“About a month after I got out, I was out at a bar,” Hardy said. His words slowed, and Cassandra thought that she could detect the sound of guilt in his voice. “Adrianna comes in, angrier than I’d ever seen her.”
“Okay, what was she so mad about?” Cassandra checked her mirrors once more. They were on an almost deserted stretch of the highway, coming up on the interchange. “Am I staying on, or changing to one of the other highways?”
“Keep going straight on,” Hardy said. He paused for a moment before resuming his story. “Adrianna was pissed because she’d found out Riley had slept with a prostitute the weekend before,” he told her.
“That’s pretty understandable; I’d be pissed, too,” Cassandra said.
“Well, yeah,” Hardy agreed, and Cassandra could almost hear a smile in his voice. “I figured he might be picking up the occasional escort—he never got as lucky as me when our unit was on shore leave.”
“Have you used prostitutes before?”
“No, I never had the need—but I don’t have a problem with the idea, either. The guys in the Navy used to say that one night with a working girl is cheaper taking a girl out on three dates,” Hardy countered. “And there’s no guarantee she’ll put out after that.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Cassandra said, blushing without knowing why.
What should I care about what he thinks? What does it matter? He’s a murderer and a kidnapper—I shouldn’t give a damn about what he thinks.
Regretting having started the conversation, Cassandra changed the subject. “So Riley had sex with a prostitute and Adrianna found out.”
“Yeah.” Hardy went silent for a moment. “If I hadn’t been there in the bar, she would just have picked someone else. That was the state of mind she was in. She wanted to get even with Riley, to make him feel shitty the way he’d made her feel.”
“I can see that,” Cassandra said.
Somehow, even in the strange situation she was in, she found herself falling back on her usual journalistic manners: prompting, encouraging, coaxing answers, getting her subject to say more if she could. She shouldn’t be interviewing Hardy, and yet she was intrigued by his story. She wanted to know just how delusional he was, or figure out the truth behind his accusations.
“Hey—why did you tattoo those names on your hip?”
“What?” Hardy sat up slightly in the back seat.
“You know, the people you want to—talk to, I guess—about this whole thing, right? So why tattoo it on your body?”
“It’s complicated,” Hardy said.
Cassandra saw him sink down once more. It was starting to get lighter on the horizon, but actual dawn was a good hour and a half away. Cassandra wondered just how long they would be driving. She glanced at her gas gauge and saw that it was edging towards empty. She’d have to tell him in a few more miles, and then they’d have to figure out what they were going to do about getting gas.
“So Adrianna went into the bar and started complaining about Riley cheating on her,” Cassandra said. She still wanted to know why Hardy would think his best friend had framed him for murder.
Do I believe he’s innocent? What if he’s just spinning me a yarn, and this is all just an excuse for him to deal with some unfinished business?
“She and I started drinking while she ranted about what a piece of shit Riley was, and how she wanted to leave him,” Hardy said quietly. Cassandra cringed to herself at the thought of what she knew, suddenly, the outcome of the drinking was. “I got pretty plastered—not that it’s any excuse, and so did she.”
“Let me guess what ended up happening,” Cassandra said blandly.
“Yeah, you’ve probably got it right,” Hardy said, and Cassandra heard the grimness in his voice. “We ended up sleeping together. It was stupid as shit, obviously, but at the time I didn’t even really think about it. She was hot, and she’d spent the whole night complaining to me about Riley, convincing me that she deserved some kind of revenge on him.”
“Just because she deserved revenge doesn’t mean you had to help her with it,” Cassandra said mildly.
“I was horny, I was drunk,” Hardy said, defensive. “I can’t tell you how hot she was.” He paused for a few moments and when he spoke again Cassandra heard the regret in his voice. “The thing is, she wasn’t even that great in bed. I mean—yeah, hot, sure, whatever. But she was just doing it for the hell of it, you know? I was nothing more than a walk on the wild side for her; she just kept telling me I was bigger than Riley.”
Cassandra pressed her lips together firmly, resisting a sudden impulse to ask if Hardy thought Adrianne had been accurate in her assessment. She knew she shouldn’t be curious about what Hardy’s cock looked like—she should be trying to think of ways to get out of this adventure in one piece instead of in fifty pieces, blown to smithereens by pursuing police officers.
“So you had sex with your best friend’s fiancée,” Cassandra said, once the urge to ask for more prurient details had passed.
“Yeah,” Hardy said quietly.
Cassandra shook her head. Part of her wanted to ask him why he would do something so stupid; the other part of her mind countered that Hardy was—to the best of her knowledge—a convicted killer, and even if she believed him about being framed, he was a desperate man with a history of violence.
“I know, it was stupid as shit,” Hardy said, as if reading her mind. “I told you—I was horny and drunk, and I wasn’t thinking.”
“So that was what made your friend hate you.”
“Not…it wasn’t not just that,” Hardy said with a sigh. “I think Riley could have forgiven me for sleeping with Adrianna. I mean after all, he’d been cheating on her.”
“Okay, so if it wasn’t sleeping with his girl…” Cassandra glanced in the rearview mirror.
“The fights got worse when he found out,” Hardy said with a shrug. “Adrianna threw it in his face that I was better in bed than Riley was.” Hardy laughed, almost a cough in the darkness of the back seat. “They broke up eventually, but not before Riley got into it with another guy on base. He was so frustrated at the situation with Adrianne that he lashed out; he barely managed to get out with his benefits.”
“Yeah, I can see why he would hate you for that,” Cassandra said, trying to keep her voice mild.
“When he got back into town, he made some threats—that he’d kill me.” Hardy shifted in the seat. “I wasn’t living there anymore, so I didn’t think anything of it at the time—and besides, I kind of deserved it.”
“Kind of?” Cassandra bit back the rest of her retort.
“Yeah, I really deserved it,” Hardy admitted. “I was a shitty friend to him. I betrayed him.” He sighed. “I don’t know how he’s feeling about me now; it’s been years. But…” he sat up slightly, and Cassandra felt his gaze on the back of her head. “I figured maybe he got caught up in something, and framing me would be an easy decision.”
“If it’s been that long,” Cassandra said, pressing her lips together as she considered what she wanted to say, “why would he throw you under the bus now?”
“I don’t know that he has,” Hardy replied. “But considering how shitty I left things with him, if he got tangled up in something—gambling, or something that might make life tough—and someone wanted him to like, kill somebody… If pinning it on me meant he’d get off, I don’t think he’d lose much sleep over it.”
Cassandra considered that possibility. If it was as far back in time as Hardy was saying, it was difficult to believe that someone who had been his friend for so long would maintain a grudge. She didn’t think it was likely that Riley could have gone from being practically a brother to Hardy, only to stop caring about him altogether. Sure—when his engagement to Adrianna had fallen apart, Cassandra could see the guy being angry enough to want to kill his best friend. But years later?
She held her peace as they continued down the Interstate. It’s not like you really have a choice in thi
s, she reminded herself, glancing at the huge form of Hardy’s body stretched out in the back seat.
Cassandra could feel his gaze on her, and wondered what he was thinking about. He’s been in prison for three months, she remembered, and a spurt of excitement—not fear, not apprehension, but something that sent a tingle through her—crackled along her nerves.
More than once, alone in her room, Cassandra had teased herself to fantasies of being at a man’s mercy—of being not quite forced, but compelled into giving into a strong, demanding man. The setup had varied, but the constant was the way that she resisted at first, only to gradually, slowly give in—to submit to the man touching her all over, kissing her hungrily, telling her that he knew she wanted it, he could feel it.
In one of them—a fantasy that had come to her after writing a piece about another prisoner—she had imagined waking up in her bedroom to find a fugitive watching her. The faceless man in her fantasy came in through her window, telling her to be quiet—he wasn’t about to get caught because of some screaming woman.
Cassandra licked her dry lips, wishing she hadn’t already drunk the last of her water. Heat simmered in her body at the memory of her fantasy, and as she drove she remembered the phantom touches she’d imagined—only now, in place of the faceless fugitive in a prison jumpsuit, her mind substituted Hardy.
She pictured him pinning her to the wall in her kitchen, telling her not to scream; Hardy’s hands beginning to move slowly over her body, his knee between her legs, pressed up against her crotch—not in a sexual way at first, but as she reacted to the feeling of his body against hers, unable to help herself, the tension between them would shift. Instead of covering her mouth with his hand, he would lean in and seal her lips with his own. His weight would shift against her, and she would feel the hard ridge of his cock pressing into her hip. He’s been in prison for three months; he hasn’t been with a woman in all that time… Cassandra swallowed against the dry feeling in her throat as her heart began to beat faster, her body heating up bit by bit. She felt the warmth spreading down from her stomach, through her hips, and shifted in the driver’s seat at the sensation of her fluids beginning to flow.
What would she have done if Hardy had had a different reason for breaking into her apartment—not to convince her to go on some bizarre errand, but instead wanting to wreak some kind of revenge on her for her part in getting him locked up? Cassandra shuddered, imagining the hungry way that he would paw at her clothes, almost ripping them in his need to get her naked and have his way with her. Her breasts ached at the thought, her nipples hardening into firm little nubs, straining at the thin lace of her bra for a touch that wouldn’t come.
Cassandra tried not to squirm as she imagined that phantom caress moving down, a hand sliding up between her legs to feel her through the fabric of her pants, rubbing her slowly until she moaned. “You want this, I can feel it.”
She took a slow breath, no longer able to resist imagining what Hardy would look like naked. She pictured him throwing her onto the couch in her living room, his fingers hooking into the waistband of her panties and tugging them down over her hips, revealing her body to his starved gaze.
Stop! You have to stop this, right now.
Cassandra wasn’t sure if the thought was directed at herself for entertaining a fantasy of Jack Hardy taking her roughly, or if it was something she wanted to say to the imaginary fugitive in her head. She gave herself a shake. Either way, you have to stop thinking that way. This is not the time for a fantasy tryst with a man who got convicted of murder.
Cassandra sensed Hardy’s gaze on her from behind; she could almost feel the heat of his eyes boring into the back of her skull through the headrest. She wondered if he somehow knew the direction her thoughts had gone in.
“I’m going to change the music,” she said, struggling to keep her voice level. Her throat felt tight, and her heart hammered away in her chest.
“Go ahead,” Hardy said from the back seat.
Her hand shook slightly on the steering wheel as she picked up her phone with the other, carefully dividing her attention between the road in front and the device in her hand as she scrolled through her music library. She chose Muse’s Origin of Symmetry and tried to force her breathing to slow into a steady pattern as the twisting, circular melody of the first track filled her ears.
Cassandra glanced at her speedometer, feeling another stab of paranoia. She didn’t want to get caught with Hardy, didn’t want to attract attention to herself. If some cop tries to pull you over, how do you know he won’t just kill you then and there? How much worse could his situation really be with another murder to his name?
Up ahead, the sky was steadily lightening, and Cassandra realized that the strange “visit” to Jack Hardy’s friend was the first time in months that she had seen the purple-pink breaking of the predawn light on the horizon. Even when she had stayed up all night on assignments, she had been inside, staring at a computer screen; there hadn’t been any opportunity to appreciate the slow, gradual build of dawn.
A flicker of light in the bottom corner of her vision interrupted Cassandra’s thoughts and she looked down at the console. The orange blob next to the “E” on her gas gauge had flicked on; she could drive maybe a few more miles before she was in serious danger of being totally out of gas, and then they would be stranded on the highway.
Chapter Six
“Uh…”
“What is it? Is someone following us?” Cassandra saw Hardy’s head pop up as he glanced over the back of his seat.
“No,” she said quickly. “But I’m going to be out of gas in fifteen, twenty minutes tops. My light just came on.”
“Oh.” Hardy settled once more across the back seat. “How far away are we from an exit?”
Cassandra looked up through the windshield, scanning the road ahead of them for the next sign.
“Three miles,” she said when she saw the sign bearing the next five exits on it. A moment later, another sign indicated that the exit had three gas stations—one open twenty-four hours—along with a hotel and a few fast food restaurants.
“I can make it. It’ll be close, but there’s a twenty-four hour gas station.”
“Get off there then,” Hardy said, sounding more relaxed than Cassandra would have expected for a man on the run. She shrugged, shifting out of the left lane, gradually working her way to the right, as the car moved closer to the exit.
Cassandra coasted to a stop at the end of the exit ramp, trying to remember what she’d read about the best ways to conserve gas. She followed the signs that told her the station was another mile away from the Interstate. She thought the car would just make it, with maybe some fumes left over.
A couple of minutes later, the brightly lit sign of the gas station came into view. Cassandra pulled in, shivering at a brief chill that came over her. In the back seat, Hardy sat up just a little. She drove up to one of the pumps and sighed with relief at the fact that everything seemed to be functioning and she would be able to fill up.
“It looks like everything’s SOP,” she said, shifting the car into park.
Hardy lifted himself up onto his elbows and looked around, his gaze falling onto Cassandra. She felt another chill work through her spine as he stared intently into her eyes, almost as if he could peer beyond them and into her brain.
“Okay,” he said finally, breaking the lingering silence between them. “I’m going to tell you exactly how this is going to go, and you’re going to tell me if you understand. Got it?”
“Sure,” Cassandra said; she would have agreed to almost any proposition at that point.
“You’re going to go inside and pay, and use the bathroom, if you must.”
“I should probably get something to drink, and some more cigarettes, since you’re smoking half of mine.”
“Okay,” Hardy said. “What you are not going to do is decide that this is your chance to call the cops. Understand?”
“I hear you,” Cassandr
a said, feeling insulted by his domineering tone.
“Neither are you going to tell the clerk inside to call the cops, right?”
“Well there goes that plan,” Cassandra joked weakly.
Hardy’s eyes hardened. “I’m serious, Cassandra.”
Cassandra twitched; she couldn’t remember if Hardy had used her name to address her at any point so far. Obviously, he would have had to have known it, in order to find her apartment. He would have read her articles on his case, or at least known about her from the help she had given the police in connecting him with Laura Granger’s murder. The sound of her name on his lips was much more appealing than Cassandra would ever have thought possible.
“Don’t fuck this up. Go in there, buy whatever snacks you need, go pee, and pay for the gas. Then you come right back here. If the clerk makes eye contact with you, look back at him. Smile, if you think you can do that without looking like a hijacking victim.” Hardy’s lips twitched into a sly grin. “Act like a normal human being who’s out at a weird hour for whatever reason you want to invent.”
“I understand,” Cassandra said levelly. “I’m not going to try and screw this up.” She took a deep breath.
“If you try to run…” Hardy licked his lips and looked away for an instant. “I can get another prison tattoo, with your name on it. And you can bet your sweet little ass that if I can break out once, I can get out again. Do you understand?”
“I already told you I do,” Cassandra said, setting her jaw. “Can I go now?”
“Go,” Hardy said, tilting his head towards the convenience store.
Cassandra reached for her purse, checking to make sure that, of all the things that could have gone wrong, she hadn’t forgotten her wallet. Hardy sank down into the darkness of the back seat, lapsing once more into silence.
She shivered as she stepped out of the car; it couldn’t be that cold, could it? She walked slowly across the parking lot, thinking about what she needed to buy. She wanted more water, and something to keep her awake. Maybe Hardy will be easier to deal with if I grab him something to eat and drink, too.
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