Unforgivable (2 page)

His gaze drifted down to her fur-lined moccasins and a bushy gray eyebrow lifted. “Slumber party?”

For her quick trip to the store, Mia had tucked her satin nightshirt into jeans, pulled on a ratty cardigan, and slipped her feet into house shoes. She looked like an escapee from a mental ward, which, of course, meant that she’d bump into a cop she knew. Nothing like rein-forcing that professional image. Yes, it was shaping up to be a banner career day.

Mia forced a smile. “More like movie night.” She glanced at her watch and stepped toward the register. “It’s about to start, actually. I’d better—”

“Don’t let me keep you.” He nodded. “See ya around, Doc.”

Mia watched his reflection in the convex mirror as she paid for her groceries. He added a couple of frozen dinners to his basket and headed for the chips aisle.

The name hit her as she pulled out of the parking lot. Frank Hannigan. San Marcos PD. Why couldn’t she have remembered it sooner?

Something hard jabbed into her neck.

“Take a left at this light.”

Mia’s head whipped around. Her chest convulsed. In the backseat was a man. He held a gun pointed right at her nose.

“Watch the
road
!”

She jerked her head around just in time to see the telephone pole looming in front of her. She yanked the wheel left and managed to stay on the street.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
Her hands clutched the steering wheel in a death grip. Her gaze flashed to the mirror and homed in on his gun. It was big and serious-looking, and he held it rock-steady in his gloved hand.

“Turn left.”

The command snapped her attention away from the weapon and back to him. Her brain numbly registered a description. Black hooded sweatshirt pulled tight around his face. Navy bandanna covering his nose and mouth. Dark sunglasses. All she could see of the man behind the disguise was a thin strip of skin between the glasses and the bandanna.

He jammed the muzzle of the pistol into her neck again. “Eyes ahead.”

She forced herself to comply. Her heart pounded
wildly against her sternum. Her stomach tightened. She realized she’d stopped breathing. She focused on drawing air into her lungs and unclenched her hand from the wheel so that she could shift gears and turn left.

Where are we going? What does he want?

Her mind flooded with terrifying possibilities as she hung a left and darted her gaze around, looking for a police car, a fire truck, anything. But this was a college town, and whatever action might be going on tonight was happening much closer to campus.

How was she going to get out of this? Cold sweat beaded along her hairline. Bile rose in the back of her throat.

The engine reached a high-pitched whine. She’d forgotten to change gears. Her clammy hand slipped on the gearshift as she switched into third.

Think.
She glanced around desperately, but the streets were quiet. The nearest open business was the Dairy Queen two blocks behind them.

“CenTex Bank, on your right. Pull up to the drive-through.”

Mia’s breath whooshed out. He wanted money. Tears of relief filled her eyes. But they quickly morphed into tears of panic when she realized that his wanting money didn’t really mean anything. He could still shoot her in the head and leave her on the side of the road. She, of all people, knew the amazingly cheap price of a human life. A wad of cash. A bag of crack. A pair of sneakers.

She could be dead before the ATM even spat out the bills.

The cold, hard muzzle of the gun rubbed against her cheek. Her breath hitched, and her gaze went to the
mirror. She remembered the police sketch of the Unabomber, a man in a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses who spent years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Mia once met the artist who had drawn that sketch. As a forensic scientist at one of the world’s top crime labs, Mia had connections in every conceivable area of law enforcement—but at this moment, they were useless to her. At this moment, it was just her and this man, alone in her car, a gun pointed at her head.

Stay calm. Make a plan.

She maneuvered the Jeep up to the teller machine, nearly scraping the yellow concrete pillar on the left side of her car. Too late, she realized she’d just ruined a potential escape route.

She closed her eyes and swallowed. She thought of her mom. Whatever happened, Mia had to live through this. Her mother couldn’t take another blow.

Not on January seventh.

She turned to face him with a renewed sense of determination—or maybe it was adrenaline—surging through her veins. “How much do you want?” She rolled the window down with one hand while scrounging through her purse for her wallet.

“Five thousand.”

“Five
thousand
?” She turned to stare at him. She had that much, yeah. In an IRA account somewhere. Her checking account was more in the neighborhood of five hundred. But she wanted more than anything
not
to tick this guy off.

She gulped. “I think my limit is three hundred.” She tried to keep her voice steady, but it was wobbling all over the place. She turned to look at him, positioning her
shoulders so the camera on the ATM could get a view into her car. It probably couldn’t capture him from this angle, but it might capture the gun. “I can do several transactions,” she said.

The barrel rapped against her cheekbone. She would have a bruise tomorrow. If she lived that long.

She turned to the machine and, with shaking fingers, punched in her code and keyed in the amount. Three hundred was the most she could get. Could she get it twice? Had her cable bill cleared? Mia handed him the first batch of twenties and chewed her lip as she waited for the second transaction to go through.

Transaction declined.

Her blood turned to ice. Seconds ticked by as she waited for the man’s response. Despite the sweat trickling down her spine, her breath formed a frosty cloud as she stared at the words flashing on the screen.

That’s it,
she thought.
I’m dead.

She reached a trembling hand out and pulled the receipt from the slot.

She could make a break for it right here. Except that her doors were pinned shut by the concrete pillars on either side of her.

She could speed to the nearest well-populated area, which was a Walmart three blocks away. Could she get there before he shot her or wrestled the wheel away?

“Back on the highway.” The command was laced with annoyance but not quite as much disappointment as she’d expected.

She put the Jeep in gear and returned to the highway. As she shifted, she glanced at the familiar Mardi Gras beads hanging from her rearview mirror. Somehow they
steadied her. This was her car, and she was in the driver’s seat. She could control this.

“How about Sun Bank?” Her voice sounded like a croak. That bank was past Walmart. Maybe she could swerve into the lot and make a run for it.

“Hang a left.”

Mia’s hands gripped the steering wheel. Her gaze met his in the mirror. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could read his intent—it was in his tone of voice, his body language, the perfectly steady way he held that gun.

Left on the highway meant out of town. He was going to kill her.

CHAPTER 2

With every stop sign and mailbox she passed, Mia’s panic swelled. Farther and farther out of town. Fewer and fewer chances to escape. But how? What could she do? Her slimy palms gripped the steering wheel as her brain groped for a plan. Her friend Alex would have had a gun in her purse. Elaina would disable the guy with a few martial arts moves. But Mia didn’t own a gun—much less carry one—and she couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag.

“Right at the juncture.”

Panic tightened her throat as she neared the sign. Old Mill Road. Nothing was out there but an abandoned cotton mill.

Headlights winked into the rearview mirror. She felt her breath coming in shallow gasps now. Her pulse roared in her ears. She was running out of time. She eased her foot off the gas, and the road sloped down as she neared a low-water bridge. Her gaze flicked to the mirror.

Come on, come on.

“Speed it up.” The muzzle jabbed her neck again.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi—

“Faster!”

Mia jerked the wheel right, then left, causing the Jeep to skid. She slammed on the brakes, and the vehicle rabbited to a halt. She hunched low in her seat and fumbled with the door latch.

The gunshot was a thunderclap inches from her head. The sound reverberated around her as she flung the door open and landed face-first on the pavement. Her gaze snapped up as a pair of headlights blinded her.

She struggled to her feet and dashed off the road. She glanced back and saw her assailant heave himself out of the car. His glasses had fallen off, and his face was an angry scowl.

Mia turned and fled. The ground disappeared beneath her, and suddenly she was on her knees, icy water surrounding her feet and calves. She was in a ditch. She scrambled for higher ground, out of the frigid water, hunching low and trying to stay out of sight. She cast a frantic look over her shoulder as the car following them squealed to a halt. Its headlights lit up the Jeep sitting diagonally in the road.

A black silhouette moved into her view. He was coming after her! Terror spurred her. She ducked and ran deeper into the bushes.

“You there!” a voice shouted. “Freeze!”

It was the man who’d stopped to help. She didn’t turn. He was yelling at her attacker.

“Drop your—”

Pop!

Then a deafening silence.

Nausea gripped her, but she kept running. Something stabbed her thigh. She tried to swat it away, then
realized it was barbed wire. Near panic, she dropped to the ground and dragged herself under the fence. Her sweater snagged. The bushes rustled behind her. God, could he
see
her? Heart pounding furiously now, she jerked her arms free of the sweater and stumbled to her feet.

Pop!

Something stung her arm just above the elbow.
I’m hit!
She plowed forward through the brush, and a single thought took over:
I will
not
die tonight. Not, not, not!
She swiped the branches away and willed her rubbery legs to move faster. The ground grew steeper, harder to climb. She tripped and pressed forward until her thighs burned and her throat felt raw from the cold air.

And then in the distance, a siren. She stopped to listen. She held her breath. She crouched low and peered through the foliage at the two cars on the highway, both with headlights blazing and doors flung open. The siren grew louder.

Where was the shooter?

The Jeep’s headlights went black, and she had her answer. She heard the door slam, and the engine growled to life again. Mia rose to her feet and watched, mouth agape, as her Jeep lurched forward, made a U-turn, and then—still without headlights—shot down the highway and disappeared into the night.

Mia had blood on her hands. She laced her fingers together and squeezed, trying to stop the tremors.

“You should get this stitched up.”

She glanced at the paramedic beside her who was cleaning her wound. The woman had short brown hair
and a no-nonsense attitude that reminded Mia of her sister.

“I have a feeling I’m going to be here a while,” Mia said as yet another plainclothes detective walked up to talk to her. Detective Macon. First name Jonah, like the whale story, which was easy to remember because he was a muscle-bound giant of a man. He’d already filled half a notebook with the information she’d given him, but it looked as if he needed more.

“Ma’am.” He nodded at her. “Just a few more things.”

Mia took a deep breath and braced herself.

“About the Minute-Mart.” He flipped through the pages of his book. “You say you arrived about nine fifty-five?”

“More or less.”

“And you were there buying groceries?”

“Ice cream,” she said. “I was on my way home to watch a movie.”

“And Frank Hannigan entered the store as you were leaving?”

Mia’s gaze darted to the knot of cops and crime-scene techs standing beside Frank’s body. Her throat constricted.

Don’t let me keep you. See ya around, Doc.

The guilt was like a noose around her neck. What if she’d stayed to chat for just a few minutes longer? Would it have changed anything? Would Frank Hannigan be home with his wife right now instead of sprawled across the asphalt with a hole in his chest?

“Ma’am?”

She looked at the detective. “He was there already. He must have left right after I did.” She clamped her
lips together to keep her teeth from chattering. She wore only the nightshirt, jeans, and wet moccasins; her sweater was tangled in a barbed-wire fence somewhere.

“Okay, but you didn’t see Hannigan again until you were moving west on the highway, is that correct?”

Mia looked down at her hands. So much blood. She’d tried to stanch the flow as she’d knelt beside him in the road, desperately pressing her hands against his wound. But there had been so much of it—seeping through his shirt, his coat, oozing warm and sticky between her fingers. And that gurgling sound—