Lethal Ransom. Laurie Alice Eakes

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СКАЧАТЬ the rain starting to fall more heavily, Kristen concentrated on her driving and didn’t answer. Rain made the road slick, and her tires weren’t the best. One moment of inattention, one need to slam on the brakes, and they could hydroplane into the path of a larger vehicle like a truck.

      Or an SUV appearing out of nowhere again.

      She shivered, and her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

      “It’s not too late to change your career.” Mom’s voice broke her concentration. “You’re only twenty-five. It’s too late to get into a law school this year, but if you apply this fall, you can start next year. You’ll only be twenty-nine when you finish.”

      Kristen didn’t want the sort of corporate lawyer job her mother thought good enough. She liked being a social worker, helping rebuild people’s lives.

      “I thought you wanted me to get married.” Hearing the sarcasm in her voice, she opened her mouth to apologize.

      “I would, of course, but you don’t seem to meet any men on your own or like any of the men I introduce you to,” Mom said first. “I saw Marcus Ashburton today, and he said you turned him down for a second date. Why?”

      “He’s boring.”

      Traffic was anything but boring, especially with that SUV behind her. Kristen wanted to concentrate on driving, not discuss her love life—or lack thereof—with her mother, the matchmaker.

      “That young lawyer you went out with last week is a good man,” Mom continued. “He does a great deal of pro bono work.”

      Kristen grimaced. Marcus had spent nearly the entire dinner talking about his “charity” work and how good a person it made him. Not a way into Kristen’s good graces. If someone had to tell her he was good, he was probably drawing attention away from too many parts of him that were not.

      “He says he’s good.”

      At being nice, at being a lawyer, at choosing fine restaurants. He probably thought he sneezed better than anyone else.

      “I don’t like him,” Kristen said. “He only does the sort of free legal services that bring him maximum attention from the press.”

      Kristen struggled to keep one eye on the dark SUV bobbing in and out of her rearview mirror, and the other eye on traffic. The latter seemed to close in on her so much she could scarcely breathe. And the former was drawing near.

      “The press loves him.”

      Even if she hadn’t found him boring, she’d never date a man with a job that kept him so busy—a man she couldn’t count on to be home when she needed him. Her lawyer father had been absent for nearly every important moment in her life.

      “I don’t want to talk about Marcus, Mom.” Kristen sounded tenser than she intended.

      “All right, but I was sure you would like him.”

      “He’s a perfect gentleman. He’s just not my type.”

      Mom pulled her phone from her bag and began to text. “What is your type?” she asked as her thumbs flew across the screen keyboard.

      “Someone who...um...”

      She forgot the question she was answering as the dark SUV filled her rearview mirror.

      She needed to get away from that vehicle, return to the left lane. If she could find an opening in the line of cars and trucks streaming past her, she would accept traveling beside the “L” train. Anything to get clear of that behemoth riding too close to her rear bumper.

      “See, you don’t even know what you want.” Mom sounded victorious.

      Mom’s phone pinged with an incoming text, so Kristen didn’t bother to respond. Her goal required her attention. She needed an opening.

      Nothing but endless vehicles sending up plumes of rain water. Nothing... Nothing...

      Yes. There! A break in traffic at last.

      She stomped on the gas in an attempt to surge into the break in traffic. Zero to sixty in her aging vehicle was more like zero to thirty, but she managed to slip into the next lane.

      And that oversize SUV cut in right behind her, its engine far more powerful than hers.

      Kristen wanted to scream in frustration and beat the steering wheel instead of gripping it like a rip cord on a parachute jump.

      If only she could bail—from the highway, from the conversation with her mother, from the fear that the vehicle was following them, or more likely her mother, the judge who often made unpopular decisions in the name of justice and had experienced trouble in the past.

      And this time, the second time since Kristen was fifteen, the pursuer was bringing her into the picture.

      Unless she was mistaken and this wasn’t the same vehicle. That was entirely possible. Likely, even. Only, past events were making her anxious.

      “You don’t even know which lane you want to drive in.” Mom didn’t raise her gaze from the phone in her hands. “And you’re going too fast for the conditions.”

      “I’m trying to keep up with traffic so we’re not run over by that monster behind us.”

      “You’re too close to the car ahead of us.”

      She was, but only by a car length or so. If she dropped back, that SUV would be too close by about a gazillion feet.

      “Kristen, get back into the right lane.”

      “How? I forgot my shoehorn.”

      “Don’t be sarcastic. It isn’t attractive.”

      Kristen sighed. Her mother—every carefully blond hair, dyed to look natural, lay in place in an elegant twist, her makeup glowed as fresh as it had been that morning, and her charcoal-gray suit hung on her slim frame without a wrinkle—might be a circuit judge in the federal court system, but she was still a mother and applied herself to the role with as much vigor as she had applied herself to everything else in her life.

      “There’s an opening coming up where you can get back into the right lane.” Mom tapped on the side window.

      Kristen shook her head. “Can’t make it.”

      “If you had a better car—”

      “Please, don’t start.”

      She was too tired and too worried about that gunmetal-gray SUV to deal with the “If you had a better job, you could have a better car” lecture. At that moment, she needed to tell her Mom she intended to get off at the next Oak Park exit instead of continuing to her mother’s house farther west. She needed to lose this tail before she led him straight to her mother’s home—or her own.

      But the SUV was even closer.

      “Kristen,” Mom said with exaggerated patience, “get into the right lane. You can move in there.”

      “But СКАЧАТЬ