Relentless Protector. Colleen Thompson

square jaw. “They didn’t go that way.”

      “You’re sure?”

      “Sure as I can be about anything right now.” He flicked an assessing look in her direction. “You feeling any better?”

      A laugh slipped out, dry and mirthless. “You really don’t want to know the answer to that question.”

      “There’s some aspirin in the first-aid kit if you can reach it.”

      Though her head pounded with the movement, she picked up the plastic box off the floorboard, mostly relying on her uninjured left arm. She found the bottle but couldn’t open it one-handed.

      Passing it to him, she asked, “Could you, please?”

      He popped the top and handed back the open container. “Take that water from the center console. It’s not the freshest, but you need to drink as much of it as you can. It’ll help keep you from blacking out again.”

      She forced herself to wash down two of the tablets, then finish every drop of the water.

      “Thanks,” she managed, struggling to stave off the panic flashing through her brain like summer lightning.

      “We’re coming up on an intersection with the interstate in just a couple miles. I’m figuring they’ll stick to back roads, since for all they know, there’s already an AMBER Alert out for your son. What do you think?”

      Anxiety paralyzed her. Maybe they should make finding a phone a priority so the police could really activate the alert. But she couldn’t bear the thought of losing their chance to catch up with Tyler. If only she had some way of knowing which route the kidnappers might have taken.

      A single thought pierced the fog: the final errand on her day’s list. “They’ll have to stop for gas soon. I was going to fill up on my way home from the groomer’s.”

      “If they cut over to the interstate, there’ll be an exit in about ten miles if they backtrack or another twenty-five or so if they keep heading west.”

      “If they stay on this road, there’s a little town up ahead.” She’d driven through it last month, on the way to a friend’s ranch, where Tyler had taken his first horseback ride. The memory of his laughter choked her, but she swallowed hard and forced herself to focus. “There’s a mom-and-pop store on the main drag—look, you see the sign?”

      “Be pretty hard to miss that,” Cole said.

      Large and crudely painted, the homemade billboard stood along the grassy roadside. Texas Two-Step, Gas-Groceries-Grill, 8 Miles Ahead, Y’all Come See Us!

      Not far ahead, she saw a more official sign, with its arrow pointing to the right, indicating a connection to the interstate. And the knowledge crashed down on her that if she made the wrong choice, Tyler could be as lost to her as the husband she had buried.

      * * *

      A MPED UP ON THE candy bars she seemed to live on, his lover drove in a dangerous, lock-jawed silence that even Lee Ray Hardy was afraid to interrupt. He didn’t kid himself that “Evie,” as she’d demanded he keep calling her, did much more than tolerate him at the best of times, but the drugs were great, the sex mind-blowing and he found her fascinating, like a glittery-scaled cobra that might strike at any moment.

      Might strike him dead, he dimly realized, but he was powerless to pull away. Especially as long as she kept him supplied with the crystal meth that had consumed whatever chance he’d ever had at an ordinary life.

      Beside him, the boy’s eyelids drooped, thanks to the cold medicine Evie had used to spike the juice box from her duffel. Fighting sleep, he studied Lee Ray’s inked arms until his face screwed up with disapproval. “Teacher says you’re not s’posed to let people draw on your skin,” he said sleepily. “She says you can get in real big trouble for it. With the principal.”

      In spite of himself Lee Ray grinned. “Yeah, well, there’s not much any principal can do to me that ain’t been done already,” he said. “Besides, these’re the kind of pictures that don’t come off.”

      “Not even with soap?”

      “Already tried that,” Lee Ray joked, though he couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a bath or shower. It was one of those things he never thought of on his own, but Evie always made him before sex. Not that there’d been much of that since she’d grown so obsessed with tracking down the woman whose photo she’d spotted in some newspaper story.

      “So you have to keep them always?” the boy asked. A cute kid, Lee Ray had to admit, with those drowsy blue eyes peering up from beneath the shaggy blond-brown bangs. And except for a rash of tears after Evie had ordered Lee Ray to get rid of that snarling, snapping little mutt of his, the boy had barely cried.

      “Always,” Lee Ray answered him. “Don’t you like my tats, dude?”

      Though he held on to the stuffed octopus for dear life, the kid peered at his arm and neck critically, then pointed at the scowling pirate on his left arm. “I like that one, sort of. Except he looks a little scary. You got any cartoons?”

      There was one cartoonish naked lady splayed obscenely across his chest, but Lee Ray shook his head instead of lifting his shirt.

      “No cartoons,” he said, “but you see this?” He showed off what once had been a decent biceps. “This one here’s an eagle.”

      “Shut the hell up back there, will you? You’re givin’ me a mother of a headache, all that yackin’.” Evie’s warning sliced him, sharper than the look in her violently blue eyes.

      It was a reminder, too, that he had no business getting attached to any rug rat. Especially not one his volatile girlfriend had planned on taking from the start.

      He had no idea what she meant to do with the kid, since she’d never seen fit to clue him in on her plans. But whatever it was, he thought as dread tightened his gut, it was bound to be a lot worse than what had happened to the dog.

      Chapter Four

      The first of several officers on the scene, Deputy Trace Sutherland had never seen a damned thing like this in his sixteen years with the Tuller County Sheriff’s Department. Sure, the area had its share of property crimes and assaults, even the rare murder, but a bank holdup in broad daylight, with a hostage taken?

      All around him, witnesses continued jabbering, from bank employees to the only other customer who’d been here, to another man who’d seen an armed assailant force a dark-haired woman into his truck.

      “He acted like he just wanted to ask that poor girl for a date or something,” the customer service manager repeated as she twisted a wad of tissue into pieces. Her eyes wide and wet, she added, “I warned everyone when I saw him going for his gun. He claimed his name was Cole, Cole Sawyer, and that he’d recently left the army.”

      “Probably needed money,” the witness from the parking lot interjected. “Lot of them veterans’re having trouble finding work.”

      As the group rattled on, basically rehashing the few facts they had already given, a feminine cry interrupted from across the lobby. Excusing himself, Trace made a beeline to where the EMTs were helping the very shaken, very pregnant teller, who lay curled with her hands clutching her abdomen and her face screwed up in a grimace.

      “Her water broke. We’d better get her on the ambulance,” said one of the EMTs as she and her partner raised the gurney.

      “That’s fine,” Trace said, then looked down at the young teller, his expression softening at the terror in her eyes. “You just worry about yourself and that baby right now, Mrs. Rowan. We’ll send somebody to interview you about the incident once you’re feeling better.”

      At least they would be able to question her later. The security guard, already en route to the hospital after three shocks had failed to restore a normal cardiac rhythm, wouldn’t