A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Normal

"No!" he cried as Zayn dropped the phone and started running toward Harry. He bolted around Harry side of the car, yanking him door open and diving across the front seat, slapping at the lock on the passenger door a split second after he yanked the door open and grabbed for Harry's wrist. With a strength born of pure terror, Harry managed to wrench his arm free and throw himself sideways through his open door. He hit the ground on his hip, scrambled to his feet, and started running, his feet sliding on the slippery snow, screaming for someone to help, knowing there was no one around to hear him. Zayn caught him before he'd run five yards and yanked him around and back, trapping him against the side of the Blazer. "Hold still and shut up!"

"Take the car!" Harry cried. "Take it and leave me here."

Ignoring him, he looked over his shoulder at the map of Colorado that had blown against a rusty trash container fifteen feet away when he dropped it. As if in slow motion, Harry watched him remove a shiny black object from his pocket and point it at him, while he backed toward the map and picked it up. A gun. God in heaven, he had a gun!

Harry's entire body began to tremble uncontrollably while he listened in a kind of hysterical disbelief to the newscaster's voice belatedly confirming that fact as the news bulletin came to an end: "Malik is believed to be armed and he is dangerous. If seen, his whereabouts should be reported immediately to the Amarillo police. Citizens should not attempt to approach him. A second escaped convict, Dominic Sandini, has been apprehended and taken into custody..."

Harry's knees threatened to buckle as he watched Zayn coming toward him with a gun in one hand and the map and directions blowing from his other hand. Headlights crested the hill a quarter of a mile away, and he slid the gun back into his pocket to keep it out of sight, but he kept his hand there with it. "Get into the car," he ordered.

Harry flashed a look over his left shoulder at the approaching pickup truck, frantically calculating the impossible odds of outrunning a bullet or even being able to attract the notice of the vehicle's driver before Zayn shot him down. "Don't try it," he warned in a deadly voice.

His heart thundering against his ribs, Harry watched the pickup turn left at the crossroads, but he didn't disobey his order. Not here, not yet. Instinct warned him that this deserted stretch of road was too isolated to succeed in anything but getting killed.

"Get moving!" Zayn took his arm and headed him to the open door on the driver's side. Cloaked in the deepening dusk of a snowy winter evening, Harry Mathison walked unsteadily beside a convicted murderer who was holding a gun on him. He had the chilling sensation they were both living a scene from one of his own movies—the one where the hostage got killed.

************************************************

Harry's hands shook so violently he had to grope for the keys in the ignition, and when he tried to start the car he nearly flooded the engine because even his legs were jerking with fright. Zayn watched him unemotionally from the passenger seat. "Drive," he snapped when the engine was started. Harry managed to turn the car around and guide it to the end of the parking lot, but he stopped at the main road, his mind so paralyzed with terror that he couldn't think of the words to ask the obvious question.

"I said drive!"

"Which way?" he cried, hating the timid, pleading sound of his voice and loathing the animal beside him for making Harry experience this uncontrollable terror.

"Back the way we came."

"B-back?"

"You heard me."

Rush hour traffic on the snowbound interstate near the city limits was moving at a crawl. Inside the car, the tension and silence were suffocating. Trying desperately to calm his rampaging nerves while he watched for some chance to escape, Harry lifted his shaking hand to change the radio station, fully expecting Zayn to order him not to do it. When he said nothing, Harry turned the dial and heard a disk jockey's voice exuberantly introducing the next country/western song. A moment later the car was filled with the cheerful sounds of "All My Ex's Live in Texas."