curves like a professional race car driver. He would’ve expected no less from her. “Along with my laptop. And all your things.”
“I don’t suppose you have an extra pair of jeans in here, in my size?”
“Best I can do is pajama pants with a drawstring belt,” she answered. “They’re red. Plaid.”
Of course they were. Thomas found them easily. They were flannel, but they were thin. Still, anything was better than sitting here bare-assed. Assuming he could get them up his XL legs.
“I stole them from Ted,” she told him as if reading his mind. “And he’s tall and jacked, too, so they should fit. There’s also a pair of slipper socks in there. They’re pink. And fuzzy. Your feet must be freezing. And God, your head... Thomas, you’re still bleeding.”
Shit, yeah, he still was. The tee he’d been using as a towel was ruined. He used it to dry off his feet. “Sorry. I’ll try my best not to get any blood on your sweatshirt, but—”
“I don’t care about my sweatshirt,” she told him hotly. “I care about your head. Where they hit you. How bad is it? Do we need to find a hospital?”
She was serious—like it was merely a matter of making the choice to stop and get medical aid. Nah, Princess, let’s stop at the next Starbucks, instead. It’s nothin’ a good latte won’t fix... But he didn’t say that, because it suddenly occurred to him...
“Are you okay?” he asked, even as he reached up, wincing as he touched the place on his head where he’d been hit. There was a lump, and it was definitely sore and bruised, but as far as he could tell the brunt of the bleeding was from a relatively superficial scrape. “They hurt you?”
Tasha shook her head.
“You lying?” he asked as he pulled on the red plaid pants, tying the drawstring around his waist, then finally getting the hoodie up and over his head. “Cause I’d like you to put a little voice to that no.”
“No,” she said, not just giving him that, but putting her words into a full sentence, too. “They did not hurt me. Nor did they tell me what they wanted or why they... you know...”
“How exactly did you get away?” he asked, because this was still not making any sense to him. He found her slippers—neon and hard to miss, fuzzy was an understatement—and pulled them on, too. They were vaguely reminiscent of tube socks, with no real heel, so one size truly did fit all.
“I pretended I was helpless,” she told him. “And they believed it. They left me in the car—in the back. They also left the keys in the ignition, so...”
Damn, that did not make sense. Go to all that trouble to grab Tasha—a roadblock, all those men, all those weapons—and then just leave her in the car, with the keys right there, no less...?
Unless...
“Stop the car,” Thomas ordered.
“What?” She looked at him in disbelief. “No!”
“Stop,” Thomas said. “The car.”
Chapter Five
“They let you go,” Thomas told Tasha grimly from the passenger seat of the SUV. “I need you to pull over. Now.”
“They didn’t let me go,” she argued, but as the words came out of her mouth, she realized she didn’t quite believe them herself. Leaving the keys in the ignition like that? Guard standing with his back to her, practically singing La la la, I can’t see you...?
“No one’s following you. Why? Can’t answer that, can you?”
“They’re... busy...?” Okay, now she just sounded flat-out stupid.
“Pull. Over,” Thomas insisted, pointing toward one of the runaway truck ramps that they’d been passing every now and then, meant for trucks heading down the mountain. “There.” They, however, were still steadily climbing upwards. Her ears popped again as if in emphasis. “Tasha, do it. Now.”
She took her foot off the accelerator as she released her exasperation through her clenched teeth. “If they catch us because we stop—” Oh, shit! As she tapped the brake pedal, there was no resistance and her foot went right to the floor. “The brakes are out! Thomas, hold on.”
“Down shift,” he told her, leaning toward her and doing the exact opposite of hold on, reaching for the gear shift, his hand over hers as she jammed it into second and then first gear.
They weren’t moving that fast. They’d been heading uphill, and lifting her foot off the gas had already slowed them down. And now the engine worked to slow them even more. But momentum kept the big SUV’s tires rolling,