A body slid under the door from the front and up to pin her to the side of the seat with one quick move. Metal pushed into her left kidney...a gun?...as a voice hissed in her ear. “Where is he?”

  Heart pounding with anger and adrenaline, she used well-honed muscles to hold her weight steady in spite of the awkward position. “Where’s who?” she asked.

  Another jab to her kidney that was going to leave a bruise, and the cheek pushed up to hers moved again. “You know who. Now move slowly back inside. I have no beef with you. I want him.”

  He might not have a beef with her, but the sentiment was most definitely not returned. And no way was she giving him access to the rig. But with the door at his back, she had no real route down, either. And no way to get to her ankle holster.

  Maintaining her position, she reached for the wrist holding the weapon to her back, felt it turn, and the tip of a knife pierced her skin. She was aware, but only peripherally, as she twisted, too, got the guy in a wrist lock and, switching positions with him, had him down in the seat, her body holding him in an arm brace, just as Joe came barreling out of the back room with a raised hammer in his hand.

  Damn!

  “Stop!” She spoke with more meanness than she knew she possessed, glancing at Joe. If he came any closer, she’d have to handle two men at once.

  She could do it.

  Just didn’t want to have to.

  * * *

  She had the arm in her grasp disabled but hadn’t yet disarmed her attacker. She finally got a good look at him, though.

  The teenager who’d given them the finger...

  With another twist of the wrist in her grasp, and a tight flick, she saw the knife drop to the floor of the rig right by her foot, and then, with a knee in the kid’s gut, right under his rib cage, she patted him down for further weapons before looking around for something to tie his hands.

  A piece of cording appeared before her eyes—wrapped in a strong male hand.

  Taking it without removing her gaze from her prisoner, she jerked him over, pulling his wrists behind him, wrapped them and tied a quick, very tight knot.

  Other than a couple of grunts, the kid hadn’t made a sound until she flipped him back over, let go of him, and he slowly slid to a sitting position behind the wheel. Joe appeared in the small space then, hauled the kid out of his seat and pushed him down to a sitting position by the door with his back against the kitchen wall.

  “Who else did you tell where we are?” Joe asked, his tone pretty menacing, too. “You the one who put me on social media?”

  “No.” The kid’s sullen tone didn’t do him any favors. Nor did the hate spearing from his eyes to Joe’s head. Joe took a step forward, reaching as though to grab the kid, and the boy looked down. “I swear, man, I didn’t tell anyone. I saw the message board...”

  “What’s a kid your age doing on the dark web?” Joe threw out the accusation, and McKenna, who’d been standing there watching the scene unfold, stared at him. She had to call the police and get the kid in custody—hopefully without raising undue attention, or having Joe’s likeness actually be seen—but she was kind of wanting to watch how he played things out with the kid, too.

  For the moment, because he was on the right track, getting the information Glen and Hud were going to need, she left them alone—gun now in hand—watching for any sign that her physical skills were needed.

  “I don’t know...”

  Joe stepped closer.

  “I was looking for you, okay?” the teenager shouted, his voice filled with emotion. “One of the pictures, I knew the road, and I’ve been following you ever since.”

  “Following me?” Standing back, hands on his hips, Joe frowned. “Why?”

  “I was working up the guts to kill you.”

  McKenna raised her gun. Saw Joe’s frown out of the corner of her eye.

  “Come again?”

  “That’s why I haven’t told anyone where you are. I wanted you all to myself.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Driving your own car?”

  Seriously? They had an attempted murderer on the floor of the rig and Joe cared whose car he’d been driving?

  “It is now.”

  Joe glanced at her then. “What are we going to do with him now?”

  “It was my dad’s car,” the kid said then. Glared at Joe and finished with, “Until you killed him.” Spittle shot forward.

  “I killed him?”

  “He had cancer, too, but losing the money... He’d invested his whole savings with Bellair so I could go to college, and then, when he lost all the money, he just gave up. He died before your trial ended.”

  “And you really think killing me is going to make any of that better?”

  The fire in the boy’s eyes was not even a little diminished then as he looked between the two of them. “You have to pay.”

  “What’s your name?” Joe asked then.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing.” McKenna had had enough. They were going to start attracting attention, hogging the pump for so long. “The police will get it out of you soon enough.” She pulled out her phone, waited for it to boot up.

  “No police.” Joe’s tone was as firm as it had ever been.

  Openmouthed she stared at him. What did he think they were going to do, keep the kid captive? Get rid of him themselves?

  Even as she had the thought, she knew that latter part was ludicrous. And wasn’t at all fond of the first bit, either.

  “I’m going to teach you a thing or two about life, kid, but, first, you’re going to tell me your name.” Joe’s tone was unrelenting.

  Losing some of his belligerence, the young man looked up at McKenna, as though seeing any hope coming through her. She was pretty sure that the police sounded like a better option to him than the big, angry man standing before him.

  A man the kid believed guilty of major corporate fraud, money laundering and God knew what else.

  The kid believed...not she believed...

  Shaking her head, she thought about the tip of a knife scraping her skin, ignored the teenager’s plea and glanced over at Joe.

  At the thought of her back, the first she’d had of it since her scuffle with the boy, she lifted her free hand back behind her and...felt blood.

  The cut was surface, she could feel that, too, but her shirt had a small hole in it and was also wet.

  “My name’s William,” the boy finally said. “What of it?”

  “Does your mother know where you are?”

  “She thinks I’m staying at my friend’s house...”

  “You ever been arrested, William?”

  “No.”

  “Yet you were willing to spend the rest of your life in jail for murder...”

  “No way I was getting caught.” The bravado was back.

  “You’re caught now.”

  Silence fell again. The kind she and Joe had shared the first few hours they’d been on the road together. It grew. And suffocated you with the tension of not knowing what he was thinking...

  Of course, in her case, she hadn’t been the least bit afraid of the man.

  Nor had she been on his bad side.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, William. You’re going to give me your mother’s name and number. I’m going to have a friend check it out, check you out, and as long as what you’ve told me is true, we’re going to make a deal.”

  “I’m not making no deal with you...”

  Joe stepped closer again, bending over the captured kid. “Your father raise you to be stupid, boy?”

  “No.”

  “Then act like it. You’re in a load of trouble here, you got that?”

  With a sullen smirk, the kid glared at the wall in front of him.

  “If you check out, and that’s a big if, then we’re going to deliver you to someone who will take you home. You will not say a word to anyone, not even a fly in your room, about seeing me or knowing where I am. And in return for your silence, you earn four years of college tuition. But only if you maintain a B average or higher.”

  “I’m not...”

  “You’re being stupid again. You got a choice—the cops or my offer.”

  McKenna watched as all fight seemed to drain out of the boy. His shoulders slumped, his head relaxed back and his mouth seemed to de-age, leaving him to look like little more than a grieving boy.

  She still had a hand holding her shirt against the blood at her back.

  “You’re forcing me to let you go,” the boy finally said. And then, the glare back in his eye, looked up. “So, no! I’m not doing it. You go ahead and call the cops. See if I care. You don’t just get to ruin so many lives and then just walk away.”

  With a nod, Joe sat down.

  Shocked, McKenna pointed her gun at William, praying that she didn’t have to take a shot.

  “I’m trying to help you,” Joe said, his tone more calm. “And trying to do it quickly, because we really need to get going.” He glanced toward McKenna, at the gun, and said, “She doesn’t take kindly to her schedule being messed up.”

  William glanced at her, then back at Joe.

  “I didn’t do it, William. Some pretty powerful people are trying to help me prove that, and people like you, stalking me, trying to make my life miserable, are slowing us down. If you really want to get the people who hurt your family, then you need to take my deal and let us get on with what we’re doing. I’m sorry your dad lost his money. I’m even more sorry that he died. I’d like to help. I didn’t take your father’s money, but I have plenty of my own—legally and honestly earned—and I’d like to put some in a trust for your college education. Assuming you go home. Don’t say a word about me until this is all over, because if you do, you not only put McKenna there in danger, you also slow our process of finding the real thief. You stay out of trouble. And maintain a B average.”

  “I have a 4.0.” William’s tone was disgusted, but it had lost all its luster.

  “Do we have a deal?” Joe wasn’t letting up.

  “You really didn’t do it?” The short-haired boy looked him right in the eye.

  Joe looked back. “I really didn’t do it.”

  “Man, sucks being you then.”

  And that, McKenna figured, just about summed it all up.

  Chapter 10

  McKenna had still thought Joe should call the police and have William arrested. When he’d first caught sight of the blood smeared all over her hand, he’d almost agreed.

  If not for the horror on William’s face when he’d seen what he’d done, and for the fact that the cut really was just a scratch—albeit one that bled a lot—he’d have stepped back while she notified authorities. Instead, he’d left William with his hands tied behind his back down in the stairwell of the rig, telling the kid not to move, and had gone to the bedroom to have a quiet session with his bodyguard. Asking her to give the kid a break – on Joe’s terms.

  Remembering those moments a couple of hours later, as he and McKenna were once again on a road to nowhere, through nowhere, actually heading toward Yuma, she’d said, Joe got a little buzzed down below. The two of them, behind the closed door in that tiny, tiny bedroom...he’d never ever thought that would happen.

  She’d had to sit on the mattress he slept on, as there wasn’t room for two of them to stand at the door, and he was pretty sure he’d remember her body there, like her heat had been transfused into his sheets, the next time he lay down to sleep.

  Every time he lay down in that bed forevermore.

  He’d tended to her back, ascertaining that it really was just the surface wound she’d claimed, but insisting on putting antibiotic and a bandage on it, just the same. Pretty much holding his breath, and setting his memory function to pause so that it wouldn’t retain the paleness, or softness, of her skin.

  He’d also always remember the way she’d capitulated to his wishes. Seeing the best in not calling the police. For William’s sake first and foremost, though she’d been willing to forgo that because she thought the kid should pay for what he’d done. But for the sake of the case, they sure as hell didn’t need any more publicity, and he could only imagine what social media would do when it got wind of another Joe Hamilton run-in with the police...

  She’d called Glen before giving her agreement to his plan. But he’d heard her talking to her boss. Heard her arranging details to bring William’s mother up to speed, and then for legal contracts and signatures and to have someone chaperone William home. And knew, when she’d said, “Yes, I do,” that Glen had been asking her if she agreed with the plan.

  She might not fully trust him, but she was keeping an open mind to his thoughts.

  He’d take it.

  And wanted more.

  So now...reaching one pinnacle and heading straight up the next incline...

  “You know, you and William have something in common,” he said when the silence was getting to be too long again. They weren’t strangers anymore. Hours of no talk between them...not as good as it had been.

  “What’s that?” As always, her attention was on the outside of the rig, on mirrors and landscape and vehicles on the road.

  “You both followed your heart at sixteen, leaving home without permission, but uncaring of the consequences for having done so because you were so sure you were on the right path.”

  Of course, William hadn’t been—on the right path.

  But his motivation, standing up for his father who could no longer stand up for himself, had been.

  He wasn’t all that surprised when she didn’t respond. But, feeling empowered by the way the thing with William had gone, he pushed more.

  Pushing himself to reach for what he wanted, to refuse to settle for less, to give everything he had, had made him a near multimillionaire by the age of thirty-one, he reminded himself. He drew a breath and asked, “Why were you so eager to leave your grandparents’ home?”

  “How do you know I wasn’t just eager to be with my dad?”

  “Because of the stipulations you put on your visits to the home you grew up in,” he said. She had to have known he’d read the nuances. “And the fact that the court allowed them.”

  Her pause gave him pause. She wasn’t going to tell him the truth. At least not all of it. She was calculating what to tell him. He knew it before she started speaking.

  “I’m guessing you wouldn’t understand.” The answer, when it finally came, was a huge disappointment. He hadn’t expected everything, but he’d been counting on something.

  Another clue, at least, into the life and mind of the woman who intrigued him more than any other human being he’d ever known.

  And not just because she’d single-handedly taken down an armed and emotionally distraught kid set to kill him.

  “Why would you say that?” Yeah, still not content to just sit still and take it, as he’d been doing for months while quietly trying to figure out what in the hell had happened at Bellair. To figure out who had happened was more like it.

  “True or false. You love big-city action, glitz, schmoozing with people who are wealthy or wealthier than you are.”

  “True.” No shame for being proud of what he’d built. Or for enjoying his success.

  “I like small towns, evenings where the only cacophony is the raucous laughter at the table while I drink beer and play card games. And small gatherings where I know and care about everyone who’s present. I want to be able to let my hair down, so to speak, and trust that I won’t get slapped later for having done so. Expensive things make me nervous, not happy. Having to watch what I say, or the volume with which I say it, when I’m in a private, nonbusiness gathering, makes me tense. I abhor parties that are thrown as a guise for business to get done, and I most definitely can’t stand knowing that every time I attend a function, I’m being judged for what I’m wearing, how I’m walking, how much I eat or if I get drunk or not.”

  Wow. She’d pretty much chewed up and spit out the entire lifestyle that energized him. Motivated him. Challenged him. The life he’d spent his youth envisioning. The world where he thrived and intended to grow old.

  Leaving him sorry he’d asked.

  Very sorry.

  Note to self—in the future, he needed to be sure of the direction he was headed before he pushed.

  And the bright side...his bizarre sense of connection to her should, from that moment on, be severed. Leaving him to give one hundred percent of his focus to assisting Sierra’s Web in any way he could. To prove his innocence so he could get back to the life he craved.

  Like looking outside the box for the person who’d had access to his computer, as well as those in other departments, even on nonbusiness days.

  The list, as far as he knew it, was short.

  He’d been over it again and again.

  Narrowing down, to within hours, when access would have had to have been gained, for someone to have physically changed the databases. Cross-checking with times he’d been away from his computer.

  Searching social media for anything that might tell him where any of the individuals on his list had been any of the times when changes to databases would have had to be made.

  He’d managed to weed out all of them.

  Which was why he’d called Sierra’s Web in the first place.

  He had different angles now for gaining inspiration. And as soon as he figured out what he’d been missing and had access to the internet, he could begin the weeding-out process again.

  His time driving would be far better spent to that end.