Hunted by Karen Robards Page B

We’re dead. We need a bomb that’s for real.”
    “Think about it: there’s as much of a real bomb now as there’s ever been,” Reed growled, while at the same time Caroline tried one more time to look at him over her shoulder as she snapped, “What have you done with my father?”
    Given what he knew about how she’d been treated by her father, Reed was surprised at the question.
    “He’s safe. All of them are safe.”
    “Safe?” Her voice went perilously shrill. She was looking all around, like maybe she thought he had them tucked away somewhere in the shadows. He wasn’t mistaken: there was a definite lessening in her fear level, which for the sake of his plan probably wasn’t a good thing. “Safe where?”
    Before he could answer that—not that he was going to answer it—Holly chimed in with, “You got a plan to get us out of here, right? ’Cause Ms. Cop here wasn’t kidding when she said they’re going to kill you. And me, too. Like, any minute now. Red dot on the forehead and then bang .”
    Great image. Thanks, kid.
    “Yes,” he told Holly. “I have a plan. You could help it along by just standing there and shutting up. ”
    “So what’s the plan?” Holly wasn’t going to shut up—Reed had known Holly long enough that he hadn’t had any real expectation that the kid would, although hope always sprang eternal—and as for standing there, he was twitching and grimacing and hopping from foot to foot with apprehension. Reed ignored him to concentrate on Caroline.
    “What are you doing?” Caroline’s voice was sharp. But she didn’t resist as he quickly and prudently secured her wrists behind her back with the zip tie he’d extracted from his pocket. He might feel a little bad about it, but he couldn’t afford to take any more chances. Until he had reason to change his mind, she was his hostage.
    “Being careful,” he replied, and let her go. She turned sharply toward him, glaring at him through the darkness.
    “This isn’t helping,” she snapped. “Take it from me, you’re out of time. Do you want to get yourself killed?” She nodded at Holly. “Do you want to get him killed?”
    “Yeah, Dick, what about me?” Holly almost wailed.
    “Not especially,” Reed answered Caroline. She didn’t have to tell him he was out of time. He could almost hear the proverbial clock ticking. But there were things he had to do, and they had to be done right if he and Holly were to have even a sliver of a chance of getting out of there alive. Grimly he focused on Caroline. “Sit. Right there on the floor.”
    Caroline looked at him with disbelief. “What?”
    “Do it,” he ordered her. “I don’t have time to argue about it. Either sit or—” He left the rest of that blank, gave her a threatening look instead, and had his answer in her indignant huff as she folded herself toward the floor.
    “Good girl,” he said—he kept having trouble remembering she was no longer seventeen—and she responded by snapping, “This is the stupidest thing you could do.”
    “She’s got the keys to the cuffs on her.” Sliding one foot in front of the other like he didn’t trust the floor beneath them, Holly came scooting toward him. Keeping a cautious eye on Caroline, who was clearly growing less afraid of him by the second, Reed moved to meet him. If she did something like, say, jump up and take off running, he didn’t like to think what he was going to have to do. “You want to get ’em from her and get these things off me. And the blindfold. Like, now .”
    “I’ve got the key.” Reed pulled the blindfold off Holly’s head as he stepped behind him to free him from the handcuffs. God, he was jacked up on adrenaline. It was as if he could feel his nerve endings jumping under his skin. Every muscle in his body was taut. His blood raced through his veins. He was sweating, and he, born and bred in the sultry Louisiana swamps, almost never broke a sweat. Keeping his cool, keeping his focus,