Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(84)

“I will, I will, Mal.” She reached for him, tears streaking her face. “I am scared for my children. And you helped me once.”

“Don’t let those morons at the gate stop you.” He swung open the back door and climbed into the tiny box where they stashed detainees when they’d moved them around the prison. He folded himself in half to fit.

His arm stung like hell, but what hurt the most was his heart. He wasn’t going to quit until he found her, saved her, and told her she was right about everything. He held on to her glasses in one hand, the gun in the other, and closed his eyes.

In the dark, dank box, bleeding and sweating and clunking along the rutted road, all Mal could think about was hope.

Define hope, his brain screamed.

Hope was Francesca Rossi at his side. Hope was happiness, and they were all intertwined. He just had to keep himself—and her—alive long enough to share that.

* * *

She needed a plan.

Well, she needed her glasses more than anything, but as Chessie drove the little car down a deserted road for what felt like forever, she was certain she could ignore her pounding headache if she had a plan of attack.

Only, she had nothing but a gun in her side and a blur in her line of vision.

“So you know my brother,” she said conversationally, hoping to distract him.

“He worked for me.”

Really. “Yeah, I heard you were a dick.”

“You heard right. Shut up and drive.”

After that, he was dead silent, except for his heavy breathing, dividing his attention between her and the road, speaking only to warn her of an oncoming truck, which even a blind woman could see.

She stole another look at the man next to her, a hundred questions bouncing around in her head. She might not escape, but she could ferret out some information that could help her when they got to wherever they were going. If she didn’t accidentally drive them into a tree before then.

“So why do you hate Mal so much? He really is a nice guy, you know.”

He slammed her with a dirty look. “Is your whole f*cking family like this?”

“Way worse. My cousin Zach? A one-eyed monster.”

After a minute, he shifted in his seat. “I don’t hate him.”

She snorted. “You want him in jail or dead. You send people after him to bug his hotel rooms. You have him looking over his shoulder every minute so he can’t live a normal life.” She fired a look at him. “Sounds hateful.”

“Watch the road.”

“I can’t see the road.”

“Pothole ahead.”

“Welcome to rural Cuba,” she said, the echo of Mal’s words and dry attitude making her chest pang with how much she wanted to see him again.

She avoided the deep rut at the last second, seeing little more than a dark spot in the headlight beam. What would happen if the little car fell into one of those holes? That might work as a plan. At least it would delay things and require help.

Or he’d shoot her and run.

“Mal has something I want,” he said. “And with your help, I’m going to get it.”


Something he wanted. She thought about that like a line of unfinished code, filling in the ones and zeros for an answer. Which, honestly, wasn’t that hard to figure out. “Money.”

She felt him look hard at her, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he gestured toward the road. “Watch out for that one!”

She drove straight toward the massive pothole, gritting her teeth for the impact, but Drummand swung the wheel at the last minute and they missed. Shit.

He jabbed her side with the gun. “Don’t f*ck with me, Francesca. I have no qualms about killing you in Alana Cevallos’s car on the side of the road. Nothing would happen to me, and she’d suffer the consequences.”

And her kids would be orphans—the very thing Mal gave up four years of his life to avoid.

She glanced in the rearview when something flashed, catching the headlights of another vehicle behind them. Maybe she could intentionally have an accident?

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

“A place we call Gitmo.”

She was going to Guantanamo Bay? “Why?”

“So you can do what you do, Francesca. Hack into a computer and move some funds back to where they belong.”

The car—no, a truck—was catching up, going at least ten miles an hour faster, but she couldn’t see well enough to really judge how close it was. Maybe if she went really slowly, he’d pass, and she could swing out and cause a collision.

Her side of the car would take the worst of that hit. Still, it was something. She lifted her foot off the accelerator very slowly, praying Drummand wouldn’t notice. A little more. The truck gained on them.

She didn’t dare hit the brakes—he’d know exactly what she was doing. She had to distract him.

“What funds? Move them from where?”

“My funds. Mal Harris’s account.”

She was off the gas completely now. “What?”

“It would be better if he did it with his fingerprint, his password, but that won’t prevent you from getting my money, will it?”

“Your money? It belongs to the government.” Maybe if the truck hit them from behind… She had to keep Drummand thinking about something else. “And, as I understand it, that money was never found. It can’t be in Mal’s account. Wouldn’t it have been recovered then?”