Shiver

much of anything except the raging fire by the fence and the van, which also kept them from being seen. But people had to be spilling out of the neighboring houses. With the explosion and fire, help in the form of police and firefighters had to be on the way. And Sanders and Groves and O’Brien—where were they? God, were they even alive? Casting desperate glances in every direction, Sam searched for help: nothing. She searched for Tyler. He was nowhere to be seen.
    Thank God he got away.
    Veith said, “Here’s how this is going to go down, Marco. Either you drop your weapon and come with us like a good boy, or we’ll leave you here and just take the girl. And the next time anybody sees her, she’ll be chopped up into so many pieces she’ll look like fish bait.”
    “Back up, bitch.” The low voice in her ear was accompanied by the grinding pressure of the gun barrel against her temple.
    Sam’s heart slammed against her rib cage as the man holding her started to pull her backward. She tried to resist, but with hisarm crushing her windpipe and a gun to her head there wasn’t a whole lot she could do other than be clumsy and drag her feet, which earned her a quick, vicious tightening of the arm around her neck. She choked, gasping for air. Her eyes fastened despairingly on Marco. His expression was impossible to read, but his stance hadn’t changed, and his weapon remained fixed on Veith.
    “Let her go and I’ll come with you,” Marco said. Dread twisted Sam’s insides into knots as she recognized the desperation that underlay the offer. It was the sound of fear, of defeat, of knowing that they had him and he couldn’t win. Hearing it beneath the studied calm of Marco’s voice rammed the almost unthinkable truth home for her: on this terrible night, both of them were probably going to die.
    “No.” Dragging her heels, Sam managed to gasp the word out even as she was forced right up to the side of the van, right up to the open sliding door.
    It was an instinctive protest, made because she loved him. She couldn’t bear the idea that he would sacrifice himself for her. For Tyler’s sake, if it came right down to it maybe she would have let him, but she knew, and she was sure Marco knew, too, that the bargain he was trying to make just wasn’t going to happen. They weren’t going to let her go no matter what he did, so the best thing he could do was stay out of their reach and save himself.
    “Goddamn it, Veith, let her go!” Marco’s gun tracked Veith. “You want me, not her.”
    “I want you both,” Veith said, confirming what Sam already knew. “But I’ll just take her if I have to.”
    “Get in,” said the voice in her ear, and when she wouldn’t, when she refused to climb into the van, the gun jabbed harder into her temple and the arm around her neck tightened so viciously that she choked and gagged and went instantly light-headed. Then, without ever removing the gun from her head, he stepped up into the van and she had perforce to step up behind him or be strangled to death. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the van was configured with two front seats, a small, empty cargo area in the middle where she and her captor were positioned, and four bucket seats in the rear. The floor was carpeted, and there were three doors, all of them open.
    Veith made a gesture. Then he and the other man started backing away from Marco, keeping their weapons trained on him but moving toward the van.
    “You coming, Marco?” Veith asked.
    In a semicrouched position just inside the big open doorway, her captor’s arm still around her throat and the gun still at her head, Sam saw Marco’s focus slip from Veith, whom he’d been tracking like a predator, to her. For a split second their eyes met. Then she watched in horror as Marco abruptly raised both hands in the air in the age-old gesture of surrender.
    “I’m coming,” he said. “Just let me get my crutch.” Still keeping the gun up where they could see it, he bent down to get his crutch, then wedged it into place beneath his arm and started moving toward the van.
    “Get his gun.” Veith ordered the other man as they converged on Marco. Sam was shoved into the back, forced into a seat. Seconds later, Marco threw his crutch into the van, steppedin himself, then had his hands secured behind his back. Heart in her throat, Sam realized that she was witnessing the man she loved putting his life on the line for her.
    He could have saved