Arlie pointed toward her license plate and turned to Clem. “Don’t you have a cousin in South Dakota?”
Clem nodded. “Small world, I guess.”
“Mind if we share your fire for a while, keep you company?” Arlie took a step forward. “If you’d rather keep to yourself, we can go. We don’t mean to intrude.”
There was something silky in his voice, as if he desperately wanted her to trust him. Too bad for him.
She took a step to her left, ready to pivot and run. “I came up here to get some space, so I’d really like my privacy. Please go.”
Her pulse ticked off the seconds as she waited to see whether they would respect her wishes—or whether they were as bad as her gut told her they were.
“That’s not very friendly, is it, Clem?”
Shit.
Naomi tensed to run—then froze, heart seeming to stop in her chest.
A gun.
Clem held it in his right hand, the barrel pointed straight at her. “We haven’t had a decent bite in a few days. You’ve got plenty of food. Get to cookin’, woman.”
Naomi satnear the fire while Clem and Arlie ate the chili they’d forced her to make for them, a needle file she’d snuck from her toolbox hidden in her coat pocket. She knew where this was headed. Arlie’s wandering hands and the slimy grin on Clem’s face left no doubt in her mind what they planned to do once their stomachs were full.
She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
There are two of them and one of you, and Clem has a gun.
She squeezed that thought from her mind. She couldn’t let fear get the best of her, not if she wanted to get out of this untouched and alive.
Naomi had gleaned from the men’s conversation that they had escaped from a Texas prison and had been hiding out in Roosevelt National Forest for at least a week, eating food stolen from campsites and sheltering in some old abandoned ranger cabin. She and her SUV were their ticket to getting out of here and moving down the highway.
Arlie belched. “Bring some firewood, squaw. The fire’s burning low.”
Naomi glared at him, got slowly to her feet.
“That’s what you are, ain’t you?” Arlie reached for her, but she dodged him. “You’re part Indian. Your daddy must’ve been white on account of them blue eyes.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t have answered even if she’d wanted to because she didn’t know. Not even the people who’d raised her had known who her parents were or where she’d come from.
“She’s part Indian?” Clem sniggered. “Which part? Seems like we ought to spread her legs and find out.”
His vile words sent frissons of fear through Naomi. She picked up an armload of firewood from the stack near her truck and carried it back to the fire, the needle file burning a hole in her pocket. She would do whatever it took to defend herself, though the idea of killing someone made her stomach ache.
Don’t think about it.
She dropped the wood beside the fire pit, took one of the smaller pieces and poked at the fire, embers glowing orange. And then it came to her—a way out.
She adjusted her hold on the wood, jabbed at the fire again, her body tensing, her pulse beating faster. All at once, she scooped up flaming wood and embers and flung them into Clem’s lap, then swung the wood like a bat into Arlie’s face, knocking him onto his back.
“Son of a bitch!” Clem howled. “I’m burned!”
Arlie grunted. “Fuck! Get her!”
Naomi bolted toward the forest. She didn’t wait to see how badly the bastards were hurt or to find out whether Clem was pointing his gun at her. If she could just get far out of the firelight where they couldn’t see her…
BAM!
A gunshot split the night. The blast made Naomi shriek, turned her blood to ice, but she kept running. It was only after the darkness of the forest had swallowed her that she realized she’d been hit.