Hadley & Grace(39)
He climbs out, and wisely Herrick steps back, keeping herself out of range.
He is impressed by her. She doesn’t rattle easily, and she knows her way around a gun. That was no lucky shot she took in the parking lot. Her husband is Army Special Forces, sniper division, and it’s obvious he’s taught her a thing or two about shooting a gun.
She’s different from her photos. Though in her pictures she’s pretty, she’s fairly unremarkable. While in person, Herrick is anything but ordinary. Her hair is a fiery mane of wild rust curls that swirl around hypnotic hazel eyes, her brain ticking rapidly behind them as she figures out her next move.
Meanwhile, Torelli is exactly like her photos—glamorous, like she belongs on a runway in Paris or on a yacht in Greece. Ink-black hair, catlike eyes, and curves designed to make men go to confession.
“Mattie,” Herrick says, “I need your help.”
The girl steps from the car. She is a strange combination of her mom and dad. Her hair is bleached white blonde but has a wave to it like her father’s, and her eyes are the same chocolate brown as his. But her other features are like her mom’s, with the same wide lips and slightly upturned nose. Winding up her left ear is some sort of silver piercing.
“Take off your tie,” Herrick says to Mark.
He does as she says, his humiliation mounting as he realizes what she intends to do with it.
“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind you.”
He frowns, and Torelli frowns with him.
“Do it,” Herrick says, lowering the gun to aim at his knee, letting him know exactly where she intends to shoot him if he doesn’t comply.
“Grace,” Torelli says, “is this really necessary?”
Herrick glares at her. “No, Hadley, this isn’t necessary. I’m just doing it because this is how I get my kicks.”
Torelli turns away and continues to coddle the baby, swaying back and forth and nuzzling her nose into his neck. Unlike Herrick, who seems to know exactly what she’s doing, Torelli is as unlike a criminal as Winnie the Pooh is a grizzly.
His tie in his left hand, he lowers himself to the ground, and it is only then that he notices the direction they’re traveling, the car parked behind an abandoned jerky stand with the sun rising behind them. And his stomach sinks, his hopes for a quick ending to all this obliterated. Baker is on the way to Las Vegas and the women’s final destination of Omaha, but Herrick has driven the opposite direction, back the way they came.
Goddamn brilliant.
She must have realized east is a bottleneck, while driving west has too many options to set up roadblocks along each one.
“Mattie,” Herrick says, “make sure you stay behind him and out of reach. Do you know how to tie a strong knot?”
“I took a sailing class last summer,” the girl says.
“Good. Make sure the bind is at the smallest part of his wrists and that there’s no space.”
The girl steps in a wide circle around him and pulls the tie from his grip.
He considers whirling around to take her hostage, but Herrick has the gun trained on his chest, and while she doesn’t strike him as violent, she does strike him as protective, and he feels her worry for the girl, making him unwilling to risk it.
The girl is surprisingly strong, and Mark feels the circulation being cut off as she cinches the tie around his wrists. When she’s done, she tugs on it to be sure it’s secure.
“Up,” Herrick orders.
He struggles but manages to get to his feet.
Herrick looks him up and down, her brain ticking.
“Take off his shoes,” she says to the girl.
“Really?” Torelli protests. “Grace, have some decency.”
“Mattie, take them off,” Herrick orders.
“Why?” Torelli says.
“So he can’t run off if he gets the stupid idea in his head.” She holds Mark’s eyes as she says it, letting him know she knows he’s considering it and that it would be, in fact, stupid.
Mark sighs and then, to spare himself further humiliation, slips the shoes off himself.
“Mattie, put them in the trunk, then take his socks off as well.”
“His socks?” Torelli says.
“Would you want to walk across hundred-degree desert in your bare feet?”
Mark’s insides go cold, wondering if that’s what Herrick intends to do—drive him into the middle of the desert and leave him there.
30
HADLEY
Mattie and Skipper share the front seat, and the agent sits in the middle of the back seat between Hadley and the baby. His bare feet are on the hump between the seats, and his hands are tied behind his back, forcing him to bend forward, his chest practically on his knees. It looks very uncomfortable, and Hadley feels bad for him.
Because of his folded position, there was no way to get the seat belt around him, so Hadley left it off. Hadley has always been a stickler about seat belts, and she really hopes they don’t get in an accident.
He doesn’t look like a bad fellow. He’s somewhere in the midst of middle age, perhaps a few years older than she is, and has a wide, open face; sandy, almost cinnamon-colored hair; and light-blue eyes that remind her of Skipper’s.
He keeps glancing over, like there’s something he wants to say, but then he reconsiders and looks away.