Cowboy Alibi. Paula Graves
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up? It’ll go faster that way. I’ll get the food, you get the other supplies—”
“No. We stick together,” he said firmly.
And the suspicion was back, she thought. She sighed as he picked up a shopping basket and headed down the first aisle. She grabbed a basket of her own and fell into step with him.
She picked up a jar of outrageously expensive peanut butter and put it in the basket. “A grocery store would’ve been a whole lot cheaper.”
“And more exposed.”
His dead-serious tone unnerved her. “You’re trying to scare me now.”
“You’re not scared already?” He glanced her way.
“Okay, you’re trying to scare me more.”
He dropped a large loaf of bread into the basket and headed for the drink coolers at the end of the aisle, not answering.
By the time they reached the checkout stand, both of their baskets were full. Joe paid the bill with a credit card and turned to Jane. He handed her his keys. “I’ll get the bags. You get the doors.” He took the two full sacks of provisions from the cashier and followed her outside.
Jane unlocked the passenger door for him and took one of the bags, sliding it into the narrow space behind the seats. As she took the other bag from him, Joe suddenly lurched toward her with a low grunt. Almost simultaneously, she heard a loud thumping sound and the whole truck shook.
“Joe?”
Joe closed his fingers around her arm, the grip painfully tight. “Get in the truck!” he growled.
She pulled up into the cab. A loud thunk shook the truck again, and Joe pushed her to keep going.
“Get behind the wheel!” He pushed her until she crawled over the storage console and settled behind the wheel. Joe hauled himself into the passenger seat and slumped low. “Drive!”
She fumbled the key into the ignition and started the truck. “What’s going on?”
Another metallic thud made the truck rock. Joe grabbed her arm and squeezed. “Just drive, damn it!”
She put the truck in gear and pulled onto the highway, realization settling over her in cold waves. “Someone was shooting at us.”
Joe remained silent. She shot a look at him, alarmed by the way he lay half-sprawled across the seat. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he gritted in a tone that told her he was anything but.
Her heart dropped. “You got hit.”
“I don’t think it’s bad.”
Jane gripped the steering wheel and pressed the pedal to the floor. “God, where’s the nearest hospital? Maybe we should stop and call 911—”
“No!” Joe pushed himself up to a straighter sitting position. “No paramedics. It’s not that bad.”
She flicked on the interior light and he squinted at her, his face pale and sweaty. “Not that bad?”
“Just—the next wide place on the shoulder, pull off. Okay? And turn off that light!”
She turned it off, plunging the interior of the truck cab into darkness again. She could hear Joe’s soft pants of pain and considered defying his wishes. But then she spotted a widening of the shoulder straight ahead and slowed to pull to the side of the highway. She put the truck in Park and turned to Joe. “What now?”
“I need you to get out of the truck and start feeling around the undercarriage.”
“What?”
“Just do it!” He took a couple of swift, shallow breaths and added, “Please?”
Jane cut the engine and got out of the truck. She left the door open so she could hear Joe. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything stuck to the truck’s underside that doesn’t feel like it belongs,” he answered, his voice thready.
That’s helpful, she thought. She ran her hands along the undercarriage from the back of the truck to the front bumper. “Nothing so far.”
“Keep going.”
She felt her way around the front of the truck and started down the passenger side. Just behind the passenger door, her fingers ran into something hard and cold. “I think I found something.”
Joe lowered the window. “Can you pull it away from the truck?”
She jerked her hand away, a sudden, horrifying thought darting through her mind. “Is it a bomb?”
“I doubt it. Why shoot at us if we were rigged to blow?” Joe leaned his head against the window frame. “Just see if you can pull it off.”
She reached under the truck, grabbed the edges of the square object and gave a tug. It popped free and she stood up straight, holding it out for Joe to see.
He took it from her and studied it in the pale glow of the truck’s dome light. Muttering a soft curse, he handed it back to her. “Throw it as far away as you can.”
“What is it?”
“Just throw it away and get back in the truck. We need to get a move on.”
Biting back her irritation, she hurled the small metal box into the scrubby underbrush lining the highway, then slid behind the steering wheel. “Done. Now, are you going to tell me what the hell that was?”
“It was a GPS tracker.”
It took a second to place what he was talking about. “Someone was tracking us? Who?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He reached for the seat belt, grimacing as he tried to slip the metal tab into the buckle.
Jane reached across and buckled the belt for him. She took a moment to adjust her own seat forward so she could better reach the pedals. Taking a couple of slow, deep breaths to fight the flood of adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream, she pulled onto the highway. “So, what do we do now?”
“We don’t keep going to Boise,” Joe said. “We need to find a place that nobody would think to connect to either of us.”
“Somewhere secluded?” she asked, her mind racing to think of an answer.
“Yeah.”
The problem was, she was almost as much a stranger to the area as he was. She’d spent most of the past five months in the little apartment she’d shared with Angie. Most of her trips out of town had been doctor’s appointments in Ketchum or the occasional day trip to Boise. The only time she’d spent more than a few hours out of town had been the previous Christmas, when Angie had invited her to spend the holiday with her family up at their cabin in the Sawtooth Mountains—the cabin!
“I know a place,” she said aloud.
THOUGH JANE had closed the door to the tiny bathroom, Joe couldn’t miss the retching sounds. He had to hand it to her, however; she’d made it through the nasty job of cleaning up and binding his gunshot wound before her stomach finally rebelled.
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