Gone

“She was,” Ella responded softly, her words barely carrying over the whistle of wind through the shattered back window.

She was still looking in that direction, her left hand resting on glass that littered the bench seat. She had no visible tattoos. No rings. No jewelry of any kind. Not the normal Organization operative he’d met. He wasn’t sure about the others. He assumed they were polished. Sophisticated. Well-educated. Well-dressed. Well-spoken. The kind of people who could easily convince others to do what they wanted. They had to be. They entered places like Newcastle and set up legitimate businesses that eventually served as covers for their illegal operations. They hired people living on the fringe of society to do their dirty work, destroying families, homes, lives without a second thought. They were the people Sam wanted to bring in. Low-level thugs like the ones who’d kidnapped Ella didn’t know enough about the inner workings of The Organization to help shut it down, but he’d be just as happy to toss them in jail, too. First, though, he needed to understand how Ella had gotten where she was—in the crosshairs of a crime syndicate that seemed to want her dead.

“Is it possible, Ruby was—”

“No,” she cut him off.

“You didn’t let me finish the question.”

“You were going to ask if she could have been part of The Organization.”

True. He had been. “Lots of good people get caught up in not-so-good things.”

“Based on the fact that I was kidnapped, and we were both shot at, I’d say The Organization is a lot worse than not-so-good.”

“What I’m trying to say—” Badly, apparently. Which was why he generally didn’t conduct interviews with victims. It was why he preferred working undercover in very dangerous situations to interacting with people like Ella—people who’d been hurt, who were afraid, who needed sympathy and understanding. “Is that your cousin might have gotten involved in something that was much more dangerous—”

“And illegal and wrong than she thought? Not Ruby. She played by the book. Always.”

“Okay.” He’d broached the subject. Now, he’d let it drop.

“What does that mean?”

“It means okay. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Really?”

“I believe you believe what you’re telling me. That being the case, there’s no sense in discussing the subject.”

“In other words, you think Ruby was part of a crime syndicate and that’s why I was kidnapped?”

“In other words, I want the truth. Whatever it is, and whatever it means.”

“There is no FBI field office is Newcastle, Sam. I don’t think there’s one in Maine,” she said.

“There’s not.”

“I want the truth, too. Who are you really? Why are you here? How did you just happen to arrive on the scene in time to help me?”

“I didn’t just happen to do anything. I was working undercover as an IT specialist hired to run the clinic’s network system. I was leaving work for the day and saw you being wheeled into the parking garage. Something didn’t seem right, so I followed the vehicle you were being transported in.”

“You’ve left a lot out of that story,” she said, finally shifting so that she was facing forward again.

“I gave you the truth. It’s what you wanted.”

“You said you’re working undercover—”

“I was working as an IT specialist, taking payoffs from The Organization to manipulate certain computer systems at the clinic. The goal was to maintain my cover and gather evidence that would identify and lead to the arrest of top-tier operatives. Now, I’m working on keeping you safe.”

“You don’t have to keep me safe. You can drop me off at a police station and go back to what you were doing.”

“No. I can’t. First, because you’re not going to be safe until you’re far away from here. Second, because my cover was blown the moment this truck was seen.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“Don’t be. My job requires that I protect and serve. I would have done this for anyone.”

“I’m still sorry. What you were doing was important. Now, you can’t do it anymore.”

“We’ll still bring The Organization down. We’ll just have to go about it in a different way.”

She nodded, her fingers tapping against the pieces of glass on the seat.

He lifted her hand, set it on her thigh. “I don’t think you’ll want to pick glass out of your fingers later.”

“I don’t want to be here, either. But, I am.”

“Where would you rather be?”

“Home,” she said, so simply and with so much longing he glanced at her way.

“That’s in Charlotte, right?”

“Outside of it. Up until three years ago, Ruby and I lived a block away from each other.”

“Is that when she moved here?”

“She got the job first. She’d been working as an addiction counselor at a Charlotte hospital, and she was ready for an adventure.”

“You didn’t want her to go?”

“I wanted her to be happy. Whatever that meant and wherever it led. Now, I wish I’d fought a little harder to get her to stay.”

“You can’t blame yourself for what happened to your cousin.”

“Sure, I can.”

“You shouldn’t.”

She laughed, the sound hollow and devoid of humor. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“How was old was your cousin?”

“Thirty-two.”

“So a few years older than you?”

“Yes.”

“And perfectly capable of making her own decisions?”

She didn’t respond.

“How did she die?” he continued, and she stiffened, her back going ramrod straight, her gaze jumping from the road ahead to him. He could feel the intensity of her stare, and he wondered what nerve he’d hit and why she’d reacted so strongly.

“A drug overdose,” she finally responded tersely, and he thought she’d prefer the subject to be closed.

Too bad, because he planned to keep it open. Eventually. For right now, he’d let things lie.

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw distant headlights. This was a mountain road that served a rural community. No one had been on it when he’d followed Ella’s kidnappers in. He’d had to stay back and turn his headlights off to keep from being spotted. He found it difficult to believe that anyone other than the gunmen were traveling it now.

He accelerated, anxious to get off the two-lane road and onto the highway. It would be safer there. More traffic. More room to maneuver. More exits and entrances and ways to escape.

“What’s wrong?” Ella asked, looking out the back window again. “Is that them?”

“Probably.”

“They’re catching up.”

She was right. The distance between the two vehicles was narrowing. The old Chevy the FBI had assigned him for the undercover job wasn’t fast. That hadn’t mattered, until tonight.

He floored it anyway, racing toward the entrance ramp to the state highway.

The car was still gaining on them.

“Get down,” he said, speeding around a curve, the exit ramp just ahead. Headlights streamed into the Chevy, their pursuers edging closer. He thought they might slam into the bumper, try to force him off the road. Instead, someone leaned out the window and fired a shot. He felt the quick tug of a blown tire, fought to keep the truck under control as he flew onto the ramp, rubber burning, the Chevy still shimmying.

He didn’t ease up on the accelerator.

He couldn’t risk having the other vehicle pull up beside him. A hundred yards ahead, an emergency turnaround split the wide median between the north and southbound lanes of the highway. He didn’t brake, just spun onto the road, bounced across the median and sped in the opposite direction.

The other driver missed the turn, his brake lights flashing as he tried to stop. It would take a few minutes for him to recover and backtrack. Unlike the rural route they’d been on, the state highway wasn’t empty. Several big rigs zoomed past and a few RVs meandered along. The other driver wouldn’t want to call attention to himself. By the time he found a place to turn without being noticed, Sam would be off the highway, the crippled Chevy hidden from view.

That was the plan.

Of course, he’d learned a long time ago that the best-laid plans didn’t always work out. His relationship with Shelly was a prime example. He’d had it all figured out—how long they’d date, how long they’d be engaged, how big the wedding would be. She’d been in complete agreement. Until she’d met someone else and walked away.

He couldn’t say he’d been devastated. Shelly had been smart and driven, energetic and funny. She was everything he’d thought he’d wanted in a life partner. She’d worked as an ER nurse at a hospital in Houston, and they’d met while he was having a knife wound stitched up. People had said they were the perfect couple, but she’d wanted a lot more than he ever had. More rooms in the house they’d buy one day. More expensive cars. More clothes, shoes and jewelry. After spending nine years in his father’s home, all Sam had ever really wanted was peace.

The Chevy thumped along the highway, the thudding flat making speed impossible. He needed to get off the road, and he needed to do it before the other vehicle caught up. He took the next exit ramp, thumping off the highway and onto a more rural road.

He had to find a safe place to pull off, and then he needed to make a call. Not to the local or state police. He had no idea if there were Organization operatives working for either. He’d call Wren. She could put a team together and be in the area in a few hours. That would push the odds of survival in his favor.

All he had to do was make sure he and Ella survived until then.

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