Maggie's Man by Alicia Scott Read Free Book Online

limited manpower. If you have
limited manpower, how do you deploy it? It's all about tactics—how you position
yourself in the short term. He has tactics. I have tactics to try to outmaneuver
his tactics. What I really need, however, is strategy—a plan for winning the
game."
    "What did you do before … well,
before?" she interrupted curiously.
    "Computer programming." His hands tightened
reflexively on the wheel. But that had been six years ago. He hadn't been on a
machine since then. The World Wide Web, home pages, web sites, were all things
he'd only read about, when he thirsted so desperately to know, to play, to
understand, to do. He'd missed everything, because it was either that or build
an Aryan Brotherhood home page to help with recruitment. He'd preferred to do
nothing.
    Cain took a deep breath. "Back to the chief
of police. He can move cars into the immediate vicinity in hopes they can catch
me holed up somewhere. They probably figure I'm on foot, or I've stolen a
car—"
    "They don't think you had an accomplice
for a prison break? A friend?"
    His stomach tightened, and something old and
sad twisted in him again. For no good reason at all, he saw his mother standing
at the window of the old log cabin, watching the rain dance in the evergreens
and reaching out her hand wistfully, as if she'd like to catch the rain on her
palm. As a child, he'd never understood that look on her face. Now, he
understood it a lot.
    He kept his gaze on the windshield, though his
knuckles had whitened with the force of his grip on the wheel. "No."
    "But they don't know that," she
pointed out. "They'll still check with your friends."
    "I don't have any friends."
    Her eyes blinked several times. "Of course
you do. Everyone has friends."
    He glanced at her at last. "I'm a
convicted murderer, Maggie. Just whose Christmas list do you think I'm still
on?"
    "Oh," she said weakly. For a moment,
she looked almost sorry for him. He didn't want that. He didn't need that.
"Family?" she suggested at last. "Siblings? I mean … uh … other
than this brother you don't like."
    "No."
    "Oh. Well, your father then."
    "He hasn't spoken to me since the day I
left Idaho."
    "Mother?" she asked faintly.
    "Died when I was twelve."
    "Wife?"
    "Never married."
    "Not even a girlfriend?"
    "I had a girlfriend," he granted her
at last. He turned long enough to gaze at her squarely. "She's the one
they say I murdered."
    Sapphire-blue eyes widened. She drew in her
breath so fast it hissed. She simply stared at him, obviously too appalled to
speak.
    "Oh," she said at last.
    Maggie's gaze swept down to the vinyl seat. He
returned his attention to the road and for that she was grateful. She couldn't
think, she couldn't move. She was handcuffed to a man who'd murdered his
girlfriend. And from the sound of it, he was the classic loner, intellectual
type. Probably obsessive, maybe paranoid as well. And armed. Don't forget
armed.
    She was going to die, killed by a man with a
deep, soothing baritone, and she'd always placed a lot of stock in someone's
voice. Had his girlfriend thought the same?
    Her free hand clenched and unclenched on her
lap, fidgeting nervously with the hem of her skirt. Her grandmother Lydia, her
father's mother, who'd insisted that Maggie, C.J. and Brandon spend each summer together on her dairy farm
because otherwise the half siblings would never see one another, had always
told Maggie that she had the famous Hathaway Red hair, which meant she had the
famous Hathaway Red spirit. Someday, Maggie would add to the legend with a
story of incomparable courage and passion just like her
great-great-great-grandmother Margaret for whom she was named.
    Lydia had obviously inhaled too much
fertilizer. Maggie had no Hathaway spirit. She was a genetic mutant and she
wanted to go home now.
    She stared at the handcuff morosely, then at
the gun tucked in the small of his back. How to get out of the handcuffs. Or
maybe grab the gun. She didn't know anything about guns.