressing questions that needed to be answered first.
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes unseeing. As if on autopilot, she grabbed a plastic cup, filled it with apple juice and held it out to him.
“I could go for a soda, actually.”
“What?” She jumped at his voice and looked down at the cup in her hand, then back at his face. The blank mask she’d been wearing since the bridge fell away, and an actual smile dropped into place. “I’m sorry. I was thinking...”
“About who might have been trying to push us into the Pacific?”
Her brows locked together, fear flashing through her deep brown eyes, and he suddenly hated himself for being so blunt. But tiptoeing around an issue had never been his forte.
Looking away from her, he grabbed a can from the fridge and popped the top. Tipping it back, he took a swig. And nearly spit it out.
Diet.
Yuck.
Glancing over to see if she’d noticed his near spit take, he watched as she ran her hands over her hair, a wild mass of honey-colored curls that reached well past her shoulders and looked softer than satin. “I just don’t understand,” she said. “Why would someone do that? They were trying to...”
“Kill us. Yes.” Her face paled, and he tried to keep his voice low and gentle. Not easy after a year with a bunch of guys who didn’t do coddling. “And they wanted it to look like an accident.”
She swallowed, the sound filling the otherwise silent kitchen. Pressing a palm to the counter and the other over her stomach, she took several great breaths as the fear in her eyes shifted into something that resembled anger. “My son was in that car.”
The truth hit like a boot to the kidneys. If someone was after him or Kristi, Cody would have been collateral damage, and whoever was inside those vans didn’t care.
If a six-year-old wasn’t safe, none of them were.
Zach took a step toward her, and she matched it in reverse, keeping three feet between them. But she kept her chin up and her eyes open and said nothing.
“That was broad daylight, Kristi. Someone was blatantly targeting us.”
“I know.” Her words carried a subtle tremor that she must have noticed because she paused, straightened her shoulders and tried again. “They were after me.”
His entire body went on high alert, every muscle tensing, every nerve crackling. She sounded so certain, but he needed more details. “Why do you think that?”
Neck and shoulders stiffer than a frozen tarp, she stared right into his eyes. “Because Jackson Cole pointed right at me and said he’d make me pay.”
The floor seemed to disappear beneath him, and he stumbled to a stool at the counter. He pointed at the seat beside him. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”
She looked from the spot beside him to the juice in her hand several times before nodding, setting the cup in the sink and then padding around the end of the counter and swiveling onto СКАЧАТЬ