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we were under fire.”
She stared at him. “The Thurlow Gap cops aren’t cut out for a mess like this. Do you honestly think this will be the only attempt on my life?” She checked the Smith & Wesson’s clip to make sure she’d fired only four shots in the chaos. God knew how many more rounds she might need before this nightmare was over. “We’re wasting time talking about this.”
Rick stared at her. She saw the moment he realized she was right, that they couldn’t stay here and wait for the cops. But it was clear from his expression that he didn’t want to bug out. He wanted to handle this mess the normal way—call the cops, make a report, then forget about it and go on with life.
Good for him. She was glad he’d found his own little dose of normal in the world.
But she never would.
Sliding the pistol into the waistband of her jeans, she headed up the porch steps. “If you want to talk to the locals, fine. Stay here and chat it out with them. I have to go.” She went into the house, picked up the duffel bag Rick had left just inside and carried it out to the porch.
“How are you getting out of here? You think they won’t put out an APB for your car?” Rick asked from the bottom of the steps as she descended.
“I’ll walk.” She slung the heavy duffel bag over her shoulder, looping her arm through the canvas strap.
“And get picked up before you reach the next county.” Rick shook his head, falling in step with her as she headed toward the woods. “I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”
She stopped at the edge of the clearing, taking a good look at him. The past three years had been kinder to him than her. He’d always been good-looking, but the intervening years had added lines of maturity to his face that suited him. His dark eyes looked older, too. Wiser, maybe. A lot more jaded.
She could sympathize with that.
“I don’t know where I want to go,” she admitted. “I just want to get out of here before the people around here end up getting hurt. They don’t deserve this kind of mess. And I’m not ready to offer myself up as a sacrificial lamb.”
“There’s going to be a mess, no matter what we do,” Rick warned. “If you disappear, no warning, no goodbyes, and the cops come here and find bullet holes riddling your carport—”
“All right! You’re right. There’s going to be a mess.” A manic energy bubbled in her chest, driving her relentlessly toward desperation. “So let’s make it a big mess.”
Reversing course, she jogged around to the back of the cabin, where she kept the gasoline generator that had gotten her through one frigid winter when the mountain snowfall had knocked out her electricity. Next to the generator stood the weatherproof bin where she kept a five-gallon container of gasoline. She’d just stocked up a couple of days earlier, in anticipation of next week’s promised thunderstorms.
She didn’t like to be stuck in the dark. Not anymore.
Rick caught up with her. “What are you doing?”
Amanda pulled the gas can from the bin and pulled off the cap. The pungent odor of gasoline fumes wafted around her, fueling her sense that she’d reached a point of no return. She met Rick’s troubled gaze, her lips curving in a ghost of a smile. “Remember Choqori?”
His eyes widened. “You’re not going to—”
“Burn it to the ground?” A ripple of laughter escaped her throat. It sounded like madness. “Oh, yes. Yes, I am.”
WITHIN TEN MINUTES, they’d made it through the woods undetected and headed out of Thurlow Gap, driving south, leaving behind one hell of a bonfire. They’d already heard sirens heading for Amanda’s property, which meant the fire would be put out sooner or later. And, eventually, people would probably be seeking Amanda for questioning about the charred body inside.
But they could worry about that problem another day, Rick thought as he tore off a piece of his shredded shirtsleeve to get a better look at the bloody groove in his upper arm. He grimaced at the sight of the torn and friction-burned skin.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Amanda said from her position behind the steering wheel. She was keeping to the speed limit—not too fast, not too slow—although Rick could see a frenetic glow in her smoky-blue eyes that suggested it was taking all of her willpower to keep from gunning the Charger up the highway.
“I need to clean it out before infection sets in.” There were pieces of singed shirt and probably pieces of bullet shrapnel embedded in the groove of flesh, rendering the wound a fertile environment for bacteria.
“As soon as you drop me off in Chattanooga, you can go find a doctor.”
He shot her a look. Drop her off? Did she really think that was going to happen? “Doctors have to report gunshot wounds. You know that.”
She shrugged. “Tell him you gouged it on a nail.”
“There’s not a nail in the world big enough to make this kind of wound.”
“Then tell him it was a railroad spike.”
He clenched his jaw, pain from the gunshot wound exacerbating his growing frustration. “How about this instead? We find somewhere outside Chattanooga to hunker down for the night, and you help me bandage up the gunshot wound I got trying to help you while we figure out what to do next.”
She slowed the Charger as they came up to a traffic light, taking advantage of the wait to look at him. The fiery determination evident in the set of her square jaw was so familiar it made his chest ache. She had always been the most stubborn creature he’d ever known.
“There’s no we, Rick. You never should have come here. We’re going to pretend that you didn’t.”
“You were always better at pretending than I was.”
The look she gave him held a hint of hurt. Just a hint, as if the life she’d lived since they’d last said goodbye had mostly cauterized whatever wound had remained from their breakup.
He wished he’d been able to rid himself of the painful memories as efficiently as she had. She still haunted him, usually deep in the night when he was alone and pondering the mess his life had become since that day when he walked away from her for what he thought would be forever.
“It’s one night, Tara—”
“Amanda,” she said sharply. “Tara Brady’s dead. She’s not coming back.”
He clamped his mouth shut, then started again. “Amanda. Just one night.”
“I never did tell you my real name, did I?”
He shook his head.
“I guess it won’t hurt now. It was Audrey. Audrey Scott.”
“From somewhere in south Mississippi,” he murmured.
She slanted another look at him. “What makes you think that, hotshot?”
“In Kaziristan, you had your accent almost completely contained,” he said, pleased that he’d managed to surprise her. “But you’ve been living in Tennessee for a while now, surrounded by people who talk a lot like the people from where you grew up. Your accent has come out to play again.”
She pressed her lips into a tight line. When she spoke again, that subtle hint of Mississippi had been ruthlessly stripped away. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I like the accent,” he admitted. He’d heard it now and then, back when they were sneaking moments of passion in a Kaziristan hotel. When she’d started to lose control, her Mississippi accent had slipped out more than once. “It’s sexy.”
The look she shot his way would have been lethal if it had been a bullet.