Stopping Power (The Collected Novels of Eric Red)

A desperate mother. Her abducted daughter. A ruthless kidnapper. An impossible ransom.\nDevoted mother Stephanie Power is on a road trip in Houston, Texas with her teenage daughter, Libby. They stop at a gas station to refuel, and when Stephanie comes back from paying, she finds her daughter and their RV have suddenly vanished. Ilsa Bakke, a dangerous female bank robber on the run, just pulled an armored car heist that netted 60 million dollars in bearer bonds. She murdered her own gang, escaping in a getaway car with the Texas cops hot on her tail. She switched out her car with the mother’s at the gas station and kidnapped Libby, leaving her getaway car with the keys in it. Stephanie gets a call from Ilsa on her cell, ordering her to get into the bank robber’s getaway car and drive on the highway at high speed and keep driving or Ilsa will kill Libby – if Stephanie stops or gets caught by the cops, her daughter is dead. If she stays alive and uncaptured for one hour, Ilsa promises to release Libby safely. The desperate mother has no choice, jumping in the getaway car and leading police on a high-speed chase, the female bank robber using her as a decoy for the cops while she makes her escape in the opposite direction with Libby and the stolen loot. The game of automative cat-and-mouse shifts into high gear as Stephanie Power drives for her daughter’s life, struggling to stay alive and elude the cops, knowing she must somehow catch up to the RV with Libby and Ilsa so she can rescue her kid and take down the real perpetrator the police are after.