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“Is it safe?” she asked softly.
He thought about the ease with which Abby had broken into his house earlier. It was probably ten times easier for the intruders he’d just encountered in his kitchen. And they’d been able to disable the silent alarm before it sent him a warning. Had they had access to his personal files at MSI? What else might they know about him and his life in San Diego?
“No,” he answered Abby’s question firmly, reaching into the car to unlatch the trunk. He checked the trunk to make sure the duffel bag he kept stashed there for emergency travel was still in place. It was, and a cursory check of the contents reassured him that he had enough extra clothes and supplies inside to get him through the next few days.
Abby had gotten out of the car and come around to stand beside him, her gaze flickering down to the travel bag. “We’re not staying here tonight, are we?”
He shook his head. “No, we’re not.”
“What happened?”
He told her about the intruders, keeping it short and sweet. But even his sanitized account was enough to reignite the terror that had finally started to fade from her blue eyes. She bit her lip and looked back into the car at Stevie, who was sleeping peacefully in his car seat.
Her chin came up, and when she spoke, there was not a hint of shakiness in her voice. “Where are we going?”
Until that moment, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. But clearly, staying in San Diego would only subject them to more surprise visits from their tormentors. Luke wasn’t foolish enough to assume their bark was worse than their bite; nobody played such aggressive mind games unless they were pretty damned sure they had the goods to back up their threats. Whoever their employer was, he had high-powered connections and, Luke assumed, enough firepower to do what he threatened.
Luke might be a well-trained retired Marine who could still hold his own in a fight, but going up against that kind of enemy alone was stupid. He needed backup and he needed to change the playing field to give himself the advantage. And there was only one place he could think of where he’d have the upper hand.
“Right now,” he answered Abby, “we’re going to find a cheap motel where they’ll take cash and ask no questions.”
“And after that?”
He smiled genuinely for the first time in a long time. “Ever been to Alabama?”
Chapter Four
“If they know all about you, won’t they be staking out your family?” Abby broke the tense silence that had hovered between them for almost three hours. Interstate signs signaled that they were nearing the outskirts of Yuma, Arizona. The drive east had taken longer than it should’ve, thanks to Luke’s wandering tour of eastern San Diego before they’d hit I-8 near El Cajon.
The dashboard clock inched toward 11:00 p.m.
“I haven’t been back to Alabama in almost ten years,” Luke answered flatly. “They know that.”
“That long?” She looked up in surprise. He’d always spoken lovingly of his big, boisterous family in Gossamer Ridge. For Abby, an only child whose parents had passed away in a car crash when she was eighteen, Luke’s stories of his wonderful, crazy family had always evoked a sense of envy. “It’s complicated.”
She tamped down an acid rush of bitterness. The job, of course. Military intel—the secrets, the lies, the constant danger all took a toll. Marriages crumbled, friends became enemies, families self-destructed.
She glanced at Stevie, sound asleep in his car seat. He was still young enough that car travel was a surefire sleep aid. At least he could sleep in peace tonight. She’d do anything to spare him even a second of fear or concern.
“We’re stopping in Yuma for the night,” Luke said. She saw his gaze fixed on the rearview mirror. Did he see Stevie in the reflection,? Could he see how Stevie’s square jaw was a carbon copy of his own??
For his first year, Stevie had looked just like her, saving her from awkward questions and convoluted explanations about his origins. But now that she saw glimpses of Luke in her son—the darkening gray eyes, his lopsided smile—she was painfully aware of how selfish she’d been to keep father and son apart just to avoid complications.
Maybe Luke hadn’t wanted her enough to stick around. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t want to know their son.
“You haven’t contacted anyone since we left my house, have you?” Luke asked. “Maybe when we stopped at the ATM?”
“No.” His sudden tension made her stomach hurt. “Why?”
His gaze darted to the rearview mirror. “That car a quarter mile back’s been with us for the last few miles. I slow down, speed up, no matter. He stays the same distance away.”
Over her shoulder, all she saw was a blur of lights. But she trusted him. “What do we do?”
“Take this exit and see what happens.” Luke whipped the Mustang into a narrow gap between a truck and a sedan just in time to take a quick right onto the off-ramp.
“Did it work?” Abby’s heart raced from the daredevil move.
“Can’t tell yet.” At the bottom of the off-ramp, Luke went right and pulled into a well-lit gas station nearby. He cut the engine by one of the pumps, keeping his eyes on the exit ramp. “You pump the gas.” He pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
Tamping down fear, Abby took money from the wallet and headed off to prepay the cashier. When she returned, she found Luke rummaging through the trunk.
“Did they follow us?” She unscrewed the cover of the Mustang’s gas tank.
“Not sure.” He closed the trunk. In his left hand, he held a small gray device with red lights at the top. One light was lit up. He showed it to her. “See that light? There’s a GPS tracking device within a twenty-five-foot radius.”
There were no other cars at the gas station, and the road was at least forty feet away. “Does your car have GPS?”
He shook his head. “I never wanted it used against me. Do you have a GPS tag on any of Stevie’s stuff?”
“I don’t let him out of my sight except to take him to Mrs. Tamburello’s while I’m working.” She returned the gas nozzle to the pump, her mind racing. “You know, I don’t know how long those men were in my apartment—”
Luke opened the driver’s door of the Mustang and shoved back the driver’s seat. Hearing Stevie’s soft whimper, she raced around to the passenger door. “What are you doing?” she demanded, glaring at Luke across the backseat.
Luke’s expression of horror was almost comical. “God, I’m sorry—I wasn’t—” He laid his hand on Stevie’s head, stroking his damp curls. “Sorry about wakin’ you up there, Little Bit.”
Stevie’s snuffling subsided. “Firsty.”
“You’re thirsty, huh?” He glanced at Abby.
“I’ll get him an apple juice.” She ran to the food mart, grabbed an apple juice from one of the coolers and added it to the gas purchase. Back at the car, Luke stood by the driver’s side door, Stevie cradled in his arms. Abby faltered, her heart stuttering at the sight of Luke’s big, muscular arms wrapped around their son.
She was going to have to tell him the truth. Soon.
Luke’s gaze locked with hers as she reached the Mustang. He held up a black device a little smaller than a credit card. “Found it inside Mr. Hoppy.” He nodded toward the small animatronic stuffed rabbit sitting on the roof of the car, its ears still wiggling and nose twitching. “Inside the pouch where the batteries are. I guess they put it there when they trashed your house.”
Her heart lurched. “So they know where we are.”
He nodded. “No wonder they didn’t risk a wreck to follow us off the interstate. They can pick us up wherever we go.”
“Throw it away!” The sensation of being watched made her skin crawl.
Luke shook his head. “I have a better idea.”
THE BUDGET ARMS MOTEL was the sort of nondescript, vaguely shabby motel a motorist could find near almost any major interstate exit. Walk-ins were welcome if there were vacancies, and some of the places didn’t even require identification as long as you could pay cash up front for the room. The only amenities would be basic cable and local phone service, if that.
Luke had stayed in worse places.
Abby, apparently, had not, judging by the look of horror on her face when Luke pulled into the motel parking lot.
“This is your better idea?”
“Wait here,” he said, parking in front of the motel office. As Abby started to protest, he leaned toward her, cupping her chin in his palm. “Trust me, Abs. I know what I’m doing.”
He could see the struggle in her blue-eyed gaze, but her expression finally cleared and she gave a little nod.
He handed her the keys before he got out. “Any sign of trouble and you get the hell out of here, understand me? Just go. I’ve got the tracker, so they can’t find you that way.”
She nodded again, worry flooding back into her eyes.
He pocketed the GPS tracker as he got out of the Mustang and headed up the uneven concrete walk to the office. Inside he found a dark-haired man reading a bodybuilding magazine. He looked up with a hint of annoyance as Luke entered.
“I need a room for a couple of nights.” Luke pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket.
The desk clerk handed him a register. “Sign here.”
Luke knew better than to sign his own name. The people following him would smell that kind of trap a mile away. But for his purposes, he needed to pick a name that could, with a little research, be connected to him. He settled on Cal Trimble, the name of his old drill sergeant at Parris Island. Obscure, but not so obscure that people with resources couldn’t connect it to him with a little effort.
It served his purposes for the people who were following them to think they’d finally found them.
Paying the fee for two nights, he pocketed the room key the clerk handed him and headed back outside to a pay phone attached to the office facade. He put coins into the slot to make a call he knew might end up being traced, as well. That was okay, too. It wasn’t as if he didn’t make calls to his family now and then.
His sister answered, her voice groggy. “Yeah?”
“Hey, Hannah, it’s Luke.”
“Hey, stranger.” A smile tinted her sleepy voice, and he heard a low-pitched murmur on the other end of the line. “It’s Luke,” he heard Hannah say in response.
“I need to speak to your husband,” Luke said.
“You need to speak to Riley?” Hannah sounded puzzled. Luke couldn’t blame her; he’d yet to meet her husband, despite the fact that she’d been married to the former Wyoming cop for over a year. A couple of months earlier, she’d given birth to her first child, a little boy they’d named Cody.
He missed her like hell. He’d stayed away from home far too long, let too many milestones go unwitnessed. Hannah’s wedding. Jake’s whirlwind romance with his pretty wife, Mariah. Sam’s return to Gossamer Ridge after years away, and his recent marriage. His niece Cissy’s graduation.
He’d missed all of it because going home had seemed too big a risk. But wasn’t what he was doing now even more dangerous? Cordero or the black-clad thugs—what was the difference?
Was he doing the wrong thing again?
“Is something wrong?” Hannah asked.
He shook off his doubts. He needed help. He knew he could count on his family for backup. End of story. “Let me talk to Riley and then he can explain.”
“Okay.” He heard the reluctance in his sister’s voice as she passed the phone to her husband.
“Hi, Luke.” Riley Patterson’s voice was a low rumble tinged with a Wyoming twang. “Something up?”
A lot was up, but he didn’t have time to do anything but get to the point. “Do your parents still live in Yuma?”
“HAVE YOU EVEN met them before?” Abby resisted the urge to look out the window of the motel. She was pretty sure that whoever had been following them on I-8 had found them by now. Luke had assured her more than once that letting the bad guys find them was all part of his plan.
She wished she could feel quite so confident.
“No, I haven’t met them. I haven’t even met Riley.”
She looked away from the closed curtains. “You haven’t met your brother-in-law? Not even at the wedding?”
A flicker of pain crossed Luke’s face before his features settled into a carefully neutral expression. “I told you, I haven’t been home in ten years.”
Abby shook her head and turned back toward the window. Luke had no idea how lucky he was to have a big family to go home to. “What makes you sure you can trust him?”
“Hannah trusts him. She’s always been a good judge of character. A lot better than any of her hardheaded brothers.”
She smiled a little at the confidence in his voice. For a guy who’d been avoiding home for so long, he clearly loved his family dearly. What in his secret past could have kept him away from them for ten years?
Outside the motel room, a new sound interrupted the faint drone of traffic on the interstate—the low-pitched purr of a car engine. The sound died too suddenly for a passing car. Someone had entered the motel parking lot and shut off the engine. Was it the people they were waiting for?
Abby looked at Luke, her pulse quickening. His expression didn’t change as he crossed calmly to the tiny dressing room vanity and picked up the scuffed plastic ice bucket.
“Showtime,” he said, nodding toward the door near the back of the room. He’d already made quick work of the simple locks separating their room from the empty one next door. He’d stashed their bags and Stevie’s car seat by the front door of the adjoining suite, ready for their quick getaway.
Luke detoured to the bed and picked up Stevie. Abby held her breath, even though she knew Stevie was next to impossible to wake once he was dead asleep. He grumbled softly but didn’t awaken, and Abby exhaled.
Exchanging a quick look with her, Luke tucked Stevie close and joined her at the door to the adjoining room.
“What if they jump you outside?” Abby paused with her hand on the doorknob, fear freezing her insides.
“They won’t go after me when I have Stevie. These people may be ruthless, but they don’t really want to hurt a kid.”
She reached out to stroke her son’s silky hair. Fear crystallized in the pit of her belly. “You hope.”
“I think.” His expression softened, and he started to lift the hand holding the ice bucket. He let it drop again, a little wrinkle of frustration forming between his eyes.
Abby wondered what that aborted gesture meant. Had he been planning to touch her? She was alarmed by how much she craved his touch right now. How gladly she’d have walked into his arms had he spread them open to welcome her.
“I’ll protect him with my life, Abs. Nobody’s going to hurt him on my watch.”
Nobody was better prepared to follow through on the promise he’d just made. But she’d seen their pursuers in action. They were equally skilled, and unlike Luke, they had plenty of resources backing them up.
“I know you’re afraid,” Luke added. “But this is our best chance to go to ground awhile to get them off our trail.”
She met his steady gaze, struggling to draw strength from his confidence. “I’ll be waiting for your knock.”
He smiled briefly as she opened the door and entered the adjoining room. As she locked the door behind her, she heard Luke doing the same thing to the door on their side.
The people after them were as capable of picking locks as Luke—if they’d even bother with stealth. But two locked doors would at least give her a head start on escaping.
She resisted the urge to watch through the narrow gap in the curtains, not wanting to alert their pursuers to her presence in the second room. Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, counting every frantic heartbeat to pass the time while she waited for Luke’s signal.
LUKE STAYED CLOSE to the motel facade, keeping to the shadows, not because he thought that such a maneuver would help him evade detection but because he knew it wouldn’t. He was dealing with pros who apparently knew a lot about his background. If he didn’t at least try to avoid being seen, they’d know he was setting a trap.
