Shiver

himself, could have left her. But here he was.
    Their eyes connected. His were hard and dark and absolutely unreadable. Hers, she felt, probably had her heart in them.
    Then Veith, who had entered behind him, clouted him over the head with his gun. The thud was so loud Sam felt it like a physical blow. Marco dropped like a stone.
    Sam cried out, started to rise. She was roughly forced back into her seat.
    “Good to see you again, Samantha Jones.” Veith smiled at her as the thug who’d been holding the gun on her secured her hands behind her with a zip tie, then locked her in place with a seat belt. It was an absolutely evil, terrifying smile. Her pulse rate soared. Her mouth went dry. “Pity we couldn’t bring the little boy along, isn’t it?”
    She hated him then, hated him with such magnitude that for a moment the force of it almost wiped out her fear. An angry reply surged to her lips. But then she looked into his eyes, and realized that a reply was what he was hoping to provoke her into. He was going to hurt her; that was a foregone conclusion. But hurting her while she was defying him? That would just add to his fun.
    So she clamped her lips together and said nothing.
    The door rattled shut as the third man closed it from theoutside. Seconds later he was behind the wheel and the van took off.
    As it bounced across the grass and then sped away down the street, Sam caught a glimpse through the windows of the milling crowd that was starting to accumulate in front of the blazing town house. She wanted to bang on the van windows; she wanted to scream for help. The first one she couldn’t do; the second one she knew better than to attempt. But she looked out at the huge, shooting flames stretching toward the sky, and willed someone to notice the fleeing van, then scanned the crowd hopefully to see if anyone did. The fire made the area around the front yard almost as bright as day. Among the crowd— yes, that was Groves. His blond buzz cut was unmistakable. With Groves was Sanders, who was crouching while he talked to—Tyler. Oh, what a relief! That brief sighting of her son’s small, slender frame and black hair imprinted itself on her heart. Why? Because it just that moment hit her that she might never see him again. Even as her heart shattered into a million pieces at the thought, Sam felt a surge of thankfulness that he was out there rather than in here.
    He’s safe. Tyler’s safe.
    But the hard truth was that she and Marco were not. As the van, carefully observing the speed limit now, drove past onrushing fire trucks and police cars, Sam looked down at Marco, still sprawled unconscious on the floor, and at the thug in the seat across from her, and at Veith, sitting with a smug smile on his face and his gun pointed at Marco’s head,and tried not to think about what these criminals had done to Mrs. Menifee.
    But she couldn’t help it. The image of the woman’s severed fingertip, and the blood running across her kitchen floor, became lodged in her head. By the time the van stopped some fifteen minutes later, she was sick with terror.
    She didn’t pray much, because she had figured out a long time ago that if God really was up there, as her grandma had sworn he was, and if he really was in the answering-prayers business, which her grandma had sworn was true, the only answer she was going to get from him was no.
    But now she prayed so hard that if God didn’t hear her he had to be deaf.
    Please, God. Please. I just want to see Tyler again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
     

     
    F ear was not something Danny experienced often. Handling dangerous situations was what he did for a living. He had been in so many life-or-death spots that they were pretty much par for the course for him, just another day at the office, so to speak.
    But he was afraid now. And the reason he was afraid had nothing to do with the distinct chance that he wouldn’t live through the next hour. What it had to do with was the silky-skinned, smart-mouthed, tender-hearted, gorgeous girl whom he’d just fucked into next week.
    If Veith had been willing to blow up the town house to kill them, with all the attention that was sure to attract, he wanted them dead now. No more torture time, no more questions about money. Just dead. As in, a bullet to the head as soon as they were in a suitable place.
    Danny would have told Veith the truth about his identity, and to hell with the assignment, if he had thought it would do any good. But the