Maggie's Man (2 page)

She made an instinctive lunge for the phone
banks. At least she thought it was a lunge. Her captor glanced at her
quizzically as if she'd hiccuped, then proceeded to drag her through the big
glass doors like his own personal Raggedy Ann.

She blinked like an owl beneath the sudden
harsh glare of sunlight. A part of her was instantly relieved. It was daylight,
after all, prime commute time on a bright spring day in downtown Portland;
everyone knew bad things only happened after midnight in dark alleyways where
stark streetlights reflected off big puddles.

Attila, however, showed no signs of slowing down.
He dragged her to the corner, then came to an abrupt halt. She was so
unprepared for the stop, she tripped in her low heels and practically flung
herself around him like a spider monkey. He caught her hundred-pound body
effortlessly, not even swaying from the impact. Strong hands gripped her
shoulders and righted her curtly. Again, she did her impression of a blinking
owl.

"God, who taught you how to walk?" he
muttered, then pinned her with a determined green gaze. "Where's your
car?"

"Car?" she asked weakly. They were on
Fourth Street, populated pulsing Fourth Street, swamped by morning commuters on
foot and in cars. Beautiful wide street, nice clean sidewalks because Portland
was a nice, clean city. Wide blue sky, bright spring sun, gentle wafting breeze
from the waterfront just four blocks away. Across the street, a simple city
park offered a touch of emerald green and a thoughtful memorial to the U.S.
Volunteer Infantry. Behind it, she could see the towering white stone building
of the Justice Center.

The walk signal's green man lit up, indicating
for pedestrians to proceed, and her captor dragged her briskly across the
street. Drivers watched them politely, fellow commuters rushed by hurriedly.
Abruptly, Attila pushed her into the park, ducking them both behind a
four-foot-high hedge. She had time for one gulping gasp of air, then he pinned
her between the prickly hedge and his rock-hard frame.

Her hands were captured against his broad
chest, her legs clamped between his muscled thighs. She was just a tiny,
delicately built woman, and he looked as if he could bench-press a sumo
wrestler. She blinked, then blinked again. No matter how many times she did it,
he remained standing before her, his steely thighs clamped around her legs.

"P-p-please," she begged weakly. Her
body began to tremble, her eyes squeezed shut; she had no pride. She was very
scared and she would do anything if this man would just let her go.
"D-d-don't hurt me…"

"Look at me," he commanded.

She had no choice. She opened her eyes to find
his face looming over hers, those bright green eyes hooded by thick, blond
brows. For the first time, she could see the sweat beading on his forehead and
upper lips, the smooth texture of his skin. His cheeks held the faded gold
stamp of old sun and the fresh pallor of a man who hadn't been outside in a
long while. His jaw appeared to have been carved from a mountain, strong,
square and absolutely unrelenting. His neck was so strong she could see corded
lines of muscle from the tense way he held his shoulders.

By God, he didn't look like someone who
believed in compromise. And those lips were only an inch from hers, the closest
any man's lips had been in a long time.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said
quietly and without any trace of warmth. His green eyes scrutinized her, not
cruel, not crazy, but unrelentingly sharp. She imagined scientists used the
same gaze on lab rats right before they conducted the next horrible experiment.

She giggled hysterically; she couldn't help
herself. In response, he jammed the gun against her side so sharply that she
hiccuped.

His eyes narrowed and when he spoke, his tone
was all business. "Any minute now, a half-naked guard is going to come
running out of that courthouse. You don't want that to happen, because if that
happens, you're my insurance. It's going to be you between a convicted murderer
and a corrections officer who doesn't want a black mark on his record.
Understand?"

"Convicted murderer?"

Slowly, coolly, he nodded. His gaze was
suddenly hooded. "After killing the first person, the second is
easy."

She flinched reflexively, once more shutting
her eyes.
Faint, Maggie. Just faint and then you'll be no good to him and
he'll leave you alone.

"Tell me where your car is."

Her face crumpled further, the hysteria rising
up in o sickening mixture of giggles and hiccups. Oh God, she was incapable of
fainting. Whoever would've known? It wasn't as if she was a particularly strong
person. In the violent war that had masqueraded as her parents' marriage, she
had been a heartbroken, seven-year-old diplomat, not a soldier. Nor was she an
adventuresome, temperamental wild-woman like her mother. She lived alone in the
suburbs with two cats. These days, buying a new brand of panty hose constituted
a major event in her life. Really, she thought she ought to be able to faint.

"Are you listening to me?"

"I don't have a car," she whispered
glumly, her eyes opening and gazing at him miserably. "Want a bus pass
instead?" She tried for a hopeful smile.

"Damn!" His arms snapped around her
upper arm, and suddenly his voice was hot and urgent in her ear. "Start
walking.
Fast!"

Her eyes popped open. Behind her she could hear
a sudden commotion. The real prison guard, she thought. He was coming out. And
then she remembered what Attila the Hun had told her about her future
opportunities when the real prison guard appeared. She started walking
fast,
her captor's hand still clenched tightly around her arm.

"Car," he whispered urgently, his
voice hot against her cheek. "We need a car. I'm not lying."

"I don't have one," she whispered
back just as intently, then winced as his grip tightened on her arm.
"Honest! I took the bus! Don't you know what traffic is like on the Sunset
Highway these days?"

"Oh sure. In prison we listen to the traffic
reports all the time. It would be such a shame to be caught in rush-hour
traffic on our way over the wall."

He dragged her straight down the street,
pushing bodily through the morning pedestrian traffic. His hand was so tight
around her arm there was no way they looked like lovers casually strolling. But
no one gave them a second glance as he pulled her past rapidly filling office
buildings, then Starbucks, overflowing with well-dressed caffeine junkies
desperate for a fix.

That was big-city life for you, she thought
resentfully. Where was a hero when you needed one?

He yanked her abruptly into a public parking
garage. "Do you have any money in your purse?"

"What?"

"Do you have money?"

"A…a little."

"Good, you can pay for our parking."

"But we don't have a car."

"We do now." He gestured to the wide
concrete expanse of a second floor filled with shiny, gleaming automobiles.
Then he turned back to her, his green eyes like hard emeralds. She stared at
him with genuine horrified shock until he arched a single blond brow. "Did
you really think I was a Boy Scout?"

"But … but stealing is wrong." She
smiled tremulously at the blatant banality of her statement, then shrugged.
You're
discussing morality with a convicted murderer, Maggie. Why are you discussing the
evils of theft with someone who
kills
people?

"Uh-huh," Attila the Hun said dryly,
seeming to agree wholeheartedly with her thoughts. He nodded curtly and then,
as if he was tired of waiting for her to make up her mind, jerked his head to
the right. "We'll take that van. Let's go."

He dragged her forward, his grip iron-tight
around her wrist. She wanted to resist. She'd taken self-defense classes; she
knew you should never let them get you into a vehicle. Once in the car, there
would be no way to run, no way to break away. She'd be trapped as effectively
as a moth pinned to a tray.

He outweighed her by a good hundred pounds. He
looked to be in tremendous shape. Those arms… Heavens, he could probably pull a
tractor out of the mud single-handedly. Or wrestle an ox or pin a steer. Her
footsteps slowed. She tried to dig in her sensible pumps; she yanked back her
arm.

He didn't even look at her. His fingers
tightened, he murmured, "Don't be an idiot," and dragged her forward
without ever missing a beat.

He was definitely going to get her into a
vehicle.

My God, Maggie, what are you going to do?

Cain selected an old, beat-up blue Dodge trade van from the late seventies.
Unlocked and easy to hot-wire. He'd driven something like this way back when in
Idaho. He popped open the door and peered in quickly, still clutching his
insurance.

Two front seats and a gutted back that doubled
as a bachelor pad. Some kid had built in a bed along one side while old milk
crates lined the other, some filled with clothes, some with books. An apartment
on wheels. Just the right accessory for the convict on the run.

"I'll take it," he murmured.

He turned back to his captive. She was the
scrawniest woman he'd ever seen, composed of ninety percent flaming red hair
and ten percent skin and bones. Looking across the hallway, he'd known she was
the one. She wore a plaid wool skirt from the eighties, a ruffled pink silk
blouse that was even older than that and low-slung beige shoes like his grandma
once wore. She didn't even wear much jewelry, just a plain heart-shaped locket
around her neck that looked old, varnished and worse for the wear. Mousy court
clerk, he determined with a single glance. A woman with the spine of an
invertebrate. The perfect accommodating hostage, if she'd stop trembling like a
leaf.

"Get in."

Her blue eyes opened wide, peering out from the
thick jungle of fiery hair. Her gaze went to the van to him to the van. He
tapped his foot impatiently. He didn't want any trouble—that was why he'd
selected her. He just needed her to do what she was told. Twenty-four hours and
it would all be over. He'd waited six years for this day. He'd taken a big
gamble. The only way to make it work was to be willing to play it out all the
way.

A man made choices. A man paid for those
decisions.

Cain had always believed that and he was
willing to live with the consequences of his actions.

"Get in," he repeated sharply, and
this time his lips thinned dangerously. He didn't want to hurt her, but he was
willing to be forceful.

Wonder Woman cringed at the edge in his voice.
Then, rather than obeying, she peered up at him miserably through the shiny red
veil of her hair.

"We can't take this," she whispered,
then promptly tucked her chin against her chest and hunched her shoulders.

He blinked several times and looked at the
spineless wonder once more. Sirens cut through the air.

"What did you say?"

Her whole body went in a shivering fit. His
eyes narrowed fiercely and she shook even more. She licked her lip nervously,
finally dragging her gaze up to his face. She looked terrified. But somehow,
her shoulders had set in a resilient line that did not bode well.

"We … we
can't,"
she stated
again, her voice soft, but dangerously firm.

The sirens sounded closer.

"Get
in
the van," he ordered
tightly and followed the words with an urgent push of his arm.

The sweat was beginning to trickle down his
cheek. More than the moment when he'd actually knocked out his guard in the
isolated corner of microfiche machines in the fourth-floor Multnomah Law
Library, more than the moment when he'd quickly pulled on the guard's uniform
before anyone else arrived, he understood that he was committed now. He might
have considered himself a victim once; he might have considered himself wrongly
accused. But he'd just knocked a man unconscious. Then he'd taken a hostage.
He'd crossed that line between passive victim and aggressive avenger, and if
they caught him now, that was it.

The time for self-doubt and moral quandaries
was over.

"But you said I could pick," his
captive waif was exclaiming in a rush, her free hand clasping the heart locket
she wore as if it were actually a cross filled with divine power. "And
this is just some poor kid's van, but not just a van. I mean … look at it. It's
probably his home, his life. I bet it's not even insured. Does it look insured
to you? You steal this and you've … you've taken someone's whole life—his
clothes, his books, everything. You can't do that, it's just … just…"

"Cruel?" he supplied
expressionlessly.

She looked at him with huge blue eyes, then
slowly nodded. "Can't you … can't you steal a nice insured car?
Please?"

He stared at her, then he blinked a few times
and stared at her again. She smiled back sickly. She was obviously near
hysteria—for God's sake, they could probably hear her knees knocking together
in China—but she still didn't look away. And she didn't get into the van.

This woman had just been taken hostage by an
armed, escaped felon, and she was worried about some kid's future? Oh good,
Cain. You just managed to kidnap the one woman in the courthouse who's mentally
unbalanced. Great job.