Nowhere to Run Read Free Page B

sister. Same light reddish-brown hair, same few freckles, same long lashes and beautiful brown eyes.
    That uncanny resemblance gave him pause. If someone was trying to send him a message or make sure his real identity was exposed, what better way to do it than through a pretty woman pretending to be in distress?
    He turned back to the car. If she was a planted informant and he let her go, there was no telling how long it would be before someone else followed. Perhaps someone more lethal. If he kept her in town for a few more days and checked her background, however, he’d have a better idea whether or not his real identity had been discovered.
    It made sense to know his foes up front, he told himself. And it looked as if it wasn’t going to be easy to repair the woman’s car without disassembling the fuel system, so that would give him overnight, at least.
    He slipped into the passenger’s seat and popped open the glove box. The car was registered to a Marie Parnell. If the driver had actually borrowed this vehicle from a friend, that friend must be named Parnell. That, or the woman had fibbed about where she’d gotten the car.
    Either way, it looked as if he’d offered to be a good Samaritan for a bald-faced liar. He just hoped he hadn’t made a big, big mistake. Then again, it wouldn’t be his first.
    He huffed in self-disgust. One mistake had cost him dearly. He just wished he’d recognized the looming danger in time to have saved Alice’s life. Perhaps, if he hadn’t been so caught up in his work, he’d have realized that she was planning to file for divorce and he could have made the news public. Then, the men who were trying to frame him might have changed their minds about eliminating her.
    Or, they might have gone ahead and killed her anyway so they’d have even more to blame him for, he argued. Corporate espionage could be just as dirty and just as deadly as covert government operations. In his case, he had been pegged as the fall guy because he’d been doing deep undercover work for Corp. Inc. and hadn’t been able to prove his innocence. If he hadn’t had friends who had warned him, he’d probably either be buried beside poor Alice or serving time for her murder, along with a conviction for corporate theft.
    Seth shuddered at the thought, then turned back to the car he’d been working on. Reliving the past was counterproductive. As long as he kept his guard up and didn’t let a good-looking woman like this car’s driver get too close to him, he’d survive. At this point in his life, that was all he could ask for.
    Â 
    By the time Marie and Patty returned from their ice cream quest, Seth had put the compact car up on a rack in the garage and was poking around under it.
    â€œWhat do you think?” Marie asked, holding tightly to her daughter’s hand.
    He shrugged as he continued to work. “Beats me. I disconnected a plugged fuel line, and it looked as if somebody had dumped sawdust into your gas tank. Did you tick someone off?”
    â€œNo, I…” The memory of the incident in the fast-food restaurant parking lot flashed into her mind. If anyone had been tampering with her car, she couldn’t have seen the individual doing it because the van had blocked her view. And if that was where her gas tank had been fouled, that meant her instincts had been correct: she hadn’t shaken her pursuers after all. The conclusion made her shiver in spite of the warmth of the afternoon.
    Seth turned to look at her as he pushed a button that lowered the car to the ground. “What?”
    â€œNothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing. I have no idea who might have done such a thing.”
    â€œWell, it won’t be an easy fix. The fuel filter is inside your gas tank. That means I’ll have to drain the gas and drop the tank in order to flush it out, clean the lines and change filters.”
    â€œHow long