Shiver

thigh and pulling it tight. God, that hurt. It made a rough but effective tourniquet, and if he left it in place longer than about the next fifteen minutes he would probably be in danger of losing his leg.
    Which, unfortunately, seemed like the least of his problems at the moment.
    “As soon as that trunk lid opens, I want you to be ready to go. Jump and run. Just run away into the dark as fast and as far as you can. For your life, you hear?” he told her.
    “I hear.” The tempo of her breathing had slowed down, as if she were deliberately calming herself. “Oh, God. I’m scared.”
    “In a situation like this, fear’s a good thing. Keeps you sharp.” He reached around, caught her hand. It felt slender and fine-boned and, surprisingly considering the temperature in the trunk, cold as ice. Or maybe not so surprising: he could feel a slight tremor in her fingers that underlined just how truly afraid she was. Her hand clung to his, clutching it, telling him that she needed comforting in the worst way. Pulling her hand around in front of him, he surrendered to the impulse of the moment and lifted it to his mouth, kissed the knuckles. He felt her slight movement and took it for surprise, but again she didn’t try to pull away.
    “We got this,” he told her. He was still holding her hand, and she was holding his hand back even more tightly. Maybe it was a lie, but right now he felt she needed to hear it. To stand even the smallest chance of escaping, she was going to need confidence and courage. “We’re going to make it. Just do what I tell you, and you should be fine.”
    “I will.” Her voice had steadied. “What about you?”
    “You let me worry about me.”
    The car stopped its forward motion. Then the rocking stopped. They weren’t moving at all any longer. His body tightened as his heartbeat speeded up. Behind him, Sam caught her breath and quickly withdrew her hand from his. She must have realized what the fact that they had stopped meant, too. He felt her tense, and then her weight no longer pressed into his back as she edged away from him, scooting as best she could back toward the rear of the trunk. While he could still feel the warmth of her touching him in places, she seemed to have put as much distance between them as possible, as if she thought maybe they might overlook her or something when the trunk opened. Which he didn’t have a problem with: at least it gave him some room to maneuver. As long as she remembered to jump.
    “Here’s the deal.” He fished the knife—the pathetically small and way-less-than-lethal knife—out of his pocket. Ironically, now that he had cut off the blood flow to most of his leg it hurt worse than ever. Enough to where not thinking about it required real effort; fortunately, he had distractions. “I’m going to go after whoever opens the trunk as soon as it happens. They think I’m still tied up, so they won’t be expecting that. You takeadvantage of their distraction, and jump out of the trunk. You’ll probably only have a few seconds, so run like hell the minute you hit the ground.”
    “Shh.” She breathed the warning.
    That was when he heard it at last: the slight crunch of footsteps on gravel.
    They were coming.
    Danny tensed. He took a deep breath, centered himself, and felt his pulse rate slow way down: battle mode. At least now, unbound, he had a chance, however slim it might be. He braced the foot of his uninjured leg against a protuberance at the side of the trunk, the better to help him spring out, and got a good grip on the knife. His hand-to-hand combat skills were top-notch, but the sad truth was that, virtually weaponless, it was hard to defend against one gun, let alone two. Uninjured, he might have stood a fighting chance, but as it was . . .
    The footsteps stopped. Danny’s every sense went on red alert. From the sounds, he knew that there were still only two of them, even knew where they were. Both stood behind the car, one in the center, one to the left.
    Torres and Thug Two, he presumed. If Veith was there, or anyone else, they’d arrived earlier. He would have heard another vehicle crunching over the gravel.
    “Heads up,” he whispered.
    Just as Danny realized that he couldn’t hear her breathing any longer, a metallic click sent the hair on the back of his neck into bristle mode. It also gave him a split second’s warning:someone had hit the trunk release button on the BMW’s key ring.
    This is it.
    His gut