The pickup’s side window shattered. She couldn’t see Jon. Heart lodged in her throat, she couldn’t even scream as she struggled to drag herself out of the deep snow in the ditch and onto the road. She rushed to the pickup as Jon crawled out the passenger side. He had a gun in his hand as he crouched down beside her.
“Katie. Run up the road over the hill that way,” he said, pointing back the way they’d come. She was shaking her head, mouthing I can’t leave you again over the sound of Collin’s gunfire and the tinny pings of the bullets ricocheting off the pickup’s body. “Think of Mia and Danielle. Do it for me. Please.”
At the sound of more shots from Collin’s gun, she felt Jon’s shove and took off running up the road. She heard more shots, only louder as Jon returned fire, no doubt providing cover for her. She could see the hill ahead. She didn’t think. She didn’t question what Jon had told her to do. She trusted him. She just ran, praying he would be right behind her.
* * *
COLLIN STOPPED SHOOTING. There was no sign of Jon Harper and that made him nervous as he stayed by the open driver’s-side door. He realized he was still standing by the SUV in a couple feet of snow. In the adrenaline-powered excitement, he hadn’t felt the cold. But now it settled around him. The deep, snowy quiet, the aching chill that had started with his feet and now moved up his body into his shoulders.
He shivered and waited, ready should there be any movement around the truck. Only minutes had gone by. He looked up the road. He could see Kate. How quickly she’d done as Jon had ordered her. It grated on him since she would have argued with him. Crazy woman. A bomb in the car? She’d believe anything if Jon Harper said it was true.
Still no movement by the pickup. Maybe he’d gotten lucky and wounded him. He considered pushing through the few yards of snow between him and the road to check, but he wasn’t sure how much more ammunition he had in the weapon. He’d lost track of how many times he’d fired. He would have to dig another clip out from under the seat.
But he hesitated, realizing that first he had to know the truth. The passenger-side door was still standing open. He reached back to grab the large box with the wedding dress in it. Earlier he’d put the two back seats down to shove the box forward when he loaded their suitcases. When they’d gone off the road, the box had come crashing forward and was now against the back of the two front seats. He lifted a corner of the box. The heaviness of it assured him that it was exactly what he knew it to be. A wedding dress full of drugs. No way was Gerald going to blow that up, so there was no bomb. It had all just been a ruse to get Kate out of the car—and it had worked.
His cell phone began to ring. He pulled it out.
“Don’t answer it!” Jon yelled as he suddenly came barreling around the front of the pickup, diving from the edge of road to grab for him. His cell phone dropped into the snow as Jon grabbed his arm and drove him backward away from the SUV. Collin tried to fight him off as the two grappled with Jon driving them both farther back.
Jon was yelling something Collin couldn’t hear, when the phone quit ringing—and Collin realized he still had the gun in his hand.
He swung around with just enough room between them to point the barrel at Jon’s midsection. He pulled the trigger. The shot made a puff sound with the silencer on it in the closeness between them. He pulled the trigger again. Click. Click. Click.
“You fool,” the carpenter said, his hand going to his side. Blood seeped from his fingers as he stumbled back.
Collin swung the gun, catching Jon in the face and knocking the man backwards. Caught off guard, Jon stumbled and fell over a rise. Collin watched him roll down into what appeared to be a gully, blood staining the snow in his path. He wanted to go after him and finish him, but he could barely see where he’d landed. He waited for movement.
Behind him, he heard his phone begin to ring again. He turned to look up the road. Kate had stopped at the top of a rise in the road, but he could tell she was already heading back. As if she could save Jon now.
If he’d had ammo in his gun, he would have taken a shot at her. He probably couldn’t have hit her—not at this distance with a pistol with a silencer on it—but he damned sure would have tried.
He turned back toward the SUV and the ringing phone. He couldn’t wait to tell Gerald that he’d taken care of everything. He had the drugs, he’d gotten them across the border, he’d taken care of Jon Harper and was about to finish things with Kate. He’d get another clip and go after her. Or maybe he wouldn’t have to. Maybe she would die of hypothermia before he found her.
What began to sink in was what Jon Harper had been yelling as he’d tried to drag him away from the SUV. The stupid fool really believed there was a bomb in it. Collin might have believed it, but he’d felt the wedding dress box. It had been heavy. Just like when he’d picked it up at the shop.
As he reached his open door of the SUV, he saw his ringing phone lying in the snow down in one of the holes his boots had made. He started to reach for it and stopped, remembering how Jon had been screaming for him not to answer it.
Collin shook his head as he pushed the seat forward and pulled the heavy dress box toward him. It wasn’t that easy to lift off the lid. He’d finally had to tear it to look inside. He felt instant relief. Thick sparkly fabric.
His phone quit ringing. He started to close the box when he saw something that shouldn’t have been in there. He felt his heart drop as he lifted the edge of the fabric.
Rocks? They’d been piled onto more padded fabric and then covered. When the SUV had gone off the road, though, they’d all shifted, so now two of them were visible. Rocks? He was trying to get his mind around what he was seeing when he moved the top fabric and saw what was nestled in the middle of the box. His blood ran cold. An armed explosive device sat huddled in a nest of even more of the expensive-looking fabric. He thought about the woman telling him not to look inside, not to disturb it and to be gentle carrying it.
His phone began to ring again, making him jump. At the same time, a tiny light began to blink on the explosive device. He swore and tried to turn and run, but he’d only taken a step in the deep snow when there was a flash of blinding light, a cracking noise and then nothing.
* * *
KATE HAD RUN up the road, the sound of Jon’s voice in her ears. Run! Think of Mia and Danielle. She’d run like she’d never run before. She’d thought he would be behind her. She’d prayed he would be. But when she’d heard the shots, she couldn’t go any farther. Jon wasn’t behind her.
She could see the two of them back at the vehicles. Why was Jon still down there? If there really was a bomb...? Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe he’d said that only to get her away from Collin, away from the gunfire.
That’s when she heard the pop of a shot from Collin’s gun. She’d seen Jon stagger and drop into the deep snow. What she did next had nothing to do with reason or common sense. Her body had just started moving back down the road toward him. She would have gone to him had she not been stopped by a blinding flash of light followed by a deafening boom of noise. The explosion had driven her back as the SUV she and Collin had been in moments before turned into a fireball. Debris showered down around the SUV, blackening the snow.