by Lori Wilde
The sports car rammed them from behind, jarring the SUV. Marlie moaned. Joel tried to get back into the right-hand lane, but the Camaro swerved to block him.
Marlie closed her eyes and prayed.
“Oh, shit,” Joel said.
Her eyes flew open and she gasped. Up ahead was a suspension bridge with black water shimmering below.
“We’re dead,” she cried.
“Quick.” Joel’s gaze was hooked on the road. “Unbuckle your seat belt, slide over here, and take the wheel.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can, I’ve seen you drive. You’re amazing.”
“That wasn’t me! That was Angelina.”
“Angelina?”
“My cartoon character.”
“Huh?”
“I sort of channel her in difficult situations.”
“Then channel her now and take the wheel.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Make it happen, Marlie.” Joel was already out of his seat belt.
“What are you doing?”
“Have faith, Ladybug.”
“Have faith? Hello, have you even met me?”
“Just get behind the wheel. You can do this.”
Angelina, you hear that? Come on. Take over. But Angelina didn’t answer her call. Where was the bitch?
The Camaro rammed them from behind again. Marlie shrieked.
“Listen to me. This is the only chance we’ve got,” Joel said. “Get behind the wheel.”
She had no choice. Joel was already climbing over the seat into the back of the Durango. The SUV slowed immediately and the Camaro hit them again.
Marlie jumped into the seat Joel had just vacated, grasping the wheel in her sweaty palms.
Angelina, Angelina, come on, come on.
The bridge loomed.
Marlie perched on the very edge of the seat so her feet could reach the accelerator; she hadn’t had the chance to move the seat forward so her short legs would fit. She stomped down on the accelerator with all her weight.
The Durango shot forward.
She heard a thump as Joel fell backward. “Are you okay?”
“Forget me; keep going.”
The tires made a rat-tat-tatting sound as she hit the metal slats of the bridge.
Joel was rummaging around in the back, making all kinds of noises. His motions caused the Durango to rock. Because she was so much shorter than Joel, she couldn’t see in the rearview mirror, but she was afraid to take her hands off the wheel to adjust it.
The Camaro’s engine revved, and she knew that the driver was going to strike the SUV again. The killer was going to force them off the bridge and into a watery grave.
She felt a cold blast of air, heard loud road noises, and realized Joel must have opened the back-door hatch. She heard a loud boom but felt no impact.
Fearfully, she sneaked a peek in the side-view mirror just in time to see the Camaro shoot off the bridge and go flying into the water like a movie-studio stunt car.
She slowed the Durango and turned to look over her shoulder. She couldn’t see Joel. Where was he?
Panic shot through her.
She pulled to a stop, hopped out, and saw Joel’s mangled toolbox in the middle of the road. She realized at once what had happened. Joel had tossed the toolbox out the back, and the Camaro struck it at a high rate of speed. That’s what had propelled the sports car into the water.
“Joel,” she screamed, running around to the back of the truck.
Marlie found him lying on the floorboards, clutching his side and panting hard. Blood soaked the dressing she’d applied to his wound.
“You’re hurt!”
“I’m fine.” He sat up, trying to hide his grimace from her.
“You saved us,” she cried, rain streaming down her face.
“We saved each other.”
It was only then that Marlie realized she’d done it all without a drop of help from Angelina.
Together, she and Joel peered over the edge of the bridge and watched the Camaro’s taillights disappear beneath the churning waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joel was fading fast. He needed fuel to keep running at this pace. Food and a long sleep.
Marlie used her cell phone to put in an anonymous call to the police, telling them that she’d seen a Camaro go over the bridge. She made Joel stretch out in the backseat while she changed his dressing. He got a kick out of her fussy mother-hen bossiness, and they were both relieved to see her stitching job had held up well under the exertion of heaving the toolbox into the path of the diabolical Camaro. She applied a new bandage to his wound, taped it securely, and then they took off again.
As tired as Joel was, he was in much better shape than the Durango. It rattled ominously as they drove back to Corpus Christi.
“Is it stupid that I feel badly for not pulling the guy out of the water?” Marlie fussed.
“He was trying to kill us.”
“But he was still a human being.”
Her innocence twisted him in knots. “Look, we did what we had to do to save our own lives.”
“I know.”
Joel didn’t know how to comfort her. Reality sucked. “At least you can stop running,” he said.
“Yeah, now only the cops are after me.” She turned to look at him. “Maybe I should just turn myself in.”
“Then who’s going to find your mother?”
“I’m so tired and hungry I can’t even think.” Marlie massaged her forehead with a thumb and finger.
“Never fear,” Joel said, turning into the parking lot of an all-night diner. “Denny’s is here.”
Ten minutes later they were sipping orange juice at a booth in the back corner, waiting for their Grand Slam breakfasts. Joel insisted on sitting against the wall. He didn’t want anyone sneaking up on him.
Marlie was nervously shredding a paper napkin and avoiding his gaze. He wondered if she was thinking about what had happened between them before she’d seen Ronald McDonald’s face in the window. His mind kept being drawn back to how they’d almost made love, even though he didn’t want to think about it. He needed all his concentration for figuring out this puzzle.
“I’ve gotta ask you something,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Look at me.”
Shyly, she tilted her head. “What is it?”
“Do you think there’s any chance that the stories about your father could be true? Do you think it’s at all possible that he might have been a traitor?”
“Lies.” Marlie smacked her tongue down hard on the word. “My father found out that someone high up in the Navy was involved in a cover-up and he was going to blow the whistle when he was murdered by his supposed best friend, Augustus Hunter.”
Joel wasn’t prone to guilt, especially for something that he hadn’t done. But when he looked into Marlie’s eyes, the pinch he felt in his gut had nothing to do with his injury or hunger and everything to do with the pain that his father had caused her family.
Gus hadn’t talked much about the shooting. Joel had heard more from the local gossipmongers than from his old man. According to the official story, Daniel Montague had been arrested for treason when he’d reboarded his ship after a stop in Basra, Iraq, in 1990.
They’d transferred Montague to the USS Gilcrest, the ship his father had commanded. Because they were old friends, Gus had personally seen to the exchange. As Gus had escorted Daniel to the brig, Montague had made a break for the railing. Gus had meant to fire only a warning shot, but in the rush of excitement one of the young MPs had jostled Gus’s arm and his bullet had struck Montague in the back. Daniel’s body had fallen overboard and was lost at sea.
Now, in retrospect, the story sounded pretty damned fishy. If they weren’t above framing Marlie for Robert Herkle’s murder, who said they weren’t above inventing an entire cover story around Daniel Montague’s death?
The questi
on was, who were “they”?
If Marlie was correct and her father had been used as a scapegoat and then killed to keep him quiet, where did Gus fit into the scheme? Was his father part of the conspiracy?
It was an agonizing question.
And what crimes was it that the Navy was really covering up? Only concerns of national security warranted such extreme secrecy.
A sense of menace lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. Sweat warmed his scalp at the thought that his beloved Navy was corrupt. That everything he’d ever believed in and cherished was a lie. Someone in the upper echelons of the organization had committed an egregious act, and apparently they would stop at nothing to cover it up.
The realization was a punch in the gut so swift and hard, Joel exhaled a groan.
It was unfathomable that the one true place where he’d ever felt he belonged was no longer something he could trust. The Navy had provided him with discipline and the guidance he’d lacked at home. It had brought him closer to Gus after years of estrangement. But it was all a house of cards. Falling down around his ears. Shaking his faith, shattering his confidence in a system he’d pledged to defend, honor, and uphold.
Had he been a fool? An utter dupe?
He studied his hands. Hands that had killed in defense of his country. He curled his fingers into his palms, tightly squeezing them into fists.
Emotion washed over him in waves. Anger, betrayal, sadness, guilt. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, pushing away the torrent, forcing his shoulders to relax and his fingers to loosen. Focusing the electric tide tingling over his skin into a narrow laser he could draw into his gut.
Joel opened his eyes, glanced over and caught Marlie studying him intently. “What is it?”
“You’ve got some soot on your cheek.”
She licked her thumb with that devastatingly pink tongue, leaned across the table, and slowly rubbed the flat of her moist, soft thumb across the ridge of his cheekbone.
For some reason, this gentle contact unnerved Joel more completely than if she’d reached down and touched his crotch. What was this feeling muscling in on his psyche? He’d tried shutting it down, but the damn thing kept popping up like a jack-in-the-box, springing out at the most unexpected moments.
He was smiling, yes, frickin’ smiling, because she was rubbing the dirt from his cheek with her wet thumb. He felt the smile crinkle his eyes, and a sudden warmness burned his chest just left of dead center.
She was looking into his eyes and he was looking back, unhinged as a teenager having his first sexual experience.
Oh, shit, he was in deep trouble.
They stared into each other’s eyes, Marlie’s hand still frozen on his cheek, still leaning across the table, hearts smoldering in the heat of their white-hot gaze. He found, in her face, a view of paradise.
He melted like chocolate in a damp palm. Her face triggered his slavish devotion. He made no sense of it. Absolutely no understanding of why it was happening. He simply knew the feeling was absolute in its tyranny.
Her eyebrows lifted in that wide-eyed eager look of hers, and then she shyly lowered her eyelashes and lifted her cheeks in an almost imperceptible smile. Then she glanced back at him once more, caressing him with her eyes. Breathlessly, she sat back down. Her thumb was gone from his face, but he’d been imprinted for life.
Joel too had forgotten to breathe.
On the surface, Marlie was cute, yes, with her round cheeks and that crooked little nose and her compact, curvy body. But as he looked at her now, in the unflattering yellow light of a Denny’s fluorescent bulb, wearing his white shirt, he saw the most beautiful woman on earth.
A startlingly honest face, intelligent brown eyes, and a spirit so brave it caressed his soul. She was burning bright, nervous like someone with a high fever. Her inner beauty washed over him in a tidal wave, drowning him.
He was a convert to love. One of the faithful now. A skeptic no more.
Their waitress shuffled over and plunked down two plates in front of them, jarring him out of the aching sweetness of the moment. “Two Grand Slams.”
“I’m starving.” Marlie reached for the maple syrup, poured it over her pancakes, and attacked them with a soft moan of exquisite pleasure that just about made Joel come unglued.
He tackled his eggs, trying to focus on the food, but his mind was caught up with this new revelation that he had been wrong and she had been right.
Joel was not accustomed to being wrong, nor was he one for overthinking things. The way he’d always looked at the world was changing, and good or bad, it was all Marlie’s doing.
After she’d polished off her breakfast, she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. He watched her go with a sigh in his heart.
The waitress led two Corpus Christi police officers to the table next to where Joel was sitting. One of the men unclipped a two-way radio from his belt and set the device on the table in front of him.
Instantly Joel went on alert.
His eggs went to sawdust in his mouth. Every muscle fiber in his body tensed. He watched the cops, but when he realized his scrutiny might draw their attention, he forced his eyes to his plate.
The two-way radio squawked. “Unit 45, come in.”
The cop depressed the talk button. “Yeah, Maisy, what is it?”
Joel leaned forward, straining to hear what the dispatcher was saying. His fingers gripped his fork until his knuckles ached.
“Got an APB out on that suspect in the Herkle murder case. Name’s Marlie Montague.”
“Go ahead,” the cop said.
The dispatcher went on to give a description of Marlie, but it was difficult to make out everything she was saying over the radio static until the end. “And her male accomplice has been identified. He’s a rogue NCIS agent. An ex-Navy SEAL named Joel Hunter. Be careful out there. He’s considered armed and extremely dangerous.”
“Where are we going?” Marlie asked after Joel rushed her out of the Denny’s. The sun had risen and the streets were starting to clog with drive-to-work traffic.
“I don’t know. We need somewhere to hide until we can figure out exactly who is framing you and why, and who really killed Robert Herkle.”
“And what happened to my mother.” Her voice clotted with sadness. “Please don’t forget my mother.”
“I haven’t forgotten her,” Joel said. “But her disappearance is obviously part of what’s going on, and I have a feeling it’s all related to one of your conspiracy theories. Question is, which one? How many conspiracy theories do you have, by the way?”
Marlie tilted her head, counted on her fingers, did a little mental math. “Two hundred, give or take.”
Joel whistled. “I had no idea there were that many conspiracy theories floating around.”
“Hey, it’s a complex world.”
“Any way we can narrow them down? Throw out some of the more outlandish ones?”
“Since all this is coming to a head now, I’m thinking it’s got to be a theory in one of my most recent comic books. Are you sure you want to get roped into this with me?”
Joel’s eyes met hers. “I have never been more certain of anything else in my life. What they’re doing to you is a gross injustice, and if I have to single-handedly overthrow the United States government to clear your name, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Marlie felt as if the Marines had landed. Joel was throwing in his lot with her, and she was pitching a tent in his back pocket. They were a team. He’d earned her loyalty. They might have had a rocky start, but now they were sharing a foxhole in the war zone. She’d gladly take a bullet for him and die with a smile on her face. There were only two other people in the whole world to whom she was equally committed.
Her mother and Cosmo.
“First step, find a place to hole up. With the cops looking for you, we can’t just check into a motel and we’ll have to ditch the Durango as well.” Joel idled to a stop at a traffic signal, pulling up behind a clamorin
g diesel truck that bore a bumper sticker advertising Corpus Christi Buccaneer Days.
Buccaneer Days was an annual spring event honoring the town’s colorful past. The weekend celebration featured a flotilla parade, arts and craft fairs, food vendors, a ceremonial kidnapping of the mayor by the chamber-of-commerce-turned-buccaneers, and a huge fireworks display, among many other events. Marlie wasn’t a folk festival/street fair kind of gal, but Cosmo’s family organized the flotilla parade. Cosmo had been forced to pitch in every year, and he’d often tapped Marlie to keep him company.
The three or four weeks before Buccaneer Days were crazed. Hundreds of volunteers worked around the clock getting the floats ready. Off season, the floats were housed in an old dockside warehouse owned by Cosmo’s parents. Attached to the warehouse was a small apartment and during the prefestival rush, the Villereals hired a fry cook to keep the volunteers fed.
Many a night Cosmo and Marlie labored into the wee hours, discussing computer hacking and conspiracy theories, while painting or welding or nail-gunning the displays. It had been heady fun, eating greasy food, not getting enough sleep, being part of the behind-the-scenes action. The rest of the year the warehouse and adjoining apartment lay empty, waiting silently for the annual Buccaneer Days madness.
And Marlie knew where the Villereals kept the spare key.
“Make a U-turn at the next intersection,” she told Joel.
“Why?”
Marlie grinned. “I’ve got the perfect place for us to hide out.”
The warehouse was silent and musty. The floats loomed like quiet dinosaurs, waiting to be brought back to life. They squeezed past a pirate ship flying the Jolly Roger, and Joel almost hit his head on a diving board turned gangplank. They had to traverse King Neptune’s water palace rising up from a fiberglass clam and slip around the bumper of the Mermaids’ Cotillion. Two years ago Marlie and Cosmo had been the ones to paint the Mermaid Queen’s scales with shimmering aqua paint.
Marlie sneezed against the dust and dampness seeping in from the docks.
“Don’t get sick,” Joel said, as if it were a choice. He was so used to taking command he thought he could tell a virus what to do. Who knew? Maybe he could. He’d certainly shaken off that grazing gunshot wound as if it were nothing more than a shaving nick.
