Page 19 of Defending You

In the rearview, she glimpsed Asher as he leaned out the window.

Gunfire cracked in the silence.

The other car swerved and crashed into a light pole.

Cici passed the accident site, slowing to see what’d happened.

“Move!” Asher shouted.

Right. Of course.

She shifted into fifth and hit the gas. The car rumbled down the empty road. They passed the train station again, and then it was shrinking in the rearview.

Asher slid into the passenger seat, watching behind them. Finally, he exhaled and slumped back in the seat.

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Her heart was a jackhammer, her mind replaying the last few minutes on a loop.

“Guess I finally figured out what it takes to shut you up,” he said, tone dry. “Gunshots.”

“Not funny,” she croaked, but a shaky giggle bubbled up anyway.

He smirked, a rare crack in his stony facade, and then he chuckled, a low, rumbly sound that felt like a thread of peace in a tapestry of chaos.

They laughed together, the absurdity of it all spilling out, until she remembered… They’d just stolen a car. Nearly gotten caught by bad guys. Nearly gottenkilled. “What are we going to do?”

“It’ll be okay.”

“How?” Nothing about this felt funny all of a sudden. Nothing was okay. “They’re everywhere. We can’t get ahead of them.”

“We survived. We’ll just take each scenario at a time and figure it out as we go.”

Maybehewould. She wasn’t cut out for this…this running for her life. She’d panicked. All she’d wanted was to return Forbes’s jewelry to him, to do something bigger than herself. Maybe even a little…heroic?

Right. She was as far fromheroicas she’d ever been.

If not for Asher’s quick thinking, they’d both be dead.

CHAPTER SIX

Asher steered the stolen sedan along a two-lane state highway, the headlights carving a narrow path through the darkness. The hum of the engine was steady, the only sound breaking the silence since he and Cici had traded places after her panic-and-giggle cocktail back in Springfield.

She was not the cool-under-pressure type, but that was okay. He was, and he could lead her to safety, as long as she trusted him enough to follow his directions.

The giggling, the stress-babbling? They should drive him crazy. And they did, but in all the wrong ways. Like everything else about Cici Wright, the things about her that should be annoying only attracted him more.

Right now, she needed him, and there was no headier drug than being needed by a beautiful woman.

If he didn’t put that very inappropriate thought away, it would distract him, which was the last thing either one of them needed.

I-90 would’ve gotten them to Boston in a couple of hours—sooner at this time of night—but he’d decided they’d do best to avoid the interstate. Too obvious. Too exposed. He’d surely run across at least one cop—a problem if this car had already beenreported stolen, though he hoped the driver had parked it for the weekend. More importantly, the guys following them were smart and had resources. This beat-up Ford had an electronic toll pass adhered to the windshield, which would trigger every time they passed beneath a reader on the toll road. Even if he pried it off, toll roads recorded license plates. He couldn’t take the chance that their pursuers could access those records.

He and Cici had managed to escape twice. He wasn’t sure they’d survive round three.

Where had he messed up? How did those thugs keep finding them?

Their pursuers—he needed to figure out who their enemies were—must’ve found his pickup near the Thirtieth Street Station and deduced that he and Cici had hopped a train. It took them time to get ahead, though—Springfield was a good haul from Philly. They must’ve studied the Amtrak schedule, driven like madmen, and waited at the station like vultures. Smart, organized, determined. And the way they’d tracked her cell phone…? That proved they had resources beyond the typical criminal.

If Asher and Cici were picked up in Massachusetts for stealing this car, Cici would be extradited to Pennsylvania to face charges there for arson and murder.