Escape Out of Darkness Read Online Free PDF

emptiness and failure that had been nagging at her for the past few months came back full force.
    Maybe it was bad blood. Maybe she was doomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps, always falling in love with the wrong man, never being able to love the right one. Her sisters hadn’t been blessed with any more luck than she had. Kate was on the verge of a divorce, Holly seemed to go through men like Kleenex, and Jilly kept away from them altogether. They were a sorry lot, the four of them.
    “Penny for your thoughts,” Mack’s voice rasped beside her, and she looked up, startled.
    “I was thinking about my family. You got any brothers or sisters?”
    “One brother. He lives in Seattle, drives a car very much like this one, and totally disapproves of me. Loves me, but thinks I have a helluva life-style.”
    “So you do.”
    Mack shrugged. “I like it when I’m not being gunned down. It’s not for Alan, but then I’d suffocate if I had to live his life. He’s a stockbroker, with a socially ambitious wife, socially ambitious children, even socially ambitious dogs. I think their image is more real to them than what’s behind it.”
    “What is behind it?”
    “Basically good people but lacking in depth. Do you have brothers and sisters, Maggie May?”
    “Three sisters. Half sisters, to be exact.” She wrinkled her forehead. “Actually, I guess I have more than that. My mother had four daughters, my father had me and then three sons by his second wife. I tend to think of my half brothers as more like cousins. It’s odd, because they’re just as closely related as Kate or Holly.” She shook her head.
    “So what were you thinking about your family?” It was a casual question, one to wile away the long hours of Arizona flatland, but Maggie wasn’t in the mood to spill her soul.
    “Just that I missed them,” she said evasively. She could see by the look he gave her that he wasn’t fooled, but he dropped the subject. She was learning he had a way of doing that, pushing just a little bit, then pulling back when she got uncomfortable. She sort of liked that about him. She sort of liked a lot of things about him, even though she still wasn’t quite sure she trusted him.
    “Do you have any more of those nails you threw on the road yesterday?” he asked in a tone of no more than casual curiosity.
    She looked at him, as she had many times during the morning, trying to superimpose her memory of the legendary Snake on the rumpled, world-weary, very real man beside her. He had the mirrored sunglasses perched on his nose and his hands were resting with casual competence on the leather-covered steering wheel. Big hands, strong hands, she noticed.
    And then his words penetrated her abstraction and Maggie was instantly alert. “I threw them all. Why?”
    “Because while I think the Snow Princess is completely innocent, I’m not too sure about the Little Hustler from Mobile, Alabama. Vern and Donna Jean and Jennifer and Tommy are supposed to be inside. Instead, they look like Juan and Carlos and Manuel. And I don’t think they’re here to see the sights.”
    “The men in the car yesterday weren’t Hispanic.”
    “So we’ve traded one set for another. Great.” Mack straightened in his seat, just marginally, and she could see those strong,broad hands of his flex experimentally around the steering wheel. “Where’s the Snow Princess?”
    “I can’t see it but I guess it’s behind the Little Hustler. Do you want me to drive?”
    “I thought we already agreed that in these circumstances we didn’t have time to stop and switch drivers?” His voice was still casual. “You’re going to have to leave it up to me. Fasten your seat belt.”
    At least he’d stopped calling her Superwoman, she thought gratefully. “Are you sure you can handle it?”
    “We don’t have much choice, now do we? If it’s any consolation, I can tell you that I managed to survive two Ferraris, a Corvette, and a Jaguar XKE in my