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Then, just as I thought my day couldn’t get any worse, Danny patted my arm and pointed across the parking lot. A snow white BMW was pulling up with Casey Steward at the wheel and right behind it was an SUV full of CIA heavies. Oh great.
Steward jumped out and marched towards us. We all put our guns away. Steward spread his arms wide, asking without words what the hell is happening here?
So I explained. And when he lost it and started yelling, I stood there and soaked up the full force of his anger. I didn’t care what he did to me. I just wanted to get Colton back.
When he finally finished ranting, Steward pulled out his phone. “We’ll have to put out an all-agencies bulletin,” he told me. “And send out teams.” He didn’t have to say what sort of teams.
“Look, our guy’s been duped,” I said. “Give us a chance to bring him in before you start issuing kill orders. We know him. We can do it quietly.”
Steward glared at me, still seething. Then he sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Twenty-four hours,” he told me.
“Thank you,” I said sincerely. I marched over to Danny and the others and pointed to the SUV. “Let’s get that tire changed. We’ve got to figure out where she’s taking him and find someplace quiet so we can stop them without anyone getting hurt.”
Danny and Gabriel got to work. But Cal crossed his arms and scowled at me. “We’re going to help them catch him?” he asked. “Colton?”
Bradan hadn’t moved, either. “Ain’t right,” he agreed.
“Look,” I told them, exasperated, “this isn’t Colton’s fault. That witch has got her claws into him so deep he can’t think straight. But either we bring him in in cuffs, or Steward brings him in in a body bag.”
Bradan and Cal looked at each other, then reluctantly nodded and started helping. I began working the jack, throwing worried glances in the direction Colton had disappeared. Please, Colton, be okay.
38
COLTON
Tanya drove fast. Not Danny-fast but way faster than I ever did. Within minutes, we’d left the bar far behind and were blasting down open roads, heading north. It was still a beautiful day, with a gloriously blue sky above, but over towards New York, clouds the color of wet concrete had formed and they were slowly spreading across the world, soaking the warmth and color from everything. What the fuck am I going to do?
“Pull over,” I mumbled.
Tanya glanced across at me, then nodded. “Good idea. We’d better swap cars.”
She pulled off the road and into a picnic ground attached to a nature reserve. The place was deserted, wooden picnic tables sitting empty, sandwich crusts and a lost squirt gun the only evidence of all the families who’d stopped there for lunch. There was just one car in the parking lot, a beat-up convertible sports car.
Tanya headed straight to the sports car and started hotwiring it. I stumbled over to the trees and leaned hard against one, the scratchy bark digging into my palm. My legs were suddenly shaky. I’d just run out on my family.
A white car flashed past on the road and my chest went heart-attack tight because I thought for a second it was a cop car. Jesus Christ, I was a fugitive, now. People were looking for us, watching surveillance cameras, putting up posters. This must be what it felt like for the guys I bounty hunted.
And somewhere, just a few miles back, the team would be scrambling to come after me. A bunch of people who were the best at what they did, who knew me. Suddenly I was their mission. How did this all go so wrong? Two days ago, we were all laughing and joking back in Mount Mercy.
An engine revved. Tanya had gotten the car started and she waved me over: hurry!
I ran over and climbed in, and we roared out of the parking lot. As we rejoined the road, Tanya glanced at me. “You okay?” she muttered. It was quick and awkward, but I could hear the genuine concern in her voice. She was trying.
“Peachy,” I growled. Then I took a deep breath and pushed the sick worry down inside. The only way to get out of this was to clear Tanya’s name and that meant exposing Steward and the whole conspiracy. We got any leads?” I asked.
Tanya drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, thinking. “Maravic is the key to all this,” she mused. Even now, stressed out of my mind, her Russian accent was like an immaculately-carved ice sculpture, so coldly brutal and yet sensuously smooth that I just wanted to close my eyes and let it caress my mind. “If we can find out what Steward’s hired him to do, we can expose the whole thing. But to do that, we need to find him.”
