“Hey, slow down. We’re not protesting. You can have the truck, if that’s what you are after.” Sawyer reached for the seat belt and got a tap on the shoulder with the butt of the gun.

“Don’t be cute, or you’ll never see her again,” the man said.

“I’m undoing our seat belts. Don’t get trigger-happy. We are stepping out now,” Sawyer said.

If only one of them had held a gun, he might have grabbed it and told Jill to run, but not when there were two guns. Jill might get hurt or killed. There wasn’t a truck in the world worth harming one hair on her head, but who in the hell would have thought there would be hijackers in Burnt Boot, Texas?

“Hey, Sherlock,” the man with the gun on Jill yelled. “It’s all yours.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Sawyer asked. “Can I get my personal things out of the glove compartment before you take it off to strip it down for parts?”

“Who said we’re stripping it down? And, no, you can’t get anything out of the inside. You’ve probably got guns in there. Give me your cell phones, billfold, and your purse, woman,” Jill’s assailant said.

Sawyer inhaled deeply. Yes, there was a pistol in the glove box, another one in the console, and a third one under the seat. He had a license to carry all three, but it wasn’t doing him a bit of good right then.

Sherlock crawled into the driver’s seat, backed the truck out, and drove away with it. No skidding tires or slinging gravel—just drove off like it belonged to him.

“Now, you two start walking,” Jill’s outlaw said.

“To where?” Jill asked.

“Out to the road.”

“Are you going to kill us in the middle of the road? Wouldn’t it be better to shoot us right here?” Jill asked.

Sawyer could have wrung her pretty little neck himself right then. If they reached the road, there was a possibility that someone might drive by and help them. He reached over and laced her fingers in his. She squeezed his hand gently, and he hoped that didn’t mean she was about to try something stupid.

A dark van pulled up and slowed down, and Sawyer thought their problems were solved, until the double doors at the back swung open, and the two hooded men motioned for them to get inside.

“What the hell is this?” Sawyer protested.

The second man shoved the gun into Jill’s gut, and Sawyer crawled inside the van. They pushed Jill in right behind him. The doors closed, and the darkness was so thick that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

“Jill, where are you?” he whispered.

A hand reached out and touched him on the shoulder. “Right here.”

He grabbed it and pulled her into his lap, felt around her face until he found an ear, and pressed his lips close to it. “I imagine this is bugged, so start kicking the side of the van to make noise, and I’ll whisper. Who do you know that would kidnap you?”

She kicked and said in a loud whisper, “Nobody. Not even Aunt Gladys or Aunt Polly would do this.”

“Gallaghers or Brennans?”

“Both.”

“Which way are we going?”

“I don’t know. I think we turned around about the time they shoved me in here, but I’m not sure.”

The van slowed down as if stopping at a red light or a stop sign. Burnt Boot had only one red light and a handful of stop signs, but Sawyer still couldn’t get a bearing on where they were. Or why in the hell either of the feuding families would want to kidnap them.

Tires squealed, and they were thrown against the doors of the van. Whoever was driving cussed loud enough that they could hear him through the metal separating the cab from the cargo area. “Damn tree in the road. You should have checked things out better than this, Dumbo.”

“Does that name mean anything to you?” Sawyer asked when they were sitting back up.

“No,” she whispered.

“Well, let’s get out and move the damn thing. We can’t get to where we’re going any other way,” the one with the deep voice said.

Everything got quiet.

“I’m going to kick these doors open,” Sawyer said. “Slide back so you are out of the way.”

He raised his foot, his boot landed square on the hinged part, and the doors swung open as if by magic. Trouble was, instead of a midnight sky, there were two more guys in ski masks with guns, pistols this time, motioning for them to be quiet and get out of the van.

“It’s the FBI,” Jill said. “They’re here to save us and then shoot the balls off those bastards for stealing your truck.”

One of the men chuckled. “Follow us. Now get in here. Be quiet, and we’ll get you out of this.”

Sawyer and Jill moved as quietly as possible and crawled into another cargo van. This one was blue with some kind of lettering on the side, and the doors went shut, but not before Sawyer shoved his jacket in between them.

“Why did you do that?” Jill asked.

“I don’t think we’re being rescued. I think we’re changing kidnappers.”

“No!” she said.

“Give them time to get around to the front, and then we’re getting out. Slide off into that ditch until they drive away, and then we’ll start making our way out of this mess. We might have to find a place to hole up until daylight, when we can get our bearings. I think we were driving for about twenty minutes, but I don’t have any idea which way…now, Jill, slide out right now. They’re starting to move.”

He grabbed her hand and opened one door, retrieved his denim jacket, carefully shut the door, and the van pulled away into the night without its passengers. The two men wrestling with the tree finally freed it, and they went in the opposite direction without ever realizing they’d lost their cargo.

Sawyer and Jill exhaled loudly at the same time as they watched from a prone position halfway down a ditch beside the road.

“Now what? We don’t know where we are, and our cell phones and money are all gone,” Jill said.

“Take a real deep breath,” Sawyer said.

“Yuck,” she said.

“That, darlin’, is pig shit. Where there are pigs, there is a barn or a house or something nearby. We’ll follow our noses until we find a barn.”

“Why not knock on a door and ask for help?” she asked.

“We might get shot for one thing, and how do we know who we can trust?” He pulled her up, put on his jacket, and wrapped her hand into his. “I’m going to kick some ass when I find out who did this. I’m too damned tired to walk for miles in the cold.”

“Get in line, Sawyer O’Donnell. I get first chance at them. I hate to pee in the brush, and I damn sure hate sleeping in a hayloft,” she said.

They crawled over two barbed-wire fences, worked their way through a patch of thick mesquite, and outran one rangy old bull before the barn loomed up before them like a silent sentinel in the night.

“I may go back to Corpus Christi and sling hash for a living after this. I’m sick of pig wars and pig shit, and I’m not sure I even like pork chops anymore,” she grumbled.

“It’s only a quarter mile at the most, and it looks like the pasture has winter wheat growing. It’s not tall enough to turn the cows into it, so the going should be good,” he said. “Besides, Gladys will call out the Army, the National Guard, and the Texas Rangers when we don’t show up for church.”

“No, she won’t. I told her that we might not be there, and she’s not going. She and Aunt Polly are staying home, and Verdie is coming over later to play canasta with them. And, remember, she’s doing chores tomorrow, so she won’t miss us until Monday, probably when we don’t show up at the store.”

The barn hadn’t been in use for years, but what was left of the tack room still had a couple of well-worn winter horse blankets stored in a drawer. Sawyer carried them to a stall, kicked the straw around to fluff up a bed, and shook out one blanket.

“We’ve slept spoon style before, and that’s the only way we’ll be able to stay warm with a bed this small,” he said.

“I could sleep standing up in a broom closet. Sawyer, why would the Gallaghers or the Brennans kidnap us? It doesn’t make sense.”