The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “American, Ralph,” Eve said. “Think John Wayne.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not sure old John would particularly give a damn, but . . .” He took a deep breath. “Both Dr. Samuels and Mrs. Johnson pulled me aside tonight to caution me and tell me . . . well . . . Doc Samuels actually gave me some condoms. Do you know what those are?”

  He had her attention now. She nodded as she blushed. Yes. “Why would he . . . ?”

  “Apparently the fact that lately my bicycle’s been parked out front when the milk delivery comes in the morning is the subject of a great deal of gossip in town. Mrs. J. mentioned it to me, too. She told me to pull my bike around into the garage if I’m planning to, ahem, spend the night. She then told me with huge disapproval that what you and I do is, of course, no one’s business but our own.”

  “Mrs. Johnson and Dr. Samuels think that you’ve . . . that we . . . ?” She giggled, her hand up over her mouth. Oh, dear.

  “Not just them—the entire town,” Ralph told her grimly. He didn’t find it funny at all. “I denied it, but . . . Eve, your reputation is in shreds, and it’s completely my fault.”

  “Well, they’re all wrong.” She laughed again, a burst of disparaging air. “They’re all fools.”

  “Yes, well, I’m afraid we have no choice, now,” Ralph said. “You’ll have to marry me.”

  Eve laughed harder. But then she stopped. Holy Christmas. He was serious.

  “I’ll get a special license, we can have a small ceremony before I leave for the army.” He looked about as thrilled as if he were discussing his impending execution.

  Eve stared at him. The really stupid thing was that she wanted to marry him. More than anything—in two or three years, when she was old enough—she would have been the happiest woman on the planet if he asked her to marry him.

  Asked her. Not ordered her. Because he wanted to, not because they had to.

  She’d been a burden to other people all her life, and she was not going to live that way with Ralph. No matter how tempting an idea it was.

  She wanted to weep. Instead, she glared at him.

  “I don’t give a damn about my reputation,” she told him. “I don’t care what people think. So forget it. I’m not marrying you.”

  “Eve. Think about it.”

  “This is 1939,” she shouted at him, suddenly horribly angry—at him, at herself, at Nick for getting sick and worrying her so, at the entire world. “I’m a modern woman! I don’t have to get married. I don’t have to do anything unless I want to, and, trust me, the dead last thing I want to do is marry someone who doesn’t love me! Anyone who thinks otherwise can just go to hell. Do you hear me? You can just go to H-E-double-L!”

  She stormed away, but he ruined the effect by following her. “That kind of thinking might’ve worked in California, but I assure you—”

  “So I’ll go back to California. I want to, anyway. I hate it here. I hate everything about stupid England.” I hate you. She didn’t say the words, but he recoiled from them as if he’d heard them, loud and clear.

  He stopped following her.

  “Just leave now, Ralph,” she whispered. “Go join the army early. This waiting for you to go is killing me.”

  She made it into Nick’s room and closed the door behind her before bursting into tears.

  Twelve

  MEG BACKED OUT of the parking spot in front of the motel room, glad that she’d refilled the gas tank earlier that day, before she’d stopped to sleep.

  The rain was still coming down like a giant faucet had been opened overhead. It was thick against the windshield, sloshing and splashing as she set the wipers onto high speed in an attempt to see just a little bit. It was noisy, roaring onto the roof of the car.

  It was crazy to get onto the highway with the rain coming down this hard, but Meg had to get moving. Even crawling along at twenty miles an hour would be better than standing still.

  She looked in her rearview mirror at John’s car one last time.

  She hated locking him in the trunk. But she had no choice. She was his enemy now. His job was to stop her.

  Resolutely she put the car into first gear and moved forward, peering through the pouring rain, searching for the parking lot exit and the road that led to the highway.

  “Oh, my God!” Meg stepped on the brakes, hard, to avoid hitting a man who’d suddenly appeared, from out of the rain and mist, directly in front of her car.

  He was soaking wet.

  He was John Nilsson.

  He moved closer, and as she stared at him through the swishing windshields, she could see his mouth move. Meg.

  Somehow he’d gotten out of his trunk.

  Somehow? Of course he’d gotten free. He was a Navy SEAL. What was she doing, thinking she could lock him anywhere? No wonder he’d gone in so willingly—he’d probably been laughing at her the whole time.

  Meg threw the car into reverse. She’d pull out the other way—the motel’s driveway went all the way around the building. If she couldn’t lock him up, well, she was going to have to outrun him. He might’ve been able to get out of the trunk in a snap, but it was going to take him some time to find his car keys in the woods, in the dark.

  It should have been easy to do—after all, she was in a car and he was on foot. But as she hit the gas, he leapt forward, right onto the front hood.

  She went faster and faster in reverse, and the car started to whine, but she wasn’t outrunning him. She was taking him with her.

  He was clinging to the hood with the tips of his fingers.

  Meg hit the brakes, turned the steering wheel hard, but he didn’t slip off.

  She slammed the gears back into first, but all she could think was, God, what if he did slip off, and she ran him over?

  She didn’t want to kill him.

  The car came to a shuddering halt, and she sat there, staring at him through the windshield.

  He looked back at her unblinkingly, completely motionless except for his fingers. He took the opportunity to get a better grip on the edge of the hood, right up by the windshield.

  His hair was completely soaked as if he’d been standing under a shower, and water was streaming down his face.

  “Please get down,” she said.

  He read her lips. “No.” He shook his head.

  He couldn’t hear her and she couldn’t hear him through the glass and over the roar of the rain, but she didn’t need to hear to know they’d hit a standoff.

  And Meg couldn’t help it. She started to cry.

  John just watched her, his face expressionless, his eyes hard. And then he said something, something about the hotel, something that was too long and complicated for her to be able to lip-read, particularly with tears blurring her vision.

  She rolled down her window a half an inch.

  “Cut the tears,” he said. “That may have worked to manipulate the guard back at the safe hotel, but I’m smarter than that. I’m going with you, Meg. Get used to the idea. You’re not leaving here without me—even if I have to ride like this all the way. Of course, if you try to drive on the interstate with me up here, the police will probably pull you over.”

  Meg couldn’t stop crying. She should have locked him in the trunk and driven immediately away. Of course, he probably wouldn’t have gotten into the trunk if he hadn’t known it would take her some time to drag Razeen out to her car.

  Damn it. Damn him.

  Okay. Okay. She could handle this. After all, she was the one in the car. All she needed was for him to get down off the hood, and she’d drive away as fast as she possibly could. John was fast, but there was no way he could keep up with a car. She had the definite advantage here.

  Meg wiped her eyes and got ready to hit the gas. She nodded at him through the windshield. “Okay,” she said. “You win. You can come with me.” She hit the unlock button, but kept her finger right there, on it, ready in case he started to move. “Get down off the hood.”

  As soon as he got off the ho
od, she’d floor it.

  But he didn’t move. Not an inch.

  Rain was coming in through the open crack of the window, getting her even more wet than she already was.

  John just looked at her, and she knew that he knew she had no intention of letting him get into her car.

  “Open the passenger side window,” he countered, “and I’ll climb in from up here.”

  She wiped her eyes again. God, she couldn’t stop crying.

  Could she risk flooring it and try to shake him while he was climbing in? Or would the open window give him an even better handhold on the car? Even if she started raising the window the moment he began to move—which would be hard to do since she’d have to reach across and crank the window up—he’d still get his hands around the frame. And with a well-placed kick, he could easily break the half-opened window.

  “Come on, Meg,” he said. “I’ll just climb in and we’ll talk while you drive. That’s all I want. Just to talk to you.”

  Yeah, right. Like he wouldn’t go for her gun while she was driving? How was she supposed to drive and keep her gun on him at the same time?

  No, this was why in the movies the criminals always made the kidnapped or carjacked person drive. That way they could sit in the passenger seat and hold the gun.

  God, this was crazy. How had her life suddenly become a bad movie?

  “I’ll shoot him,” she said. “Razeen.” Threatening that had worked before.

  John’s mouth tightened. “If you do that, Meg, I can’t help you. So please don’t. Open the window and let me climb in. I need you to trust me. Right now. Please. Trust me.”

  “What?” Her voice shook. “Trust you to take my gun and haul me back to DC? Because you know what’s best for me? Gee, where have I heard that before? That worked out so well the last time, didn’t it? Get off my car!”

  A muscle jumped in the side of his jaw. And with the rain running down his face, he almost looked as if he were crying, too.

  “I did what I thought you wanted,” he said. “That night. You had too much to drink and I didn’t want it to happen that way, Meg. Not like that. You want to talk about it? Great—it’s about time. I wanted to talk about it when I got back from the Middle East, but you’re the one who never returned my calls. Let me in. We’ll talk about it now.”

  Oh, God, that long-ago night was the last thing Meg wanted to talk about—not now, not ever.

  She could still feel the heat of his body, pressing her against the wall in the hallway just outside her bedroom door. She could taste his kisses, hot and sweet, feel his hands on the bare skin of her back as he peeled her dress from her shoulders and—

  No. This wasn’t helping. Every minute they wasted here was a minute she wasn’t getting closer to finding Amy.

  “You want me to drive?” John pressed. “Let me in the driver’s side. That way you can hang on to your gun. Come on, Meg. I just want a chance to talk to you. You drive away from here without me, you’re going to end up dead, and I’m going to end up hating myself for the rest of my life for letting you get away. Don’t do that to me.”

  He was silent for a moment, just watching her through the windshield.

  “I’ve let you get away too many times before,” he said quietly. She could barely hear him over the rain. “I’m not letting you go this time. Not willingly. Not when you need me—and dammit, you do need me.”

  Meg shook her head. “No, I—”

  “Yes,” he said. “You called me. You asked for help, and god damn it, I’m going to help you whether you like it or not.”

  “You already did—”

  “What are you afraid of?” he bulldozed on. “You think I’ve got another of WildCard’s tracking devices on me? Well, I don’t. Besides, if I did, it’s electronic and I’m soaked. It would’ve been ruined by the rain.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that a Navy SEAL would develop a tracking device that couldn’t be used underwater?” Meg shook her head.

  “This was a prototype,” he told her. “Sure, the next step is to waterproof it, but WildCard didn’t get that far—and you don’t believe me, okay, fine. I’ll . . . I’ll take off my clothes. That way you’ll see there’s nothing hidden on me.”

  That way she’d also have a naked man on the hood of her car. All she’d need was one car to pull into the parking lot and . . .

  Talk about drawing unwanted attention.

  “Don’t,” she said sharply, understanding that that was his plan. He was trying to make it so that she had no choice—so that she had to let him into the car. “John! Stop!”

  But he was doing it. He was taking off his clothes, one hand at a time—careful always to have a tight grip on the hood of her car.

  He threw his jacket down onto the driveway, and then his T-shirt. Kicked off his sneakers and socks.

  Unfastened his jeans.

  Meg hit the horn, rapped her gun against the windshield. “Stop!”

  Somehow he looked even bigger without his shirt on. “Let me in the car.”

  “No.” She started driving. Slowly. So that if he did slip off, she wouldn’t run him over.

  It wasn’t easy for him to get out of his wet jeans, but somehow he did it while holding on to the hood. Oh, dear God, he had even more muscles now than he had three years ago.

  And he still wore plain white briefs.

  His right arm tightened as he let go with his left and reached for that waistband.

  Meg hit the brake. “Okay! Okay! It’s kind of obvious you’ve got nothing hidden on you! You’ve made your point!”

  “So let me in.”

  “I can’t.”

  The rain was starting to let up, just a little, and Meg could see car headlights approaching on the road. With luck, whoever it was would just drive past. With luck, they wouldn’t pull into the parking lot. With luck . . .

  The car pulled into the motel lot. It was moving slowly in the rain, but it was heading straight for them.

  John saw it, too, and took off his briefs.

  And there he was. Completely, gloriously naked and gleamingly soaking wet, clinging to the front of her car, like some surreal hood ornament.

  The approaching car looked as if it had lights mounted up on the roof, as if it might be a police car.

  Meg looked at John, looked at her gun. If she didn’t let him into the car, if that was a cop and he came over to find out what the hell the naked man was doing on the hood of her car, she’d have to kill Razeen. Right now. In the next few minutes. Seconds, maybe.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  And John knew what she was thinking. “Don’t do it, Meg,” he said. “Don’t go past the point of no return. Let me in.”

  Meg opened the driver’s side window, cursing the entire time. She said words she didn’t even know she knew how to pronounce as she scrambled over the parking brake and into the passenger seat. As John Nilsson, dripping wet, slipped into car, as naked as the day he was born.

  “Drive,” she ordered him. “South on 95. I swear to God, John, you pull any tricks—like driving to the police station or heading back toward DC—I’ll kill Razeen.”

  He put the stick shift in gear and pulled out, past the oncoming car.

  It was a roof rack, some kind of ski rack, not a cop car’s lights.

  John handed Meg something and it wasn’t until she took it from him that she realized it was his briefs. They were soaking wet and he’d wadded them up in an attempt to wring them out.

  “Check them,” he said. “I want you to be sure I haven’t attached one of those tracking hoo-ha’s to the elastic band.”

  She sat there, completely numb, holding tightly to his underpants and her gun as he pulled onto Route 95 heading south.

  This was absurd. She was in a car with the one man who’d played a part in nearly every one of her fantasies for the past three years, he was buck naked—and she couldn’t bring herself even to take a peek.

  “The faster you do it,” he said, squeegeein
g the water from his face and hair, “the faster I can put ’em back on.”

  He turned on the defroster, turned the fan up high. The rain plus his body heat was steaming up the windows. The cool air felt good against her flushed face.

  How had this happened? How had this gotten so completely out of control?

  “You’re in an awful big hurry to get these back,” Meg said. “It would be just like WildCard to hide some kind of homing signal in a pair of underpants.”

  John laughed. “Yeah, it would be. I’ll have to suggest it to him. He’ll like the idea.”

  “Maybe I should just throw them out the window.”

  “Be my guest. I brought ’em in here for you. You’re the one who won’t even look at me.”

  “I’m not looking at you because I’m mad at you,” Meg countered. “I’m furious. I’m . . .” Her voice broke. “Terrified,” she whispered. And then she said the unthinkable. “If Amy’s dead . . .” She felt bile rising in her throat, felt her stomach churn, her blood turn to ice.

  “Life goes on,” John said quietly. “Believe it or not, Meg, life does go on. It takes a while. Sometimes years. Sometimes longer.”

  But it didn’t. It wouldn’t. Not for Meg.

  “I won’t let her be dead.” Meg fought the urge to vomit, cursing herself for being weak. She had to stay focused. She had to believe that she could save her daughter. She had to be strong. “I won’t. I won’t think it, I won’t believe it.”

  “I was only seven when my mother died,” John told her.

  She turned to look at him in surprise, then turned quickly away.

  Oh, my God.

  She’d made the mistake of looking at him. It was dark in the car, thank goodness, and he was mostly in shadow, but, oh, my God.

  “I know I kind of led you to believe I was older than that when it happened,” he continued, “but I wasn’t. So, see, I know what it feels like to lose someone irreplaceable, to lose someone you need as much as you need air to breathe. If you want me to be completely honest, I’d have to tell you that I’m still not over her death. I’ll never be over it. But I learned to live with it. And that’s what you’ll do, too—if you have to.”

  “No,” she said. He was wrong. If Amy were dead, yes, she’d have a chance to go on living, but she wouldn’t want to. And if Amy weren’t dead . . . Please God, let Amy still be alive.