She told herself it wasn’t unreasonable to be thinking about sex. She might be repressed, but she was still human, and Mat was so different from the men she knew. Too assertive in his dealings with women to be politically correct. All hard muscle and square jaw, broad hands and blunt-tipped fingers. She loved the way he smelled of soap, shaving cream, and skin. He was big and brawny, and she liked his teeth.

His teeth? Oh, God, she was losing her mind. With a groan, she turned her attention to helping Button pour water into Styrofoam cups without drinking it.

Lucy eventually got bored and decided to go up to the room to watch TV. Before she left, she told Nealy she was a moron for not knowing that Button needed a bottle, and she took her little sister with her.

Nealy sighed and settled back on the lounge, determined not to think about Lucy, Button, or Mat Jorik, but that only led to worrying about money. Steelworkers made good salaries, but this was proving to be an expensive trip. Could Mat handle the repairs for Mabel on top of the other trip expenses? And did she really want to spend the rest of her grand adventure in two pairs of shorts, a couple of tops, and a change of underwear?

She had to have money, and Terry Ackerman was the only person she could trust to get it for her without turning her in. She made her way to a pay phone and called him.

*  *  *

FBI Special Agent Antonia “Toni” DeLucca pulled out of the parking lot of the truck stop near Mc-Connellsburg, Pennsylvania, where Jimmy Briggs had stolen the Chevy Corsica. She and her partner had questioned employees and truckers, but no one had seen anything. In a few hours, they’d come back to talk to the workers on the next shift.

She gazed across the seat of the government-issued Taurus at her new partner and wondered how she’d ended up with someone named Jason. Secret Service Special Agent Jason Williams. Nobody over the age of thirty had the first name of Jason. And maybe that was what irritated her the most because Jason Williams wouldn’t see thirty for another four years, while Toni had passed it more than a decade and a half ago.

When Toni had entered the Bureau in the late seventies, she had been one of only two hundred female agents. More than twenty years later, she’d managed to survive the gender wars by being tougher and smarter than everybody she’d started out with. She’d considered it her duty to rise through the ranks, only to discover that what she loved most was working as a field agent. Three years ago she’d gone back to doing just that, and she’d never been happier.