Shiver

His expression was difficult to read. Her head leaned against his shoulder, making the angle odd, and anyway she couldn’t really focus still. From the way his leg shifted beneath her she thought that it wasn’t the most comfortable situation for him. But there really wasn’t anywhere else for her to go. Uncomfortable or not, he didn’t shove her off him and she wasn’t about to move ontoanyone else’s lap of her own accord. Better the devil you knew, and all that.
    “I’m Trey,” Marco told her, as Tyler scooted close and Sam wrapped a protective arm around him. He felt thin and frail—bird bones. In that, he was like her. Clutching Ted, her son snuggled against her side. “It’s a nickname.”
    Sam ignored the questions that were dying to be asked in favor of the more crucial matter. “We”—oh, God, she didn’t want any part of this, but she had to get help for Mrs. Menifee; terror for the other woman kept her heart pounding and knotted her stomach—“have to go back. Somebody has to help her. She was hurt. Bleeding. And those men were still in my house. They still had her.”
    She hoped her tone conveyed everything else that she didn’t want to say where Tyler could hear: that Mrs. Menifee had been tortured. That if they hadn’t murdered her by the time she and Tyler had escaped, she felt that they almost certainly would have done so once they saw that their primary prey was gone. But there was always a chance that Mrs. Menifee was still alive, still suffering, still being tortured for information, and while there was that chance they had to go back and do what they could to save her.
    “No can do.” Sounding clearly indifferent to Mrs. Menifee’s fate, the driver made no effort to so much as slow the speeding car down. Bright lights flashing into the car’s interior, along with a glimpse of tall metal light poles and clustered service stations and fast food places, told Sam that they had reached the expressway interchange, and then they were zooming up theon-ramp onto I-64. Sam thought the driver was looking at her through the rearview mirror, but she couldn’t be sure. “You’re damned lucky we came after you.”
    Sam stiffened, and Marco’s arm tightened around her waist. Tyler lifted his head, and for his sake she forced herself to moderate her tone. “You can’t just leave her!”
    “Sure we can,” the driver said. “And we’re going to.”
    “You’re U.S. Marshals! You have to help her.” Then Sam had a thought. “You are U.S. Marshals, right?”
    The men around her all nodded. Marco gave her a look as though to say, oh ye of little faith.
    “Yeah, we are. And we have a job to do.” The driver’s tone said the discussion was over. “That job is getting him”—he jerked his head in Marco’s direction—“and now you and your son, out of harm’s way. Which is what we’re doing.”
    “But Mrs. Menifee—”
    “The local cops are on the scene,” Marco told her quietly. “They were pulling up as we were leaving. They’ll handle it. There’s nothing else we can do.”
    “I saw a police car, Mom,” Tyler said. “The police will help Mrs. Menifee. Won’t they?”
    The uncertainty of his voice as he said that last made Sam’s throat tighten. He’d been through so much tonight—way too much for anybody, much less a four-year-old, to have to endure. She gave him a reassuring hug. Thank God they hadn’t found Tyler! Just thinking about it made her sick.
    “Yes,” she told him. “They will. Of course they will.”
    “You can thank us for that. We called 911,” the guy whoselap Tyler was still partly sitting on told her. He sounded a little defensive. “The local yokels will play mop-up. They’ll find your friend, get her to a hospital.”
    “Best we can do,” the driver said.
    Outside the window, Sam saw metal struts flashing past. Beyond them curved the starry night sky. Below slid the denser black that was the river. They were on the bridge, one of a number of vehicles streaming into St. Louis. The giant, imposing curve of the Arch that was the symbol of the city glowed silver just ahead. Sam reluctantly understood that there was no going back. What happened to Mrs. Menifee now was beyond her control.
    She felt terrible for her kindly neighbor, shaken and sad and guilty, and deeply, deeply sorry that such a horror had befallen her because of Mrs. Menifee’s connection to her. But however reluctantly, she understood, too, that there was nothing