I stilled when she turned back to me. The ancient bar was nearly broken. “You should’ve let it go. Now you’re going to jail for murder.”
“I told you that was an accident.”
I nodded, mockingly. “Accidental stabbings happen all the time.”
“I told him to stop the car so we could talk, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept saying he had to go, and I had to get out, so I poked the blade through his seat to show him I meant business, but he did exactly what you did! He jammed the gas. Another car cut into our lane and Dante swerved. He got the car straightened out, but when he’d jammed the brakes to avoid the other car, the dagger...” She choked on the words. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I just wanted him to tell me he was sorry. Really sorry. Not shut-up-I’m-busy sorry. I wanted to hear that my product was worth more than half his attention and a bunch of sick mice. I begged his forgiveness when I saw all the blood, but he still wouldn’t pull over and let me help him. Instead he called your grandmother.” She made a wide-eyed, open-mouth, what-could-I do expression. “I couldn’t let him rat me out.”
Sirens cut through the distance, delivered to my ears on warm summer wind. They grew quickly. I worked the binds faster.
Angelina turned in a circle, probably determining the best route for escape. “Tell them it was an accident.”
“Sure thing.”
She turned away and I lunged. The gate busted, throwing rust into my hair and face. Angelina ran.
My name echoed in the distance.
“Here!” I screamed, balancing my joined hands in front of me as I pounded through the forest behind Angelina. “We’re here!”
“Stop that,” she hissed. “Stop screaming. Go away.”
Through the thinning trees on the south side of the hill, a yellow cab was visible on the corner of Orchard and Applegrove.
“Hurry!” I screamed. “Orchard and Applegrove! Orchard and Applegrove!”
“Shut up!” Angelina cursed. Her toe hit a half-buried limb and she lost her footing.
I grunted and dove for her, catching air for a moment as my flight and fall became one over the hill’s edge. We collided in a tangle of hair and elbows, bouncing against the ground and rolling full speed toward the street below. The Taser flew from her grip and was swallowed by a pile of brush.
We wrecked into a set of saplings and young, bendy trees.
“Get off me!” She shoved hard, toppling me off her side.
I rose to my knees and gave chase as she crawled away, trying to find new footing. I hefted my arms into the air and brought them over her head and chest, securing her in a backward hug before she could stand.
“Where are you going?” She clawed my skin and swore at the ties, forcing my arms higher as I lowered myself behind her.
She wasn’t getting away. Not after what she’d put Dante and my grandma through.
She pulled me to my feet with her and flung us backward into the wide trunk of an old oak tree. Something cracked. Pain radiated down my spine.
I swung my short legs around her and locked bare, bleeding feet against her stomach. I was a tiny backpack on a giant woman.
We were only a few yards from her cab. I couldn’t let her go.
Angelina bit my hand and slammed me into the tree again.
The sirens roared louder. Squad cars tore into view and surrounded the cab.
“We’re here!” I yelled.
She tried to smash me into another tree, but I squeezed the air from her chest with my legs and three decades of horseback riding.
Fury roared through me. “Stop fighting! You’re caught. Where are you going? They have your getaway cab.” I adjusted myself on her back and angled the crook of my elbow around her throat. “Stop fighting.” I squeezed. “Go to sleep.”
She flailed, tossing blind slaps over her head and whacking me weakly.
“We’re here,” I cried out again.
Quiet sobs rocked my chest as I waited for her fight to slip away.
Her knees finally buckled, and we fell again. Not as far this time. My limbs were too numb from the last thumping to feel this one. We landed in a gulley beside the road. Years of dried-up leaves skated down the incline behind us and rained over our heads.
“Mia!” My name lifted on a dozen voices. “Mia!”
I thrashed my legs in the bug-infested leaves. “Here.” I choked the word, eating dirt and who-knew-what else with each inhalation. “Here.”
A shadow fell over us. Jake peered down with a look of humor or relief. I wasn’t sure which. “Whatcha doin’?”
Hot tears slid over my burning cheeks. My teeth began to chatter. “I think I killed her. I wanted her to pass out before she broke my spine, but then we rolled again and her head’s bleeding. She’s not moving.”
He crouched over us with a pocketknife and cut the ties binding my wrists.
I fell away, scrambling backward against the hill, putting distance between Angelina and me.
“We need a bus over here,” Jake called.
A group of men I hadn’t noticed before stood a few feet away with mixed expressions from confusion to elation.
I wiped trembling fingers under my eyes. “Is she dead?”
Jake lifted his fingers from her pulse. “Nope. How’d you learn to do that?”
“Standard dating-prep.” I rubbed my battered wrists and winced when my right arm didn’t appreciate the effort. “Dad was a beat cop with two daughters, remember?” He’d taught us self-defense from the moment we could comprehend it. The lessons got scarier when we wanted to date. “Angelina confessed.”
Jake passed Angelina off to a pair of EMTs and reached for me. “Come on. You, too.” He slid an arm around my back, the other under my legs and counted to three. A moment later, he cradled me to his chest and headed for the ambulances. “You’re bleeding from your head, wrists and feet. Your clothes are torn and bloody. Your car is totaled.” He settled me on a gurney. “These guys are going to take care of you. I’ve got my truck. I’ll follow you to the hospital.”
“I don’t need a hospital.”
An EMT wrapped my neck in a big cone. “I have to disagree.” He slid a pressure cuff around my arm and pumped. “Burn marks on the neck.”
“I was tasered.”
He looked at Jake. “Probably how she wrecked the car.”
“I’ll get her official statement once you’ve got her stabilized and bandaged up.”
A second medic pulled wide Velcro strips over my arms and chest. “There are multiple abrasions and contusions. Significant head trauma.” He prodded the hot wet place at the back of my head. “This is going to need staples.”
The first man hung a bag of clear liquid on a metal pole and prepped my hand for an IV.
“See you on the other side.” Jake shut the doors and patted the side of the bus twice.
The vehicle rumbled to life.
Something warm crawled up my arm.
“Hey,” I slurred. “What’s in that baah?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I climbed out of Jake’s truck and inhaled the sweet mountain air.
He grabbed our bags from the back and tossed them onto the porch at my family’s cabin. “You were quiet on the way here. How are you doing?” He wound strong arms around my middle.
I unlocked the door and turned the knob, letting stale air out and fresh air in. “Good.” Better now that his arms were around me and a long weekend lay before us.
The family cabin stood sentinel over a wide and marvelous gorge in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Mom and Dad had brought us here regularly as children, but I hadn’t been back since high school.
I’d never looked forward to the trip the way I had this time. This getaway felt different, somehow. Pivotal. “I’m glad you fini
shed your Terrance Horton case in time to join me.”
“Wasn’t too hard. Horton sang like a bird when we offered him a plea deal. Threatening a guy like that with a maximum-security prison usually does the trick.”
“What about Angelina?” I forced the word from my lips. It was the first time I’d said her name aloud since giving my statement to the police ten times that night.
He tucked me against him, wrapping his arms tighter and resting his head on mine, as if he could secure me in an Archer cocoon and keep me safe forever. “She kept her mouth shut a while longer. Her attorneys are bartering a deal, but we matched her DNA to the DNA on the dagger, and the fibers in Dante’s backseat were from her lab coat, probably stuck to her clothes then left behind at the crime scene. The medical examiner found her hair on Dante’s jacket and her skin cells under his fingernails.”
“From their tumble outside the lake.”
He released me on a sigh. Big hands dug into the back of his neck. Frustration lined his forehead. “I should’ve gotten to her before she got to you.”
“It’s not your fault,” I whispered.
“I’ll decide that. Now, answer truthfully. How are you doing?”
In the two weeks since I’d tumbled down a hill with Angelina Weiss, I’d healed physically. The staples in my head were removed ten days later. Most of my bruises were gone, others were in the pale golden stage, and I didn’t mind them as much. My pinky finger was splinted and covered in white gauze, but all things considered, I was lucky. Really lucky. I lifted the small cast on my left wrist. “By the time my fracture heals, the whole mess will be long forgotten.”
Emotional healing would take time.
Jake stroked flyaway hair from my cheek. “How about the anxiety? You were still recovering from the last psychopath and it happened again.” A storm brewed in his eyes.
“This wasn’t your fault,” I repeated. “Besides, at least Angelina didn’t try to hurt me. She just wanted to get away. I was supposed to be a distraction.” I placed a palm against his stubble-covered cheek. “I’m okay. Okay?”
He raised his eyes to mine. “Okay.” He pulled me closer, his gaze sweeping the beautiful mountain views around us. “Now tell me something else. Does a girl like you have any idea what to do on a mountaintop for four days?”
I glanced at the cabin. “There’s cable and cell service. Town’s not far. Cooter’s is a pretty good honkytonk, if you like those. And don’t get me started on your assumption I can’t have fun out here, or the fact you called me a girl. I am not a girl. I’m a woman.”
He lowered his lips to my nose and planted a tiny kiss. “Yes, you are.”
I smiled. “Don’t forget it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I smiled at his sexy Southern drawl. “Did you know my mom’s putting you in her book? She’s portraying you as some kind of hero.” I rolled my eyes.
Jake grinned. “I see she’s done her homework.”
“Yeah, and her literary agent was right about the interest in our family story. They signed a contract last week for a jaw-dropping advance. Mom’s planning a kitchen remodel.”
“Of course.” He lowered his hands from my waist to my hips and hauled me against him. “We should invite the crew up here in a day or two. Nate, Fifi, maybe Dan and Reese.”
“I’d like that. Grandma told me to invite you to her Vegas wedding. As if my family isn’t crazy enough in Ohio, we’re heading to Vegas.”
“Has Nate proposed yet?” he asked. “Maybe they can have a double wedding. Streamline the whole thing.”
I laughed. “You might be my soul mate.”
“Sounds like a good gig.” He lowered his lips to mine and kissed me slowly. He stopped far too soon and pulled back to look into my eyes. “I think this place would make a great place for a wedding.”
I stroked the soft fabric over his broad shoulders. “Me, too.”
His grouchy face appeared. “You’d like that?”
“Yeah.” The thing I’d realized most over the past few weeks was that I’d marry Jake anywhere. I wasn’t afraid of anything with him at my side, and losing him was something I feared more than any amount of embarrassment caused by saying so. “Were you thinking that I should get married up here?”
He made a shocked face. “Was that a proposal?”
“No.” I laughed. “That would’ve been the world’s worst.”
“I thought so too. Besides—” he kicked up a crooked smile “—the man’s supposed to ask.”
I pulled in a long audible breath. “You and I have some work to do, Archer. And speaking of work...” I smiled. I’d saved the big news for our arrival. “I took Grandma’s advice and offloaded some of mine.”
“You and Nate finally chose a project manager?”
“Yep, me. I gave my notice at the Horseshoe Falls Clubhouse and suggested Fifi as my replacement. She’d be great in that role, and I’m sure the manager will gladly move her up. Everyone loves her.”
“And you hired yourself as project manager?”
“Sort of. Nate and I hired his friend from Delecorte to assist on some big picture stuff at REIGN, but I’ll be overseeing everything. We liked his company so much, I signed him on to help with some similar things at Guinevere’s Golden Beauty. Now that I don’t have anywhere to be from nine to five, I manage the project manager. I’m still the boss, but now I’m a boss with minions and time to kiss her boyfriend.”
“Well, I like how that sounds.” He kissed my lips, my temple, my forehead.
I relaxed against him, arching my back for a better view of those smoldering blue eyes. “I’ve got a little more time than that.”
He turned his black ball cap around backward and lowered his lips to mine.
I sank into his kiss and reveled in the taste of his lips. I fantasized about all the things we could do, alone on a mountain for four days. The crew could join us some other time.
His pant leg vibrated against me. Jake broke the kiss by a fraction, pulling his lips only a centimeter from mine. “Ignore it.”
I wiggled and laughed. “I can’t. It tickles.”
He peeled himself away with a sigh and fished the phone from his pocket. “Archer.”
My phone dinged on the seat of his truck. I crossed the short yard and stretched an arm inside the open window to retrieve my phone.
“Who’s that?” Jake stood behind me frowning.
I read the screen aloud. “Bree thinks she’s in labor.” I tossed the phone back onto the seat. “Grandma started the phone tree. Who called you?”
“The team’s got a lead on a fugitive near Lake Erie.” He pushed the device back into his pocket.
“So, we’re leaving?” I gave the cabin a long, sad look.
“I guess,” he said, clearly disappointed. “Do you think we can get back before she has the babies?”
I wrinkled my nose. “We’re not leaving for that.”
“We aren’t?”
“If I left a romantic weekend with you to watch Bree give birth again, she’d kill me.”
He matched my crazy expression. “You were going to watch?”
“Well, yeah. We all...” I drifted off. “My family’s...” I couldn’t finish that sentence either. “What about you and the fugitive? I thought that was why we were leaving.”
He lifted and dropped a shoulder, color rushing to his cheeks. “I told them I’m unavailable.”
“Unavailable?” I liked the sound of that. As in off the market, spoken for. Mine.
“I explained how I’m in the middle of a very important operation at the moment and couldn’t be disturbed.”
My heart fluttered. I was important enough to him that he skipped the chance to chase a fugitive. Important enough that he wanted to play operation. Oh boy!
/>
He towed me back against him. “Are you sure Bree won’t mind if you aren’t there to meet her new daughters?”
“No, Bree won’t mind.” I pulled his handsome face down to mine. “I think I love you.”
His lips parted. Excitement flitted over his furrowed brows. “I know I love you.”
Adrenaline and something else coursed through me. “You want to go inside and turn off our phones for a few days?”
Jake scooped me into his arms.
I kissed his face as he carried me inside. “Now that I’ve got all this free time, maybe I’ll write a book like Mom.”
“Oh, yeah?” He kicked the door shut behind us. “What are you calling your book?”
I kissed him slow and deep as he lowered me onto my feet. “How about Geek Girl Gets the Guy.”
Jake lowered himself to one knee as I regained my footing. “That might be the perfect title. I’ll let you know in a minute.” He fished a little box from his pocket and popped it open.
I covered my mouth with one hand and pointed with the other. “That’s the vintage ring Nate considered for Fifi.”
“Nope.”
“Yes, it is. He showed me a picture. He asked me if I liked it.”
“Yes.” Jake’s bright eyes twinkled. “This ring belonged to my nana. She and Papa were married sixty-two years, and now I have a question to ask you.”
Tears brimmed in my eyes as the most beautiful words I’d ever heard were spoken.
And I said yes.
* * * * *
When a man falls at your feet, you’d better hope he’s not dead.
A twentysomething party girl and a retirement-home resident make an unlikely duo in CARDIAC ARREST by Lisa Q. Mathews. Read on for a sneak preview.
As a general rule, Dorothy Westin preferred to mind her own business. But the leggy blonde on the top-of-the-line smartphone three lounge chairs down was making that rather difficult.
“Come on, Joy, give me a break. I’ve only been in Florida two weeks, and I’m living in a freaking old-farts community.”
Well. Dorothy carefully concentrated on applying SPF 50 sunscreen to whatever parts of her weren’t covered by her black, old-farty swim dress. She might not get away with a candy-cane-striped string bikini like her rude young pool companion, but she was in decent enough shape for seventy-eight.
A Geek Girl's Guide to Justice (The Geek Girl Mysteries) Page 28
