by Jane Graves
“Oh, Paula,” Renee said. “Thank you.”
“Which one are you going to?” Steve asked. “The one on Eighteenth and Meadowlake seems to always break down. I’ve had better luck with the one by the drugstore on Harris Avenue. The one in that strip shopping center.”
“Okay, we’ll go there,” Paula said, then turned to Renee. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” she said, sniffling a little as she stood up. “Thanks, guys. For everything.”
“I’d better go see about Rhonda,” Steve said, looking as if that were the last thing in the world he wanted to do. He gave Renee a hug, then looked at her sadly. “Good-bye,” he murmured. “And good luck.”
He headed off toward the bedroom, but at the last minute he veered into the kitchen instead. Renee didn’t blame him. He probably wanted to get a cup of coffee under his belt before facing that shrew again.
Ten minutes later, Renee pulled up in front of the strip shopping center and parked John’s Explorer next to an aging blue Chrysler. Paula pulled up next to her in her car, and they both got out. Renee was dismayed to see that despite the early hour, two people were in line ahead of them for the ATM.
They stood over to one side, Renee shivering a little in the cool morning breeze. Paula fingered her card nervously, while Renee merely tried to look inconspicuous. She was anxious to get on the road, because she needed to be a long way from Tolosa before she got Sandy to turn John loose. She didn’t want him to be in those cuffs any longer than he had to be.
That’s because you still care about him.
It was true. She couldn’t deny it. But as sharp as the feeling was now, it would fade, and the pain would go away. It was just a matter of time.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, the last man grabbed his receipt and walked away. Paula and Renee hurried up to the machine. Paula stuck her card in, punched a few buttons, and a moment later the machine spit out five one-hundred-dollar bills. She scooped them out of the cash tray and gave them to Renee, then tucked her card and receipt into the pocket of her purse. Renee gave her a big hug.
“Thanks, Paula. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“Just give me a call when you get where you’re going, okay? I want to know you’re all right.”
“It may be a while.”
She looked at Paula a long time. Her warm hazel eyes had filled with tears, and Renee wondered if she’d ever have a friend like her again—somebody who accepted people for who they were and loved them, anyway. Tom was probably the luckiest man in the world, and Renee hoped to hell he knew it.
Finally she backed away. “I have to go now.”
Paula nodded.
Renee got into John’s car and pulled out of the parking space, refusing to look back at Paula, keeping her mind on getting out of town instead. When she got to the street, she turned right and headed for Highway 4, which would take her to the freeway. Tears clouded her eyes. She blinked rapidly, then wiped her eyes on her sleeve, trying to clear her sight. The last thing she needed was to be blinded by tears and end up wrapping John’s car around a telephone pole.
The light turned red at Harris and Twelfth, and she pulled up behind another car and waited. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, trying to get a grip on her frazzled nerves. By the time she made it to the freeway, she’d be calmer. She’d be able to decide which way she should go. Everything was going to be all right. As long as she kept her cool, everything was going to be all right.
Then, for some reason, she got that prickly sensation along the back of her neck that made her feel as if she were being watched. She turned her gaze to her left, to the car that waited at the light beside hers—a brand-new red Blazer, hot off the showroom floor. Behind the darkly tinted glass, she could just make out the figure of a man, a very large man, staring in her direction. Then his front passenger window came down and she saw his face clearly—that hideously ugly nightmare of a face with a big white bandage slapped across his broken nose.
“Hey, there, sweet thing,” he called out. “Long time no see.”
Chapter 16
Renee stared at Leandro’s revolting face, paralyzed with disbelief that he could have caught up with her again. What was he, anyway? Some kind of bounty-hunting savant?
She had to get out of here. Now.
But how? A car sat in front of her, blocking her way. And the light was still red. She laid on the horn, but the driver in front of her merely shrugged and pointed to the red light.
And Leandro was getting out of his car.
No, no, no!
She threw the Explorer in reverse and almost floored it, only to hit the brake again when she looked in the rearview mirror and realized that a bread truck had pulled up behind her.
She was trapped.
Leandro circled around the front of his car and headed straight for her. She flicked the door locks and laid on the horn again, but the guy in front of her merely turned around and gave her a disgusted look while he waved his arm at the opposing traffic. She knew the door locks would keep Leandro at bay only so long, but all she needed was a matter of seconds.
Change, light! Change!
Leandro came up beside the Explorer, that bald head of his glinting in the morning sunlight, his tattoos standing out in sharp relief on his huge biceps. And that was when she saw the baseball bat.
Without missing a beat, he whacked the bat against the driver’s window, shattering the glass. Renee recoiled and covered her face as safety-glass beads rained down on her. Leandro reached into the car, pulled up the lock, and yanked the door open. He jammed the car into park, then clamped his hand onto her arm and hauled her out of the driver’s seat.
“Let me go!”
He dragged her toward his car. She kicked and screamed, desperate for somebody who was watching this spectacle to help her. But who in his right mind would even consider going toe-to-toe with a huge, ugly, bat-wielding monster like Leandro?
“Hey!” she shouted. “You can’t just leave my car in the middle of the street!”
“Not my problem.”
Leandro shoved her through the passenger door of his Blazer, and when he slammed it behind her, she saw he hadn’t yet removed the interior door handle on the passenger side as he had on his other car. A rush of sheer panic made her fling the door open again, intending to make a run for it. But he doubled back, slammed the door, and shook the bat at her threateningly, and she was forced to reconsider.
He circled the car, tossed the bat onto the back floorboard, then folded himself into the driver’s seat. Just sitting within touching distance of him again made Renee quiver with disgust. She hated his smug expression, and she desperately wanted to smack his surgically altered nose right off his face. But she had no doubt that if she got the least bit physical, he’d turn her into SPAM.
She couldn’t believe this. John’s car had to be cursed. Every time she drove it, she got trapped somewhere with large, angry men coming at her. How could Leandro have found her? Tolosa wasn’t a huge town, but it wasn’t microscopic, either. How bad must her luck be?
Then she had a terrible thought. Could he have known she was at John’s? Could he have followed her from there?
No. Surely if he’d known she was there, he’d have barged right in and ripped her out of his arms. Maybe she’d just been right the first time about him. He was a bloodhound from hell.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“I told you before,” Leandro said with a self-satisfied grin. “I’m the best.”
The light turned green and he peeled out, tires squealing, and Renee strapped herself into the shoulder belt out of pure self-preservation.
“I got no cuffs with me,” he told her. “But being an invited guest the way you are, I’m sure you’ll want to mind your manners.” He added a warning look that said if she didn’t adhere to Emily Post’s rules of fugitive apprehension, he’d break her in half.
Renee felt as if she
were sitting outside her body, watching each terrible moment unfold. She thought about how she could be back with John right now, in his bed, and she wanted to cry. She wanted to be in his arms again, having him tell her once more that he really did believe she was innocent. Maybe it was true; maybe it wasn’t. But she’d have given anything to hear him say it one more time, to have him tell her he was going to do everything he could to help her.
But there wasn’t anything he could do to help her now.
Leandro floated through a stop sign, then turned down Fifteenth Street, passing through a rural-looking niche of the city with a cow pasture on one side of the road and a cemetery on the other. He lit up a Camel and dragged hard on it. He started to toss his Bic on the dashboard, then shot Renee a quick glance and stuck it into his jeans pocket instead.
“So how do you like the new car?” Leandro said, stroking the steering wheel. “Pretty hot, huh?”
“Not nearly as hot as your last one,” Renee said.
“Now, that’s real funny, sweet thing. Maybe you should be a comedian. Right after you spend the next ten years in prison.”
Renee’s stomach turned upside down, and she seriously wondered if she was going to throw up. That wouldn’t be a good idea. She’d already incinerated his last car. If she barfed in this one, he’d rip her to shreds.
He shoved a CD into the player, and something very loud with only a faint resemblance to music blasted out of the speakers.
“Now, there’s a sound system,” he said, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel as he drove, the bass rumbling through the car. “Shoulda upgraded years ago. I was long overdue for new wheels. This baby’s got it all—cruise control, keyless entry, airbags, power everything. Extended warranty, even. And I got a hell of a deal. That pussy of a salesman never knew what hit him.”
No kidding. He’d probably taken one look at Leandro and handed him the keys—no charge.
Wait a minute. What did he say about airbags?
All at once Renee’s mind was buzzing like crazy. Could she actually do that?
“So it’s got airbags, huh?” she said, then made a scoffing noise. “I doubt that’s plural. Knowing you, you’ve only got one on the driver’s side. To hell with anyone riding with you. Right?”
“You got it, sweet thing. Because it’s usually fugitives from justice such as yourself occupying that seat. Why spend the extra couple hundred bucks to protect someone I’m dragging to jail?”
“You know, in theory that makes sense, but in practice, I think it could get you into trouble.”
“Trouble?” Leandro snorted. “What kind of trouble?”
Renee grabbed the steering wheel and gave it a hard downward yank.
“Hey! What are you—”
The car veered hard to the right and jumped the curb. The impact sent the airbag whooshing out, whacking Leandro right in the face and stuffing any words he was about to say right back into his mouth. The airbag deflated instantly and his mouth opened again, this time to emit one long, horrendous howl of pain.
The car traveled a good twenty yards with its left-hand tires on the street and its right-hand tires up over the curb. Its right front bumper whacked a lamppost, slowing the car considerably; then it veered over, hopped the curb the rest of the way, and struck the cemetery’s brick fence, coming to a huge, jolting halt. The impact sent Renee hard into the shoulder belt, her head whipping forward and then recoiling back, but still she had the presence of mind to get out of the belt, yank open the door, and hit the ground running. To her undying relief, the impact had wrapped the fender of Leandro’s car around the right front tire. He wouldn’t be driving it anywhere for quite some time.
The last thing she saw as she glanced over her shoulder was Leandro with both hands over his face and blood running down his arms, and she felt a deep-seated sense of satisfaction knowing that his surgically repaired nose was destined to take another trip through the operating room.
Fortunately, they’d traveled less than half a mile, and the adrenaline pumping through Renee’s body helped her cover that ground in a hurry. She prayed the whole time that nobody had called the police to tell them there was an abandoned car in the middle of the street.
Several minutes later she came around the comer onto Harris Avenue, and if she hadn’t been gasping for breath, she’d have shouted for joy.
John’s car was still there.
She crossed the traffic and opened the driver’s door. She raked a couple of handfuls of shattered safety glass out of the front seat, then hopped inside. The keys were still in the ignition, and it was still running. She was lucky no real criminal had seen it and decided he needed it worse than she did.
With her hands still shaking, she put the car in drive, then made a U-turn at the intersection and chose a new route to Highway 4—one that wouldn’t require her to pass by Leandro’s wreckage.
Five minutes later, she saw the freeway in the distance. She pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road and brought it to a halt. It was decision time.
New Orleans was out. The entire population of planet Earth and possibly some nearby galaxies knew that it had been her original destination. So where was she supposed to go now? East or west?
The engine idled softly as she clutched the steering wheel, her mind spinning with the possibilities. She had five hundred and thirty-nine dollars in her pocket. How far could she go on that?
Think. Think.
Las Vegas? Everybody was shady and possibly a little criminal there, weren’t they? She’d fit right in. Or maybe she should go someplace squeaky-clean where nobody would suspect she was running from the law, like Santa Claus, Indiana, or Cherryvale, California. Their law-enforcement staffs would consist of three or four Barney Fifes who wouldn’t know what to do with a fugitive even if she were right under their noses.
She checked her watch. It had been less than an hour since she’d left John handcuffed to his bed.
Naked.
No. Do not think about John naked. Think about geography.
Maybe she could go to Arizona, dye her hair black, and mingle with an Indian tribe. Or head to New York, where nobody thought much about armed robbery—it was merely part of the local color. Or San Francisco. Everyone was so weird there that a fugitive on the run from an armed-robbery accusation would be positively bland by comparison.
Or she could think about John.
She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined him sitting in that bed, fuming as only he could fume, thinking about how stupid he’d been to trust her for even a minute.
Thinking about how she must be guilty, or she wouldn’t have run again.
Renee clasped the steering wheel, her stomach churning, wishing there had been some way for her to leave without his assuming she was guilty. From now on, when he thought of her, he’d think not of the night they’d spent together, but of the guilty woman he’d been crazy enough to try to help.
She blinked her eyes open again, trying to scrape together a little determination. She had to get out of here now, because sooner or later Leandro would be on her tail again, and if he’d been angry before, he’d be in a delirious rage right about now.
But he probably wouldn’t be half as mad as John.
She couldn’t help it. Raw, hot memories of the hours they’d spent together last night flooded her mind, sending a warm shiver down her spine like an erotic caress. She folded her arms on the steering wheel and dropped her head against them, willing the memories to go away.
Impossible.
She’d be calling Sandy soon, and she’d go over there and turn John loose. He’d never live that down with his family. Never. It wasn’t as if Renee could call 911, though, because that would be fire rescue or something, and undoubtedly one of those guys would know him or know somebody who knew him. He’d be a laughingstock either way.
It’s you or him.
She raised her head slowly, astonished that it had come to that. Or had it?
She could go bac
k.
Just as quickly as the thought crossed her mind, she drove it away again. If the worst happened—if John took her to jail and she was convicted of armed robbery—her life would be over.
But if she ran, she’d be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.
It was a prison either way.
The engine idled, waiting for her to put it in gear, but her mind was so fuzzy that she just couldn’t think. Her whole life seemed to flash before her eyes, and she wondered how everything she’d tried to make right all these years could suddenly have gone so wrong. She saw those long days in juvenile detention that had taken her freedom away. She saw the leering faces of those horrible inmates, taunting her with the realities of life behind bars. She saw endless miles of interstate ahead, without a friendly face in sight.
She saw John’s face, asking her not to leave. Pleading with her to trust him.
She dropped her head to the steering wheel again, overwhelmed by the emotions bombarding her from all sides. She had to decide where she was going. Now.
And once she did, there would be no turning back.
Being on the captive end of a pair of handcuffs was an experience John had never imagined he’d have to deal with, and he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
In the first five minutes after Renee left, he’d tom up everything within the radius of his reach, looking for something to use to saw through the spindle of the headboard. Nothing. In the next five minutes, he sat against the headboard and fumed, furious with her for leaving him here like this. And for the next hour, he alternated between wanting to throttle her and wishing to God she were back in his arms again.
She's guilty, or she wouldn’t have run.
He kept shoving the thought aside, hating to believe it, but it kept coming back until he was forced to acknowledge it. Guilty people ran. Innocent people stayed and fought.
She’d run.
Only a tiny thread of belief remained inside him, and it was growing thinner by the minute. He held on to it, though, trying to keep believing she was innocent, because if he believed anything else, he was going to have to regret making love to her, and he couldn’t imagine living the rest of his life with a memory like that.
