No words passed between them, but she saw the agreement settle in Jolie’s eyes.
If he stopped this vehicle, they fought.
On impulse, Stina leaned toward the back of the driver’s seat. “Any chance you’ve ever been to Antonio’s Ristorante in Chicago?”
He didn’t respond to her question, but something happened. He let off the gas just a fraction, causing the vehicle to lose momentum.
It only lasted for half a heartbeat, but then he corrected his speed and the SUV surged forward again.
Stina went still.
He knew the name.
Maybe he’d never personally been to the restaurant. But she’d said something that made him react before he could stop himself.
Her heart slammed fast and hard, making her head throb more.
Beside her, Jolie’s gaze flicked to Stina for the briefest second, and she knew her friend had caught it too.
Stina settled back against the seat and tried to control her urge to scream at him and make demands to know what he intended to do with them. If she pushed too hard, he’d most likely pull over and shoot them both. But Antonio’s meant something to him.
She kept her voice light. “I’m only asking because I made a pretty big impression there once.Verymemorable. It involved pizza. Screaming. Public humiliation. The whole thing had real dramatic flair.”
“Stina,” Jolie murmured under her breath, warning and encouragement wrapped together.
She ignored it.
“I’m just saying, if you were there, I’d remember you.” She tilted her head, studying the dark shape of him in the front seat. “And if you weren’t, then maybe you know someone who was.”
His shoulders locked.
For one terrible second, the only sound in the SUV was the engine straining against the climb.
Then he looked in the rearview mirror.
Whatever he saw made him hit the gas.
The SUV surged around the next bend so fast Stina slammed shoulder-first into Jolie. Ahead, something flashed across the road—orange barricades, a chain gate, a wall of packed snow. She couldn’t make sense of it before the man swore and stomped the brakes.
The vehicle fishtailed.
Jolie caught herself on the seat in front of them, and Stina grabbed the door hard enough to hurt her hand. The SUV slid sideways before jerking to a stop.
A barrier blocked the pass.
A steel gate stretched across the road, reinforced with heavy barricades and warning lights that flashed weakly against the rock face. Snow had drifted around the base of it, turning the whole thing into a dead end.
The man didn’t waste a second. He yanked the wheel hard and gunned it onto a narrow maintenance road carved into the mountainside above the gate. The tires bounced over rutted ice and frozen gravel, the SUV lurching upward at a steep angle before leveling out onto a flattened shelf of mountain.
And there, sitting in the gray pre-dawn light with its rotors already beginning to turn, was a helicopter.
He’d never intended to drive out. The gate, the pass, the road—none of it was ever the plan. He was moving toward an escape.
He was out of the vehicle before it stopped rocking.
The door on Jolie’s side flew open. “Out.”
Stina didn’t move.
