Hunted (15 page)

She stood, then staggered a little as the boat bumped the dock again. Reed was right behind her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, steadying her before she could sit down hard, or worse. After that, she didn’t make the mistake of trying to climb out unaided onto the dock, which was approximately two feet higher than the edge of the boat. With her hands fastened behind her, her balance wasn’t all it could be and she had no way to catch herself if she should start to fall.

For which she blamed Reed.

“Grab her arm, Holly,” Reed directed as he helped her out. Holly did, and a second later Caroline found herself standing on the dock. Reed stepped up after her, navigating the height differential with ease, the backpack slung over his shoulder.

“You want to cut my hands loose now?” she asked him. Her voice had regained its edge.

“In a minute. Come on, let’s go. They’ve got a night watchman. Supposedly.” He caught her elbow again, hurrying her past the double line of boats toward the end of the dock. Holly walked ahead of them. Moving fast, they stepped off the wooden dock into a gravel parking area. The night seemed darker here. Caroline realized that it was because of all the tall trees ringing the parking area. The sound of their feet crunching over the gravel was all but drowned out by the piping of the tree frogs. To one side was a small, one-story frame building. It was dark and looked deserted. As they strode past it, Caroline read the sign in the large front window: Best Lake Tours and Boat Rental.

“You rented an escape boat?” she asked Reed in a hushed tone. Although why she was being so carefully quiet she didn’t know: it all came down to her having trouble remembering whose side she was on.

“Place was closed when I got here. I borrowed it,” he said.

“Stole it, you mean.”

“I brought it back.” He shrugged. “If I’d been stupid enough to drive a car to the party, we’d be in a peck of trouble right now.”

“Speak for yourself.”

A car waited in the farthest, darkest corner of the parking lot. It was a small four-door, inconspicuous, several years old. The shadows had kept Caroline from seeing it until they were almost upon it, and they kept her from discerning the make, model, or even the exact color now. Dark, was all she could tell.

“Every cop for miles around is going to have a description of your car, the license plate number, the whole works,” Caroline pointed out as Reed pushed a button on the key ring to pop the door lock and the car beeped in response. The sound seemed abnormally loud in the quiet, and she shot an involuntary glance all around to gauge who could possibly have heard. Several smallish, warehouse-type buildings were nearby, and she thought that they must house more businesses. They were dark and seemingly deserted just like Lake Tours. Add in a number of parked vehicles and boats on trailers scattered around, and as far as she could tell the sum total of other humans within hearing distance was zilch. If there was a night watchman, she saw no sign of him. Considering what night it was, it was reasonable to assume that he might have been given some time off. Scoffing, she continued, “You won’t make it twenty miles.”

“What is he, stupid? That ain’t his car,” Holly said scornfully.

“You’re in the back, Holly.” His hand still curled around her elbow, Reed tugged Caroline around the vehicle, stopping when they reached the front passenger door. There he finally let her go.

“Whose car is it?” Caroline glanced up at Reed in time to catch, by the flash of the car’s interior light as Holly opened the door to slide into the backseat, him looking at one of the still safely distant helicopters that had just flown into view as it continued to search for them. His expression was revealing, and she realized that she had been mistaken earlier. The sudden harsh lines around his eyes and mouth revealed both exhaustion and desperation. She got the impression that he was running on nothing but fumes, even if he was determined not to show it. Sensing her gaze, he looked down at her, and his face changed instantly. He was once again the determined, competent man she had been dealing with all night.

“My neighbor’s. He’s out of town until the middle of January, and I’m keeping an eye on his place. That includes his car. Hold still.” He wrapped a hand around her wrist, and she felt the tug of downward pressure on the zip tie. A sawing sound gave her the answer: he was, she realized, cutting her free. A second later, her wrists were no longer bound, and she saw the glint of a knife as he folded it and stuck it into the front pocket of his pants. As her arms dropped to her sides, she felt the blood flowing back into her fingers and grimaced. Flexing them as they tingled and burned, she made a little sound of discomfort that came out sounding very much like a moan.

“Caroline.” Reed picked up her right hand and carried it upward. She glanced at him in surprise. With the car door closed again, it was very dark where they stood, but she could see the gleam of his eyes, see his long, strong fingers gripping the slender paleness of hers, see that he was lifting her hand toward his face. To check for bruising? To see for himself if there were any visible marks on her wrist?

Even if there were, he wasn’t going to be able to see them: it was just too dark.

“I really am sorry about this, cher,” he told her in a low voice as she watched him, narrow-eyed. For a moment she could feel the whisper of his breath feathering over her skin. Then he pressed his lips to the inside of her poor chafed wrist.

Her heart stuttered. Her breath caught.

The feel of his mouth against her delicate inner wrist made her toes curl. It made her blood heat, and her body tighten deep inside. His lips were warm, and firm, and as they pressed against her quickening pulse she felt the hot slide of his tongue over the sensitive spot. It never even occurred to her to pull her hand away. All she could do was watch, and feel, and try to remember to breathe. It was the briefest of kisses, scarcely more than a butterfly touch, but she felt scalded by it. Branded by it.

Even as he let her go and opened the car door for her, Caroline came to a grim realization: the sizzling attraction he’d held for her all those years ago was still there, and was every bit as potent. The only difference was, she was all grown up now and knew exactly what it was that she wanted from him.

Shaken, she slid into the front passenger seat without a word.

By the time he closed her door and got behind the wheel, she had her breathing under control. Her heart rate was back to normal. The hot surge of wanting had cooled.

But the knowledge of how that barely there kiss had made her feel remained. It made her careful not to look at him, in case he should be able to see something she didn’t want him to see in her eyes.

Or in case she should see something in his eyes that she was better off not knowing. Like, maybe, that he was crazy hot for her, too.

Sleeping with him is not happening. You are not that big a fool
.

Much as she tried not to, she remembered the way her body had quickened when he had frisked her. His hands moving over her had been impersonal, the reflexive actions of an experienced and careful cop, and yet they’d made her soften with pleasure. They’d made her aware of him as a man. They’d made her think that under other, better circumstances, she might have turned in his arms and—

Well. Bottom line was, the last thing she needed now was for him to suspect that she still had a thing for him.

Even if she did.

“So what’s the plan, Dick?” Holly asked as, with a brief reminder to his passengers to buckle their seat belts, Reed started the car. Lights off, tires crunching over the gravel, they pulled out of the lot. Caroline found herself actively welcoming Holly’s presence. Until she was able to get a firm grip on her common sense where Reed was concerned, Holly served as a useful barrier between them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Holly flick a look at her as he added, “When are we going to trade her for Ant?”

Both were questions that she would like to have answered. Realizing just how very tired she was as the plush cloth of the bucket seat allowed her to relax for the first time in hours, Caroline discreetly opened her flak vest for comfort’s sake as she looked at Reed, too.

“Once we get you squared away, I’ll deal with getting Ant back,” Reed replied. A downward flicker of his eyelashes seemed to track the progress of her zipper. But then his attention was back on the road, and she wasn’t sure whether or not he’d actually been watching her at all. The narrow country lane they were driving along veered away from the lake and turned from dirt into pavement after about half a mile. At that point, Reed turned on the headlights: he was right to do so, Caroline decided. The car was far easier to spot with the lights on, but there was no way to know who was inside unless they got pulled over. And if they were seen running without lights, well, the chase would be on. Although all she could now see of any ongoing search activity was the faint glow on the horizon that marked the mansion they were speeding away from, Caroline had no doubt that their continued freedom was a precarious thing. Her father would be breathing fire and deploying all available resources. Every law enforcement officer for miles around would be pulling out all the stops to find them. The mere thought of the manhunt that was being launched made her chest tighten with anxiety. If they were stopped, she was as sure as it was possible to be that Reed would resist arrest. And in the firefight that would almost certainly ensue, it was very likely that he would be killed. The mere thought of it made her sick, so she did her best to banish the horrifying image from her mind as Reed continued, “Then we’ll see what we can do to fix this mess.”

“What do you mean, get me squared away?” Holly sounded suspicious.

Reed flicked a look at him through the rearview mirror. “I’m sending you . . . out of town. Somewhere safe. I’ll catch up with you again when I get Ant.”

“What? No!” The protest was accompanied by the smacking of Holly’s palm against his door. The sharp sound might have made Caroline jump if she hadn’t been so tired. “Hell, no!”

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.” Reed’s voice was flat. “There’s no room for discussion. That’s what’s going to happen, so deal with it.”

Holly leaned forward so that his face was almost between the headrests, almost even with hers and Reed’s. He glared at Reed. “Hey, Dick, guess what? You don’t got no right to tell me what to do. I’m a grown-ass man, and—”

“Hey, grown-ass man, who just saved your ass?” The sideways glance Reed shot Holly in return glinted in a way that told Caroline that this was a battle Holly had no chance of winning. “You want to be responsible for getting you and your little brother out of this alive? You do, say the word, and I’ll be glad to stand back and let you have at it.”

“I ain’t running away. No damn way. It’s my fault Ant’s in this and—”

“The best thing you can do for Ant is let me get you the hell out of here,” Reed replied. “As long as they don’t have you, they won’t hurt Ant. He’s their insurance you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

About what, exactly? The question gnawed at Caroline. She narrowed her eyes at the pair of them, but didn’t bother to ask. She knew there wouldn’t be an answer. And she was growing more tired by the second. Way too tired to even try to think through the possibilities.

Holly didn’t reply. The sudden droop to his eyelids and the sullen tightening of his mouth told Caroline that he knew when he was defeated. His thwarted expression reminded her of how young he really was.

“So how you gonna
send
me somewhere?” he asked after a minute. “You mean, drive me there?”

“By now the BOLO will be everywhere. They’ll be patrolling the expressways,” Caroline reminded Reed, voicing the warning simply because she couldn’t help herself.

“I’m going to get you there,” Reed told Holly. “Never mind how.”

“I got a right to know what the plan is,” Holly protested. “Especially since it involves me. Ain’t nobody else around here getting sent
out of town,
and—”

“Would you stop going on about your rights?” Reed gave Holly an exasperated look through the mirror. “Caroline’s going back, remember? When I trade her for Ant, I don’t want her to be able to tell anybody where you went. Or how you got there. Or who might have helped you get there.”

“Oh,” Holly said, abashed.

“Yeah,
oh
.” Reed was starting to sound a little testy. Like her, Caroline reflected, he had to be dead tired.

“Hey,” Caroline said. She almost added, “I can keep my mouth shut.” Then she remembered:
I’m not on their side
.

I wouldn’t tell me anything, either.

“Never mind,” she added lamely.

They were nearing an intersection, Caroline saw as the car slowed. A single stoplight dangling from an overhead wire showed red. The road they were going to be turning onto was a four-lane highway. It was well lit but deserted, and the sight of it raised Caroline’s anxiety level all over again.

It was just the kind of road on which they could expect to encounter a patrol car.

Glancing quickly at Reed, she reminded herself that he would know that as surely as she did, then reminded herself again that she was not on their side, and resolutely kept her mouth shut.

An expressway overpass with a cloverleaf of entry and exit ramps and, positioned to take advantage of them, a cluster of fast food restaurants, gas stations, and a truck stop, were located about half a mile up the highway. From their glowing lights, at least a couple of the establishments seemed to be open. She had just noticed them when Reed pulled onto the shoulder maybe a hundred feet short of the red light and stopped the car.

“What’s up?” Sounding nervous, Holly asked the question that rose to Caroline’s mind, too.

Reed’s hands tightened around the wheel as he looked at Caroline. “I can’t have you seeing where Holly goes. Which means I have a choice: I can handcuff you to a tree over there in that little wooded area and leave you all by yourself in the dark until I get back; I can blindfold you, tie you up, and throw something over you in the backseat and hope that nobody notices you; or I can put you in the trunk.”