Meghan Carver - Under Duress

Before he had the door half-open, the girl whined again from the backseat. “I’m hungry, Sam. Can’t I run inside and get a bag of chips and a pop? Maybe some of those little chocolate cupcakes or a candy bar? You know, something to tide me over until we get wherever we’re going.” Her voice took on a wheedling tenor. “I can get something for you, too.”

Reid shook his head. What a study in the art of cajoling. He turned to see Samantha shaking her head no and reaching through the front seats to pat Lily’s hand. “We’ll get something soon, I promise. But Mr. Palmer is right. We don’t want to take any chances. We don’t know that we’re out of danger.”

Irritation at the predicament of an innocent woman and her ward bubbled up from a place deep within that he kept buried. A burial ground that concealed a childhood at the hands of an angry father, the very reason he had pursued a career in law enforcement so many years ago. There was no way he would allow himself to call that emotion what it truly was, even if he was fighting the urge to slam his fist into the dashboard. And what about that salvation that had swept over him just in time to save him from the dire consequences of himself? A verse bubbled up as he prayed, again, for peace and calm. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

He glanced around the pumps one more time and slammed his door shut. What was this ride, though, if it wasn’t a favor? A rescue, even? Samantha probably thought he deserved that callous treatment. People with flawless pasts and perfect lives often looked down their noses at those who had had to fight for every inch of progress. And so far as he could tell, Samantha Callahan had lived a perfect life.

A few long strides carried him across the stretch of gas station asphalt as he pinched the front of his shirt to fan away the summer heat. Inside the convenience store, he prepaid twenty bucks. It would have to do for now, at least until he figured out what to do with his ride-along.

* * *

Samantha hissed out a sigh and turned in her seat, peeking around the headrest but making sure she was hidden behind it. Reid was gone for a few moments, and then he strode back to the pump without even a glance in her direction. A scowl resided on his face. He was probably grouchy, irritated to have the two of them in his vehicle without a place to go. Whatever his plans had been, they hadn’t included Samantha and Lily.

She picked at a fingernail. She probably had come across to him as just as grouchy. She usually did to people who knew her twin. Mallory, the forever optimist, the sweet, sunshine-and-daisies twin. It didn’t matter how friendly she tried to be, Samantha was the one who everyone perceived as serious and stoic. Add on to that a past filled with men who acted like jerks, and, well, it was enough to make a girl want to leave town and start over, except that she loved her twin as much as everyone else.

Numbers ticked by on the gas pump, and Samantha scanned the station again. Reid had taken them to the police, and it had turned out exactly like he had said. The police, or at least that one officer, had thought there wasn’t much they could do.

She dug back into the recesses of her mind, trying to dredge up memories of Reid. Even by law school, she had decided she didn’t need any men in her life, so she had largely ignored those around her, choosing instead to focus on her studies and her sister and mother. Reid was a bit older than she was and had had a different career before entering law school. But that wasn’t unusual, and she couldn’t remember anything else. Whatever his history, his reason for leaving the school had been the year’s scandal.

“Sam?”

Lily’s quiet voice broke through her reverie. “Hmm?”

“Do you know Mr. Palmer?”

Samantha craned her arm around the side of the seat to rub Lily’s back in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. However much Samantha needed reassurance that all would be well, Lily needed it more. “Sort of. We went to law school together for a year, but that was a while ago.”

“Can we trust him?”

Smart kid. “For now, I guess. He’s at least better than the guy who tried to nab you at the church. And he’s been more helpful than the officer at the station.”

Lily pointed toward the busy street. “Why don’t we just get out and run to one of the fast-food places over there? Get away from Mr. Palmer and the bad guy, call someone for a ride, go home?”

“That’s an interesting plan, but we don’t want to bother any friends. We’ve already bothered Mr. Palmer, and that’s quite enough.” It wasn’t something she wanted to admit often, but her dedication to her work came before friends. There was too much good to be done in the field of family law, helping desperate would-be parents secure forever families and uniting abandoned children with loving mothers and fathers, that she couldn’t justify taking personal time to cultivate relationships. In fact, Samantha couldn’t name anybody she could bother with a situation of this magnitude, especially with her immediate family on a trip so far away. “I want you to scrunch down back there. Don’t let your head pop up from behind the seat.”

Lily slouched down, and Samantha raised the headrest a couple of inches so she could stay low behind it and still perform her surveillance. She wasn’t sure why, but she thought it was best to monitor what happened behind the vehicle rather than the front, even though Reid was in that direction at the gas pump. Surely it had nothing to do with his thick black hair and the navy polo that hugged his torso. Nothing at all to do with the protectiveness and feeling of security that emanated from him. Definitely nothing to do with his clean, soapy scent that lingered in the Jeep.

She shook her attention away from Reid just as a monster black SUV pulled into a spot two pumps away.

“Get down. More,” she whispered to Lily.

Samantha clutched the seat fabric with shaking hands as she jerked down behind the seat. Was that the same SUV from the church? Reid was still out there. Would the thug recognize him from the accident site? His Jeep?

She licked some moisture to her lips and inched up until she could see Reid through the space between the seat and the headrest. How could she just hide there and do nothing when Reid might give them away? Was he safe out there? The windows weren’t tinted enough to assure her that she and Lily were hidden, because she could still read the numbers on the pump ticking by and see Reid leaning against the Jeep, his face to the pump.

A burly man stepped out of the SUV. He had removed his Colts cap and now wore wraparound sunglasses, but he was definitely the guy from the church parking lot and the site of the accident. The only reason a guy would wear sunglasses with thunderstorm clouds colliding overhead and nighttime settling over the town would be to avoid detection. If only her phone still worked, she could snap a picture, an image for Cody to run through facial recognition or something high-tech like that.

A screech squeaked out, and Samantha clapped her hand over her own mouth.

A second man wearing similar sunglasses emerged from the passenger side of the SUV and jogged inside the station, Samantha assumed to pay in advance with cash. She sagged in the seat. There were two guys after them now? The one hadn’t got them, so he’d brought in reinforcements? A few seconds later, he tossed a thumbs-up at the first thug. He lifted the nozzle and turned toward his vehicle, pausing, nozzle in hand, as he seemed to notice Reid. Samantha couldn’t track his eye movements with such heavy sunglasses and the tint of the Jeep’s windows, but his head turned a little as if he were studying the Jeep. Then his attention appeared to return to Reid.