Sleepwalker (33 page)

“He’d have Iacono and Rossi arrested for murder, for starters. He’d pass my information on the Lightfoot case up the chain of command to be investigated. And he would get us taken off the suspect list.” She kept casting nervous glances out the windows as she spoke. For anonymity, the Taurus beat the cruiser by a mile, but still she didn’t feel safe. Between the cops and Uncle Nicco’s security apparatus, danger could lurk anywhere. “The last list you ever want to be on is the suspected cop killer list, believe me.”

“Or maybe he’d shoot you on sight because he believes what he’s heard, or he’s in on this. Or, if he’s honest, he’d listen to what you had to say, then have you arrested, because you don’t have any proof that you’re telling the truth about Lightfoot or what happened in that warehouse today or anything. Even if he didn’t arrest you, even if he listened and believed you and did everything you think he’d do, what do you think would happen to you eventually? You think somebody eager to
make sure you never testified might blow your head off just as soon as they could?”

Mick narrowed her eyes at him. She firmed her lips. She flexed her poor, aching shoulders. But none of that made any difference to the sorry reality that Jason had a point.

“You know I’m right,” was how Jason interpreted her expression. His tone was smug, and Mick made a face at him. The Taurus sped up the ramp onto the expressway, and suddenly Mick felt like they had a target the size of Lake Erie pinned on their backs.

“Maybe,” she admitted reluctantly.

“No maybe about it. Face the truth: it’s you and me, babe. We’re all we’ve got.”

Mick looked at him. The gray morning light was harsh and unflattering. Playing over the hard planes and angles of his face, it made him look tired and faintly haggard and exactly like the unrepentant criminal he was. The fact that he also looked handsome as hell and sexy enough to make her remember just how hot he’d gotten her in that sleeping bag was flat-out annoying. Twelve hours ago, she’d had no clue this man even existed. Now he had become the most important person in her life. Sizzling sexual passion was one thing: that was purely physical. That he should turn her on the way he did really wasn’t all that surprising given that he was absolute eye candy, and anyway there was no accounting for chemistry, after all. But the thing was, she liked him, too. There was an easy intimacy between them that made her feel like she had known him for years. Plus he was engaging, and considerate, and made her laugh. Mind-boggling as she might have found the thought just a few hours earlier, she even trusted him. Whatever side of the law enforcement fence they happened to be on, they had each other’s backs.

“Fine. We’re a team. For now.” If she sounded a little sulky, it was because she wasn’t sure she particularly liked this turn of events. In fact, she was pretty sure she didn’t like it.

Jason smiled at her, a slow and charming smile that had the unexpected effect of making her stomach flutter, as if half a dozen butterflies had just taken flight in there.

My God,
she thought
, I better be careful. The last thing on earth I want to do is start liking him
too
much.

Because at some point, they were both going to get their lives back. And when that happened, she would still be a cop, and he would still be a thief.

“Welcome to the dark side, baby,” he said, his smile widening into a grin.

“Hah, hah.” Actually, that was so exactly how she felt that she couldn’t even summon a smile. To quiet the unnerving little sense that she had just crossed some invisible moral line, she looked all around—a few more big rigs, a few more cars, but nothing alarming—and then turned her attention to Jason again. “We’re heading south. They’ll expect us to go south, I think. Because by now they’ll know I don’t have any identification on me, which means we won’t head north, because the only real place to hide up that way is Canada.”

“You think we ought to get out of the country?”

“I told you: I can’t. I don’t have a passport or any identification.”

He grinned. “See, you’re still thinking like a law-abiding citizen. Those are not insurmountable obstacles.”

The look Mick gave him was not one of amusement. “I’d really rather not break any more laws than I absolutely have to.”

“Duly noted.” The twinkle was still there in his eyes. “How about we get off the expressway for a moment, grab some drive-through coffee and get those handcuffs off you?”

“You can get the handcuffs off?” The idea of being able to move her arms again was even more appealing than the thought of coffee. And the thought of coffee made her toes curl. “How?”

“I may have lied about the bobby pin.”

“You
jackass.
”

“Yeah, well, last time your hands were free, you arrested me.” He was pulling off the expressway as he spoke. “What is it they say? Once bitten, twice shy?”

“Just get the handcuffs off.”

The exit he chose had a number of strip malls running on either side of a four-lane road. Fast-food places occupied pride of place on every corner. McDonald’s was the only one open; the drive-through line was surprisingly long, probably because there was no competition. After he placed their order, which included burgers and fries because they were both famished, he told her to turn around. In a surprisingly short time—before they made it up to the window to collect their food—he had the handcuffs unlocked and was pulling them off her.

“There you go.”

“You sound way too proud of yourself.” Mick gingerly flexed her arms and shook her fingers. As they reached the window, she glanced back in time to see a cop car pull into the back of the line. Her nerves instantly went haywire. “Oh God, we have to go.”

“Thank you,” he said to the woman who handed their food over. He passed Mick the cup holder with the coffee in it and drove on out of the parking lot, cool as could be. Mick looked sideways at the squad car as they passed it, but the two cops in it didn’t so much as glance their way. She felt jittery anyway.

“We need to get out of the state, at the very least.” Even in the face of fear, she couldn’t resist the smell of the coffee. Cradling the Styrofoam cup with both hands, she enjoyed the warmth against her cold fingers as she took a revivifying sip. “If we even can. They’re probably setting up roadblocks everywhere as we speak.”

“Not a problem.”

He sounded so carefree that Mick frowned at him. “Why is that not a problem?”

“Because we’re not driving anywhere. You see that airport over there? That’s where we’re headed. I’ve got a plane.”

Somewhere over the sea, Mick woke up. She’d fallen asleep over northern Florida, about two hours back, and Jason hadn’t heard a peep from her since. Now her eyes opened, not fluttering but popping wide open in an instant, making him wonder if something had startled her. Maybe the air current they’d just hit, which had caused the Bonanza to bounce a little, or maybe the change in the droning of the engine as he’d increased the speed to 210 knots to combat the prevailing crosswind.

“Hey,” he said. She stared at him hard, as if it was taking her a minute to compute who he was. Then she sat up, shaking the tousled mass of her glorious hair back from her face, rubbing her hands over her sleep-heavy eyes. The cut on her cheek, which, once she had washed the blood off her face in the onboard restroom, had proven to be little more than a long scratch, was still visible against her pale skin. Her left shoulder had a bruise the size of a baseball. Otherwise, their ordeal had left her unmarked.

He couldn’t help it: he snuck a quick, admiring glance at the pert little tits that sat up with her, on display now that she had jettisoned his coat and shirt. If he was ever asked to vote something into the sexy hall of fame, it would be that clingy white tank top. And the tits beneath it, of course.

“Where are we?” she asked, frowning.

He watched her face as she looked out at the bright blue sky
complete with fluffy white clouds, then down at the deep blue water ruffled by whitecaps below. Between sky and water, there was nothing but the warm, golden, early evening sunshine. No land anywhere in sight. A view more different from the freezing gray gloom they’d left behind in Detroit would have been difficult to imagine.

“Over the Caribbean,” he answered, then smiled at her expression, which was horrified. From the moment she’d first beheld the Bonanza, a gorgeous little red and white bird that, sizewise, was to a commercial airliner what a child’s pedal car was to an eighteen-wheeler, trepidation had shown in her eyes. Except for asking, in a constricted voice, “Are you sure you can fly that thing?” when she’d first beheld the plane, she hadn’t objected to escaping by air, probably because, given the forces that were certainly being massed to hunt them down, there hadn’t been a whole lot of choice. Being Mick, she’d done her best to project cool unconcern after her initial, openly dismayed response. But by the time they had taxied down the runway and then lifted off into the leaden sky, she had been gripping the armrests hard. As they had banked away from the airport and soared up toward cruising altitude, it had started to snow again. Fat flakes had hit the windshield, dense gray clouds had stacked up in foggy layers. They’d hit some turbulence, flown through some clouds. At one point visibility had been reduced to near zero and the plane had bounced like a child on a trampoline. She had turned white. After a while the ride had settled down, and so had she. Now she was looking big-eyed and anxious again as she peered down at the water some fifteen thousand feet below. He saw that her fingers were once again curling tightly around the armrests of the copilot’s seat beside him.

Maybe the bright hair and the tits were addling his brain, but he found her nervousness, and her determination not to let it show, charming.

Her eyes slewed around to him. “I thought you said we were going to Miami.”

“I lied. We’re actually going a little farther south than that.”

“To
where
?”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

The woman had no sense of humor: she shot him one of the deadly looks with which she typically greeted his jokes. He smiled.

“
Jason.
”

“To my house, okay?”

Once again she looked out the windows and visibly shuddered. That cool-hand Mick should have such a visceral reaction to flying both amused and, to his own surprise, touched him.

“Where is it?”

He’d known this moment was coming, that in the end there wasn’t going to be any keeping it from her. When he’d made the decision to bring her with him, he hadn’t done it lightly. When all was said and done she was still a cop, and letting a cop know exactly where he could be found when he wasn’t robbing people for a living probably ranked right up there as one of the stupidest things he had ever done. Even the frog hadn’t given the scorpion the chance to sting him twice. But leaving her behind hadn’t been an option, either.

“The Caymans.”

“The Cayman Islands?” Her eyes widened, and she took another look out the windows that was at least as much interested as nervous, he was glad to see. On the way down, he had learned during the course of their conversation that she had traveled very little outside the Michigan area, the exception being Canada, of course, and Florida for occasional vacations, most of which had involved staying at Marino’s Palm Beach mansion. Her only previous experience in planes had been in big jetliners heading for Florida. She had imparted this information when she’d
finally admitted to being just a little bit anxious in the air and had blamed it on the Bonanza’s small size; the Bonanza had been rising and falling like an elevator on the fritz as they’d been flying through a thunderstorm over Atlanta, and her white-knuckled response had been obvious. Instead of copping to being scared to death, which she’d clearly been, she’d admitted only to being “a little tense.” That refusal to admit fear was vintage Mick. “So why did you tell me Miami?”

Jason looked at her without replying. The truth was, he’d wanted to wait as long as he possibly could to give her the information that, if she turned on him, could ruin his life as he knew it. Over the last few years, he’d built up a comfortable existence, found contentment and a way of living that suited him. By bringing her into it, he was putting all that in jeopardy. Not just for himself, but for Jelly and Tina, too.

“You don’t trust me!” she accused.

“Not entirely,” he admitted.

“You had this plane waiting. You could have ditched me any time after we escaped from the warehouse. If you don’t trust me, why did you bring me with you?”

He shrugged. On the horizon, specks of white and green appeared. He smiled, partly in relief at having this uncomfortable line of questioning interrupted and partly because he was simply glad to be almost home. He nodded at Mick to look out the window.

“There it is.”

She looked, and he had the pleasure of watching her face out of the corner of his eye as they approached the islands, which from the air looked like tiny, diamond-encrusted emeralds floating in the deep blue water. There were three of them, the largest of which was Grand Cayman, where he lived, and then Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. Paradise on earth, he’d thought when he had first discovered them some six years before. Shaped like a jawbone, or, as he preferred to think of it, a whale flipping its tale, Grand Cayman had two distinct personalities.
The west end was a tourist mecca, with almost daily visits by cruise ships. Thousands of visitors flocked each year to George Town, Grand Cayman’s capital, drawn by its duty-free shopping and ritzy hotels and gorgeous Seven Mile Beach. The rest of the island was laid back and sparsely populated. Few tourists ever made it past the Turtle Farm, which wasn’t far outside George Town, and the few who did were usually on their way to Hell, a tiny settlement with a couple of souvenir shops and a sign that said Welcome to Hell, just to say they’d been there. The north shore, where he lived, boasted mile upon mile of sugary white beach and almost no people.

“Shouldn’t you be talking to an air-traffic controller or something?” Mick asked uneasily as the Bonanza started its descent and she saw the same thing he did: a gleaming Boeing 727 with its landing gear out, powering down toward the airport several miles away. From the way she stiffened, he knew the sight alarmed her.