Page 15 of Preying Heart
A helpless woman.
A beautiful damsel in distress.
And a baby in jeopardy.
Ah, yes, someone knows all my buttons, and he’s luring me into a trap.
It could be the guy I busted paying me back for the indictment. Even though he was never prosecuted, his sterling reputation was damaged, and he forced me to go into hiding.
Or it could be her brother, but the two-bit crook has no money.
Or it’s the kingmaker funding the Greasleys’ Operation Persephone, the tech billionaire behind OgleNet, the world’s largest social media company where users win awards for invading other people’s privacy, post videos and spread rumors, collecting shameful data, all in the name of entertainment, profits, and dishing up gossip—a blackmailer’s delight and the bane of sex traffickers.
Would he use Remi Bruckner, the Greasleys’ showcase foster daughter, to bust up their empire or to gain control of a future president?
I’m betting the latter.
ChapterSix
Remi
I’m alone.
Still pregnant.
And trapped with a stranger who has a million-dollar reason to not let me go.
He hasn’t hurt me yet, but he’s not telling me what he’s going to do.
I have no choice but to follow his orders.
I can’t make a run for it—not even when we stop at an out-of-the-way rest stop and he ditches the car.
Instead, I gratefully gobble down the burger he buys for me and follow him like a baby duck on a wilderness trail full of switchbacks. I pride myself on being in good physical shape, but hiking up a steep and rocky trail wearing a pair of borrowed hiking boots and scratchy clothes isn’t the same as moving my legs on an elliptical trainer while wearing spandex with a ceiling fan blowing down on me. Mosquitos plague me. Blisters and hotspots burn my toes and heels, and I have a stitch in my side from exercising on a full stomach.
“You okay?” Heath turns around every few steps to check on me. “It’s not too much farther.”
“Why are we hiking over a mountain range?” I gasp for breath.
“Because most people on the run would take the easy trail along the river.”
“We’re on the run? I don’t get it.” I bend over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
“Whoever hired the gray suit guys isn’t going to just give up because we gave them the slip. Here, lean on me.” He tugs my left arm over his shoulder. “Once we get to that ridge yonder, it’ll be downhill.”
“And then what?”
“We hitch a ride on a railcar into Idaho. After that, we’re home free.”
“What’s in Idaho?”
“Nothing.”
* * *
He’s right. There is nothing in Divine, Idaho, a one-street town in between two mountain ranges, other than a railroad stop between the river and a series of warehouses, where the train slowed enough for Heath to help me off without breaking a leg. The sun had already set, so no one saw us as we hiked into a remote orchard where he’d hidden his pickup truck.
“Finally.” I moan with pleasure as I wiggle my feet from the stranger’s worn boots.
