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SUSAN’S LAUGH brOKE a long moment of hard silence. We all looked at her, the sound absurd in the icy tension in the quiet forest at the roadside. She covered her mouth, shook her head.

“Sorry,” she said and glanced at me, her eyes a little too wide, meaningful. “I just… Wouldn’t that be just perfect? If they burned the truck.”

I caught on quickly, gave a smirk I hoped was convincing. “Would serve them right.”

“Why?” the big guy said. “What’s… what’s in the truck?”

I eased breath through my bruised chest, clenched my fists, tried desperately not to give the game away. I could see Susan doing the same, trying to rein in that desperate urge to plea, to fight, to run. Stay cool. The big man lowered his gun, gave a quick glance back toward the upside-down truck. Fuel was dribbling into the soil, and the crushed engine was hissing, easing a thin line of smoke. The big guy’s boot crunched on a slab of safety glass as he took a curious step back.

“Looks like with all that fuel leaking, it’ll be gone in a minute, anyway,” I murmured to Susan. “By the time they’ve dealt with us, it’ll be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“What’s in the truck?” The smaller guy came over and pressed the barrel of his gun against my forehead. I fought the urge to knee him in the groin and slap the gun away. I knew I could disarm him before he could pull the trigger. But that would leave the big guy open to fire on us.

“What are these bags?” the big guy asked, nodding toward the suitcases. Two were still strapped into the truck bed. One had been flung into the forest, only feet away from him.

Susan and I remained quiet. Every muscle in my body was tensed, my thighs ticking, my knuckles cracking. I was waiting for that moment. That precious moment. When the big guy relented to his curiosity and went to the suitcase. The barrel of the gun against my forehead was warming with my body temperature. The little guy’s eyes bore into mine. I heard the whiz of the suitcase zipper and the sound of the hard shell flipping open.

“Oh my God,” the big guy said.

His partner turned at the sound. I reached up and grabbed the gun.