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Katie woke with a jolt. Crap. There was some reason she wasn’t supposed to sleep. No, wait. Alex had promised he wouldn’t run out on her and abandon her again. She sagged back to the mattress in relief. Except something was still wrong. But what?

Alex was curled on his side facing her, sleeping quietly. Lord, he was handsome, even with his hair tousled and his face mashed against a pillow. How did he still manage to radiate pain like that, though?

She would give anything to lift it away from him. For his mother to be a lovely woman who had desperately missed her son over the years and adored him in absentia. But Alex seemed to think she was somehow tied in to their current predicament.

God, he was so suspicious of everyone and everything. She thought she’d gotten past that with him, but at the moment, she seemed to be included in his lengthy list of people not to be trusted.

It was still dark outside. She checked her cell phone. A little after four a.m. Restless, she slid out of bed and padded over to the window. She lurked beside the curtains like she’d seen Alex do before and peeked sideways around them without disturbing the hanging drapery.

A car was just pulling into the motel parking lot. Weird hour for that. Even weirder as it turned the corner that its headlights were off. It parked beside another car of identical make. It must have been noise of the first car pulling in that woke her up. A warning vibration erupted in her gut.

“Alex,” she said low. “I think we have a problem.”

He lurched awake and was out of bed in a single catlike lunge. Talk about reflexes. Dang. Remind her not to startle him out of a hard sleep when she was within arm’s length of him.

He stopped in the middle of the room just long enough to see what she was doing and then he slid over to the other side of the window. It took him about two seconds to announce, “Get dressed and head into the bathroom. Lie down in the bathtub.”

“What are you going to do?”

He ignored her question and ordered, “Call 911 on your cell phone and tell them there’s a shootout in progress.”

“But there isn’t any shooting?—“

Alex lifted the pistol he’d been holding down by his side. “There’s about to be.”

Where…he must have been sleeping with it under his pillow. Paranoid, much? “Who’s out there?” she asked in quick alarm.

“Go, Katie.”

She made the 911 call, giving the name of the motel and Alex’s message. She hung up as soon as the operator said she’d dispatched police.

Katie snatched up her clothes, closed the bathroom door, and felt her way to the bathtub in the dark.

It wasn’t long enough to stretch out in, so she curled on her side in it.

Extremely awkwardly and with copious mental swearing, she managed to pull on her clothes.

But they were all crooked and pulling at her in weird places.

She finally gave up and stood up to adjust the darned things.

A tremendous explosion of sound erupted from the living room and she dropped like a rock into the cold, hard tub. Holy mackerel! Sometimes she forgot just how loud gunshots were, particularly in a confined space. A dramatic fusillade of return fire from the parking lot made her lurch again.

That was at least three weapons firing back at Alex, maybe more.

“Alex!” she shouted, “Are you okay?”

Another round of gunfire exploded from the living room. She was relieved when shooting back at whoever gave her proof that he was still alive.

Another round of incoming fire hit the bathroom door and flung splinters of wood every which way in here.

She yanked the shower curtain shut and covered her head with her arms. Something metallic and fast moving pinged off the side of the bathtub, and Alex’s order to climb in here suddenly made sense.

The bathroom door burst open and she jumped violently.

“Get up, Katie. We’ve got to go.”

“Out there?” she squeaked.

“Window,” he grunted. “Hurry. I’ve set a timed charge in the front room.”

Ohmigosh. She leaped to her feet and climbed on the toilet seat and then the top of the toilet tank as he disappeared out the open window.

She stuck her head and shoulders out and he waved at her to slide down to him.

She did so, and he caught her under the armpits, pulling her legs through and setting her upright.

She opened her mouth out of habit to thank him, and he pressed an urgent finger against her lips. Stealth. Got it. She nodded and followed him as he eased into the woods behind the motel.

Another round of gunfire erupted from behind them, and on cue, a tremendous explosion lit the night. The ground shook and Katie staggered into Alex’s back. He paused just long enough for her to regain her feet, and then they moved out, heading deeper into the night.

The treed area gave way to a farm. They skirted the edge of a plowed field to a big, old-fashioned barn. Alex carefully slid open its tall wooden door a few feet.

He disappeared inside after signaling for her to wait outside. She fretted for about one minute and then stared in shock as he led out a giant horse. It had on a bridle but was otherwise bare of tack.

“Give me your leg,” Alex breathed.

“You want me to get on that monster?”

“Trust me. It’s better than running all night.”

She was no horsewoman! Stunned and terrified, she let him hoist her onto the broad back of the beast, who shifted under her weight and stamped a foot. Ohgod, ohgod. It was a long, long ways down to the ground.

“Easy, boy,” Alex murmured. He led the horse over to an unpainted, wooden fence, handed the reins up to her, then climbed the fence and eased onto the horse behind her.

The animal’s back was warm and wide. Scared to death, she grabbed on to a handful of the horse’s thick mane and hung on for dear life.

Alex’s arms came around her and he pried the reins out of her panicked fists.

She felt his legs tighten around the animal’s girth behind her and the horse moved forward.

At least Alex didn’t spur the beast into a mad gallop. Although, in her panic to get away from whomever was shooting at them, she almost wished he would send the horse on a mad dash to safety.

Alex breathed in her ear, “We’ll draw less attention moving quietly. And, this is a draft horse. He’s designed to go all day at a slow pace, but he couldn’t run a mile without being totally winded.”

He guided the horse across a road in front of the farm and into another patch of woods. The animal found some sort of path and turned onto it of his own accord. Alex gave the animal free rein and let the horse plod along in the dark.

“Where are we going?” she finally ventured whispering.

“Away from the motel. As for what awaits us ahead, I have no idea. We’ll adapt when we get there.”

The horse walked for maybe a twenty minutes at a steady, but surprisingly ground eating pace. All of a sudden, a clearing opened up in front of them. A simple, one-story building stood in the middle of it.

“That’s a one-room schoolhouse!” she murmured. “Was that farm Amish?”

“Mennonite, I think,” Alex answered. “I saw a tractor in the barn.”

The horse strode up to a hitching post with a watering trough beside it and shoved his nose into the black water. After that, no matter what Alex tried shy of beating the beast, the horse refused to budge. Period.

Finally, Alex gave up, slid off the animal and helped her down. She watched as Alex slipped the bridle off the horse and gave it a sharp swat on the rump. The horse threw up its head, startled, and turned to trot back down the path it had come from.

“If I know horses, that guy’ll go right back to his barn and maybe even back into his stall. If we’re lucky, the farmer won’t report his stolen bridle to the police.”

To that end, Alex hung the bridle on the hitching post, where it didn’t look at all out of place. “We’re on foot from here.”

Except before they could take a dozen steps, they heard something rattling toward them. Katie dived for behind the trees on the far side of the clearing and waited pensively for what would emerge from the dirt road beyond the schoolhouse.

A black, boxy carriage rocked into sight, pulled by a horse, shambling along casually. A woman climbed down from the carriage and tied the horse to the hitching post before disappearing inside the building. In a few seconds, a soft, yellow glow illuminated one of the windows.

“How early do Mennonite kids start school, anyway?” she whispered to Alex.

“They’re early risers as a group. C’mon.”

“Are we going to steal a buggy, now?” she asked in jest.

He nodded and indicated that she should climb up into the black conveyance.

Stunned, she clambered between the narrow wheels awkwardly.

The thing rocked and squeaked a little as she settled onto the seat.

Alex threaded the reins inside the carriage, and as she held the ends, he leaped in considerably more gracefully than she had.

With a quiet slap of the reins on the horse’s rump, he guided the beast back into the night.

Whether or not the teacher inside the school heard them or ran out to give chase, Katie had no idea.

The grassy meadow and sandy dirt of the carriage path muffled sound tremendously well.

If they were lucky, they’d gotten away cleanly.

The genius of Alex’s theft became apparent as the path gave way to a paved road. “Pull the curtains down and tie them in place,” he told her.

The entire interior of the carriage was shrouded in black fabric in a few seconds. Even the front window was covered, with only a narrow slit at eye height for Alex to see through to steer.

And when they approached a parked police car blocking the next intersection, the cop nodded respectfully and waved them past without stopping the buggy.

“Sonofagun,” Katie murmured.