use her phone to call for help, assuming the problem with her cell service would eventually be fixed.
But that plan went out the window—literally—when Black Boots and Onion Breath and a man with a hat that had ear flaps shoved her back into the SUV, and did a hard youie in the road, driving back down the mountain with the truck and the van right behind them.
Onion was driving as Ear Flaps helped Boots rifle through both Tasha’s suitcase and her shoulder bag. It didn’t take long for them to find her phone—and throw it from the car window as they took a particularly perilous curve.
There was no way it had survived its crash course straight down the mountain, but Tasha tried to make note of their location, just the same.
Big trees. Big cliff. Big curve in the road. Beat up guard rail with a dent and a pattern of rust that looked a little bit like a cow.
But they kept driving, and she tried—even while she kept up the weeping-girl facade—to mark the miles by silently counting, in hopes that she could use that information to help find Thomas, after she was rescued.
I promise, I’ll find you...
Thomas had said that to her, but she was the one who wasn’t unconscious, and this time she truly wasn’t a helpless little girl. She was the one who would find him.
She now lifted her head—and yes, the men who’d abducted her had, indeed, left her alone in the SUV. It was parked near a ramshackle cabin—pointing back out toward the main road, as if ready to make a quick escape if needed.
Someone had done something to the vehicle when they’d first arrived, opening the front hood of the SUV, and then slamming it shut—rocking the big car.
She’d curled there, still crying—but listening, hard, as she’d waited to be pulled out and dragged into that cabin. But Onion never came back to get her. Nor Ear Flaps. Nor Boots.
She was alone there, on that big back seat, as minutes continued to tick down.
There was a man standing guard about ten feet from the SUV. He was holding one of those big, nasty military assault rifles. The kind that belonged in a war zone, that people used to murder children in classrooms and people in movie theaters. But he was the only man out there—the only one, at least as far as she could see—and his back was to her as he watched the road.
She lifted her head to look again—and he still didn’t move.
Had it worked? Had she really convinced them she was helpless and useless and so absolutely not a threat that they’d left her essentially unattended?
Although, true, gun-man would hear if she opened the car door. There was no way to do that silently—or was there? She was for damn sure going to try.
But then, when she peeked up again, she realized with a jolt of shock that Onion had left the keys in the SUV.
They were right there. Right there, dangling from the ignition.
She peeked up and around at the back of the guard’s head, at the cabin, at the otherwise deserted yard, back at those keys...
And she launched herself up and over and into the driver’s seat, where she turned the key and jammed the SUV into gear and peeled out of the driveway, and roared back up the mountain, toward the resort—and Thomas.
A car was approaching.
Thomas heard it coming before he saw it—many twists and turns much further down the winding mountain road—still far enough away for him to be unable to tell the make or color.
It was alone—no vehicles behind it that he could see, at least—and it was moving fast, engine straining as it headed up toward him.
He had to make a choice. Hide, or step into the road to try to flag down the driver.
He was naked, he was bloody, he was in the middle of freaking nowhere, Maine, and oh yeah, he was Black, so hide it was gonna have to be.
But he was going to hide more with stillness than actual cover, using the power of light and shadow and his reconnaissance training to blend into the brush that was close to the edge of the tarmac. He parked himself toward the end of a stretch of relatively straight road where he’d have a good long look at the approaching vehicle—and as much of the driver and passengers that he could manage to see through the rain-sparkled windshield, considering light and shadow would