Page 14 of Sting
“Hours?”
When he still didn’t respond, she said, “Actually, it doesn’t matter. The police will have quickly deduced that you murdered that man in cold blood and kidnapped me.”
Stone silence.
“By now, they’ll have launched a full-scale search. Kidnapping is a federal crime. So not only the local authorities but the FBI will be in on the manhunt, and they won’t give up until they find me. And they will.”
“I give them three days.”
Since he hadn’t responded to anything else, she was momentarily taken aback to hear his voice again and even more alarmed when she realized that he had gradually braked. As the car slowed, he steered it into a right turn.
Once they were off the highway, the view through the car window changed. Their headlights danced crazily across overlapping treetops that obscured the view of open sky. For fifty yards or so, rocks knocked against the undercarriage as the car jounced over deep potholes.
“Three days minimum,” he said. “By that time, I’ll be back in Mexico, sipping cerveza and shopping fishing boats.”
“What about me?”
He stopped the car, shifted it into Park, and turned to address her through the space between the seats. “You won’t be going to Mexico.”
That blunt declaration caused another surge of gorge in her throat.
He cut the engine, switched off the headlights, and got out. The dome light came on when he opened the driver’s door. Jordie blinked against the sudden glare that shone directly down on her.
He opened the back door and ducked his head inside. Again she felt the bite of his razor-sharp eyes. The overhead light cast harsh shadows on his face, emphasizing prominent cheekbones and unsmiling lips.
Without saying anything, he closed his fingers around her left ankle. At his touch, she yanked her knees up, freeing her feet from his grasp, and then tried to drive them into his face. He jerked his head back just in time. Her heel barely clipped his chin.
She tried again. He stayed just out of reach. On her third attempt, his hand shot out, grabbed her ankle, and roughly pulled her feet against his chest, where he kept them in place with one hand while, with the other, he picked one of her sandals from off the floorboard and worked her foot into it. He secured the tiny buckle with the same detachment with which he’d fired a pistol into the back of his cohort’s head.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
That cold gaze lifted to meet hers. “Not inside the car.”
When both her sandals were on, he backed out of the door and shut it. He went around to the other side and opened the door behind her head. Reaching in, he cupped her underarms and hauled her out.
As soon as he set her on her feet, he turned her to face him. “Don’t try any more dumb stunts like trying to kick me.”
“Go to hell.”
As though she hadn’t spoken, he said, “I’m curious. If you had gotten that door open with your toes, what were you going to do? Try to worm your way through it without me noticing? Was that your plan?”
She didn’t honor him with a reply, only glared up at him.
“And say you had cleared the door, what then, Jordie?”
Her knees nearly buckled when he spoke her name.
Of course, if he had taken her purse when he kidnapped her, he would have read her name on her driver’s license and credit card. Right?
Wrong. Because both bore her full legal name, not the familiar nickname Jordie.
He knew her.
Most despairing, however, was that it came as no real surprise that he’d called her by name. When she saw the grim pair striding toward her on the parking lot, she’d realized instantly what their purpose was and who had sent them.
The only thing she didn’t know was Why now?
“You didn’t think it through too well,” he said, continuing on that thread. “We were going over seventy miles an hour. If you’d opened that door, it would have sounded like a wind tunnel.
