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floored it.
    Horns blared as she crossed two lanes of traffic and ran a red light.

9
    F inn wrapped his hand around the grab bar and said a small prayer as Darcy flung his beloved Jeep heedlessly into traffic.
    Though he was certain he was about to die or be badly injured, it in no way impeded his enjoyment of the ironic fact that he would go down as a passenger in his own car, clinging to the oh-shit handle and praying silently, just as his mother always did when he took her for a quiet ride on the weekend. Mom had been right after all, this thing was a death trap.
    When the last of the screeching tires and horns had finished their chorus, he looked over at Darcy.
    She was Latina, so her skin was the same pretty tan as always, but he still would have described her face as pale. Her eyes were wide, lips pulled thin.
    Finn had never, ever seen Darcy rattled. And he’d witnessed her in action on more than one occasion, including just now when she was dealing with the goon that tossed his dressing room.
    Those guys had frankly scared him a little, especially the creepy lady in the pink suit giving the orders. He’d heard them call her Miss Sharp. The guys seemed like they might rough him up a little - no big deal, and he knew he could hold his own if he had to. But Miss Sharp… She seemed like she would have liked to put him in a birdcage and make him sing.
    Darcy took a hard left, her hands gripping the steering wheel so hard her tendons stood out.
    Something had gotten to her.
    And Finn was pretty sure he wanted no part of anything that could unsettle Darcy.
    He tried to stay quiet and help her by being on the lookout for anyone who might be following them.
    Darcy careened and curvetted a seemingly random route through the southern part of the city, past the newly constructed luxury condos and the old shipyard.
    At last they were on the ramp onto the highway.
    As far as Finn could see, no one had followed them.
    Darcy headed south.
    He could see her expression relax slightly as soon as they were rolling along at sixty five. But her eyes kept drifting back to the rear view mirror.
    “Where are we going?” Finn asked carefully. “It doesn’t seem like we’re headed to the police station.”
    “That’s the first place they’ll go. And then that awful woman—” she began.
    “—Miss Sharp,” he heard himself interrupt her to correct.
    “Whatever. She’ll have the kid back in a heartbeat, and we’ll be on the hook for kidnapping,” Darcy said.
    Oh.
    Well, he hadn’t thought of it like that.
    Shit, she was right. And he wasn’t about to spend any more time looking at the inside of a cell.
    “I guess both of our places are out of the question,” he mused.
    “If it was just the kid, I’d bring him right to my family. They’d know just what to do. But I’ve got something else going on,” she said, glancing nervously in the mirror again, “and I can’t bring that to their doorstep.”
    Instinctively, Finn looked over his shoulder to the road behind them. There was nothing unusual, just the same herd of cars heading down the highway at a relatively measured pace.
    He chose not to push the issue.
    “So where, then?” he asked.
    She bit her lower lip, suddenly looking young.
    Finn wondered exactly how old Darcy was. He had always seen her as capable, sexy, confident, more than an equal. Suddenly she seemed vulnerable. And like maybe she was in her late twenties, not her early thirties like he was.
    “We need to find somewhere we can wait for help. Somewhere public, but off the beaten path, and open all night,” she reflected out loud.
    “A hotel lobby? A CVS? A hospital?” Finn offered.
    “No, I’ve got it,” she replied.
    They drove in silence for a while, the gray of the buildings and the spaceship look of the airport fading into trees and swamps.
    They were really in the country now as far as he was concerned. Finn had grown up in a row home with four sisters. All his family lived on the block. The