A kidnapper with deadly intentions

...and a US marshal who must come to the rescue

The carjacking that ended with Kristen Lang running for her life—and her federal judge mother kidnapped—was a nightmare. The ransom, however, is worse: Kristen in exchange for her mother. Deputy US Marshal Nick Sandoval will do almost anything to safely recover the judge—except trade Kristen. But can he shield the woman he’s falling for and bring her mother home?

LAURIE ALICE EAKES dreamed of being a writer from the time she was a small child. Now, with her dreams fulfilled, she is the award-winning and bestselling author of over two dozen historical and contemporary novels. When she isn’t writing full-time, she enjoys long walks, live theater and being near her beloved Lake Michigan. She lives in Illinois with her husband and sundry cats and dogs.

Also by Laurie Alice Eakes

Love Inspired Suspense

Perilous Christmas Reunion

Lethal Ransom

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Lethal Ransom

Laurie Alice Eakes

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09635-5

LETHAL RANSOM

© 2019 Laurie Alice Eakes

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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“The woods give us plenty of places to hide.”

“Come. I found a place where you can get a little sleep.” Nick helped Kristen to her feet. “I’ll be close enough to hear you if you have trouble, but far enough away to give you privacy.”

So considerate, so thoughtful that she might need some time alone.

As if she needed to think about Nick Sandoval’s benefits. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

“I think I’m the one who dived into this.”

She smiled. “I should have listened and not gone off on my own.”

“It’s done, Kristen. You can’t undo the past. You can only move on with the future.” He laughed, though she didn’t know why. “Try to sleep.”

She couldn’t deny his kindness.

Or the fact that her feelings for him weren’t exactly brotherly.

She smiled and dreamed of a Fourth of July celebration with fireworks shooting brilliant stars and flowers and flags into the air.

And awoke gasping for breath with the realization the fireworks of her dream were, in wakeful reality, gunshots.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading Lethal Ransom. This idea has been in my head a long time, and I am grateful to be able to write it and share it with you all.

Kristen is the kind of heroine I can relate to—caring about others, smart and courageous. Yet she doesn’t think she has strengths and abilities to survive. Nick is haunted by events in his past that rattled his self-confidence. As they fight for their very lives, they learn they work better together than separately, bringing out the best in themselves and one another.

Once again, I have made my beloved Midwest the setting. Crowded city streets and vast woods create so many lovely opportunities for danger and intrigue.

I love to hear from my readers. You can contact me through my website http://www.lauriealiceeakes.com or find me on Twitter @LaurieAEakes or Facebook.com/AuthorLaurieAliceEakes/

Laurie Alice Eakes

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

—1 John 4:18

To Red, whose friendship encouraged me through this difficult year and helped keep me writing.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Readers

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

ONE

Kristen Lang had to be mistaken. The same vehicle that had followed her from her office to the courthouse where she’d picked up her mother, the Honorable Julia Lang, could not be tailing her down the Eisenhower out of Chicago. The world was surely full of gunmetal-gray SUVs.

With her mother’s job, threats were not uncommon. For the past ten years of her life, Kristen had learned to be vigilant of anything out of the ordinary.

Seeing the same—or very similar—vehicle three times in one afternoon was out of the ordinary.

Kristen took one second to glance at her mother. “Is everything all right with you?”

“When is it not?” Mom’s voice sounded a little too bright.

“Oh, I don’t know, Mom. Maybe when someone threatened to blow up your car, or you had that stalker two years ago, or—”

“Why would you think anything is wrong now?”

“Because you’re not answering my question with anything but questions.” Kristen checked her rearview mirror.

The dark SUV loomed closer.

Beside her, Mom sighed. “I have no reason to think anything is wrong. I haven’t had any threatening phone calls or mail.”

“But?” Kristen squeezed the word past the tightening of her chest.

“Nothing that doesn’t make me sound like a silly old woman.”

Kristen laughed at that. “You are the last person I would call silly or old.”

“Thank you for protecting my ego.” Her mom patted Kristen’s hand on the steering wheel. “Now tell me what’s going on with you.”

Defeated for the moment, Kristen shrugged. “Everyone else left the office early for one reason or another, and I decided to finish up paperwork at home. You know I don’t like being there alone.”

“I don’t blame you. If you had an office in a better part of town, that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“We’re there to be closer to our clients.”

“If you had better clients, such as ones who pay—”

“Someone has to advocate for poor victims of crimes. And I get paid, Mom, you know that.”

“A tenth what you would make if you’d gone to law school.”

Kristen sighed over the age-old conversation. “I wouldn’t be doing as much good as I am now for those who can’t afford to pay to get help.”

The work she was certain God wanted her to do, but her mother didn’t want to hear that.

“You could do pro bono work with better support staff than you get at that nonprofit organization you work for now.”

With the rain starting to fall more heavily, Kristen concentrated on her driving and didn’t answer. Rain made the road slick, and her tires weren’t the best. One moment of inattention, one need to slam on the brakes, and they could hydroplane into the path of a larger vehicle like a truck.

Or an SUV appearing out of nowhere again.

She shivered, and her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

“It’s not too late to change your career.” Mom’s voice broke her concentration. “You’re only twenty-five. It’s too late to get into a law school this year, but if you apply this fall, you can start next year. You’ll only be twenty-nine when you finish.”

Kristen didn’t want the sort of corporate lawyer job her mother thought good enough. She liked being a social worker, helping rebuild people’s lives.

“I thought you wanted me to get married.” Hearing the sarcasm in her voice, she opened her mouth to apologize.

“I would, of course, but you don’t seem to meet any men on your own or like any of the men I introduce you to,” Mom said first. “I saw Marcus Ashburton today, and he said you turned him down for a second date. Why?”

“He’s boring.”

Traffic was anything but boring, especially with that SUV behind her. Kristen wanted to concentrate on driving, not discuss her love life—or lack thereof—with her mother, the matchmaker.

“That young lawyer you went out with last week is a good man,” Mom continued. “He does a great deal of pro bono work.”

Kristen grimaced. Marcus had spent nearly the entire dinner talking about his “charity” work and how good a person it made him. Not a way into Kristen’s good graces. If someone had to tell her he was good, he was probably drawing attention away from too many parts of him that were not.

“He says he’s good.”

At being nice, at being a lawyer, at choosing fine restaurants. He probably thought he sneezed better than anyone else.

“I don’t like him,” Kristen said. “He only does the sort of free legal services that bring him maximum attention from the press.”

Kristen struggled to keep one eye on the dark SUV bobbing in and out of her rearview mirror, and the other eye on traffic. The latter seemed to close in on her so much she could scarcely breathe. And the former was drawing near.

“The press loves him.”

Even if she hadn’t found him boring, she’d never date a man with a job that kept him so busy—a man she couldn’t count on to be home when she needed him. Her lawyer father had been absent for nearly every important moment in her life.

“I don’t want to talk about Marcus, Mom.” Kristen sounded tenser than she intended.

“All right, but I was sure you would like him.”

“He’s a perfect gentleman. He’s just not my type.”

Mom pulled her phone from her bag and began to text. “What is your type?” she asked as her thumbs flew across the screen keyboard.

“Someone who...um...”

She forgot the question she was answering as the dark SUV filled her rearview mirror.

She needed to get away from that vehicle, return to the left lane. If she could find an opening in the line of cars and trucks streaming past her, she would accept traveling beside the “L” train. Anything to get clear of that behemoth riding too close to her rear bumper.

“See, you don’t even know what you want.” Mom sounded victorious.

Mom’s phone pinged with an incoming text, so Kristen didn’t bother to respond. Her goal required her attention. She needed an opening.

Nothing but endless vehicles sending up plumes of rain water. Nothing... Nothing...

Yes. There! A break in traffic at last.

She stomped on the gas in an attempt to surge into the break in traffic. Zero to sixty in her aging vehicle was more like zero to thirty, but she managed to slip into the next lane.

And that oversize SUV cut in right behind her, its engine far more powerful than hers.

Kristen wanted to scream in frustration and beat the steering wheel instead of gripping it like a rip cord on a parachute jump.

If only she could bail—from the highway, from the conversation with her mother, from the fear that the vehicle was following them, or more likely her mother, the judge who often made unpopular decisions in the name of justice and had experienced trouble in the past.

And this time, the second time since Kristen was fifteen, the pursuer was bringing her into the picture.

Unless she was mistaken and this wasn’t the same vehicle. That was entirely possible. Likely, even. Only, past events were making her anxious.

“You don’t even know which lane you want to drive in.” Mom didn’t raise her gaze from the phone in her hands. “And you’re going too fast for the conditions.”

“I’m trying to keep up with traffic so we’re not run over by that monster behind us.”

“You’re too close to the car ahead of us.”

She was, but only by a car length or so. If she dropped back, that SUV would be too close by about a gazillion feet.

“Kristen, get back into the right lane.”

“How? I forgot my shoehorn.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. It isn’t attractive.”

Kristen sighed. Her mother—every carefully blond hair, dyed to look natural, lay in place in an elegant twist, her makeup glowed as fresh as it had been that morning, and her charcoal-gray suit hung on her slim frame without a wrinkle—might be a circuit judge in the federal court system, but she was still a mother and applied herself to the role with as much vigor as she had applied herself to everything else in her life.

“There’s an opening coming up where you can get back into the right lane.” Mom tapped on the side window.

Kristen shook her head. “Can’t make it.”

“If you had a better car—”

“Please, don’t start.”

She was too tired and too worried about that gunmetal-gray SUV to deal with the “If you had a better job, you could have a better car” lecture. At that moment, she needed to tell her Mom she intended to get off at the next Oak Park exit instead of continuing to her mother’s house farther west. She needed to lose this tail before she led him straight to her mother’s home—or her own.

But the SUV was even closer.

“Kristen,” Mom said with exaggerated patience, “get into the right lane. You can move in there.”

“But I want to exit the expressway.”

“Not here.”

“Who’s driving here?” Kristen tried to laugh to lighten the question.

“Just listen to me for once.”

Kristen glanced at her mother and read tension in the tightening of the skin around her blue eyes.

“You know,” Kristen murmured.

“That we’re being followed? Yes. Now change lanes.”

Hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough for her knuckles to whiten, Kristen managed to slide into the slower lane.

And the dark SUV wedged in right behind her. Mere inches from her bumper. Just as her foot pressed harder on the gas to create more distance between her Camry and the SUV, a pickup roared into the gap between Kristen and the car ahead of her.

“What are they doing?” Kristen cried.

Mom didn’t answer. She held her phone to her ear. “I think we are about to be carjacked.”

“Mom, who are you talking to?” Kristen’s voice had gone squeaky again as she sought for breath—breath and the Harlem Avenue exit. She passed it every day, and she couldn’t remember if it was on the left or the right. She couldn’t remember if Austin or Harlem was first.

Her sweating palms slipped on the steering wheel, and the car swerved. “I need to get off the expressway.”

“We’re easier to find if we stay on the Eisenhower.” Mom’s tone remained quiet, calm. “If we get off in Oak Park, there’s too many quiet side streets we could end up on.”

And the exit loomed too close. Moving over for a left-hand exit was impossible at the moment. The pickup was slowing. The SUV was not. The faster lane flowed with an unbroken line of cars and trucks. At the moment, a semi roared alongside them, flinging water from beneath its enormous tires, sending diesel fumes into the intake vents for the air-conditioning.

Kristen’s stomach rolled with the anticipation of what was about to happen and the knowledge she might fail at the drastic measure she must take in an attempt to stop it.

“Mom?” Kristen kept her tone as calm as she could manage. “Hold on.”

She spun the wheel to the right.

“Don’t do it,” Mom cried.

Too late. The Camry’s tires rumbled on the edge of the pavement. The car hit the shoulder, water and rocks spraying, pinging against the fenders. Kristen’s foot pressed harder on the gas. Fifty-five. Sixty. Sixty-five.

“Kristen!” Mom shouted.

She saw it looming in her rearview mirror—the SUV riding her bumper. Ahead, a disabled vehicle stood on the side of the highway, flashers blazing into the rain-created twilight. To her left, the pickup kept pace, blocking her ability to swing back into the flow of traffic.

Trapped, she eased up on the gas, praying the SUV wouldn’t crash into them, and moved her foot to the brake. Slow and steady. Water flooded over the road. She could hydroplane and cause a pileup if she slammed on the brakes and lost control. If she didn’t stop fast enough, she would plow into the aged Buick ahead of her.

She was losing momentum too quickly. The back of the Camry fishtailed. The SUV blasted its horn, and Kristen jumped.

“Just past the Harlem exit,” Mom was saying into her phone.

“Put the phone down.” Kristen barked out the order. “If we crash, it could break your face.”

If they crashed? When they crashed.

Or something crashed into them.

The thud came from the left, a tap against the bumper. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the SUV looming dark and menacing in her side mirror. Roaring up closer, crowding her to the right where she could go over no farther. Threatening the back of the pickup.

Bang.

The SUV hit the left-hand back door. Kristen’s foot slammed on the brake in a convulsive effort to maintain control. Water blasted against the undercarriage.

And control was only a dream.

The Camry spun perpendicular to the lane, missed the pickup by a hair, then smashed its front bumper into the side of the SUV.

The air bags exploded, slamming Kristen against her seat, driving wind from her lungs. Mom emitted a soft gasp, then began to cough from the dust.

Kristen couldn’t breathe at all. Her vision blurred. Her chest tightened, squeezing, squeezing...

Between the air bag and seat belt, she couldn’t move. Cocooned. Strangled. The air bag was already deflating. A click and the seat belt would be off. This was mere seconds.

It felt like a lifetime.

A scream reverberated through her head, couldn’t reach her lips, choked her.

“No panic attacks now.” Mom never raised her voice, but it was sharp nonetheless. “No weakness.”

Weakness. Mom considered panic attacks weakness. Must not show weakness.

Nausea clawed at Kristen’s middle. She swallowed, reached for the seat belt lock with one hand and the door handle with the other.

The door popped open without her aid. It should have been locked, but a man stood in the opening on her side and another on Mom’s side.

“Get out,” the man on the right commanded.

“Stupid move there, lady,” the man on Kristen’s side said. “Who taught you to drive?”

“I will wait for the police here in the vehicle.” Mom made the declaration and folded her hands against her waist.

“You’re going to get out now.” The man on her side grabbed her arm and reached across to release her seat belt.

Mom moved her hands to the dashboard. “I do not wish to go into the rain.”

“Even if your car explodes?” The man on Kristen’s side grabbed her arm and began to haul her from the car.

She slammed her fist against his wrist. The move failed on a full-grown man. He continued to hold. She grabbed for the steering wheel, curled her fingers around the grip.

With a squeeze of the man’s hand on her wrist, her fingers opened against her will, freeing her hold on the wheel. And then he was dragging her into the rain, icy for June, painful for rain. Hail. Tiny hammer blows against her face. She ducked her head, saw her feet in their sensible pumps scraping along the pavement as though they belonged to someone else.

They may as well belong to someone else. She possessed no power to stop herself from being forced from her car.

Carjacking was all too common. People stole cars to commit a crime, but they didn’t usually hurt the vehicle owners. They left them beside the road. It was unpleasant but not life threatening if they didn’t fight back.

But these men were taking her and her mother, not the car. They had deliberately wrecked her.

She yanked one arm free and struck out for the man’s face. Missed. She kicked one kitten heel into the man’s shin. Connected. He grunted, then picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Tires, a barely dented bumper on the SUV, wet pavement, Mom’s designer heels spun past in a nauseating blur. In another moment, she was going to be sick.

The man tossed her into the back of the SUV. Her head hit the side. Stars exploded before her eyes. Dazed, she lay still for a fatal moment—a moment in which her mother landed beside her.

“Tie her up,” one man commanded.

He leaned into the back of the SUV and grabbed Mom’s hands.

Kristen surged up and bashed her head into his face at the same time Mom shoved both stilettos into his middle. He staggered back, fell against his companion, sending him reeling, but still held Mom’s hands.

“Kristen, run!” her mom cried.

Kristen ran, kicking off her pumps and speeding along the shoulder of the Eisenhower. Above the roar of traffic, she heard the slam of the SUV’s hatch—with her mother behind its tinted windows.

* * *

Traffic slowed to a crawl and Nick Sandoval knew he had found what he’d been looking for, what he’d feared he would find since receiving the phone call from his boss.

“Judge Lang contacted us to say she fears they’re about to be carjacked.” Callahan’s voice was as calm as usual, but Nick knew the US marshal for the northern district of Illinois well enough to catch the tension beneath. “I’ve called the local law enforcement and am sending men out from here, but you’re on your way in that direction, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

Despite all his responsibilities, Nick’s boss remembered this was Monday night, the night Nick ate dinner with his eldest sister’s family. Unlike Wednesday night when he joined his younger brother and sister-in-law, and Friday nights, when the entire clan gathered at their parents’ house for Mom’s great cooking and terrible attempts to get her last unmarried child to commit to someone—again—no matter how many times Nick told her he wasn’t ready to put his fiancée’s death behind him.

“She’s in her daughter’s car,” Callahan continued with his deliberately slow explanation. “It’s a silver Camry.”

“That should be easy to spot. There must only be a hundred within a mile.”

Despite his sardonic response, Nick’s instincts for trouble tingled up his spine as his eyes fell on the slowed traffic ahead.

“Got to go, sir. Something up ahead.” Still hearing his boss’s voice squawking from the speaker, Nick tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. He needed both hands on the wheel, and his vintage Mustang didn’t possess anything as fancy as a Bluetooth connection to the car speakers.

Sirens wailed in the distance, audible above the rain drumming on the Mustang’s roof and roar of surrounding traffic. Cops were on their way, but Nick wanted to get to the scene first if it involved the judge. Protecting federal judges was his primary duty.

An accident involving the judge would be worse than a carjacking. Oddly enough, the latter were usually peaceful with drivers forced off the road, removed from their vehicles, left stranded while the crooks took off in the vehicle to commit a crime, such as a robbery or drive-by shooting, and then abandon the car, usually wrecked, somewhere else. In that scenario, the car might be a loss, but the judge and her daughter would be safe. Wet. Cold. Probably frightened, but unharmed.

His gaze swept the traffic and his mind touched on the idea that if this was a carjacking, it wasn’t like those that went down in the city so often they rarely made the news anymore.

Maybe the traffic jam had nothing to do with Her Honor. Nick couldn’t risk picking up his phone to call Callahan to ask if or what he had heard. Neither had the phone rung. A good sign, surely.

An opening in the right lane was another good sign. Nick punched the accelerator and surged into the gap seconds before everyone’s brake lights flared on and the lane screeched to a complete halt—a defining characteristic of an accident, not a carjacking.

Unless...

Nick cut the wheel right and, half a dozen horns honking in his wake, plowed onto the shoulder of the road.

He spied what lay ahead now. An accident for sure. A crash between a dark gray SUV and a silver Camry, the former idling with emergency flashers engaged, the latter with doors wide-open.

And from the vehicles raced a tall woman in a flowing summer dress and long, blond hair, with a man in hot pursuit.

Nick flung himself from his car and raced for the woman. The daughter? Not the judge. Where was Her Honor? His gaze flicked to the Camry, to the SUV. Rescue the daughter? Go look for the judge? His duty was to the judge, but the daughter was in imminent danger.

Wishing he wore his running shoes, Nick sprinted along the side of the road. Cars honked. People shouted, words indistinct above the rumble of engines and approaching sirens. His feet slipped on wet gravel.

A hundred yards ahead of him, the woman stumbled, started to pitch forward. The man in pursuit grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her upright. Her mouth opened. If she cried out, ambient noise drowned the sound.

Nick pushed himself to greater speed. The man was dragging the woman backward, closer to him. She struck out with one hand. The man caught her wrist, spun her around toward the idling SUV nosed against the Camry.

That SUV was involved in more than having wrecked the Camry. Nick knew it with all his law enforcement instincts for trouble. On foot, even in his Mustang, he couldn’t stop the owners of the SUV if it took off. From its angle, he could read the license plate. Police were on their way but taking too long. Minutes when Nick needed seconds, wedged into traffic as he had been despite their sirens.

But he could stop that man from taking the judge’s daughter. A dozen drivers and their passengers could stop the man from taking her. Not one person got out of their vehicle. Scared. The man could be armed. Nick was armed. Still, if anyone simply tossed something in the way to trip the man Nick would catch them before they reached that SUV.

“Seconds. I only need seconds to gain.”

Half prayer, half plea to anyone who might be willing, Nick spoke the words aloud, though he barely heard them. Ten yards. Three yards.

Nick lunged and grasped the daughter’s captor. “I’m a deputy US marshal. Let her go.”

The man tried to keep running, hold firm on the judge’s daughter. But she stopped, dropped to her knees, an anchor to her captor.

“Get up.” The man aimed a kick in the young woman’s direction.

Nick hooked the man’s raised leg with his own foot and threw him off balance. “Now stay down.” He placed his foot in the center of the man’s chest. “If you can, get up and head for my car behind me.”

“I can’t. My mom—” She spoke between gasps for breath, then leaped up and began running toward the SUV.

“Stop,” Nick shouted.

She kept running.

Nick’s prisoner laughed and tried to grasp his ankle.

Nick grabbed the man’s wrists and hauled him to his feet. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” Four cops from the nearest suburban town surrounded Nick.

“Deputy US Marshal Nick Sandoval. Please take this man into custody. I need to go after the judge’s daughter.”

And the judge? Of course. The young woman was running toward her mother.

“Credentials?” the police sergeant demanded.

“Later.” Nick thrust the prisoner, a man nearly half his size, toward the waiting police officers. “I’m responsible for those ladies.”

An officer caught hold of the prisoner, and Nick raced after the judge’s daughter. It took mere seconds to catch up with her—seconds in which the flashers on the SUV ceased, the tires spun, and the monstrous vehicle roared to life. One officer raised his weapon as though intending to shoot out the tires.

“No,” Nick shouted, as another officer pushed his colleague’s arm down.

They couldn’t fire at a vehicle containing a federal judge. They could miss the tires and strike her through the rear of the vehicle. They could hit a tire and send the SUV spinning or rolling into the heavy traffic—traffic unable to stop because of the rain-slick road.

Two officers ran for their cruisers to give chase, but the SUV swept past the wrecked Camry and sped along a suddenly clear shoulder, pickup and stalled vehicles gone. Before the police reached their car, the SUV was lost in traffic.

“Nooo.” The daughter’s cry was long and painful like a wounded animal.

She took a few stumbling steps in the direction the SUV, then dropped to her knees, her hands to her cheeks.

“It’s all right—” Nick hesitated, not sure of her name, as he crouched beside her. “You’re safe with me.”

“But they have my mother.” She was gasping as though still running. “They took my mother.”

“We’ll find her. We caught the man who grabbed you. He’ll tell us something.”

Not at all guaranteed, but she needed reassurance.

“Let’s get you to my car and out of the rain.”

“We need to go after that SUV. They have my mom.”

The judge, Nick’s responsibility.

The minute he helped the woman to her feet and turned toward his vehicle, he knew her assailant had slipped the officers’ custody. The officers were scattered, running into the now halted traffic, and the wiry kidnapper darted between cars and under the elevated train tracks to the eastbound lane.

No one would blame Nick for the vehicle getting away. He could not have caught up with it.

But they might blame him for the prisoner escaping.

TWO

Kristen fell more than sat in the deputy marshal’s low-slung car and covered her face with her hands. She should lock the doors, make herself safe. But she couldn’t in such a small space. Only the rain-washed air, however choked with exhaust fumes, kept her from hyperventilating.

Her feet throbbed from running barefoot along the highway. Her head ached from where the man had grabbed her by the hair. Her shoulder hurt from how he tried to drag her away until the deputy US marshal arrived to rescue her, too late for her mother.

She began to shake from the cold of being soaked through, from the accident and near capture, from knowing her mother was tossed into a car and speeding away somewhere. Nightmare seemed too tame a word to describe the events of the past fifteen minutes.

Her mother had been kidnapped, and her father was thousands of miles away, probably out of cell phone range.

With two parents who worked so much that nannies had raised their daughter more than them, Kristen understood feeling alone. But nothing, not all the school plays and choir concerts Mom or Dad or both of them had been unable to attend, left her as hollow as knowing men had taken her mother by force and she had been unable to stop them. On the contrary, her mother had stopped them from taking Kristen.

She slumped forward so her forehead rested on the dashboard. “If I had made different driving choices... If I had told a marshal at the courthouse about the SUV following me... If I thought faster during the accident—”

More police cars arrived. Blaring sirens ceased, though lights flashed in an eye-searing strobe behind her. The police were here, while her mother was somewhere else. She was here, while her mother was somewhere else. Her mother was in the hands of a criminal, while she would soon be in the hands of the police or US Marshals Service. Whoever it was would be questioning her like she was a suspect. They might send her a victim’s advocate.

A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat. After the hundreds of crime victims she had helped in her job as a social worker, she was now one herself. She should know exactly what to expect.

But she doubted anyone could prepare for such an eventuality. None of her training had taught her about the slicing depth of the guilt, the anguish, the grief of being captured even for a few minutes.

And her mother could be captured for hours or days, or—

She wouldn’t think about the worst-case scenario.

A groan escaped Kristen’s lips. “Mom, why do you stay in this job?”

Threats had been nothing before, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t end up following through. Except Mom hadn’t mentioned any threats. Surely she wouldn’t keep such information from the marshals who were assigned to protect the judges, even if she might keep it from her daughter.

And her husband?

Kristen should have asked, would have, if she hadn’t been so wrapped up in looking for that SUV—the vehicle now speeding away with her mother inside alone because she had helped Kristen escape.

Sick with guilt, Kristen reached for the marshal’s phone. Her own remained in her purse in her car a quarter mile ahead on the side of the road. Abandoned. Wrecked.

“Siri, call—” Kristen stopped. She couldn’t remember her father’s number. She didn’t know her mother’s number. She never bothered to remember telephone numbers anymore. They were programmed into her phone.

She needed it—now.

She slid out of the sports car and took a step toward her bashed-in car. Gravel cut into her feet, and she cried out in pain. It was foolish to have kicked off her shoes to run faster.

She had run away while that man stole her mother.

Every time she turned around, she was disappointing her mother. She wouldn’t take the right sort of job. She wouldn’t drive a better car. She wouldn’t date the right class of men. Kristen was happier at home with a good movie and a bowl of popcorn than she was at a black-tie affair or any sort of gathering where people’s worth seemed to be measured in the cost of their ensembles rather than their character.

Letting her mother get kidnapped was one more huge disappointment, one more misstep to letting her parent down.

“If she dies, it’ll be my fault.” Kristen wiped her eyes.

This was no time to give in to tears or panic or anything else...weak. She must be strong, think what to do.

She needed to start doing something now, not simply stand by the side of the expressway and whine about her feet. She should go answer questions. The sooner the authorities got information, the sooner they could rescue her mother.

She took a step forward, and the marshal’s phone rang. Wincing, she turned toward the car again and bent down to grab the cell phone from the console. Then, phone in hand, she trudged, wincing, toward the marshal and a policeman talking beside the road. The man who chased her was gone and more emergency vehicles had arrived, an ambulance among them. Traffic crawled, partly from a blocked lane, partly from the gapers.

“Halt right there, miss,” the policeman called when Kristen was barely a dozen feet away from the Mustang.

Kristen held up the phone. “He got a phone call.”

The deputy marshal spoke to the cop, who frowned, but nodded and started toward Kristen, the marshal beside him.

“This is the judge’s daughter,” the marshal spoke to the policeman.

“Kristen Lang,” she supplied.

The cop’s grass-green eyes, in a face pale enough to not have been exposed to the sun for the past year, raked over Kristen. “We need to talk to you.”

“She’s getting checked out by the paramedics first, then coming to the marshal’s office,” the deputy marshal said. “This is our jurisdiction.”

“Then where are your men?” the cop demanded.

“On their way.” The marshal looked at Kristen.

She ducked her head, feeling the revolting tangle of wet hair slap against her cheeks.

“Why don’t you come to the ambulance?” the deputy marshal said. “I’ll be right with you.”

Apparently expecting her and the policeman to go along with this plan, he began to text on his phone.

Kristen hesitated. “I’d like to get my purse and phone out of my car.”

“We need an accident report from her at the least,” the policeman said.

“Since it was part of the kidnapping, we’ll get it and pass it along.”

Officer Green Eyes scowled but nodded and strode back toward one of the vehicles with flashing lights, each footfall looking hard enough to shake the earth.

“He doesn’t know how to play with others.” The deputy marshal smiled at Kristen.

She blinked. The grin transformed his face from hard authority, to boyish charm in a flash. An attractive flash.

“Now,” he continued, “let’s get you back out of the rain. You must be freezing.” He hesitated, then held out his hand. “I’m Nick Sandoval, by the way.”

She touched the tips of her fingers to his palm, finding it broad and firm, calloused as though he labored to earn his muscular frame rather than worked out in a gym. It was a hand one could hold onto and know one was safe.

She snapped her thoughts back to what was important. “I would like my phone, please.” She sounded like a little girl asking for her favorite toy, not a grown woman with a master’s degree in social work and a responsible job.

“I’ll get it for you as soon as the crime scene techs release it. Her Honor may try to call it.”

“With what? Her phone’s still in the Camry.” Tears stung Kristen’s eyes. “I told her to put it down so it wouldn’t knock her in the face when we crashed. It’s my fault she doesn’t have it.”

“Her kidnappers would probably have taken it away from her anyway, Kristen.” His tone was gentle, but his eyes were cold. She hadn’t thought brown eyes could hold no warmth, but his looked like frozen Fudgsicles, nice on a hot day but uncomfortable in the chill of a summer storm.

“How will she call us if she doesn’t have a phone?” Kristen asked.

“She’ll find a way if anyone can.” Nick touched her elbow. “Come on. You’re not doing her any good standing here in the rain. The sooner we make sure you’re all right and then get a statement from you, the sooner we can find her.”

Kristen shook her head. “No paramedics. I’m just fine.”

Except for her bruised and aching feet.

“You were in a crash bad enough for your air bags to deploy.”

“The air bags going off is why I’m fine.” She shifted from one foot to the other to ease pressure on her battered soles. “Please. I want to make my statement. I don’t know much, but the sooner I tell you what I do know, the sooner you can find my mother.”

* * *

Nick had no idea how the daughter of such a confident, powerful woman as Judge Julia Lang could walk as though she carried a hundred pound pack up a mountain, talk like the sound of her own voice frightened her and think she was to blame for that day’s events. But she did look a body in the eye. Every time those lake-blue eyes of hers met his, he felt like someone Tasered him. Zing. Zing. Zap. The electric energy flowed from his neck to his toes.

In the office of the marshal service, Kristen Lang looked at him a great deal. Every time, she answered his questions precisely and concisely before she answered anyone else’s, so much so that US Marshal Tom Callahan, his boss, sent him out of the room “So you’ll stop being a distraction.”

Nick didn’t argue, but he figured he was a help, not a hindrance, and someone’s ego was taking a hit at a time when egos over authority shouldn’t matter. With a reassuring smile for Kristen, Nick left the room at a snail’s pace and went into the hall.

Where he noticed the blood on the floor.

He shoved the door open. “Kristen, are you bleeding?”

She didn’t meet his eyes this time. “Am I?” She glanced down, and her face whitened. “My feet. I knew they hurt, but—”

“Why didn’t you tell the paramedics?” Callahan asked before Nick got the question out.

“This interview is far more important.” If she was trying to smile, she failed. Her lips twisted, but more in a grimace of pain.

“Enough questions,” Nick declared. “She needs to go to the hospital and have her feet seen to.”

“My feet can wait. I need to answer all the questions I can to help find my mother.” Her hands gripped the edge of the table, the short, polished nails digging into the fake wood, the knuckles white. “Even if it’s my fault she was taken, it won’t be my fault she isn’t found.”

“How many times do we have to tell you it’s not your fault, Kristen?” Callahan sounded impatient. “From what you’ve said and what Her Honor texted, we know that you took every precautionary action you could under the circumstances.”

“But I should never have been under the circumstances.” This time, she focused those blue eyes on Callahan.

He didn’t so much as blink at their impact.

“May I take her to get her feet seen to, sir?” Nick asked.

“Please do. And then drive her home and stay with her. Where is Her Honor’s husband?”

“My father is in Switzerland,” Kristen said.

“Business?” Nick asked, figuring on Zurich and Swiss bank accounts and all those things far above his touch or interest.

She shook her head. “Mountain climbing or something like that.”

“Your father’s on vacation without your mother?” Nick couldn’t keep the astonishment from his tone.

He couldn’t imagine his parents going on more than a weekend retreat without each other.

“Is that normal?”

“Abnormal would be if he did take a vacation with her.” Her voice was flat as she looked at the table. “Has anyone called him?”

“We left a voice mail,” Callahan said. “It’s the middle of the night there, though.”

Kristen nodded, then tried to stand. With a little cry, she fell back into her chair.

Callahan surged to his feet. “We’ll call an ambulance. I’m so sorry we didn’t realize sooner you were injured.”

But they should have realized it. Nick should have. Someone, the paramedics if no one else, should have noticed she wore no shoes. His mother would have his hide for not being more careful with a lady who’d been in an accident and then run for her life down the side of the expressway.

“Please don’t fuss over me.’” Her face was as white as the institutional walls around them. “I can walk.”

“I don’t think so.” Nick glanced from his boss to Kristen. “With your permission, I’ll carry you.”

“You can’t do that, Sandoval,” Callahan protested.

“It’s better than wasting resources others may need instead.” Kristen offered the older man a tight smile, though her cheeks had flushed to the color of the strawberry Jell-O with whipped topping blended into it Nick’s aunt Maggie insisted on bringing to every family gathering. “Just don’t carry me over your shoulder. That’s how that man...how he carried...me.”

She pressed her hand to her mouth. For a moment, Nick feared she would be sick. Then he saw the tears welling in her eyes and realized she was holding back a sob.

If she were one of his sisters, he would pick her up and let her cry on his shoulder. She was, however, the daughter of a judge and the main witness to a serious crime perpetrated against that judge. He must maintain a professional demeanor which, sadly, included no comforting the victim.

Maybe he could take her home and let his mom do that.

Pretending he didn’t see the tears, he picked her up from the chair, glad he worked out regularly. She was a big girl, not overweight, just tall and not model thin. She was just right in her proportions, as far as he was concerned.

“Is it all right if I put my arm around your neck?” she asked barely above a whisper.

He’d be flirting inappropriately if he gave the answer that sprang to mind—A lady as pretty as you doesn’t need permission to put her arm around me—so he merely nodded and carried her outside to his car.

The rain had stopped. With rush hour passed, the streets were emptier, the office buildings and most of the restaurants except those around the theaters having closed for the night. Nothing was quiet, though. Buses still roared up the streets and the “L” trains rattled overhead. The sharp tang of wet pavement filled the air along with exhaust and cooking odors.

Nick was suddenly filled with a longing for the clean sweetness of rain-washed grass and dirt, his mother’s roses fragrant from their bath, and even the earthy notes of wet dog. Wanting these scents in his nostrils meant he wanted to be home or visiting his parents, anywhere but facing the sort of trouble this night was still bound to bring, especially not an urgent care or hospital emergency room facility and the tedium of waiting in either.

He didn’t realize he sighed until Kristen removed her arm from around his neck and spoke. “I’m sure I can walk now.”

“No way. It’s just a few more feet to my car.”

As in a half block to the parking garage, but he could manage, even if she was half again as heavy as his fiancée. His deceased fiancée. She’d been small-boned and fragile in too many ways, beyond his ability to save.

“I should have let your boss call an ambulance,” Kristen said. “You don’t need to go to all this trouble for me.”

“I have orders to stay with you no matter what.” Nick entered the parking garage and his Mustang was not far from the door.

The advantage of returning to work after most people had gone home.

“I have to set you down for a minute. Try to stand on your heels. I don’t want oil or anything in those cuts.” He released her from his hold.

“I think it’s too late to worry about that now.” Her tone was sharp. He didn’t blame her. She was their only witness, their only hope at the moment of finding the judge, and they weren’t taking care of her.

Despite her prickly response, she balanced on her heels, one hand resting on the black vinyl top of his convertible, her gaze focused on the street.

Nick unlocked the car and opened her door. “Here you go.”

She didn’t move except to fix her gaze on him. “Why did they take her?”

“If we figure that out, it will help us find her.”

“Will there be a ransom?”

“That will help.” Nick stepped away from the car, silently urging her to get in.

She did at last, and he closed the door. Once he was around the vehicle and seated beside her, she turned to him.

“I should have told someone about the SUV following me. That’s why this is my fault. If I had mentioned that car when I got to the courthouse...”

“Provided the powers that be took you seriously.”

“They would have taken my mom seriously.”

“If she had told us she had a concern, which she did not.” He started the Mustang and headed for the exit. “We don’t even know for sure she had concerns, just your suspicions of it.”

“I know. And it makes no sense she wouldn’t say something to the marshal service. She’s very security conscious. Still...” She speared her fingers into her hair and sighed. “Then again, she wouldn’t want to look silly if it came to nothing.” She rested her hands on her cheeks. “It’s all pointless now.”

“Except for future reference.”

“If she has a future.” Her voice did that strangled squeaky thing that told Nick she was worried or frightened or probably both.

“We’ll see to it she has a future, Kristen.”

She gazed out the window. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the hospital on Harrison. The urgent care centers all seem to be closed by now.”

Nine o’clock. The judge had been gone for three hours. She might be dead. Surely they were foolish criminals if they believed they would get away with harming a hair on a federal judge. But if law enforcement heard nothing within the next few hours, Nick feared for Her Honor.

If he could have taken after that SUV instead of babysitting one perpetrator and the daughter, he might have caught them. Probably not in the traffic, but possibly.

First he would get Kristen’s feet seen to and then take her home, wherever she lived. Federal agents would already be setting up at the judge’s house awaiting a ransom call or some kind of demand from the kidnapper. Once Kristen was there, Nick was free to go home.

Home sounded wonderful. Food. His cat. A comfortable chair in which to relax.

As if he could with the judge missing and this lovely young woman castigating herself over that disappearance.

Maybe he should take her to his parents’ house, if Callahan would allow it. Miss Kristen Lang shouldn’t be alone. He would ask. First, he would get her to the emergency room.

With light traffic, they reached the hospital two miles away in no time. On a weeknight the emergency room wasn’t busy. Shortly after their arrival, Kristen was in a wheelchair and whisked to a bed.

“You can go now,” she told him. “I can call someone to take me home.”

“Sorry, but I can’t leave you until you’re home.” Nick crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

“Is she a prisoner?” a nurse asked.

“She’s a victim under protective custody for the moment. But just her feet need taken care of.”

The nurse asked Kristen if that was true. When she nodded, shooting Nick a glare, a doctor came in, looked at her battered feet, then issued orders. The staff got to work cleansing, bandaging, giving tetanus and antibiotic shots. Through it all, Kristen lay on the gurney with her face a mask, her eyes squeezed shut, and Nick remained in his stance against the wall—

Until his cell rang.

“Excuse me.” He started to leave the cubicle.

Kristen shot upright and grabbed his arm. “Is it to do with my mother?”

“I won’t know until I answer.” Nick patted her hand and slipped down the corridor.

The call was about her mother. What Nick learned left him leaning against another wall, his hands balled into fists at his sides, every calming technique he knew employed to make him appear passive when he returned to Kristen.

Those blue eyes collided with his the instant he stepped into her cubicle. “What?” Her voice was a mere breath.

“Not until we’re away from here.”

He wasn’t discussing this in front of hospital personnel or patients.

“We’re done.” Kristen swung her legs over the side of the gurney.

The nurse appeared from nowhere. “You can’t walk on those feet.”

“I can’t stay. I must get out of here. I can’t... I won’t...” She pressed her hand to her chest, her words growing faster, her breathing shallow.

“I’ll get the doctor.” The nurse sped off on nearly silent feet.

“Easy there.” Nick clasped Kristen’s hands in his. “If you have a panic attack, they may admit you.”

“I can’t breathe in here.” She tugged one hand free and clutched at her throat.

“I’ll fetch a chair.” Nick released her other hand and found a wheelchair in the corridor.

“You can’t take that,” an orderly called down the hallway.

Nick ignored him and helped Kristen into the chair. With the orderly and nurse calling after them, Nick whisked Kristen from the emergency room and out to his car. His credentials had stopped security from having his vehicle towed, so they didn’t have far to go. In moments, Kristen was buckled into the passenger seat and Nick behind the wheel.

He only drove as far as the exit before pulling over and turning to Kristen. “We’ve heard a ransom demand of sorts.”

“Of sorts? What does that mean?” Her blue eyes were enormous dark pools in the glow of the dashboard and security lights. “Too little money to be legitimate? Passage out of the country?”

“You.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Nick took a deep breath, nearly choking on the lingering odors of the hospital clinging to them—and the words he had to impart to this lovely, anxious woman. “The kidnappers called your phone while it was in the marshal’s office. They want you in exchange for your mother alive.”

THREE

Kristen didn’t have time to fall apart. As much as she wanted to crumple into as small a ball as a woman who was five feet ten inches could, she understood with the sensible part of her brain she must remain calm, composed, logical.

The rest of her brain shoved the sensible bit aside like a snowplow clearing a road and barreled over any notions of not drawing in on herself. She pulled her knees to her chest, a tight fit in the sports car. With her shins resting against the glove compartment she could barely wrap her arms around her knees and lower her head. Her hair, a tangled, still-damp mass, curtained her face so she didn’t have to look at headlights flashing by on the street or Nick’s face displaying what was more than likely impatience or disgust.

The sensible portion of Kristen’s brain registered impatience and disgust with her upright fetal position. But they were weakly expressed emotions, too feeble to overpower the deep aching horror ripping a hole in her heart and through to her soul.

Two men had kidnapped her mother instead of her. Yet they wanted her, not her mother.

“I should have known something was up when that SUV kept following me.” The words squeezed out of her constricted throat. “I should have told you about it. I should have told Mom about it. But I couldn’t think why anyone would want me. I still don’t know why. Now...if anything happens to her...” She couldn’t continue with the thought. She couldn’t think about anything happening to her mother, especially when that anything would be her fault.

“Kristen.” Nick’s voice was low and gentle, calming. “We are doing everything we can to ensure nothing happens to your mother.”

“They want me.” She spoke to her lap. “You can get my mother back by giving them me.”

“Out of the question.”

Of course it was. No one would think of giving criminals what they wanted—her. Her, a nobody, with her unimportant—by the world’s standards—job. Two men wanted her so badly they risked kidnapping a federal judge in an attempt to get Kristen in the bargain, though she couldn’t imagine why. She must be forgetting something, but in trying to recall anything she had said or done that would anger criminals to such an extent, her head spun like a lazy Susan full of sand rather than spices.

The smallness of the car struck her then, how the seat pressed against her back, the dashboard against her legs and the door against her side. The car was too small for two taller-than-average adults, especially when one of them was a broad-shouldered male. He took up too much of the space, too much of the oxygen. She could not breathe.

“Air.” She gasped like someone who had been under water too long. “I need air.”

Her hand dropped to the door handle. She flipped it open and scrambled from the car. Her sore feet inside the slipper socks the hospital provided hit the pavement too hard. The air smelled of exhaust from the nearby road, and wet concrete. But a stiff breeze blew the clouds from the sky and flowed around her like a warm, gentle touch, and her lungs expanded. She straightened, inhaled, and ran away from the confines of the car to—what?

Something. She needed to get to something. Her condo so she could be alone and think and figure out why anyone wanted to kidnap her. To her office where she could look at her case files and figure out who might want to harm her. Back to the US marshal’s office to find out how she could trade herself for her mother’s freedom. She ran across the nearly empty parking lot and the lure of the nearby “L” station for a train she couldn’t ride because she didn’t have her purse for her transit pass nor her phone to access electronic tickets on the commuter train.

She didn’t even have her office or condo keys. She didn’t have her handbag back yet.

She realized at that moment she was crying. She stumbled to a halt beside a light pole. It was something to lean against, but it was cold and indifferent to how her insides felt, shredded.

Footfalls sounded behind her. She supposed she should have flinched or taken off running again. After all, criminals wanted her and she had just stupidly run across a deserted parking lot at night. But she didn’t move. She knew who was racing after her, the deputy marshal whose broad shoulder would be so much nicer to lean on than the light pole, if he weren’t a man in uniform, or a suit, or any other symbol of a man one couldn’t count on to be around when needed.

He was there at that moment, though.

“I’m all right,” she said to ward him off. “I just needed air.”

“I understand. My car’s a little small. But I don’t think this is the best place to get your supply of oxygen.”

So soothing. So reasonable.

She wanted to shout, I let my mother get kidnapped instead of me. Don’t be so nice to me.

“Let’s get you someplace comfortable.”

“I want to go home.”

He hesitated a moment before saying what she knew he would. “I’m afraid I can’t let you go home right now.”

“Is it a crime scene?”

“Not at all, but it could be watched to see if you show up.”

Of course it could.

She wrapped her arms around herself, annoyed she hadn’t thought of that, shivering from the prospect that someone could remove her from her home without guaranteeing that her mother would go free.

“Then where will I go?” she asked. “You won’t lock me up somewhere will you?”

“We do have houses—”

“No.” She faced him, hands up as though she could push him away. “I can’t be locked up somewhere. I have to do something. I have to get my mom back.”

“We will, but we need your help to know why someone wants to abduct you.”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. In spite of that SUV following me from work, I thought it was my mother who was the target. She seemed odd in the car. I thought she knew something. I thought—I’ve told you what I thought.”

Nick nodded. His head was bowed over his phone, and he was texting, thumbs flying over the screen. The tone of incoming texts rang in continuous staccato bursts.

Kristen glared at him more because she wanted her phone, her line to communicating with her friends, than because he wasn’t giving her any attention. She didn’t need his attention, especially if what he was doing meant her mother’s safe return. She hoped those texts had nothing to do with locking her away somewhere for her own good. What was good for her might not be good for her mother.

Her feet hurting, she leaned against the pole and raised one leg to tuck her foot behind her knee and rest it. After a few moments, she switched legs.

Nick glanced at her. “I’m sorry. I’m making arrangements and getting updates.”

“Which are?”

“I’m taking you to my sister’s house.”

“I mean the updates.”

His sister’s house sounded as bad as a lockup. The marshal and his family were strangers she didn’t know if she could trust.

“We can pick up your phone and purse.” Nick slid his phone into his pocket.

Kristen stared at him. “That’s your update? You all have nothing else?”

“We thought we had the license plate of the SUV that took your mom.”

Kristen straightened. “That’s good news, isn’t it? Can’t you trace it?”

“We did. The plate doesn’t match the description of the vehicle.”

“Stolen?”

“The license plate was. We don’t know about the vehicle.” He held out his hand as though he expected her to take it and let him lead her back to his car as he started to walk forward. “Let’s go get your phone, then get you someplace safe and comfortable.”

“Why is your sister’s house safe?”

“Her husband’s a former cop who’s now a home security systems salesman.”

“I can’t impose on strangers.” She fell into step beside him, only wincing slightly.

“No one is a stranger to my sister.”

“She’s a stranger to me.”

“So am I, but you got in my car willingly several times now.” He flashed her a grin.

Her toes curled inside the rubber-soled socks. “That’s different. You’re law enforcement.”

“Fair enough.” They reached the car and he held the still open passenger door. “I can leave you at the marshal’s office when we stop for your phone and purse. They will take you to a safe house to wait until we free Her Honor.”

She would be locked into a safe house for her own good. She knew that. She was a victims’ advocate and had reluctantly sent clients to such places for their protection, witnesses to horrendous crimes. People the Marshals Service had helped her make disappear. Now the marshals wanted to help her disappear for a while. A short while, she hoped.

She glared at Nick—up at Nick. At five feet ten inches, she didn’t get to look up with many men.

She dropped her gaze to remember the uniform and why she was with him in the first place. “I think I’m being manipulated, except I don’t know why you would prefer I go to your sister. If bad guys are after me, isn’t she in danger, security husband or not?”

“It’s such a small risk anyone will trace you there, she’s willing to take it.” He released the door. “But let’s get going. This parking lot is too exposed, and we’ve been here too long.”

She took the message for what it was—we might be watched—and slid into the Mustang. Nick closed her door before she reached for the handle, then rounded the hood to the driver’s side.

They said nothing on the two-mile drive back to the marshal’s office, a quick trip at night with relatively little traffic on the road. Despite him running the air-conditioning, Kristen kept her window down for the free flow of air. She could think better with uncirculated air in her face. Yet thinking meant feeling and feeling brought guilt.

She had done something that made bad guys want to harm her. They didn’t want a ransom. If so, they wouldn’t want her as exchange for her mother. Mom was worth more on the ransom market than Kristen.

She didn’t know what the men wanted. She only knew their actions fell on her shoulders, were her fault, and she needed to find a way to stop them. She would find it regardless of the consequences.

* * *

Nick didn’t like Kristen’s silence. He liked her panic even less. She was strong-looking in appearance, gorgeous with those lake-blue eyes, high cheekbones and athletic build. Yet Kristen’s appearance was deceiving. She was as fragile in her spirit as petite Michele, his deceased fiancée, had been, maybe more so. Michele had come across as confident in her worth, in her belief others’ kindnesses to her were deserved. And they had been. Michele was one of the most giving people he knew, a true servant of the Lord’s.

Yet in the end, that open heart of hers had been her undoing. She thought she was safe no matter what part of the city she ventured into because she helped so many people in need. Michele had trusted God to keep her safe. She had trusted the wrong people, and they had killed her. Nick suspected Kristen trusted no one, which might be just as dangerous to her safety as believing in the goodness of others.

Or that God would take care of her.

Nick shook off that thought. His family had been helping him to regain his faith since Michele’s death. Yet sometimes, doubt reared its ugly head.

Kristen was not Michele. Kristen was strictly business. He was assigned to protect her. Protect her he would—with his life if necessary. He would not fail her as he had failed to be with Michele when she needed him most.

He had failed her. God hadn’t.

Along the lines of protecting Kristen, Nick pulled into the parking garage, but texted for someone to bring her personal items to them. She didn’t need to be walking on her battered feet. That meant the two of them sat in his car, Nick vigilant for all the garage was secure, and Kristen silent, still gazing out the window until another deputy marshal brought her purse and two laptop computers, her mother’s and hers, to the car. She thanked the courier, then fell silent again until Nick pulled onto the street.

“They’re not going to question me further now that they know these men are after me and not my mother?” Kristen spoke at last.

“They will, but not until tomorrow.” He headed to Lake Shore Drive and the north end of the city.

Beside him, Kristen clutched her hands on her knees. “Isn’t that too late? Wouldn’t talking to me tonight help them find her sooner?”

“Do you know any reason why someone would want to harm you?” He countered her question with a question, the obvious question she had surely been asking herself since he informed her of what they had heard from the kidnappers.

She shook her head. “I can look on my computer, search case files for possibilities.”

“But you can’t share that information with us because of confidentiality laws, right?”

“Right.”

“So we need to see what the kidnappers’ demands are.”

“But you know already. They want me.” She bent her head and muttered something like, “And they can have me.”

Nick inhaled the clean, crisp scent of the lake blowing through the open passenger window. “Of course they can’t have you. We would never exchange one person for another. And right now, we don’t even know where they want to make such an exchange.”

“And when we do?”

“When the Marshals Service knows, they will act appropriately.” He wanted to offer her some comfort, something proactive. “Meanwhile, think of someone who holds a grudge against you so we can get permission for you to release that information.”

She needed to eat and rest, if he could get her to do either. He hoped his sister Gina, could. She was good at persuading people to do what was best for them. She had brought him back from the brink after his fiancée’s death.

Call it what it is—her murder.

Killed because he had been working and couldn’t help her when she got a flat tire, and she walked to an “L” station.

He understood how Kristen must be feeling at that moment. He supposed that was why his boss had assigned Nick to watch over her, to protect her. Callahan knew Nick would give her sympathy, even empathy.

He wondered if he should tell her about Michele. Twice before their exit, he opened his mouth to say he knew how she felt, but closed it again. Gina might have forced him to eat and rejoin the world, to keep going until the grief eased, but she hadn’t been able to get him to talk about Michele to anyone. Those thoughts and feelings were between him and God. He wasn’t going to change anything with a lady he barely knew and was unlikely to see again in twenty-four hours, except on a wholly passing way if she came to the courthouse.

“The waiting is terrible,” he said at last.

She nodded.

“And you keep thinking about what you could have done differently.”

“I could have stayed with her instead of running.”

Nick flipped on his blinker to take them into the heart of the Lakeview neighborhood. “What good would that have done?”

“They would have let her go if they had me.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I would know they weren’t hurting her.”

“Or they would have kept you both and harmed you both.”

Nick wished he knew her well enough to know how she would react if he touched her hand, her shoulder, gave her that bit of human contact so comforting in times of distress. He didn’t know her, though, so kept his distance.

Off a more major thoroughfare, he turned onto a relatively quiet street and stopped in front of a four-flat building with a carriage house behind. “My sister and her husband live in the carriage house.”

“I wanted to live in a carriage house, but I could never find one I could afford.” She popped open her door and climbed out before he could reach her side. “Can you park here?”

“They’ll have a sticker for me.” Nick gathered up her belongings, such as they were, and carried them through the open gate. “I’m going to ask Sean, my brother-in-law, to lock this for the night.”

Kristen stared at him. In the light of the security lamps, her face was sickly pale. “You don’t think I’m safe here.”

“Kristen—” He stopped.

Her wide-eyed horror roused his sympathy so much, he doubted he could keep an emotional distance from her.

“Kristen,” he began again, “I don’t think you’re safe anywhere. This is just the best place at the moment if you don’t want to be locked away in a safe house until we hear more from the kidnappers.”

As if to respond to his statement, a cell phone rang. Kristen jumped. Nick reached for his phone. Nothing showed on the screen, and the ringing continued.

“It’s mine.” She was fumbling in her bag. A pack of tissues, a tube of lip balm and three peppermints landed on the sidewalk before she drew the phone from the suitcase she called a purse.

“Let me.” Nick held out his hand.

But she was already answering. “Hello?”

She lowered the phone so it switched to speaker mode, and Nick heard the response as clearly as she did.

“Please,” said a whispery voice, “do whatever they say. They’ll kill me otherwise.”

“Mom? Is that you? What are they—?”

A scream interrupted her, and then the call was disconnected.

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