I turned back to Vee. "That should confuse Tony for a while."

She was giving me that look, as though she didn't know if she should hug me or hit me. "What if Tony realizes we've tricked him? What if he kills Nickie just to pay me back? You know he's capable of it."

"We'll get to her before Tony realizes anything is wrong."

"I don't know ..."

I could see the worry in her dark eyes. "You have to trust me."

She shook her head. "I can't do that."

I couldn't expect her to, either. Not after everything she'd been through, but she didn't have much choice, and I told her so.

"Fine," she said resolutely. "Let's just keep moving."

I looked around again. An old station wagon that had seen better days was parked on the far side of the lot. "Grab your bag," I told her, "and follow me."

She did as I'd suggested and we hurried over to the other side of the parking lot. I kept my eyes peeled for anyone who looked like the owner of the car coming out of the restaurant, but so far everything was quiet.

I spotted a small rock on the ground not too far away, and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. With a sharp smack of the rock against the driver's window, I smashed a hole in the gla.s.s. Reaching in through the hole, I pulled open the lock, which disengaged all the locks in the car, and then yanked open the door.

"Gotcha." I turned to Vee. "Jump in, but stay low."

She climbed over to the pa.s.senger seat and slid down into it, so only the top of her head was visible through the window. I bent down, under the steering wheel, and located the wires I needed. This kind of older vehicle was easy to hotwire, and within a minute, the engine revved to life.

"Let's go." I jumped behind the wheel, wincing at the pain in my thigh the movement caused, and before the owners had a chance to even notice the vehicle missing, we were back on the road. I figured the old banger was worth more in insurance than anything else. The owners would probably be happy to have the money to buy a new car.

"Now what?" asked Vee, glancing over at me, her bag of guns held primly in her lap.

"Have a look in the glove compartment, see if there's a map."

She did, and pulled out a ma.s.sive map, badly folded, so when she tried to unfold it, it filled half the car. "Jesus. No wonder they invented sat-navs."

I laughed, a sound so foreign to me. I'd been lucky if I so much as cracked a smile before meeting her. "We need to find the road they're going to meet us on, and see if there's another way. If we can come from the wrong direction, chances are they won't see you coming."

"Me? What about you?"

"We still need to split up. I'll cover you from the side of the road."

"What if they just shoot me as soon as they see me?"

I hated to think that was a very real possibility.

"That's the reason I need to watch things go down from the side. The minute it looks like someone's going to pull a trigger on you, I'll shoot the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h."

"Okay, looks like I don't have much choice."

I turned to her, as much as I could while still driving. "Yes, you do. You don't have to go and try to get your sister back. You could just take off, go and lose yourself again."

"And what kind of person would that make me? I hate myself enough already, without adding 'abandoned sister to mobsters' to the list." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter anyway."

I frowned. "What doesn't?"

"If they shoot me. If I die. It's not like anyone is going to miss me."

"Vee-" I started, but she cut me off.

"If you have the choice between Nickie or me-which of us you're going to save, I mean-choose her. Okay?"

I shook my head. "I can't do that."

"Yes, you can. It's simple. Just pick her. Take her away somewhere to start a new life-h.e.l.l, take her to the cops, if you think that's the best thing. Just make sure she's safe. She's got more chance of living a normal, happy life than I have. My life ended three months ago. I'm just going through the motions."

I didn't know what to say, but I wasn't going to promise her anything.

Chapter Twenty-one.

V.

I located where we were on the map, and then found the road Tony the Hound told us to take.

I wondered if he was getting suspicious yet. Had the car with the tracker gone past the turnoff, or had the young men already come off the main road somewhere along the route and gone in completely the wrong direction? Even worse was the possibility the other car had taken exactly the same route Tony had told us to, in which case there was the chance a car of young men were about to get their heads blown off by a bunch of gangsters.

I was tense, waiting for the phone to ring to find out what we were playing at, but, for the moment, it remained silent.

X leaned across to take a look at the map. Having him so close sent shivers through my body. I could still feel the dull ache of him between my thighs, the wetness in my underwear. I didn't know what had come over me-that proximity to death making me cling harder to life, I guessed. I wanted to lean into him, to lay my head on his shoulder and close my eyes. I was tired of fighting with everyone and everything, and I just wanted to let someone else take the strain for a short while. But I couldn't. I needed to prepare myself for the biggest fight of my life, and I couldn't let my guard down again.

"There," he said, stabbing his finger down on the map. "There's a little back road-possibly not much more than a farm track-which leads further south, adjacent to the route Tony wants us to take."

"But we don't know how far down the road they're going to be."

"We're just going to have to take our chances. I don't think we have any other choice."

He was right.

"You need to take the next turn," I said. "Then a couple of miles along, we'll come across the farm track on the right hand side."

Why there? Why had they chosen this place, in the middle of nowhere, as a meet-up spot? I guessed we were in the middle of nowhere, so less chance of pa.s.sersby reporting the gunshots that were bound to come. It also wasn't too far from the town where I'd been relocated by Witness Protection, so that must have come into play. It was a far cry from New York City, though, and I experienced a sudden and unexpected pang of homesickness.

X took the turn and we found ourselves on an unpaved road. The old vehicle b.u.mped and jolted its way down the track, creaking and moaning its protest. We should have stuck with the truck.

The cell phone buzzed.

"He's figured out we're no longer with the tracker."

"What should I do?" I asked staring at the ringing phone.

"Don't answer it."

"Then he might kill my sister."

"If he does that, he'll have lost all leverage, both with you and with your father. He's not a stupid man."

"f.u.c.k." I was torn with indecision. If I answered the cell phone, he'd want to know exactly where I was, and if I told him that, we'd lose any element of surprise.

"He doesn't know we found the tracker," said X, trying to rea.s.sure me. "You could have been carjacked, for all he knows. Anything might have happened."

He was right, but the thought of him doing something awful to Nickie terrified me.

Even so, I stared at the phone with my heart lodged in my throat, my palms tingling to pick it up and answer it.

X's hand suddenly covered my thigh, dragging my attention away from the phone and to him.

"It will be all right," he said, and I found myself tumbling into the blue of his eyes. "I kill for a living, and taking down Tony the Hound and his men won't prove to be a problem."

A small smile touched my lips. "You were supposed to kill me, too, remember? You didn't do so well on that job."

"Maybe that was because I couldn't bring myself to see you dead."

"Not because I stabbed you in the arm and leg?"

His eyebrows lifted, his lips pursing slightly in a way that made my heart flip. "Maybe that helped, too."

The phone stopped vibrating, the light of the screen going dark again, and ahead of us the dirt track hit a road in a T-junction. My heartrate continued to thunder, and I took a couple of deep breaths. I needed to distance myself, emotionally, from all of this. It was something I'd been good at in the past, and I had to find that cold, dark place inside myself again. That Verity was the one who needed to face Tony the Hound and his men, not the Vee who had been awakened by the touch of the hit man sitting beside her, or the terrified sister frightened for her sibling's life.

"We'll stop the car here," I said, straightening in my seat and taking a breath. "We should walk the rest."

X cast a curious glance over to me. "You're happy to go alone?"

"I don't have any choice."

He nodded his agreement. "Okay. I'll stay on this side of the road, and run along parallel to you."

"There are three guns. Which of us gets two of them?"

"I'll have to take them," he said. "Chances are, the first thing they'll do is search you."

"If I let them get close enough."

"Just try to play it cool," he warned.

I nodded. "I will."

It was almost dark now, right at that moment where day becomes night, but there was still enough light to see.

We climbed from the car and stepped out onto the road, turning right, so we effectively headed back on ourselves. I hoped we were going in the right direction. I kept the phone in my back pocket with it switched to silent, and slung my bag over my shoulder. It held all my belongings in the world, and I wasn't about to abandon it. The gun I held in my hand.

"I'll slip between the trees," said X as we walked, him checking the magazine cartridges in both guns to make sure he was fully armed. "I won't lose sight of you if I can help it."

"Okay."

His touch on my arm made me draw to a halt. "Don't do anything rash," he said. "Be careful."

I nodded, and then, to my surprise, he leaned in and planted a soft but firm kiss to the corner of my mouth. Not giving me a chance to respond, he turned and ran in a slow lope off the road, disappearing between the tree trunks.

I pushed my weapon down the back of my jeans, pulling my t-shirt over the b.u.t.t to hide it. The rucksack on my shoulder also helped to disguise the bulge. I took a deep breath and started walking, alone.

No, I had to have faith I wasn't alone. X was right beside me, just out of view, shrouded in tree trunks and the pockets of darkness between them. From somewhere to my left, an owl screeched.

As I continued to walk, I rounded a corner and spotted something in the road up ahead. My heart lurched, my stomach cramping with a twist of fear. A familiar sign was positioned to block the way, warning of police and an accident. I didn't think for a moment there had been an accident. The sign had been positioned there to stop people from driving down the road and interrupting whatever Tony the Hound and his crew had planned. I highly suspected there would be an identical sign coming from the other direction as well. At least I knew I was heading in the right direction. I tried not to feel nauseated with terror, my chest tight, my breathing shallow. I needed to focus on Nickie and how scared she must be right now. I would see her soon, and X would kill Tony and his men, and we would walk free.

I had to believe that. It was the only thing that would keep my legs moving.

I rounded the bend and my heartrate exploded.

Two vehicles were parked in the middle of the road-both big, black, and expensive. The headlights of the cars lit the road ahead. Four men stood around the vehicles, each of them in expensive suits. They were facing the opposite way, the way they'd expected us to come. X's plan had worked.

The interiors of the cars were also lit. In the seat of one of the vehicles, through the rear windshield, I could see the back of a head, shiny black hair, just like my own, too small to be a man. Nickie.

I suddenly wondered why I was walking down the middle of the road in plain view. Wouldn't it have been better for us both to ambush Tony the Hound from the side of the road?

The reason dawned on me.

I was a decoy, a distraction.

If the mobsters were focused on me, they wouldn't notice X coming to put a bullet in the back of their heads. I just hoped he did so before I ended up with a bullet in mine.

Though I was only about thirty feet away, they still hadn't noticed me approaching.

Briefly, I wondered if I could sneak over and just grab Nickie out of the car. But then a guy cleared his throat and threw a cigarette b.u.t.t onto the road, where it bounced and sparked, and he turned and spotted me.

A smile spread across his rotund face. "Well, well, well. What do we have here? Looks like Mickey Five Fingers' daughter finally made an appearance."

The other men turned at his words, and my eyes flicked over each of them, quickly ascertaining which was Tony the Hound. He was easy enough to spot. He was the one with the air of smug superiority hanging around him. He was in his mid-forties with overly black hair which was receding at the temples. Fury that this middle-aged man thought he could go around s.n.a.t.c.hing teenage girls suddenly rose inside me, and my fingers itched to s.n.a.t.c.h the weapon from the back of my jeans and open fire on the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h. I had to hold back. If I pulled the gun now, they'd shoot me and it would be game over. I had to remember what X had said about how important restraint and control were.

"Give me my sister back," I demanded, raising my voice to be heard, my gaze focused on Tony.