Shiver

her breathing before she managed to tamp it down again. It wasn’t like she had a whole lot of options at this point. There was only one way out of the parking lot, and the oncoming cars were between her and it. The realization sent Sam’s stomach plummeting.
    “Damn it, Marco, wake up!” This time, when she shoved his shoulder, it was violently.
    “Mm.” He made a sound just as the cars got close enough so that she could see that there were two people in each of them, but by then she was too distracted to even glance at him. The cars were no longer traveling in a straight line with one following the other, but parallel with enough space between them to bookend the truck, to box it in. Looking at the four headlights closing in fast, Sam felt like a fist was tightening around her windpipe. Cold prickles raced over her skin. Marshals or not, they were absolutely zeroing in on the truck, and in just a minute or so this thing would be a done deal. She would be at their mercy, to do with as they would. The knowledge was terrifying.
    She still hadn’t hit the brakes.
    Stopping felt like surrender, like ceding control, like putting her fate in the hands of whoever was in those cars. Not stopping let her retain the option of smashing the accelerator to the floor and speeding away.
    Or at least it gave her the illusion of retaining the option.
    “Marco! They’re here.” She shoved him. The shove, or the urgency in her tone, must have finally penetrated, because he opened his eyes a slit.
    “What?” He sounded groggy.
    “Your friends are here,” she said, impressed by the steadiness of her own voice as she looked from him to the cars that were now only a few dozen yards away. She had slowed to a near crawl instinctively, probably because somewhere deep inside she knew that fleeing wasn’t going to work out. And the reason it wasn’t going to work out was that Big Red couldn’t outrun those cars. It wasn’t possible, although she faced the truth reluctantly. But stopping and just letting whatever happened next happen seemed about as smart as playing Russian roulette.
    Marco hitched himself up a little in the seat, and she knew from the direction of his gaze that he was looking at the oncoming cars.
    “Stop. Park.” His words had a bitten-off quality. Like he was having trouble mustering the strength to speak at all.
    “I don’t know if . . .” this is such a good idea, she was going to say, but her words trailed off as nerves closed her throat. Thenshe came to the reluctant conclusion that there was nothing else to do but stop. If cooperation was her only option, best to act like she was cooperating willingly. Moving like her leg weighed a thousand pounds, she put her foot on the brakes and pressed down.
    Screech. Even the brakes seemed to scream that she was making a mistake.
    “It’s going to be okay. Trust me.” He sounded more alert now as Big Red shivered and lurched in apparent protest. For a second, as the truck finally shook to a stop, her eyes held his. Did she trust him? The answer was, maybe she did. At least, she trusted him not to kill her. Even to keep her safe if he could. But that left huge, gaping holes that allowed for lots of bad things to happen. Those holes scared her. Her eyes were wrenched from him to the cars as they slammed to a halt mere feet from both the front and back bumpers. Just like that, any semblance of choice had been taken out of her hands: the truck was well and truly blocked in. Game over. Nothing to do. Even as Sam registered that and felt fresh panic surge through her veins, two clean-cut men in dark suits leaped from each of the cars and converged on the truck.
    They were armed.
    Her stomach cramped.
    “You never . . .” Sam began, shooting Marco an accusing look, but she didn’t finish because two of the men appeared at Marco’s window just then, looming up behind him, drawing his attention as well as hers.
    “Get out,” one of them ordered him. The tone, the attitude:cop to crook. It was eye-opening. She’d known it, of course, but still Sam felt a suffocating rush of dismay. So what’s the big surprise? she asked herself fiercely. He’d been in custody; they were treating him like he was a criminal. And that would be because he was a criminal. Somehow that nugget of truth hadn’t really crystallized in her brain before.
    So are they going to treat me like I’m a criminal, too? Sam thought of the two men she’d shot and felt a spurt of