Nowhere to Run

by Suzanne Brockmann

Still holding the child, Felipe pushed the screen back open. He took Carrie’s arm and dragged her inside, shutting both doors tightly behind her.

  Green-eyes looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and hostility. Carrie couldn’t blame her. She’d be hostile, too, if her husband brought his lover home.

  “What are you doing here?” Green-eyes asked Felipe. Her voice had the warm sugar-and-spice accent of the Deep South. “Everyone’s looking for you. Jim Keegan was by just a few hours ago.”

  Felipe closed his eyes. “Damn. If only I’d known…”

  The young woman was strikingly pretty, with long, pale, slender arms and legs. She was wearing a denim skirt and an off-white tank top with a gently scooped neckline. Her outfit wasn’t necessarily feminine, but on her, it looked as delicate as lace. She looked like a dancer, tall and graceful. Next to her, Carrie felt like one of the seven dwarfs.

  “I’m sorry,” Felipe said. “I know this is awkward. But I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Phil, so help me God, if you screw up my life—”

  “Billy, excuse your mother and me for a moment, please,” Felipe said. The little boy slid down out of his arms. He gazed curiously at Carrie as he walked past her and sat down on the living room couch.

  Felipe stepped closer to Green-eyes, touching her shoulder, speaking to her in a low, soft voice. Carrie couldn’t make out the words, but his tone was soothing, almost seductive.

  It was misery, watching him talk to her like that. Carrie stared at the worn floorboards of the living room floor, but she couldn’t block the sound of his voice.

  I don’t really know that much about you, do I?

  No, you don’t.

  Damn straight she didn’t. She felt like a fool. She glanced up to find the little redhead watching her. She imagined she could see scorn and disgust in the youngster’s eyes.

  Carrie heard the answering murmur of Green-eyes’s Southern accent, and her attention was drawn back to the other side of the room, where she and Felipe were having their own version of summit peace talks.

  Was he touching her face? Had he kept that comforting hand on her shoulder, sliding it down her arm in a gentle, sensuous caress? Was she, right this very moment, lifting her face to his for a kiss?

  Carrie couldn’t keep from looking over at Felipe. She couldn’t stop herself. But as soon as she did, she wished desperately that she hadn’t. Because Felipe was touching the redheaded woman. He was pushing Green-eyes’s wavy hair back from her face. Carrie’s heart shriveled inside her as she remembered that he’d touched her that same way mere hours before.

  How could he have? How could he make love to her the way he had, with his wife and child here in this little house, waiting for him to come home?

  Felipe glanced up to find Carrie staring, and she quickly looked away, knowing all her hurt and jealousy were showing in her eyes.

  “All right,” Green-eyes said, walking across the living room and sitting on the couch next to Little Redhead. “So introduce me to your friend, why don’t you?”

  “Caroline,” Felipe said, moving toward the couch, “meet Jewel and Billy.” He didn’t sit down but rather stood beside them. It was a charming family portrait. Carrie’s head was spinning.

  She searched the boy’s face for any sign of Felipe’s features, any similarities the child might have to his father.

  She couldn’t see a single one. The red hair, green eyes and freckles came directly from his mother. The nose was entirely the child’s own, as was his chin and mouth.

  “Daddy, I saw you on the news,” Billy said. His small face suddenly looked pinched and nervous. “They say you’re a bad man.”

  “Billy, hush,” Green-eyes—Jewel—whispered. Her name suited her.

  “No, that’s okay,” Felipe said. He knelt next to the boy. “You must be pretty upset, huh?”

  Billy nodded.

  “It’s not true,” Felipe said. “All that stuff they’re saying on TV and in the papers. Someone made a mistake, and I’m being blamed for something that I didn’t do.”

  “You didn’t kill those guys?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Felipe said, “I didn’t. And you know I’d never lie to you.”

  “I know,” Billy said. He pressed his lips tightly together and stared down at his hands.

  “I’m going to get it all worked out,” Felipe said.” Don’t worry, okay?”

  “Okay.” But it was said grudgingly.

  “Feel any better?”

  Billy shook his head.

  Carrie’s heart was in her throat. Felipe was gentle with the child, full of soft words and reassurances. It wasn’t hard to imagine him talking to her in that same soothing tone. But there wasn’t much he could say to make her feel any better, either.

  “I’m sorry,” Felipe murmured, pulling the little boy into his arms. “I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all disappear, but I can’t. I need time. Can you give me some time, Billy? Another week, maybe?”

  Billy nodded, on the verge of tears. He wriggled free from Felipe’s arms and ran out of the room.

  Felipe started after him, but Jewel stood up and stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Let him go,” she said. “He doesn’t like to cry in front of anyone these days. He’s a big boy, nearly seven. He’s got enough to worry about—at least spare him the embarrassment.”

  Felipe looked as if he was about to cry, too. “I’m sorry,” he said to Jewel.

  “Whoever you’re investigating,” she said, “you sure got them scared, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Felipe laughed humorlessly. “We’ve got them shaking in their shoes, don’t we, Caroline?”

  She said nothing. What could she say? All she wanted to do was leave. Walk out the door, away from Felipe Salazar, away from his lies and deceit—except he’d never told her that he wasn’t married. She’d stupidly never asked.

  “It said on the news that you’d been shot,” Jewel said, pushing her hair back behind her ear. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m sore,” Felipe said shortly. “I should stay off my leg for another week, but I don’t have another week. I don’t have enough time.”

  Jewel smiled wryly. “I know the feeling well. Come on into the kitchen. You can have something to eat while I cut your hair.”

  Now was Carrie’s chance. She’d just stand up and let herself out the same door they’d come in.

  Except Felipe took her arm and pulled her with him into the tiny kitchen.

  “I need a bathing suit,” he said to Jewel as he gently pushed Carrie down into a chair. “And one for Caroline, too.” He took out his wallet and handed her a hundred-dollar bill. “Will you run down to Swim City and buy them for me? Caroline’s a size five, and I’m still a medium. Get us something funky and young-looking. Something college kids would wear.”

  “Can I take a spin on that bike you drove up on?” Jewel asked. She filled a spray bottle with warm water from the sink, then dragged one of the kitchen chairs into the middle of the room.

  “Sure.” Felipe sat down in the chair, and Jewel wrapped a towel around his neck.

  “Then it’s no problem. I tell you, Phil, it kills me to cut this gorgeous hair off,” Jewel said, wetting down his long curls.

  “I don’t need a bathing suit,” Carrie said, finally finding her voice. Her numbness and disbelief were slowly being replaced by anger. That was good. Anger didn’t hurt quite so much.

  “You need to get out of that dress,” Felipe said to her as Jewel combed his wet hair, parting it neatly on the side. “The police have probably issued a description of what you were wearing by now. And besides, we’re going down to the beach. If you don’t have a bathing suit, you’ll stand out.”

  “You might be going to the beach,” Carrie said. “But I’m not. I’m out of here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous—”

  “Ridiculous?” she said. “Ridiculous? This is ridiculous, Detective. Sitting here like this…”

  Jewel took a
long, sharp-looking pair of scissors and began cutting Felipe’s hair at cheekbone length. Long, dark curls fell on the beige linoleum floor. She glanced up at Carrie. “You got a problem with my kitchen? I admit it is kinda ugly….”

  Carrie leaned forward. “I hate to break it to you, sister, but Phil here has been unfaithful.”

  Jewel just kept cutting his hair. “Why, you bad boy, you,” she said to him.

  “Caroline,” Felipe started to say, but she ignored him.

  “Don’t you care?” Carrie asked Jewel.

  Jewel smiled, quickly cutting the hair around Felipe’s ears even shorter. “Nope.”

  “Well, I do,” Carrie said coolly. “And I’m leaving.”

  Her chair squeaked as she pushed it back from the table and headed out of the room.

  Felipe stood up. “Caroline, wait…”

  Jewel put the scissors down. “It seems like this is a good time for me to get those things you wanted from the store.”

  Carrie spun back to face Felipe as he scrambled after her into the living room and followed her toward the front door. “And by the way,” she said, “I have regrets. Big regrets. I regret the day I first laid eyes on you.”

  FELIPE HAD DONE IT. He’d gone and made Caroline ready and willing to walk away from him. Except he hadn’t expected her to be quite this angry, quite this upset, quite this willing to walk right now.

  He had had no idea that she would be so…jealous. Jealous? She was. She was jealous of Jewel. My God, maybe she cared about him more than she’d let on.

  “And,” she continued, “I definitely regret ever being so foolish as to make love to you, you two-timing snake!”

  Felipe had been called quite a number of things in his life, but “two-timing snake” wasn’t one of them. Out on the street, he heard the roar of Diego’s bike as Jewel rode away.

  He laughed—he couldn’t help it. It was a combination of her words and the giddy way he felt, knowing she was jealous.

  “Oh, you think it’s funny?” she said. “Fine. I’m leaving, and this time you can’t stop me.”

  Felipe stopped laughing. She was dead serious, and the thought of her walking away now was instantly sobering.

  “No,” he said. “No, it’s not—Caroline, I’ve misled you.”

  “Damn straight you did, you bastard.”

  “No,” he said, pushing his freshly cut hair up and out of his eyes. “I’ve misled you by letting you believe I have any kind of relationship besides friendship with Jewel.”

  “No relationship?” she said. “Right. Your friendship created a son?”

  “He’s not my son,” he said, talking low and fast as he followed her the last few steps to the door. “He calls me Daddy because he doesn’t have anyone else to call that, and because I love him as if he were my son.”

  Carrie stopped with her hand on the doorknob. She wouldn’t look at him, but he knew she was listening. It was a good thing she was listening because there was no way he would let her leave.

  “I met Jewel when she was seventeen,” Felipe said, talking quickly, quietly. “Billy was nearly three. She’d just come out of rehab, and her uncle was trying to hook her on crack again so he could resume his role as her pimp.”

  “Lord,” Carrie breathed, finally looking up at him. Her eyes were wide and so blue.

  “I helped put her uncle in jail,” he told Caroline evenly. “She and I became friends. That’s all it’s ever been—friendship. I’ve never slept with her—I’ve never wanted to. I love her, but I’m not in love with her. Do you understand that?”

  Caroline’s eyes were brimming with tears, but she kept her head turned away. She never wanted him to see her cry. She was so tough, so independent, and at the same time, so damn fragile. She nodded her head. She understood.

  “You must think I’m a fool,” she said. “A jealous fool.”

  Jealous. She was jealous. Why did that make him so happy? It should worry him, make him wonder if maybe she cared about him too much. “I don’t think you’re a fool,” he said gently.

  “Well, that makes one of us,” she said and went back into the kitchen.

  Felipe briefly closed his eyes. She wasn’t going to leave.

  Not yet anyway.

  “YOU LOVEBIRDS get things ironed out?” Jewel asked Carrie as they sat in the kitchen.

  Jewel had returned from the store and finished cutting Felipe’s hair. Now Felipe had gone to find Billy, to say goodbye to the little boy.

  Carrie was wearing the bathing suit that Jewel had bought at Swim City. It was a bikini of extremely minute dimensions, in a neon orange-and-black zebra-stripe print. Supposedly it made her look like a college student. Over it, she wore a filmy gauze beach cover-up and a pair of overalls dug out of the back of Jewel’s closet. The long pants would make riding the motorcycle easier, and help keep her warm if they were out all night.

  Carrie shrugged. “It’s not love,” she said.

  “I don’t sleep with guys I don’t love,” Jewel said. She took a sip from the glass of iced tea that sat on the table in front of her. “Not anymore.” She looked at Carrie. “And I don’t think you do, either.”

  Carrie was silent, tracing a design on the table with the condensation from her glass.

  “How could you not be in love with that man?” Jewel asked.

  Carrie looked up into the brilliant green of the younger woman’s eyes. “Are you?” she asked.

  Jewel laughed. “No,” she said. “Well…I used to have a crush on Phil back when we first met, but that was a long time ago.” She looked at Carrie from out of the corner of her eye. “However, he is the best-looking man on earth.”

  Carrie had to smile. “Amen to that. But that haircut you gave him makes him look about eighteen years old. I feel like a cradle robber.”

  “Just push his hair out of his face,” Jewel said. “It’s only when it’s in his eyes that he looks young.”

  “You’re good at cutting hair,” Carrie said.

  “Thanks,” Jewel said almost shyly. “It started out as a temporary career. I’m actually going to school over at the state university. I’m majoring in business, with a minor in Spanish. Although, I like cutting hair so much, I just might stay with it. With the business degree, maybe someday I can own my own salon.”

  “You speak Spanish?” Carrie asked, leaning forward.

  “Nearly like a native of Puerto Rico, or so Mrs. Salazar tells me,” Jewel said. Her tone was tongue-in-cheek, but there was some pride there, too.

  “Do you know what ‘Tay-yamo’ means?” Carrie asked.

  Jewel nearly dropped her glass of iced tea. She put it carefully down in front of her. “Did Phil say that to you?” she asked, bemused.

  Carrie nodded. “When I asked him what it meant, he told me it was too hard to translate.”

  Jewel laughed. “For Phil, yeah, it’d be really hard to translate. He’s got a problem with that particular verb.”

  “Okay, we better roll,” Felipe said, coming into the kitchen. “We’ve already been here to long.”

  With his hair cut so that it fell forward past his eyes almost to the tip of his nose, he did look much younger. With the combination of his hairstyle and the boldly patterned knee-length bathing suit, the extralarge T-shirt and the cheap beach sandals he was wearing, he looked like he might even pass for a high school student. Provided, of course, that his shirt stayed on to cover the hard, well-developed muscles in his chest and shoulders, and his hair stayed in his face, hiding the mature leanness of his cheeks.

  He touched Carrie lightly on the shoulder. His hand was warm through the fabric of her cover-up.

  Carrie was still embarrassed about her jealous reaction to Jewel. He’d made it more than clear that she had no claim to his heart. He’d told her that he could only give her here and now, and he may very well have meant their time at the beach house. Come to think of it, that poignant kiss he’d given her before they left, that could very well have been a kiss goodbye.


  It was probably over—at least, that part of their relationship was over—yet Carrie had acted like a jealous, spurned lover. Of course, her reaction hadn’t been all jealousy. She’d been outraged at the thought that Felipe could make love to her with such little regard for his wife. She’d been shocked and appalled and angry that she had misjudged him so thoroughly. The man she thought she knew wouldn’t cheat on his wife. He wouldn’t have gotten married in the first place, but if he had, he’d be sure to keep his marriage vows.

  Of course, Jewel wasn’t Felipe’s wife. Jewel wasn’t even his lover, present or past.

  So now what?

  Carrie had let him see her jealousy and hurt, and now he probably knew that she’d been stupid enough to fall in love with him. He’d probably treat her with the same kindness and gentle compassion he’d shown little Billy.

  Terrific.

  “We were discussing the translation of interesting Spanish phrases,” Jewel said to Felipe. “Te amo, for instance.”

  His hand dropped from Carrie’s shoulder. She glanced up to find his gaze fixed on Jewel, his expression suddenly shuttered.

  Jewel laughed. “I’ve always felt that ‘te amo’ is one of those things that needs to be explained by the person who says it. The meaning is defined by the situation in which it’s spoken.” She leaned toward Carrie. “I can’t tell you what Felipe meant when he said it. Only he can tell you that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “WHY EXACTLY are we going to the beach?” Carrie asked as she slipped the motorcycle helmet on her head. Felipe helped her on with a big, unwieldy backpack that held the rest of their clothes and a few beach towels.

  “We’re going to meet Diego,” Felipe said, putting on his own helmet. “He and I used to eat an early dinner at the same sandwich stand on the beach every Wednesday night back when we were partners. I’m hoping that since it’s Wednesday he’ll show up. I need to talk to him.”

  “And you’re sure that this Diego’s not really some gorgeous woman?” Carrie said dryly. “Because if he is, I want to be prepared to go into another jealous snit. I know how much you must love that.”