Leaning across and behind, I popped the doors open. On the far side of the road, a civilian peered at the bank and registered me double-parked in front. He took out a cell phone. Goddamnit. What the fuck was keeping Gregor?
They had been inside nearly three minutes now. That was way too long. There’s never a protocol, no procedure for the driver. No way for you to bolt, leave a note. “Sorry. Couldn’t wait.” You just have to hold your position, hanging out in plain sight. Smoke curled out of the bank door.
The civilian with the phone had gotten his call connected. He was talking animatedly. He moved around the back. I know he was going to be looking for the license number. Then there were shots.
Lubic and Hannes burst through the bank doors and dashed down the steps, supporting Jared between them. They all carried big black sacks. Gregor came out behind them and it looked like he was dragging Ratke after him. Ratke’s sack was slung across his back. He had a short, pump-action shotgun in each hand.
As Hannes shoved Jared onto the back bench, I saw there was blood running down his temple. Gregor pushed Ratke, holding his collar to shove him into the seat beside me. As Gregor clambered in the back with Lubic, Hannes, and Jared, I gunned the engine and the tires smoked as we took off. The little burner phone in my pocket buzzed. There was no way that I could take it out now.
The door flapped and one struck the side of a bus before it slammed shut. As I made a hard left turn, the doors on the right swung open. For a fraction of a second it looked like we could lose Ratke. He slipped fast toward the open door and his hands were still full of guns.
As I straightened up, though, he was slung back in and the door slammed shut beside him. Sirens were starting up and getting louder. They were too distant, echoing too much, to get any idea what directions the sounds were coming from.
Ratke said, “Time is it, Gregor?”
“Shut it, Ratke,” Gregor growled.
“Think the garage is gone yet?”
“I’m telling you, Ratke.”
Ratke elbowed my arm. “Loose ends, Jacker. Nice big fire to burn off the loose ends.”
The garage? Ratke said, “Shame about your jumpy buddy, eh, Ryan? That fucker with all his ‘don’t touch me’ and his twitchy scowls. Shame if the shutter door was locked. He’d be floating embers by now. Torched.”
Gregor grabbed at Ratke’s neck. “Shut the fuck up, Ratke, or I swear…”
Ratke leered back at him. Then he said, “Your snappy friend will have gotten fried, Ryan. Your bargaining chip turned into a roasted chip and went up in smoke.” And he laughed. “Seems like your Tynie could have been evidence.”
It was less than three minutes since I spoke to Tynie. Even though he unsettled me, I didn’t rise to Gregor’s bait.
As we hurtled through the traffic, at each turn I picked the route with the most vehicles, looking out for trucks, busses, anything that would slow down whatever was behind us. Where I had to, I sounded the horn. A flash of my brights was enough for most of the vehicles. Trucks moved. Car drivers were slower to react. We scraped the side of a Volvo and he slid off into the path of a Toyota Camry.
There was still no way to know which way the cops were coming, but the sirens were definitely getting closer.
Across a junction, traffic on our side was log-jammed. As I swung onto the other side, a light one street ahead changed and a wall of lights, painted metal, and glass rolled right at me. To get back on our side, I side-swiped a milk van. An ugly, dark smear lined the gash we took out of his side.
The little burner in my pocket buzzed again. As I slewed into a side street, just for that moment we had a clear run, I slid the phone out and glanced down. I hoped Ratke wouldn’t see it.
A text message on the little screen said,
I’m coming to get you.
Chapter Twenty
Hayley
I SAT PARKED AT the side of the street with the engine running and watched Ryan turn onto the street in front of me. He gunned the gray SUV out of a side street, steered hard, and I caught a glimpse of his concentrated frown, that scarred eyebrow, before he sped away. Ratke was next to him. Gregor was in back with the other men.
Made up and ready on the phone, I had the text waiting. Everything now would depend on him reading it and doing what I told him. The only other thing I had going for me was the chance that he would see me coming in the mirror. Or hear the engine. That would do it.
The hood of the car rose as I revved the big engine. A surge of power grew inside me. The seat, the wheel, the dash, and the throb of the engine, they were all his. All him. I sent the text.
STOP the car NOW and GET OUT
There wasn’t too much need for me to hurry. It was more important that Ryan saw me and heard me. Revving the engine as hard as I could, making as much noise as I could, I drifted past him. It would help if I knew if he’d read the text. There wasn’t much time. As I passed I saw his eyes down, looking toward his thigh. He was slowing down.
Gregor saw me. He reddened and I saw him shout something. Ryan’s face glowed when he saw the car. Or was it me? I think it was the Chevelle. I gunned it and stopped about twenty yards ahead of them, broadside, and opened the passenger’s side door.
Ryan stopped the SUV and he jumped out. He started to run, straight to me. Ratke climbed out the other side and he took aim with a big gun, right at Ryan. Ryan zigzagged. Ratke fired. A gouge cut into the pavement and a cloud of dust and shale sprayed. I lost sight of Ryan. Then Ryan leapt through the dust, burst out from the cloud, and jumped into the car.
“Let me drive this time,” he said. My heart was ready to burst. The sight of him made me feel weak and strong all at the same time.
I told him, “Nuh-uh. Strap yourself in, Jacker. I know where we’re going.”
We got away in squeals and smoke as Gregor was climbing into the driver’s seat of the big SUV.
Over the throaty roar of the engine, I shouted, “Are you sure this is faster than their SUV?”
Ryan frowned. “I’ve got no clue. Probably.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
From behind the seats in the back, Tynie said, “It would be if Ryan was driving.”
“We’re going up the hill on Second Avenue,” I told Ryan. “We’ll make a hard left up onto State Street. Be ready to jump out.”
He scowled. “You want us to dump the Chevelle?”
“I want us to get out of this in one piece, Ryan. There will be a price to pay for that.”
All around us, sirens whooped and echoed. As we climbed the hill, the gray SUV was hard on our tail and blue and red lights flashed close behind it. The Chevelle pulled away easily and left them behind on the climb. They were still a distance away when I slewed the car to a stop, ninety degrees from the curb and blocking the slope in the middle of State Street.
“Out!” I shouted. Gregor wasn’t too far behind. I heard his engine as we ran.
Tynie waited by the Chevelle, holding his tablet. When Gregor made the turn up into State Street, Tynie pressed his screen, then he ran to catch up with Ryan and me. Gregor’s engine died. He slowed, drifted to a stop, and then began to roll slowly backward. Down and back toward the approaching cops.
Ryan hesitated when he saw Aileen waiting, holding her car doors open for us.
“Come on,” she shouted with a force. Her face glowed with excitement. As we all climbed in, Ryan said, “You got an Escalade.” I had no idea what he was rambling about.
Aileen slammed her door. “Seat belts on,” she said. She and I sat in the front. Ryan and Tynie were in the back where they would less likely be noticed.
Aileen was taking her time settling in and putting on her safety belt. “What the fuck? We need to go!” Ryan yelled.
“Ryan,” I said, “meet Aileen.”
Unhurried, Aileen turned to him with a sugar-sweet smile. “Hello, Ryan. I’ll be your getaway driver today.” Her voice was soft and gentle, but still firm. I had forgotten that almost hypnotic
kind of command that she had. “Now please, put on your seatbelt. Sit back and relax. Enjoy the ride.”
In the mirror, I caught sight of Tynie. His eyes were shining and they were fixed on Aileen.
In the soft leather and thick upholstery and at this slow, dignified pace, it felt like we were being driven in a car full of VIPs. We maneuvered around the Chevelle and turned the corner.
Taking her time, and just as we’d planned, Aileen drove us back down the way we’d come. Police cruisers had stopped to surround Gregor’s SUV and more were coming up the hill.
Gregor and Ratke were still inside the car. The other three were out, but their hands were raised to the cops as we drifted by. One looked unsteady and he seemed like he was going to kneel. As we passed, Ratke pointed at us and I could see he was yelling. Gregor snarled, but the cops paid no attention to them, and they completely ignored us as we drove on past at our stately pace.
“What was it you were saying, Ryan?” Aileen asked, conversationally. “Something about the car?”
He looked like he was in shock. His eyes were fixed on the little golden nodding Buddha on the dash. He said, “You’ve got an Escalade. A black Escalade.”
“Yes, do you like it?” She smiled into the mirror as she looked back at him. “In fact, you kind of got it for me.”
“What?”
“This was what my nice insurance agent told me to get to replace the car that you stole.”
Ryan shook his head dazedly.
“Now,” Aileen said, “would all of you like to come back to my house for a morning coffee? I would love to hear about all of your adventures.”
Tynie said that he wanted to go to Aileen’s house. She blinked and her eyebrow lifted, but I saw her look into the mirror and make eye contact with him.
Her tongue slipped between her lips and she said, “You will have to be very good, Tynie.”
“I like you.” Tynie said. Ryan and I looked at each other.
Ryan said that he wanted to go back to the diner and collect the van. That he would stop by the motel afterwards to get his sunglasses.
“If Melissa hasn’t tossed them or broken them in a rage because you never came back to her,” I said.
If he got what I meant, he didn’t let on. “Nah,” he said, “everything should be fine and just as we left it. Our rooms are paid up until tomorrow morning.”
Then I told him that I would go on with Aileen. Mainly to see how he would react. He didn’t. Seeing him in the car, driving Gregor and his gang, my heart had jumped. When I watched him come running to me, when Ratke fired at him and the dust shot up, when I didn’t know whether he’d been hit, the whole of my being had ached for him.
All the time we’d been apart, when he’d been out doing who the fuck knew what, and I was a prisoner, first in the damned warehouse, then in that filthy basement, all of that time, I thought of him. Now that he was safe, now that I’d risked my life to rescue him and his spiky friend, what did I get from him? What did he have to say?
He wanted to go back for his sunglasses.
The van was still there where we left it. When Aileen pulled up in the lot in front of the diner, Ryan and I climbed out.
He said, “I thought you said that you were going on with Aileen?”
“I did. I lied.”
Aileen’s tires crunched and her big SUV rolled away. We stood in the lot, by the black van. Close. Close enough that the scent of him made me want to grab him. Close enough that when his long eyelashes swept down, his eyelids slowly drifted shut, and the tip of his tongue flicked between his lips, I wanted my mouth on his. To taste his breath and feel it blend with mine. To feel my heart bang against the hard ridge of his chest.
Now, at least, I saw a gleam in his eye. His eyebrow, the eyebrow that had the scar, tightened. I wanted to wrap myself around him. To hug him and kiss him and feel every part of him. Because I was glad he was safe. Because I was so thrilled to see him again. And because I was so relieved that I was safe, that we got through that mess without anyone getting hurt.
Well, no one but his precious Chevelle. As I searched his eyes in the sunlight, I wondered if that was it, if he was grieving over his damned car. Could be.
I asked him. “I mean, I know you’re a pretty shallow, self-centered thief. And I know nothing much matters to you and you don’t care about anyone other than your own damned self, but aren’t you even a little bit pleased to see me? Aren’t you at all glad that I saved Tynie, or that I came and got you out of that chase? The chase that was bound to end up with you shot or in jail?”
His lip curled.
“Aren’t you even impressed that I escaped captivity to come to your rescue? Or even that instead of just running home after the ordeal I had—the ordeal you got me into—I came and got you? That I risked another chase with Gregor, that I went and got Tynie…”
His huge arms swept me up and his mouth took me. My senses swirled as I was lost in his kiss.
“I was thinking about you all of the time,” he told me. “Worrying and beating myself up for getting you into this whole damned thing.” He squeezed me and crushed my breasts and my ribs against his massive trunk.
“Yes,” he said, “I was pleased to see you. I am pleased to see you.” He squeezed me so hard I could hardly breathe. My arms and legs wrapped around him and I clung on tight when he said, “I’ve never been as pleased to see anyone in my life.”
His hard, hot body made me pulse and tingle inside and out. He kissed me again. My fingers raked through his hair. The swelling hardness of his body against mine made me want to melt around him, to cover him and have him fill me.
In his arms, all the tension from the chase boiled up inside me and I gripped and clenched every part of me tight around him. Through my breasts I felt his breath, his pulse. My hips felt the hardening press of his ridge. The scratch of his denim against my pale, shivering flesh, along my wet rift, made me moan deep and low.
I sank my fingers into him, holding so very tight. I didn’t want to let him go. But we couldn’t stay like that. Not in the parking lot, right out by the diner. Still, I couldn’t bear to stop. The scrape of his hard stubble under my hands, the rising swell of his hot breath, the dark, dizzying scent of him—I just wanted us to stay, knotted and joined together, growing closer, tighter, more firm, more complete.
In the end, we both were breathless. Unwillingly, we pulled apart. The rasp of his breath made my knees shake. The smolder in his eyes made the ache inside my hot, wet panties burn unbearably. All along the drive, up the highway and back, to the motel that had been right across the street from where we were—all the time in the van, I wanted to grab his thighs, to scrape my fingers inside his shirt. To feel his stiffening pecs and grip his tightening buttocks. I wanted the taste of his air to fill me.
And I wanted him to fill me. Fill me until I burst.
When we crossed the courtyard of the motel, Melissa leaned out of the office to smile and wave and I wanted to just drop her in the pool as we passed.
Up the steps to the room, I couldn’t walk in front of him without feeling his eyes on the roll of my hips, the flex of my ass, and up the insides of my thighs. But I couldn’t stand to walk behind him. I couldn’t watch his back sway without wanting, needing to grab at his ass and squeeze.
As soon as we fell inside the room—the second I leaned back to close the door behind us—he spun and stood in front of me. Trapped me. Pinned me against the door. My feet wide apart, my lips parting. My pulse thundered in my ear and my breath jammed up in my chest.
Dirty Driver: Dark Crime Romance Page 18
