Gone Duck
Page 13
The room really did spin behind her as he turned and headed for his bedroom. Air sifted past her bare feet and between her toes. She peeked out from beneath her heavy eyelids and almost laughed at him for kissing her and watching where he was going at the same time.
So adorable.
The room spun again and the bed came up to press beneath her. His weight came to rest around her, over her. She smiled at the dichotomy of being completely alert while also being incredibly drowsy.
Her pain hat hurt, her lips were bruising, but she didn’t care. Kissing was everything. She would die if they stopped.
A little sound came from the main room—the chink of small metal pieces hitting the tile.
Shawn started. “My keys,” he whispered close to her ear. “Someone’s trying to get in. You hide in the closet. Now.”
Silently, he climbed off the bed and took the gun from the nightstand. Bent over, he stuck his head out the door, then pulled it back. A second later, he straightened, then and rolled around the doorframe and disappeared.
Macey slipped off the bed. She had a gallon of hormones pouring through her system, and the last place she wanted to be was alone in a closet.
No. The last place she wanted to be was in a room with Lacrosse again.
The closet door rolled silently along the track, and she crawled into the shallow space. She rolled the door closed again, feeling like a coward for hiding when Shawn was going out to face the monster.
She rolled the door open a crack and strained to hear anything beyond her own breathing.
“It’s all right,” Shawn called quietly.
She crawled out, got to her feet, and looked at her reflection in the mirrored door. Thanks to Shawn, her hair was completely disheveled. Her lips were puffy—even in the dim light—and her robe, which she’d worn all day, hung open. But the hormones from just minutes before had been washed away by panic. Stark, sobering panic.
Shawn returned as she was retying her robe. “It was the guy across the hall. He tried another door before he found his. I’m pretty sure he’s drunk.”
“Not just pretending to forget his room number?”
Shawn shook his head, staring at the bed. “No. I don’t think so.”
Since she couldn’t be sure if he was answering her question, or commenting on whether or not he wanted to continue what they’d started before the interruption, she headed out of the room. When she brushed past him, he was still staring at the bed. He didn’t try to stop her.
“Macey.”
She kept walking.
“Macey?”
“What?” She tried to sound casual and opened the small fridge for a cold bottle of water.
“Can we talk about this for a second?” He hadn’t moved from the doorway, like he couldn’t wait to get inside and lock the door.
She shrugged and took a swig. “Talk about what?”
“Look. I’m sorry. I got carried away. I was so relieved you didn’t hate me that I just wanted to…to celebrate. And when we got interrupted, I thought maybe it was…a sign?”
She filled her mouth with cold water and held it, then nodded. He couldn’t expect her to speak to him with a mouth full of water.
He stared hard at the doorframe and ran his hand up and down the glossy white paint. “It’s going to be hard enough just surviving for a while. If we start sleeping together—”
“Ha!” She choked on the water and cleared her throat. “Listen, Neighbor Dude. I wasn’t about to sleep with you—”
“Oh. Okay.” He laughed and rolled his eyes. “You’re right. We weren’t about to do everything—I mean, anything. And I’m just going to have an ice-cold shower because I like to torture myself.” He pointed from her feet to her head. “It had nothing to do with how hot you look in your cut-offs and that robe, with your hair all messed up and your…” He froze, his eyes riveted to her mouth.
She froze too, with her water bottle just an inch from her lips. She wasn’t often told she was hot—to be honest she wasn’t often around living, breathing people much—and it caught her by surprise. Of course, when she had to do book tours—the kind where she hid in the shadows with a headset and let an actor play Morty—there were always drunks in hotels willing to call her anything they thought she wanted to hear, but they were just flirting. And Shawn was doing the opposite—he was unflirting. But for someone who had just insisted he didn’t want to be attracted to her, he sure was breathing hard.
She was able to lift a finger and point to her own bedroom. “Do you want me to—”
“Yes. Go. Now.” His voice grew louder with every word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Macey was too stunned to move quickly, and the idea of having any sort of power over the man tempted her to test it. She tried to walk as sexy as possible, crossing her feet in front of her like the runway models did, but she gave it up for fear of tripping and falling on her face. It would really ruin the moment.
She half expected Shawn to stop her, but he didn’t.
A few, short minutes later, she was tucked safely in bed, willing to forego washing her face until morning if it meant she could get to sleep quickly and stop thinking about what almost happened.
Water kicked on somewhere, and she realized Shawn hadn’t been joking about taking a cold shower. She’d never been so flattered in her life. But since he’d been a gentleman and refrained from putting a camera in her bathroom, she thought it was only fair that she keep her imagination out of his shower.
Two hours later, when she still wasn’t able to sleep, she decided to open the window and let the cool fall air into the room. She spread her blanket over Dorothy Jean, hoping the woman wouldn’t notice the change in temperature, and dug through the layers of curtains to the window.
Their view opened onto the front of the hotel and she took a moment to watch the busy street seven stories below. A simple tug brought up the sash with little effort and the smell of rain sifted through the sheers around her head and flooded her senses.
It was midnight, but the city hadn’t seemed to notice the time. Red lights passed back and forth, their exact reflections rolling across the wet street. White lights flashed as cars turned at the corners. Red and blue lights cut through the night scene made darker by rainclouds blotting out the moon. A cop car pulled around the corner with its lights flashing, and though the front of the hotel was blocked from her view, the blue and red lights stopped progressing along the buildings across the street. Two sets of them now. There had to be another car already down there.
Her heart jumped and pounded furiously, demanding that she react. And though it didn’t mean those cops were there looking for her and her companions, she couldn’t help assuming they were. And she wondered, since the episode with Barney Fife and the blockade at the state line, if she’d always feel like a criminal whenever she saw a cop car.
Cops in front of a hotel? Was that so unusual? Even though the Davenport was a beautiful high-end business, it didn’t mean that crimes weren’t committed in its rooms, surely.
Her gut told her to run to Shawn’s room and raise the alarm. But if she did, there would be that second or two when he’d believe she was dying to get into his bed, that she was using any excuse she could to get close to him again. She just couldn’t make herself do it.
But maybe she could send Dorothy Jean.
She left the window open and stepped out of the curtains. If cars started screeching to a stop in front of the building, she wanted to be able to hear them.
One look at Dorothy Jean, snuggled up with a pillow, blissfully unaware of the drama going on around her, made Macey ashamed to have even considered waking her up.
Maybe there wasn’t any drama going on anywhere but in Macey’s head. She needed to know what the police had come for, but she didn’t have a clue how to find out. Then she remembered her late night concierge, Joseph, a kid who couldn’t be more than seventeen.
Like she had before, she dragged the hotel telephone aro
und the corner and into the closet before pressing the button for the concierge desk. She asked if Joseph was on duty.
“This is Joseph. What can I do for you, Mrs. Phillips?”
“Can you come to my door? I have a short list of things I need tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am. Uh, I’ll be up…uh…as soon as I can.”
“Is there a problem?”
“No…” He hesitated and she jumped to her feet, hitting her head on the empty hangers.
Her pride could suck it. She was going to have to wake up Shawn!
“Nothing’s wrong,” Joseph lied, then his hand cupped the phone and he whispered, “The police are here, arresting some people, and I wanted to watch.”
“Oh?” She swallowed. “Who are they arresting?”
“Some old lady—”
Dorothy Jean! “When?”
“They’re coming through now. Hold on.”
“Joseph! Don’t put the phone down!” It was too late. There wasn’t time to wake Dorothy Jean and convince her to run, let alone give her a minute to remember where she was! No time to warn Shawn. Lacrosse, or the cops, were probably poised to break through the door at any second.
“I didn’t. I’m here. Are you all right, Mrs. Phillips?”
Grasping the phone was like having a hand to hold while she waited for the nightmare to start again.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just…a little bored and wish I could see what you’re seeing, that’s all.”
“Well, they got her. And one other guy. Looks like they’re calling an ambulance for the last guy. He’s hurt.”
Macey’s thoughts collided in her head and the pieces got all mixed up. For a split second, she wondered if it was supposed to be her or Shawn who was hurt. But then she started sorting her fears from reality. Dorothy Jean was in bed. They’d been after a different old lady, two other accomplices.
She shook her head and tried to focus. “They’ve already got her? You’re seeing this?”
“Through the door. They’re taking the old lady out.”
Just how many old female fugitives did the antique hotel hide on a given day? “Joseph?”
“Yeah?”
“About how old do you think the old lady is?”
“Aw, I don’t know. Fifty or sixty, I guess.”
Macey laughed.
“Wait a minute. Hold on.”
Macey waited, but only because she needed to tell the kid not to bother coming up. He was going to be bummed to miss out on another big tip, but if Shawn kept them at the Davenport much longer, she was sure she could think of an errand or two for Joseph later.
“Mrs. Phillips?”
“Yeah?”
“This is kind of cool.”
“What?”
“So those federal guys just showed up. Sounds like they thought maybe the people the cops arrested were the three they’ve been looking for. You know, on TV?”
Apparently the federal guys didn’t always come screeching to a halt in front of hotels. Either that, or she hadn’t been able to hear them from inside the closet. But if Joseph thought they were feds, it meant Lacrosse and/or his goons had arrived. And Shawn was going to kill her when he found out she’d wasted precious minutes in order to save her pride.
“Um. Joseph? I haven’t been watching TV.” Shawn hadn’t allowed her or Dorothy Jean to watch anything but movies since they’d arrived. He said he didn’t want Macey freaking over Mortimer Coffee coverage, and he thought any kind of news might upset Dorothy Jean. It took a lot of convincing, but she’d finally agreed, knowing it would drive her crazy if she couldn’t do anything about her pen name getting trashed. And the way Shawn had talked, after monitoring the situation on the TV in his room, knowing might upset Macey more than not knowing.
“Well, the Feds have been combing the city for that kid’s book writer, Mor Coffee. You know the one? They’re going to start making movies of the Keefer Boone books—er, or at least they were going to. Now, probably not.”
She’d already realized the movie deals would be cancelled now that she’d started running from the police, but to hear it from someone else, someone who might have been a fan at one time, was like a nail in the coffin of her career, and an almost physical blow to her stomach. Shawn had been right to keep her away from the news. She thought he was being a little silly about it, now that they were away from Salt Lake stations, but apparently her story was going National. She’d be lucky if they didn’t start burning her books at libraries.
Tears trickled down her cheeks before she noticed she was crying, and she wiped them away. She’d deal with Keefer business later. At the moment, her actual life was in danger.
“What are they doing?” she asked and stepped out of the closet, imagining what she needed to do first. Wake Dorothy Jean. Wake Shawn. Throw the old gal’s meds into her backpack… “Joseph, are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here. There’s a scary agent dude who’s pissed at the cops. And I’m not sure, but I think the officer wet himself. Holy shit. I’ve got to get out there, ma’am. This is just too good to miss.”
“Okay, Joseph. Maybe you can come tell me about it when it’s all over.”
“Yeah. Okay, yeah.” Then he hung up.
She didn’t freak out. It was probably shock that kept her calm. Or maybe she was just too scared to breathe deeply enough to be able to scream her head off like she should be doing.
She hung up the receiver and took the phone back to the nightstand. She scooped up the pill bottles and the backpack and put the former into the latter while she made her way to the door. On the other side of the adjoining door, she was only slightly surprised to find the barricade in place. But quickly and quietly she lifted the small tables and kitchen chairs out of the way. The loveseat was in the living room, where it was supposed to be. No need to jump over it.
She made straight for Shawn’s door and tried the handle, expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. So she turned it and pushed the door open without stepping into the room.
“Shawn?”
“Yeah?” His voice was deep, smooth, and unsurprised, damn him.
She ignored the fact that he sounded like he hadn’t slept yet.
“Lacrosse is downstairs.” She walked to the main entrance and dropped Dorothy Jean’s backpack next to the other two and headed back to her room.
Shawn was suddenly next to her wearing nothing but his dark boxer briefs. “What?”
“Lacrosse is downstairs. Apparently the cops arrested some older woman and two others. He came, thinking they’d found us, I guess. Now he’s pissed.” She started walking again. “Dorothy Jean’s medicines are all in her backpack. I’m going to get her ready to run.”
Shawn grabbed her arm and gently turned her to face him. “Macey? Are you serious? Or are you sleepwalking?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
He shook his head in the shadows. “How do you know he’s downstairs?”
“I have a spy among the staff.” She smiled, knowing it was something Morty would have appreciated.
A knuckle rapped softly on the door.
“Expecting someone?” Shawn whispered, pulling his gun up to his shoulder.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s either my spy, or it’s Lacrosse.” She chuckled quietly, both at her joke and the secret agent posing in his underwear.
Shawn scowled. “Macey? What’s the matter with you? Are you sure you’re not just dreaming?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” she said and walked to the door. She pushed the little brass flap aside and looked through the peep hole. It was Joseph, so she opened the door and let him in. Then she realized she didn’t have her dark wig on.
Joseph stepped inside and smiled, then his smile dropped. “Holy freaking shit. It’s you!” He frowned at Shawn. “And you!” His eyes dropped to Shawn’s boxers and went wider still.
Shawn closed his eyes and sighed, then he gestured with his gun for Joseph to move to the living room.
“Yeah?” He held his hands in the air and walked to the coffee table and sat on it. Then he closed his eyes tight. “I didn’t see anything, man. I don’t know anything.”
Shawn shook his head in disgust. “Did you really need a spy, Mort?”
It was kind of nice to know that in spite of his career being over, Mortimer Coffee was still alive and well and living inside her. She felt her backbone strengthen instantly. “Hey. Look. Without Joseph here, we wouldn’t have known Lacrosse was downstairs, would we?”
“Lacrosse? Yeah, that’s what they called him.” Joseph nodded without opening his eyes.
Shawn snorted. “Will you tell him he doesn’t have to close his eyes?”
She crossed her arms and gave him a heaping scoop of attitude. “You can’t talk to him yourself? He’s right there.”
“He’s your spy,” Shawn growled.
Macey nodded. He was right. “All right. Joseph, open your eyes. Unless you are offended by his state of undress…”
The kid opened one, looked at Shawn for a few seconds, then opened the other one. “You sure he’s not going to have to kill me or something?”
“Of course not.” Macey smiled. “You’re on the payroll.”
Shawn glowered at her. “That’s great, Macey. But before you hand out any more uniforms, you need to remember our mission statement.”
“Our mission statement?”
“Yeah, you know. The part that goes, Everyone on the team…is going to end up dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
His underwear finally concealed beneath his jeans, Shawn paced.
Macey made quick work of her fingernails while trying to stay quiet so the man could think. Each time her eyes met Joseph’s, she gave him a big smile and a wink. After the fifth wink, she realized she was freaking the boy out, so she changed chairs and did a better job of not looking in his direction.
“Should we wake up DJ?” she asked, trying to be helpful.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Shawn shook his head. “I wish I knew what Lacrosse is doing.”