Free Under the Magnolia by Moira Rogers Page B

my French, Granny, but what the
hell are we walking into?"
    "Stuart Carlin is not a career
criminal," she replied tartly. "He's going to be all sorts
of jumpy and scared to death of what you're likely to do to him for
kidnapping Addie."
    "I'm going to beat the living
crap out of him, that's what I'm going to do." He opened his
Silverado and grabbed a bag from the front floorboard then headed
back to Granny's truck.
    Granny nodded as she waited for him
to come to the passenger door and help her up into the seat. "We're
heading to Florida. Take the highway out to 95."
    "Has he already crossed the
state line?" I need
to call the damned FBI already.
    "Hours ago," Granny said
softly. "But you can't call the FBI, Wesley. Addie will die if
you do."
    The engine roared, and his fingers
tightened on the steering wheel. After the last day, nothing shocked
him, not even Granny Gardner possibly reading his mind. "If you
can promise me that she's okay and we’ll get her back, I'll
hold off on it."
    Granny said nothing as he pulled her
truck onto the highway that led out of town. They'd gone several
miles before she finally broke the silence. "I remember the
first time you came to my home with Addie. Day after her mama's
funeral, and she'd scared me half to death by running off. You knew
exactly where to find her, and you coaxed her home somehow."
    It hadn't been hard to find her.
He'd just gone to the cemetery and heard her sniffling then found her
high in the branches of a live oak by the front gates. "She was
watching them add her mama's name to the tombstone."
    Granny didn't seem to hear him. "The
minute you walked through that door with her, I had the strongest
vision of my life. You were down at the county hospital, grinning ear
to ear as you introduced me to my great grandson. She was twelve
years old that day, and you two could barely stand each other half
the time, but I knew then, Wesley. I knew."
    The idea of him and Addie together
and having babies nearly choked him with emotion. He'd spent so many
years thinking of a life with her as nothing more than a pipe dream,
but Granny was telling him it was a foregone conclusion. "So...what?
Nothing we do matters? Whatever will be, will be, or whatever?"
    "It always matters," she
countered, looking at him suddenly. "Sometimes the visions are a
warning, and sometimes they're a promise. We've just got to help the
Fates out a little bit. They're too busy to take care of it all."
    He ground his teeth together. "Then
what do we do ?"
    Granny just smiled. "You
concentrate on driving, son. I'll tell you everything you need to
know."

    Addie had no idea how much time had
passed when the truck finally stopped again. They'd rolled over so
many twisting dirt roads that she imagined they'd covered every back
road between Carter's Bay and wherever it was they'd ended up. Her
stomach complained bitterly, and she peered up into the darkness when
Stu pulled the tarp from over her head again.
    But it wasn't Stu; it was the man
from her vision. His eyes wandered over her in a blatantly assessing
manner. "Good evening, Miss Gardner. I trust you had a pleasant
trip?"
    She blinked her eyes, trying to
focus. "I trust you wouldn't care either way," she said
before she could stop herself. Her mind was occupied with a different
problem—changing her vision enough to keep Wes alive.
    "That's where you'd be wrong,
Adelaide. My buyers prefer unmolested merchandise." His accent
was odd, stilted. Foreign.
    "Oh?" She shifted enough
that she could stare up at him. "I've been tied up in the back
of this truck since morning in wet clothing with no food and no
water. How pleasant do you think my trip was?"
    "We can remedy that," he
told her, his dark eyes inscrutable in the dark of evening. "There's
a motel nearby." He snapped his fingers. "We will go there
at once."
    "No!" The word slipped out
of her before she could stop it, but the obvious fear in her voice
was something she could use. She let it fill her eyes as she