The off-track route took them into the mountains. Not the worst place to be, but also not the best. Curving through the trees, he nearly missed the sheer drop in one place. Fortunately, the truck had excellent traction. Even as they left the shelter of the trees and the road widened, their problems were far from over. The fuel gauge swung closer and closer toward empty, and he hadn’t seen a gas station in hours.

He had a stash of emergency fuel in a container in the back, but only five gallons. Still, it should be enough to get them to supplies. He’d eaten two protein bars and coaxed Pilar into trying one. Though she hated it, she’d still eaten every bit of it. So food and fuel were covered, as much as he could.

The snow beginning to fall offered a great big middle finger from Mother Nature—or did it? Snow could slow down her pursuers. That was a positive. The change in temperature meant turning up the heat so his passenger didn’t freeze, which would increase fuel consumption.

Fine, he’d call it fifty-fifty with the weather gods. Pilar’s breathing changed, and she took a deeper breath. She’d fallen asleep an hour before, still not having shared who was after her or why. Didn’t matter, as he’d meant it when he told her he’d get her somewhere safe. The harsh inhale warned him that she’d woken up afraid or at the very least startled.

Catching her hand, he gave her fingers a light squeeze. “You’re still safe, sweetheart. We’re still on the road.”

“I was kind of hoping it was a bad dream,” she murmured in that sleep thickened sexy voice of hers. “The part about the men with guns, not the you part.”

Hey, he had a part. “Glad to hear it.” Keeping it light was a skill he’d cultivated over the years, and one his teammates appreciated. Didn’t matter if they were taking mortar fire, tucked into position to wait out an assigned go time, or jumping out of planes, Cannon didn’t sweat the small stuff.

“Where are we?” She rubbed a hand over her face, then jerked her hand away. “Dammit, my face hurts.”

“I’ve got something in the first aid kit.” He should have offered it earlier. Bruised or not, he’d suffered plenty worse. Somehow he doubted her experience was the same.

“I’ll live.” Shoving herself up in the seat, she groaned and seemed to decry her declaration. “Where are we?”

“The middle of fucking nowhere.” His phone had zero signal, and even the truck couldn’t find their location on its much-vaunted GPS. For the last three hours, he’d been missing his sat phone. “We’re heading southwest, roughly. If my calculations are right, we’re going to end up in Tennessee, and we can turn east from there.”

Silence greeted his statement. Pilar pushed her hair away from her face. The mass had been tickling his arm for the last hour, and he’d enjoyed the sensation. After finishing the last of the water in her nearly empty bottle, she said, “I hate to be a bother, but I need to pee. Again.”

The snow made a pit stop along the winding road a distinctly uncomfortable option. He’d figure something out. “Got it. Urgent? Kind of urgent? I can wait an hour if I have to?”

“You really like to define things.” Not an unfair observation. “Kind of urgent, but I can last a bit longer.”

Rolling his head from side to side, he ignored the taut pull across his shoulders. A hot shower and some stretches, and he’d be fine. “I like defining them because I don’t have your baseline. I’ve got one buddy who will say he needs to hit the head, and if he’s mentioning it, then it means he needs to go right now. Got another that will let us know a whole half-day ahead of the event.”

“Event?” The hesitation on the question mark in the sentence made him grin.

“Oh yeah, and no I won’t give you more details. They’re gruesome.”

Her groan-laugh carried both humor and disgust. “Thank you, and sorry I asked.”

“You didn’t ask.” It was like taking a stick to check to see if the snake would bite and if it was venomous at the same time. “But you seemed concerned about my need for details. Details are the building blocks of good planning. The only bad plan is the failure to make one in the first place.”

The snow deepened beyond his headlights, creating a curtain effect. The tires could handle it so far, but if the temperatures kept dropping—ice would be an issue.

“I wasn’t concerned so much as…it’s weird. I get detail-oriented. I’m an accountant, so I’d have to be.” Leaning back in the seat, she stretched her arms forward and her legs as much as she was able. They definitely needed a break from the truck. Maybe when they got of the damn mountain, they could find a hotel or at least another rest stop. If the snow kept up, any shelter would be better than none. “Sorry if I offended you.”

A bark of laughter escaped him. “You’re going to have to work a lot harder than that to offend me. I’m a go along to get along kind of guy.” Lightning didn’t strike him dead, so it wasn’t a lie. The thought amused him more and he chuckled.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you’re a wise woman,” he retorted. “Detail oriented and into—accounting? Are people really into numbers?”

“Numbers don’t lie. They can be doctored, they can be manufactured, and they can even be misinterpreted, but the numbers themselves don’t lie.” When she licked her lips, Cannon offered her an unopened bottle of water. He had pulled it out for himself but hadn’t opened it yet. “Oh, thank you.”

“No problem.” He leaned his head to the right. The tautness in his neck was starting to get aggravating. When it popped lightly, relief spread down to his shoulders. “So you went into accounting because numbers are honest?”

“I didn’t say honest. I said they didn’t lie. Numbers are factual, but honesty and truth are fluid. They’re crisp. They’re exact. Nothing else is so—clean. Or at least as clean as they used to be.” Passion infused every word.

“I’m not going to say I understand,” he said instead. “I could fake it and pretend, but I don’t. My world is a little more basic—good guys and bad guys.”

“How do you tell which is which?” The arch tone didn’t match her smile, but it did seem to distract her from the earlier frustration.

Grabbing the thread, he went with it. “As cheesy as it is to quote a movie, it’s effective. If they’re shooting at you, they’re probably bad.”

The dry comment earned another laugh. “It sounds pretty simple.”

“About as simple as your faith that numbers don’t lie. You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can be mistaken for someone else. You can be shot at by friend and foes.”

“That’s such a bleak outlook, isn’t it?” Resignation marred her tone.

“Not if you don’t let it be,” he said. When he likely should have dropped it, he pushed on with the breach. Getting in and getting out was where he lived. “We try to live the best life we can, a good life, a clean and honest one. Sometimes secrets get in the way. The choices you face then are to play it dirty, exploit their flaws, or live down to our own. Strategically, we could use their mistakes against them. Every day, we do this—whether it’s cutting in line for coffee at the local shop or fighting for a job, a contract, or whatever it is we want that someone else may have or take away. But if you put all those exploitive choices behind you and let those secrets go, and you come out of it clean and honest, then you win.”

More words than he was used to saying in one go, but he believed every single one.

“God, I want to believe that’s true.”

“Then decide to believe it. Make it true for you.” That was how he survived every single thing he’d gone through. The only way he had been able make it out the other side, with the scars to prove it.

“That’s really easy to say,” she argued. “What if you make really shitty decisions?”

“Over the years, we do some things good, some of them bad. The decision you make to help one person can hurt someone else. The decision to save them could hurt you. The decision not to? Could hurt worse.”

“So you’re basically telling me we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t?”

Not exactly, but he liked how she aligned them. “What I’m saying is we make our choices. We make sacrifices or we choose against it. Whatever we do, we live with them. Sometimes life happens in a way that’s utterly out of our control.”

A long silence stretched between them, and she said, “What if I think I committed a crime? Or at least, I was party to one?”

“You think? You don’t know?” The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It was the same sensation when he saw the vapor trail of the incoming rocket. If he heard fire, he knew it wasn’t for him. But somewhere in those dangerous, fluid moments, he had to just keep moving and wait to see who the boom took.

“No,” she said with a hard sniff. Between that and the strangled note in her voice, the glacial calm she’d embraced began to crack. “I don’t. Now I’m…in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, in a snowstorm, with some poor guy I just met with people shooting at me—and I really, really need to pee.”

Time for plan B.

And a bucket.

“How adventurous are you?”

“Remind me to never advertise how adventurous I am,” Pilar said thirty minutes later. If she’d known what he planned, she would have said no. As it was, she didn’t think her face would ever cool. Blushing had not been a thing for her, not growing up around all the guys in the family. Yet, here she sat, face flaming like some kind of comic book character

“You did fine, sweetheart.” Crystals of snow and rapidly melting ice glinted against his reddish-blond hair. “I put fuel in the truck’s tank while you emptied yours…”

“Oh my God.” She startled, then twisted to look at him. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“Ever?” He slanted a look toward her. They were back to following the road to damn nowhere and snow was everywhere. It might be pretty, if not for the sensation of the world closing in on her. When she ran, she thought she’d go straight to the Justice Department. Or maybe the FBI. They had the resources to deal with her family…the family. Not hers, not anymore.

“Ever.” No matter what else she had to face, the idea of discussing her using a bucket in the back seat of his truck needed to never come up again.

“All right.” The level of his amiability should piss her off, but it didn’t. It kind of fascinated her. “I’m keeping an eye on this storm. If I’m following the terrain right, we’re coming down the mountain now. Hopefully that means we’ll get to an interstate or a larger route.”

Trusting him, she took his word for it. “Then what?”

“Then we find a place to rest, refuel, and you can tell me where we’re going.” He stretched his neck again, and the vertebrae popped. His jaw tightened, the dashboard lights illuminating the tense cut of his face. When the light came on during their stop, he’d given her another of those carefree grins even as he explained his insane plan. Well, maybe only a little insane. He’d managed to solve her problem handily, even if it embarrassed her.

Pressing her foot against the side of her purse, which currently sat on the floor, she blew out a breath. “Can I trust you, Cannon?” Weird to ask, especially when she already seemed to be doing exactly that.

“All depends on you.”

Closing her eyes, she leaned her head against the seat. Exhaustion rode her in waves. Since dinner at her grandfather’s, she’d slept an odd hour here or there. Usually when she’d been too tired to go any further. Those naps didn’t last long, and she yawned. They were always just two steps behind her and naps let them catch up.

It was why she’d been racing down the road, looking at her rearview mirror instead of in front of her. The sound of the crash echoed in her memory, and she blinked her eyes open. A dimly-lit building sat beyond the partially obscured windshield. Where the hell…?

The driver’s side door opened and she jerked to find Cannon sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Hey, sweetheart, I found a place. It doesn’t look like much, but we can catch some real sleep and maybe a shower.” He didn’t wait for her response as he backed the truck out of the spot. “I got us a place around back and on the end. They aren’t full and don’t expect to be. It should be quiet and it puts the baby out of sight from the road.”

Baby? He named his truck? If she lived to be a hundred, she would never understand men. Letting that go, she rubbed her face and winced. Bruised and abraded flesh did not like to be touched, and she kept forgetting she’d hurt herself—until she started throbbing all over again. “Where are we?”

“Nowhere, Tennessee. Or it might still be West Virginia. Maybe Kentucky. The name on the sign was pretty unspecific and definitely not welcoming. I don’t care at the moment, because it’s the middle of nowhere and I’ll take it.” As promised, he parked in another slip behind the building. “Grab your purse.” He reached into the backseat and pulled out a duffel. “It’s cold, but the room should be warm. Do you need a coat?”

Since the rest of her things burned with her car, she shook her head. It wasn’t that far to the room. “One room?”

“One room,” he confirmed, then removed his gun from the lockbox between the seats. He relocked it, but not before she saw a second weapon inside and another magazine or two. The man continued to surprise her. Armed. Dangerous. Effective. It was kind of like traveling with a movie action hero, only he was real enough to touch.

So why didn’t he scare her?

“Let’s do it.” Purse gripped in her hand, she paused when he didn’t leap into motion. Instead, he stared at her. The cant of his head suggested he studied her, and the corners of his mouth curved and the dimples in his cheeks deepened. The look worked for him, transforming him from pretty boy next door to roguishly attractive. The whole effect elevated him from dangerous to pure trouble.

Dammit. She’d always liked trouble.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, then grinned wider. “Wait here until I check the room… Glock out.”

It took her only a moment to close her hand over the grip of the gun, and he nodded once before leaving her in the truck. The room was on the ground level. Why didn’t he take one upstairs? But even as she studied the layout, she understood. Upstairs had two access points—both stairwells. The only way out if those were blocked was over the railing.

She would prefer not to break their legs. When he reappeared, relief cascaded through the knotting muscles in her gut. Though she didn’t think it necessary, he returned to the car and helped her out. Her legs protested immediately, and so did her ass. It had gone numb and she’d failed to notice it.

Cannon didn’t comment on her near stumble, just slipped an arm around her waist and walked them to the hotel room. The quiet beep from the truck accompanied by a flash of the lights told her he’d locked it.

“How long was I asleep?” Pins and needles were the worst damn thing ever. Sharp, shooting pains lanced through her legs with every step.

“About four hours.”

Four hours? She dropped her purse onto the bed and sat next to it. As much as she wanted to stretch her legs, she curled her toes inside her shoes in an effort to speed the waking up. “How is that even possible?”

“You were tired?” He threw the security bar over the top of the door and closed the blinds. Despite the remote location, the room wasn’t the worst she’d ever seen. It smelled clean, without any hints of mold or mildew.

The green color, however, was pretty damn atrocious.

“It looks like the seventies threw up in here,” Cannon said. He tossed his duffel onto the bed then took her arm to help her rise. Then he walked her over to the other bed, the one closest to the interior wall. She sat, a little bewildered, as he took the gun from her fingers. Crap, she half forgot she had a hold of it. He grabbed her purse and sat it next to her.

“Gun goes on the nightstand, safety on. If someone comes through that door, you and your gun, go that way…” He pointed to the bathroom. “There’s a window in there. It’s a bit narrow, but you’ll get through it fine.” He held up his truck keys. “These are going to be on the nightstand, too. You take them with the gun. You circle the building—it’s about three hundred feet—and then you come out in a little breezeway about five doors down to our left. Watch your six and check your surroundings. If you can get to my baby, you climb in, hit auto start, and get the hell out of here.”

The more he spoke, the wider her eyes grew. She gaped at him. “You have a battle plan?”

“Always,” he said with a nod, then he stripped off his jacket and his shirt. He lifted the fabric to his nose, sniffing it. She forgot about the clothes at the revelation he’d been hiding beneath it. Where she’d thought him as lean and controlled, she found him to be all tightly ripped muscle. There was a hint of a scar on his forearm. When he turned, there was an abrasion along his back—one that couldn’t possibly have come from the accident.

Her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth as she traced her gaze along his spine to his hips. Despite the red hair and freckles, he wasn’t pasty white at all. He had a hint of amber and gold to his skin tone, kissed by the loveliest freckles on his back and shoulders.

“Pilar?”

Her face flamed all over again when she found him staring at her. Running a hand over her mouth, surreptitiously she hoped, she made sure she wasn’t drooling. “Sorry, you were saying scary things about an escape plan?”

“Repeat it, please. Better for you to know it enough to react immediately. If you don’t think you can do it, I need to know. If you’re going to freeze during an attack, it could get you killed.”

“I haven’t frozen yet. I mostly managed, you know, to stay ahead of them until I ran into you.” Barely, but she had.

“Good job.” He folded his shirt, then rolled it tight before opening the duffel and pulling out a clean one. Like the one he’d removed, he sniffed this one. “Go over the plan again.”

He wanted her to think while he strutted around the hotel room like some Irish god come to life. Why was her life so damn unfair? “Gun and keys on the nightstand. If someone comes through the door, I take both and go to the bathroom, shimmy out the window, then run around the back of the building to the breezeway. If I have a clear path to the truck, I get in and drive away, leaving you on your own to face whomever it is.” She finished the recitation, then sucked in a breath. “I hate the plan.”

“There is no hating of the plan in survival. It’s what you’ll do. It gets you out of the immediate line of fire and gives me more freedom to focus on whatever is coming after us.” Even as he spoke, he switched to checking his gun. “When was the last time you cleaned the Glock?”

“A week ago, and I haven’t fired it yet.” Taking care of a gun was something she knew how to do. “I hate leaving you to fight my battles. What if there are more of them? You said there were two at the rest stop.”

The quick, easy grin gracing his lips never faltered. “Doesn’t matter how many of them there are. There’s only one door.” Finished going over his weapon, he went to the room’s closet and checked inside. Nodding in satisfaction, he pulled out a rather uncomfortable looking metal foldout. Not that he told her why considering they had two beds. “Go grab a shower, if you want one.”

“I do, but I kind of hate showering and putting on dirty clothes.” Hers still smelled like smoke, and fuel, and something she didn’t want to identify but feared might be body odor.

“I’ve got some sweats in the bag, and they’re clean. They’ll be big on you, but the drawstring should work. We can get you more clothes later.” He left the foldout where it was for a moment and went through his bag. “I’ve got deodorant in here, too. Toothpaste, and a couple of toothbrushes.” He added the items to the growing stack next to the duffel. “Might have a comb.” The small, short-toothed one he pulled out earned a skeptical look from him. “I have no idea how it will work on your hair. I don’t need much.”

As if to prove his point, he raked his fingers through the wavy mass on his head. It wasn’t quite military cut, but it was higher on the sides and kept his ears clear.

“You’re like a superhero,” she blurted out and ignored the wave of embarrassment this time. He carried the stack over to her and winked.

“No, ma’am. I’m only a sailor.”

Bullshit. Fortunately, her overactive mouth didn’t blurt the thought. There was nothing only about him at all. He was larger than life. “If you say so,” she said, proud of the control. “Thank you for the clothes and the comb.” Her hair could be dealt with. If necessary, she’d braid it while wet. It might take a couple of days to dry that way. “Worst case, I’ll just cut it off.”

“Don’t.” The immediate denial gave her pause.

“It might discourage pursuit.”

“I don’t care,” he told her, and a shiver prickled along her spine. For a moment, she forgot all about the ache in her face and the shooting pains in her legs. Everything faded except for the intensity in his green eyes as he stared at her. “I like your hair. You let me worry about the pursuit and keep the hair.”

All the moisture fled her mouth, and she gathered the items he’d offered to her chest as she stood. Holding them in front of her just reminded her of how good he smelled in the truck. How nice his truck smelled.

I don’t know him! Her body didn’t give one good goddamn what she knew or didn’t. Everything in her hummed at his nearness, and the man was just looking at her. Even her nipples perked, the tightening skin sending a coil of heat to her belly, and her thighs tightened.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” she managed to push out without squeaking. “I’m going to shower now.” A very cold, cold shower to slap some sense back into her.

“I’ll be here.”

His promise followed her into the small bathroom. Once inside, she closed the door and leaned against it. Heart hammering in her chest, she closed her eyes. Of all the times to meet someone who turned her on, it had to be while she ran from mafia-like family after overhearing her grandfather putting a hit on someone and realizing all the money she secured in so many accounts was probably dirty.

Pilar was so screwed.

And not even in a nice way.

Glancing at the mirror, she grimaced. The bruise looked worse, if that was possible, but there was no denying the spark in her eyes. Cannon was gorgeous, tough, and so freaking happy all the time. He made her want to smile because he was.

He’s not yours, Pilar. Get your mind out of the gutter. Even the mental chastisement had no effect on her rising libido.

Cold shower it was.

The thought lasted right until she stepped under the icy spray and yelped.

“Pilar?” His hot-bodied self was right outside her door. “Are you okay?”

Flattened against the porcelain wall and out of reach of the icy spray, she called, “I’m fine. Water’s chilly.”

Like Elsa levels of chilly, and she wasn’t going to let it go. Scooting out, she switched the water to warmer and shuddered. What a mess.

“Okay.” Cannon was still there, right on the other side of the door. She could just open it up and invite him in to join her. Lots of her friends in college had hooked up with guys they’d known five minutes. She’d known him a whole ten—twelve hours? Maybe longer.

Shoving herself back under the cold spray, she closed her eyes and sucked it up. Because bad decisions came from just leaping, and she needed facts. Figures. Numbers.

Not the super-hot, delicious guy with the devastating smile and sexy green eyes.

The mental pep talk didn’t last longer than a few seconds.

Who was she trying to kid?