Meghan Carver - Under Duress

“Is it safe to go through the drive-through?” She turned her gaze to the rearview mirror, fighting back the urge to rake her hand through her hair.

Reid scanned the streets surrounding the restaurant. “I think it’ll be fine. While we eat, we can figure out what to do next.”

Samantha turned toward the squawk box and ordered two adult meals and a kid’s meal plus a milk shake. The shake would be a treat for Lily, something to keep her mind off their current predicament, and maybe Samantha could get a few sips of chocolate, as well. It wouldn’t be as calming as solid dark chocolate melting on her tongue, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

A few minutes later, they sat in the back of the parking lot, hidden behind the brick Dumpster enclosure, munching burgers and savoring the hot, salty aroma of French fries. Lily rummaged through the colorful sack her meal had come in and extracted the clear plastic bag that contained the prize. She ripped it open and popped a pair of sunglasses with rectangular frames onto her nose.

With darkness encroaching, Samantha could just barely make out the storm clouds that still hovered in the sky. “Lily, it’s too dark for sunglasses. Why don’t you put those away until tomorrow?”

“These aren’t just sunglasses, Sam.” She turned away from them to look out her side window. “There’s a little mirror that lets me see what’s behind me. For spying. Cool, huh?”

Yeah, supercool. Lily would be playing spy now for the next month and a half. Reid was apparently nonplussed as he took another big bite of his hamburger.

Lily giggled. “You have a bit of mayonnaise on your chin, Mr. Palmer. I can see it in my spy mirror.”

“Since we’re getting to know each other so well, you might as well call me Reid.” Reid swiped at his face with a napkin. “And thanks for the heads-up.” He held out his fist, and Lily bumped it with her own.

“No, no. There’s no call for that.” The last thing Samantha needed was for Lily to get chummy with a hothead like Reid Palmer. But would a hothead act like that with a ten-year-old, joking and not caring about mayo on his face? She sipped her drink, the coolness averting her attention from Reid and back to the decisions at hand. “Thank you so much for your assistance, Reid. You’ve been most helpful. Can we go home now?”

FIVE

“Home? Not advisable.” Reid opened his backseat door. “And I think I better drive.”

Samantha puffed hair out of her face, but she opened the driver’s-side door and stalked around the front of the Jeep to climb into the front passenger seat. “If we can’t go home, then where?”

“Not only would it be inappropriate to invite you to my place, but I don’t even have a place. There were a couple of leads for apartments to rent from the newspaper I was going to check out this afternoon, but I arrived in town a little later than I wanted, and then an unfortunate accident took over the rest of my day. It’s too late now to go knocking on a stranger’s door.” He pointed a stare at her. “What about your family? Parents? Siblings?”

He had dodged her questions to some extent so far. After all, who wanted to lay out all their sordid past for someone else’s evaluation? He had worked with the officers at HHPD for several years, and they didn’t even know the reason he rarely saw his father or how his mother had died. But with what he remembered and what he had seen tonight of the tenacious Samantha Callahan, he could be sure that if he spent much more time with her, there would be further interrogation.

She tore at a fingernail. “Out of town. Or unavailable.”

He clicked his seat belt into place, the clacking of metal in the catch echoing throughout the silence of the Jeep. Whoever had come up with the statistic that women said twelve thousand words a day compared to men’s five thousand obviously hadn’t met Samantha. Her quietness should have been comfortable for him, yet it was oddly unnerving. He shifted in his seat, seeking a comfortable position. None was to be found.

Perhaps another tactic would elicit some helpful information. “We ought, also, to be thinking of who might be trying to kidnap you and Lily. That could help us put an end to being on the run. Does he want just Lily or both of you?”

“From what I saw at the church and the way he looked at me, I would guess he wants us both. If he wanted just Lily, couldn’t he have grabbed her and stashed her away before I got there?”

“Sounds logical. But that doesn’t necessarily make the situation any better.”

Samantha turned in her seat, a softening shadowing her eyes. “Lily, honey, how’s your arm? Where that guy grabbed you?”

Lily slurped on the shake, drawing out the last few drops. “It’s all right, I guess. No biggie. But I sure don’t want that to happen again.”

“We’re going to do our best to keep it from happening again.”

We? Did that mean Samantha was going to stick around and let him help her? “It seems clear that whoever this is doesn’t want you dead. You said he shot out your back windshield. If he’s any good with a weapon, and we should assume that he is for our own safety, he could have hit either of you. But he didn’t.”

“That was my conclusion, as well.” She paused. “Of course, now we’re here with you, and he may not care about killing you.”

“Yes.” That disturbing thought had worried its way into the forefront of his thinking, and he didn’t care to dwell on that probability.

“Kill you?” Lily asked from the backseat. “Seriously?”

Reid pivoted to meet her wide eyes. “We just need to be careful.” No sense in getting the girl more scared that she probably already was. “Careful is always good.”

“You never did tell me if you had a gun.” That girl was a smarty-pants who didn’t miss a thing.

“Well—” he aimed his attention back to Samantha “—any ideas who could be behind this? You don’t recognize the guy who tried to grab you, so it’s possible he’s a hired thug. Is there any event or relationship from your past or present that could drive someone to this kind of action?”

Samantha pinched her lips, deep in thought. Several moments later, she shook her head. “No idea whatsoever.”

“What about ransom?”

Lily poked her face in between the front seats. “What’s ransom?”

“It means that someone could want to hold you or Samantha as their captive until you or someone pays them a certain amount of money. Usually a large, almost exorbitant, amount.”

“Exorbitant? I like that word, Mr. Palmer. Does it mean an amount that’s really, really big?”

This girl just got better and better. He hadn’t gone through law school learning to question and defend and write briefs without acquiring some appreciation for word choice. “You got it.”

Samantha pointed a stare at him that nearly pushed him out the door. Okay, he got the message. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to get friendly with the kid. “As interesting as your ransom idea is, Reid—” she could have stabbed him with the force of her enunciation “—I just can’t see it. Lily has a trust from her father’s death, but it’s not a large amount by any stretch of the imagination. I have some savings, but nothing significant. There are certainly bigger and wealthier targets. In fact, I shouldn’t even use the word wealthier in that sentence. That implies that I or Lily have some wealth to begin with. It’s funny how so many people think that lawyers are rich. But not all of us are.”

Reid calculated what was in his checking and savings as well as what was in his wallet, and he had to agree. “What about family members who could be forced to pay a ransom amount?”

“My sister and I share the practice, so I know she wouldn’t have much more than me. When my father left my mother, he nearly left her destitute. She wouldn’t have anything to pay.”