ANGELA GRIPPED THE steering wheel with more force than
necessary. She tried to relax, to unclench her grip around
the leather, but it was as if her fingers were claws. She
didn't have a clue where she was going. Somehow she had
taken a wrong turn, and, instead of heading to her aunt's
cabin, she had ended up on this bloody highway. A turnoff
was up ahead. She took it and slowed down, realizing
belatedly the speed she'd been traveling. Her nerves were
shot, and she could swear to God she'd been followed for the
large part of this journey.
A black pickup seemed to sit on her ass for the last several
hours as she drove up the California coast.
Then suddenly there was no sign of it. That made her more
worried than ever. She'd wanted to stop and check in with
Bridget, let her know she was okay, but she was afraid her
phone was being tracked, so she had turned it off. It was
just way too easy to get people you loved in deep trouble.
And that was something she couldn't handle.
She was desperate to get Joshua back, but she didn't know
how to accomplish that.
For some wild reason, she'd thought Corey would be able to
help her. But she hadn't even stayed long enough to explain
it to him. How would she tell him, as the father of the
child she'd lost, that the father of her second child was
trying to take her out of the equation?
She gave a bitter laugh. "I can really choose men. I walked
away from a good one and ended up with a crazy one."
She pulled into a gas station and got out. She not only
needed to fill the tank in the car but she needed food and a
rest stop.
She finished pumping gas, paid for it with her credit card
and then froze. She pounded the roof of her car and bowed
her head. "Shit. Shit. Shit. Somebody can track my credit
card use."
She stared bleakly out at the world around her as she parked
her car by the nearby restaurant. "I was not cut out to do
this."
Exhausted, worried, she walked inside, ordered coffee and a
sandwich, and sat down in the far corner. She'd very quickly
learned to sit in such a way where she could watch the
traffic coming and going, keeping an eye on anybody who
appeared to be watching her. When her coffee arrived, she
stared at it with longing. It would still be at least two
minutes before it cooled enough for her to drink it.
And she was rather desperate for the caffeine hit. When the
sandwich arrived soon afterward, she swallowed that down in
several bites and then sat back to enjoy the coffee. She
didn't know where she was going at the moment. She needed to
ask somebody for help, but she didn't want to draw any
attention to herself. She had a GPS option on her phone, but
the roads in the area were not well-enough marked to use it.
She brought out the address from her pocket and the old map
she had stuffed in the back of the car's glove box, then had
transferred to her purse.
Once she had figured out where she was, she realized she'd
taken a wrong turn about forty minutes back. She groaned.
"I'll be a couple more hours getting there."
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