Time Bomb_On The Run Romance

by Madi Le

  The alarm screamed out, telling everyone in a half-mile what she was doing. She didn't care. She needed to get out of here, and she needed to do it yesterday. So she slipped into the driver's seat, and her hands ripped at the dash, pulled away the ignition switch, pulled the wires, and bypassed it.

  The car kicked to life. There was a long moment where she was afraid that it would turn back off. The reasons weren't immediately obvious to her; she didn't stop to try to figure an explanation for everything.

  Grant slid into the passenger seat, and she put the car into reverse, and jammed on the gas. She didn't bother waiting around to see how much of a lead she had on the cops. She found the road and ignored the speed limit, forcing herself to suppress the panic of driving at positively unsafe speeds on the residential roads. She kept going until she found a highway, and then she really let the car open itself up.

  They should have seen the cops coming. She knew it, though she wasn't about to say it. If Grant agreed, then there was nothing to say. If he didn't, there was no reason to get into an argument with him. She knew what the truth was, and if he was being honest with himself, he did too.

  She let out a long, low breath and clenched her teeth, scanning the horizon ahead of them for the signs of trouble. She looked out the rear-view. There should be someone right on top of them. They couldn't stay where they were, she knew that much. She let out a breath.

  "What were you thinking?"

  Misty peeled her eyes off the street and looked over at Grant. At the speeds they were moving, she couldn't afford more than a second, but the question was so stunning and frustrating that she wasn't about to give him anything to work with.

  She pulled off the highway at the fifth exit and kept moving until she could find someplace. Without the wind whipping hard at the car, without the roar of the engine forcing itself to uncomfortable speeds, ambient noises were easier to make out. It was easier, for example, to make out that the cops weren't far behind. She looked over her shoulder.

  They weren't in sight yet, at least. But that meant surprisingly little. If she kept waiting, it wasn't going to be long. At least this time, she could afford to take her time boosting the ride.

  Grant followed after her. She could see in the set of his jaw that he was pissed. She didn't have time to sit down and talk to him about it; if he was going to draw a line in the sand over this, then she was going to let him. Then she'd cross it, because they weren't in a position where they could afford to be prissy.

  The first row of cars had nothing worth taking. Cars that were too new, cars that were too nice, cars that were too beat up. She shook her head when she got to the second row, but a Ford truck just old enough to drink was her best bet. She tried the driver's side door. It was unlocked. She slid inside.

  The owner smoked, she noted unhappily. At least the windows worked. Nobody had smashed it in, so that was a move up from the last ride.

  Her hands worked again, automatically. This time she had more time to wonder. Where had she learned to do this? Grant certainly didn't look like this was something he would have done when they knew each other. It seemed unlikely that she had been involved in some kind of Idaho-based car theft ring when she was in high school.

  What was her life like, that she learned how to steal cars? She shouldn't have known anything about it. But that didn't change the fact that a minute later, the car sputtered and came to life. She twisted everything off and put the car into reverse. Grant stood by the driver's side looking like he was ready to stop a train with his bare hands and sense of right and wrong alone.

  Misty pressed the button. The window groaned as it rolled down. "Get in," she said.

  "No."

  "You're going to get arrested," Misty said. The man was being stupid. "And besides that, you said you were going to help me."

  "There are limits," Grant countered.

  "Yeah? What limits? Like, going up against the Feds, that's fine. But borrowing a car–"

  "Borrowing!" He slammed the side of his fist into the truck's nose, no doubt leaving a dent, and then seemed to immediately regret it. "You're stealing."

  "So fucking what? I'm not getting caught here because I feel bad about maybe stealing a car."

  "Maybe you should feel bad, though, even a little."

  Misty had already considered that idea. She'd been considering it for almost a year. And the answer was that she'd feel a lot worse if she got shot, so she kept moving and did what she had to do. Guilt was a luxury she couldn't afford. She wasn't about to give him that whole explanation, though.

  "So you're staying here then, Dudley Do-Right?"

  He grit his teeth until Misty worried he was going to crack one of them. "Go on," he growled, like it was a threat.

  "Fine," Misty said. She pulled out of the spot. Someone stepped out of the restaurant holding a big, plastic cup. Misty's eyes met his. He took a drink, and then seemed to notice only after a long moment t hat she was driving away.

  "That's my car," he said, loud enough that she could hear it. Then she put the car into drive, and stepped on it. The truck's tired slipped on the gravel, but she started to move, and she started to move hard.

  Thirteen ♥

  *

  Grant watched the truck pull away. Then the sound of the approaching sirens caught his ears, and the absolute absurdity of his insistence hit him, square in the gut, and he started to run.

  Misty pulled up to a stop as she came to the street, watching both ways for traffic. She had barely started moving again when Grant slapped his hand onto the tailgate, and with a desperate jump, threw himself into the bed. The tail end of the truck did a jump as the rear end hit the street, and then the engine roared, and the truck started moving in earnest.

  Wind whipped over Grant's head. Misty caught his eye in the rear-view, her expression harder to read than it had been. If he didn't know better, he'd almost have read some relief in her eyes, but it was impossible to say for certain.

  On the long stretch of road she reached back with one hand, grabbed the rear window, and slid it open a half an inch.

  "You having fun back there?"

  "More fun than a barrel full of monkeys," Grant growled. "But I wouldn't say no to switching to inside the cabin."

  "Where would the fun be in that," She laughed; but the truck slowed down, and Grant climbed out. The sound of the police had faded some time ago; at the same time, it was only a matter of time until they were looking for the stolen truck. At that point, someone would find them. Only a matter of time.

  He climbed into the cab, buckled his seat belt, and as Misty stepped on the gas, he told her so.

  She shrugged, like the news didn't affect her in the slightest. Maybe, for all he knew, it didn't. Maybe this was just business as usual for her, and he was the one who was freaking out over nothing.

  "Which way, then?"

  "We'll want to figure something out for the night."

  "You know anyplace?"

  "I know plenty of places. None in the direction we want to be going."

  "Great." The landscape moved by on the sides of the road, obviously sped along by the truck's aggressive growling. There was a long moment of silence.

  "The border to Washington is only a couple hours," Grant offered. "By the time night hits, we'll be most of the way through."

  "Which means we could be on your friend's yacht by tomorrow night," Misty said. She put a brave face on it; Grant wished he was half so confident as she sounded. He wasn't about to let her know about his worries.

  "Could be," he agreed.

  They kept driving, and both of them kept not talking. It was a good balance, Grant thought. But eventually they had to stop. There was no other way around it. And that meant, for better or for worse, that there would be a risk for them. He let out a breath.

  "You haven't eaten in 6 hours," he said, forcing himself to sound gruff, hoping that it would make it sound more insistent than pleading. "We need to stop to get something."

&
nbsp; Misty looked over at him, her expression sharp. She let it soften after a long moment. "Yeah," she said finally. "Sure."

  They drove a little while longer. Grant had never been partial to the long, flowing meadow country, per se. There was no reason to leave. It cost money. But seeing it all in one sitting put an unpleasant feeling in his gut.

  They pulled into the driveway of a chain fast-food place; Grant watched the inside. They were doing plenty of business, but then, it might just be the only place to get a bite in ten miles. Which meant that they would do plenty of business with anyone traveling on the interstate, because people were always hungry, and always looking to stretch their legs after a long drive. Most of them probably weren't on the run from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and who knew who else.

  "We'll make this quick," Grant said, trying to tally how many more miles until they hit the border. It couldn't be more than a handful, but crossing state lines felt like a big step. Too big.

  The television was showing the local CNN station; his name featured prominently, but there was no photograph. At least he managed to learn something before things all went to shit, he thought sourly.

  "Get me a number one," he told Misty, and slinked over to the side room to see what they were telling people.

  The woman on the screen was attractive in a way that wouldn't ever have been distracting, and sat with a stiff professionalism that was endemic to her profession.

  "… Holloway, the former Sheriff of Franklin County, has been officially charged by the FBI with two charges of obstruction of justice, and implicated in at least two kidnappings over the past twelve months. We'll continue to update you on the story as it develops."

  The woman turned before the camera angle shifted, giving the viewers a shot of her perfectly appreciable jaw for two long seconds. The camera angle changed, and her expression had already shifted to an unnaturally soft one. There was more local news, and she was about to have a prettier, younger woman who would probably make anchor in ten years tell the viewers all about a local cat farm.

  Grant slid up to the counter, careful to hide the badge on his hip, and looked at Misty. She watched him, too, expecting something. He reached into his pocket and dropped his wallet on the counter.

  "Just swipe there," the woman behind the counter said, careful not to touch the machine. Grant did so, wincing as he did, knowing that it was going to set off alarm bells across the state. Knowing that it meant that they had to be gone in only a few short minutes, and knowing that they couldn't possibly get far enough in that time to stop someone finding them.

  He just had to gamble that it was going to be fine, because otherwise the options he had available to him were slim.

  A moment later, the screen said 'APPROVED' in big, square letters, and a receipt started printing, almost entirely unprompted by the woman behind the counter. They smiled at each other pleasantly, and four minutes later, Grant was walking out with a sack of food crumpled into one hand.

  He let Misty slip into the driver's seat of the boosted truck, and moved himself into the passenger seat, and they were back on the road. He let out a breath and tried not to count the seconds until they were arrested. He crunched down on a french fry. At least he wasn't going to be arrested on an empty stomach. It was no consolation, but then again, nothing could be at that point.

  So he crunched down another, held out Misty's burger as she took a bite, and almost managed to convince himself that everything was going to work itself out by the time they crossed over into Washington. The trouble was, of course, that he knew better, and he was absolutely right.

  Grant set his teeth, looked at Misty. She didn't seem concerned. He tried to believe that it was all because she was used to this. Maybe he was just extra-nervous because he wasn't used to the whole 'being on the run' thing.

  The cop, who Grant had been eyeing for the past quarter-mile, let them pass without a second glance. Grant's eyes stayed fixed on the stationary car until they were far enough past that there was no seeing it any more.

  "How do you do it?"

  Misty didn't look at him when she answered. "Do what?"

  "Stay so calm."

  She smiled at him. "Calm? Is that what I look like to you?"

  "Ice cold," Grant said. She turned back to the road. The truck continued to growl. Grant started to relax, which should have been the first sign that things were about to go wrong. It was a lesson he'd learned in the army, but a lesson easily forgotten when your life wasn't on the line all the time.

  They pulled off the road without any particular discussion. There was a big sign, visible from the interstate, that told Grant without any doubt where they were going. Misty pulled at the truck's wiring, and the engine died. The fuel gauge showed them running on empty, the same as it had for nearly twenty miles.

  "Number one?" Misty asked. It had only been a little time, but she had already started to figure him out, Grant thought sourly. Was he that predictable?

  So he didn't answer the question. He looked up at the menu and picked something at random, immediately ordered without thinking about it too much, and told himself that he'd make it work.

  "What's next? When do we stop for the night?"

  "Do we stop?"

  "I'm not sure driving through the night is a great idea." He swallowed a bite of a truly miserable-tasting fish sandwich and tried not to make a face. "In a couple hours, the streets are going to really empty out, and a stolen vehicle is going to draw a lot of attention. Attention I'm not desperate to have coming down on me."

  Misty's eyes scanned across the table while she thought. She should have been more communicative. If there was some issue that she was worried about, then she should have brought it up. She didn't.

  "No, that makes a lot of sense. Alright."

  "So we're in agreement?"

  "Yeah," she said, after a pause that was long enough to make Grant feel anything but comfortable about it.

  He watched her. She didn't show any signs of anything that should have set him on edge. He kept watching, and she kept looking for all the world like she wasn't planning anything, and like she wasn't keeping anything back.

  Maybe he was just paranoid, but the hairs on the back of his neck stood up anyways. Maybe that was all it was, just a bad feeling. He decided that he should ignore it. It wasn't quite the same thing as successfully making that happen, but the least he could do was try. He grabbed a couple of fries, chomped down on them, and took a deep breath. There was plenty of time for worrying down the line.

  The sound of some kids behind them, laughing at something, was almost enough to make him turn. He forced himself to ignore it. There was nothing to be done for that, he told himself. He was just going to have to ignore them. Teenagers get all kinds of things in their head, and it was pointless to make some kind of psychodrama about it.

  Misty didn't ignore them, though. She was facing in their direction, and her eyes flicked upwards. It wasn't until her face moved to look, too, and Grant saw the expression in her eyes, that he realized that there was something more to the entire situation. Something he should have responded to already, if he knew what was good for him.

  Misty stood, her eyes fixed behind him. Then she started walking. Grant turned, still half-smiling. He should have reacted, but he still didn't know what he was dealing with, and he couldn't have known any better. By the time that he knew what was happening, Misty had already balled up her fists and planted one deep in the kid's face.

  Grant scrambled out of the booth. The boy was maybe seventeen and wiry, built like someone who didn't eat too much, but didn't work out too much either. Maybe he would have been able to take on a woman Misty's size if he'd set his mind to it, but he seemed as surprised as Grant. He touched his nose with surprise even as Misty's fist came down again, smashing his hand into his face and his nose bled more.

  Grant grabbed her, pulled her up.

  "What the fuck was that?"

  She stood, holding a cell phone, a
nd slipped it into her pocket. "Don't fucking record me," she growled at him.

  There was no staying in the restaurant after that. They left. The good news was, right by the interstate, any place that had a place to stop had a place to sleep within walking distance.

  Grant grit his teeth and watched the door of the room. The shower behind him ran loud enough to eat at his mind. Any minute, something was going to go wrong. Someone was coming through the door. He knew, because he'd relaxed for a moment. They were recognized, and someone would be watching his credit card. But they had to sleep. He kept telling himself that. He had to sleep some time, and sleeping on the road was no better an idea.

  He let out a breath, tried to force himself to relax. It didn't work. A pair of arms wrapped around him. Misty was still wet from the shower. He leaned back into her; her lips pressed against his neck. He let her kiss him, relaxed, and tried not to think about how everything had gone wrong for him.

  There was another matter that was a little more pressing, and he would have plenty of time to worry afterward.

  Fourteen ♥

  *

  Misty liked the feeling of pressing herself against him. She liked the way that he reacted to it. She liked the hard feeling of his muscles, under his shirt. She even liked the feeling of his stubble, scratching her cheek as she pressed a line of kisses across his throat.

  The thought that it was the same path she might use to cut it, if there was need for violence, popped up and then faded into thankful forgetfulness.

  Misty shifted her position to hold Grant tighter, his broad hips pressed between her thighs and reminding her in an instant that there was nothing else going wrong in their lives right now. She was good at forgetting. At least, she could try to forget. And that was all she needed.

  Her lips pulled back as her teeth sank into the sensitive flesh of his throat, scraping across stubbled skin.

  "Oh, God," he breathed, though Misty couldn't have said that she was supposed to hear it. His hand reached around behind himself, wrapping around her head and taking a handful of hair into his grasp. He pulled on it, pulled her over his hip and into his lap. Misty let him, slipping around until she was standing propped up on one leg, the other perched beside him.