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“It’s time to go,” Ryder said, packing up the last of the electronic equipment. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”
If Anne-Marie had hoped he would change his mind, that he’d hear her tale of battery and pain and give up the outrageous bounty placed o
n her head by her family, she’d been sadly mistaken. Yes, his eyes had reflected some empathy and a fierce anger as she’d explained about her husband’s abuse, but in the end, once she’d finished talking, he’d said nothing for a second, then had clipped out, “I didn’t know what you went through.”
She realized that, overall, he didn’t sound all that moved by her story. Instead, he was staring at her coolly as if she were some interesting, maybe dangerous, specimen. She suddenly understood that he was second-guessing her, wondering if she were lying again. Of course.
She walked to the window and flipped open the blinds. It was daylight and she saw both vehicles parked outside. Hers with more snow piled upon it near the sagging building she thought had once been used as a garage, his truck parked a few yards back, probably where he’d slid to a stop without headlights so as not to wake her. He’d parked carefully, wedging his pickup between two trees, guarding the lane so that no other vehicle could pass and she couldn’t get away.
She didn’t bother asking him how he’d sneaked in on her as he’d obviously been in the place once before to plant his electronic equipment, so he’d no doubt used his same breaking-and-entering skills.
Snow was still falling and the tracks of both vehicles were covered, his less so as it was parked beneath a canopy of branches and had been stationary for a shorter amount of time. Was she really trapped? If she couldn’t convince him to let her go, would she really be forced to return to New Orleans with him?
Thinking of reuniting with her family, of the disappointment carved on her father’s face, the disgrace in her mother’s eyes, and the hurt on her grandmother’s proud visage, she knew she couldn’t return to Louisiana. Ever. Even if she could face the condemnation and shame, there was her husband, who seemed to have vanished, as well. No doubt she would be a suspect in his disappearance, or, worse yet, if he should suddenly show up in New Orleans again, she would have to look him in the eye and see him smirk at her fear.
Her stomach turned over at the thought of him. No. She’d never go back. Ryder wasn’t going to take her. He just didn’t know it yet. Mind turning with thoughts of escape, she started to close the blinds, then stopped. Had she seen something outside the window, some movement that she’d caught from the corner of her eye? She squinted hard, staring through the shifting veil of flakes, but whatever it was had disappeared.
Another deer perhaps.
Or, more likely, a figment of her imagination.
She told herself it was nothing, but couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something outside wasn’t right. Then again, nothing inside the dilapidated cabin was right, either.
“You can see why I can’t go back,” she tried.
“If you’re telling the truth.”
She knew it. The bastard didn’t believe her. “Come on, Ryder. You think I made that story up?”
“What I know is you’re a liar, Anne-Marie, and a good one, if I recall.”
“Everything I said to you was the God’s honest truth. Who would make up something so . . . so brutal?”
“Who would rob their damn grandmother?”
Anne-Marie was dying inside. She’d bared her soul to him. Stupidly.
“You told me how much she meant to you. So, it’s not making a whole lot of sense to me that instead of running to her and confiding in her, asking for her help and protection, or insisting she take you to the police, you decided to steal from her. From the one woman you swore you adored.”
Anne-Marie’s throat clogged and she fought tears. The biggest regret in her life had been sneaking in the back door when she’d known her grandmother was sleeping in the next room and with nervous fingers opening the safe that was hidden behind a shelf in the pantry. But she had. When the safe had opened, she’d scooped up the bills that had been stacked so neatly within, money she’d used to escape, to buy her vehicle, to purchase her new identity, to visit a dentist for appliances and a costume store for the extra padding and wigs. And for the doctor in Oklahoma City. “I can’t go back,” she said again.
His expression hardened. “Maybe not willingly,” he said, crossing the room.
“Not ever.” She met his uncompromising glare with one of her own. “You’ll have to shoot me. Your gun. My gun. It doesn’t matter, but I won’t go.”
“Fine.”
To her horror, he dragged a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and before she could move, he reached her and snapped them over her wrists. “We’re goin’, darlin’, and we’re goin’ right now.”
Chapter 26
The wipers weren’t keeping up with the falling snow, so Pescoli tried to turn them up, to increase their speed, but they were maxed out. The storm was just that fierce. “Global warming, my ass,” she muttered as the sign for the River View appeared through the thick, swirling flakes.
“Actually these storms and all the weird weather patterns we’ve been experiencing are the direct result of climate change.” Sometimes Alvarez could really be a buzz-kill.
Pescoli cranked the wheel and her Jeep slid a bit before they drove into the lot of the motel and parked under the broad portico that was, according to several signs posted near the front doors, reserved for guests of the facility.
Pescoli really didn’t give a rat’s ass what the protocol was.
