Free Escape Out of Darkness by Anne Stuart Page A

audible whisper.
    “Sure thing. But you just raced past the fire exit.”
    “Why the hell didn’t you say so?” She wheeled around, diving through the door with Mack on her heels, and moments later they were clattering down the stairs. Three flights down, she flung her body against the wall, gesturing Mack to do thesame, and they stayed there, listening, for what seemed an eternity.
    “They didn’t see us,” she gasped. “So far so good. Let’s go.”
    “Won’t I look a little odd carrying this?” Mack gestured with the gun.
    Maggie opened one of the bags. “Toss it in here.”
    “And then what?”
    “We find a way out of here without tripping an alarm. Then we find a car, a motel, and we find a way out of the country.”
    “You want to tell me where we’re heading?”
    She pushed herself away from the wall. “Honduras.”
    “Honduras?” He managed the semblance of a shriek.
    “That’s where we’re most likely to find Van Zandt. He spends far too much of his time as a military adviser for various rebel groups. Last I heard he was stationed in Honduras. So that’s where we’re going. Any objections?”
    “No. As long as we get there in one piece.”
    “I expect we will. We’ve been damned lucky so far.” She started down the next flight of stairs at a more reasonable pace.
    “Luck has a habit of changing,” Mack said from above her.
    She paused long enough to meet his troubled gaze fearlessly. “And some people make their own luck. Come on. I promised I’d get you out of this mess, and I’m going to. It’s just going to take a little longer than I expected.”
    “That’s all right, Maggie May. I’ve gotten used to having you around.” And he caught up with her just as she was trying to decide whether she liked the sound of that or not. “Let’s go steal another car.”
    “A Mercedes this time,” she said.
    “Maybe. More likely another Beetle.”
    “I won’t be able to walk if my legs are cramped into another VW,” she warned.
    “I’ll carry you.”
    And she was damned if she didn’t like the sound of that, after all.

seven
     
    “You sure know how to pick ’em, Maggie.” Mack surveyed the shabby motel room with more curiosity than actual condemnation. “I think I preferred the Travers.”
    “Beggars can’t be choosers. Jail would probably be more comfortable too.” She dumped the much-abused shopping bags on the bed, then dropped her aching body beside them. It was the worst motel she’d come up with since they left Utah—even the late, unlamented Lone Star Bide-a-Wee was a model of cleanliness and luxury compared to their current quarters. There were two different patterns of paper on the water-stained walls—cabbage roses on the outside wall, green polka dots on the bathroom wall. The two narrow beds were covered with raveled chenille bedspreads, and the wall-to-wall carpeting showed the paths of a thousand weary feet.
    But it was outside the sprawling city limits of Houston, ten miles from a small, run-down private airport, and for the moment they were safe.
    Somehow, they had managed to escape the death trap in the Travers Hotel. Through a stroke of amazing good luck the stairway had ended in the basement garage of the huge building. It had taken five minutes to retrieve their aging VW, and then they were off, chugging past the police cars with their lights flashing into the early evening sky. Maggie had been right—someone had sent for the police, and she had no doubt at all that Peter’s killer made the phone call. Mack had read the road atlas, directing her toward Simmons Airfield, and the LazyCowboy Doze-Motel had loomed up out of the darkening sky like a beacon.
    A somewhat dimmed beacon, Maggie had to admit. “I’m too dirty to sleep and too tired to move. All I want is a hot shower and twenty-four hours’ sleep.”
    “Let me go first. There’s a Laundromat two doors down—I can wash the clothes we’re wearing while you’re taking your