Karen Foley – Hard to Hold (страница 3)

The man beside her was silent. Maddie didn’t know whether to be thankful for that or not. She watched him covertly from beneath her baseball cap. He was a big man, tall and lean with broad shoulders. He’d startled her half to death when he’d confronted her in the diner. Her first impression had been of height and width and dark eyes that had focused on her with an intensity that missed nothing.

Then he had spoken, and his voice was like a lifeline in a world that was suddenly tilting out of control. This was the kind of guy who could talk a suicide jumper down off a ledge, she decided. His voice had a quality to it that both calmed and inspired trust. It was low, and sort of rough around the edges, with a bare hint of a drawl that made you want him to keep on talking. Because when he did, you felt like he really cared. Only that was crazy, Maddie thought, because he didn’t even know her. Never mind that she had kidnapped him at gunpoint.

She watched him now as he drove, his hands relaxed on the wheel. Maddie noticed he didn’t wear a wedding band. She hadn’t had a chance to really look at him in the diner, but now she let her eyes travel over him, lingering on his profile.

He was dark, his skin burnished to a warm copper. His black hair was cropped short in a style that was almost military. He had slashing black brows and a hawklike nose above lips that were wide and generous. Despite his chiseled cheekbones and clean, square jaw, there was an aura of toughness about him that she recognized. She was willing to bet the ladies lined up for a chance to be with him. She guessed he was at least partially Native American. Altogether, he was overwhelmingly male. He wore a black T-shirt paired with blue jeans, and it seemed his entire body was layered with muscles. Even his thighs beneath the worn denim appeared muscular.

As if sensing her scrutiny, he slanted a sideways glance at her, one black eyebrow arched in question. Maddie felt her face grow warm. What would she do if he tried to overpower her? There would be no contest. She’d be dough in his hands. She groaned inwardly. What had she been thinking to involve this man in her madness? Truth be told, she hadn’t been thinking. She hadn’t actually had a single coherent thought since she had received the threatening note early the previous morning, followed by the phone call. A call that had chilled her and then galvanized her into panic mode.

Her younger brother, Jamie, was in trouble. Serious trouble. He’d lost a staggering amount of money at the poker tables in Reno. Money that hadn’t been his to lose. Money that the lenders now wanted back. More money than she had, despite the fact she’d emptied both her savings and checking accounts, sold her car for far less than its worth and cashed in the precious few bonds she owned.

There hadn’t been nearly enough time to remortgage her little condo or apply for a bank loan. The men who were holding her brother said they would hurt him if they didn’t have the money within the next seventy-two hours. And they warned her that if she involved the police, they would just kill him outright and be done with it.

Maddie believed them.

Why wouldn’t she? After all, she’d seen what had happened to her father. She knew firsthand about the seamy, dark side of gambling, and what really went on in the back rooms of the casinos. But her brother was only twenty years old, just finishing up his last year of college. He’d been too young to remember what had happened to their dad, though Maddie did all too vividly.

She wouldn’t let that happen to Jamie, although there was a part of her that wanted to kill him herself for having gotten into this mess. How many times had she preached to him about the dangers of gambling? She’d made him promise that he would never, under any circumstances, go to the casinos, and certainly not with money that wasn’t his. But she understood the lure of turning a quick buck; of beating the house and winning huge sums of cash. Now Jamie’s luck had run out, and unless she acted quickly, his life was in danger.

Frantic, she had stashed what cash she had into her backpack and boarded the first bus for Reno. She’d left a voice mail at the town office where she worked as a senior accountant, telling her boss that she had a family emergency and needed to take several days off. She had a telephone number to call once she reached Reno.

She had spent the first hundred fifty miles of the westbound bus ride tolerating the shoot-’em-up antics of the little boy in the seat in front of her. But after nearly three hours of watching him pretend to shoot her with his toy gun, her nerves had been stretched taut.

When they pulled into the rest area in Lovelock, she had spied the toy weapon lying on the seat and had quickly snatched it up, shoving it under her T-shirt and into the waistband of her jeans. She’d promised herself she would “find” the toy for the child once they reached Reno. And in the meantime have some peace and quiet.

But as she had watched the cashier at the diner laughingly ring out a customer, and glimpsed the money in the drawer, something had caught at her. Something dark and desperate, and she’d become agonizingly aware of the toy gun pressing into her stomach. Whether or not she would actually have worked up the nerve to rob the diner was something, thankfully, she would never know. What she had done was bad enough. She could scarcely believe she’d had the nerve to take this man hostage; could scarcely believe he’d been duped by the fake gun.

“Do you have a name?” the stranger was asking her, a small smile tilting the corners of his generous mouth. “Or should I just call you Bonnie?”

Maddie blinked at him. How could he be so relaxed? As far as he knew, she was pointing a loaded gun at him. And he wanted to make jokes? In the short time they’d been driving, she had tried to decide where he should drop her. The trip to Reno would take a couple hours. Being silent and surly wasn’t going to make the journey any more enjoyable, and what did it matter anyway if he knew her name? Once she had her brother safely back, she intended to turn herself in to the police. At which point everyone would know who she was.

“Madeleine,” she answered shortly, not adding that people generally called her Maddie.

“I’m Colton Black,” he drawled. “I’m real sorry we couldn’t have met under different circumstances.”

To Maddie’s horror, he extended a hand to her across the seat. It was large and tanned, with lean fingers tapering to neat nails. She raised her gaze to his, keeping her expression blank. He was watching her carefully, while keeping an eye on the almost empty road.

Did he really believe she was that big of a fool? She knew what would happen if she shook that hand. He’d haul her across the seat and wrest her miserable excuse for a weapon from her nerveless fingers. No, thank you.

But he only grinned and pulled his hand back. “Okay,” he murmured, as if talking to himself. “That’s okay. You’re not ready to be sociable yet. I understand. But here we are, just you and me.” He gave a wry smile. “At least we’re heading in the right direction.”

Maddie blinked. “Excuse me?”

He slanted a swift look at her. “I was headed up to Paradise Valley for a couple of weeks of fishing. I’ll drop you wherever it is you want to go, and maybe I can still reach my cabin before it gets too late.”

Maddie stared at him in disbelief. “I can’t let you go. You know that.”

He kept his gaze straight ahead. “Why not? I promise you, darlin’, you sure as hell don’t want the kind of trouble I’ll bring you.”

Was that a threat or just a general comment about the hazards of taking hostages? Maddie pressed herself closer against the passenger door. “Look, I really don’t want any trouble. I—I just need to do something, okay? Once it’s done, I’ll let you go.”

“Oh, yeah?” A small smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “What’s so important that you’d risk your life, huh? Why were you going to hold up the diner? Is it drugs?” His gaze swept over her, sharply assessing. “Or do you need to pay off a bookie?”

Maddie blanched at his words, but he’d turned his attention back to the road and didn’t see her sudden panic. She glanced out the window at the desert rushing past. As soon as he’d mentioned his cabin in Paradise Valley, she’d known exactly what she needed to do. Her grandfather had a cabin in the hills, and he’d once said that he had a fortune hidden there. She had no idea if that was true, but she needed to check it out, although it required turning off the main road. But she couldn’t afford to have her focus diverted by this man. She needed to unload him and get on with her mission. If she ditched him here, on the main road, he’d have a better chance of hitching a ride with someone. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to leave him in the foothills, where a day’s hike without sufficient water could mean death in these temperatures.

“Pull the truck over.” Her voice sounded low and strained, even to her own ears.

Colton gave a disbelieving laugh. “What?”