Tall, Dark And Wanted

It hadn’t mattered that he’d kissed other girls before then; with Molly it had felt like the first. From the moment he’d leaned across the seat, buried his fingers in her thick hair and drawn her mouth to his, Mitch had known it was more than just another kiss. Much more. There was no comparing, because that kiss, and every one they’d shared after that, had always felt like…coming home.

Mitch’s body responded to the memories, and he tried instead to shift his focus to the road ahead of them, keeping the Blazer steady through the accumulating drifts. The weatherman’s predictions had certainly been accurate. Between the heavy snowfall and the unrelenting wind, whatever tracks Molly had made in her walk to the house had long since been covered or blown clear. Mitch was grateful that Barb had left him with the four-wheel drive and rented a car to get back to Chicago.

“So the police know I’m alive?” he asked finally, needing something—anything—to break the heavy silence between them.

In his peripheral vision he caught the flash of Molly’s eyes, but the second he tried to meet her stare, she looked away again.

“No,” she answered flatly, her soft voice almost drowned out by the Blazer’s fan and the thumping wipers. “They think Sabatini got to you first.”

“But you didn’t?”

She shook her head.

“Why?”

“Call it a gut feeling.”

“So you came all this way on the department’s budget?”

“No. This is my vacation time, Mitch. My budget. I wanted to find you.”

Was it possible? he wondered. Could Molly have driven all the way from Chicago just for him? Out of concern for his safety and well-being?

No. The truth of the matter was Molly was a cop. Vacation or no vacation, as a cop she’d searched for him, and as a cop she wanted him to come back to Chicago. To testify.

“So how did you find me?”

“I broke into your office,” she said, so matter-of-factly she made it sound like standard police procedure. “Went through your Rolodex. Process of elimination. Figured that of all the places you’d run to, I’d find you here.”

He saw her nod past the windshield.

“My Jeep’s just around the next turn. I thought I saw headlights.”

“Probably the plow,” he suggested. But if there had been a plow or another vehicle it was gone by the time he steered around the bend and caught sight of the Jeep’s four-way flashers.

Mitch drove past the vehicle and pulled the Blazer to the shoulder of the road as well. Leaving it idling, he stepped out into a blast of icy air. In spots where the wind had blown the road clear, the packed snow squealed under his boots as he took out the gas can and walked back to the Jeep. There was no other sound; the heavy blanket of snow over the dense forest muffled the jangle of Molly’s key ring as she unlocked the gas cap, and the clank of the can as Mitch brought it up and fitted the nozzle.

Holding the flashlight in one hand, Molly lifted her collar and tugged her scarf up under her chin against the biting cold. Mitch didn’t know why she unzipped her anorak from the bottom just then and fumbled underneath as though checking her gun’s holster. If he’d had time to think about it, he might have taken the gesture as a warning. He might have thought Molly sensed something that he didn’t. Or…he might have wondered if she’d expected what happened next.

But the thoughts had barely begun to form themselves in his mind when they both heard the low rumble of an engine. Together they turned in time to see the sudden glare of high beams as a vehicle careened out of the darkness and around the corner. Momentarily caught in the headlights of the Blazer, the dark-colored SUV accelerated along the snow-covered road.

“What the hell? It’s coming right at us!” Molly shouted above the revving engine.

But Mitch didn’t need any warning. Instinct drove him. There was no time to wonder what lay in the darkness beyond the snowbank to his right. Anything was better than the grill of the oncoming vehicle. He dropped the empty gas can, and before it even hit the road, he’d snatched Molly’s hand in his.

He cleared the bank before she did, dragging her after him, up and over the hard slope and into the soft, deep snow beyond. Vaguely he was aware of branches whipping at his face and an exposed boulder gouging into his back as he rolled with Molly. And finally, his own wind escaped in a gasp, knocked out of him as she landed on him.

In the same instant, above the engine’s roar came the gut-wrenching sound of impact. It was followed by the scream of metal grinding against metal, of tortured steel and shattering glass.

He heard Molly’s curse as she bellied up the bank, and when he joined her, peering over the top, the Jeep was a good forty feet from where it had been parked. It wasn’t until the assailing four-by-four slowed to a stop farther down the road and finally turned around that Mitch was able to see the damage it had inflicted on the smaller vehicle. In the other vehicle’s headlights, it was clear Molly’s Jeep had been spun around, the driver’s side crushed and the windows smashed out.

Again he heard Molly curse, but this time she followed it up by lifting the edge of her anorak and taking out her gun. In the brief glare of headlights, he could see the determination in her face as she gripped the weapon in one gloved hand.

“Molly, what are you doing?!”

“What does it look like?”

“It might have been an accident.”

“I hardly think so. Get down, Mitch,” she ordered, pulling back the slide of the semiautomatic.

“Molly, what the hell—”

But he didn’t need to ask, nor did he need to hear Molly’s explanation behind the defensive stance she took, her body pressed along the snowbank, her elbows propped against the hardened surface as she brought the gun up. He, too, watched the four-by-four slow as it neared their hiding place, and when the passenger window rolled down, Mitch was shocked to see the weapon in the man’s hand.

“Get down,” Molly warned him once more, a mere second before the night erupted in gunfire.

There was no telling which shots were which then. To Mitch, it sounded like a virtual torrent of bullets. A war zone. From where he crouched just below the top of the slope, he could almost hear the small missiles piercing the air above him, striking trees and ricocheting off boulders in the darkness beyond. When he snatched a look at Molly, he saw she was holding her position at the top of the embankment, one round after the next exploding from the black muzzle of her gun.

Mitch could only imagine that her shots were far more accurate, because as suddenly as the gunfire had begun, it ended. There was the rev of the four-by-four’s engine and the grinding of huge tires against the frozen road as it sped off.

But Molly wasn’t finished. Far from it. Mitch heard her mutter something about them getting away, and in a flash she was on her feet.

“Molly, no! Let them go.” He snatched at her coat, hoping to stop her, but it was pointless. She tore loose and charged down the snowbank to the road before he’d even caught his balance.

In the roadway, Mitch winced with each earsplitting shot as Molly let off several more rounds at the fleeing vehicle. And that was when he smelled the gasoline.

Behind them, only one of the Jeep’s hazard lights continued to blink through the inky darkness. The four-by-four must have struck the Wrangler’s fuel tank.

“Molly!” But his voice was lost to yet another shot as the four-by-four’s taillights disappeared around the bend.

“Molly!” he shouted again.

The blast of her final round echoed through the woods. It was followed by the quiet, yet unmistakable whisper of a fire igniting. In the next second there were flames. Over the low crackle, he heard Molly curse again, turning to the vehicle as though she hoped to rescue some of her belongings.

“Molly, no. Come on!” he shouted above the hiss, tugging at her coat.

She’d lowered her gun, and in the intensifying red-orange glow of the hungry flames that already engulfed the driver’s side of the Jeep, Mitch saw the shock in her expression. The heat of the flames, searing against his own cold-numbed skin, seemed to hold her back.

The air was swollen now with the heat of the fire. Flames licked higher and higher into the stormy night, fanned by the wind.

“Molly, now! It’s going to blow!” This time when he grabbed at her coat, Mitch didn’t let go. He half dragged, half ran with her away from the Jeep and down the empty road, uncertain how much distance was needed.

It wasn’t enough.

There was the low whoosh of gas igniting, followed by an earth-shattering explosion that hurled both of them to the cold ground. The shock of the blast rippled through the air around them, followed by a wave of thick, acrid heat and a storm of flying shards that rained down around them.

“Are you all right?” His body covered hers, and when he raised himself enough that she could move, Molly rolled over and sat up. She brushed snow and grit from her face and stared back at the burning wreckage, the flames reflecting in her wide eyes.

“Are you all right, Molly?” he asked again, taking her by the shoulders.

She managed a nod and instantly scanned the snow-covered ground. Locating her gun, she brushed it off as well.

“Yeah,” she said at last, “I’m okay. I think…I think we need to get out of here.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

It was when Mitch started to stand that he spotted the two figures in the roadway. Twenty…maybe twenty-five yards away, they were no more than silhouettes in the flickering glow of the fire, but there was no question as to their intent. Each of them carried a gun, and each approached with the steady determination of hired killers.

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