week catching up with her, Sasha looked away and continued to blink hard, this time against overpowering emotions. “It’s only a graze,” she muttered. “And nothing compared to what will happen if you don’t let me go.”
7
12:59 a.m. CST
Shortly after passing the road sign indicating Bitters 5 Miles, the woman driving the BMW Z8 stiffened with new alarm as the engine light flashed on.
“Stupid automobile!”
It wasn’t a year old and outrageously expensive, how could the engine be sick? This is what she deserved for her extravagance. God was punishing her, would punish her like the angel pursuing Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.
But this was no garden. She was in the middle of nowhere, a hideous, barren place not that different than where she’d come from, but without the luxuries. She’d noted all its deficits during the meandering, desperate attempt to find her way back to the interstate and here. Considering the endless darkness stretching before her, she had no hope that this “Bitters”—Americans forever perplexed her with their town names—was an improvement over the last disaster she’d exited at. There the gas pump had been malfunctioning, and the toilet—She would rather have risked the wildlife and peed behind a bush.
Now she couldn’t afford disdain. She had to seek help at Bitters because the stupid car was running on fumes as well as whatever that light meant.
Clinging to the steering wheel with a grip that triggered the cramps she’d been experiencing since the first night she’d been traveling, the woman checked her rearview mirror. At least she was safe again. No one else was on the road. Spasibo, Mama. Now if only her sainted mother could convince the Holy Virgin to forgive her for her vanity and self-indulgence, and bring her to someone who understood overpriced sports cars. This was exactly what she’d been warned when she’d bought it, how no one outside of a metropolitan area would be able to fix it should she have trouble. The head mechanic at the dealership had insisted, begged her, to pull over immediately should anything ever go wrong.
Pull over? Easy for him to say, she thought with another spasm of self-pity. He wasn’t the one in a strange place with a phone that refused to work, worried that when it finally did there would be no answer on the other side.
“I hate you,” she cried, pounding on the dash. “Turn off!”
The light stayed on.
Blinking at tears that threatened to lead her off the road, she eyed the odometer again, gauging how far away she now was from the exit. Two miles? It had to be less.
“I am strong,” she recited, remembering the therapy and self-help books she’d read by the dozens. “I can do it.”
Sniffing, she shifted into Neutral, turned off the ignition and let the Z8 cruise on its own momentum. The night was mild. Walking would be nerve-racking, but what hadn’t been so far? She could manage.
As the car began to slow, she steered to the shoulder until the vehicle came to a full stop.
Would it ever start again? She had counted on this sleek, red beauty to finance her future. But, she allowed with a sigh, that was the way of life. As her baba used to lecture, “To live a life is not so simple as crossing a field.”
Feeling tears collecting again, she pulled free the keys, climbed out of the BMW and locked up. Brushing back her shoulder-length hair, she inspected her surroundings. The other warnings flooded back into her memory, how not to venture off into the prairie if something went wrong, how there was as much danger out there as there was on the road, things that did more than bite or sting.
“All I ever wanted was to be warm again,” she whispered to the night.
With no desire to find out what creatures stalked this unwelcoming terrain, she began walking briskly toward the lights. Although dim and minimal, they consoled her somewhat. She was a woman who needed her solitude, needed it desperately, but the company of people, especially strangers, would be reassuring right now. If she could also get a cup of hot coffee and use a clean rest room, she would endure. Blossom.
“I am strong…I am strong.”
Her jogging shoes, still too new to be comfortable, made each step awkward. She was used to high heels, expensive leathers, not these heavy things with soles she suspected were made from military-truck tires. As ugly as they were stiff, they were no less foreign to her than her jeans and Texas T-shirt. Her style was the business suit, preferably silk and exquisite, and handcrafted shoes. These monstrosities reminded her of the old country, difficult times and too much she wanted to forget.
“The point is to blend in with the tourists, not stick out.”
Remembering those cautionary words, her lips, bare of the expensive makeup she was envied for, twisted without mirth. “What tourists?”
All but lost in her dejection, she was slow to realize something was missing.
My bag.
Horrified, she began running back. But after only a few steps, the lights of another vehicle appeared.
What to do? There was no choice but to seek shelter in the first shrubs large enough to hide her. Even as she sent up another prayer, she nevertheless veered off the road and down a craggy draw to seek cover in the deeper terrain. Stumbling over the uneven ground, she barely missed a dive into a thatch of prickly brush.
Ducking behind it, she watched as a vehicle slowed, then pulled in behind hers. Thieves? Of course! Who would ignore such a beauty standing alone for the taking? And in it all that was left of her future.
She cursed the interlopers in the large vehicle parking behind her car. Then she bit her lower lip as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could tell more about it. Oh, no, she thought. Please God, no.
Both driver and passenger doors opened. Two men emerged, the cab lights exposing that both dressed in dark attire. They were barely a hundred feet away, yet she couldn’t make out many details about them except that they appeared large, intimidating. Then they spoke and she knew visual identification wouldn’t matter.
The Russians.
An involuntary cry burst from her.
In the next instant the man on her side turned his flashlight toward where she hid. She ducked lower. The beam slid right over her hiding spot and passed. A second beam duplicated the trail of the first. It wasn’t unlike the prison camp searchlights from the old days, and she knew like those, these dogs of war would not give up easily.
Her worst fears materialized as the men started down the steep incline.
Terrified, certain that she’d been spotted, she turned blindly into the darkness and began running.
8
1:07 a.m.
Once they returned inside, Gray handed Sasha her glass and directed her toward the hallway.
“What for?”
He understood her wariness, realized she wasn’t convinced that,
