Lethal Ransom. Laurie Alice Eakes

her mother was somewhere else. Her mother was in the hands of a criminal, while she would soon be in the hands of the police or US Marshals Service. Whoever it was would be questioning her like she was a suspect. They might send her a victim’s advocate.

      A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat. After the hundreds of crime victims she had helped in her job as a social worker, she was now one herself. She should know exactly what to expect.

      But she doubted anyone could prepare for such an eventuality. None of her training had taught her about the slicing depth of the guilt, the anguish, the grief of being captured even for a few minutes.

      And her mother could be captured for hours or days, or—

      She wouldn’t think about the worst-case scenario.

      A groan escaped Kristen’s lips. “Mom, why do you stay in this job?”

      Threats had been nothing before, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t end up following through. Except Mom hadn’t mentioned any threats. Surely she wouldn’t keep such information from the marshals who were assigned to protect the judges, even if she might keep it from her daughter.

      And her husband?

      Kristen should have asked, would have, if she hadn’t been so wrapped up in looking for that SUV—the vehicle now speeding away with her mother inside alone because she had helped Kristen escape.

      Sick with guilt, Kristen reached for the marshal’s phone. Her own remained in her purse in her car a quarter mile ahead on the side of the road. Abandoned. Wrecked.

      “Siri, call—” Kristen stopped. She couldn’t remember her father’s number. She didn’t know her mother’s number. She never bothered to remember telephone numbers anymore. They were programmed into her phone.

      She needed it—now.

      She slid out of the sports car and took a step toward her bashed-in car. Gravel cut into her feet, and she cried out in pain. It was foolish to have kicked off her shoes to run faster.

      She had run away while that man stole her mother.

      Every time she turned around, she was disappointing her mother. She wouldn’t take the right sort of job. She wouldn’t drive a better car. She wouldn’t date the right class of men. Kristen was happier at home with a good movie and a bowl of popcorn than she was at a black-tie affair or any sort of gathering where people’s worth seemed to be measured in the cost of their ensembles rather than their character.

      Letting her mother get kidnapped was one more huge disappointment, one more misstep to letting her parent down.

      “If she dies, it’ll be my fault.” Kristen wiped her eyes.

      This was no time to give in to tears or panic or anything else...weak. She must be strong, think what to do.

      She needed to start doing something now, not simply stand by the side of the expressway and whine about her feet. She should go answer questions. The sooner the authorities got information, the sooner they could rescue her mother.

      She took a step forward, and the marshal’s phone rang. Wincing, she turned toward the car again and bent down to grab the cell phone from the console. Then, phone in hand, she trudged, wincing, toward the marshal and a policeman talking beside the road. The man who chased her was gone and more emergency vehicles had arrived, an ambulance among them. Traffic crawled, partly from a blocked lane, partly from the gapers.

      “Halt right there, miss,” the policeman called when Kristen was barely a dozen feet away from the Mustang.

      Kristen held up the phone. “He got a phone call.”

      The deputy marshal spoke to the cop, who frowned, but nodded and started toward Kristen, the marshal beside him.

      “This is the judge’s daughter,” the marshal spoke to the policeman.

      “Kristen Lang,” she supplied.

      The cop’s grass-green eyes, in a face pale enough to not have been exposed to the sun for the past year, raked over Kristen. “We need to talk to you.”

      “She’s getting checked out by the paramedics first, then coming to the marshal’s office,” the deputy marshal said. “This is our jurisdiction.”

      “Then where are your men?” the cop demanded.

      “On their way.” The marshal looked at Kristen.

      She ducked her head, feeling the revolting tangle of wet hair slap against her cheeks.

      “Why don’t you come to the ambulance?” the deputy marshal said. “I’ll be right with you.”

      Apparently expecting her and the policeman to go along with this plan, he began to text on his phone.

      Kristen hesitated. “I’d like to get my purse and phone out of my car.”

      “We need an accident report from her at the least,” the policeman said.

      “Since it was part of the kidnapping, we’ll get it and pass it along.”

      Officer Green Eyes scowled but nodded and strode back toward one of the vehicles with flashing lights, each footfall looking hard enough to shake the earth.

      “He doesn’t know how to play with others.” The deputy marshal smiled at Kristen.

      She blinked. The grin transformed his face from hard authority, to boyish charm in a flash. An attractive flash.

      “Now,” he continued, “let’s get you back out of the rain. You must be freezing.” He hesitated, then held out his hand. “I’m Nick Sandoval, by the way.”

      She touched the tips of her fingers to his palm, finding it broad and firm, calloused as though he labored to earn his muscular frame rather than worked out in a gym. It was a hand one could hold onto and know one was safe.

      She snapped her thoughts back to what was important. “I would like my phone, please.” She sounded like a little girl asking for her favorite toy, not a grown woman with a master’s degree in social work and a responsible job.

      “I’ll get it for you as soon as the crime scene techs release it. Her Honor may try to call it.”

      “With what? Her phone’s still in the Camry.” Tears stung Kristen’s eyes. “I told her to put it down so it wouldn’t knock her in the face when we crashed. It’s my fault she doesn’t have it.”

      “Her kidnappers would probably have taken it away from her anyway, Kristen.” His tone was gentle, but his eyes were cold. She hadn’t thought brown eyes could hold no warmth, but his looked like frozen Fudgsicles, nice on a hot day but uncomfortable in the chill of a summer storm.

      “How will she call us if she doesn’t have a phone?” Kristen asked.

      “She’ll find a way if anyone can.” Nick touched her elbow. “Come on. You’re not doing her any good standing here in the rain. The sooner we make sure you’re all right and then get a statement from you, the sooner we can find her.”

      Kristen shook her head. “No paramedics. I’m just fine.”

      Except for her bruised and aching feet.

      “You were in a crash bad enough for your air bags to deploy.”

      “The air bags going off is why I’m fine.” She shifted from one foot to the other to ease pressure on her battered soles. “Please. I want to make my statement. I don’t know much, but the sooner I tell you what I do know, the sooner you can find my mother.”

      * * *

      Nick had no idea how the daughter of such a confident, powerful woman as Judge Julia Lang could walk as though she carried a hundred pound pack up a mountain, talk like the sound of her own voice frightened her and think she was to blame for that day’s events. But she did look a body in the eye. Every time those lake-blue eyes of hers met his, he felt