until he gave in.
She saw her car, finally, just a few aisles away. Rounding a pylon, she practically ran into a third Santa Claus. She gasped, almost losing her armload from the surprise. She stepped to her right just as he stepped to his left. Her smile died on her lips, however, when she looked more carefully at his face.
He stared at her with intense, bloodshot eyes, and his expression was anything but jovial. Her heart kicked into double-time as she realized he wasn’t just another store Santa.
“Ms. Parker,” he said.
That did it. How did he know her name? She looked to her right, her left, but there was no one nearby. Someone had to be around, for God’s sake.
“Please, don’t be scared, I just want to talk to you.”
She checked to her left once more, tried to feint to her right. But his hand caught her arm, and his grip held her firm. She opened her mouth to scream, but the move came too late. His hand, thick, clammy, covered her mouth, the hand on her arm pulling her farther into the recesses of the garage.
She struggled against him, but he kept maneuvering her past cars, toward her SUV. God, he knew her car! She hadn’t been crazy, or nostalgic for her mother. This maniac had been following her, stalking her, and now…
She remembered in a vivid flash the most serious admonition given to every woman: don’t let the abductor get you into the car. The chances of surviving were minimal once he got you away from people, from crowds.
She kicked his leg, and his grunt let her know she’d made an impact, but it wasn’t enough. His grip didn’t loosen. In fact, his hand tightened brutally.
They got to the SUV and she heard something behind her, a car door closing. She tried to twist around, but he pushed up against her back, his warm breath and scratchy white beard tickling her neck.
“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. “I won’t hurt you as long as you stay quiet. I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. I have a gun, and I have nothing to lose by shooting you.”
A gun. Oh, God. She was going to die. She thought of the mace in her purse, and it might have been on the moon for all the help it did her. She should have just dropped her packages and run at the first hint of trouble, but she’d clung to the stupid gifts as if they mattered.
As promised, his hand moved from her mouth, and just as she was about to scream, regardless of his threat, she felt something hard and round poke into her side. It was a weapon. Nothing else could feel like that. If she screamed, she died. If she held on, there was always a chance she could escape.
“Good girl,” he said, his lips so close to her ear it made her wince. “I’m going to take your purse now. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Fine. Take it. Take the money. There are credit cards. You can take it all.”
He didn’t respond. Just lifted the purse from her grasp. The gun still poked her side. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but she knew that he wouldn’t have to look hard for her keys. She kept them in the outside pocket so she herself wouldn’t have to dig for them. Stupid. Another bonehead move. She lived in D.C., for God’s sake, one of the most dangerous cities in America, and she walked around like she was invincible. Even after she’d sensed someone was stalking her.
He unlocked the car electronically, then pulled her back so he could open the back door. “Put the packages in the back seat.”
She did as he said.
He opened the front door. “Get in.”
She did, searching frantically for something to use as a weapon.
He’d already figured this part out, because the second she was behind the wheel, he captured her hands, held her wrists with one hand while he tied them together with a thick blue scarf. Then he tied that to the wheel.
A moment later, he ran around the car. She pulled at her restraint, tried to move so that at the very least she could honk the horn, but then he was beside her. Him and the gun.
“I won’t hurt you. Just listen to me. I’m going to untie you. You’re going to drive away from here. Don’t panic, and don’t try anything stupid, and we’ll both get out of this alive.” He stuck her key in the ignition and undid the bindings. “Start it up. Now.”
With trembling fingers, she turned the key. From her peripheral vision, she saw him toss the Santa hat and the ridiculous beard into the back seat. His hair was dark, his skin, pale. She was afraid to look at him directly, afraid that if he realized she could identify him, he’d have no reason to let her go.
“That way,” he said, pointing with his free hand toward the east exit.
She checked her mirror, then, without even thinking about it, she turned his way, and something registered. She’d seen him before. Recently.
“Drive.”
She focused on her speed, direction and the gun he held so steadily he couldn’t possibly miss. But the face haunted her. Where had she— “You’re that reporter. You killed that old man.”
He grunted. “Yeah. I’m that reporter.”
Max Travis. His name made everything else fall into place. All the reports on the news, in the paper. He was a lunatic, and he’d already murdered once. Twice wouldn’t make him blink an eye.
“You can’t get away with this,” she said, hoping her voice sounded a lot stronger than she felt.
“I already have.”
Chapter Two
“Where are we going?” Jade was scared, but kept her fear under control. If she was to escape this ordeal alive, she would have to be ready to flee at the first opportunity.
“Shut up. Turn right here.” The gun in Max’s hand never wavered. Damn that CSI show—she could picture the bullet entering her body, tracing a path to her heart… Her purse lay at his feet, so she couldn’t get to her cell phone or the mace.
“Can’t we talk about this?”
“No. Head for I-95.”
Jade threaded her way through the streets of Arlington for the highway, fully aware that it headed for either Washington or deeper into Virginia. She considered faking a skid on the snow-swept streets, but the gun could go off in a crash.
“Get on here,” Max said, waving the gun toward the southbound on-ramp.
She swung onto the highway, merged with the traffic and accelerated into the blowing snow. She reached to turn the heater up and Max’s nervous twitch reminded her that she was being kidnapped by a cold-blooded killer.
She tried to recall what she’d heard about the man on the news—pitifully little, actually—that might help her reason with him. He was a reporter for the Washington Post. He’d done some big stories, some undercover work. He’d even been up for a Pulitzer. For unknown reasons, he’d brutally murdered an older man, a friend of his father’s and an important man at Geotech, an energy and mining company large enough to change the course of the nation
