Unfinished Business (16 page)

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the com
parative darkness of the garage, but the respite from the harsh sun was welcome.

“Erica!”

Erica blinked, turning toward the sound of her name.

A dusty red pickup truck sat in a handicapped space only a few feet from the garage entrance.

To say the car was old would have been an understatement: it was ancient, and not in the “classic” car sense. Its rusted red body suggested years of hard driving, but it was so dirty, it was hard to tell just how many years that might have been, or even what make or model it was. At first glance, Erica thought there was a Confederate flag painted on the back window, but upon second glance she realized it was the state flag, with its suspiciously similar placements of blue stripes and stars.

Mark Newman stood beside it.

“Over here!” he said, waving her toward the old truck. A moment later, he swung open the passenger-side door. “She's a little dirty,” he said with a grin, “but she's been sitting in this garage for almost two months. Didn't drive 'er when I was here two weeks ago, so I'll clean her up this afternoon and she'll look good as new.”

Erica stared at him.

“You're kidding, right?” she said at last. “This isn't your car. I thought you told me you don't drive—”

“No ma'am,” he corrected, smirking for all he was worth. “I told you I couldn't drive a regular car.” He patted the truck. “Old Red here isn't a regular car. She's specially outfitted. Custom, I guess you'd call it. To accommodate my…uh…limitations. Now, are you going to get in, or what?”

Or what.
The words were on the tip of her tongue and she was within seconds of saying them out of
pure frustration and bad attitude.
It's bad enough that it's a pickup truck, bad enough that he's got that flag on the rear window
, she told herself, as she tightened her grip on her luggage and walked up to the truck's door.
But if he's got a gun rack, I swear I'm getting on the next plane out of here.

Gingerly, Erica approached the passenger door and leaned inside.

A gun rack.

“There is no way I'm—” she began.

But then he slid the cane into the slots and grinned.

“Not everything is what you think,” he teased. “Get in.”

She sighed in relief, hopped up on the running board and climbed inside, cranking down the window to let some air inside. He deposited her bag and his briefcase in the truck bed and slid into the driver's seat a moment later. He reached across her to open the glove box and pulled out a silver key ring.

“You keep your keys in the car?” she asked, incredulous.

His chuckle was as relaxed as the rest of him seemed to be. In fact, Erica noticed, ever since he'd deplaned he seemed more centered, more…normal, if a guy like Mark Newman could be considered normal in any sense of the word.

“No one's going to steal this truck. And if they did, the state police would have it back to me within the hour.”

“You're awfully sure of that.”

He nodded. “I am. First of all, it's a heck of a lot safer here than where you come from. And second of all, most of the state knows this truck. I campaign in it, from it, out of it.” He patted the dashboard. “Old Red here is a little famous.”

Erica sighed. “As long as Old Red has air-conditioning, everything will be fine. This heat is giving me a headache.”

The smile slid off Mark's face. “Actually, no,” he said apologetically. “But once we get rolling you'll feel better. And I haven't forgotten about that drink. I know just the place. Q & A first, though. Or Bitsi will have my head.”

“I don't think it's your head she wants,” Erica muttered, as the old truck's engine roared to life. A moment later they were on their way.

“Where is the city? The houses? The buildings?” she asked him when she turned away from the cool breeze of the window to look in his direction.

She had to be hot as hell in that long-sleeved T-shirt. It was perfect for mid-March in Washington, but totally wrong for the climate here, where the temperature was closer to 90 than 60 degrees. He wanted to suggest she change—strip the thing off right here and now, replace it with anything in her suitcase more comfortable. But he was pretty sure that it wouldn't come out right.

Especially with his attraction to her zooming around between them like a bumblebee looking for a flower. She'd think he was trying to get her into bed—which he was.

Not yet
, a voice within him cautioned.
Soon, but not yet.

“City's about fifteen miles,” he told her, shouting a little over the rushing air pouring in through the open windows. “We built the airport a ways from where most people live. Less noise pollution.”

She nodded her understanding, and then turned away from him again.

Mark cast a sidelong glance at her. She was showing him nothing but profile: the long curve of her neck, the perfect shell of her ear, marred a little by the couple of dark stitches where the bullet had nicked it the other night. A strand of her jet-black hair hung damply against her cheek, looking surprisingly lank and straight compared to the wild waves covering her head. He imagined it spread around her head like a dark halo on a white pillow, imagined himself winding it around his fingers.

Snap out of it
, a voice in his brain commanded, and he blinked a couple of times, forcing his attention back to the road.
Snap out of it. We've got work to do.

And in that uncanny way she had of looking at him like she could read his mind, she turned back to him, locking away his heart with those smoldering eyes.

“Look out!”

Mark jerked the steering wheel hard to the left to avoid a rabbit as it jumped out of the nearby green.

“That bunny was nearly roadkill,” he muttered.

“I don't think you hit him, though,” she said, turning to stare out the truck's rear window. Her arm brushed his shoulder, setting everything inside him afire again.

“Nope, I didn't hit him,” he heard himself saying, like his mind was his own. “If I'd hit him, trust me. We'd know.” He cleared his throat, determined to steer himself out of dangerous waters. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

It was like one of those glass partitions that separated driver and passenger in fancy limousines suddenly went up between them. She was still looking
at him with those soft brown eyes, but he sensed her wariness.

“You can ask. I might not answer, but you can ask,” she said, showing him her profile again.

“Why aren't you married? A beautiful woman like you…” he stopped, reigning himself in before he was in too deeply. “A woman should be married. Especially a woman like you.”

Her head whipped toward him again, and he knew it had come out wrong. He curled his lips into a smile and watched that irritated look blossom on her face again.

“What's that supposed to mean?” she fumed. “'A woman like me should be married.' I suppose you think all women should be married—that it's a woman's place to be under some man's thumb.”

“Here we go.” Mark sighed, exasperated. “You know, right when I start to get all mushy about you, you bring me right back to wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I thank you for that.”

Amazement shone in her eyes. “You were getting mushy? About me?”

Mark locked his eyes on the road. “Not exactly,” he muttered. “You've got me saying things I don't mean to say.”

“But that is what you said. That's exactly what you said.”

“Well, it's not what I meant.”

“Then, please explain what you meant.”

A million macho, smart-mouthed quips circled his mind, but he finally rejected them all. “All right. Don't take this wrong way, but…”—he practiced the words in his head a moment, before saying calmly—“I'm beginning to like you a little. Even though you're a Left Wing nutcase,” he added quickly. “I mean, I knew I was…
attracted
to you. But now I
realize it's more than that. I'm starting to like you.”

She frowned at him. “You like me?”

“A little, yes.”

“A little.”

A pink tinge crept over her caramel-colored skin. She turned toward the window again.

“You like me,” he heard her murmur. “And I…” but the words were caught by the wind and he wasn't entirely sure whether she was reciprocating his sentiments or scorning them.

Mark focused his attention on the road. She was right: This was one lonesome stretch of highway. Billingham seemed forever away; the airport, miles behind them; Washington, D.C. a distant memory. Right now, amidst the waving fields of corn, they might have been the only two people in the world.

Silence filled the cab for a while. Mark kept his eyes on the road ahead until, out of the clear blue nothingness, she said, “I was married once. Did I tell you?”

He turned toward her, but she was studying her hands as though the answers to life's riddles were written there.

“What happened?”

She lifted her shoulders in the smallest of shrugs. “It ended.” Her eyes found his. “I ended it.”

“Why?”

Her sigh was heavy and long. “Well, you might find this a little surprising, coming from me, but…I guess I wanted the white-picket-fence thing. You know, a home. A family. Sort of”—she cut her eyes at him like she was expecting to be made fun of—“traditional.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Mark said quietly.

“Nothing, except it's unrealistic,” she said in a voice that scoffed the idea of domestic happiness. “It takes two incomes to have any hopes of buying any
kind of house in D.C. anymore. And for most of our marriage, we only had one: mine. Reggie quit his job to pursue his dream—he wanted to be a writer. Don't get me wrong, he had talent and I was totally in support of him,” she added quickly, but Mark noticed the furrow that came to her brow, as if the memory were particularly uncomfortable. “I just didn't know that pursuing his dream would cost so much.”

“Financially?”

When her eyes found his, there was a wry sort of pain in them he'd never read before. “Financially, emotionally, physically. See, Reggie was used to making money. And with his new venture, he wasn't making anything. And that made him feel insecure, I guess. I thought that was why he was in such a rush for us to get pregnant, even though I kept telling him the timing wasn't right. And when I refused, he had to build up his self-esteem somehow. And he did that with a string of women. A string of women other than me.” He watched as those lovely eyes filled with an unbecoming bitterness. “And that's why a woman like me isn't married. I'm not in the market for heartache, Mark. From you or anyone else. I can do bad all by myself, thank you very much.”

I hate Reggie
. The thought knotted in the pit of his stomach as soon as he saw the bitterness in her eyes, heard it in her voice. There was a part of him—a big part, if he wanted to be honest—that wanted to pull the truck over right then and wrap her into his arms and remind her that not every man was a Reggie. That a man could be faithful to just one woman until the day he died if he were a man of honor. A man of character. That there were places in the world where there were still white picket fences and Sunday dinners and children playing hide-and-seek by twilight.

But instead, he simply nodded. “I'm not looking for
heartache, either,” he told the road. “I've had enough of it to last a lifetime.”

He knew she was staring. He knew she was going to ask that painful question that still haunted his nights. He felt the grief welling up inside him, pinching at the edges of his heart. He swallowed, hoping for the grace to tell the story one more time without breaking down.

He piloted the truck around the next bend in the road. A lone car was parked along the side of the road with its trunk open and its hood up.

“Lousy place to be stranded,” Erica observed.

“You said it,” Mark agreed, taking in the driver, who stood leaning against the vehicle, holding what Mark thought might be a cell phone. “Better see if he needs some help.”

The car looked suspiciously shiny, as though it was either new or recently washed and waxed. The driver shifted nervously as Mark slowed Old Red and pulled up behind him.

“That's the guy from the plane!” Erica cried as they got close enough to see a dark baseball cap and sunglasses. “The one who was sitting next to Angelique. He slept the whole way.”

Mark studied the man, frowning. His gut told him there was something about this guy…something either eerily familiar or eerily strange. He couldn't place it. To all appearances, the dude was just a fellow traveler having a bit of very bad luck.

“This is a terrible place to be stranded. There isn't another car on the road!” Erica popped the door handle and was on the verge of sliding out of the car, when Mark barked, “No.”

Her eyes found his, inquisitive, confused. Scared.

“You don't think…” she began in a low voice, craning her neck toward the blank stretch of road be
hind them. “I thought you said there would be state police—”

“I'm sure it's fine,” Mark said, struggling to keep his voice calm and reassuring. “I just think…” She frowned at him and he knew she wasn't buying his act. Not for a second. “I'll find out what's what,” he finished, sliding slowly out of the truck and reaching for his cane.

He tested his weight on the soft dirt of the roadside, then limped toward the man…or at least he thought it was a man. It was hard to tell, the way the dude kept pulling his baseball cap down low over his face, which was already concealed by a large pair of aviator glasses. Mark noticed he wore a windbreaker, a dubious fashion choice given the heat of the day.

A flash of memory flickered in Mark's mind, but he couldn't be sure. After all, Erica had said they'd seen the guy on the plane. That might be the only place he knew this guy from. And yet…

“Hey,” Mark drawled, reverting to the easy, neighborly manner of Southern speech as if he hadn't stepped off a plane from Washington less than half an hour ago. “Looks like you got some trouble.”

“Yeah,” the man answered and the voice at least was unmistakably male. The stranded motorist shifted the little black device from his hand to his jacket pocket and buried his face deeper into his collar as though avoiding a brisk wind.

Only there wasn't a wind. Not even a breeze. The air was warm and still and the Southern sun beat down on them with its usual relentlessness.

“Need some help? There's a little place up the road there with a telephone, if you need it,” Mark offered. “Cell phones don't always work good out here.”

But he could tell the man wasn't listening. He was
peering toward the cab of Old Red with more than curious interest.

“No, no,” the dude muttered vaguely. “It's a rental. Just picked it up from the airport. I've already called back. My cell's working fine. Told them they gave me a lemon, Senator.”

Senator
. The dude knew who he was, but he didn't have the accent of a native. Which led to one obvious conclusion.

“All righty,” Mark said calmly. “Take care.” And he turned on his heel and stumped back to the car.

Erica Johnson had worry etched into the very bones of her face when he hoisted himself back into the cab beside her.

“What is it?”

“Car trouble, or so he says,” Mark told her, gunning the truck's engine.

“But you don't believe him?”

Mark shook his head. “That fella's Washington press corps if he's anything.”

Relief coursed across her face. “Oh. For a second, I thought…”

“Never thought a dull ol' boy like me would be dodging the paparazzi.”

She flashed him a smile. “You're plenty interesting,” she said. That lovely pink color flushed her skin again. “I mean…”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But you're even more interesting.”

“Me?”

He nodded. “That's what that dude there wants. A picture of you—or more precisely, a picture of us, if you get my drift.”

“You don't think he's the one taking those pictures? The ones of us…” she let the sentence die unfinished, knowing he knew what she meant.

“I don't think so. Professional photographers don't hold on to photos that good. That ladies'-room photo definitely would have hit the papers by now if it was shot by a pro.” He leaned toward her. “Apparently, though, the Washington gossip columns need some fodder. I'm personally not in the mood to oblige. How 'bout you?”

For an instant, her expression seemed to go blank while she thought it through. Then that light of determination came to her eyes.

“What should we do?”

Mark grinned. “You duck and cover—and Old Red and I'll lose him.”

The hum of the engine, the thrill of their mission and the smile she gave him made his heart thump with fresh desire. He cut the wheels of the truck sharply and a moment later, Old Red bounded onto the pavement again, flying past the dude in the rental and leaving him quite literally in the dust.

 

Nestor Hannegan looked good, considering his age and state of health, Mark thought as he shook the old man's hand. He was Mark's political mentor—sort of a godfather—a legend of state politics. He was also a resident of this district of Billingham and never failed to make an appearance at any event—whether it was a fund-raiser, town meeting or Q & A—Mark held.

“Good to see you, son,” Nestor wheezed in a voice that had passed decrepit and headed straight for ancient. “Good to see you.” He twisted his torso around until the veins stood blue and sentient in his neck. Mark followed his gaze: This event was in the large auditorium of Westlake High School, and there seemed to be very few chairs unoccupied. Mark no
ticed that most of the attendees seemed to be clutching white flyers in their hands.