She stared over at him, but it was too dark to read his expression. Was he…protecting her? In his own twisted way, it sure seemed like it. But why? If he wanted her punished for all of her misdeeds, why not hand her over to the cop? Or, for that matter, the people she’d spent the last several years running from? He wasn’t part of this. He didn’t have to put himself in danger and could so easily tell her good riddance and wash his hands of her, but he didn’t seem the least bit inclined to do so.
He made no sense.
Up ahead, a car waited at a stop sign for them to pass. A police car. The same police car?
Sage’s muscles twitched with the need to run. “Vaughn…”
“Yeah. I see him.”
They passed the intersection, and she spun in her seat to watch out the back window. The cop car sat there for a second longer than necessary, then turned in the opposite direction, again heading back toward the Interstate. Maybe he was just doing his rounds or driving in circles to kill time, but the hair standing up on her arms was telling her otherwise. Something wasn’t right.
“I don’t think we should go to the motel,” she said.
“Read my mind, vixen.” He fumbled in the center console for his phone and handed it to her. “Figure out where we are and find us a way back to the highway.”
She swiped her finger over the screen to unlock it and found he had an unread text message from Marcus.
I know who she is. Call me ASAP.
A dark, yawning pit opened up in the bottom of her stomach, and she slid a glance toward Vaughn. He still had an eye on the rearview mirror and wasn’t paying attention to her. With her heart pounding so hard she was surprised he didn’t hear the percussion of it against her ribs, she quickly deleted the message. It wouldn’t stop him from finding out, but it’d buy her some time at least.
“Where are we, Sage? I need directions.”
“Uh…” She opened the GPS app and saw it had already calculated a new route that took them to Atlanta on backroads. “It says twelve miles straight on this road, then turn left and take the ramp onto a state highway. The next biggest city is Atlanta, and we should be reaching the outskirts in just under two hours.”
“All right. We’ll go as far as Atlanta and find a place to stay until—”
The SUV came out of nowhere, slamming into their back bumper. They both jolted forward hard against their seat belts. Vaughn swore as the car started to swerve and fought for control of the wheel, but the SUV rammed them again. The car slid into a spin, the outside world whipping by in a smear of trees, too-bright headlights, and yawning darkness.
“Hang on!” Vaughn shouted.
She braced herself for impact, but it still tore the air out of her lungs when the car nose-dived into a short ravine beside the road and came to an abrupt halt, nose down, body wedged in a small cluster of trees. Her seatbelt tightened painfully, jerking her back when she would have flown through the windshield. Beside her, Vaughn grunted in pain, then went frighteningly silent.
She sat there, glued in place by an overwhelming fear, and tried to catch her breath as the car creaked and groaned around her. The beam of a flashlight played over the dashboard, and she thought she heard voices from the road overhead.
They were looking for her.
She couldn’t let them find her.
Panic sizzled away the fear. She had to go. Had to run, but her door was jammed shut.
Still dazed, she unhooked her belt, and gravity pulled her out of the seat and toward the dashboard. She propped herself against the dash and used her feet to break through the large crack snaking across the windshield. It took a few tries, but the whole thing finally exploded outward.
She climbed out onto the soft, leaf-covered earth and only then did she notice how much farther they could have fallen. It wasn’t a small ravine at all, but a long, steeply sloped hill into a fast-moving river, and the only thing keeping the car from crashing down there was the two sturdy pine trees it had lodged between.
A second flashlight joined the first. Two men stood by the road, staring at the wreck. Their voices floated down, but she couldn’t make out any distinct words, just a general tone of annoyance from one and apology from the other. Neither of the men seemed inclined to climb down and check for survivors, and she didn’t think they saw her, hidden in front of the car as she was. She could easily continue unnoticed down the slope to the edge of the river and then follow that to town. She started sliding downhill, slowly, quietly. She could disappear again. Now was her chance to escape and—
What about Vaughn?
She stopped moving and gazed up at the car. Maybe she should check and make sure…
No. Hell no. What was she thinking? Going back for him was a bad idea. He wanted to throw her in jail. Marcus knew her real identity, so it was only a matter of time before Vaughn did, too. If she valued her life—and she did, as sucky as it was—then she needed to keep moving and not look back.
He’d be fine. He was the big, badass SEAL. Besides, she still had his phone, so it wasn’t like she had to leave him completely without help. She could call 911 for him as soon as she was safely hidden.