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should go back to Purgatory,” Jack said a couple of minutes later. “My brother-in-law is a deputy sheriff in Alabama. He can help.”
“No.”
“Are you running from the police or something, Mara?” He asked the question with a hint of humor in his tone, as if he thought he knew her so well, knew that she couldn’t possibly take one step over the line between right and wrong.
He didn’t know her at all.
“I just don’t want to involve anyone else in my problems.”
“Too late for that, darlin’.” There was that western Wyoming twang again, gravelly, deep and compelling, with just a hint of Texas at the edges.
She didn’t let herself look at him. His voice was disarming enough. She didn’t need to see the lean angles of his jaw or the dimples that played around the corners of his mouth when he smiled. She had a lifelong habit of falling for the wrong men, and she knew Jack Drummond was as wrong as it got. In so many ways.
Jack switched to the left lane and began to slow down. She sat forward in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“Turning around,” he answered as he swung the truck into a U-turn and headed toward Purgatory.
“Jack, no. Please.” She reached across the seat and grabbed his arm.
He shot a look at her. “What are you so damn afraid of, Mara?”
“Please, let’s just go to Poe Creek like we planned.”
“Like you planned. I wasn’t consulted. And you won’t tell me what’s really going on here. Besides, my truck, my way.”
“Then let me out. I’ll walk.”
“In the pouring rain.” Skepticism edged his voice. “For miles.”
Before she had a chance to come up with a response, the rain-washed road visible ahead in the truck’s headlights took on an eerie red glow. A minute later, she spotted red flashing lights on the road ahead, coming from multiple emergency vehicles.
Sinking a little lower in the seat, she peered through the windshield, trying to see through the rain to get a better idea of what was happening on the road ahead.
“Accident?” Jack murmured.
It was hard to make out their exact location in the driving rain, but she thought the vehicle ahead must be pretty close to Salvation Bridge, which crossed Black Creek about a mile outside Purgatory’s tiny downtown district. As Jack slowed to a stop behind a couple of other vehicles that had been ahead of them on the road, she could just make out the back of a tractor trailer rig lying on its side.
“Truck jackknifed,” she said bluntly as one of the cars ahead of them pulled a U-turn and started back in the other direction. “Must be blocking the whole bridge.”
“Is there another way into town?” he asked as he and the car ahead of him pulled forward to where a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer was making sweeping arm gestures to indicate they should turn around, as well. As she opened her mouth to answer, he slanted a hard look at her. “And would you tell me the truth if there was?”
“You know you can go back by the lake road,” she answered, trying not to let her anxiety show. “If you want to risk driving past a guy with a rifle who knows what your truck looks like.”
His mouth tightened, but he didn’t reply.
A few moments later, they passed the turnoff to Deception Lake, and she let herself breathe deeply again.
Jack broke the silence a couple of miles farther up the road. “What’s the plan, Mara? Since you’re getting your way, the least you can do is let me in on it.”
“There are motels there. It’s on the way to a lot of tourist destinations that stay booked up, so the extra motels help ease the overbooking situation.”
“And motels are going to solve your problem with the gun-toting crazy person how?”
“I need a safe place to think.”
“To think. Think about what?”
About ditching you, she thought, keeping her expression neutral. “About who could be doing this to me.”
Jack was silent for so long she couldn’t keep from taking a peek at him. He was staring forward through the windshield, his eyes narrowed and his lean jaw set like stone.
“What?” she asked when the silence between them stretched to the snapping point.
He slowed the truck and pulled over onto the shoulder again. His gaze turned to meet hers, and in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, his eyes were as black as midnight. When he spoke, the words came out in a low rumble. “Who the hell are you?”
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