Free Cold Pursuit (Cold Justice) (Volume 2) by Toni Anderson Page B

make. Welcome to the rest of the world.
     
    ***
     
    Pilah’s heart raced as she sat in her little, blue Ford Focus in the hotel’s huge parking lot, engine running to try and keep warm as the thickening snowstorm turned the whole world white. The heater blasted out hot air but her hands and feet were numb with cold. She wasn’t used to such harsh weather. Her mother—a beautiful, blond American—had lived in Florida. Her parents had divorced when she was ten and her father had taken her back to the Eastern plateau of Syria without any objections from her mother.
    She knew what it was like to grow up without a mother and didn’t want her daughters to go through the same experience.
    After leaving the hospital, Pilah had gone home to find a man called Abdullah Mulhadre camped out in her living room. She’d surprised him. The cold light in his eyes had scared the crap out of her. At first she’d thought he was there to kill her, to tidy up any loose ends, but as time wore on she’d relaxed her guard. They’d spent the afternoon watching news of the attack, monitoring the growing swell of outrage. Then the feature on the boy had aired and she’d rushed to the bathroom to throw up.
    She couldn’t believe she’d made such a terrible miscalculation and let the child live. She’d been blindsided by the scale of her mistake. Abdullah had followed her to the bathroom and she'd had to confess she couldn’t remember exactly what they’d discussed in the toy store and the boy might have overheard something.
    He’d struck her.
    Her cheek still stung, and she touched it gently. She hadn’t told him she’d seen the child at the hospital. The man would have killed her on the spot for not eliminating the problem. Abdullah gave her the creeps. She shivered. Most of the men she’d been involved with recently gave her the creeps.
    “Why did you get involved with these people, Adad?” she asked her dead husband angrily, wiping the condensation of her breath from the windshield. Of course he didn’t answer, too busy hanging out with vestal virgins while she tried to figure out a way to save their children. “You always were a damn fool.” Her eyes dampened. Fool or not, she’d loved him.
    Now it was only a matter of time until the boy gave the authorities a detailed sketch of her face or enough information for the Americans to realize the Syrian Government wasn’t responsible, it was the rebels who’d attacked the mall, and they weren’t finished yet.
    The Syrian president would crush those who’d tried to implicate him in international terrorism and the US wouldn’t stop him. Her children would be caught up in the fighting and probably die.
    She checked her phone, waiting for a text from Abdullah. Where was he? Out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall, dark-haired man shepherd a woman and child through the snow, past her car toward a black 4X4. The man’s hair and pants were damp, snow clinging to him as he moved swiftly through the frigid air. It was them , she realized, sucking in a shocked breath. She was glad for the accumulation of snow on the windshield obscuring her from view.
    What had happened? Had Abdullah not found them in time? Where was he?
    She thought about the pistol in the glove box, but the man was obviously law enforcement and the harshness of his features caused a little shiver of trepidation to flicker over her skin. Before she could decide whether or not to attempt to take care of the problem herself, the black SUV pulled away. She memorized the license plate.
    Abdullah had obviously failed in his mission.
    Had he been captured? Should she leave? Sargon favored the arrogant man and she didn’t dare cross either of them. If he came out in a few minutes, walking into a snowstorm without the jacket he’d left on her back seat, he’d be angry. Her face still throbbed from his earlier outrage. Her head pounded, a mixture of injury, cold and fear.
    Squad cars sped along the nearby roads. If