Lethal Ransom. Laurie Alice Eakes

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       TWO

      Kristen fell more than sat in the deputy marshal’s low-slung car and covered her face with her hands. She should lock the doors, make herself safe. But she couldn’t in such a small space. Only the rain-washed air, however choked with exhaust fumes, kept her from hyperventilating.

      Her feet throbbed from running barefoot along the highway. Her head ached from where the man had grabbed her by the hair. Her shoulder hurt from how he tried to drag her away until the deputy US marshal arrived to rescue her, too late for her mother.

      She began to shake from the cold of being soaked through, from the accident and near capture, from knowing her mother was tossed into a car and speeding away somewhere. Nightmare seemed too tame a word to describe the events of the past fifteen minutes.

      Her mother had been kidnapped, and her father was thousands of miles away, probably out of cell phone range.

      With two parents who worked so much that nannies had raised their daughter more than them, Kristen understood feeling alone. But nothing, not all the school plays and choir concerts Mom or Dad or both of them had been unable to attend, left her as hollow as knowing men had taken her mother by force and she had been unable to stop them. On the contrary, her mother had stopped them from taking Kristen.

      She slumped forward so her forehead rested on the dashboard. “If I had made different driving choices... If I had told a marshal at the courthouse about the SUV following me... If I thought faster during the accident—”

      More police cars arrived. Blaring sirens ceased, though lights flashed in an eye-searing strobe behind her. The police were here, while her mother was somewhere else. She was here, while her mother was somewhere else. Her mother was in the hands of a criminal, while she would soon be in the hands of the police or US Marshals Service. Whoever it was would be questioning her like she was a suspect. They might send her a victim’s advocate.

      A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat. After the hundreds of crime victims she had helped in her job as a social worker, she was now one herself. She should know exactly what to expect.

      But she doubted anyone could prepare for such an eventuality. None of her training had taught her about the slicing depth of the guilt, the anguish, the grief of being captured even for a few minutes.

      And her mother could be captured for hours or days, or—

      She wouldn’t think about the worst-case scenario.

      A groan escaped Kristen’s lips. “Mom, why do you stay in this job?”

      Threats had been nothing before, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t end up following through. Except Mom hadn’t mentioned any threats. Surely she wouldn’t keep such information from the marshals who were assigned to protect the judges, even if she might keep it from her daughter.

      And her husband?

      Kristen should have asked, would have, if she hadn’t been so wrapped up in looking for that SUV—the vehicle now speeding away with her mother inside alone because she had helped Kristen escape.

      Sick with guilt, Kristen reached for the marshal’s phone. Her own remained in her purse in her car a quarter mile ahead on the side of the road. Abandoned. Wrecked.

      “Siri, call—” Kristen stopped. She couldn’t remember her father’s number. She didn’t know her mother’s number. She never bothered to remember telephone numbers anymore. They were programmed into her phone.

      She needed it—now.

      She slid out of the sports car and took a step toward her bashed-in car. Gravel cut into her feet, and she cried out in pain. It was foolish to have kicked off her shoes to run faster.

      She had run away while that man stole her mother.

      Every time she turned around, she was disappointing her mother. She wouldn’t take the right sort of job. She wouldn’t drive a better car. She wouldn’t date the right class СКАЧАТЬ