Mystery Bride

“Nice car,” the kid said.

Will looked down at him. The boy was all of five, with large brown eyes that twinkled in a positively angelic face. Along with the Mariners cap and red jacket, he wore faded worn jeans, a Pokémon T-shirt and sneakers. The headphones still hung around his neck, with a cord that ran to the CD player cradled in his lap on the small navy backpack. Unlike Will, the boy didn’t seem all that surprised by this turn of events.

Will turned to catch sight of the Buick coming up fast. Great. “Just tell me you don’t kidnap children. I mean, this isn’t just some random thing you do, right? You know this child, right?” He looked expectantly at her, waiting.

“Only from a faxed photo of him. He’s cuter in person.” She shot the kid a quick smile, then went back to her driving, which Will was thankful for. “His name is Zackarias Lucien O’Brien, age five-and-a-half, of Seattle, Washington. That about covers it.”

“Just ‘Zack,”’ the boy said quickly. “Just Zack” didn’t appear in the least upset as Sam took a turn on two wheels.

“Am I missing something here?” Will asked.

Samantha turned onto a paved two-lane and tromped down on the gas. The car took off like a rocket.

“What is under the hood?” he yelled over the roar of the engine.

She shot him a grin. “You like it?”

Not really. He liked it when he thought she was someone else: a nice, single woman who drove a Lexus.

“Sorry about the cuffs, but I couldn’t let you ruin my show.”

She made the whole thing sound theatrical and almost innocent. He nodded, telling himself again that she’d have a good explanation for this. It was just getting harder to believe.

She glanced over her shoulder. He looked back, too. The Buick wasn’t far behind them now.

“And those men?” he enquired.

She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She looked over at Zack. “Who are those guys?”

He shrugged, too. “They said they were friends of my birth mother’s.”

She raised a brow as she looked at the boy.

Will wished she’d keep her eyes on the road. Not that she didn’t seem capable of doing any number of things while driving. “Where exactly are we headed?” he asked, as the flat landscape flashed by in a blur and he realized they’d left Wolf Point far behind.

“Seattle, eventually. Right now—” she glanced into her rearview mirror “—anyplace where they aren’t,” she said, indicating the Buick gaining on them.

Seattle? He thought about telling her that Seattle didn’t fit into his plans. But what she did next made him lose the thought.

He watched her reach under the seat, pull out a handgun and lay it across her sun-browned thighs. He told himself he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. How could he have been so wrong about a woman?

He wondered what Jennifer Finley was doing right now.

“You can just drop me off when you get the chance,” he said—not that she seemed to be listening. “Anywhere would do.” He noted that the Firebird was pegged at over a hundred miles an hour and that the Buick was right behind them.

“See that box on the floor at your feet?” she asked.

He looked down to see a cardboard box about eight inches square. “Yes?”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d pick it up.”

Amazingly, it didn’t seem like such a strange request, all things considered.

He rattled the handcuff. “I’m not sure I can do it locked to your dash.”

She shot a look at him. “Oh, I think you can handle it.”

He wasn’t sure that was a compliment. Worse, it appeared she wasn’t ready to uncuff him.

He lifted the box from the floor with his free hand. It was much heavier than he’d expected. “What’s in here—iron?”

She didn’t answer.

He turned back the cardboard flaps on the box. At first it looked like a box full of children’s jacks, the kind his sister used to play with. Only these jacks were huge. But as he looked closer he saw that the box was packed with sixteen-penny nails welded together and ends sharpened to make large, ugly-looking multi-sided spikes.

He looked at her askance. He was in the construction business but had no idea where anyone would buy something like this, or let alone have it made. Or why anyone would want to.

As she took a curve to the left, she rolled down her side window, grabbed the box from him and hefted it out the window.

Stunned, he swung around just in time to see the box explode as it hit the blacktop. Spikes pelted the Buick’s windshield. An instant later, the Buick’s front tire blew and the car began to rock, then swerve. The Buick hit the ditch in a cloud of dust, burrowing into a small dirt hillside.

“Wow,” the kid said. He’d unbuckled his seat belt and now stood looking back as the dust settled over the Buick. “Awesome.”

Will pulled Just Zack down and got him buckled in again as Samantha slowed. She smiled down at the boy and gave him a high-five. The kid was grinning from ear to ear. This woman was not a good role model.

“I’m Samantha but most people just call me ‘Sam.”’

Just Zack turned shy.

“And this is—” her gaze shifted to Will “—Will, an acquaintance of mine.”

Passing acquaintance, he thought. What was going on? Why had she grabbed this kid? And who were those men? And more to the point, who was this woman?

He realized he was getting a headache just trying to figure it all out. And what was the point? Obviously, she was all wrong for him.

Absently, he considered what he might be doing right now if he’d listened to his sister’s advice. He glanced down at his left wrist to check the time. His watch was gone! How was that possible? He’d just had it.

“My watch—”

“Give it back, Zack,” Samantha ordered, not even looking at the boy.

Zack let out a long-suffering sigh, reached into his jacket pocket and extracted the watch.

Samantha snatched it from the kid and handed it to Will. “Sorry. I should have warned you.”

Will stared down at the boy, then at Samantha. They both looked so…innocent.

Samantha turned off the highway onto a dirt road.