He went back to driving and keeping his mouth shut the way he’d been told, but he was starting to get angry again. Not the burning-all-over rage that had overwhelmed him before, but a slow simmer of resentment. First of all he wasn’t one to take kindly to being bossed around, never had been, and being bossed around by somebody holding a gun on him was even harder to take. Add to that the fact that the person holding the gun and doing the bossing was a woman, and a pretty one… It surprised him that that particular aspect bothered him, given the way he’d been raised, but dammit, it did. He couldn’t help but feel it reflected badly on his courage that he’d let such a thing happen-and even, in some foggy way, on his manhood.
Adding a whole other layer to his resentment was a thin veneer of guilt, which came over him whenever he thought about that little girl with the refugee eyes. Dammit, the woman was right; he ought to have known those people were in trouble when he’d first set eyes on them, there in that rest stop. He had known, if he’d let himself think about it, but he hadn’t wanted to think about it. He hadn’t wanted to be bothered, afraid their trouble might interfere with his tight schedule. Truth was, if he’d offered his help right off the bat, the woman wouldn’t have had to pull a gun on him.
Not that that excused what she’d done. No way. And he wasn’t about to stand for it any longer than he could help.
It was quiet in the cab of the Kenworth in spite of the sweet rumble of the big diesel engine up there in front of him, the steady rush of highway noise and the muted thump of rockabilly music coming from the speakers back in the sleeper. The last of the storm had moved on east, and the late-afternoon sun had dropped down out of the clouds and was pouring liquid gold over his left shoulder. The interstate was straight and monotonous, traffic was light, and normally C.J. would have been fighting drowsiness pretty hard. But not this time. Right now he was wound up tight with all his senses honed.
It reminded him of the way he’d felt as a kid when his oldest brother, Troy, had taken him out hunting the first time, sitting up in that deer blind in the first light of a cold autumn dawn…wide-awake and shivering with excitement, waiting for his quarry to tiptoe into the clear.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see his passenger’s head make little jerking motions from time to time. He knew what that meant. The hijacker was fighting sleep.
C.J. drove in silence, as smooth and steady as he knew how. He’d timed it to hit Atlanta during dinner hour and was lucky enough to sail around the beltway without any major stalls. By the time he’d got sorted out and was heading northeast out of the city, twilight had given way to darkness and traffic had thinned out the way it usually did at that hour. It was mostly just big trucks, now. Long-haul drivers, like him.
And the hijacker was sound asleep.
C.J. had had plenty of time to think about what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. He’d rehearsed it over and over in his mind, visualizing the movements, preparing himself. Even so, when it came time to put his plan into action, and he saw the first signs for the exit he had in mind, his heart was thumping so loud he was afraid it was going to wake her up and spoil everything.
It was one of those exits to nowhere, common in that part of the Southern foothills, nice wide straight on-and off-ramps that fizzled out quickly into little two-lane roads that wandered off into woods and cow pastures. Before it did, though, there was a cleared turnaround space off to the right where a failed gas station and minimart had once stood, where a tired driver could park his rig and catch a quick nap when he was in dire need. C.J. had done so himself there, more than once.
He slowed gradually, with care not to make any jerks or grinds that might jolt his sleeping passenger, and took the exit a bit faster than he normally would. He could see the stop sign looming dead ahead at the bottom of the ramp. There was no cross traffic, and the few vehicles that had been sharing the interstate with him had zipped on by the exit, oblivious. He took a breath and held it, trying without any success at all to calm his runaway pulse.
Now! No, not yet…not yet.
It was now or never. Choosing what he hoped was exactly the right moment, with his truck going neither too fast nor too slow, C.J. braced himself and hit his air brakes.
At the same moment he reached over with his right hand and released his passenger’s seatbelt.
It went exactly the way he’d hoped it would, which was a gratifying surprise to him. With a giant hiss the Kenworth bucked like a mule and came well nigh to a stop. Having no seat belt to stop her, the woman beside him kept right on going, with just enough momentum so she would have ended up on the floor without hitting the windshield or too much damage being done to her person on the way down. The only thing that could have kept her from doing that were her reflexes, and she had good ones, he’d have to give her that. She came awake with a gasp, and did just what he’d hoped she would-she threw out her hands to catch herself. Both hands.
By that time, C.J. had the emergency brake on and his own belt undone, and was stretched across the center console and getting a firm grip on those slender-strong wrists with both his hands. Making sure to keep the captured hands a safe distance from that gun in her sweatshirt pocket, he quickly overcame her silent struggles-she was stronger than she looked, but he was a good bit bigger-and got her pinned down on her back across the console. A second or two later he had that snub-nose pistol in his own hand, and was scooting back into his seat, breathing like a racehorse and drunk with triumph.
The adrenaline high he was on didn’t let him think about, then, the intimate female body warmth inside that pocket, or the glimpses of struggle-bared torso, of delicate muscle and cream-pale skin.
He twisted around to face his erstwhile hijacker and, keeping one eye on her while she eased herself slowly back into her seat, quickly examined the gun. He’d been thinking maybe it wasn’t loaded, but he was wrong.
“This thing’s loaded,” he said in an outraged tone, the skin on the back of his neck crawling.
She gave a faint snort. “I told you it was. I don’t tell lies.” He noticed she didn’t rub at her wrists, or anything like that, although he could see the red marks his fingers had made on her skin. She simply sat with her hands relaxed in her lap, momentarily thwarted, maybe, but-he had a feeling-not defeated.
He gave a start when the curtain across the sleeper twitched back and the big-haired woman put her head out, looking mussed-up and scared to death. “Caitlyn? What-”
“It’s okay, Mary Kelly,” the hijacker quietly said, while C.J. was stuffing the gun down in the pocket alongside his seat where she’d have to go through him to get at it. “We’re just stopping for a minute. Everything’s okay.”
“Sorry ’bout that, ma’am,” C.J. muttered. Caitlyn, he was thinking. So that was her name. Nice to be able to think of her as something besides “the hijacker.”
He tensed when she turned in her seat, but it was only to inquire softly of the woman named Mary Kelly, “How’s Emma?”
“Still sleepin’,” Mary Kelly replied in her heavy Middle-South accent. “I think she’s ’bout wore out.”
“Why don’t you see if you can get some more sleep, too?” Caitlyn said. “We’ll be on our way in a minute-oh, and Mr. um…”
“Starr. C.J.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mary Kelly said, sticking out a hand for C.J. to shake, and as he muttered the polite acknowledgments, he was thinking how weird it felt to be doing that with that loaded gun sitting there in his side pocket.