Latimer's Law. Mel Sterling

for miles and miles—a monstrous tension headache throbbed at her temples. Maybe some juice would help. She started to reach for the jug, but it only reminded her of the impetus for her flight.

      She bit her lip and grabbed the jug anyway, wrenching it open with fierce determination, and downed several swallows of the juice. It was only orange juice, after all, not an enemy, not a symbol, not Marsh’s grip. When she had capped the jug again, she got out of the truck to stretch her legs and face what she’d done head-on. Time to be practical about it all.... If she wasn’t going to take the truck back, she might as well see if anything in the pickup bed could be of any use to her in her new life of crime.

      The fork, covered with mayonnaise and bits of tuna, clattered into the sink with a noise that hurt her ears. Abby felt the familiar black wave of grief submerge her. It was all too much. Tuna. Peanut butter. Sandwiches. Tomato soup. Toast. Apple wedges. Cheese. Celery sticks. Wheelchairs. Adult diapers. Tantrums. Seizures. Without Gary, it was too much.

      “What is it? What’s wrong, Abigail?”

      “I can’t. I need Gary. I can’t do this.”

      “You can. We can. Look, I’m here. Just tell me...how many tuna sandwiches?”

      Abby slid down the cupboard doors by the sink and sat on the floor with her knees drawn up and her head pressed against them. “I don’t know.”

      Marsh put a warm hand on her shoulder. “Then tell me who gets peanut butter. I can manage that, I know. Come on, Abigail. It’ll be all right. All we need is time.” His voice was serene and placid. When he spoke, she could think again. Maybe it would work. Maybe all it took was time. Maybe he was right. He smelled like Gary. She wiped her eyes against the knees of her jeans.

      “Rosemary. Rosemary gets peanut butter. Joe gets tuna.”

      “Good, good. The older guy, is his name Smith? What kind of sandwich does he get?”

      The old red truck had a white camper shell over the bed of the pickup. Tinted windows prevented her from peering in, so she went to the back of the truck and turned the handle, lifting the hatch...

      ...and found herself staring into the unwavering barrel of a pistol, held beneath the grimmest, bluest gaze she’d ever seen, a blue gaze bracketed on one side by a starburst of corrugated scar tissue, and a smear of blood on the other. Standing at the shoulder of the man with the gun was a German shepherd, teeth bared and hackles raised.

      * * *

      When his pickup lurched into motion, Cade Latimer toppled from his crouch, striking his head on the big green toolbox. He had left the K-9 training facility outside Bushnell a few minutes ago and had pulled off the interstate at the Wildwood exit only to get a bad cup of convenience store coffee for the road and give Mort a snack and a drink of water. He’d climbed into the bed of the truck to tend to Mort before they got back on the road to head to the northeast corner of Alabama for some decent hill country hiking, fishing and camping.

      His first reaction was to right himself and lunge for the back of the truck—he must have forgotten to set the parking brake, and the truck had slipped into reverse. He had a vision of his truck rolling slowly out of control and into the street, causing the sort of stupid accident he had always hated to see while on patrol duty in the sheriff’s department. Before his undercover days, how many times had he lectured drivers about putting on their thinking caps before getting behind the wheel of a two-ton killing machine? But then he got a glimpse of someone in the cab of his pickup, behind the wheel, and realized something else was going on. Something illegal.

      For a moment Cade couldn’t believe it was happening. Surely no one in this Podunk, backwater, stuck-in-the-Depression town would steal a truck. Weren’t small-town folk supposed to be as honest as the day was long? A second lurching hop sent him flat again. Mort scrabbled uselessly, claws squealing against metal as the truck fishtailed onto the road. Cade reached out to steady his dog and spoke the command for the German shepherd to lie down. Warm wetness trickled down from Cade’s scalp. He’d cut himself on the metal toolbox.

      One last bump, then the truck’s motion smoothed and Cade ventured to look out the side window.

      Interstate. Passing swiftly.

      Damn it.

      He peered through the darkly tinted camper shell window into the cab of the truck and wished—not for the first time—that he’d had the cab’s window replaced with a slider. Most often he thought about that when he wanted to check on Mort while the truck was in motion, but now he wanted the slider so he could strangle the jerk who’d stolen his truck.

      With Cade in it, no less.

      Cade expected to see some punk-ass kid, maybe two, with cigarettes hanging loosely from their lips and leaving ash all over his vintage bench seat, out for a joyride with a six-pack of cheap beer. Instead, he saw the clean profile of a woman, light brown hair scraped back in a bobbing ponytail that brushed her back below her shoulder blades, and in the seat next to her wobbled a sack of groceries.

      Groceries!

      Some redneck soccer mom had stolen his truck. Maybe she was drunk already, though it wasn’t even ten in the morning, and confused which truck in the parking lot was hers.

      Blood dripped from his jaw onto his neck. Cade reached into his back pocket for a bandanna. Blotting, he looked at the cloth and saw the bright blossom of red there. Scalp wound. A tentative probe with his fingertips showed the cut was neither long nor deep, though it felt tender and was already swelling. The woman had caught him completely off guard. It shouldn’t have happened. His personal radar should have been better. He was a K-9 deputy, for crying out loud. It was his job to pay attention. Just because he was on vacation was no reason to check his brain at the door.

      What was worse, he knew not to leave his keys in and the engine running, even if it was only going to be for the two minutes he was feeding Mort. Talk about putting on his thinking cap.... He’d grown soft in the two years since he’d had to leave undercover work at the Marion County Sheriff’s Department after his accident. It was disturbing to realize how much he’d come to depend on Mort’s alertness to supplement his own training, awareness and common sense. Cade glared at the woman impotently, peering past her at the speedometer needle as it crept up and up. He watched her hands shaking on the steering wheel. She was all over the damned road. Drunk, high or terrified by what she’d done?

      Staying low, not wanting her to glance in the rearview and see even a shadow of him crouching in the pickup’s bed, Cade shifted toward the tailgate again, edging past his camping gear and fishing tackle, cooler, bedroll and tools. He leaned out cautiously, studied the concrete of the interstate flashing by at high speed beneath him and brought the flap of the truck’s canopy down. He latched it securely to shut out the boil of the truck’s slipstream, then glanced over his shoulder to see if she’d noticed. Her face was still turned toward the front, and she was scooted toward the wheel as if she hadn’t bothered to pull the bench seat forward to accommodate her height.

      Still at the back of the bed, Cade settled low and opened his zippered duffel. The 9mm Beretta waited there in its pocket holster, safety on, with a full clip and a bullet chambered. He stuck it in the back of his jeans, and slipped a couple of heavy-duty cable ties out of the same bag. He formed them into a two-link chain before settling low again, in case she pulled another thank-you-ma’am across the roadway. Not much he could do at the moment, but by God, when she stopped—he’d be ready.

      She’d stolen the wrong truck.

      Chapter 2

      “Hands up, lady.”

      Abby’s shocked gaze traveled slowly up from the menacing dark little mouth at the end of the gun barrel to the blue eyes behind it, and locked there. Peripheral vision showed her the shiny, puckered nightmare flesh of an old acid burn fanning out from the edge of his left eye toward his hairline and ear, and spilling down the side of his neck to vanish beneath his clothing. A vision of splattered melted red candle wax flashed through her mind. It took her too long to look away from the damaged