Rebecca York: Betrayed

She didn’t finish the thought. Mr. Big was speaking to her again.

“We’re going to take back roads to Columbia. That way I can tell if anyone’s following you.”

“Columbia?”

“Yes, to another industrial park.”

“And my brother will be there.”

“If you do what you’re supposed to. Get going. I’ll give you directions as you drive. And, of course, I’ll know where you are at all times.”

Feeling sick, she did as he directed. As she drove down the road, thunder rumbled and a fork of lightning split the sky in front of her like a warning sign.

In the next moment, rain began to pound down on the car.

“Shit!” In the other car, Shane shouted out his frustration. “We’ve lost the sound. We can’t hear what he’s saying to her.”

“We can still track her,” Max said.

“We hope.”

Max fiddled with some dials on his equipment, and Shane could tell from his actions that he wasn’t having any success.

“What’s wrong?” Shane growled.

“The storm is interfering with the tracker we had her swallow. I don’t know…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence.

“Shit.” Shane repeated his earlier assessment. “I thought that thing might not work.”

“It’s the storm. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll get her back.”

Shane drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, praying that Max could work it out, because if he didn’t, Shane wasn’t sure he could keep his sanity.

He would lose his mind if anything happened to her.

He’d been going through the motions of living until he’d met her. And even when he’d told himself he didn’t trust her, he knew he was forming an attachment to her.

He didn’t want to go back to the life where it was a struggle to heave himself out of bed and get through every day.

He wanted to shout in frustration. He wanted to pray aloud. He wanted to start driving and hope that he was going in the right direction and that when they found her, they’d be close enough to save her. But he did none of those things because he was in the car with his two friends, and he wasn’t going to let them see that he was skating on the edge of his emotions.

Yeah, who was he fooling? He was sure they knew what he was suffering, but at least he could hang on to his illusions.

“What have you got?” he said to Max, trying to keep his voice even.

“Nothing yet.”

He didn’t bother cursing again. It wasn’t going to do any good.

He watched rain sheet down the windshield and prayed that the storm would pass.

Finally, there was an electronic beeping from the machine in Max’s lap.

“I got her,” he said.

“Where is she?”

“On back roads. I guess to make it easy to see if anyone’s following.”

“Where’s she going?”

Max was silent for several moments. “If I had to guess, I’d say Ellicott City or Columbia. But the rendezvous point could be a vacant farm out in the country, for all we know.”

“That’s just great.”

“We can circle around, then head for the Columbia-Ellicott City area and see if the signal gets stronger.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We can head into the backcountry.”

Elena hunched forward, struggling to see where she was going with water pouring down on her windshield. Her headlights cut through the steady rain, making the road in front of her murky as the storm unleashed its worst. She didn’t know this part of Maryland, and she didn’t like driving these narrow roads in a downpour, but she had no choice.

Max had told her that the tracker on her car was only part of their plan to follow her. The tracker on her leg had been a decoy that the men expected Mr. Big to find and make her throw away. That had happened as predicted. But before she’d left the hotel, she’d swallowed a capsule with another tracker inside. They still should be able to follow her—if the thing was working correctly. She’d been able to tell from Max’s face that he wasn’t one hundred percent certain that it was going to work. But he had acted confident, and she had to be, too.

She drove on through the downpour. It had been an eternity since she’d heard from Mr. Big. Had she lost the connection in the storm? If she had, then what?

Her tension mounted. With no other option, she kept driving, praying that she would hear from the man who was holding her brother. Finally, the phone next to her crackled.

“A road is coming in on the right. Take it.”

She dragged in a breath and let it out before answering, “Okay.”

“Don’t have an accident in the rain,” Mr. Big said, his voice cheerful, and she knew he was confident that he had total control of this situation. Hopefully, he was dead wrong.

“I won’t,” she answered, thinking that he probably was hoping she’d crash, and then he wouldn’t have to trade anything for the SIM card.

Shane drove as fast as he could through the pelting rain and darkness, feeling sick as he calculated his chances of getting Elena out of this alive.

“Take it easy,” Max murmured as the car skidded on the wet pavement and Shane fought to keep control. “If we crash, you’re not going to be any good to her.”

“I know that,” Shane snapped and slowed down a few miles per hour.

“We’re getting closer to her,” Max said.

“Thank God.”

“We’re going faster than she is. We should be able to catch up.”

“Well, not entirely,” Shane cautioned. “We don’t want anyone to think we picked up her trail.”

In the backseat, Jack was consulting computer maps while Max manned the tracker up front.

“I think she’s headed for another industrial park,” Jack said.

“Okay, good. That’s better than an isolated farmhouse where we’d have to get out and sneak through the fields.”

Max made a sound of agreement, then caught his breath.

“What?”

“She’s stopped abruptly. Either she’s there or she had an accident.”

“How fast can we get to her?”

“If you don’t crash, in ten minutes.”

Shane gripped the wheel, knowing that ten minutes could mean the difference between life and death.

Elena pressed on the brake, the car fishtailing on the slick road surface. Ahead of her she could see water flowing across the pavement.

“There’s a flood,” she said aloud.

“What are you talking about?” the man on the other end of the line snapped.

“Water is flowing across the road.”

“Go through it.”

“It looks like it’s too deep.”

She was greeted with a string of curses, then “Just a minute.”

She waited with her heart pounding.

“Back up,” he snarled. “Go to the last intersection. Take Owen Mills Road.”

“Okay.”

She looked behind her and saw that nobody else was dumb enough to be out in this storm.

Turning the wheel, she tried to make a U-turn, but the road wasn’t wide enough for her to do it and stay on the blacktop. Her right front tire crunched onto the wet gravel shoulder. There must be a thin layer hiding mud below because the tire sank in, and she had to back up, the wheel grinding as she fought to gain the pavement again.

Shane had pulled to the side of the road as he waited for Max to tell him which way to go.

“Wait a minute, she’s moving again.”

“Still heading in the same direction?”

“She’s backtracking, but I think the ultimate destination is going to be the same. She must have hit a spot where she couldn’t get through.”

“You guess,” Shane snapped, then said, “I’m sorry. I’m on edge.”