She could hit her head on the passenger’s door or the dash. But it was better than getting it blown off.
The men in the van kept firing at them. Bullets pinged off the metal and cracked what was left of the glass.
He steered the truck out of the tailspin the van had sent it into when it had slammed into the rear bumper. Before the men could catch up again, Jake pressed hard on the accelerator. The truck jerked forward, and Lillian’s forehead bumped against the dash.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No!” Her voice cracked with fear.
At least she hadn’t lost consciousness.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t lost the van yet, either. Bright lights glinted off his rearview mirror as the van accelerated, too, closing the distance between the vehicles again. He had to move faster.
“Hang on!” he warned her. Then he gunned the engine.
A whimper of fear slipped between her lips. He wanted to reach out and reassure her. But then he reminded himself that this was all her fault. Those men were shooting at them because of her.
“You must know who these guys are,” he insisted. “They showed up at your grandma’s house.”
“They must have followed you there,” she said.
Damn it. She was right. If these were the guys Mrs. Truman had talked about, the ones who’d shown up at Lillian’s place, they hadn’t seen the things she’d left behind six months ago. They couldn’t have learned what he had. But they might have staked out her apartment in case she showed up there. And they’d seen him instead.
“They probably don’t even know I’m in this truck,” she continued.
And they might not. He hadn’t known that she was inside it when he’d jumped into his truck. But she hadn’t just been inside it, she’d been trying to steal it. She couldn’t have known the rusted old pickup was his, though.
Could she?
He hadn’t used this vehicle when he’d been dating her. He’d used his pleasure vehicle instead, an old Chevrolet Nova he’d restored himself. This old truck was his work vehicle because its big block engine had more power. But at the moment it wasn’t fast enough.
“The last place I was before driving out here was your apartment. If they followed me...” And how the hell had they managed that without his noticing? “...then they followed me from there.”
The truck lurched forward as the van struck again. Metal crunched. He wasn’t sure if it was the truck’s rear bumper or the front of the van. He hoped like hell it was the front of the van. Maybe they’d disable their own damn vehicle.
“Lose them!” she yelled at him.
Her voice cracked now with anger. She wasn’t the sweet soft-spoken woman he remembered and whom he’d spent the past eight months missing. But then she must have never actually been that woman—the one he had started to fall for.
No, she was definitely a Davies.
Not that she didn’t have every right to be mad, with people shooting at them and trying to run them off the road.
Jake’s pulse pounded with fury. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry. He could remember the last time he’d felt helpless, though—when Lillian had sobbed heartbrokenly as he’d taken her dad and oldest brother into custody. He hadn’t been able to make her understand he’d just been doing his job.
But he suspected now that she’d always known who he was. She’d probably been playing him just as she must have played her boss when she’d embezzled money from the company for which she’d worked.
No matter what she’d done, though, he didn’t want anyone to hurt her. And with the way those guys had opened fire in the cottage, it certainly looked as though someone was trying to kill them. Jake didn’t intend to die, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone harm Lillian.
He pressed harder on the accelerator. But then he took one hand from the steering wheel and pulled his gun from his holster. He extended it through the shot-out back window and using the rearview mirror, he took aim and fired at the van. Over and over again.
Glass shattered and the van tires squealed as it braked and then slipped into a skid. While it careened out of control behind them, Jake accelerated more and increased the distance between them. Despite this, he was tempted to turn back and find out who the hell they were and if he’d hit any of them...
But he glanced down at Lillian crouched yet on the floorboards, and he knew that he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk her life.
If he hadn’t been outnumbered...
But even if he’d hit one or two of them, he would still be outnumbered. There had been so many of them firing at him in her grandmother’s house.
They had to be after her.
And he intended to find out why.
He steered around a couple of sharp hairpin curves, nearly raising the truck onto two wheels as he did. Then he spied a slight space between trees on the side of the street. It was probably some old two-track road leading back to an old cabin or an oil well. He braked and turned onto the nearly obscured trail. He turned so fast that the truck nearly flipped over on the passenger’s side.
And Lillian screamed again.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to lose them.” And so far it looked as though he had.
The truck bounced along the rough road, as he continued down the two-track, deeper into the trees. Night had fallen, but the moon was big and bright enough that it might reveal their location unless he drove farther from the main road. Of course, if those guys found them Jake wouldn’t be able to escape with the truck.
He and Lillian would have to outrun the men on foot. As shot up as the truck was, that might not be a bad idea, even now. He wasn’t sure how much farther the beat-up old pickup could make it.
He stopped the truck and glanced out the back window to make sure they were deep enough into the woods so that they wouldn’t be seen from the road. But before he could even put the vehicle in Park, the passenger’s door opened—flashing on the dome light as she jumped out.
“Lillian!”
If the van went past and saw the light in the trees, their hiding place was blown. But she seemed more intent on getting away from him than the shooters.
Had she set up the ambush?
Jake followed her out and slammed the door shut behind him. But he couldn’t see her in the trees. He could only hear the occasional snap of a branch and the rustle of brush as she ran. She wasn’t getting away from him that easily.
But as he started after her, he heard the squeal of tires against pavement as a vehicle braked on the street. Maybe finding her was the least of his concerns right now. He had to worry instead that they had been found. And if the shooters had been determined to kill him before, they would be even more determined now that he had fired back
