A screech of brakes. The slam of a car door. Heart thundering, Jess dared a quick, hunted look back over her shoulder.
The SUV had pulled off onto the soft gravel shoulder just yards away, and was now stopped with its headlights still slicing through the dark, pointing back the way it had come. A man walked around the hood, a tall man, moving fast. The headlights gave her a glimpse of black dress pants and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“Jess!”
Oh, God, she ’d known it was Ryan as soon as she’d seen the car. Sucking in a quick gulp of air, she dropped to her knees, afraid that the movement of the grass as she plunged through it would give her away.
“Jess!”
Cringing, making herself as small as possible, she turned just enough so that she could watch him easily and then held very still, like a rabbit in the presence of a dog. What did he want with her? Her stupid heart urged her to run to him, to trust him, but her head told her she dared not. If she was wrong about him, it could cost her her life.
A small circle of white light appeared out of nowhere like an unblinking eye. A flashlight. He was holding it, looking around, scanning the area where she had left the road. How was he able to pinpoint it so precisely? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Somehow it seemed he just knew.
A moment later, her heart leaped into her throat as she realized he ’d found the bicycle.
“Goddamn it, Jess! Answer me!” It was a roar that seemed to echo off the trees. He looked up again, scanning the darkness, the flashlight beam skimming the feathery tops of the grass. “Jess!”
The flashlight lowered, circled, paused, then moved in her direction with uncanny accuracy. Jess realized to her horror that he was following the trail she ’d left through the grass. He would find her in a matter of minutes. If she ran, he would catch her. He was bigger and stronger and faster and in her present state she had no hope, no prayer, of getting away.
Plus, he had a gun.
At the thought, she broke out into a cold sweat.
Maybe you can trust him. . . .
“Jess!” He headed toward her unerringly, the flashlight beam leading the way. Her pulse thundered in her ears. Her chest tightened.
He’s done everything he can to keep you alive so far. . . .
He was still coming and was now just a few yards away. She could hear the crunch of grass beneath his feet above the pounding in her ears.
“Ryan? Is that you?” She stood up on rubbery legs.
“Jess?”
He closed the distance between them in two long strides, caught her elbows, and pulled her against him, wrapping her tightly in his arms, hugging her close. She allowed herself to rest against him because there was no other choice, then found herself taking momentary insane comfort in the solid warmth of his body, in the muscular strength of his arms around her. If she hadn’t been leery about trusting him, she realized she would have been so glad to see him she would be dizzy with it. Much as she hated to acknowledge it, his arms felt right around her. Despite everything, she discovered that in them was just exactly where she wanted to be.
“You scared the absolute shit out of me! Are you all right?”
Her heart still pounded like a trapped bird’s. Her cheek nestled into his wide chest and her arms circled his firm waist while her mind raced a mile a minute, trying to decide what to do. His gun was in its holster at his waist; she could feel the hard protrusion of it hidden beneath his shirt. Comforting—or scary? She breathed in the scent of him—powder fresh, a hint of musk—as she realized that choice had been taken from her. Since she had no reasonable hope of getting away, she had to trust him . . . or at least pretend to.
God, she wanted to be able to trust him.
“Where are your friends?” she asked, her voice only slightly unsteady.
Grasping her upper arms, Ryan pushed her away from him a little and looked down at her. If she hadn’t been wearing her heels he would have towered over her, and she still had to tilt her head back to see up into his face. She couldn’t read his expression: The night was too dark. She doubted that he was having any more success with hers.
“Where do you think? Out looking for you.” There was a definite edge to his voice. “Wendell went upstairs to take a shower and felt cold air blowing out from under your door. She checked on you, and guess what? The window was open. You were gone. I take it you left voluntarily? Nobody dragged you out by your hair or anything?”
“Could we talk about this somewhere else, please?” He was alone in the car, she was almost positive. Still, she was having hideous visions of one of the others showing up at any second. Driving away in his car with him felt a whole lot safer than standing here in the great outdoors waiting for that to happen.
“That’s probably the best idea you’ve had all night.”
Grabbing her hand, he started walking back toward the RAV4. Considering that her legs felt about as sturdy as rubber bands and her back ached like a sore tooth and she was so tired she felt wilted, keeping up was hard to do.
“You okay?” He glanced back as she stumbled.
“Yeah. They’re not, like, right behind you or anything, are they?” She kept walking even though it required a major effort of will, looking back up the road for any sign of another vehicle.
His grip on her hand tightened. “Something about that make you nervous?”
“I don’t trust them.”
“Is that why you . . . ? Never mind. We ’ll have this conversation in a minute. Get in the car.”
They had reached the SUV by that time. He opened the passenger-side door and watched her sink into the seat with more relief than she hoped showed. She hurt in places she hadn’t known she could hurt.
“Stay put.” He shut the door on her. Shivering from some combination of cold and nerves, Jess cast a quick glance at the ignition—no keys. Not that she had expected to get that lucky. Would she really have driven away and left him there beside the road anyway? She didn’t even have to think about that: Yes, she would.
Her life was on the line here. And just whose side he was on was still very much up in the air. The question was, how much did she tell him when he got back in the car? If she went with the truth, the whole truth, told him how deeply she felt the Secret Service was implicated in this, would he openly turn into the bad guy she feared he secretly might be?
The interior light flashed on as he opened the back cargo door, making her jump. He lifted the bicycle inside and closed it again. A moment later the driver’s-side door opened and he slid in beside her, tossing her purse into her lap. By the car’s interior light, she could see that he was looking tired, stubbly, and decidedly grumpy. Angry, even.
“Thanks.”
“So talk.” He gave her an assessing look as he closed the door and thrust the key into the ignition.
“Like I said, I don’t trust your friends.”
“I kind of gathered that.”
It was once again dark inside the car. That didn’t stop her from admiring the clean, classical lines of his profile. She was just like her mother, she realized dismally: a fool for good-looking men. Getting a glimpse of herself in the sideview mirror, she was reminded that she was still wearing her glasses.
Well, so be it.
“You didn’t tell them what I told you?” Not that she supposed it mattered now. At least one of them clearly already wanted to kill her, and giving him an additional motive wouldn’t make her any more dead. Ryan shot an unsmiling glance at her.
“Did you think I would?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
Hesitating, Jess thought frantically. Should she tell him the rest? Of course, if he was a bad guy, she had already talked way too much and he already knew enough about what she knew to seal her fate. But she felt the opposite of threatened by him. In fact, she realized that somewhere deep inside, she was glad he had found her. Whether it was foolish or not, she
felt
safe with him.
“Good to know.” There was a definite edge to his voice. The RAV4 had already pulled back onto the pavement and was starting to pick up speed as it headed back around the curve. With another glance at her, he turned on the heat and cranked it up, and she realized he must have noticed the fine tremors that shook her. “So, you want to tell me what you were thinking to do something as stupid as climbing out a window and deliberately running away from a protected environment?”
“Just so you know, I wasn’t feeling all that protected.”
“You think you’re safer out here? On your own? You’ve got to be nuts.” He sounded like his patience was wearing thin. “Just for the record, I about had a heart attack when Wendell told me you were missing. You know why? Because there may very well be a killer out here somewhere who’s just waiting his chance to take you out. If you’re right about the First Lady’s death, then you know what that makes you? The only thing standing in the way of somebody getting away with it.” He glanced at her. It was too dark to see his expression, but his tone left no doubt that he was getting angrier by the minute. “Jesus, I thought somebody had gotten to you.”
He was driving too fast, handling the car like a weapon. The distance that she had covered on the bicycle was, she realized as the tires ate it up, really ridiculously short. Her heart started to speed up as they passed the place where she had made the phone call to Solomon. Another few minutes and Ryan’s driveway would come into view.
She wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to banish the shivering, and saw his mouth tighten. Maybe she was making a mistake, but she was going to go with her gut and trust him. He ’d had ample opportunity, after all, and she wasn’t dead yet. And he’d cranked the heat. You didn’t crank the heat for a woman you were preparing to kill. She thought.
“Okay, you want to know why I went out the window? Because I think one of the agents you brought in might be the person who attacked me in the hospital.”
“What?” He cast an incredulous glance at her. A shaft of moonlight spilling in through the car window allowed her to see that he was frowning, disbelieving, and, yes, angry—but not suddenly self-conscious or guilty-looking, as she would have expected him to be if he had some kind of prior knowledge that what she was telling him was the truth.
The hard knot in her stomach relaxed a little. The shivers started to ease. Trusting him just might have been the right thing to do.
“I’ll tell you the whole story, but you’ve got to turn around first. I can’t go back to your house.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Turn around.”
There was a moment of silence during which Jess could feel the issue hanging in the balance. Then, thank God, he braked, turning the car around in another wide U-turn so that the tires crunched on the gravel berm. His driveway couldn’t have been more than a few minutes ahead.
She let out a sigh of relief.
“Okay, cut the crap.” He was still driving too fast, but at least it was in the right direction. This time Jess was thankful for the speed that ate up the distance. “Why would you think something like that?”
“Because in the hospital, just as he started to put whatever was in that needle in my IV line, the person who attacked me said, ‘This will help you to go back to sleep, sugar.’ And tonight I heard that same voice say ‘sugar’ again. I woke up, had to go to the bathroom, and when I came out I was standing at the top of the stairs and heard him downstairs saying something like ‘It ’s not too early for breakfast, sugar.’”
“You heard a
man
saying that? We’re talking Fielding or Matthews here?”
“I’m not clear on the names. It was somebody who was downstairs in your house about twenty minutes ago. And I’m almost positive it was a man.”
“I didn’t hear anybody say anything like that. Of course, I wasn’t with them all the time.”
“I know what I heard.” Her tone dared him to doubt her.
“Fielding or Matthews, then.” He paused, seeming to think it over, then shook his head. “That ’s not possible.”
“What do you mean it’s not possible? It’s
true.
”
“Do you know how many guys go around calling women ‘sugar’?”
“It was exactly the same. Same voice, same intonation. What, do you think I’m imagining things again?” She put some bite into her voice on that last.
They had passed the place where she ’d hidden from him now and were swooping on down in the direction of the 7-Eleven. Jess spared a passing thought for Solomon, who was undoubtedly barreling in their direction at that very moment. She still meant to give him his exclusive, although she was sure that Ryan was going to hit the roof when he found out she’d called a reporter despite his warning. Still, she had to rely on her own best judgment, and going public was the only thing she could think of that might have any chance of making this whole thing just go away. But maybe, after talking to Solomon, she would stay with Ryan until she felt safe again.
If he would let her, that is.
“If you believed that, why the hell didn’t you come tell me?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you were downstairs with the person I heard saying ‘sugar’ and you’re a Secret Service agent, too?”
“You thought it was a better idea to jump out a window and run away into the dark?”
“I was kind of short on options.”
“You should have come to me.” They were rounding another bend, and Jess saw, just faintly, the lights of I-95 glimmering in the distance. Soon they would be off the dark country road and heading toward—where? Time to work that out when she’d convinced him of this. “You know, I’ve known those three back there for years. They’re good people.”
“One of them isn’t.” Jess realized she was no longer shivering. The heat was working—and so was the idea, however wrongheaded it might be, that she was safe with him. “Why are you having such a hard time believing me?”