Free Time Enough for Love by Suzanne Brockmann

looking quickly at each one they passed. “We can’t go there.”
    “Where are we going to go?” Maggie asked. “An even bigger question: if we can’t take my car, how are we going to get there? Wherever
there
is.”
    He glanced back at her. “We’ll have to borrow someone else’s car.”
    Maggie dug in her heels. “
Borrow
someone else’s car? It’s not as if we’re going to find one with the keys in the ignition,” she said. “What are you going to do? Hot-wire it?”
    Chuck nodded. “Absolutely.”

FIVE
    “I CAN’T BELIEVE you know how to hot-wire a car.”
    Chuck glanced away from the road and over at Maggie, his face dimly lit by the green dashboard light. “It’s all a matter of understanding how things work.”
    It was obvious to Maggie from the ease with which Chuck had started the engine of this white, late-model Taurus with only the Swiss army knife he had in his pocket, that he had a clear understanding of how things worked.
    It was obvious, too, that he had an understanding of how to
keep
things working when he not only switched license plates with the car next to the whiteTaurus, but stopped in another badly lit corner of the parking lot and quickly switched plates a second time.
    It was likely that while someone coming out of the mall would notice that their car was missing, they probably wouldn’t notice that their plates had been switched. And while the state police would be on the lookout for a white Taurus with the original plates, they wouldn’t be looking for a white Taurus with this third set of plates.
    Chuck glanced at her again, and Maggie realized she was staring at him, but she couldn’t seem to stop. His face looked angular in the shadows, his cheekbones in sharp relief.
    There was more than mere age that made him look different than Charles. There was a hardness to his mouth, an edge to him that made her wonder with a shiver just where he’d draw the line in his quest to set things right.
    They were traveling north on Route 17, heading up into the mountains, toward Sedona and Flagstaff. The tires of the car made a low humming sound on the highway as they moved at a speed slightly over the limit.
    They’d made only one stop—right before they left the city limits. Chuck had pulled up to a roadhouse-style bar, and he and Maggie had gone inside.
    They weren’t there to quench their thirst. No, in just a matter of minutes after walking into the place, they were seated at a table in the back, across from a man who looked as if he hadn’t bathed since Jimmy Carter was in office. As Maggie incredulously looked on, Chuck paid a hundred and fifty dollars cash for a deadly-looking handgun, a shoulder holster, and a box of ammunition.
    The two men shook hands, and then—cool as a cucumber, as if he wore an illegally obtained, unregistered handgun underneath his jacket all the time—Chuck slipped the leather straps on over his shirt. Somehow he knew how to fasten it all together to make it work as a holster. He checked the gun—for what, Maggie didn’t know; to see if it was loaded?—then slipped it into the holster, putting his jacket back on to hide it. The box of bullets went into his pocket.
    Maggie didn’t say a thing.
    Chuck suggested they make use of the facilities before they hit the road again, and when she came out of the ladies’ room, he was talking on the pay phone. He hung up as she approached. He didn’t tell her who he’d called, and she didn’t ask.
    She didn’t say a word as they walked back out to their stolen car. She still didn’t speak as once morehe used his knowledge of how things worked to restart the Taurus.
    Now, though, she cleared her throat. “Where are we going?”
    Chuck glanced at her. “Maybe you should close your eyes, try to get some sleep. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
    “Yeah, right. I always get the urge to take a nap after nearly being gunned down at the mall.”
    He looked at her again, longer this time. “I’m