“Please. Just drive!” she ordered, jamming the phone to her ear. “Oh, come on, pick up. Mom, for God’s sake!” she said into the phone, all the while looking in the mirror. “He’ll shoot us both, you know,” she told Rand. “The dog was on my scent, and he won’t let me get away. He won’t kill me right away, but he’ll kill you. After he shoots out your tires or somehow disables your truck.” Then into the phone, she moaned, “Oh, Mom, answer the damned phone, for Christ’s sake!” Then, more calmly. “Mom, it’s Zoe. I’m okay. Coming to New Orleans. Your house, okay? But then we have to go to the police. I . . . I think he’s still got Chloe. Call me back. I’m at—” She looked at him again and he rattled off his phone number, which she repeated. “I’m on my way. Be there in—?” Again she pierced him with a glare.

“Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty, depending—”

“Twenty minutes.” She hung up and cradling her phone in her hands said to him, “So, are you going to drive or what?”

Still he hesitated, unsure.

She went ballistic. “What? You don’t believe me?” she demanded, frantic. “Why the hell do you think I’m running around out here naked? For the love of God, don’t you know that people are looking for me? Isn’t it all over the freakin’ news?” When he didn’t respond, didn’t admit that he only watched sports, she said, “My name’s Zoe. Zoe Denning.”

From somewhere nearby the dog started baying again.

“Oh, God! He’s here! I told you! Shit!”

In his mirror, he caught sight of the dog, closer now, bounding through the grass and weeds, running straight at them. Worse yet, not fifty yards behind, a tall man was cutting across the field. Dressed head to toe in camouflage, sunglasses shielding his eyes, a rifle gripped in his hands, he was moving with a steady if ungainly gait.

Shit! The girl was telling the damned truth.

In the mirror, he saw the hunter stop, hoist the stock of his rifle to his shoulder, and take aim.

“Get down!” Rand ordered, and hit the gas.

For the love of God, what the hell was this?

His pickup lurched forward, tires chirping.

Craaaack!

The sharp report of a rifle split the summer air.

The first bullet pinged off a fender.

“Faster!” she yelled as he tromped on the gas.

Then the hunter took aim again.

The Silverado’s engine whined as it sped forward, accelerating, faster and faster, from a dead stop, forty, then forty-five.

“Who is that guy?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“And he’s chasing you?”

They were going sixty now.

God, what was this?

And how the hell could he take the next corner at seventy miles an hour? Shit . . . he had to slow or they’d never make it.