Chapter 2 - THE RULES OF A MAN LIKE COLE
Emma had stopped crying by the time they reached one hundred and twenty miles per hour.
Not because she felt safe.
Because terror had become too deep for sound.
She sat crouched in the back seat with the red backpack open on her lap, trying to shield baby Noah from every violent turn the car took. Her small bare feet were tucked beneath her. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears. The baby’s cries had weakened into frightened whimpers.
Cole drove like a man born with one hand on a steering wheel and the other around a weapon.
He took the first off-ramp without signaling, cut through a dry service road, then dropped back onto the highway five miles later after forcing one SUV into a cloud of blinding dust. He lost the second by darting through a construction detour. The third stayed with him longer than he liked.
Only when that last SUV missed a hard turn around a disabled truck and vanished behind a wall of flying gravel did Cole allow himself one measured breath.
He didn’t look at Emma when he spoke.
“Who were they?”
She clutched Noah tighter.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not!”
Cole cut his eyes toward the mirror.
She looked too terrified to be calculating.
He hated that.
Children that frightened made him feel something he had spent years training out of himself.
He drove another fifteen miles before pulling beneath the rusted shade of an abandoned gas station at the edge of nowhere.
The sign had fallen years ago. The pumps were dead. The building’s windows were boarded. It was enough for five minutes of cover.
He killed the engine.
Instant silence crashed over the car except for Noah’s ragged little cries.
Cole turned in his seat and faced Emma fully for the first time.
“Start from the beginning.”
Emma stared at him.
“Please help my brother first.”
Cole nearly told her no on instinct.
Instead, he opened the door, circled to the back, and pulled the red backpack toward the light. Noah’s face was flushed from heat and stress. His lips were dry. His breathing was fast, but not failing.
He frowned.
“What does he need?”
“Water. Formula. He has a fever sometimes when he cries too long.” Emma’s voice broke. “And he needs his medicine.”
Cole went very still.
“Medicine?”
Emma pointed with shaking fingers to a side pouch on the pack. Inside was a little bottle, a baby syringe, and two crumpled diapers. He studied the label.
He didn’t understand the drug name, but he recognized the dosing instructions.
He handed everything back.
“Take care of him.”
While Emma tried to calm Noah, Cole stepped away and lit a cigarette he did not want. He never smoked on jobs. It dulled his hands.
But this was no longer a job moving in a straight line.
This was an eleven-year-old girl, a sick baby, three hostile SUVs, and Rachel Morgan—the woman half the Southwest had been whispering about for two weeks.
Officially, Rachel was an embezzler who had vanished with encrypted financial records and a lot of men’s money.
Unofficially, every serious killer Cole knew had heard another version.
Rachel Morgan had stolen something worse than money.
Proof.
He crushed the cigarette under his shoe and got back in.
Emma looked up.
“Are you going to help us?”
He started the engine again.
“That depends on how useful your mother is.”
Emma’s face crumpled.
“She’s my mom.”
He drove back onto the road.
“To me, right now, she’s two million dollars.”
Emma stared at him in horror.
And for the first time since he’d stopped on the highway, Cole knew exactly what he looked like through her eyes.
A stranger in a dark suit.
A hard face.
A black car.
May you like
A man who saved her only because he wanted a reward.
The worst part was that she was right.
