A rig grumbled across the parking lot, and Will watched it turn onto the highway.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Something was wrong. Where the hell was she? He slid out of the booth and strode to the back of the restaurant. The narrow hallway leading to the bathrooms was empty. Will pushed open the door marked women and startled some lady at the sink.

"Courtney?" He checked under the stalls. Nothing.

Buzzing with adrenaline now, he opened the men's and took a quick look around. Empty.

"Shit!"

He pushed out the back exit and found himself in a gravel parking lot beside a rusted Dumpster. "Courtney!"

An eighteen-wheeler roared down the highway as he scanned the desolate landscape surrounding the restaurant.

It wasn't possible. Not this time. She wouldn't run out on him now.

Would she?

She didn't even have any money. But, shit, maybe she didn't need any. Maybe she'd simply smiled up at some trucker and asked for a ride.

But she wouldn't do that.

Would she?

"Goddamn it!"

He scanned the horizon. The Texas panhandle stretched for miles in every direction. No cars, no trucks. No Courtney.

She watched Will through a gap in the weathered fence slats. The smell of garbage surrounded her as she listened to him curse.

The arm tightened around her neck, choking her even more. She whimpered, and it tightened again, while at the same time the gun barrel pressed against her temple swung around to point at Will.

She sucked air through her nostrils and smothered the urge to scream, to make even the slightest sound.

Don't look. Don't look. Don't look. She stared at Will's back and sent the message with her mind.

The arm around her neck remained strong and thick. The arm pointed at Will remained steady.

Turn around! Go inside!

The gun arm lifted fractionally, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't watch this. Not again.

Suddenly her windpipe opened, and she took a dizzy step backward. Will was gone. And just as she realized it, a hand clamped around her arm and dragged her backward.

"Not a word, or I swear, I'll blow your fucking brains out."

He pulled her out from behind the Dumpster, and she glanced desperately around the parking lot. A few empty trucks sat near the highway, but no one was outside. The man hauled her around the corner of the building to a green sedan. He shoved her into the front passenger's seat, slammed the door, and then opened the back door and slid in behind her.

Courtney reached for the handle, but the lock snapped down. She jerked her head around. A woman sat in the driver's seat, smiling at her.

"Hello, Courtney."

"Who the hell are you?"

CHAPTER 23.

Will checked the ladies' room again. Then the men's. He strode back toward the dining room, but a familiar sound made him stop.

His phone. He did a 360.

"Courtney?" He opened a door marked employees only. Supply closet. The sound came again, from the corridor leading to the exit. There, on the floor beside a dust mop, was his cell phone.

He snatched it up while at the same time plowing through the restaurant's back entrance.

"Courtney!"

His gut clenched. She hadn't gone willingly. Wherever she'd gone...

He pivoted toward the Dumpster, the source of that putrid odor. He shoved the noisy phone into his pocket and approached it with feet that felt like cinder blocks. A padlock secured the rusty hatch. Gripping the metal lip of the box, he heaved himself up.

And peered down into a rancid heap of garbage.

He dropped to the ground and bent over, nearly sick with relief.

His phone started up again, and he yanked it from his pocket. Devereaux.

"What?"

"We got a problem."

No joke, Will thought, as he raced around the side of the restaurant to the parking lot in front.

"Lindsey Kahn is in New Mexico," Devereaux said.

Shit. That explained a few things.

"So is Courtney."

"I know," Will told him. "I'm here, too."

"With Courtney?"

"No," Will said. He unlocked his truck and hitched himself behind the wheel. Damn it, which way? The highway stretched endlessly in both directions.

"Lindsey Kahn's in a Chrysler Sebring, and she's not alone," Devereaux said. "There's a man with her."

"How do you know?"

"I just got off the phone with the rental-car people in Albuquerque. We've ID'd the guy on Alex Lovell's surveillance video. Name's Mick O'Donnell. He's an ex-con suspected of two professional hits in Boston. Rental car people say he looks like the man they saw with Lindsey. This guy rented the car under an alias, but he was dumb enough to use Lindsey's cell phone as a contact number."

To the east, a couple of trucks disappeared into the glare of the morning sun. To the west, nothing but miles of highway and a faint green dot fading over the rise.

The Sebring.

"Hodges? You there?"

He skidded onto the highway. "I'm here." He stomped on the gas and pleaded with his oldest friend in the world. Thirty-five, forty, fifty. He slapped the wheel, and she gave a mighty lurch forward.

"What's going on? What are you doing?"

"I'm going after Courtney."

Courtney watched the woman barreling down the road. She wore a diamond Rolex and a black Juicy Couture tracksuit, and she had a head full of expensive blond highlights. She looked like half of Courtney's clients, except for the crazed gleam in her eyes.

"You thought you could hide from me?" She turned to Courtney, taking her attention off the road. "Let me tell you something. Information is king. Information, all right? You don't have it, you get left behind. Are you listening?"

Courtney was sort of listening, but mostly she was trying not to hyperventilate. That gun in the backseat was pointed straight at her head, and this woman was doing ninety-five miles an hour. What if she hit a bump?

She glared at Courtney. "Are you hearing me?"

She gulped. "Yes."

"Do you think I worked my way through college washing dishes so I could get disbarred? You think I let mother-fucking Wilkers pimp me out so I could lose?" She pounded a fist on her leg. "It's my money. I earned it. I earned everything, and I'm not going to lose it all now because of you!"

Courtney stared at her. She was unhinged. Or maybe on something.

Music emanated from the backseat, and the woman reached back-still pushing one hundred-to dig a phone out of a Louis Vuitton purse.

She snapped it open. "You have him?" Pause. "Good." She checked her watch. "Okay, got it."

Have who? Will? Courtney's terror multiplied.

"Up here on the right's good," the man in back said, and Courtney turned toward him. His belly spilled over his jeans. She looked into his bloodshot gray eyes and knew he was the ski-mask guy from the park.

The one who'd killed David.

The one who'd tried to kill her.

And she'd Maced him, and thrown a wok of hot oil on him, and given him the slip at least half a dozen times. And now he looked pissed.

The woman jerked the wheel right and then they did hit a bump, and Courtney held her breath, certain she was about to be decapitated by a bullet from that gun. They lurched over dip after dip, and then the land flattened out and they were flying across a huge expanse of dust.

"Where are we going?" she croaked.

By way of answer, the woman pointed the car toward what looked like some sort of abandoned outbuilding. As they neared it, Courtney saw tumbleweeds bouncing across the dusty plains. Tumbleweeds. She glanced around, frantic. There was nothing. No one who would see whatever was about to happen.

Where was Will?

The car skidded to a halt beside the shed. She thrust it in Park and turned to Courtney.

"You are nobody, do you understand? Nothing! Except for one tiny piece of information that you will give to me if you ever want to see your boyfriend again."

Courtney was going to puke. "Where is he?" And then she regretted the question, because the crazy bitch smiled.

"Wouldn't you like to know that?" She reached into the backseat and jerked a computer bag from the floor. Courtney watched, baffled, as she whipped out a sleek silver notebook and powered up.

And then she understood. The e-mails.

"We're going on a little treasure hunt," Juicy Woman said cheerfully. "You have the map-those e-mails between Eve and John. I get to keep the treasure. Are you getting this now? I'm not returning a dime of that money. I earned it!"

Courtney eyed the computer with dread. There was no way she was going to get a signal out here. Did this lunatic realize that? And was she going to flip out when she did? She glanced over her shoulder, at the man in back, but he wasn't watching the screen. He was watching Courtney with some serious hostility in his eyes.

He hadn't forgotten the Mace.

"Goddamn it!" The woman jabbed a manicured fingernail at the Enter key. "What is wrong with this?" She stared at it a moment, and Courtney noticed the tremor in her body. She was definitely on something.

"Fine!" Her gaze snapped up to meet Courtney's. She grabbed the purse from the backseat and pulled out a gun, a giant black cannon that was completely at odds with her French manicure.

"Forget the computer. You can just tell me your password. But know this: if you lie, we will kill him. Do you understand me?"

Courtney nodded.

"The password!"

Will swerved off the highway where the cloud of dust had begun to settle. About half a mile off sat a small, dilapidated building. The Sebring had disappeared behind it.

Will jumped out of the truck and left the door open, in case the sound carried. Two people, probably armed. He took out his Glock, checked the clip, and set off.

"The password!" she screamed again.

What could she say? If she told her, would she pull the trigger? The password was her only leverage, her only means of buying herself time.

"It's my birthday."

"What?"

"My birthday. That's my password. On my computer at work." Oh God, oh God, oh God. Where was Will? Where was anybody? How long could she draw this out?

The woman sighed, annoyed. "And what is your birthday?"

"August twenty-second."