Chapter 3

 

In the storm drain set back from the road, Scott hugged his knees to his chest and thought about hot deserts and warm, sunny beaches. This time of year in northern Colorado the weather could turn foul from one hour to the next. He refused to walk any further on this desolate ribbon of highway. If the team shadowing him wanted to put him in the target’s path, they could damn well give him a coat and a ride. Days ago he’d tried to go south when he thought he’d slipped away from the team only to get caught within an hour.

The beating had been so fierce they’d left him in the trunk of a sedan for almost twenty-four hours to recover. It was sufficient incentive to keep him playing along until he found a way to make sure the team wouldn’t be capable of following him or calling for back up. At this rate, every border patrol in the United States had probably been briefed with a list of his crimes and his photo and their weapons were locked and loaded, just waiting for him to step into their sights. Scott held no illusions that he’d get the chance to explain himself before bullets shredded his chest. On his own, death-by-border patrol was preferable to letting the team who’d kidnapped him finish him off, but his buddies were counting on him. He failed here, he failed them.

Which left him with the obvious option to cooperate. Take the life of a stranger and the three of them could walk free. A rock and a damned hard place.

When he’d been offered the chance to live after the SUV rolled, he’d been told to head north. On foot. They hadn’t given him any further direction or assistance, just waited for him to decide between immediate, certain death and a hope for freedom. Common sense and self-preservation kicking in, he’d started walking. He’d nabbed jeans, worn boots, a ball cap and a flannel work shirt along the way, wishing he could’ve left cash for the items. The Army had accused him of crimes he couldn’t fathom and now to survive, he’d become a thief and probably a cold-blooded killer.

But survival was the name of the game. If he made the kill, his buddies lived. Assuming the bastard in the suit didn’t renege on the arrangement. Walking for miles between truckers willing to give him a lift he’d had plenty of time to think about his eventual exit strategy. He had no intention of letting the man in the suit control him beyond this one untenable mission. Then all he had to do was reach one of the Indian Reservations in Montana. There, his odds of escaping this situation increased dramatically. He could trade work for shelter and food. Bulky and fair-skinned, the stiff-lipped men watching him would be easier to spot when they were in the wilderness he knew best.

Once he crossed the border, he could find a remote spot and remake his life. It wouldn’t look like anything he’d planned, but it would be living. It would be freedom.

A gust of bitter wind swirled through the pipe, heavy with potential snow. Scott rubbed at his cold ears. The regulation high and tight hair cut was brutal in this weather without good gear. The hat helped, but not nearly enough.

He’d thought of bleaching it, but that required money or more stealing. It wasn’t as if changing his hair would fool the team that kept him in line. He turned his back to the wind and waited out the last of the light. How much longer would they leave him out here? Until the target was in reach, obviously. He didn’t think they’d let him freeze to death, not until the job was done, anyway. He could pick up food and probably some water from the garbage bins at the next truck stop or diner he came across.

Ignoring his discomfort, he thought of his friends, hoping they were faring better. Would the man in the gray suit have them in cells or a safe house? None of the headlines he’d seen hinted at their escape or their fate. Whatever they were going through, Scott hoped it was an improvement over serving a life sentence for a murder they didn’t commit.

Except when they were free, he’d be a killer for real. He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that. If he’d refused they would have killed them all. For them, he’d follow through when the time came.

Would his buddies want freedom on those terms? Not the first time he’d asked himself that question. Whenever it cropped up in his head, the urge to do the right thing got stronger. One innocent life was too high a price for the freedom of three men.

He was about to crawl out of his hiding place and tell them he quit when he heard tires rolling to a stop at the shoulder. Listening, he waited for the sound of hard voices or search dogs. Please not search dogs.

Instead a woman’s voice carried across the cold air. She had a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush and the target of her ire was apparently the car. Or maybe the empty stretch of road.

He shifted, pressed back into the shadows to watch. He knew his way around engines. If he sorted out her problem, maybe she’d let him ride along for a few miles. That might be enough of a head start to evade his unpleasant shadows. He heard a scuffle and another curse as she wrestled with something in the trunk. A toolkit? No, a tire.

This he could handle. Now he just had to figure out how to make himself available to help without scaring her to death.

*

Jaime Castle had been fighting off a foul mood long before the tire went flat. It was just icing on the bad-day cake. Bad week, really. The elbow she’d injured, falling wrong during a sparring practice, had cost her a shooting competition a few days later. It would have been fine to have been outclassed, but she’d lost by one lousy point.

One lousy point made her question her focus and commitment, regardless of the injury. Maybe it was time to take a step back and find a new direction. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have other interests and obligations that needed her attention.

“One.” She kicked the tire. “One point. Like one lousy nail in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She’d stopped to gas up and eat a few miles back and now the milkshake she’d been looking forward to was melting while she dealt with this. Alone. In the dark, naturally.

Ignoring the pain in her elbow, she wrestled the spare tire out of the trunk and rolled it closer to flat right front tire. At least on the safe side of the shoulder she wouldn’t be risking life and limb changing a tire with traffic blowing by.

She glanced up and down the typically deserted road. Okay, so that wasn’t such a big concern out here. There were few places in the States as deserted as the route she was taking home to Bozeman, Montana, but she loved the scenic routes. Always more peaceful and definitely more soothing after spending hours jammed up behind an accident on the interstate.

She got the jack into place, only banging her sore elbow once, and started loosening the lug nuts. Before she had the first one loose, she was breathing heavy, a rarity for her, and had four more to go.

Without the sun, the temperature dropped in a hurry out here. Her hands were already chilled and edging toward numb, but when she’d tried to use the wrench with her wool gloves, she couldn’t get a decent grip.

She decided to take a break and warm up for a few minutes in the car when she saw movement in the shadows at the side of the road. What on earth was anyone doing out here without a vehicle? She shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the January weather. The person stopped at the edge of the light cast by her emergency flashers.

“You okay?” The voice was deep, mellow. “Can I help?”

He sounded sincere, but how often did decent, well-meaning men hang out on the side of a deserted road? “Where did you come from?”

He took a step further into the light. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of jeans that looked a little short and his shoulders were hunched against the cold. He didn’t have a coat, only a flannel shirt buttoned to his chin and a ball cap.

He tipped his head toward the truck stop she’d just left. “Same place as you, I guess. Got a flat?”

“Yes.” She should jump in the car and lock the doors. Call for help, assuming she was near a cell tower.

“Feels like snow,” he said. “You live close?”

“No,” she replied without thinking. Come on, Jaime, be smart. “Don’t come any closer.” She could handle herself in any situation. Well, any person-on-person situation, she thought, glaring at the stubborn lug wrench. Years of martial arts study, training, and competition had given her a rock-solid confidence in her abilities. But outworking an opponent with reach and size and possibly a weapon was a different story.

“Why don’t you get in the car while I change this tire? You’ll be warm. Lock the doors if it makes you feel better.”

“That’s very polite, but—” He started forward and she backed up. What was wrong with her? Acting skittish, giving ground was as good as letting an opponent land the first punch.

“I promise all I want is to help you with the tire.” He held up his hands, raised his shirt so she could see he didn’t have any weapons in the obvious places.

What he seemed to have was a lean, athletic body and no practical outerwear for the season. He had to be hitchhiking. Not the brightest idea on this sparsely traveled road. She’d never done any research, but she supposed serial killers came in all sorts of packaging.

“In exchange for?” she finally asked.

“A ride to the next town north would be appreciated, but it isn’t necessary. I’ll change the tire regardless.” This time she held her position at the front fender as he took two more strides. “Get out of the weather,” he suggested again. “I’ve got this.”

“Where’s your car? Why are you walking?”

His lips kicked up at one corner. “It seemed like a good idea when I set out.” He put the lug wrench to the next nut and after a few seconds of tugging, had it spinning free. The lug nut dropped into his hand and he set it carefully aside so it didn’t roll away.

He’d made that look too easy and repeated the process on the remaining lug nuts. He had the flat off and the spare in place with such efficiency, she knew he’d had plenty of practice.

Lucky her. She didn’t put much stock in luck. What was his story?

As he rolled the flat to the trunk for her and closed the lid, she made up her mind. She couldn’t look herself in the mirror if she made him walk to the next decent-sized town.

She couldn’t make it all the way home on the spare anyway. It wasn’t designed for the snow forecast to hit the region before she got home. Thankfully, she had family in Clover City who could help with tires and a place to stay overnight.

She thanked the stranger at her trunk and he nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Take care,” he said, backing away.

“Get in,” she said.

In the car, she noticed his hands were chapped and nearly blue and far too big for her wool gloves. She cranked the dial on the heater all the way over and turned the fan on high.

He wasn’t too proud to hold his hands to the hot air blasting out of the vent. She liked that about him immediately. The patchy scruff on his jaw hadn’t met a razor in a few days and she’d bet this wasn’t the first day in the clothes he wore. The sloppiness of those details didn’t match the precise military hair cut she’d noticed when he shifted his ball cap.

“Are you meeting someone in Clover City?” she asked. “That’s the next real town on this route. Not far from the Colorado-Wyoming border,” she added when his brow furrowed.

“Not particularly.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Just trying to make my way north.”

Without a coat in January. Hmm. She bit back the judgmental thought. It wasn’t her business how he came to be on that road when she needed a hand. Better to just be grateful. “Thanks again for the assist.”

“Sure.” His stomach growled. “I appreciate the lift.”

She rattled the take out bag. “Help yourself. There’s a slice of apple pie and a coffee. If you’re hungry.”

“I’m good.”

She was starting to believe it but good guys worked up an appetite too. “We have a long drive ahead of us. Seriously, help yourself.”

He peered into the bag. “I expected French fries.”

She sniffed the air. “Sorry to disappoint. I polished those off just before the flat.” She had the strange feeling he was criticizing her food choices. “I tend toward junk food on a road trip.”

“Only way to go,” he said around a mouthful of pie. “A sugar buzz can carry you through a long drive, especially at night.”

So maybe he wasn’t being critical after all. The way he gobbled down the pie, she had the distinct impression he wasn’t eating on a normal schedule.

Questions rattled through her mind as she drove. More than once she started to ask and bit her tongue, deciding he didn’t need her nosing into his business. Just because he’d helped her with the tire didn’t give her the right to pry. They wouldn’t be together for long anyway. She focused on the road and the milkshake and kept her thoughts to herself.

“Is Clover City home for you?” he asked after a time.

“No. Montana,” she replied. “I have a few weeks to myself between jobs.” Why had she admitted she didn’t have any place to be? “It’s a good time to visit family.” And regroup before her next competitions. “Are you looking for work?”

He shifted in the seat. “Yeah. My last job ended on a misunderstanding and jammed me up.”

“No references then?”

He chuckled, the sound low and bitter. “None of them good.”

“What are your skills, besides lightning-quick tire changes?”

“Is this an interview?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be.” Snow was starting to swirl in the beams of her headlights. Checking the mileage and the speedometer, she recalculated the drive time due to the limits of the spare tire.

“Sorry,” he said after a few miles more. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks.”

No big surprise based on the telltale signs she’d noticed. She had some connections, uncles who might give him a chance, but that didn’t mean she had to stay tangled up with him if he wasn’t interested. Hadn’t she learned not to rescue every stray that wandered across her path?

“Whatever you’re running from, I wish you luck.”

“It’s that obvious?”

She slanted a look at him. “Unless you’re using the helpful, hungry stranger routine as a serial killer pick up line.”

“I’m not a killer of any kind.”

The way his deep voice rumbled through the car gave her a thrill. No, a chill. She wanted to believe she wasn’t a total idiot, but his every reply stirred up equal amounts of doubt and attraction. She really needed some rest herself.

“Glad to hear it,” she murmured. Fat snowflakes were splatting heavily against the windshield now. Clover City was going to be a stretch at this rate, but there wasn’t another place to stop in between and she wasn’t going to spend the night in the car with a stranger. “My plan is to stop overnight and head out once I get new tires in the morning. Will you be okay overnight?”

She didn’t have a lot of cash on her, but she could swing two motel rooms with her family discount at the place her aunt owned if he needed it. She suspected he didn’t have money or credit of any sort.

“I’ll be fine, thanks.”

Jaime didn’t believe him for a minute and pressed on toward town, debating how to make sure he was safe without wounding his pride.

“I’m Jaime Castle, by the way.” She stuck out her fist for a bump.

“Scott.” He met the fist-bump. “Nice to meet you.”