felt neither amused nor flippant. Instead, she felt sobered and respectful of her own reaction to what they had just let happen between them. And joyful, yes, that most intensely, to know that this man for whom she could no longer deny her feelings wanted her. Wanted her.
Her own reply, should she have been able to find one, lost its opportunity when the truck turned in at the factory entrance. The gate was closed. Someone got out of the passenger door, a very tall man it appeared from here, and opened it. The truck pulled through, and he closed it again, then climbed back in.
“Let’s get down,” Jack said and stretched out on his belly.
Annie did the same, twigs snapping beneath her and what felt like an acorn pressing into her thigh.
They watched, silent now, while the truck made a U-turn and then backed up, the loud beep-beep of Reverse ceasing when it eased to a stop against the thick black bumpers beneath one of the loading-dock doors.
Both men got out. One pointed something at the door—a remote control, maybe?—and it opened.
“Do you know who they are?” Annie whispered.
“I can’t get a clear look at their faces. They look familiar to you?”
“Not yet.”
A minute or two ticked by. One of the men hoisted himself onto the dock entrance, disappeared inside, and then lights flared on. He appeared again, saying something to the man still standing beside the truck. From this distance, they couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the light struck his face, and Annie gasped.
“Early Gunter,” Jack whispered.
“But he’s your security guard. Maybe they’re here for something else.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But what?”
Good question. It was after ten o’clock on a weeknight, and they’d just driven in here with an unmarked moving-van-type truck. It was hard not to draw conclusions. “I know Early well. And his family, too.”
Jack sighed, that alone conveying his dismay. “You know, I was really hoping I was wrong on this.”
“Me, too. In fact, I was sure you would be. But I would never have believed Early capable of stealing.”
For the next forty-five minutes, they remained where they were, stretched out flat on the ground, watching while Early and the other man, whom they had not been able to identify, carried product out of the warehouse and loaded it onto the truck. When they’d finished, they turned off the lights, closed the loading-dock door, jumped back inside the cab and roared off.
“We’ve got to see where they’re going with that,” Jack said.
“You mean follow them?”
“Might not get another chance,” he said.
As soon as they had closed the gate and started pulling away, he got to his feet and helped Annie up beside him. “Come on,” he said. “You game?”
“Sure,” she said and then remembered the return trip back through the woods and the snakes that were all surely in hibernation by now.
“Pony Express is still in service,” he said, clearly reading her mind.
She held up a hand. “No, no, really. A little desensitization will be good for me.”
“Sure you want to start your desensitizing tonight?”
“No time like the present.”
She wasn’t fooling him. She could see it on his face, plain and clear. He knew exactly why she wasn’t hoisting herself onto his back again. That was okay, though. There were some things imminently more dangerous to a girl’s well-being than snakes.
* * *
THEY FOLLOWED THE TRUCK from a discreet distance for an hour and a half, down Route 220 South with its winding curves, across the Virginia border and into North Carolina.
Annie had made the trip through the woods like a hurdler in training, her feet so high off the ground her knees nearly hit chin level. Jack had led the way, and she was grateful for the simple fact that he hadn’t looked back to see how ridiculous she looked.
Now his expression grew more grim with every passing mile. Annie felt the direness of the situation, too; this was a man she knew, whose family she knew, chatted with in the post office, the grocery store. How could he drain the lifeblood from the company that had provided him with a job for so many years?
“They’re going to the first warehouse we went to, aren’t they?”
“Looks that way.” Jack’s response sounded as if it had been dipped in concrete.
“Are you going to confront them?”
He shook his head. “No point in that. I’d like to get some pictures.”
“What about calling the police?”
“I don’t want to do that just yet.”
“But they could catch them in the