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backseat door to check on her, she might stand a chance of getting out and running if—
    There were a dismal number of if s, and none of the options held much promise of success. But, dammit, she wouldn’t just lie here to be dealt with when he felt like it. She wouldn’t make it as easy for him as his previous victim had. She wouldn’t be dispatched without giving him a fight.
    However, she also knew on an instinctual level that this man wouldn’t be easily tricked or overtaken physically.
    When she’d left the bar, the parking lot had been dark and, she’d thought, deserted. Rushing footsteps over gravel had alerted her to the approach of her two attackers. In the nanosecond between her spinning around and the pistol being fired, she’d recognized both from having seen them in the bar just a few minutes before: the heavyset man who hadn’t made any kind of memorable impression on her; and him , who had.
    As he’d walked past where she sat at the bar, they’d made brief eye contact. She remembered his above-average height, an unhurried but somehow predatory stride, a severe face, and eyes sharp enough to cut diamonds. She’d had a visceral reaction to that incisive gaze and had quickly looked away from it.
    She should have heeded that intuitive warning of danger, but at the time, she had mistaken it for another type of reaction, another kind of danger.
    Any sudden movement of her head caused the throbbing to sharpen, so now she gingerly angled it in order to get a clearer view of him. Above the driver’s-seat headrest, she could see a swirl of hair on the crown of his head. She remembered it being long and untidy. It looked darker in the blue ambient light of the dashboard than it had beneath the amber, smoke-fogged fixtures inside the bar.
    Visible through the space between the two front seats was a portion of his right arm, sleeved in blue chambray. She recalled that the shirt had pearl snap buttons. The cuffs were rolled back almost to his elbows.
    He hadn’t impressed her as being particularly muscle-bound, not a body builder type, but evidently he was strong enough to carry her to his car, because she certainly hadn’t made it here under her own power.
    Reluctantly, she admitted how difficult it would be, if not impossible, for her to physically overcome him.
    No, in order to survive, she must somehow outwit him, and in order to do that, she couldn’t operate in a vacuum. She needed information, and he was her only resource.
    She cleared her throat. “Congratulations. You have me. Who are you?”
    For all the response she got, he could have been deaf.
    “Do you have a destination in mind, or are we just putting distance between us and the scene of the crime?”
    He remained silent, registering no reaction whatsoever.
    “How long was I out?”
    Nothing.
    “Hours?”
    When he still didn’t respond, she said, “Actually, it doesn’t matter. The police will have quickly deduced that you murdered that man in cold blood and kidnapped me.”
    Stone silence.
    “By now, they’ll have launched a full-scale search. Kidnapping is a federal crime. So not only the local authorities but the FBI will be in on the manhunt, and they won’t give up until they find me. And they will .”
    “I give them three days.”
    Since he hadn’t responded to anything else, she was momentarily taken aback to hear his voice again and even more alarmed when she realized that he had gradually braked. As the car slowed, he steered it into a right turn.
    Once they were off the highway, the view through the car window changed. Their headlights danced crazily across overlapping treetops that obscured the view of open sky. For fifty yards or so, rocks knocked against the undercarriage as the car jounced over deep potholes.
    “Three days minimum,” he said. “By that time, I’ll be back in Mexico, sipping cerveza and shopping fishing boats.”
    “What about me?”
    He stopped the car, shifted it into Park, and turned to address