The truck cab went strangely quiet.
Gary’s hands tightened on the wheel. “You don’t know what you want yet.”
“Yes, I do.” Her voice trembled now, but she kept going because anger was easier to hold than terror. “I want my son. I want my home. I want Vander.”
The second his name left her mouth, she knew it was a mistake.
Gary’s head turned slightly, not enough to look back at her but enough to show the hard line of his jaw. “That’s unfortunate.”
Her stomach dropped. “Why?”
“Sarah decided she didn’t want the road either.”
Summer’s heart began to pound so hard each beat hurt.
Gary’s voice remained steady, almost conversational. “Sarah kept talking about going home. Her friends. Her family. Her job at the grocery store, like scanning cans was some big life she needed to get back to.”
Summer’s throat closed.
“She never saw them again.”
The words moved through the truck like toxic gas.
For a moment, Summer couldn’t breathe. Her wrists burned. Her head spun. The truck kept barreling down the highway, carrying her farther from the auction grounds, farther from Vander, farther from the life she’d fought so hard to build.
Ben’s face flashed in her mind. His missing tooth. His sticky ice cream smile. The way he’d said he wasn’t sad leaving for spring break because Vander would be with her.
A sob tried to climb out of her chest, but she tamped it down with everything she had.
No.
She would not disappear from her son’s life.
She would not let this man turn her into a story people whispered about later. Poor Summer. Single mom. Waitress. Taken by some trucker who thought wanting equaled ownership.
She rolled slightly onto her side, working her fingers despite the bite of the zip tie. Pain flared through her nerves, but she welcomed it. Pain meant she was awake. Pain meant she could still fight.
Gary glanced at her in the mirror. “Don’t make bad choices, Summer.”
Her gaze locked on his reflection.
For the first time since waking, her fear burned hot enough to become fury.
“You already made the bad choice.” Her voice shook with rage now. “You took me from Vander Pope.”
Gary’s smile faded.
Summer held his stare in the mirror even as her wrists throbbed and the cab blurred at the edges from whatever he’d put in that lemonade.
“And he’s going to come for me.”
Something shifted in Gary’s expression then. Not fear.
Recognition.
Like he understood Vander Pope wasn’t a man anyone wanted hunting them.
Chapter Sixteen
