Getaway Girl

by Michele Hauf

  Now, I battled another strong male.

  I wondered how Sacha had known Max. I couldn’t recall Max mentioning him, though his profession demanded that he deal with all sorts.

  Maybe they hadn’t known each other. Was Sacha a hit man? Hired to take out a nuisance driver? Sacha had been fathered by a man who sold women for money. On the scale of criminal careers fostered by parental influence, it was an easy leap to make.

  The last time I had seen my mentor alive was the night of my birthday. It had been ’80s night at DV8…

  I love American ’80s music, so the fact that it was blasting my every pore was fitting. I shimmied on the dance floor, taking joy in the swishy click of the beaded lime-green fringe that edged my thigh-high dress. Layers of the beads fell from breast to thigh like a flapper’s dress. I’d worn killer stilettos in matching glitter-green. Tonight was all about me, and I wanted every man in the club to notice.

  But the most important man danced opposite me. I’d been with Max Montenelli for more than four years. It had been his idea to go out for drinks. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, though occasionally we were lovers. Mostly, we shared a professional relationship, but cared for one another. Once in a while, sex just happened.

  Flashing strobes danced across Max’s smooth, bald, black head. Jamaican by birth, he had lived in London most of his life, so had a cockney accent with just the slightest smoothness of the islands. Gorgeous green eyes always won him a second look from the ladies. And he wasn’t one to walk by without noticing those looks.

  Sliding a palm down my arm, Max drew me close. We ground our hips in a teasing promise and bounced low.

  “I see an acquaintance at the back of the room,” Max shouted beside my ear. “I’m going to say hello.”

  I nodded, but didn’t lose the beat as he spun away from me. But three vodkas and I was feeling keen. Dancing with a partner or by myself, it didn’t matter, so long as the music didn’t stop. The Spanish rhythm of Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” coaxed me toward the center of the dance floor. Once there, I did a periphery scan of the bar.

  Flashing lights and arms swaying high in the air made it difficult to pick out anything, but I did spot Max’s head in the shadows beneath the balcony. There another man stood, who nodded as Max approached. I’d never seen him before and, frankly, didn’t care.

  At the time, I’d thought nothing of it. Max had bussed my forehead with a birthday kiss and whispered, “Happy birthday” in his sexy Jamaican-Brit accent. I didn’t mind him leaving me alone. I’m in my element on the dance floor (correction: second element; you know the car is first). I’d remained on DV8’s dance floor and boogied for what seemed like endless hours of ecstatic dancing.

  Later, I found myself a partner who had matched my every move. I love a man who’s not afraid to let loose dancing, just allow his body to move and enjoy the motion. He was handsome and danced as smoothly as a Porsche 911 corners going ninety. We’d spent a good hour on the dance floor—most of it slow dancing-even as bodies tranced and thumped to a raucous beat all around us. Neither of us had asked if the other would like to go home for the night. It had just happened.

  The small apartment my dance partner took me to was in the 11th arrondissement, not far from the place de la Bastille, where the famous prison once held cruel reign. The three-room loft, faced with dozens of floor-to-ceiling windows, had been sparsely furnished, so much so that I commented, “You just move in?”

  “Moving out,” he’d said with a whiskey smile. (Though his drink of choice had been vodka, neat.)

  He tugged off his suit coat and shirt (the well-fitted designer kind that I knew was expensive only because of the little black-and-yellow bee embroidered below his rib cage on the right side). The sight of his pecs lured me across the room to kiss the hard masculine flesh. Beneath my brazen, exploring touch, his muscles tensed and he murmured a soft plea not to stop. The taste of him, like salt and vodka and sex, filled my mouth.

  I wanted all he could give me, quick, hard and all night long.

  Strong fingers glided over my shoulders and lifted the thin glittery straps. I shimmied like a dancer out from under the dress as he lifted it and tossed it aside. Wearing nothing but my stilettos and panties, I coaxed him with a sly finger to follow me, and we collapsed together on a lush, high bed.

  Nameless sex with a stranger is hot, and it wasn’t the first time I’d neglected to learn my lover’s name. There’s something about anonymity that destroys inhibitions and tempts a lass to simply take it all, and beg for more.

  The next morning, I woke alone amidst a sea of crisp white sheets. It was difficult to emerge from the 900-thread-count luxury, but I was annoyed at being abandoned. I did the usual apartment search—de rigueur following anonymous sex—more out of curiosity than looking for anything. He brushed his teeth with Elgydium toothpaste, had no evil looking creams in the cabinet. Silk boxers were his choice, and the refrigerator stored only Perrier and fruit. There was nothing personal to clue me in about the man who had rocked my world.

  I hadn’t even learned his name.

  I’ve always deviated from the path. All right, so I’ve sped right on through the warning signs and on to dangerous territory. And standing at the end of that path were the bad boys just waiting to give me the comfort—albeit false—I craved from a man. No staunch, upright morals for this chick. Leave those business suits at home and wrap me in your arms of leather and steel.

  I sighed following the final notes of Cinder’s “Soul Creation” pumping in my ears. The chorus claimed that I would want it, need it, love it, and even hate it.

  Yes, I wanted. I needed. I wanted a man in my life, but he had to take care of himself. Just loving me and keeping me happy were all I required from him. And sex whenever I chose. Sex is good. Sex is keen. Sex makes life worth living. Sex is world currency.

  I’d been on a dry spell since sleeping with Sacha, but that had nothing to do with lack of interest. Was it because my world moved so much faster than most of the men I cruised by?

  I tapped my fingers to the beat on my thigh and refocused on that morning following waking up at Sacha’s. I’d left the apartment after snooping, thinking he wouldn’t return, and drove the Audi home. I knew that Max would call me when he needed his car back and suspected that if he’d gone home with a woman, he didn’t need me barging in to hand him the keys and wait for a ride home.

  Around noon, I’d gotten a call from Fitch asking me to meet her at Max’s house. When I arrived, she told me about the car accident. We both suspected it was murder.

  Had Sacha left me slumbering in his bed and gone to kill Max? Why? And how? Max had been peeled out of a banger—not his own. I’d immediately thought he’d gotten a ride home, but reports said there had been no one else in the car. Had Sacha’s sleeping with me been a clever ruse to…to what?

  Something didn’t add up. Max had to have been pursued by a professional driver. It’s the only thing I could guess. (And my initial guess had been the Network.) Sacha Vital was neither a professional driver nor a member of the Network. However, that didn’t rule out him hiring someone, which had to be the likely choice.

  But that still didn’t explain how Max had gotten behind the wheel of a strange car.

  Pressing the back of my head against the bus seat, I closed my eyes. I would bring Vital to justice. I owed it to Max.

  But first things first. I was starving. And likely I smelled pretty rank after yesterday’s adventures. I needed a change of clothing and some food. I had a T-shirt and jeans in my bag; I’d have to change first chance I got.

  Your apartment went up inflames.

  If Kevin—aka Eight—was such a good watcher, couldn’t he have prevented the fire? Or did he take some strange sort of pleasure in witnessing my pain while keeping tabs on me? We watch. We don’t interfere. That man had been watching too much television.

  Thinking of what I had lost in the fire didn’t upset me overmuch. I had taken anything of value
when I’d vacated after the cocked-up kidnapping attempt. Cash, passports and ID, a few family pictures of me and my pa, and the photo I’d found in Max’s bedroom when Fitch and I had searched.

  I dug into the duffel bag, drawing out the stack of photos. The Black Crows claimed they were “Hard To Handle” as I sorted through the few glossy snapshots. My pa held a thin pike up near his ear. The silly grin on his face told me he didn’t care about the fishing; it was the time he’d spent with his daughter that mattered to him. Another showed Pa sitting on the hood of an old Volkswagen Rabbit he’d completely overhauled. I had raced that a few times and had returned home with a stack of bills—much to Pa’s annoyance. He had never been keen on me risking my life, yet he’d never succeeded in taming my furious heart. I had spied him cheering me on during more than one street race, yet he’d always slip away and beat me home. I wondered if it had been difficult for him to hold the stern, disapproving parent look after I’d return home.

  Secretly, I think he was proud of me, but he’d never put it into words.

  I bowed my head, ignoring the race of buildings and pedestrians outside the bus window. The corner of my left eye burned. With a tear? I don’t cry. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

  It was not easy to relate to those good times now. It wasn’t as though my life had changed so drastically, beyond my father no longer sharing my successes and challenges. I held Pa in my heart and always knew where to find him, should I need him. Yeah, he’d been proud. One doesn’t have to say it to show it in their eyes.

  As for my mother? She could still be alive, but I’ve never felt the urge to find her. Wanderlust? Hmm, I suppose that could be partially to blame for my need to drive. Driving away from things most important to me.

  Maybe.

  Oh, bloody Sunday, I didn’t believe that gobbledygook. I am the way I am because I’m…me, and not because of any mother I’d never had in my life, or because my pa was a quiet man who’d let his daughter learn from her own mistakes instead of trying to mold her into something she was not.

  I hadn’t turned out so awful. All right, so I was trying my best to atone.

  The final picture in the stack featured a dark-haired woman, probably in her late twenties, smiling more with her ebony eyes than her straight mouth. It was the photo I had found lying on Max’s nightstand near the alarm clock, as Fitch and I had pored over his things hoping to find a piece of evidence before the police arrived on the scene. To keep it so close to his bed, well, I figured the woman must have been someone close to Max.

  Except for the two of us, Max had never mixed personal relationships with business and had asked me to do the same. He’d known of my penchant for seeking one-night stands and rarely commented on the reckless nature of my ways. I was looking for a connection, Max had once analyzed, someone to replace the hole my pa’s death had left. I’d always shrug. Max was no therapist. I just like sex.

  I had never guessed Max knew someone who would hold a prominent place so close to his heart. Now, I flipped over the photo and read the name scrawled in Max’s tight black script: Ava. A pretty name, but there was no way to determine nationality for the shadowed light made the color photo virtually black-and-white. And without a last name, she would be impossible to trace.

  With a shrug, I held the stack of photos up and silently vowed to the mystery woman that I would find her, return the photo, and tell her all I could of Max’s never-ending thrill of a life. If that was what the woman wanted.

  I replaced the photos in an inner pocket of the duffel so they wouldn’t get too rumpled. My stomach spoke up. Yes, I could hear it growl even over the low tones of music.

  I eyed the passing shop fronts for an enticing restaurant for something hot and quick to eat when the phone rang. The one Sacha had given me.

  “Time to put on the game face,” I muttered as I flipped it open and tugged out one earplug. “Speak.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m in a parking lot for the InterContinental hotel on the rue de Castiglione.”

  “Across from the Tuileries? That’s a popular area. Must be plenty of tourists milling about.”

  “Exactly. If you’re not here in five minutes, I drive away in your new car.”

  “I’m on a city bus.” I scanned the street, locating a sign; I was on the rue St. Honoré, not far from the royal gardens, but a longer trip for the many stops along the way. “I can be there in ten minutes. If you don’t wait for me, I’ll hunt you down, Vital.”

  Click.

  Chapter 14

  There was so much static on the line, I suggested Kevin find a new provider. I gave him the meet location, though I had to repeat it twice for him to understand.

  “We’re being scrubbed,” I thought I heard him say through intermittent bursts of interference.

  I guessed that was some tech term for being scrambled or spied on by those hacks who drive around trying to tap into WiFi connections. I wondered if I should contact Fitch for a clearer connection. I still wasn’t sure if I could trust her. However, now we were both playing for the enemy.

  Correction: I wasn’t. I never would.

  “I hope you’ve got my back,” I said to Kev—Eight—and then hung up. “But if you don’t…” I touched the shape of the Glock in the bag nestled upon my lap. “I can handle Monsieur Vital.”

  I was wishing Adam Ant had been top of the charts during my prime—I would have liked to see him perform “Desperate But Not Serious” in concert wearing his pirate/fop gear, prancing across the stage, shifting his hips for all the ladies.

  I sang along to the tune as I walked the sidewalk en route to the parking lot connected to the hotel where Sacha was waiting.

  Was that what I had become? Was I desperate but not serious? Desperate for…something. But not serious about finding that something?

  Connection, Max’s deep British accent said in the haze of my thoughts. You are desperate for connection, girl. Can you take it seriously once you have it?

  Why did a ghost from my past seem to hit it right on the mark?

  Fine, I’d take the connection part, but please, I did not need a man. All that jazz about a man completing a woman? Not on my watch. But it goes without saying that I do enjoy men.

  A billowing white canopy covered half the hotel parking lot. I strode down the first aisle, eyeing a few patrons leaving their cars behind while dragging luggage toward the hotel. Tourists. At the far end, near a grove of lush lime trees, stood a tall figure, the back of his head visible over the roof of a shiny new 3 series sedan BMW. My pace increased. This was going to be bloody spectacular.

  Well. When the man promised to deliver, he certainly did deliver.

  Ignoring Vital’s nod of acknowledgment at my approach, I ran my fingers over the slick, deep red paint on the hood of the car. It was so glossy it slipped beneath my fingers like silk, but it was finer than any silk sheets that had ever slid over my body.

  “Barrique Red,” I said with satisfaction. A subtle quiver trickled through my system. Miniorgasm over a car? It was definitely possible, but I didn’t quite get there. Nothing less than driving a Ferrari or Porsche could do that.

  “Red? It’s brown.”

  “Red,” I snappily corrected.

  “Whatever.” Sacha toed the front tire. “I thought they’d delivered the wrong car when I saw the color. But if you say it’s red…”

  It did look like a deep chocolate brown here in the tree-laced shadows, but I was sticking to my guns. “Red.”

  Sleek, agile and luxurious. Two hundred and fifty horsepower, 7,000 rpms and maximum torque. This pretty redhead would go zero to sixty in under six seconds. I could so thrash behind the wheel. She was designed for fun, but not necessarily a backseat full of passengers. Three could squeeze tightly in the back—not conducive to pickups—but I’d worry about that later. I couldn’t wait to hear the roar of the engine as I pushed her to the limit.

  Christmas had come e
arly.

  “The key is in it,” Sacha offered. “I figured I’d let you reprogram the start code yourself. It’s yours.”

  You had better believe it was mine.

  Not needing to be forced, I skipped around to the driver’s side, slipped inside and touched the key. My fingers danced over the sleek dashboard, up over the crest of the steering wheel and then along my thighs to absorb the buttery leather into my very psyche.

  The interior was quiet, like a private spa designed only for me, and with buttons, each within tapping range, to please my every whim. Sitting on the cordovan leather seats was like sleeping between 900-thread count sheets. The latter was soft as a baby’s bottom, and you know how sweet it is to touch a baby’s bottom. (Don’t get any ideas. I am not ready to settle down and become a mother. Would I repeat my mother’s transgression of abandoning her only child? It was something I thought about. A lot.)

  Wielding an anticipatory finger and dancing it about in a few balletic circles, I then pressed the Start button.

  “Purr, baby, purr.” And I think I purred in response to the engine’s call to adventure.

  I pressed voice control on the steering wheel. “Radio on.” The tunes softly pulsed, and I left the volume low because the pound of my heartbeat was all the rhythm I needed.

  Closing my eyes and inhaling, I lingered in the heady aroma of factory-new leather and a pristine engine. “Oh, but I love new-car smell.”

  Alone in a new car—a car I didn’t have to pay for—was the best feeling in the world. The flood of superpowered endorphins rushed straight to my groin; I was ready to settle back and soar.

  I hit the door lock button on the steering wheel, but it was too late. I’d seen the hand move in for the kill out of the corner of my eye. The passenger door opened. My spa was under invasion.

  But I had a brilliant idea.

  “Hold up!” I swung out and skipped around to the passenger side. I had to protect myself. No new-car orgasm was going to alter my perception and put me off my game.