whimpering family member who comes begging to me. That’s not exactly my thing, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“Do you remember where you buried Mercy?”
“You’ll have to come back and have another chat with me. I’m tired now.”
“But we just started talking,” she replied, a note of urgency in her voice.
“Call me Dan.”
She looked at him blankly. She had not been expecting that request. “What?”
“It’s our third date. It’s time to use real names, Atlee.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
He clapped his hands silently together. “Then poor, sweet, and probably dead Mercy Pine remains an enigma forever. Poof.”
“When do you want to meet again?”
“A month from today…Atlee. I’m a busy man. So say it, or we’re done. Forever.”
“Okay…Dan.”
Pine walked out, got her guns—and had to force herself to not charge back into the prison and blow Dan’s fucking head off.
She climbed into her car and headed back to Shattered Rock, Arizona, where she was the sole FBI agent for huge swaths of thinly populated land. An hour into her drive she got an Amber Alert on her phone. A little girl had been abducted. The suspect was driving a gray Nissan pickup very near Pine’s current location.
Under the lustrous glow of a hunter’s moon, the god of law and order smiled on her that night, because five minutes later the truck flew past Pine going in the opposite direction.
She did a one-eighty, the Mustang’s custom rubber smoking and squealing in protest before regaining purchase on the asphalt. Pine hit the blue grille lights she’d installed, laid the fancy chrome gas pedal to the floorboard, and roared off to save a little girl’s life.
Pine swore to herself that this time she would not fail.
Chapter 2
THERE WAS A SINGULARLY CRITICAL RULE with Amber Alerts for law enforcement: You got to the victim and the abductor as quickly as possible and walled off any means of escape. After that, you could work the situation any number of ways. Brute force, or talking the suspect out of any violence to the hostage, if that was a possibility.
When the man turned off the main road after seeing the flashing blue lights coming up fast on his butt, Pine knew she would have to read the situation and make that choice soon. At least she knew the terrain. Pine had taken a detour down this very road to let her head clear after her second session with Tor. Thus she knew this was a box canyon, with the road she was on the only way out.
She called in her location to the local police along with her identity and pursuit status. She knew they would deploy a response immediately. But they were in isolated territory here. The cops would not be showing up in a couple of minutes. For now, it was just Pine, her twin guns, wits, training, and experience—adding up to the best hope the child had to survive.
Dusk was fading to darkness as they wound higher and higher on the switchback road. The lane was growing narrower and the drop-off higher with each passing turn of the wheels.
She tried to see the man and the girl in the truck cab but couldn’t make out more than vague silhouettes. But the plate number in the Amber Alert was correct, and the guy was clearly trying to get away. Whether he realized the road was going to run out on him at some point, Pine didn’t know. But she did know this was going to get complicated. Yet Pine had been rigorously trained in complicated.
A half mile later the point of no return was reached. Pine positioned her Mustang sideways in the middle of the narrow road, blocking the way back out, with the passenger side facing the truck. If he tried to ram her, she would shoot him through the windshield. She took out her trusty Glock and drew a bead through the open passenger window.
The Nissan made a loop and pointed its hood back the way it had come. The man stopped and put the truck in park, the engine idling. Pine could almost see the wheels turning in the guy’s head: Do I try it or not?
When he turned on his high beams, probably to blind her, she shot them out. Now, Pine figured, she had his full and undivided attention. After she once again reported in their current location to the local cops, Pine sat there with one hand wrapped around her gun grip and the other on the door lever.