Traffic was sparse, but there were a cluster of cars coming. I raced across the road, hoping Jared would have to stop for the traffic, if he made it up to the road in time to see mecross.
The closest half of the highway was only two lanes wide, but the line I ran across it was more slanted than straight, and I had to hold my arms out to keep from falling over. When I got to the rocky median, I had to stop and throw up. Which I recognized from health class freshman year as one of the earliest signs of aconcussion.
I wiped vomit from my mouth, leaving a smear of blood in its place, then forced myself back to my feet and ran across the next two lanes. My steps felt a little steadier. On the shoulder of the road, I turned. Several cars had stopped on the other side of the highway, and their drivers stood at the edge of the road, staring down at thewreck.
“Hey! Are you okay?” one of them called out tome.
More vehicles whizzed past without stopping, and I took off running again. In the distance, to the south, I saw a line of trees—the only reasonable place to hide in such a barren landscape, utterly unlike what I’d grown up with in eastern Texas, and in southern Canada beforethat.
I couldnotlivehere.
I ran as fast as I could across the rocky dessert, stopping to catch my breath, stumbling every few steps as I tripped over pebbles I couldn’t see very well with my still-blurry vision. Sweat dripped into my eyes and I wiped my face with the tail of my shirt, for all the good that did. My shirt was grimy from thewreck.
A few feet later, I tripped and went down face-first in the dirt. As I picked myself up, my gaze caught on my left forearm. Blood was still dribbling steadily from the gash, and when I looked back, I found a thin trail of dark droplets leading back to where I’d crossed thehighway.
Cats can’t track by scent, but Jared wouldn’t need to. My trail was small, but obvious, and there was nothing I could do to hide my progress until I made it to thetrees.
“Kaci!” Jared shouted, his voice hardly carrying over thedistance.
I kept running, my right hand clamped over the gash on my left forearm, trying to hold itclosed.
Relief washed over me when I hit the tree line and the foliage provided much-needed shade. But my relief was short-lived. The patch of trees was so thin I could see all the way through it to the narrow, shallow river that fed this lush patch in thedesert.
I was alone and injured, on the run in thedesert.
With no good place tohide.
Twelve
Justus
My pulse racedas I sped down the highway, chasing a car that might or might not have been a blue Honda Civic with my kidnapped bride trapped inside. I must have looked like a psycho, weaving in and out of the left lane, honking my horn at assholes already doing better than the speed limit on a straight, open stretch of highway, and if I’d been driving my Z4, they might have (somewhat correctly) concluded that I was a rich asshole who felt entitled to the wholeroad.
Yet I’d never been farther from my Z4 or a carefree stretch of highway. I’d never in my life done anything as important as this. I’d never had anyone else depending on me, and the fact that it was Kaci—and thatI’dgotten her into this—made me press the gas pedal harder than I should have. Harder than the poor little rental could probably take for verylong.
I swerved around a delivery van and finally had a clear view of…what turned out to be an aquamarine Ford Taurus. Not Jared’s car. And unless Kaci’s was one of the small, dark heads just peering above the rear seat, aimed at a cartoon playing on a screen strapped to the back of the front passenger’s seat headrest, I’d been following the wrong car for miles andmiles.
And Kaci wasgone.
Fuck!
My fist flew, but I stopped it about an inch from slamming into the dash board. Hurting myself wouldn’t help anything, and further damage to the car would only run up a credit card bill Titus was probably already shaking his headover.
I eased off the gas a little to keep from scaring the family in the Taurus, then I passed them like a normal asshole, rather than a psychotic street racer. And as I was pulling back into the righthand lane, using my blinker and everything, a sharp movement in the traffic up ahead caught myeye.
I looked up just in time to see a car swerve to the right and plunge over the shoulder of the road into the desert, then flip. Then flipagain.
Oxygen deserted me. The sudden pressure in my chest was paralyzing. I couldn’t make out the color of the car from here, but I knew without even a flicker of a doubt that it was a blue Honda Accord. And that Kaci had somehow caused thatcrash.
That she might not have survivedit.
The cars around me began to slow. The Ford Taurus dad was already on his phone, staring at the wreck as he—presumably—called911.
I had to get to Kaci. But when the first car stopped on the shoulder of the road to help, I realized my rescue attempt would have anaudience.
Shit.
I pulled the rental to a stop on the shoulder, in the middle of a line of gawker/do-gooders, then I slammed the gearshift into park and practically vaulted out of my car, without bothering to close my door before I raced around the hood. I peered over the shoulder at the wreck, blending into the gathering crowd just long enough to verify that the car lying upside down at the base of a hill was, in fact, JaredTaylor’s.
