Capsized

by Sharon Sala

  He started back toward the motel where he and Kelly were staying, and the farther he walked the faster he went.

  * * *

  Kelly watched Quinn leave the motel, then headed for the pay phone outside the manager’s office. She was so angry with the situation that she was shaking. Someone pretending to be on the side of the good guys was a traitor. She didn’t know who to blame, but there had to be a starting point, and Michael Forest was it.

  She dropped some coins into the slot and dialed his direct number. He answered on the first ring.

  “This is Forest.”

  “Someone with the DEA or the prosecutor’s office sold me out,” Kelly said, without introducing herself. “Kelly?”

  “Who else do you know who’s got a price on her head?”

  “What do you mean, you were sold out?”

  “The bounty on my head is up to two million. The only reason that would have happened is if Ortega knows for sure I’m alive. And for that to happen, someone had to tell him. Was it you, Captain? Did you sell me out?”

  Forest was stunned. “You can’t believe that!”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Kelly said. “But if it’s not you, then you need to clean house. And if it’s not someone in the DEA, then it’s coming out of the Federal prosecutor’s office. I hate to speak in clichés, but someone better find that leak and fix it, or we’re sunk.”

  “Kelly! Wait! Tell me what’s going on! Let me—”

  She hung up in his ear then started up the street toward the Wal-Mart, her step lighter than it had been in weeks.

  Forty minutes later, she was back in the motel. She dumped her purchases on the bed, then picked up a pair of scissors and a can of colored hair spray, and headed for the bathroom.

  * * *

  The closer Quinn got to the motel, the more he felt like running. He shouldn’t have left her alone. He just knew it.

  He slipped the key into the door without knocking and then rushed inside. Then he saw her clothes in a pile on the floor outside the bathroom door and went weak with relief.

  “Kelly, it’s me. I’m back.”

  “Be right out,” she said.

  He sat down in the chair, needing to let the panic subside. He combed his hands through his hair, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His heart was hammering. His hands were shaking. And all because he’d let fear get the best of him. This wasn’t like him. He was a better cop than this, or at least he had been—before Kelly.

  “God,” he muttered, and closed his eyes. How had she become so important to him in such a short time?

  “Okay…how do I look?” Kelly asked.

  He opened his eyes, then grunted as if he’d just been punched in the belly. “Kelly?”

  She put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin in a defiant tilt.

  “Never heard of her. Call me Candy.”

  Quinn got up and moved closer, touching the sharp pointy spikes where her hair used to be.

  “Nice touch,” he said, eyeing the red hair spray she’d added to the spikes. Then his gaze moved to her clothes. “You bought those at Wal-Mart?”

  “No, there’s a secondhand shop a couple of blocks up.” She ran her hands down the front of the black leather minivest. “I always wondered what it would be like to be a biker babe.”

  Quinn started to grin. “Wait till you see our ride.”

  “What have you done?”

  “You’ll see tomorrow.”

  “Okay, fine. I can wait.”

  Quinn eyed the tight black leather pants she was wearing, as well as the wealth of skin showing beneath that skimpy black vest. If it wasn’t for a white tube top, she would be naked beneath.

  “I’d take you out to eat, but I might have to fight my way back home later,” he said.

  Kelly grabbed his elbow and pulled him toward the door.

  “I’ll save you,” she said. “Now let’s go. I’m starving.”

  Quinn followed her out the door, his gaze so focused on the sway of her backside that he stumbled on the steps.

  Kelly heard him curse and turned around just as he grabbed the railing. “You okay?”

  He eyed the swell of her breasts pushing against the vest and sighed.

  “No, ma’am, I am not. I may never be all right again.”

  Kelly grinned. “It’s just black leather.”

  “You give new meaning to the term ‘hot.’”

  Kelly started to tease him, then saw something in his eyes that stopped her. He wanted her. The thought of making love with this man turned her appetite for food into a different kind of hunger.

  “Quinn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How hungry are you…really?”

  “I’m starving.”

  “Oh, well, then I—”

  “For you,” he added.

  Kelly’s stomach tightened with a longing she hadn’t felt in years. She started toward him, her hips swaying with a slow, rhythmic gait.

  Quinn took her by the hand and pulled her back into the room, then shut and locked the door. For a few moments they stood in the shadows of the room and stared into each other’s eyes.

  Then Kelly exhaled slowly. When she did, Quinn sighed.

  “Honey…it’s time.”

  She nodded.

  Quinn put his finger in the vee of her vest and gently tugged. The first snap came undone.

  Kelly lifted her chin, watching the flare of his nostrils and knowing he was remembering his first sight of her.

  She reached for his hand and pushed it away, then undid the rest of the snaps herself. When she shrugged out of the vest and let it fall to the floor, she thought she heard him groan.

  “Kelly… Kelly…you are so beautiful.”

  “It’s Candy…remember?”

  “And just as sweet,” Quinn whispered, then stripped the rest of the clothes from her body and carried her to the bed.

  Chapter 6

  “Now yours,” Kelly said, pointing to his clothes. “Take them off.”

  Quinn stripped in record time and stretched out on the bed beside her. He started to kiss her, then held back when he saw the look in her eyes.

  “This is crazy, isn’t it?”

  “About the craziest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.

  “Please don’t regret this.”

  “Only if you stop,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  He brushed his mouth across her lips, lingering tenderly on the sensual curve of her lower lip until Kelly started to moan. Then he moved down the length of her neck, dipping into the valley between her breasts with his tongue, then encircling the sweet brown areolas surrounding her nipples.

  Kelly fisted her fingers in his hair. When his teeth tightened gently on the peak of one nipple, the sensual pain traveled the length of her body, building shockwaves of pulsing need.

  Quinn heard her gasp, then felt her body arch up from the bed. It was exalting to know he was giving her pleasure. And so the loving began.

  * * *

  Night came to the small Louisiana town, cloaking the motel in what seemed a temporary refuge. The air was close—almost sultry. No breeze stirred other than what was generated by a couple of outdoor ceiling fans hanging from the portico off the office. But the heat building inside their room was of a different kind. One that threatened to consume them both.

  The air conditioner rattled noisily near the foot of their bed, but the sound was lost in the act of making love as their bodies joined in a dance as old as time. Sweat-slicked, with hearts pounding, they clutched at each other in mute desperation and raced toward a finish that couldn’t be denied.

  One moment Kelly was riding a ripple of pleasure, and then she slammed into the wall. Shattered by the climax that ran through her, she could do nothing but cling to Quinn and let it engulf her.

  Quinn heard Kelly gasp. He looked down just as her eyes rolled back in her head. Her neck arched first, and then her body, as a low,
gut-wrenching groan came out of her throat. It was the most sensual thing he’d ever experienced, and the knowledge that he’d given her such pleasure was the sign that his wait was now over. The muscles in his forearms were shaking as he slammed once more into the valley between her thighs. Once, then again, and the climax came upon him in a mind-shattering blast, emptying his mind as he spilled himself into her.

  Too exhausted to move or speak, they turned to each other and slept, while across the South, the search for Kelly Sloan continued to escalate.

  * * *

  Michael Forest was livid. Being accused of selling out a fellow agent was not only humiliating but infuriating, but it wasn’t Kelly Sloan that he was mad at. It was the situation.

  He’d started an investigation inside the ranks of the DEA that would put a Federal Grand Jury to shame. And he’d set a fire under the Federal prosecutor, Robert Marsh, that was echoing his own investigation. Forest wanted to be confident that the mole was not within their ranks, and yet how could he be sure? Kelly Sloan was well within her rights to be mad as hell. She’d put her life on the line by going undercover in the first place. Escaping three days of torture should have, at the least, garnered her a letter of commendation. Instead, she was still on the run, with a two-million-dollar bounty on her head and no one she felt she could trust.

  Suddenly his phone rang. He reached across his desk to answer it, frustration still strong in his voice.

  “This is Forest.”

  “Michael, it’s me, Robert.”

  The Federal prosecutor sounded far too chipper to suit Michael’s case.

  “Do you have any news?” he asked.

  “Yes, actually, I do,” he said. “You were right. We had a guy selling information to Gruber. He’s been arrested, although, as you said earlier, the damage has already been done. All I can say is how sorry I am that this is affecting your agent. Have you heard from her again? Do you know if she’s all right?”

  “I don’t know anything except what I told you before. So if you want answers, I suggest you pray.”

  Michael Forest hung up, relieved that the traitor had been identified and arrested, but that didn’t fix what was already broken.

  * * *

  Kelly woke to the sound of rain, then felt the heat of another body behind her back and remembered what she’d done.

  God. Making love to Quinn had been a revelation. He’d brought out a sexuality in her that she hadn’t known existed and, at the same time, had given her a renewed faith in herself. Not until she’d felt the surge of life power from the climax of making love had she realized that she’d been going through the motions of living. During the three days of torture at Dominic Ortega’s hands, she’d been subconsciously preparing herself to die. When she escaped instead, she had liberated her body but not her soul. It had been tangled up with old fear and pain until the touch from a dark-eyed Texan had set it free.

  She turned, still locked within the safety of Quinn’s arms, and found him watching her.

  “Hi,” she said softly.

  He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then her lips.

  “It’s raining,” he said.

  She nodded. “Yeah, I heard it.”

  “You know what my favorite thing to do is?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Make love when it rains. What about you?”

  She traced the shape of his eyebrows, then his mouth, with the tip of her finger and frowned.

  “I think I have a new favorite thing.”

  “What?” Quinn asked.

  “You.”

  Emotion stifled what Quinn had been going to say. Instead, he cupped the side of her face and pulled her close.

  Rain peppered against the roof as Kelly crawled on top of Quinn. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as he lifted her up, then slowly lowered her down onto his erection. She sighed as his body filled her, then cried out from the pleasure as he started to move.

  * * *

  Luis de Jesus and his partner, Armenio, were coming out of a Texaco truck stop outside Oklahoma City when the first highway patrol car appeared. They thought nothing of it until two more topped the hill right behind the first.

  Armenio looked at Luis, then threw down the bag of chips and bottle of pop he’d been carrying and ran toward the car. Luis was right behind him. By the time Luis had the key in the ignition, the first patrol car had slammed to a stop, blocking the only exit. The patrolman was out of his car and kneeling behind the open door of his cruiser, yelling for them to get out. The other two patrol cars added to the melee by stopping on either side of the first, creating a phalanx of black and white.

  Luis was reaching for his gun when Armenio grabbed his arm.

  “No, Luis. They will kill us.”

  “And Ortega will kill us if we fail.”

  Armenio cursed and then threw himself out of the door onto the ground, screaming at the police not to shoot.

  Luis chose the other way out and opened fire.

  It was over in a matter of seconds. The third shot entered Luis de Jesus’s head near his ear and exited—with a large portion of his brains—into the back seat.

  Armenio started talking before they could get him off the ground. By the time he was handcuffed and situated in the back of a patrol car, the patrolman knew they had more than they’d bargained for.

  The patrolman got on the radio, eyed the man in the back of his car, then keyed the mike.

  “This is Whaley. Someone tell the captain to notify the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. We’ve got someone I think they need to see.”

  As the car pulled away, Armenio looked back, saw the body of his friend lying on the ground in a spreading pool of blood and breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive. That was all that mattered.

  * * *

  There was a party going on in the Dead Pig, outside of Jackson, Mississippi. As bars went, it was on the lower rung of society, as were the patrons who frequented it. The theme of the party was something new—sort of a scavenger hunt for ex-cons and lowlife. They called it Hunt the Fed, and with a two-million-dollar prize for the winner, the crowd was growing by the hour. Sometime during the last forty-eight hours, a picture of Kelly Sloan, along with a description and the tag number of Quinn McCord’s truck, had begun to circulate within the underbelly of society. A stack of photocopies of her picture were sitting at the end of the bar beside a half-empty bowl of pretzels and an unopened bottle of beer.

  Suddenly someone let out a rebel yell and then shot off a gun. For a heartbeat the sudden silence after the roar was startling. Then the shooter, a long-haired biker with a death’s-head tattoo on his forehead, yelled, “Let’s get it on!”

  The bar emptied within seconds, as men and women alike grabbed a copy of her picture, then raced for their vehicles. Nearly one hundred cars, vans and trucks, as well as a half-dozen Harleys, took to the highway. The race was on to find a woman named Kelly and claim the prize for her life.

  * * *

  Kelly was finishing the last bite of a sausage biscuit when Quinn came back to the Tuskeegee motel. He’d been gone for almost an hour, and Kelly had been starting to worry. But now he was back, and the grin on his face was contagious. Kelly found herself returning the smile even before she knew why.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You ready to ride?”

  “Yes. I saved you a sausage biscuit,” she said.

  “Hold it for me until we get on the road. Is everything in the bag?”

  “Yes, but I still want to know what’s so funny.”

  “You’ll see,” Quinn said, and picked up the suitcase with their joint collection of clothes. Then he eyed her black leather and new hairdo, and his grin widened. “We were definitely on the same wavelength yesterday. You’re gonna fit the new ride just fine.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “You will.”

  Quinn exited first, casually sweeping the parking lot with a careful gaze before moving asi
de for her to follow.

  Kelly came out the door, then stood on the stoop, waiting to see where Quinn went. When he headed to the monster truck parked near the office, her mouth dropped. She couldn’t decide which was worse, the black-and-orange flames down the sides or the Confederate flag on the hood. As for the new tires, they’d elevated the clearance of the truck by several feet. She wasn’t sure she would be able to get in without help.

  “That’s your truck?”

  “Yep. This is it,” he said. “Hop in.”

  Kelly walked toward the passenger side, then looked up at the door handle.

  “Got a ladder?”

  Quinn opened the door, then grabbed her around the waist and lifted her into the cab. While Kelly was settling in, he tossed their suitcase in the truck bed then slid behind the wheel. When he fired up the engine, it rumbled lightly. The sound was similar to jet wash before takeoff as he put it in gear.

  “Who did this?”

  “A guy named Little Ed.”

  “Is anything on here legal?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Kelly laughed. “This just might work after all.”

  “That was the plan,” Quinn said, and drove out of the parking lot and back onto the street. A few minutes later they were back on the main highway, still heading north.

  * * *

  Twenty-seven hours later, a green Ford 4 x 4 pulled up in front of Little Ed’s Paint and Body Shop. Little Ed looked up and then started to grin.

  “Françoise, you old son of a bitch! Long time no see!”

  Françoise Marin was a man who’d lived hard and large and paid often for the price by chalking up a sizable rap sheet. He’d been on the road for the better part of the week in search of his own pot of gold. The picture in his pocket was his ticket to the easy life. All he had to do was find a woman named Kelly Sloan, then make a call.

  “Hot damn, Little Ed. You got to cut back on those pork ribs or you’re gonna pop.”

  “We all die,” Little Ed said. “What brings you to Tuskeegee?”

  “A leaking radiator hose,” Françoise said. “Figured you might be able to help me out.”

  “Sure, sure,” Little Ed said. “Business has been pretty slow. Except for a fancy paint job yesterday morning, I ain’t had a customer all month.”