She took a moment to get her bearings.
She closed her eyes.
Concentrate. Locate. See it.
“I think … they’re near where we ditched the ATV.”
“Do you suppose they’ve found it?”
“They might have run across it. They’re heading in our direction.”
The car was getting closer.
“Because now they can also see our footprints. The minute the wind died down, we were screwed.” Waldridge motioned back to the desert floor behind them, where their prints in the sand were now plainly visible. “Once they found the ATV, it was only a matter of time until they found those prints.”
Right, Kendra thought, as she felt the chill go through her. It was only a matter of time, and their time might be up if she couldn’t think of some way to escape the vehicle bearing down on them.
They had no weapons. There was only flat desert terrain where they were here. No real place to hide. Only cactus and sagebrush that wouldn’t take long to search.
Okay, think. Look at the whole picture. Go back. Remember. Search for options. Pull a plan together.
The car was getting even closer.
Suddenly, she could see the headlights!
“Closer than I thought,” Kendra said. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Then why the hell are we just standing watching them?” Waldridge’s gaze was darting around the terrain, attempting to find an escape route. “Let’s go. We can’t stay here.”
“No, we can’t.”
Because she had the plan. No weapons here, but she’d remembered another possible weapon. Flimsy, at best. She only prayed it would work.
But first she had to go after it.
She didn’t look at Waldridge as she started running forward instead of away. “But we can’t let them run us down either. We’d be even more vulnerable. I have an idea. Go take cover behind that brush. Okay?”
“What? Where are you going?”
She gestured toward the headlights. “There.”
“That’s crazy. I don’t care what kind of—”
“Don’t say another word.” She glanced over her shoulder, and said fiercely, “Stop arguing with me. I don’t have time. I’m going to do this. I can make it work. Now hide. I’ll be right back.”
“Kendra!”
She blocked him out as she sprinted toward the headlights, jumping over brush and cactus plants along the way. She needed to cover three to four hundred yards for her plan to work, but the car could be on top of her before she got there.
What then?
Don’t think about that. Just keep pushing …
The Jeep’s engine revved harder. It was closing the gap fast. Had she been seen?
No. The Jeep was slowly drifting away from her.
Can’t let them get too far off track …
She ran even faster, ignoring her aching ankle and cactus-needle scrapes.
She cut to the right, crossing in front of the Jeep’s high-beam headlights.
As if in response, the car’s engine roared. She’d been spotted!
She turned and ran back in the direction whence she had just come.
No shots. She hadn’t thought there would be. She still had value to Dyle alive. But there had always been the chance …
The Jeep revved even harder.
Damn, she’d cut it close. Maybe too close.
The vehicle bore down on her with the headlights casting her long shadow on the landscape ahead. She nimbly jumped over cactus plants and wild brush. But the car mowed over them even more easily than she had.
And was gaining on her.
Shit. Stupid idea, Kendra … Stupid, stupid.
She leaped over the thick clump of brush she’d seen just minutes before.
Zero in on me. I’m the target. Don’t think of anything, don’t look at anything, but me.
There it was right ahead of her!
She skirted the wild sagebrush with just inches to spare.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster …
Crash!
She whirled. Just fifteen feet behind her, the vehicle had smashed at high speed into a clump of large boulders hidden by that wild sagebrush she’d just skirted.
It had worked!
Maybe.
Kendra kept her distance while she warily tried to assess the damage to the jeep and its occupants. The entire front was pulverized. Smoke poured from the crumpled front end, and the engine noise had been reduced to a series of erratic clicks.
Only one of the headlights was now functional though it was flickering on and off. There was blood on the shattered windshield.
She moved carefully around to the driver’s side. A man was slumped over the steering wheel, his head oozing blood. He was dressed in the same black fatigues as Dyle’s other security men.
She circled around to the other side.
She froze. There was no one in the passenger seat, but the door was now wide open.
Shit.
She whirled around, her gaze flying in every direction. Where in the hell had— “Hold it right there, Kendra.”
She knew the voice immediately. “Biers.”
“Turn around. Slowly.”
She turned to face him. His lips were cut and bloody, his shirt torn.