Before, when he’d dropped Caitlyn and her charges off at the police station, he’d taken the route on the east side of Main. This time he was on the west side, which was going to bring him into the parking lot directly behind the courthouse. Right on time, he thought, glancing at his watch just as he saw the light up ahead turn yellow.

Damn. He stomped on the brake and brought the truck to a creaking, hissing stop, then sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Cold sweat trickled down the center of his chest. His leg, tense on the brake pedal, had developed a muscle twitch. Through the half-open window of the cab he could hear the clock on the bell tower across the street from the courthouse-the one from which the sniper had taken his shots-begin to strike the hour.

Come on, come on, dammit. Turn green…

And then he saw her. Them. Caitlyn and Charly. There they were, crossing the street from the parking lot about a block and a half in front of him. Caitlyn was wearing a light-gray tailored business-type suit she must have borrowed from Charly-he couldn’t imagine where else she’d have come by such a thing-but he’d have known that chrysanthemum cap of pale-gold hair…that graceful, light-as-a-fairy walk anywhere.

His heart just about shot through the roof of his mouth. Heart hammering, wired and helpless, he gripped the steering wheel hard enough to break it off in his hands, while his mind shouted futilely, Caitlyn, wait!

He was so focused on the two women he failed to notice right away the long white sedan with dark tinted windows that was moving slowly toward them from the opposite direction. Not until it stopped, and the passenger side door opened, and a man got out. Even though he’d been half expecting it, C.J. was so frozen with shock it was a second or two before he realized the man was wearing a ski mask.

It happened so quickly. The man didn’t hesitate, but rushed straight at the two women, grabbed Caitlyn’s arms from behind and at the same time kicked Charly savagely in the back of her legs. As she crumpled to the pavement, he was already turning, half dragging, half carrying Caitlyn toward the waiting car.

But by that time C.J. had the Kenworth in gear and, as truckers used to say, the pedal to the metal. He hadn’t thought about it, didn’t know he was going to do it, he just reacted. Caitlyn was in trouble, and in the best hero fashion he went charging to her rescue with the only weapon he had.

Had the light changed? He didn’t know nor care. Horns blared as the powerful diesel engine roared and roughly eighty thousand pounds of eighteen wheeler rolled through the intersection. Through a red fog of rage C.J. saw the ski mask swivel toward him, as if in slow motion. He saw the mouth form a round black O of astonishment. He had one brief glimpse of Caitlyn’s face, bleached white with shock, and then, with a hideous screeching, grinding, breaking sound, his Kenworth’s front bumper plowed into the hood of the white sedan.

For a moment he sat frozen, staring down at the wreckage through the windshield of the cab. Truth was, he was pretty shocked at himself, now that the deed was done, even though the driver of the sedan didn’t seem to be hurt much. C.J. could see him flailing around inside the car, trying to untangle himself from the airbag and at the same time get the door open-it had apparently been jammed shut by the collision.

What he didn’t see was Caitlyn, or the guy in the ski mask. Not until the door on the passenger side of his cab suddenly opened and Caitlyn came hurtling through, propelled by a powerful shove. Right behind her was the ski mask-and something else. For the second time in his life, C.J. found himself staring at the barrel of a gun.

Chapter 15

“Drive,” the man in the ski mask snarled, slamming the door behind him. “Now.”

Hijacked. I don’t believe this, C.J. thought. This can’t be happening to me again.

This time there was no sense of déjà vu. The individual pointing the gun at him now was a long way from a girl with silver eyes trying to save the lives of a woman and her child and no other way to do it except to try a desperate bluff. This guy wasn’t bluffing. How, he didn’t know-it sure wasn’t from experience-but C.J. knew a cold-blooded killer when he saw one.

“I’m drivin’, I’m drivin’,” he muttered. He already had the truck in reverse.

As the big Kenworth shuddered and separated itself from the wrecked white sedan with another shriek of mangled metal, C.J. glanced over at Caitlyn and was all set to ask her if she was okay when he saw her eyes widen and her head move just slightly. A tiny, almost imperceptible shake. No!

“I’m sorry about your truck, mister,” she said in a small, frightened voice. A stranger’s voice.

Ski Mask cut her off with a savage, “Shut up! Get down!” and shoved her roughly until she was on her knees on the floor between his feet and the center console. The gun in his hand was pressed against her head now, its ugly gray barrel buried in the soft petals of her hair.

A strange prickly rush, like a shower of ice particles, swept C.J. from his scalp to his toes. Ice formed a great lump in the center of his chest.

Outside the windows of the cab, howling sirens and blaring air horns announced the arrival of a whole array of police and emergency vehicles. The light mid-morning traffic was beginning to snarl.

“Get on your radio,” Ski Mask growled. “Tell ’em they better clear us out. Otherwise I’m gonna start putting bullets into people, and since I need you to drive, it looks like it’ll have to be blondie, here.”

C.J. nodded and picked up his CB mike. His mind was clear and calm, and he was pretty sure the guy in the ski mask wasn’t going to kill Caitlyn-not yet, anyway. Considering he’d been paid to bring her back alive and in a fit condition to tell what she knew about the whereabouts of Vasily’s daughter, Emma, and that the last hired hand to put Caitlyn’s life in danger had wound up dead a short time later. So, it was a fairly safe bet that if Ski Mask did put a bullet in her it wouldn’t be in a critical place. Not that that made a big difference to C.J.

Dialing in channel nine, he thumbed on the mike and spoke into it. “Uh…channel nine emergency, this is Blue Starr Transport driver requesting assistance…over.”

After a tense pause, a woman’s voice, calm and professional but at the same time typically, informally Southern, replied, “Yes, Blue Starr, we read you. How’s ever’ body doin’ in there?”

“Doin’ okay so far.” C.J. glanced over at Caitlyn. Her gaze was fastened on him with that strange silvery intensity, as if she were trying to talk to him with her eyes. Ski Mask made an impatient gesture, and, heart pounding, he turned back to the mike. “We have a, uh…situation here, though. I have a, uh…couple passengers, guy with a hostage. He has a gun, which he says he’s gonna use if he doesn’t get clear road outa here. Any chance you could, uh…help me out on that?”

There was another pause, longer and even more tense. C.J. waited, his heart thumping against the constriction of his seat belt. Finally, “Okay, Blue Starr, which way you headed?”

C.J. glanced at Ski Mask this time, and chuckled darkly. “Quickest way outa town, would be my guess. I’m thinkin’ the interstate?” He looked at Ski Mask, who nodded confirmation.

“Tell ’em they better not follow us, either,” he added in a low growl. “I so much as see a cop I’m gonna start shootin’.”

“They’re never gonna go for that. You think they’re gonna let us just drive away?” C.J. said in an incredulous hiss.

“You better hope they do” was Ski Mask’s reply.

Grinding his teeth, C.J. passed on the demand and the threat. After the usual pause the calm voice responded, “Okay, Blue Starr, we’re gonna give you some room.” Another, gentler pause. “You be careful, now…” And then silence.

With a grunt of surprise C.J. hung the mike on its hook and gave his full attention to driving.

Cramped and uncomfortable, wedged unpleasantly against the gunman’s legs, Caitlyn closed her eyes and listened to C.J.’s voice, talking in that drawling monotone truckers use on their CB radios…the police dispatcher’s voice calmly answering. As the truck growled in stops and starts, twists and turns, the gunman took out a cell phone and punched in a number. She listened to his low-voiced conversation and felt cold, clammy relief wash over her. He was talking to his boss, obviously, telling him about the glitch in their plans…the change of getaway car. Something about a rendezvous point. Everything else, it seemed, was still on track.

For her, too. It’s going to be all right, she told herself, riding on the crest of a wave of improbable optimism. It can still work. And then, plunging into a trough of utter despair: Oh, C.J.-why couldn’t you have stayed out of this?

The FBI’s plan had taken everything into account-except this. Maybe it had been a mistake, after all, not to tell him. He would have tried to keep her from taking part in it, of course he would have, but at least he wouldn’t have stumbled-no, not stumbled-come charging into the middle of things, magnificently, heroically, like some gallant knight on his great blue and silver steed. Oh, C.J., how wonderful, how magnificent you were. And how I wish you hadn’t done it!

Vasily wouldn’t kill her, she was sure of that, not until he had Emma back in his clutches. And long before that happened, the FBI would have him in theirs. But C.J. Oh, God, they wouldn’t hesitate to-and almost certainly would-kill him once they had no more need of him and his truck. How she would stop them, she didn’t know; she only knew she had to. She had to.