Lethal Ransom. Laurie Alice Eakes

opening in the right lane was another good sign. Nick punched the accelerator and surged into the gap seconds before everyone’s brake lights flared on and the lane screeched to a complete halt—a defining characteristic of an accident, not a carjacking.

      Unless...

      Nick cut the wheel right and, half a dozen horns honking in his wake, plowed onto the shoulder of the road.

      He spied what lay ahead now. An accident for sure. A crash between a dark gray SUV and a silver Camry, the former idling with emergency flashers engaged, the latter with doors wide-open.

      And from the vehicles raced a tall woman in a flowing summer dress and long, blond hair, with a man in hot pursuit.

      Nick flung himself from his car and raced for the woman. The daughter? Not the judge. Where was Her Honor? His gaze flicked to the Camry, to the SUV. Rescue the daughter? Go look for the judge? His duty was to the judge, but the daughter was in imminent danger.

      Wishing he wore his running shoes, Nick sprinted along the side of the road. Cars honked. People shouted, words indistinct above the rumble of engines and approaching sirens. His feet slipped on wet gravel.

      A hundred yards ahead of him, the woman stumbled, started to pitch forward. The man in pursuit grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her upright. Her mouth opened. If she cried out, ambient noise drowned the sound.

      Nick pushed himself to greater speed. The man was dragging the woman backward, closer to him. She struck out with one hand. The man caught her wrist, spun her around toward the idling SUV nosed against the Camry.

      That SUV was involved in more than having wrecked the Camry. Nick knew it with all his law enforcement instincts for trouble. On foot, even in his Mustang, he couldn’t stop the owners of the SUV if it took off. From its angle, he could read the license plate. Police were on their way but taking too long. Minutes when Nick needed seconds, wedged into traffic as he had been despite their sirens.

      But he could stop that man from taking the judge’s daughter. A dozen drivers and their passengers could stop the man from taking her. Not one person got out of their vehicle. Scared. The man could be armed. Nick was armed. Still, if anyone simply tossed something in the way to trip the man Nick would catch them before they reached that SUV.

      “Seconds. I only need seconds to gain.”

      Half prayer, half plea to anyone who might be willing, Nick spoke the words aloud, though he barely heard them. Ten yards. Three yards.

      Nick lunged and grasped the daughter’s captor. “I’m a deputy US marshal. Let her go.”

      The man tried to keep running, hold firm on the judge’s daughter. But she stopped, dropped to her knees, an anchor to her captor.

      “Get up.” The man aimed a kick in the young woman’s direction.

      Nick hooked the man’s raised leg with his own foot and threw him off balance. “Now stay down.” He placed his foot in the center of the man’s chest. “If you can, get up and head for my car behind me.”

      “I can’t. My mom—” She spoke between gasps for breath, then leaped up and began running toward the SUV.

      “Stop,” Nick shouted.

      She kept running.

      Nick’s prisoner laughed and tried to grasp his ankle.

      Nick grabbed the man’s wrists and hauled him to his feet. “Who are you?”

      “Who are you?” Four cops from the nearest suburban town surrounded Nick.

      “Deputy US Marshal Nick Sandoval. Please take this man into custody. I need to go after the judge’s daughter.”

      And the judge? Of course. The young woman was running toward her mother.

      “Credentials?” the police sergeant demanded.

      “Later.” Nick thrust the prisoner, a man nearly half his size, toward the waiting police officers. “I’m responsible for those ladies.”

      An officer caught hold of the prisoner, and Nick raced after the judge’s daughter. It took mere seconds to catch up with her—seconds in which the flashers on the SUV ceased, the tires spun, and the monstrous vehicle roared to life. One officer raised his weapon as though intending to shoot out the tires.

      “No,” Nick shouted, as another officer pushed his colleague’s arm down.

      They couldn’t fire at a vehicle containing a federal judge. They could miss the tires and strike her through the rear of the vehicle. They could hit a tire and send the SUV spinning or rolling into the heavy traffic—traffic unable to stop because of the rain-slick road.

      Two officers ran for their cruisers to give chase, but the SUV swept past the wrecked Camry and sped along a suddenly clear shoulder, pickup and stalled vehicles gone. Before the police reached their car, the SUV was lost in traffic.

      “Nooo.” The daughter’s cry was long and painful like a wounded animal.

      She took a few stumbling steps in the direction the SUV, then dropped to her knees, her hands to her cheeks.

      “It’s all right—” Nick hesitated, not sure of her name, as he crouched beside her. “You’re safe with me.”

      “But they have my mother.” She was gasping as though still running. “They took my mother.”

      “We’ll find her. We caught the man who grabbed you. He’ll tell us something.”

      Not at all guaranteed, but she needed reassurance.

      “Let’s get you to my car and out of the rain.”

      “We need to go after that SUV. They have my mom.”

      The judge, Nick’s responsibility.

      The minute he helped the woman to her feet and turned toward his vehicle, he knew her assailant had slipped the officers’ custody. The officers were scattered, running into the now halted traffic, and the wiry kidnapper darted between cars and under the elevated train tracks to the eastbound lane.

      No one would blame Nick for the vehicle getting away. He could not have caught up with it.

      But they might blame him for the prisoner escaping.

       TWO

      Kristen fell more than sat in the deputy marshal’s low-slung car and covered her face with her hands. She should lock the doors, make herself safe. But she couldn’t in such a small space. Only the rain-washed air, however choked with exhaust fumes, kept her from hyperventilating.

      Her feet throbbed from running barefoot along the highway. Her head ached from where the man had grabbed her by the hair. Her shoulder hurt from how he tried to drag her away until the deputy US marshal arrived to rescue her, too late for her mother.

      She began to shake from the cold of being soaked through, from the accident and near capture, from knowing her mother was tossed into a car and speeding away somewhere. Nightmare seemed too tame a word to describe the events of the past fifteen minutes.

      Her mother had been kidnapped, and her father was thousands of miles away, probably out of cell phone range.

      With two parents who worked so much that nannies had raised their daughter more than them, Kristen understood feeling alone. But nothing, not all the school plays and choir concerts Mom or Dad or both of them had been unable to attend, left her as hollow as knowing men had taken her mother by force and she had been unable to stop them. On the contrary, her mother had stopped them from taking Kristen.

      She slumped forward so her forehead rested on the dashboard. “If I had made different driving choices... If I had told a marshal at the courthouse about the SUV following me... If I thought faster during the accident—”