Page 43 of A Shot at Love
Anger pushed through the raw, stark fear, the churning bile. The urge to scream at the top of her voice, to hit something hard, to fight against this seemingly endless nightmare, was powerful. She was supposed to be safe now; he’d promised her she would be. No one knew where they were heading, but yet again, they’d been found and ambushed.
It was obvious he couldn’t keep her safe, no matter how hard he tried. And Gemma did believe he had done everything he could. Even through her anger she recognized that. He’d never let go of her hand during their entire trek, never once. He was her protector, her defender, her guard, and he hadn’t shirked his duty for one moment since she’d been placed in his care.
Despite all his efforts, though, she was still in danger.
Leaning back into the cushion, she allowed her eyes to close and tried to calm her mind while the men spoke in Greek.
An idea wormed its way through her exhaustion.
A gentle hand on her shoulder pulled her back to the land of the living.
She startled instantly awake. “Wha—“
“You’re okay.” Ky squeezed her shoulder.
Gemma bolted upright in the cushioned chair to find him and his friend staring down at her.
“I fell asleep?”
“Only for a few minutes, I think,” Theo said. “And totally understandable.”
“We need to get moving,” Ky told her. “I need to get you out of here, out of the city.”
“Where?”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out,” Theo said. “It seems as if no place is out of this wacko’s reach so far.”
Ky shot him a speaking glace, then looked back at Gemma.
Before he could say a word, she swallowed and said, “I have an idea.”
Chapter Eight
Ky swerved around the narrow bend in the road, barely missed grazing a low-slung tree branch, and bit back the curse dancing on his lips. Next to him, Gemma consulted a map using a flashlight.
How Ky got talked into this crazy scheme, he couldn’t begin to understand. But here he was, in the dead of night, driving a beat-up, ready-for-the-crusher two-door sedan that should have been junked ten years ago, up a mountain thoroughfare that barely qualified as a road and not a rut.
“It looks like we make the next right turn,” Gemma said, pulling the map closer to her eyes. “Another quarter mile or so. There’s a marking on the right side of the trail that’ll read: Gossamer Way.”
A thoroughly stupid name for a road in the middle of nowhere. “How far is the cabin from the turnoff?”
“About a mile,” she said. “Give or take.”
Ky shook his head. So far, as a human GPS, Gemma was doing a fair job—they hadn’t gotten lost yet, but he would have preferred an actual navigational system. They couldn’t take a chance on using anything that could be electronically tracked, though.
“The text says it’s the only place for ten miles in any direction, so we should be safe enough for the moment.”
For the moment was the operative phrase, he told himself.
After speaking with Theo for over an hour and still having no idea what he was going to do, Gemma had the idea to contact her brother-in-law and ask for help, since, as she put it, “he was the best at what he did and would know what to do.” Ky’s pride had been wounded, the not-so-veiled implication being that he didn’t. At first he’d nixed the idea, but Gemma had argued her case astutely, telling him that Josh was used to subterfuge and even if Ritandi’s men had him and his business under surveillance because of his connection to her, Josh was an expert and knew how to help them without being seen to do so. The pride and love she felt for the man rang through her voice, once again shooting his ego down.
Gemma trusted her brother-in-law implicitly with her life; that was a fact. It was obvious she didn’t afford him the same assurance.
Ky had given in to her request and so far her confidence in Keane had proven sound.
Through an untraceable cell Theo had provided, Ky had contacted Keane on what Gemma called his bat phone—a cell no one but those closest to Josh had access to—and had been able to relay what had occurred during the past day.
Several back-and-forth calls later from various phones, and Keane had arranged for them to pick up the barely alive car they were currently in from a friend who, Josh told them, owed him a favor. Under the front seat they’d found an envelope with more than three thousand dollars in small bills with a note that read “For gas and sundries,” and two bags of groceries in the trunk.
