Shiver (40 page)

In a semicrouched position just inside the big open doorway, her captor’s arm still around her throat and the gun still at her head, Sam saw Marco’s focus slip from Veith, whom he’d been tracking like a predator, to her. For a split second their eyes met. Then she watched in horror as Marco abruptly raised both hands in the air in the age-old gesture of surrender.

“I’m coming,” he said. “Just let me get my crutch.” Still keeping the gun up where they could see it, he bent down to get his crutch, then wedged it into place beneath his arm and started moving toward the van.

“Get his gun.” Veith ordered the other man as they converged on Marco. Sam was shoved into the back, forced into a seat. Seconds later, Marco threw his crutch into the van, stepped
in himself, then had his hands secured behind his back. Heart in her throat, Sam realized that she was witnessing the man she loved putting his life on the line for her.

He could have saved himself, could have left her. But here he was.

Their eyes connected. His were hard and dark and absolutely unreadable. Hers, she felt, probably had her heart in them.

Then Veith, who had entered behind him, clouted him over the head with his gun. The thud was so loud Sam felt it like a physical blow. Marco dropped like a stone.

Sam cried out, started to rise. She was roughly forced back into her seat.

“Good to see you again, Samantha Jones.” Veith smiled at her as the thug who’d been holding the gun on her secured her hands behind her with a zip tie, then locked her in place with a seat belt. It was an absolutely evil, terrifying smile. Her pulse rate soared. Her mouth went dry. “Pity we couldn’t bring the little boy along, isn’t it?”

She hated him then, hated him with such magnitude that for a moment the force of it almost wiped out her fear. An angry reply surged to her lips. But then she looked into his eyes, and realized that a reply was what he was hoping to provoke her into. He was going to hurt her; that was a foregone conclusion. But hurting her while she was defying him? That would just add to his fun.

So she clamped her lips together and said nothing.

The door rattled shut as the third man closed it from the
outside. Seconds later he was behind the wheel and the van took off.

As it bounced across the grass and then sped away down the street, Sam caught a glimpse through the windows of the milling crowd that was starting to accumulate in front of the blazing town house. She wanted to bang on the van windows; she wanted to scream for help. The first one she couldn’t do; the second one she knew better than to attempt. But she looked out at the huge, shooting flames stretching toward the sky, and willed someone to notice the fleeing van, then scanned the crowd hopefully to see if anyone did. The fire made the area around the front yard almost as bright as day. Among the crowd—
yes, that was Groves.
His blond buzz cut was unmistakable. With Groves was Sanders, who was crouching while he talked to—Tyler. Oh, what a relief! That brief sighting of her son’s small, slender frame and black hair imprinted itself on her heart. Why? Because it just that moment hit her that she might never see him again. Even as her heart shattered into a million pieces at the thought, Sam felt a surge of thankfulness that he was
out there
rather than
in here.

He’s safe. Tyler’s safe.

But the hard truth was that she and Marco were not. As the van, carefully observing the speed limit now, drove past onrushing fire trucks and police cars, Sam looked down at Marco, still sprawled unconscious on the floor, and at the thug in the seat across from her, and at Veith, sitting with a smug smile on his face and his gun pointed at Marco’s head,
and tried not to think about what these criminals had done to Mrs. Menifee.

But she couldn’t help it. The image of the woman’s severed fingertip, and the blood running across her kitchen floor, became lodged in her head. By the time the van stopped some fifteen minutes later, she was sick with terror.

She didn’t pray much, because she had figured out a long time ago that if God really was up there, as her grandma had sworn he was, and if he really was in the answering-prayers business, which her grandma had sworn was true, the only answer she was going to get from him was no.

But now she prayed so hard that if God didn’t hear her he had to be deaf.

Please, God. Please. I just want to see Tyler again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

F
ear was not something Danny experienced often. Handling dangerous situations was what he did for a living. He had been in so many life-or-death spots that they were pretty much par for the course for him, just another day at the office, so to speak.

But he was afraid now. And the reason he was afraid had nothing to do with the distinct chance that he wouldn’t live through the next hour. What it had to do with was the silky-skinned, smart-mouthed, tender-hearted, gorgeous girl whom he’d just fucked into next week.

If Veith had been willing to blow up the town house to kill them, with all the attention that was sure to attract, he wanted them dead
now.
No more torture time, no more questions about money. Just dead. As in, a bullet to the head as soon as they were in a suitable place.

Danny would have told Veith the truth about his identity, and to hell with the assignment, if he had thought it would do any good. But the terrible fact of the matter was, as undercover
FBI Special Agent Daniel Panterro, he had no value to Veith or the Zetas at all. With no reason to keep him alive, Veith would kill him instantly. And Sam, too.

Telling the truth would be tantamount to signing his own, and Sam’s, death warrant.

The thought made his gut clench. Cold sweat beaded his brow. His mind kept wrestling this thing around and around, which wasn’t good. He kept getting the feeling that he was missing something, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what, and wasting time worrying about it wasn’t what he needed to be doing. What was important at the moment was to stay coldly focused, but he was having trouble getting there.

Because of Sam.

If he hadn’t stepped up, Veith would have taken Sam, and he would have killed her. Danny had no doubt about that whatsoever. The bastard would have done exactly what he had threatened, and enjoyed himself doing it. He would have tortured her, done God knows what to her, and in the end he would have cut her up just like he had said he was going to, and left the remains somewhere where they would be found. That was how Veith operated.

Just thinking about Sam with Veith made Danny want to kill the bastard. It was his newest, most pressing ambition. He only hoped that he would be afforded the chance. If not, well, he was going to save Sam. Or die trying.

At this point he was perfectly willing to give his own life if that was what it took to protect Sam, and Tyler, too. They
meant something to him, something personal. Something special. In giving up his weapon and turning himself over to Veith, Danny had done what he had to do, following the devil into hell in hopes of maybe being able to bring Sam out again.

Not that success was looking likely.

When the van stopped, every muscle in Danny’s body tensed. Adrenaline flooded his system. His instincts went on red alert. This might very well be it.

The van door opened. Hands reached in to haul him out.

In the rear seats, the thug guarding Sam stood up, unsnapped her seat belt, wrapped his arm around her throat, and stuck a gun to her head.

Even in the dark, he could tell her eyes were on him. They looked wide and scared.

It killed him that there was nothing he could do or say to reassure her. But any attention he paid her just gave Veith more reason to think that he could use Sam to get to him.

“Let’s go,” Veith said, shoving Danny with his foot.

Danny groaned, and let himself be hauled out of the van. The object was to pretend to be still groggy from the blow, and a lot more hampered by his leg wound than he was. If he had to put up a fight, the element of surprise was always good. Having free hands was even better, and he couldn’t use a crutch with bound hands. The crutch was the key: he really needed to keep the crutch with him. He was out the gun—Veith had taken it—but the phone Crittenden had provided was still inside the crutch. The phone could be tracked, and by now Crittenden should be
tracking it. Rescue was what Danny was hoping for, either by Sanders and company or by Crittenden, although he figured that the chances that it was going to happen were dicey.

During the van ride, while he was mostly feigning unconsciousness, he had hit on a workable plan to keep at least Crittenden on their trail: Danny was a big guy, and if he couldn’t walk, somebody was going to have to help him get from place to place, maybe even carry him. The phone was why he had stopped to pick up his crutch before getting into the van with Sam. He hoped the memory of him needing that crutch enough to stop for it would resonate with Veith now. With only two men and himself, Veith didn’t have the manpower to spare for hauling Danny around, not and keep a gun on him and deal with Sam at the same time. Easiest thing to do would be to free his hands and let him walk with the crutch to wherever Veith was taking them.

If he were taking them anywhere. Danny had a bad feeling that whatever was getting ready to go down would go down now.

But no, as it turned out Veith apparently had a different killing field in mind.

Which was the good news.

The bad news was that, hands bound behind her, Sam was being hurried along ahead of him at gunpoint, the better to keep him docile, he knew. Still, Veith was taking no chances: Danny had a gun pointed at him, too, every step of the way.

The other good news was, Danny was hobbling to wherever they were going on his crutch.

The other bad news was, he had no idea where that might
be, although he had a pretty good idea about what was going to happen when they got there.

The long, low, white building that the van was parked beside looked like an airplane hangar, Danny saw as he and Sam were hustled past it. A faded sign on the side of the building confirmed that. It said Hayfield Airport, but if this was an airport it was a long-abandoned one. The place was deserted. Because of the cloud cover, the night was dark as pitch. The only light to be seen was a yellow bug light beside the hangar’s garage-type door. That made it hard to be sure, but aside from the hangar, and a paved parking area surrounding it, he got the impression that there was farmland all around. The smell of crops and fertilizer blew past him on the breeze.

Just beyond the hangar, sitting on a turf runway carved out of what looked to be a wheat field, sat a Cherokee Six. Danny knew from planes, and he recognized it instantly just from its shape. This one was a little beauty: a six-seat, single-engine, fixed-landing-gear light aircraft with a range of around eight hundred miles. Which just went to prove that crime paid way better than law enforcement.

As his eyes ran over it, Danny slowed down. Wherever this sweet little bird was taking them, he didn’t want to go. Plus, the chance of rescue went way down if they were flown, say, eight hundred miles away.

Making a stand here and now, out in the open, occurred to him, but the odds didn’t look good. Veith and company had at least three guns to his zero (and if he knew Veith, they probably also had ammo out the wazoo) and he had a bum leg to hamper
him in a fight, plus Sam to worry about. Avoiding getting killed himself was doable; keeping her from getting hurt or killed might be harder.

Because they would use her to control him.

Veith was a fast learner, and he had already learned how well that worked.

Until he had Sam where he could protect her, he was better off waiting, Danny concluded. If Veith had been going to kill them immediately, the showdown would already have occurred. Apparently he had something else in mind, something that required a plane ride. Which meant that they still had some time.

As Sam reached the Cherokee, its lights came on, the engine started to rumble, and the propeller started to turn with a fast
whap-whap.
A pilot must already be on board. The plane was vibrating, readying for takeoff as soon as they climbed inside; the steps were already down. Veith meant to waste no time, clearly. He must be concerned about a rescue party, too.