Ransom (The Unchained Omegaverse #1) - Callie Rhodes Page 0,56

passenger door and dumped her in, slamming it shut before she had a chance to catch her breath.

So much for that alpha courtesy she’d been praising.

Seconds later, they were picking up speed on the rough terrain. For the next twenty spine-rattling minutes Ransom pushed the jeep to its limits, taking a route that must have been meant to throw off Fulmer’s trackers, one that apparently entailed hitting every rock and rut in their path.

When they were finally far enough away Gretchen she could no longer see the river valley in the mirror outside her window, she finally allowed herself to relax a little. Conversation would have helped her calm down even more, but the set of Ransom’s jaw made it clear he wasn’t in the mood for talking.

Unfortunately, the silence left Gretchen’s mind free to spin in anxious circles.

The first aid kit was a lucky find, but Ransom really needed to be seen by a doctor. But how the hell was Gretchen supposed to pull that off? She couldn’t risk anyone spotting an alpha outside the Boundarylands.

By now the story of the explosion would be all over the news, though Gretchen had no doubt that Fulmer was doing his best to either cover it up or spin it to his advantage. At any moment, more troops could come screaming down the highway behind them. Or they might be setting up barricades ten miles down the road. She half expected to hear the roar of chopper blades overhead.

And she didn’t even know where they were headed. She’d ask Ransom, but honestly, she was afraid of the answer.

Wherever it was, they wouldn’t be safe, not while she still needed to be in contact with the outside world. Fulmer had found them once, and she was willing to bet he was waiting to do it again.

“I need to check my email to see if anyone’s responded to my inquiries,” she said.

Ransom glanced over at her. “Is it safe?”

“No,” she said honestly. “But it’s better for me to do it now, near where Fulmer already tracked us, than wherever we go next.”

Gretchen held her breath and turned on the phone, amazed to find she had two bars of coverage out here in the middle of nowhere. Her thumbs moving like lightning, and she was into her email in seconds.

Eleven new messages. Heart pounding, she scanned the first, from an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately…”

Gretchen had accumulated enough rejections before she got the Journal job that she could spot one in the first few words. The majority of the ones she used to get were from editors who claimed to have too many female contributors already.

These were different.

“Eleven rejections. The Times is the only outlet that hasn’t responded yet.”

“Did they say why?” Ransom asked after a second, his tone softening.

“Most didn’t give a reason,” she said woodenly. “One of them said they’d consider doing an interview after the story broke elsewhere. And two editors told me never to contact them again.” She sighed. “At least the editor at the Houston Chronicle was honest—he said he couldn’t risk being the first one to print the story.”

“Fulmer got to them.”

“It looks that way,” Gretchen admitted. That knowledge sat like a stone in her gut. She’d been prepared to risk her job, her reputation, even her life to get the truth out—but it had never occurred to her that no one would be willing to print it.

“What about the New York Times?”

She shrugged. “They’ve got the biggest circulation in the country, so—”

“—so they probably get a lot more submissions.”

True, but they also employed a huge staff to go through them. Nonetheless, a tiny spark of hope bloomed in Gretchen’s chest. “They have come under a lot of fire for being critical of the current administration. So far they’ve defended every story. Maybe…I guess it’s possible that they’re still thinking my piece over.”

“Then there’s hope,” Ransom said, putting a hand on her knee. It was probably meant to be reassuring, but it was also extremely distracting.

“There is,” she agreed. A thin sliver, but hope all the same. “The only trouble is I’ll have to turn on my phone again to check for their response. Which means we risk Fulmer finding us again.”

Ransom thought about that.

“Yes. But this time we’ll be ready for him.”

In less than an hour, the terrain had changed from jagged mountains to gently rolling hills the bright green of recent rains. Ransom left the road again and headed into them