Her headlights illuminated the reckless driver’s back license plate. Louisiana. “My God, it’s them,” she sobbed aloud. It had to be the thugs who wanted to kill her. They were obviously still hoping to locate her in this area, where they’d lost her three weeks ago.

Her mouth went dry and her muscles tightened. They wouldn’t know this car.

Or would they? Had they tracked her to the border? Was it only a matter of time before they caught her?

Gillian was aware of the exact moment determination edged out her fear. Time was now her enemy. If she had to disappear again, she didn’t intend to run and leave Katie’s ashes to the likes of them.

Coldly she reasoned that if they were still searching these side roads, they probably hadn’t found her suitcase. Shaking, she pulled onto a fire road and parked behind an outcrop of boulders, dousing her lights. If the men were inspecting each byway intersecting the perimeter road, they’d have already searched this one.

Leaving her car, Gillian crouched low and zigzagged across the main road. She counted on blending with the underbrush. It was quite a hike on legs already weary from hustling food orders all day, and now spongy from fear. She stumbled frequently, but dared not risk using her flashlight. Once her eyes adjusted, a bright three-quarter moon allowed her to distinguish solid form from shadows.

Creeping along the fence row, Gillian expected at any minute to come upon the men rifling her suitcase. At each bend, when the lane remained vacant, she released a little more of the breath she’d been holding. Where were they? Somehow, she hadn’t thought she’d driven this far before her tire blew out.

Of course, it would seem longer on foot.

As she inched along the fence, taking care to keep out of sight, a cloud of dust rolled across her brush cover, obscuring her view of the starry sky. She dived toward a thicket and flattened herself against the rough bark of a squat desert tree. Forced to eat grit, Gillian spat it out as quietly as possible. She needn’t have worried about being seen. The heavy sedan thundered by, traveling at far too great a speed.

Gillian, who’d shut her eyes to avoid the dust, almost left her hideaway too early. Thinking it’d be easier to walk in the lane, she was about to vault the fence. Bobbing headlights from a second car sent her scurrying back into hiding. Auto number two also moved toward the highway, although compared to the first, it crawled like a snail.

During its approach, Gillian noticed that the driver had some type of searchlight he or she was shining into the brush flanking the fence.

Her heart slammed inside her chest. As before, she molded herself to the tree. Just before the light could flash over her face, she dropped to the ground. What she saw from that vantage point, through a tangle of weeds and grass, shocked her. Not the car itself, which was a well-preserved baby-blue Corvette, but the driver. He was someone she recognized. New fear spiraled through her veins. The Vette’s driver was none other than the cowboy ex-cop she’d flirted with at Flo’s Caf'e.

“Mitch Valetti.” Her lips formed his name, letting it spill happily from her lips before she had an opportunity to add things up. When she did, and the pieces fell into place—like the fact that he was combing the underbrush for something or someone—she clambered to her feet, then ran away as fast as her quaking legs would carry her.

Gillian didn’t look back. Throughout her mad retreat, her brain shut down. Her throat constricted, making breathing next to impossible. Still, she didn’t stop until she fumbled open her door, started her engine and roared out of the fire road onto the main highway.

She’d wrongly assumed the men who were chasing her had discovered the lane by chance. Instead, they were obviously in cahoots with Valetti. “Think,” she ordered herself. Did the thugs have enough of a head start to make a meeting with Valetti possible? During lucid moments, she’d have said probably not. Sergeant Malone had warned her the men might have local contacts. It was the only thing that made sense. In the caf'e Valetti had admitted to Christy Jones that he needed money. Gillian had heard Christy allude to a case that—how did she put it? It had dropped in his lap. Why else would Valetti have made a concerted effort to get to know her—a total stranger? If he wasn’t working with the bastards doing their level best to find her, why would he be spotlighting a country lane at this hour?

Her cover was blown. That was Gillian’s first and last conclusion. The big question now was: did she have what it took to dig in her heels and face them all?

MITCH GLIDED to a halt. He held the powerful spotlight aloft and went back over a section of trees where he thought he’d seen an outline of something. A person.

“Damn, Trooper,” he said aloud to a big-footed Alsatian pup Ethan had presented him with that very day at suppertime. “Instead of chasing phantom shadows, we ought to be tailing the car that left squirrel marks so close to my corral it scared the living daylights out of my best broodmare.”

Mitch, alerted to trouble outside by his new dog, hadn’t been quick enough to record the dark sedan’s license plate. “Just as well,” he grumbled sourly. “I’d wring their bloody necks if Pretty Baby foals early. Then I’d be viewing the county’s big jail from the inside out rather than the other way around.”

The pup had begun to whine and lick his hand. Mitch tugged absently at the dog’s soft, gold-brown ears. All but smiling, the puppy flopped down on the passenger seat and laid his chin on his new master’s knee.