Anne Woodard - Dead Aim

He didn’t try that stunt again, but Maggie almost lost him more than once as he wove his way through the traffic and the warren of alleys and one-way streets that marked this part of town.

Eventually, he gave up trying to shake them and turned onto an old two-lane highway leading out of town.

“Where does this road go?” Rick was leaning forward, hands braced against the dashboard, his attention fixed on the truck ahead of them like a hungry wolf hot on the scent of his prey.

In the cramped confines of the car, he seemed a lot bigger than he had in the coffee shop, leaner and more dangerous.

“North,” she said. “Into the mountains.”

“Where all he needs to do to ditch you is find a really bad four-wheel-drive road.”

Maggie couldn’t stop the growl of disgust that rose in her throat. “Yeah. And around here, we’ve got plenty of those.”

Ahead, the truck speeded up to pass a car, then another truck. He slid back into his lane just before an oncoming car prevented Maggie from following him. Then taillights flared as the pickup’s driver braked suddenly, then turned off the highway and headed toward the mountains.

“I think you mentioned something about four-wheel-drive roads?” The Subaru bucked and bounced as Maggie followed the truck off the paved road and onto a rough, rocky dirt road.

The car’s shocks would never be the same. She figured they covered a couple miles of bone-jarring rough road before the pickup turned again and disappeared in the tangle of trees and shrubs that lined the road. Gravel spattered from under her tires as she stomped on the brakes, bringing the car to a juddering stop.

In the headlights’ glare, the rocky trail the pickup had taken looked like an impassable river of jagged rock that slashed through the trees to disappear in the dark beyond. Nothing short of a four-wheel-drive vehicle would make it up that road, and Maggie wasn’t sure she would attempt it even then.

Rick drew in a deep, slow breath, then let it out, obviously fighting for control. His eyes were like black holes in his rough-hewn face, unreadable and dangerous. For a college professor, he was a lot tougher than she’d expected.

A professor who studied grizzlies, she reminded herself, and wondered again at the difference between brother and sister.

“It’ll be easy enough to find him tomorrow,” he said. “There can’t be much up there. A cabin, maybe.”

“Or nothing at all,” Maggie said bleakly. “He may have headed up there knowing we couldn’t follow him…and that there was nothing to find up there to find when we did.”

She studied the trail the pickup had taken, her thoughts racing.

Why had Tina disappeared? No mere art student, certainly not one as devoted to her studies as Tina, just up and left in the middle of the semester. And who was the man who’d just vanished up this rocky trail where they couldn’t follow him? And why had he done it? He had to be involved in all this. She didn’t know how, but she was absolutely sure he was. Innocent bystanders didn’t lead others on wild car chases or duck onto a mountain trail like this in the middle of the night.

It took a moment for her to realize that Dornier was staring at her, his gaze boring into her with disconcerting force.

Maggie put the Subaru back into gear, suddenly uncomfortable under his assessing stare. “Might as well head back. I don’t intend to sit around here, waiting for him to come back down.”

“Give me a minute.” He was out of the car before she could respond.

Frowning, she set the brake, turned off the engine, then got out of the car, too. By the time she reached his side, he’d already piled four or five good-sized stones in a little cairn at the edge of the track.

“You’re coming back.”

He set another rock on the pile, then nodded. “First thing in the morning.”

“I’m coming with you.” This was the first break they’d had in weeks. She had to know who’d been driving that pickup, and why, and where he’d been going, and Rick Dornier was going to help her find the answers whether he liked it or not.

Rick straightened, hesitated, then said, “All right.”

“You’ll have to drive, though.”

He didn’t say anything, just stood there staring at her, his expression unreadable in the dark.

Maggie deliberately stared right back. “What?”

“Most coffee shop managers I know don’t drive like they were trying for the Indy 500.”

So much for being helpful. Or hoping he wouldn’t think to wonder.

“My mama always did say I got into the wrong business,” she said lightly. “I never quite got over the fact they wouldn’t buy me a dirt bike when I was eight, like I wanted.”

“I could see where that might irritate you.” He didn’t sound convinced.

Maggie bent and grabbed a rock at random, then dumped it on the small pile he’d built. “That should be good enough.”

She deliberately didn’t look at him as she dusted off her hands, then walked back to the driver’s side door.

“You coming?” she demanded, yanking open the door. “Or do you want to camp out here in the wilderness, waiting for whoever it is to come back down?” She slid behind the wheel, then stuck her head back out. “Might be a long, cold wait.”

She was almost sorry when he slid in beside her. He really did fill up the car more than she was used to.

“Home, James,” she said lightly. She didn’t even wait for him to buckle his seat belt before she swung the car around, then set off, more sedately this time, on the road back to town.

Anger bubbled in Rick, and fear, though he wasn’t yet willing to admit to the fear. An innocent man didn’t run from following cars. Not the way this fellow had.

Whatever Tina had gotten herself into, it wasn’t just a wild fling with a good-looking guy.

Because he couldn’t bear to follow that thought, he focused on the landmarks that reared up in the headlights alongside the road, then disappeared in the dark behind. A crooked mailbox here, a gated driveway there. It would all look different in the daylight, but he would recognize them, anyway, and know just how far he would have to go to find that little rock cairn he’d built. First thing tomorrow, he promised himself grimly. He prayed that there was something up there that would lead him to Tina and not be just a dead end where that pickup’s driver had gone to ground, waiting in safety until he could come back down and disappear, taking with him their only good link to finding Tina.

Only once they were back on the paved road did he stop watching for markers and focus on the silent woman beside him.

She was relaxed now, loose, only one hand on the wheel, but she was still pushing the speed limit, alert and confident. He had the feeling that she saw everything and everyone they passed, catalogued it, filed it away for future reference. Just as he did when he was in the backcountry, hunting for any sign of bear and what they’d been up to. She was city, he was country, but under the skin, they were a lot alike.

He wasn’t sure he much liked the thought.

He wasn’t sure he trusted her, either. Maggie Mann was not just a friendly, helpful coffee shop manager. Underneath that helpful persona she wore with such grace, there was an edge to her, an alertness, that reminded him of a couple of top-flight cops he knew.

And just what did that mean for Tina? Was Tina involved in something…illegal?

The thought shook him even as he ruthlessly shoved it aside.

Impossible. He might not know his sister as well as he would like—their mother had seen to that—but he did know that Tina was a strictly law-abiding, straight-and-narrow type of person. An art history major, not a drug dealer or thief or whatever else Maggie Mann might suspect. He was sure of it.