• • •

FEELING A SURGE OF HOPE, Liz touched the screen’s map icon and saw a green dot that revealed her location in the middle of a large, unmarked rural area. She expanded the image and discovered an orange line indicating a road, along with a number for Highway 55. She expanded the image even more, revealing the name of a town—Marsdon—southwest of her.

Her fingers trembling, she started to type a text message and let Simon know where she was. But all she managed was ESCAPED. OFF H55 N. Music suddenly blared from the cell phone.

Damn.

It sounded like the theme from the damned Rambo movies. The trumpets startled her so much that she nearly dropped the phone, touching the Send button before she intended to. As the rousing anthem reverberated through the mist, she flipped at the mute switch.

The sudden silence unnerved her.

Every animal in the forest seemed to have become paralyzed. Birds no longer complained in the trees.

Max didn’t make a sound either.

No way he couldn’t have heard the music.

• • •

RUBBING HIS SIDE FROM WHERE he’d tumbled down a slope, Max stalked through the forest.

Abruptly he heard music. Trumpets.

Rambo music.

Then he realized it was the ringtone on Rudy’s phone. To the left. For a fierce moment Max almost charged toward it, but at once the trumpets ended, their echo subsiding into the mist.

He found an unexpected stillness inside him.

What would the big guy do?

Would he charge ahead?

No damned way.

The scum he’d hunted never knew where he was.

Rambo just struck out of nowhere and . . .

Listening for any sound that Sansborough might make, he changed his phone to mute.

Then he texted Marta.

BITCH ESCAPED. RUDY’S DEAD. HUNTING HER.

After studying the ground ahead of him, he stepped onto soft pine needles—exactly what Rambo would do—and moved silently toward where the music had come from.

• • •

MARTA GAPED AT THE MESSAGE.

BITCH ESCAPED.

Without the woman, she had no way to rescue Nick. No way to prove that she could make up for her mistakes. No way to keep from being the target of Nick’s fury. She desperately needed help, but the rest of the gang was in Texas, working on two hijack jobs that she hoped the police would blame on a rival gang—an idea that she hadn’t told Nick about and for which he would surely now punish her.

She pulled a .40-caliber Sig Sauer from a drawer, made sure that its twelve-round magazine was fully loaded and that a round was in the firing chamber. She scooped an extra magazine from the drawer, shoved it and the pistol into her purse, and hurried from the office.

• • •

IN THE DARKNESS OF THE trunk, Nick struggled to breathe as shallowly as possible. The stench of the spare tire and oily rags made him sick. He thought he smelled the bitterness of engine exhaust also, but if that were true, surely he’d be dead by now. His arms ached from the tight angle at which his wrists were duct-taped behind him, but no matter how much he squirmed, he couldn’t loosen the tape.