Page 37 of Peril in Piney Woods

“Meg, where is Griff and what the hell is happening?”

“I’m here,” Griff said. “I’m okay. I don’t know exactly what’s going on...” He glanced at Meg. “But what she said is true.”

“Remember what I said, Ernie,” she reiterated, then she ended the call and threw the phone out the window.

“What the hell?” Griff demanded, dividing his attention between her and the road.

“Take the next left,” she said. “We don’t want to meet Ernie on his way to your place.”

Griff gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Where are we going?”

“As soon as I figure that out,” Meg said, “I’ll let you know.”

Griff wanted to believe those people back there were the bad guys—just like she said. And that she was actually not this Angela Hamilton.

But the fact that she kept her weapon aimed in his general direction warned him there was a good chance he was wrong.

Chapter Nine

1:30 p.m.

How had this happened so fast?

Meg had known time was short after that reporter managed a shot of her. But that had only been last night. Even as it was picked up on the AP, Lorenzo’s people couldn’t have seen it and gotten here this fast. It wasn’t possible. There had to be another explanation.

Damn it. She’d wanted to lead the bastards away from here, not bring them in like long-lost cousins.

“Is it true?”

The sound of Griff’s voice snapped Meg from her musings. “Is what true?” She shook herself and realized she was still holding the weapon at the ready. She lifted the top of the console and placed it inside. She had to shake this haze of disbelief. She had to be better prepared. On her toes. His life—she looked at him—depended on her.

Griff glanced at the console, then at her. “Is your name really Angela Hamilton?”

Anger stoked in her belly. “Did she tell you that?”

Lizbeth Franks, aka Darlene, whatever she’d called herself today, was one of Lorenzo’s top guns. Being female and on the petite side worked to her benefit. Opponents always underestimated her physical ability and her intellectual ruthlessness. The woman was utterly heartless. She would shoot her own mother if it served her purpose.

“You mean the woman you shot?”

So, it was that way, was it? “At least she was still breathing,” Meg allowed, “unlike her friend.”

Griff looked at her again, and this time his gaze lingered long enough for her to wonder if he’d forgotten he was driving.

“You killed that man.”

“We discussed that already,” she pointed out. “If I hadn’t, you would be dead now. Me too, assuming he could catch me.”

She understood that Griff did not fully comprehend any of this. Who would? How many people experienced this kind of situation in their lifetimes? Sure, there were criminals out there who shot each other up on the street. Thugs who robbed places like the Gas and Go all the time. But this was a whole different level. That part he obviously got. This was something only those who lived in the world she had once lived in fully grasped. It was glamorized, badly, in movies and in novels. But this was not a movie or a novel. This was real life, and fearlessness along with finesse would be required to survive.

Griff braked for a traffic light that had turned red. He turned to her. “Who are you?”

Meg considered this for a moment before she answered. Part of her desperately wanted to tell him everything. To make him understand her situation so he wouldn’t look at her that way. But that would put him in more danger than he’d already fallen into. The truth was too dangerous. Just being close to it had already put his life in jeopardy.

Still, she needed to give him something. As much for herself as for him, she didn’t want him to feel about her the way she suspected he did right now. She couldn’t bear the way he looked at her.

“You can call me Elle.” Her father had called her Elle. She’d been named after her grandmother Eleanor.

“So, you’re not Angela Hamilton, aka Angel, a cold-blooded assassin?”

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