“Headache,” Laura fired back. Her eyes were moving desperately, tracking the scenery around them. The kidnapper had been able to see the front of the house. That must have meant he was coming from her right—and there must have been a hill—there, behind the cluster of agents opposite the front door.
What if the vision was wrong? Laura knew they weren’t always accurate. She saw what could be, not necessarily what would be. And if it was wrong, and the girl was inside the house…
If she messed up now, the girl might die. There weren’t enough agents on the ground to cover all of the exits alone.
She had to move, and fast. She thrust her gun back into the holster by her side, knowing it would only slow her down as she ran, and broke formation, sprinting at a diagonal angle from the farmhouse. She felt rather than saw Nate move instinctively to reach for her, holding her back from breaking formation, his fingers closing on air. She knew the others around her were staring as she went. She heard the agent in charge shout her name. It didn’t matter.
Laura plunged into the tall waving wheat, taking a direct route as fast as she could go. The thin fronds whipped at her elbows and around her body, and she knew if she put a foot wrong and went down it was all over. Behind her, she heard the command from the special agent in charge to go in. She ignored it. They were all going the wrong way, and she had no time to convince them of that fact.
Laura was almost at the road, her progress hampered by the incline of the hill. She was almost at the top. Where was he? The agents were coming out of the house below when she threw a glance over her shoulder. There was no one here. Was the vision too late?
Too early?
Laura spun in the middle of the road, her breath ragged and burning her lungs. There was no sign of the car. Below her, she saw two agents exiting the house, shaking their heads. She’d been wrong. The vision had been false.
Not only had she jeopardized the mission, but she’d been wrong. She was going to get her ass handed to her—and she tasted bile in her mouth as she wondered if she’d maybe given him a chance to slip away… There was no sign of Nathaniel by the side door. Had he followed her? Had he left the side door unguarded?
She heard it first. A thin, reedy kind of noise. The way the land was built here was all wrong for acoustics; the hill gave her little view of the land on the other side, where the road vanished into trees, and everything seemed to absorb sound and bounce it around her. Her pounding head didn’t help. But the sound made her turn, and it almost wasn’t enough notice.
She had barely begun to move when she saw it. The car, cresting the ridge, coming directly into view and driving right for her. She was close enough to see his face through the windshield, to see the moment he spotted the FBI logo on her chest.
She still had a chance. She threw her body forward, ignoring the complaint in her lungs and the sting in her calves, her eyes trained only on the car. She could see him moving, putting the car into reverse, throwing his arm across the back of the seat. It was almost too late—
Laura hit the edge of the wheat field and launched herself through the air in one last-ditch effort to stop him from getting away. She landed solidly on the windshield, spreading her arms and legs in search of a hand- or foothold and managing to cling on desperately to the bodywork as the impact knocked out the last breath in her body. The car was already moving, wind whipping in her ears and sending her hair flying into her eyes as she clung on for life, not having thought her way through to step two of this desperate leap.
The car was speeding up, just as she had seen in her vision. Laura gritted her teeth and clung on, feeling the strain in her cramped fingertips, how she had to use all the strength in her body to hold herself down and not fly off like a paper bag caught in the wind. She could hear him shouting something through the windshield, but the rush of the wind in her ears and the roar of the engine right under her were too loud to make out the words.
She became aware of movement close to her head, to the window of the driver’s side rolling down and an arm coming out of it, and she braced herself for him to hit her. But before he could reach her, a massive, juddering shock pitched her away from the windshield and off the car completely.
Laura slammed down her arms to absorb the impact and rolled across the hard surface of the old road, not breathing again until she managed to lie still. Even then she couldn’t rest—she heard the rev of his engine and instinct threw her to the side, off the concrete, into the wheat. If he came at her and ran her over—
But the revving stopped, and Laura looked up, managing to make out through her spinning and roiling vision that the car was not moving. It was stuck, she realized from this angle, one of the back wheels spinning uselessly in the air while the front was lodged in a low ditch at the side of the road. She’d managed to throw him off course enough to stop him. Which was good, because from all the spinning and the motion on top of her headache, she was pretty sure she was going to throw up.
Laura put her hand out to stabilize herself and came up with a handful of dirt, her fingers sinking into the dry soil. The sound of a door opening made her look up and see the kidnapper jumping out of the car, his face twisted in rage. He was lanky, all sinew, tall enough to eat up the distance between them with long strides. She only had time to register the fact that he was holding something dense and dark in his hand before she dodged out of the way.
He growled at her, an inhuman snarl without words, and swung again, quick and heavy, aiming right for her head. Laura knew she couldn’t keep evading him. She was trapped unless she got to her feet. The only thing she could do was to roll forward instead of away, launching herself at him, a facsimile of her earlier leap for the car.
The kidnapper fell to the road with a cry, his legs tangled around her body as he plunged back, allowing her to trap his feet. She fought her way out and got up, ready to cuff him—but before she could even get her bearings, a sharp blow to her thigh had her crying out and going down, her knee giving way.
“Fucking bitch,” the kidnapper spat, scrambling up and over her. One of his hands pinned her shoulder in place, his weight preventing her from shifting. He lifted the club into the air, and Laura tensed.
There was no way she could pull herself out of the way of the blow.
CHAPTER TWO
Laura’s only hope, she knew, was to use his momentum against him. She grabbed the handcuffs from her belt and in one motion, snapped one side around the wrist that held the club and pulled down hard on his arm as she did it.
She managed to avoid the club smashing into her nose by the thinnest margin. She felt the air move around it, the small spray of dirt fly over her face when it hit the ground.
The kidnapper stumbled and tried to pull back, but she had him now, and she tugged as hard as she could against the cuffs. She used all of her body weight to smash his fist against the hard surface of the concrete until he dropped it. The impacts ran heavy through her arms and shoulders, leaving aches that Laura ignored, adrenaline flashing through her and drowning out the pain.
She had the training, and she didn’t need to think. Laura took advantage of his focus on freeing his right hand to flip him over, grab his left hand, and pull it across. The second cuff snapped into place behind his back, and Laura panted for breath, using her weight to keep his legs down while her arms pushed down on his to stop him from struggling.
She looked up at the car. It had seemed empty in her vision. Now, too.
“Where’s the girl?” she asked, her voice as ragged and hoarse as her breaths. Arresting him, reading him his rights—that could wait. She needed to find the girl.
He was still trying to struggle against the cuffs and throw her off. Silently, Laura prayed that Nate had followed her, that he was coming over the hill even now to help her keep him restrained.