Hunted by Karen Robards

hold on her a little to emphasize his point. She felt slimmer than he remembered, and stronger, too, in his arms. A grown woman now, not a girl. “Or give me any trouble. Understand?”
    She gave a curt nod.
    Cautiously he took his hand away from her mouth.
    “You don’t have a dead man’s switch.” Her tone made it a statement, not a question, and it surprised him. It took him a second, but then he knew exactly what she was talking about.
    “It wasn’t a dead man’s switch.” Sounding almost angry, she tried to look at him over her shoulder. “Was it?”
    He realized that by having both hands free and available to grab her he had given himself away, because, clearly, if he’d had a dead man’s switch, he wouldn’t have been letting go of it. Not that it mattered now. The answer was that, no, the slim canister of personal-size pepper spray he’d been holding threateningly in his hand for the benefit of the hostages and the camera had not been a dead man’s switch. But he had modified it just enough to make it look like one, and was mildly gratified to have further confirmation (besides his hostages’ shuddering reactions to it whenever they had happened to look in its direction) of how well the bluff had worked.
    Not that he was about to confess that it had been a bluff to Caroline. At this point, everything he did was on a need-to-know basis, and that she certainly didn’t need to know. Instead of answering directly, he said, “I need you to hold still and stay quiet.”
    “Okay,” she said. She was still breathing hard, still agitated. Given the direness of the circumstances, the surprise would be if she wasn’t. She was clearly on edge, clearly afraid of him, and he regretted that. What seemed like a lifetime ago, he’d felt a lot of affection for the smart-mouthed, too-hot-for-her-own-good teen who had tried to disguise vulnerability with attitude. She added, “I’m here to try and help you, you know.”
    “You armed?”
    “No.”
    “I need to check.” He was wired, jazzed, running on pure adrenaline. He’d had almost no sleep or food since he had gotten a good look at the pictures on Holly’s stolen phone and decided that there was indeed something there worth looking into. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, though, so he handled her as gently as possible even as he did what he needed to do.
    “Just tell me one thing: Why? Why are you doing this?” she asked as he pulled her arms behind her back—she didn’t resist—and, holding them there by the simple expedient of crooking an arm around her bent elbows, began giving her a one-handed pat down. He knew she wasn’t asking why he was frisking her. Rather, she wanted the why behind the hostage taking, the bomb threat, and the whole extremely criminal shebang in which he was currently engaged.
    “I needed to get Holly out of jail.” He gave her the short version. In a lightning decision, he rejected the idea of telling her about what Holly knew, what he now knew, about the deaths in the cemetery and Magnolia and the rest. He didn’t know what she knew or whose side she was on. He didn’t know if he could trust her. He did know that he and Holly might very well end up dead because of what they’d discovered. And if she wasn’t involved—he was pretty sure she wasn’t, but as previous events proved, his judgment in that regard didn’t seem to be worth shit—he didn’t want to chance putting Caroline at risk, too.
    “You couldn’t just bail him out ?” Her indignation almost made him smile.
    He couldn’t resist. “Low on funds.”
    “You want to hurry, Dick?” Holly’s voice was thin, and the way he was breathing told Reed just how nervous he was. “We don’t got all damned day.”
    “I’m hurrying,” Reed assured him.
    “What have you done with the hostages?” Caroline craned her neck to try to look at him again.
    “The hostages are fine,” Reed assured her.
    Checking the pockets of her windbreaker, he