Flirting with Disaster

by Jane Graves

  “Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?” he asked.

  “When I’m home in San Antonio, I go to the shooting range once a week.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I have a license to carry concealed in Texas. But they’re funny about you bringing guns into Mexico. Drugs, they get a little pissed. Guns, they toss you in jail and throw away the key. Makes no sense, but there you go. I feel downright naked without my Glock.”

  “So why the handgun proficiency?”

  “A girl’s gotta protect herself.”

  “So you can hit a paper target at a shooting range. Who taught you to how to blast away at the bad guys?”

  “Bruce Willis. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sylvester Stallone.”

  “Yes, and they go home at the end of the day no matter how many times they’ve been shot. Stick to chick flicks, will you?”

  She gave him a look of total disgust. “Are you really that sexist?”

  “No, I’m really that rational.”

  “Chick flicks. Right. I can learn how to sit around a dining room table with four other women and whine about my boyfriend. Or bitch about my boss. Or, of all things, find myself.”

  Dave just shook his head.

  After a few more minutes, when no other Santa Rios lawmen seemed inclined to take out after them, Dave unwound a little. A little.

  “Robert is going to be surprised to find out that I’m alive,” Lisa said.

  “I imagine he is. But once we get back across the border and you go to the authorities, there isn’t anything he can do about it.”

  “Will we run into any trouble in Monterrey?”

  “They have no clue who I am or where I came from,” Dave said, “so they have no way of knowing where we intend to go. Unless Douglas has the ability to cast a very large net, he’ll never be able to find us.”

  “Do you think they’ll try to follow us there?”

  Dave glanced into the rearview mirror for the hundredth time. “Haven’t so far. We may have shaken them for good.”

  “So I guess Robert and his partners in crime really do have an in with the local cops.”

  “I’d say that’s a safe bet.”

  “Then it’s nice that we’re getting the hell out of here.” Lisa looked around the interior of the Mustang. “And in such a hot car, too. Too bad it stood out in Santa Rios like a peacock in a flock of buzzards.”

  “This was all they had left at the rental place. Well, this or a fifteen-passenger van. I actually thought this would be less conspicuous.”

  “Can’t think of better bait if you want to catch a carjacker.”

  “And if I’d had any idea that carjacking was going to be an issue, I could have bought a junker for what this one cost to rent.” Dave circled his gaze around the car. “What am I saying? This one just became a junker.”

  It had one shattered back window, one blown-out driver’s side window, and a few bullet holes here and there for good measure.

  “They’re going to love getting this one back at the car rental company,” Lisa said. “What are you going to tell them?”

  “I won’t be telling them anything. If anyone caught our license plate number, they could have somebody waiting for us there. We’re not going to take that chance. We’ll just leave the car on airport property. They’ll find it sooner or later, and the insurance I took out will cover the damage. Then we’ll pick up a cab to the commuter airport.”

  “Will they check the small aviation companies? Maybe wonder whether we’re going to rent a plane?”

  “I doubt that. I think one of two things will happen. They’ll check the plate number, realize it’s a rental car, and ambush us there, or they’ll assume I own the car, in which case they’ll think we’re going to drive back across the border. Doesn’t mean I won’t be keeping my eyes open, though.”

  Dave stepped harder on the gas, then had a thought that made him step on the brake. “Damn it.”

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  “The spare tire. It’s one of those undersized ones meant for emergencies only. You’re supposed to drive only forty miles an hour with one of them. At that rate, it’ll take us at least five hours to get to Monterrey.”

  “Can’t you push it any harder than that?”

  “If that tire blows, we’ll be stuck out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “The later it gets, the more unlikely we are to get a plane today.”

  “I know. I’ll move it as fast as I can.”

  Lisa settled back in her seat with a heavy sigh. Dave glanced over at her. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” She paused. “Still a little tired, I guess. Hadn’t counted on a shoot-out with the bad guys.”

  “Don’t you ever do anything like that again.”

  “Sorry. Can’t promise that.” She turned to look at him, her head resting wearily against the back of the seat. “See, Dave, there are only two kinds of people out here in the wilds of Mexico. The quick”—she dropped her voice dramatically— “and the dead.”

  He started to chastise her again, but when a teasing smile played over her lips his heart just wasn’t in it.

  “Wake me when we’re halfway there,” she said, “and I’ll drive the rest of the way so you can get a little sleep.”

  “You need rest more than I do. I can take us all the way to Monterrey.”

  “I said wake me at the halfway point. It’s not fair for you to have to drive the whole way.”

  She put one booted foot against the dashboard and folded her arms, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes drifting closed. He took the opportunity to steal long glances at her, which confirmed what he’d discovered the moment he’d lain eyes on her again. The years hadn’t begun to diminish the attraction he felt for her.

  In spite of the fact that he’d ripped into her for grabbing that gun and blasting away at the bad guys, the fact that she’d actually done it filled him with feelings he hadn’t counted on. Admiration. Awe. Respect. He thought about Carla, how sensitive she’d been, like a fragile porcelain figurine always poised to slip right out of his hands. But Lisa was tough and unbreakable, with a shell so thick a sledgehammer couldn’t blast through it. Hell, she hadn’t needed him to come here. All she needed was a vehicle and a weapon and she could have taken on the entire Mexican army. And the very thought of having a woman like that . . .

  No. He had to get a grip here. He knew that emotionally charged situations did this to people, and apparently he wasn’t immune. Given the circumstances they were dealing with, his attraction to Lisa should have been the furthest thing from his mind.

  Oh, hell. Who was he kidding? With a few hundred miles of open road stretching ahead of him and nothing else to occupy his mind, it was the only thing he was going to be able to think about.

  chapter seven

  Lisa closed her eyes, but as tired as she was, she didn’t sleep right away. The low hum of the Mustang’s engine was hypnotic, relaxing her, drawing her back through memories of the last few times she’d seen Dave, memories that had grown hazy with age. But with him sitting beside her now, they seemed sharper, more focused, and she found herself remembering details she thought she’d long forgotten.

  Throughout high school, she’d watched him from a distance, because no girl on the planet would be immune to those good looks. No matter how attractive Dave had been, though, it had been a generally known fact that he belonged to Carla and always would. But what Dave had seen in Carla Lisa had never understood. In high school, she’d seen Carla as one of those silly little fools who exuded a helpless kind of delicacy, who begged to be taken care of by a man at every glance. What the hell was the attraction in that?

  Consequently, Lisa had told herself that Dave was no different from all the other swaggering jocks at Tolosa South who dated prom queens and daddy’s girls, whose only interest in a girl like her would be in getting her naked behind the stadium bleachers. So when she’d ended up as his partner in that sho
p class, she’d baited him, teased him, telling herself that hot or not, he was just one more guy who looked down his nose at girls like her, so why not have a little fun?

  For several days, he took everything she dished out. He stoically put up with it, offering little in the way of a comeback.

  Then he decided he’d had enough.

  Someday you’ll figure out that you’ve got a lot more to offer than just your body. As soon as that happens, maybe some decent guy will have you.

  The moment those words left his mouth, she felt as if he’d slapped her. From the time that she was thirteen years old, the only attention she’d ever gotten from guys was because of her body and the way she dressed. To suddenly have one suggest that he was disgusted by her appearance sent her into a tail-spin. When she got home that day, she looked at herself in the mirror.

  Really looked.

  And she hated what she saw.

  With Dave’s words still playing inside her head the next morning, she toned her appearance down. Way down. So much so that she felt self-conscious, as if everyone were looking at her and wondering what the hell was up. Then she’d gone to shop class.

  She remembered how Dave had stared at her and she’d almost slipped back into her cloak of defiance, hiding behind the “I don’t give a damn” role she’d played for so long. Then he said something about her hair.

  It’s pretty. I like it that way.

  Such a stupid little thing. But to this day she remembered the swell of elation she’d felt, the one that had made her heart beat like crazy.

  From then on, she put aside the smart-ass remarks and the sexual come-ons and they started to talk. Really talk. No matter how chaotic the rest of her life was, she could come into that class, put it all behind her, and spend an hour being herself. The relief of that was like a weight had been lifted from her chest, a way to finally breathe. Dave was the same from day to day, greeting her with a comfortable smile, cutting up with her behind their teacher’s back, and deferring to her enough times on the project they were working on that she knew he respected her opinion. Unlike the dark, sullen, angry guys she tended to date, Dave was open and friendly, with an understated sense of humor that had her captivated. They barely talked to each other outside of class, but even if he was with Carla, he’d look at Lisa sometimes for a few seconds, and it felt to her as if the two of them shared a bond that nobody else would ever understand.

  The semester passed quickly. Then one day, less than a week before school was out, they were alone in the shop, putting in some after-school time to finish up a cylinder head overhaul. While they were working, their discussion drifted around to their impending graduation and their plans that followed. Dave told her that of course he and Carla were getting married and he’d be going to college in the fall and eventually become a cop like virtually every other member of his family. Then he asked her what her plans were.

  “I’m going to get a job,” she told him.

  “That’s good. Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t matter?”

  “I just need to save some money.”

  “What for?”

  For years she’d had a dream boiling inside her like a volcano on the verge of erupting, something she wanted as much as she wanted her next breath. But now she hesitated to say it. Dave’s opinion had come to matter so much to her that she couldn’t have stood it if he’d laughed.

  “Tell me,” he said. “What are you planning to do?”

  Finally she faced him. “I’m going to take flying lessons. I want to be a pilot.”

  A look of surprise had crossed his face, which she instantly read as disbelief that somebody like her could ever achieve so lofty a goal. She drew herself up defensively, even as her heart was breaking.

  “Go ahead. Say it. You think I’m crazy.”

  “Crazy? Why would I think that?”

  “Because it takes money and brains to fly a plane, of course. I’m broke, and I’ve barely got the grades to graduate. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m thinking. You already told me you’re going to get a job and save money. And as far as intelligence goes, your grades have nothing to do with that. You chose to screw off and skip class. Are you going to show up for your flying lessons?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’d say you’re as good as in the air.”

  She searched his face for any indication that he was patronizing her. Teasing her. Lying to her. But he just continued to look back at her with a matter-of-fact expression, as if achieving her dream was a foregone conclusion if she wanted it badly enough.

  “I know it costs a lot of money,” she said. “It’s almost five thousand dollars to get a pilot’s license. But I figure if I can save two hundred dollars a month, in two years I’ll have it. That’s not such a long time. Not really. I swear I’ll quit eating and live on a park bench if that’s what it takes.”

  And because he just stood there listening to her, she kept talking. She told him that she was going to become a charter pilot and that someday she was going to buy a plane of her own. Maybe even start her own aviation company. She remembered a tiny smile crossing his lips at that point, and she knew she’d said too much.

  “I know you think I’m dreaming,” she said. “But I can do it. Every bit of it. You just stand back and watch me.”

  “Of course you can do it,” he said, his smile growing. “I’d just hate to be the person who got in your way. Bruises, bloody nose, broken bones. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

  Slowly she smiled back at him, the most wonderful glow of warmth spreading through her. She could do it. She knew she could.

  And Dave thought so, too.

  Suddenly that meant everything to her. His approving gaze exhilarated her beyond words, making her feel strong and capable and in control of her life. Making her feel as if she was only one step away from taking right off into the clouds.

  Then his smile faded. “I don’t think you’re crazy. But somebody does. Who told you that you’d never have the money or the brains to fly?”

  She turned away. “Nobody.”

  “No. There was somebody. Who?”

  Her stomach clenched with the memory, but she managed an indifferent shrug. “My father.”

  “Your father?”

  “He saw a copy of Plane & Pilot magazine in my room a few months ago. He asked me why I had it. I told him I wanted to learn to fly.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me that flying was expensive and I sure wasn’t going to be able to count on him for any financial help. He told me that it took somebody really smart to fly a plane, so that left me out, too. Then he told me to get my head out of the clouds and go buy him a couple of six-packs and a carton of cigarettes.”

  “What about your mother?” Dave asked. “How does she feel about it?”

  “She’d have to stay sober long enough to give me an opinion. But you know what? If I were married to my father, I’d stay drunk most of the time, too.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean. My father’s not the easiest guy in the world to live with, either.”

  “I’ll trade you any day.”

  “You haven’t met my father. You might think twice about that.”

  “Oh, yeah? Look at you. Your brothers. You’ve got it all.

  Just how bad could things be around your house? Does your father live on unemployment because he keeps getting fired? Leave for days at a time and not tell you where he’s been? Wave a gun around and threaten anyone who pisses him off?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll trade you. Just say the word.”

  Dave sighed. “Yeah, my old man can be pretty demanding. But I’ve got other relatives. Aunts and uncles and grandparents who live nearby. If things get bad around the house, there’s always somewhere else to go.”

  He might as well have been speaking a foreign language. She had no
sense at all of what it would be like to have other people she could depend on when things got tough.

  “Don’t you have an older brother?” Dave asked. “What about him? Will he help you?”

  “Lenny?” She shook her head. “He moved to San Antonio. I haven’t talked to him in years. With luck, he’s quit dealing drugs and actually made something of himself. But I really wouldn’t know.”

  “So you have to deal with your parents all by yourself.”

  She shrugged. “No big deal. I’m used to it.”

  “Are you really?”

  She started to say that of course she was. After all, she’d lived with it for the last eighteen years, hadn’t she?

  Then those years raced through her mind like a horror movie flashback, reminding her of the desolation, the desperation, the feeling that she was alone in the world with nobody to turn to. She was so ashamed of where she came from that she’d never told anyone what her life was really like, but Dave kept staring at her as if he actually gave a damn, and suddenly she couldn’t do anything but tell the truth.

  “No,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper. “I’m not used to it. I’ll never get used to it. I never know what I’m going to find when I go home.”

  “Like what?”

  She let out a shaky breath. “My parents screaming at each other. My mother bruised and bloody because my father can’t keep his fists to himself and she doesn’t have the guts to leave him. My mother sitting in the kitchen, emptying a fifth of bourbon and passing out.”

  “That’s terrible,” Dave said.

  It was. And it seemed even worse when she said it out loud. Her hands started to shake. God, why were her hands shaking?

  “The trailer where we live is small,” she went on. “There’s no place to go to get away from it. Sometimes I feel as if the walls are closing in on me, like I’m sealed inside a coffin, screaming to get out, but nobody’s listening.” She paused, taking a deep, unsteady breath. “On the north shore of Still-man Creek, there’s this little clearing surrounded by pine trees. Sometimes I go there and lie on my back in the grass. I stare up at the sky and take deep breaths of fresh air that I’m not sharing with anyone else. And I can watch the planes fly over. I just lie there and imagine taking off and soaring into the clouds and never coming back again.”