“I got it, boss. I’ll have her by nightfall.”
He hangs up, and I hope like hell I do have her, because if I don’t, I wouldn’t put it past Skull to come down here and hunt down Katie himself. I still have the urge to protect her and that’s fucked up. But boss isn’t thinking clearly. He might say this is to get his daughter, but I know it’s to get Beth. He wants his daughter, I don’t doubt that for a second. But… Beth. He wants Beth. What the fuck he’s going to do with her when he gets her all depends on exactly what the fuck caused her to run in the first place.
The damn jeep is sucking fumes, so I decide to take the next exit. Just another fucking reason to hate cages. If I was on my bike, I’d have already eaten up the interstate. I make a right towards the Shell station, groaning at the backed up traffic. There must have been a wreck. Hopefully I don’t run out of gas while I’m waiting for it to thin out; that’d be the fucking cherry on top of the shit pile that has been my day. My knuckles are bruised, I’ve got a headache from hell, and my fucking ribs are sore. Motherfuckers must have kicked me while I was out.
Traffic slowly starts moving. There’s a policeman directing all the traffic into one lane. As I get closer, I can see why, and I feel a moment of complete and utter fucking joy. There, surrounded by cops in the far lane, is an eighteen-wheeler. Not just any eighteen-wheeler, but a fucking bright yellow one.
I negotiate Katie’s jeep to the median and jump out to see what kind of fucking mess she’s gotten into now, because I have no doubt that she’s in the middle of whatever it is.
“What’s going on here?” I ask.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to return to your vehicle. We’re trying to prevent traffic from being backed up.”
“Oh, I hear ya. It’s just that at the Waffle King in Brownville, that very fucking truck was there, and I saw its driver force a woman into the truck with him. I tried to tell the police there. They wanted me to come in and make a report. I did, but I don’t know if they did anything about it.”
“Shit. You’re kidding me!” The officer goes off running to one of the other men there. I walk closer, expecting to get a glimpse of Katie, but I don’t see her anywhere.
“There wasn’t a woman in the truck?” I call out, and I try not to let my inner fear free. Shit, if she got herself hurt by pulling her damn stunt…
“There wasn’t anyone here,” the officer answers. “Witnesses say they saw a brunette limp out of the truck and start walking towards Casey. They reported her limping heavily and looking like she’d been in a fight.”
“David! We don’t release details of the case,” another cop says, which is kind of stupid, though probably a hundred percent true—and smart. Dumbass. For all he knows, I could be the owner of the truck.
I need to find Katie. Shit. I hope she’s okay. I start to turn away when I hear one of the cops yell.
“Hey! Sarge! Dispatch just got a call from the Angel Drop Motel, said some woman stole his rig.”
“Have one of the men go to the motel and get this guy. Tell them to treat him like a suspect. We have a witness who said this guy might have kidnapped a woman over in Brownville.”
And cue my time to leave. As much as I want to make sure that trucker gets his ass sewn up, if I have to stay around and be the motherfucker to help do it, Katie will get away. I back away until I’m out of sight, then jump in my jeep and drive off. I take the back road and hold my breath until I find a little mom-and-pop gas station and fill up. There’s been no sign of Katie. I might have picked the wrong route. I thought driving on this back road would be the way to go, but—
I stop when I see her. She’s limping hard, walking along the side of the road. My heart squeezes in my chest.
Motherfucking raindrops in Hell! Until this moment, I refused to acknowledge the fear I felt when I saw the eighteen-wheeler abandoned and Katie nowhere to be found. I didn’t fully believe that she had stolen the damn thing. Jesus.
I pull up beside her. The window is already down. It’s an older model jeep, so the windows zip. How she could like such a thing is beyond me. “Get in,” I order, and my voice might rival Skull’s in being cold right now.
Did I break a freaking mirror? I don’t think I’ve ever had such a continuous run of bad luck, and considering I spent most of my life being a prisoner of my father and grandfather, that’s saying something! When I think someone is finally offering me a ride, only to find Torch sitting in my jeep, I want to scream.
I look around, trying to figure out how I can get away.