“You wanting hearts and flowers, Caroline?” He sounded almost impatient. The look he flicked at her was impossible to read. “You got the wrong place, the wrong time, and the wrong man.”
That stung. That made her mad.
“Obviously,” she snapped, and glared at the road ahead because she didn’t want to glare at him, since that would make how she was feeling just too damned obvious. “Instead of wasting time kissing me, you might want to try driving away. Because there might be another squad car. Or that last one might come back. The fact that he didn’t see us is an absolute miracle anyway, and if I were you I wouldn’t want to push it.”
“I don’t believe in miracles.” Clearly ready, willing, and able to continue on like that kiss had never happened, he returned his gun to its holster then started the car again, while Caroline leaned back in her seat, rested her head against the headrest, and tried to calm down. She felt limp with reaction, and 99.9 percent of it was from that blistering kiss. Her heart was still beating way too fast, and her blood still simmered.
“Then let me put it another way: God looks after fools and children,” she responded caustically, turning her head so she could look at him.
He smiled. It wasn’t much, a quick curve of his lips, but it was enough to make her go all sort of warm and fuzzy inside, which under the circumstances was absolutely infuriating. She might not be able to help feeling sexually attracted to him, but discovering to her dismay that she liked him, too, as the man he was now quite apart from her ten-year-old memory of him, was not a good thing.
In fact, it could be downright dangerous.
In sheer self-defense, she looked away. The Mazda was moving, jolting free of the bushes, its tires biting into gravel before finding the road. A quick glance back through the rear window found the squad car’s lights. They were now no more than a distant flash of red through the trees.
“That was close,” he said. “What do you want to bet they’re rushing to hook up with the roadblock on I-10?”
It was possible, Caroline supposed. Thing was, she didn’t care.
“You know, we can play hide-and-seek with the patrol cars all night,” she said with a touch of acid as the Mazda accelerated to what she felt was a dangerous speed without turning on its lights. Fortunately just enough moonlight spilled through the overarching branches to make it not quite suicidal. “But I’d rather not.”
“With any luck, we’ll be off the road before another one comes along. Like I told you before, we’re almost there.”
She wanted to ask where, but knew there wasn’t any point because he wasn’t going to tell her.
“Yippee,” she replied with a notable lack of enthusiasm, and to her annoyance that made him smile again.
Moments later, he turned the Mazda onto a dirt track that wove a considerable distance through the woods. Because by consensus they continued to avoid using the headlights, the deeper they drove into the trees the darker it got, until finally the car was practically inching along and Caroline couldn’t see a thing. But he kept going, and at last they pulled into a clearing that, by comparison with the darkness they had just emerged from, seemed awash with moonlight. Caroline saw that it held a long, ramshackle-looking wooden structure with a tin roof. Reed stopped the car right in front of it, got out, and pulled open one of what looked like about three pairs of shedlike doors while she squinted at the words
Duck Tours
painted in big white letters above them. Then he got back in the car and drove into what appeared to be a rudimentary garage. Inside, it was so dark that she couldn’t even see him sitting beside her.
“Duck Tours?” she asked.
“A guy I know used to run them through the bayous for the tourists. Went out of business when the price of gas went through the roof. It’s been empty for a while.”
“Oh.” She understood that he was referring to the big yellow amphibious vehicles that she could actually remember seeing a time or two on the city streets. “This is where you’re planning to hide out?” Her tone was doubtful.
“This is where I’m planning to hide the car.” He killed the engine. “In a few minutes I need to make a phone call,” he said. “And I want your word that you’ll be absolutely quiet while I do it.”
The threat of more duct tape, of which there was still a healthy amount on the roll in the backseat, was unsaid but there. It wasn’t necessary.
“You know, I’d scream for help as soon as whoever you’re going to be calling answered the phone except, gee, I’m guessing they’re going to be too far away to come running.”
“Does that mean I can trust you to be quiet?” His voice was dry.
“Oh, for God’s sake, yes.” She frowned as he reached past her to pull up the plastic bag he’d dropped into the footwell. His arm brushed her leg, as did the plastic bag with its bulging contents, and then he was unfastening her seat belt and his arm brushed her breast, and there it was again, that jolt of sexual chemistry that made her toes curl and her body heat and that she absolutely was going to resist if it killed her. As he withdrew into his own seat she had to ask, even though she thought the chance of actually getting an answer was practically nonexistent. “Calling anybody I know?”
“Your father.”
She was surprised by his answer, surprised that he told her.
“Why?” she inquired.
“To let him know I have you, in case there’s any doubt. To arrange a trade.” He got out of the car, opened the back door, presumably to retrieve items from the backseat, then came around to her door and opened it. A moment later she felt his hand on her arm. “Come on, get out.”
Caroline got out. Reed closed the door, locked it with a beep, and then with his hand on her elbow urged her toward the grayish light that was the clearing.
As soon as they were outside, she saw that she’d been right: the backpack was slung over his shoulder. The plastic bag hung from his arm. He’d shed his jacket while he’d walked around the car to fetch her—she presumed it was now in the backpack, although she supposed he could have left it in the car—and had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt to the elbow. He was likely hot; even in her sleeveless blouse and short skirt she was feeling overwarm herself, which, since the temperature was relatively pleasant, she attributed to a hellish combination of reaction from their kiss and stress and the rain-portending heaviness of the air. Seen by moonlight, with his tall, broad-shouldered, supremely fit build and his shoulder holster plainly visible against his shirt, he looked every inch the tough, seasoned police detective he’d been until the previous day.
She faced, again, the mind-blowing puzzle of how he had ended up here, in this shadow-filled clearing on the run from the very institution to which he had dedicated his life. But she was too tired and jittery to analyze it any further at the moment, and so she turned her attention to her surroundings. The open area where they stood looked like it had once been a parking area, and from the texture of the ground underfoot she thought it might even have been graveled, although only a few scattered pebbles were left, embedded in the hard-packed dirt. The towering black walls that were, in actuality, the trees crowded the perimeter of what was approximately a sixty-by-one-hundred-foot rectangle. The sounds of the woods at night—a symphony of whirring insects, rustling leaves, scurrying creatures, and distant animal cries—were surprisingly loud, even there in the clearing. The air smelled damp, which wasn’t a surprise: unless she was mistaken they were on the edge of one of the bayous. Lafourche, she thought, from the direction in which they’d traveled, although it was always possible that she was mistaken, that she’d gotten turned around.
Whatever, from the smell she knew there was stagnant water somewhere nearby.
She waited until Reed had closed the shed doors before saying, way more politely than he deserved, “Handcuffs?”
He turned to look at her. His face was impossible to read in the uncertain moonlight, but she thought she saw weariness in the set of his shoulders before he squared them.
“Yeah. No. I remember how you tried to escape earlier. I don’t feel like chancing a repeat.”
“Oh my God, I told you I wasn’t trying to escape.”
“You told me,” he agreed.
“They’re uncomfortable. My arms are aching.”
His lips tightened. His eyes swept her face.
“Come on, Reed, take the damned cuffs off me. Please.”
He made an indecipherable sound of disgust. She recognized it for the surrender it was.
“Don’t make me chase you,” he warned.
She huffed with indignation. “Like I’m going to take off running here? Give me a break.”
He looked her over again. Then he said grudgingly, “Turn around.”
She did. A moment later his hand gripped her wrist to steady it and she heard the faint snick of metal on metal as he inserted the key into the handcuffs. Looking across the clearing at the impenetrable darkness of the woods in front of her, she realized that if she seized the moment, if the instant the cuffs were removed she did indeed take off running, she would have a fair shot at getting away. All she would have to do was make it into the trees—it wasn’t far—and hide there in the pitch darkness until morning, when she could head for the road and wait for a car and flag it down. Of course, it was possible that he would catch her, but she had always been a fast runner—she figured her chances were pretty good, actually. If the man holding her had been anyone other than Reed, she realized, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
That’s when she knew for sure that she had no intention of leaving him on his own to face whatever fate awaited him.
She was going to do her best to make sense of what the hell was actually going on. She was going to do her best to help him to survive it, and even if it came down to it, get away. She was going to do her best to do her job, which was be a cop. Which meant protecting the innocent, bringing punishment to the guilty, and solving crime.
This
crime. Bottom line was, she was going to stay.
A second after she made peace with the truth of that, her wrists were free.
At last
.
“That feels—”
better,
she started to say as her arms dropped and swung and the dull ache of the stiffness in her shoulders eased. Then she realized that the cuff on her right wrist was still in place.
“Hey.” She turned toward him, lifting her shackled right wrist to show him what he’d missed, then broke off as she watched him take the open cuff and lock it around his own left wrist, shackling them together.
Lips parting in surprise, she stared at him.
Then she looked at their connected wrists. Then she got it. Then she got mad. All over again.
“Seriously?” she said.
“You better believe it.” He tucked the key into his right pants pocket; she was careful to note where it went.
Her brows snapped together dangerously. “I am not going to run away. I’m going to stay, and try to solve whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into, and do my best to help you live through this, which, incidentally and for your information, is not looking all that likely to happen. Regardless, you have my word I’m not going anywhere. So quit being a jerk and get this thing off me.”
“Cher, you ever hear the phrase, ‘Trust in God, but lock your car’? That applies here.” Infuriatingly, he tugged the end of her ponytail before turning away from her. “Come on, we’re walking. I’m going to call your father while I can still get a signal. A little farther in, and it starts to be a problem. You need to stay quiet while I’m on the phone.”
“You are a total
douche bag,
” she hissed wrathfully, but he was already moving, which meant that she was, too. Captured hand leading the way, feeling like a dog on a very short leash, she found herself trailing after him whether she wanted to or not. She was dragged even closer as he moved his cuffed wrist so he could fish something out of the plastic bag over his elbow. A phone, she saw as he turned it on and it lit up, one of the cheap, prepaid ones that were impossible to trace. Because he had pulled it out of the bag he had acquired when he’d lost Holly, she assumed it had been purchased from the convenience store or truck stop or one of the other businesses near the dirt hill.
Phone in hand, he cocked an eyebrow at her and said, “What’s your father’s phone number?”
She snorted. “Try 9-1-1.”
“Look, I know the superintendent has a personal, private number for family, but I don’t know what it is.” His reply held a touch of impatience. “I mean, I can fart around going through the switchboard, but there’s a thirteen-year-old’s life at stake here and I’d rather there wasn’t any miscommunication.”
“You know, that’s so touching I can feel myself getting all teary-eyed, but I still don’t know the number. It’s not like I ever call him.” She matched him narrow-eyed stare for narrow-eyed stare, then added, “You’ve got my cell phone. His number’s in my contacts.” His expression made her frown. “You do have my cell phone, right?”
It was new. It was expensive. It had pictures she didn’t want to lose.
“I pitched it behind some furniture right before we ran out of the house. Those things are like a locator beacon.”
Caroline thought about that. It could have been worse, she decided: he could have pitched it into the lake. “They would have searched the house, maybe even have tried to call me on it as a way to find me. The ringer was on. I’m sure somebody’s found it by now. I wouldn’t be surprised if my father has it.”
“Good thought.” Reed looked a question at her. “Number?”
She told him.
“Shh,” he warned, and kept walking as he punched in the number with his thumb. She could quite clearly hear the phone connecting and then starting to ring on the other end as they reached the woods. With the phone held to his ear, he ducked beneath a curtain of vines, which meant Caroline did, too. Straightening, she found herself wrapped in a cocoon of darkness even as she was tugged willy-nilly forward. If it hadn’t been for the glow of the phone, she wouldn’t have been able to see Reed’s tall form in front of her, or separate the towering black walls on either side of her into the trunks of huge oaks and honey locusts and sweet gums that crowded close to the path, or check that the spongy matter underfoot was—as she had devoutly hoped—no more than layers of decomposing leaves laid down like a carpet over marshy ground. Insects buzzed everywhere. Moths, gnats, mosquitoes, you name it. She felt something land on her arm, slapped at it, then felt something tickling her ankle, and brushed the toe of her sneaker over the spot. But the bugs were relentless, and there wasn’t a lot she could do except resign herself to the ministrations of the bayou nightlife.