Just Pretending

by Myrna Mackenzie

  And now the reality of the situation shoved in on her. David wasn’t that far away. He was barreling toward her. And he didn’t know there was an ambush waiting behind her door.

  She had to disarm Lyle, trip him up somehow. But how?

  “Why did you come here?” she managed to say in spite of the press of metal to flesh. “What is it you want?”

  An eerie chuckle rolled through Lyle’s wiry body and the sound echoed through the arm he was crushing against her.

  “Oh, I think you know,” he said. “You see, I’m a business man and I don’t exactly like anyone interfering in my business interests. I especially don’t like it when someone keeps pushing me, when someone all but accuses me of something. And I really don’t like it when anybody repeatedly comes between me and what I want. Now, Ms. Neal, you’ve closed down the excavation of my resort, you’ve insinuated that I might have something to do with the death of one of my employees. How do you think all of this is going to affect future business developments? People don’t want to conduct transactions with a man who can’t control his business.”

  “And what would that business be, Lyle?” She spat out the words. “What did Peter Cook do that caused you to kill him?”

  The arm that was holding her jerked and tightened. Gretchen struggled for breath. She worked to maintain her control. She did her best to not think of David. If she did, she would panic. She would lose.

  “You killed him, didn’t you?” she said, her voice as cool as she could make it.

  His chilling laughter sent shivers slipping down her spine.

  “Neal, haven’t I told you it was an accident? And yet, you’ve never believed me. Not like everyone else. I have to say I admire you for sticking it out and not following the crowd. It’s amazing what people will believe if you set the scene just right.”

  “Why?” She forced herself to not react or move, forced her mind to think about what she could do to warn David rather than what this dirtbag was saying. Maybe if she could keep him talking, she would have time to plan, to ready herself.

  “Why?” he echoed. “You mean, why did I kill Cook? He did something stupid. Just like you, Neal. If you hadn’t pushed me, you’d be just fine. Now you’re dead. Let’s go.” He pulled the gun from her throat and shoved it into her back.

  She considered not moving for just a second, but if she couldn’t outwit Brooks and he killed her here, David would come in and find them—and then he’d be dead, too.

  Fear and pain and distress reared up in her. She fought to shove them aside.

  She had to stay alert and alive, to give herself time to think. Time was what she needed the most. Time and luck. But she would have neither if she broke down. And she would have nothing if David died, if she let him walk in on this, if she didn’t move now.

  Gretchen moved.

  Lyle slithered in closer behind her, like a guard—or a lover. One arm was looped over her shoulder in what might be presumed to be a friendly embrace. His jacket hung open slightly, enclosing her. His gun was concealed between his body and hers.

  “This is cozy, isn’t it, Detective?” he asked in a harsh, laughing whisper. “Your car, please. I’m afraid mine isn’t here. I guess I left it in my driveway where everyone could see it.”

  That laugh again. Gretchen wondered if anyone had ever actually smiled at this man’s laughter.

  “Sorry, you’ll have to drive,” he said as he edged her in the passenger door and followed her inside. “I seem to need my hands,” he said, wiggling the gun just a bit.

  She slid over the gearshift to the driver’s seat, the gun following her, low on the seat, pointing up at her.

  “Don’t move more than you need to in order to drive the car. Don’t make any wrong turns. Don’t act like a dumb cop, Neal,” Lyle said quietly as he gestured for her to start the car. “If you follow directions, your boy friend might survive. I understand he’s leaving town soon. He’s not a danger to me. So just be a good girl and follow the rules. I know you know how to do that. Isn’t that what they teach you about in cop school?

  He laughed again as if he’d said something funny and Gretchen pulled out onto the street. She could, as he said, swerve the car, but she’d be dead long before the car crashed—and Lyle might survive.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Nowhere anyone will find you real soon, Neal. You’ll simply disappear. No body to trace. We’ll find a good place to stash you. Make no mistake about that.”

  “How did you know I was on my way to arrest you?”

  A long silence filled the car. When Gretchen turned to look at Lyle, he was grinning, his eyes narrowed in glee.

  “You were coming to arrest me? Now that makes this so much better. Not that I didn’t think you’d do just that in time, but actually I had no idea. I’ve been following you for days now. Only problem is you never seem to be alone. Today I saw your guard dog ride out and I took my opportunity the way I always do. It’s one of my most endearing qualities, I’m sure. But as for your coming to arrest me, well, Neal, I’m flattered that you would come alone. Maybe you really do care.”

  And maybe she’d better shut her mouth, Gretchen thought, before Lyle figured out that someone else would be looking for him really soon.

  Lyle wouldn’t be happy to see another cop. He’d be angry, desperate, and desperate men tended to shoot wildly and repeatedly.

  A trickle of fear found its way in. It drizzled right through her. This morning the world had seemed bright. Now her life was at stake. And the life of the man she loved hung in the balance, as well.

  Gretchen didn’t take the time to refute the fact that she loved David or that the thought of anything happening to him filled her with anguish right now. When a madman was holding a gun against you, there was no point in lying to yourself.

  The fact was that she loved David desperately.

  The fact was that if she didn’t survive, she’d never see him again.

  Gretchen drove, mindful of the turns she was making, up the mountain pathways that normally looked so beautiful, around steep turns heavily packaged in lodge pole pines that hid the curling road behind her from view.

  In a matter of minutes they had left civilization and all hope of rescue behind.

  She was on her own. Just her, her training, and a man who had nothing to lose by killing her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  David rounded the last turn leading to Gretchen’s house. He was still two blocks away, but on the deserted street he was close enough to see her car pull out of the driveway.

  His first thought was that she had tired of waiting for him and was moving off to arrest Lyle Brooks alone.

  “No,” he decided. She was brave but also bright and she was honorable. She’d said she’d meet him here. If she was leaving, there was a reason. A good reason. Something important enough to have her leaving when she knew he’d be arriving any moment.

  David maintained a distance, but he slid right past her drive, moving off in the direction she had gone.

  He leaned forward, straining to see her. Two heads visible. Could be anyone. A tall woman, a small man. Her friend Karen, his sister, or someone else, he thought as she took a turn leading out of town.

  Something didn’t feel right here.

  An emergency call? Maybe, but then she would have radioed for assistance. Maybe she had. If so, there was no problem. He’d find out when they got there.

  And if the other person in the car was a man?

  “Then she’ll know you for the jealous fool you are when this is over, Hannon,” he muttered. And there would be hell to pay all around.

  But this soul-deep fear that was growing within him with every passing curve of the road didn’t feel like jealousy, and anyway, Gretchen had been very open about her involvement with him. There was no one else for her at this point in time. He knew that. He was just reaching for logical solutions, grasping, hoping that there was some ordinary reason Gretchen was headed out of town
without him in the opposite direction from the one they would have taken to go to arrest Lyle Brooks.

  And as she turned onto a dirt road that led to nowhere, stark fear rushed through David. Gretchen was in that car. There was someone with her, and he was almost dead sure he knew who it was.

  The urge to speed up was so great, he could feel his foot pressing the accelerator closer to the floor without any conscious intention of doing so.

  He muttered a foul curse and forced himself to ease up a bit. In spite of the twists and turns of this road, he couldn’t risk following too closely. If he drove up to Gretchen while Brooks had her in his grasp, it was anyone’s guess what the man would do. Whatever the answer was, it wouldn’t be good.

  “If anything happens to her, Hannon…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Letting his mind go down that road was unacceptable. He’d flay the man alive and feed his body to the nearest bear if he so much as broke one of Gretchen’s fingernails.

  That was his last thought before he rounded a turn and saw a quick flash of white and chrome. Gretchen’s car pulling into a deeply forested part of the woods.

  “Nowhere to go here,” he muttered. Once the car was in the trees, it would be hidden from view of the road, which was most likely all that Brooks was looking for. A good hiding place for a body.

  David sucked in a breath. He rolled his own car to a stop and got out, leaving the door ajar as he slipped onto the grass and began to follow.

  “Stop here. Get out slowly.” Lyle fired commands like bullets from a semi automatic.

  Gretchen edged her way out of the car. All the way here she’d done her best to talk Lyle into letting her go without revealing that she had hard evidence against him. If he knew that, then he’d realize that David wasn’t just going to go away. He’d consider him a threat, as well—and he’d go after him.

  Now she was running out of things to say to Lyle and running out of time. A thread of terror slipped in.

  “No time for that.”

  “What?” Brooks practically shouted the word and Gretchen realized that she’d actually spoken out loud, her nervousness getting the best of her.

  In spite of her complete aversion to the man, she stayed as close to him as he would allow. If she got the chance, now that her hands were free of the steering wheel, she’d go for the gun or whatever else she could grab to throw him off balance.

  Nothing, she thought, her eyes quickly taking in her surroundings, the small clearing up ahead where he was leading her. He’d chosen well. There was nothing in this clearing for her to latch on to, nowhere to hide for the first twenty or thirty feet if she ran, but there was plenty of cover to hide a body once the deed was done. Acres and acres of trees well away from any inhabited territory. He’d been right when he said that no one would ever find her here.

  But he was wrong if he thought that no one would at least look. Reba knew about the matching hair and skin samples. And David knew. He’d look. If there was any way of finding her, any evidence at all of where she’d been taken, he’d dig it out. But not in time. Not nearly in time. And maybe he’d lose his life, too. She fought the pain, but couldn’t keep from closing her eyes for a second in a last failed attempt to blot it out.

  “Over here,” Lyle ordered, wrestling her to a large flat rock. “Kneel. I have a tremendous urge to see you at my feet begging.”

  She wondered if she would do that when it came to the end. She hoped not, especially since there was no way it would do any good. This was a man without feeling, without a conscience.

  Gretchen couldn’t help but move when he shoved, but she did her best to keep her feet. If he was going to kill her, if there was no way she could make an escape, she wouldn’t give him the pleasure of letting him shoot her execution style, or of watching her run so that he could put a bullet in her back.

  I’m sorry, David, she thought. Sorry for what, she didn’t know. She’d been going to meet him. She hadn’t planned on going it alone this time. But this would hurt him. She knew that, and she wished she could change that.

  Brooks narrowed his eyes at her stubborn struggle to stay upright. He caressed his gun against her cheek and started to pull it back into position for firing.

  A slight movement against brush sounded in the trees. Like a squirrel or a chipmunk tripping over a twig. Gretchen moved just a touch.

  Lyle laughed and grabbed her, holding the gun to her temple.

  “I don’t think our furry friend is going to save you, beautiful,” he whispered.

  “Move your finger one hundredth of a centimeter on that trigger and I’ll donate your internal organs to the vultures, Brooks.”

  David’s voice was like the inside of a butcher’s freezer, icy, crisp and deadly to those who didn’t recognize the danger.

  Gretchen felt the tremor—of fear or anger—go through Lyle as he swung her around to face his attacker, never letting the gun drop from its deadly position, planting her body firmly between himself and David.

  “Well, well, look here, Neal, your boyfriend’s come calling, after all. What could be more perfect? Here I thought I wouldn’t have to bother with him, but now this works out so much better. With everyone well aware that the two of you are engaged, I won’t have to plant much information at all to make them think you’ve eloped and left town together.”

  “You won’t have to do anything at all, Brooks. You’ll be dead.”

  The gun jostled against Gretchen’s temple as Lyle shook his head.

  “Sorry, you’ll be the one dead, Hannon.”

  Gretchen didn’t need to see the man’s face to know that he was smiling, and she knew then that in spite of the gun, it wasn’t her life that was in the most immediate danger right now. It was David’s. If Brooks shot her, David would kill him before he’d finished squeezing the trigger. But with her as a shield, David couldn’t shoot to protect himself right now. Time enough to kill her after David was gone. Time had run out.

  Almost.

  She had to act now and she knew exactly what she had to do. Looking straight into the eyes of the man she loved, she opened her mouth.

  “They’ll find you after we’re gone, Lyle,” she said quietly, never taking her eyes off David, trying her darnedest to send him a message he could read. “I was coming to arrest you, because those hair and skin samples I took from you matched what was found beneath Peter’s fingernails. He didn’t die from an accidental fall. You pushed him, and it’s no secret anymore. Don’t think you’re safe.”

  She blinked her eyes and David blinked back. He didn’t even nod, but she had to believe that he knew what she intended. She needed to believe that they had, indeed, become partners in the closest sense.

  “He fell,” Lyle said, his voice agitated. “I just tried to save him. He clutched at me. That’s why my skin’s underneath his nails.”

  “That’s not what you said,” she said, her voice sinking even lower, growing even more accusing. “When your original testimony was taken, you stated that Peter was alive when you left him.”

  She forced herself not to tense up. She only had time to blink her eyes firmly once more, but as the last word left her mouth, Gretchen dropped bonelessly. She brought her leg up in as smooth an arc as she could manage, aiming for Lyle’s chin.

  The blow knocked him sideways, but he recovered quickly, swearing as he latched back onto the gun he had nearly dropped. He turned in a wild swoop, firing at David.

  But David had dropped low just as Gretchen had moved, as she’d hoped he would. He dodged Brooks’s bullet and fired in one rolling movement. One clean shot, but one was all that was necessary. Lyle staggered back and fell.

  His gun clattered to the rock. His body relaxed into total stillness.

  Gretchen took one look. She didn’t need to take a pulse to know that he was dead, but she did it anyway. This man had given Peter Cook no chance. He’d given David and her no chance, but she would give him what little chance she could if it existed. She wouldn’t become an animal
like him.

  But when she touched the skin of the man who would have taken her life without one regret, she found not even the faintest hint of a heart doing its job.

  And so she rose—and stepped right into David’s arms as he barreled toward her. She looked up into eyes that were still bright and fierce and angry.

  “Don’t,” she said, pushing as close as she could get. “Don’t be angry with me right now. You can yell and lecture tomorrow. For today, just kiss me. Hold me.”

  And he held her as close as two bodies could get without becoming one. He cupped the back of her head in his hand and covered her mouth with his own in a long, desperate, seeking kiss.

  “I thought you were gone, Gretchen,” he choked. “I thought— I almost wasn’t quick enough. I damned near lost you.”

  “Not yet,” she whispered, her voice as desperate as his kiss. His legs gave out and so did hers, and they dropped to the ground beneath them. “Not yet,” she repeated, and she twined her arms around his neck. She gave in to the joy creeping up within her. She rained quick, whispery kisses over every inch of David that she could get near.

  He ran his palms over every available centimeter of her skin.

  Together they reclaimed the day, reclaimed each other. They reclaimed life as they fed each other with kisses and caresses and all the emotion they’d been forced to hold inside during those last few terrible moments.

  “How did you know?” she finally asked, pulling back from him long enough to look up into his eyes.

  His slow, shaky smile was a relief to see. “I know you,” he whispered. “That’s what partners do, after all, isn’t it? They get to know each other well, well enough to anticipate each other’s moves.”

  He found her lips again, anticipating just what she wanted him to do.

  “Come on,” he said, pulling her to her feet and into his arms. “Let’s get you home. I’ll have Rafe send someone back for the body. But for now, you need some time to recover.”