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She drove faster.Quickly, before your friends catch up to you.The bastard’s warning echoed in her brain.

A curve had her slowing slightly, and then she gunned the accelerator again.

She blinked ... what the hell? A white van sat sideways in the road ... blocking her path. Someone stood next to it. There wasno way to go around ... the ditch on either side was too deep. She couldn’t risk trying to go around.

She slowed. Banged a fist against the steering wheel. As she drew closer, she recognized the wording on the side. A television station’s call letters. Then the person standing outside it ...Patricia Patton.

“Son of a bitch!” Vera slammed on the brakes, squealing to a stop. She rammed into Park and wrenched the door open. “Get out of my way!”

“You have to come with me.”

“What?” Had the woman lost her damned mind?

Patton’s throat worked with the effort to swallow. “He said you have to come with me. Now. Hurry.”

Vera reached back inside her SUV, grabbed the handgun, and tucked it into her waistband beneath the hoodie. “What the hell are you talking about?”

She started toward the woman, who stood mute and staring at her like a frightened animal paralyzed in a hunter’s crosshairs.

“What are you talking about?” Vera demanded again as she grew closer. Then she noticed the spots of dirt and maybe blood on Patton’s high-dollar white sweater and slacks.

The reporter’s lips trembled, and tears flowed down her blush-enhanced cheeks. “He has my friend ... if we don’t hurry, he’ll kill him and your sister.”

Vera charged the rest of the way up to her. “If you’re lying to me—”

“Please.” Patton shook her head. “We have to hurry.”

“I’m driving.” Vera climbed into the driver’s seat of the van, adjusted the position of her weapon and then the seat while Patton hurried around to the other side. “Where are we going?”

“Keep going straight on this road.”

Vera cut the steering wheel sharply to the right, hit the accelerator, sending the vehicle rocketing forward in the direction Patton had said. She thought of Bent and how he and his deputies would be frantically searching ... damn it all to hell.

“Where’s your cell phone?” Patton asked, her face cluttered with fear. “I’m supposed to toss it out the window.”

Vera’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I left it in my vehicle.”Shit.

“If you’re lying,” Patton cautioned.

“Give me the damned directions,” Vera growled, like a woman possessed by the devil himself.

“Just keep going. It’s a couple of miles.”

Vera pressed the accelerator harder. A minute ticked off, then another. Her heart pounded harder with each second. Where the hell were they going?

Patton leaned forward to stare out the windshield. “It’s not far now.”

“Am I taking a left or a right?” Vera asked, glancing at the reporter, who was not acting like herself at all.

“Left. See the satellite dish and that little red barn. It’s the next left. A gravel road.”

Vera braked hard and slid into the turn. Patton grabbed for something to hang on to.

This was wrong. Vera’s cop instincts were screaming at her. “How did he know when I got to the Carter farm?” she demanded as she wrested back control of the vehicle and sent it bumping along the narrow gravel road.

The bastard had set up some way to watch for her approach. There was no other explanation. If this woman admitted to having been his lookout, Vera might just stop this van and kick her ass.

“He set up those little battery-operated cameras. The whole parade of law enforcement vehicles appeared on the app on his phone. But he was never at that location anyway.”