Chapter Seventeen
Colorado Mountains
He glanced over at Gabby, who sat huddled in the passenger seat. “Have you thawed out yet?”
After a half-mile trek in sometimes waist-deep snow, they had both been slightly frosty when they arrived at the old shed where he’d stored their next ride.
“I’m getting there.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you had this planned.”
Justice had given him only eleven days to set everything up, so the ramshackle shed had been a risk. One he’d had no choice but to take. The nearest storage rental facility was a twenty-mile hike. No way in hell would they have made it. He’d taken the chance that no one would discover this hiding place. The weather had helped in that regard. Not too many people out and about to notice a beat-up old shed sporting a brand-new lock on its decrepit door and an old but in excellent condition Range Rover hidden inside.
“Preparation eliminates disaster.”
She frowned. “Who said that?”
“Me. Just now.” He sent her a mock look of concern. “Uh oh. Did you hit your head on a tree branch?”
The emotions flitting across her face were both amusing and poignant. Her first expression was one of high insult, and then as she realized he was teasing, her dark eyes glinted with laughter. He was also pleased to see light pink color bloom in her pale cheeks. A definite improvement.
Had anyone ever gently teased her? She had been alone and isolated for so long, he doubted that she had experienced anything so normal.
“Where do we go from here?”
To blend in with the rest of the vehicles and hide in plain sight, they’d gotten on the highway as soon as possible. Problem was, it was still a few hours till dawn. They’d passed only a couple of cars, but since no one should suspect that they were now driving a completely different vehicle, they should be fine. They had a five-hour trip ahead of them, but if the weather held up, it should be an easy, scenic drive to his place in Utah.
“I have a cabin in—” He grabbed the vibrating phone from his coat pocket and glanced at the screen. Kingston.
“Hey, we’re just—”
“You’ve got a problem, buddy.”
“What?”
“You’ve got a GPS signal coming from inside your vehicle.”
“That’s not possible.” His mind scrambled for a reason. The Range Rover had been locked up for over three weeks. Alarms would have been set off if the hiding place had been compromised. No one, other than himself, had access to it.
“I don’t—” He glanced over at Gabriella, a dark foreboding in his gut. “Can you scramble it?”
“Doing my best. But you need to find and destroy the device ASAP.”
Jonah slid the phone into his pocket and blew out a breath. They had only a few minutes, if that, to find the tracker. There was no easy way to do this.
“Gabby, are you wearing any jewelry?” He could see she wasn’t wearing a watch, ring, or a necklace, but there were other places jewelry could go.
“No. Why?”
“No belly button ring, toe ring? Piercings of any kind?”
She was smart enough not to need an explanation for such a personal question. “I don’t have anything like that. What’s wrong?”
“We’re transmitting a GPS signal. I’m one hundred percent certain that the Range Rover is clean. As am I. That only leaves you.”
“You think there’s a tracker on me somewhere?”
“Or inside you.”
He had never seen anyone go so pale so fast. The absolute horror on her face told him she fully comprehended what he meant.
Her emotions would have to be dealt with later. For right now, they needed to locate the tracker and figure out how to disable it.
“Do you have any idea where it could be?”
Trying to get a grasp on this bizarre development, Gabby shook her head slowly. “How would I even know something like that, Jonah? I don’t know what one would look like. Are they large…or…”
“Do you have any soreness anywhere on your body? Anyplace that looks like a small incision could have been made?”
“No. Nothing like that. I—”
“What?”
Instead of answering, her hands went to the waistband of her pants. “A few years ago, I had my appendix removed. When I woke, my doctor told me that in the process of examining me, they found a benign cyst on my right hip and removed it. I had never noticed anything there, but I believed him.”
She swallowed thickly. How could she have been so stupid and naïve?
The SUV swerved to the right as Jonah pulled off the highway. The vehicle jerked to a stop, and Jonah switched on the overhead light. “Let me see.”
Embarrassment might come later but couldn’t be worried about now. Gabby unzipped her pants and pulled them, along with her panties, down enough to show him the small scar on her right hip. She swallowed a soft gasp when Jonah ran a long, callused finger gently across the scar.
“Could that be it?”
“Yeah.” He glanced around as if searching for something.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to get this thing out of you. If I can find a doctor’s office or hospital, they can—”
“We don’t have time for that. They’ll find us. You’ve got to get it out now.”
For the first time, she saw a hint of alarm in his eyes. Jonah had been so calm and resolute in their escape, but now he looked almost as panicked as she felt. Silly, but his obvious fear of causing her pain made her feel less panicked.
“Either you do it, or I’ll take care of it myself. Either way, that thing is coming out of me. Now.”
“Hold on.” He pulled back onto the road and zoomed down the highway.
“Where are we going?”
“We need to find a hospital.” He gave her another grim look. “And fast.”
They were in a remote area. Finding civilization, much less a hospital, was going to be hard. Finding one before her grandfather’s men found them would be next to impossible.
Resolute, Gabby opened the compartment in front of her. There had to be something…
“What are you looking for?”
“A knife, if you have one.”
“Hell, Gabby. You can’t—”
He broke off as a familiarly ominous noise sounded above them. The whomp-whomp of a helicopter. Her grandfather’s men had found them again.
“Hold on.”
Gabby did as she was told but continued to look for something…anything that would get the tracker out of her body. And while the biggest reason to get the thing removed was whirring above them, likely shadowing their every move, it wasn’t the only one. Something even more desperate was pulling at her. Something had been put inside her body without her consent. Didn’t matter that it was an inanimate object. The object did not belong there, and she wanted it out. Now.
“Get down in the floorboard.”
“They won’t shoot me.”
“No, but they might shoot at me. I don’t want you getting hit.”
Though she didn’t for a moment believe the men would endanger her by shooting, Gabby didn’t argue. She unbuckled her seat belt and slid into the spacious floorboard. She could feel the vehicle shift gears as Jonah sped up. They had to be going well over a hundred, but that wouldn’t matter.
“You can’t outrun a helicopter.”
“Maybe not, but I’m sure as hell going to try.”
She felt helpless to do anything. She had promised herself that if she was ever able to escape, she would never feel this way again. Dammit, she had to do something!
A black duffle bag in the backseat caught her eye. Jonah was the resourceful sort. Would he have what she was looking for?
Keeping her head low, she slithered over the console and into the backseat.
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about me. Just drive.”
The whirring of the helicopter grew louder, telling her it was getting closer. Jonah cursed, and she noted absently that his language was both inventive and colorful. She was oddly thankful his attention was diverted, because she was quite sure he wouldn’t allow her to do what she planned to do.
Unzipping the bag, she almost shouted with joy when the first thing she spotted was a lethal-looking stiletto knife. Refusing to give herself time to think about it and panic, Gabby slid her pants down over her right hip again and glided the knife across the scar. She told herself it was good that the blade was so sharp, because a dull knife would have hurt much worse.
Her fingers started searching. She drew in a silent breath.
Oh damn, damn, damn…
The Range Rover roared down the highway, hugging the curves of the winding two-lane highway. Jonah was going as fast as he dared on the icy, treacherous road. He was now thankful for the lack of traffic since he would’ve had to do some major maneuvering. Still, as good as this vehicle was and as empty as the highway was, there was no way in hell he was going to outrun the helicopter. Wyatt Kingston was damn good at his job, but there was only so much he could do to scramble the tracker. And even then, unless the chopper lost track of them, they were toast. Jonah had to find cover and fast.
The silence in the backseat suddenly caught his attention. “Are you okay back there?”
“Yes.”
The tension in her voice was understandable, but still he detected something else. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing for you to be concerned with. Just keep driving.”
Now even more concerned, Jonah took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over his shoulder. The scene wasn’t quite as gory as a horror movie but close enough.
“What the hell did you do?”
“I have to get this thing out of me. There’s no other way.”
“There sure as hell is. That knife wasn’t even clean. Dammit, Gabby.”
“I can get a tetanus shot later. The bleeding isn’t that bad.” She held up a tiny, bloodied fragment of metal. “Look what I found.”
She had done it. Had actually dug the thing out of her body.
Jonah hit the power button for the backseat window “Throw it out.”
He watched as her bloody hand snapped the small device in half and threw the offensive object out the window.
His foot slammed the gas pedal. Gabby had done her part, now he needed to do his. They had to lose the helicopter. Then, he had to find her some help.
“I’ll be fine, Jonah. It doesn’t hurt all that much now.”
“Yes. After you get stitches and a tetanus shot, you’ll be just fucking fine. Till then, put a bandage on it.”
He knew he was being gruff with her, but dammit, she’d done something he hadn’t expected. She wasn’t the pampered princess he had assumed before he met her. Nor was she the vulnerable victim he’d thought she was after hearing how she’d been treated by her family. She was so much more than what he’d counted on when he agreed to do this job. And dammit, he didn’t like it. This was not what he’d signed on for.
His grim mood lifted when he spotted the exit up ahead. He turned off the headlights, lifted his foot from the gas pedal, and took the exit. He was still going too fast, but he had no choice. Until he could find cover, speed was his only defense.
Turning onto the main road, Jonah blended in with the early morning traffic. It helped that it was a weekday. Work traffic, even in a small city, could get congested at times. They had lucked up and found one of those times.
He looked up, noting that the helicopter was already backing off. No way in hell would Mendoza’s men risk getting caught by trying anything out in the open.
Jonah raced down the highway, the sound of the helicopter already fading. One crisis averted. Now on to another one. Finding a doctor before Gabby bled out.