Halverson Estate?”
“Roger,” he confirmed. “Five miles away. Why? Need me to stop and pick up some milk or bread?” He chuckled.
“No. I have a mission for you.”
“Really?” Mustang sat straighter. “Must be a short deadline if you can’t wait until I get to Charlie’s place.”
“It is,” Declan said, his tone clipped. “Be on the lookout for a red Toyota Camry. Grace’s friend is en route to Charlie’s and has a tail following her. She reported three vehicular attacks since leaving the DC area. She might be in trouble.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for her. The road out this way appears pretty deserted.”
“Then it shouldn’t be hard to find her. Let us know when you catch up to her.”
“Roger.” As he increased his speed, Mustang gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.
A mile or more later a yellow caution sign indicated a sharp curve ahead. Mustang applied his brakes, his gaze scanning the sides of the road and the ditches. If someone was trying to harm Grace’s friend, running her off the road in the middle of a curve was the perfect place to do it. Dusk was settling in, causing shadows to merge, making it more difficult for Mustang to distinguish between shadows and objects on the sides of the road.
As soon as he entered the sweeping curve, he spied a dark vehicle parked barely off the shoulder. The driver’s-side door hung open and, as far as Mustang could tell, no one was inside or around the vehicle. He slowed, pulled over to the side of the road and off onto the shoulder, giving the vehicle in front of him plenty of space. He shifted into Park, grabbed his flashlight from the center console and pulled his handgun from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
Mustang slipped down out of his truck and closed the door quietly. As he rounded the hood and edged toward the dark sedan he spied another vehicle on the other side of the ditch crashed against a fence pole. It, too, seemed abandoned and, from what he could tell, it was red. The front bumper was smashed into the fence post and the driver’s-side window was shattered with what looked like a bullet hole at the exact position that would have hit the driver, had the driver been sitting in the seat.
Adrenaline shot through Mustang’s veins. Crouching low, he eased toward the abandoned vehicles, dropped down into the ditch and climbed up the embankment to the disabled vehicle where he discovered the passenger door was open. He prayed that whoever had been in the car had escaped. All he could assume at the moment was that whoever had arrived in the dark sedan had been the one to run the other vehicle off the road and to fire the shot that had put the hole in the driver’s-side window. That led Mustang to believe the driver of the disabled vehicle was on the run, being chased now by whoever had attacked her.
With his gun held at the ready, he pointed his flashlight with his other hand into the front seat of the disabled vehicle. He was glad to discover there was no blood on the seats or the dash. The airbags had deployed and the vehicle was empty, meaning the driver had escaped. But how long would she last on the run from somebody trying to kill her with a gun? She could be injured. The question was, what direction had she gone in?
He tried to think like a person running from somebody determined to kill her. She would have made for the safety and concealment of the tree line. That meant that she would have slipped beneath the fence into the forest. She might only have seconds before her pursuer caught up to her.
Mustang ran the rest of the way up the embankment, braced his hand on a fence rail and vaulted over the metal railing. As his feet hit the ground, a shot rang out. He raced in the direction he thought the sound had come from, determined to reach the woman before her attacker finished her off. He hoped he wasn’t too late.
Mustang raced as fast as he could, leaping over branches, pushing past bushes and trees. His muscles strained and his lungs burned, and still he didn’t see anyone ahead of him.
It had been dusk when he’d pulled to the side of the road. Within the canopy of the trees, darkness had descended. He couldn’t see every little branch and tripped over one. He got up and kept moving, arriving finally at the edge of a glen where a little bit of dusk light illuminated a dark figure standing over a lump on the ground. From the man’s silhouette, Mustang could tell he was pointing a gun at the figure on the ground. Mustang raised his weapon and fired. The dark figure ducked. When he straightened, he pulled the person up from the ground and held her in front of him.
“Come another step closer and I will shoot her,” a voice said in a thick Russian accent.
Mustang took cover behind a tree. “You shoot her and I’ll hunt you down and kill you. I will show you no mercy.”
Though he spoke with force, Mustang could not help the shaky feeling he felt inside. What he witnessed before him was so similar to the last operation he and his team had conducted in Afghanistan. In that scenario, their bogey had used the bride in a wedding couple as the shield to get him out of a village. That Taliban leader’s ploy and Mustang’s team decision to spare the bride had cost them all their careers in the marines. And, as had been the case then, he couldn’t take the shot now. If he attempted to kill the bad guy, he’d have to go through the body of an innocent victim.
“Okay. I won’t shoot,” Mustang shouted. “But I reiterate, if you kill the woman, I will kill you. And I will make certain that you suffer in the process of dying.”
The man holding the hostage inched backward, dragging the woman with him. He made a wide circle, heading back in the direction of the road and the vehicles abandoned there.
Mustang had no recourse but to wait for the man to pass him and continue on his path to the road. At one point Mustang thought he heard the woman sob and, possibly, a softly spoken plea. Help me. His heart contracted, squeezing tightly in his chest. He vowed to himself that he’d get her out of her attacker’s grasp.
Mustang followed, keeping a safe distance but close enough that he could see what was going on in the shadowy darkness of late dusk. At one point he got too near.
“Do not come closer,” the attacker said. He fired a shot.
Mustang ducked low and behind a tree.
Thankfully the woman remained on her feet, still dragged alongside her kidnapper. They closed the distance between them and the vehicles on the side of the road.
Mustang knew he had to stop the kidnapper before he got the woman into the car. If he had been bent on running her off the road and shooting at her inside her vehicle, he would kill her as soon as he got her away. Mustang couldn’t let that happen. He had to stop the kidnapper.
Mustang eased through the woods, moving shadow to shadow, inching closer as quietly as he could. When the other two reached the fence, Mustang knew he had to make his move. The kidnapper shoved the woman to the ground and said something to her in Russian. She rolled beneath the fence.
“My finger is on the trigger,” the Russian called out. “If you shoot me. I shoot the woman. I might die, but the woman will die, as well.”
With the man in his sights, Mustang hesitated.
The woman, who had managed to get beneath the fence, kicked out a foot, catching her kidnapper in the shin with a hard smack.
Mustang took his chance and pulled the trigger at the same time the Russian yelled and bent over.
The
