Page 28 of Black Ice
“Hold her still,” Karl said.
“Leave her alone,” Wyatt argued. He reached behind her and shoved Karl back. “She’s scared.”
“Scared or not I can takeyou,” she snapped.
From the front seat, Tate chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “A hostage with spunk. I like it.”
Wyatt covered her mouth with a gloved hand before she could reply. His blue eyes locked with hers. She recognized his silent plea for her to cooperate. Subsiding, she righted herself as best she could considering Baker’s lack of control at the wheel. Her stomach was churning, the bad driving and being a hostage piling up.
She didn’t care for Tate’s tone or the gleam of interest in his eyes when he looked at her. The man had a mean streak he’d hidden well. She supposed hiding and manipulation were good skills for a thief. That still didn’t explain how Wyatt got mixed up in all of this.
Needing that answer, hoping her best friend hadn’t slipped beyond redemption, she sat back, deciding to bide her time. In this weather there would be an opening and when it came, she’d be ready to make her move, with luck, Wyatt would escape with her.
7
She hated him. She thought he was a criminal. He struggled to put the pain of that and the rest of his reeling emotions aside. It was too late to change anything for her and dividing his focus could prove disastrous.
Mentally, he blasted Pickering and the FBI order to stand down. He resented that what should be a golden opportunity had devolved into a mess of epic proportions. The shock, disappointment, and anger he’d seen in Evie’s expressive gray eyes would haunt him for the rest of his days.
Of course, those days might not add up to much if Baker didn’t get control of the vehicle.
All his life, despite the ugly rumors and uglier truth that cycled through town about his mom, Evie had stood by him. Stood up for him. For as long as he could remember, she refused to lump him into the same category as his addicted mother. At every opportunity, she’d spout off about anything good he’d done, from acing a spelling test to helping her rebuild a snowblower.
And how had he repaid her? He’d left without saying goodbye.
She had valid cause to hate him long before he’d returned to Deadwood. Shame coursed through him for hoping he might have gotten in and out of town without seeing her. Although, in light of the situation, it clearly would’ve been better if he’d never seen her.
So many things could have gone differently, if only he’d trusted her. Then and now.
He sensed the shift in her body. Never one to give up, she was looking for the opening and fighting to break out of the zip ties so she could take it when it came.
“Ease up on this curve, Baker,” he said.
The man gripped the wheel harder. “You wanna drive?”
“I will if you can’t,” Wyatt replied.
“Baker drives.” Tate ended the discussion. “You said this road would get us to the spur.”
“In clear conditions we’d be halfway to the turn-off by now,” Wyatt said. If he knew Evie, she’d figured out Cordell’s intended destination, but he wanted to make it clear. “You should’ve kept the original schedule,” he added to get under the man’s skin.
Tate twisted in his seat. “If I’d waited, we’d have bad roads and cops on our tail. This is better.”
In their initial calls, Cordell had struck Wyatt as an average thief and he wasn’t sure why the FBI was so hot to catch him, aside from the embarrassment that he kept escaping with small, prominent fortunes. In person, the well-above-average cunning came through. On the job, the man was intimidating and left no doubt about who was in charge.
And now that he was sitting in the middle of the operation it was easier to understand how and why Cordell’s crew evaded the authorities. Cordell might appear to be acting randomly, but he’d thought through and anticipated every detail. He kept loyal men with him and created redundancies that protected them all from the new guy.
Evie was a redundancy Cordell wasn’t ready to relinquish. He believed Evie and Wyatt were interchangeable. When it came to local trails, in clear weather, he was mostly right. But if Cordell had relied on coincidence to find a backup for Wyatt, the FBI would’ve caught him a long time ago. Despite the distraction of nasty weather, the man had to be somewhat suspicious of Wyatt taking this particular woman hostage.
Based on the FBI’s background, a suspicious Cordell was a ruthless and dangerous man. With ice gathering on the inside of the windows, his priority shifted to protecting Evie over the FBI’s agenda. How was he going to get her out of this safely?
Although Baker was learning how to handle the icy curves, Wyatt couldn’t shake the feeling that they were walking a tightrope. He’d been out here in storms only half as bad as Holly and he knew it was a matter of time before the roads became impassable. Plus, he’d hauled Evie out of the casino with no protection against the elements. Her uniform of black slacks, a crisp cotton shirt, the black and silver vest, western bolo tie, and the black heels would be no help when she did try to escape. And she would.
Her best chance was if he could get them to turn back toward town. “It’s possible the spur we need hasn’t been plowed,” he said. “Or even salted.” That was assuming they could find the turn-off at all. Visibility was dwindling with every minute.
Cordell shook his head. “You’re just now mentioning this?” he asked, his tone rumbling in a low growl. Ruthless. Dangerous.
There was little point arguing, but Wyatt held his ground. “I mentioned it earlier. This morning and yesterday. You said the rendezvous schedule wasn’t negotiable.”
