LITMIR.BIZ

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OF THE COLOR had returned to Molly’s face before they’d left the house, and she seemed to have regained her equilibrium. But from the moment she’d reholstered her gun and pulled on her anorak and boots, she’d been silent. Even now, in the passenger seat of Barb’s Blazer, she said nothing, only stared out the windshield into the mesmerizing swirl of snow.

      Mitch could only imagine her thoughts as he backed the vehicle out the drive and nosed it south along Lakeshore Drive. Was she remembering as well? No, Mitch thought, more likely she was thinking about the years that had separated them. Was it resentment that turned down the corners of her mouth now? he wondered as he snatched another quick side glance. Was it bitterness and anger, harbored over the years because he’d never been able to offer her an explanation?

      In spite of the sickly green glow of the dash lights, her features appeared soft and innately feminine. Still, her angular profile had maintained that strong, almost fierce look of determination he’d always remembered. The loose ponytail that drew up her dark hair revealed the delicate curve of her neck, leading to the regal jawline—the same jawline he’d so often watched jut out with that unparalleled Sparling stubbornness.

      Another glance and he caught the determined chin, the tight yet exquisite lips, the fine, straight nose, the subtle hollow below her cheekbone, and those gently arched eyebrows. But even with his gaze directed out to the mounting storm beyond the windshield once more, Mitch could see Molly’s eyes. They had long since been burned into his memory—exquisitely wide, and dark…almost black, like a bird’s, Mitch had often thought.

      In the confines of the vehicle, it was impossible not to remember the early days of their relationship: the summer evenings at the drive-in theater, when he’d sneaked the same side glances at her and hoped to sneak a kiss as well. The late-night drives home, and then sitting outside her father’s house with the porch light still blazing. That’s where he’d kissed her the first time, at 1:00 a.m. on May 16, in the front bench seat of his father’s old Plymouth.

      It hadn’t mattered that he’d kissed other girls before then; with Molly it had felt like the first. From the moment he’d leaned across the seat, buried his fingers in her thick hair and drawn her mouth to his, Mitch had known it was more than just another kiss. Much more. There was no comparing, because that kiss, and every one they’d shared after that, had always felt like…coming home.

      Mitch’s body responded to the memories, and he tried instead to shift his focus to the road ahead of them, keeping the Blazer steady through the accumulating drifts. The weatherman’s predictions had certainly been accurate. Between the heavy snowfall and the unrelenting wind, whatever tracks Molly had made in her walk to the house had long since been covered or blown clear. Mitch was grateful that Barb had left him with the four-wheel drive and rented a car to get back to Chicago.

      “So the police know I’m alive?” he asked finally, needing something—anything—to break the heavy silence between them.

      In his peripheral vision he caught the flash of Molly’s eyes, but the second he tried to meet her stare, she looked away again.

      “No,” she answered flatly, her soft voice almost drowned out by the Blazer’s fan and the thumping wipers. “They think Sabatini got to you first.”

      “But you didn’t?”

      She shook her head.

      “Why?”

      “Call it a gut feeling.”

      “So you came all this way on the department’s budget?”

      “No. This is my vacation time, Mitch. My budget. I wanted to find you.”

      Was it possible? he wondered. Could Molly have driven all the way from Chicago just for him? Out of concern for his safety and well-being?

      No. The truth of the matter was Molly was a cop. Vacation or no vacation, as a cop she’d searched for him, and as a cop she wanted him to come back to Chicago. To testify.

      “So how did you find me?”

      “I broke into your office,” she said, so matter-of-factly she made it sound like standard police procedure. “Went through your Rolodex. Process of elimination. Figured that of all the places you’d run to, I’d find you here.”

      He saw her nod past the windshield.

      “My Jeep’s just around the next turn. I thought I saw headlights.”

      “Probably the plow,” he suggested. But if there had been a plow or another vehicle it was gone by the time he steered around the bend and caught sight of the Jeep’s four-way flashers.

      Mitch drove past the vehicle and pulled the Blazer to the shoulder of the road as well. Leaving it idling, he stepped out into a blast of icy air. In spots where the wind had blown the road clear, the packed snow squealed under his boots as he took out the gas can and walked back to the Jeep. There was no other sound; the heavy blanket of snow over the dense forest muffled the jangle of Molly’s key ring as she unlocked the gas cap, and the clank of the can as Mitch brought it up and fitted the nozzle.

      Holding the flashlight in one hand, Molly lifted her collar and tugged her scarf up under her chin against the biting cold. Mitch didn’t know why she unzipped her anorak from the bottom just then and fumbled underneath as though checking her gun’s holster. If he’d had time to think about it, he might have taken the gesture as a warning. He might have thought Molly sensed something that he didn’t. Or…he might have wondered if she’d expected what happened next.

      But the thoughts had barely begun to form themselves in his mind when they both heard the low rumble of an engine. Together they turned in time to see the sudden glare of high beams as a vehicle careened out of the darkness and around the corner. Momentarily caught in the headlights of the Blazer, the dark-colored SUV accelerated along the snow-covered road.

      “What the hell? It’s coming right at us!” Molly shouted above the revving engine.

      But Mitch didn’t need any warning. Instinct drove him. There was no time to wonder what lay in the darkness beyond the snowbank to his right. Anything was better than the grill of the oncoming vehicle. He dropped the empty gas can, and before it even hit the road, he’d snatched Molly’s hand in his.

      He cleared the bank before she did, dragging her after him, up and over the hard slope and into the soft, deep snow beyond. Vaguely he was aware of branches whipping at his face and an exposed boulder gouging into his back as he rolled with Molly. And finally, his own wind escaped in a gasp, knocked out of him as she landed on him.

      In the same instant, above the engine’s roar came the gut-wrenching sound of impact. It was followed by the scream of metal grinding against metal, of tortured steel and shattering glass.

      He heard Molly’s curse as she bellied up the bank, and when he joined her, peering over the top, the Jeep was a good forty feet from where it had been parked. It wasn’t until the assailing four-by-four slowed to a stop farther down the road and finally turned around that Mitch was able to see the damage it had inflicted on the smaller vehicle. In the other vehicle’s headlights, it was clear Molly’s Jeep had been spun around, the driver’s side crushed and the windows smashed out.

      Again he heard Molly curse, but this time she followed it up by lifting the edge of her anorak and taking out her gun. In the brief glare of headlights, he could see the determination in her face as she gripped the weapon in one gloved hand.

      “Molly, what are you doing?!”

      “What does it look like?”

      “It might have been an accident.”

      “I hardly think so. Get down, Mitch,” she ordered, pulling back the slide of the semiautomatic.

      “Molly, what the hell—”

      But he didn’t need to ask, nor did he need to hear Molly’s explanation behind the defensive stance she took, her body pressed along the snowbank, her elbows propped against the hardened surface as she brought

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